8 Myths about Martin Luther and The Reformation

Joe Heschmeyer picks apart a popular 101 video on Martin Luther's revolt, pointing out many painfully common factual inaccuracies.

Animated Short Film:
All rights to National Geographic.

"Here I stand" Speech from "Luther":
All rights to respective holders.

[frankie]

For those wondering, this video had a fake copyright strike that seems to be overturned so now Joe needs our help to get this video out of Algorithm purgatory by WATCHING IT IN FULL, LIKING, COMMENTING and SHARING. Lets do our part!

[ToddJambon]

The Hesch! It's very ironic, but perhaps fitting, that a Martin Luther episode was in purgatory. This may be your best pun yet!

[danieldoherty]

Joe, I cannot believe that after 40 years of studying the Reformation, I have never seen the instructions from the Archbishop of Mainz. How is this neglected even by Catholic scholars?

[johnblack]

You're doing great work Joe. May God bless you in your mission to educate people on the Truth of the Catholic Faith.

[cristinamz]

I will be using your video in my European History class to show snippets of it o my students.

[tubalcain]

I'm 66, and I was born into evangelical Protestantism. I heard my fair share of obligatory and hateful anti-Catholic sermons growing up. Late in life I had my fill, walked away, and was received into the Eastern Orthodox Church (Antiochian).
My niece followed, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church, where she met and married her husband. We never looked back.
The teaching I heard growing up that the church suddenly disappeared after the death of the apostles, but resurfaced in the 16th century in Northern Europe, was always puzzling.

[TheThreatenedSwan]

It's funny how in these depictions of Luther, if it were simply framed differently but none of the words were changed, you would view him as beyond pompous

[KathleenHughes-gmjx]

The beginning of my exit from Lutheranism (50 years ago) was watching the play "Poor Man Luther." This play was intended as a positive, pro-Luther play, but in it I saw a character so repulsive that I commented to a friend that I wasn't sure if I would have followed Luther if I had been alive at that time. Within 2 years, I was a Catholic.

I think the more people know about the true character of the Reformers, the better. Thanks for this video, and thanks for TWO great videos in one day.

[hannahpolehonski]

Lifelong non denominational protestant here: I have been interested in and learning about Catholicism for the last 9 months thanks to Pints with Aquinas. Whilst I've certainly experienced a paradigm shift and feelings of betrayal, this video has really opened my eyes to the lies, deceit and propaganda about Catholicism. As much as I love your videos Joe, I think you should have a support helpline or something for us protestants who watch these. I wish you could give me a hug.

[rouxmain]

The Kraken has been unleashed from the YouTube prison!

Joe, you're giving us wonderful content lately, than you so much!

[BradleyFear]

The fact that so many lies are spun against the Catholic Church to try and discredit it frankly only serves to show it's really Christ's Church.

[alissarehmert]

I really appreciate the usage of primary texts in this (and really all of your videos concerning history). I was taught nearly all of these myths in school (both high school and college). This is why primary texts should be a part of every kid's academic experience.

[haydenguinther]

John Henry Cardinal Newman once said, "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant." Deus vult

[lostboy]

As a german I find it very strange that the german lutheran church does everything to "demythologize" Christ himself (historical critical method etc) but they love to mythologize Luther.

[crusaderACR]

Here's a GREAT and relevant excerpt from Chesterton, after his conversion to Catholicism, telling us about his experience with Protestants back when he was an unbeliever:

"I happened to pick up some of the amusing pamphlets of James Britten, as I might have picked up any other pamphlets of any other propaganda; but they set me on the track of that delightful branch of literature which he called Protestant Fiction. I found some of that fiction on my own account, dipping into novels by Joseph Hocking and others. I am only concerned with them here to illustrate this particular and curious fact about exactitude. I could not understand why these romancers never took the trouble to find out a few elementary facts about the thing they denounced.
[...] These novels were padded with pronouncements like this one, for instance, which I happen to remember: "Disobeying a priest is the one sin for which there is no absolution. We term it a reserved case." Now obviously a man writing like that is simply imagining what might exist; it has never occurred to him to go and ask if it does exist. He has heard the phrase "a reserved case" and considers, in a poetic reverie, what he shall make it mean. He does not go and ask the nearest priest what it does mean. He does not look it up in an encyclopedia or any ordinary work of reference. There is no doubt about the fact that it simply means a case reserved for ecclesiastical superiors and not to be settled finally by the priest. That may be a fact to be denounced; but anyhow it is a fact. But the man much prefers to denounce his own fancy. Any manual would tell him that there is no sin "for which there is no absolution"; not disobeying the priest; not assassinating the Pope. [...] I never dreamed that the Roman religion was true; but I knew that its accusers, for some reason or other, were curiously inaccurate.
- The Catholic Church and Conversion (1926)

[zeedub]

I"m trying not to get angry that EVERYTHING I was ever taught as a Protestant was wrong. Not only everything I heard about the Catholics, but nearly everything about Protestantism itself. "Father, forgive them, for they know not."

[treeckoniusconstantinus]

Freedom from YouTube Purgatory at last!

[elinorris]

I learned pretty much this mythical history in high school and i only realized years later how inaccurate it was. I wish i could go back and confront my teacher on the falsities

[andrewscotteames]

As a former Lutheran, I really like this video. It touches on all these points that I learned were inaccurate as I studied the reformation and puts them together in an easy to digest format.

[bethanygrey]

Even though I worked through a lot of the “history” of Luther and the Reformation in my conversion from Calvinism to Catholicism, I learned quite a lot from this video. Thank you Joe! I especially appreciate all the scholarship on primary sources, and from a variety of backgrounds. History is almost never as our myths depict it—sometimes WILDLY different.