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Secondary sourceDocument1517 (1915 translation)

The Ninety-Five Theses

Martin Luther · 1517 (1915 translation)

Luther's 1517 theses against the sale of indulgences, in the same 1915 Spaeth translation as another copy in this archive.

A translated copy of Luther's own theses, the founding document of the Reformation he started.

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What it is

This is another copy of the 1915 English translation of Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, made by Adolph Spaeth, L.D. Reed, Henry Eyster Jacobs and others. The theses, written in 1517, challenged the Catholic Church's practice of selling indulgences and followed the medieval form of a formal academic disputation.

Why it matters

The Ninety-Five Theses are considered the starting point of the Protestant Reformation, a major split in European Christianity led by Luther. Studying a translation like this lets students read the arguments Luther made, even though the wording is not his original German or Latin.

Look closer

  • Why might scholars have translated this important document more than once?
  • What kind of language and structure would you expect from an academic debate document of the 1500s?
  • How might reading a translation change your understanding compared to reading the original?

This document is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Martin Luther on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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