[I ADD MELANCTHON IS NOT REGARDED AS AN IN SITU WITNESS-SO THE PROBLEM REMAINS]????
--Previous Message--
: A more recent analysis tends to support the
: nailing of the theses to the Church door.
:
:
: https://www.luther2017.de/en/martin-luther/history-stories/on-the-doors-of-the-wittenberg-churches/
:
: Latest developments in the debate about the
: theses being nailed to the church door.
: by Dr. Martin Treu
: In 1961, the Catholic Luther researcher
: Erwin Iserloh realized that in all the works
: and letters of the Reformer he nowhere
: explicitly mentioned nailing his 95 theses
: to the door on October 31, 1517. Philipp
: Melanchthon was the first to mention it in
: the preface to the first volume of Luther's
: Collected Works in 1546. But by then Luther
: was already dead. Melanchthon only came to
: Wittenberg in 1518, and so could not have
: been an eye-witness. So Iserloh concluded
: that the theses had never been nailed to the
: door, and began a huge debate, which has
: still not been brought to a final
: conclusion.
:
: The unnoticed comment by Luther's secretary
: In 2006, Martin Treu from the Luther
: Memorials Foundation of Saxony- Anhalt
: rediscovered a handwritten comment by
: Luther’s secretary Georg Rörer (1492-1557)
: in the Jena University and State Library,
: which although printed, had so far played no
: role in research. Right at the end of the
: desk copy for the revision of the New
: Testament in 1540, Rörer made the following
: note: „On the evening before All Saints’ Day
: in the year of our Lord 1517, theses about
: letters of indulgence were nailed to the
: doors of the Wittenberg churches by Doctor
: Martin Luther.”
:
: The ultimate evidence has not been produced
: Now Rörer was also not an eye-witness, but
: he was one of Luther's closest staff. The
: copy of the New Testament, in which he made
: his note, contains many entries in Luther’s
: own hand. The note right at the end of the
: volume leads us to assume that it was made
: at the conclusion of the revision work in
: November 1544. Directly beside it is another
: note, according to which Philipp Melanchthon
: arrived in Wittenberg on August 20, 1518, at
: ten o’ clock in the morning. This
: information is not to be found anywhere else
: and presumably came directly from
: Melanchthon himself. Rörer's reference to
: the Wittenberg churches in the plural must
: be emphasized, as it corresponds to the
: statutes of the university. According to
: these, all public announcements had to be
: nailed to the doors of the churches.
:
: While this does not give final proof of the
: theses being nailed to the door, together
: with Rörer’s note it seems much more
: probable. It is at least so far the oldest
: source for it from the time when Luther was
: still alive. And: Wittenberg now has more
: than one “Theses Door”.
:
:
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