Transcript: We should probably start at the very seminal event which is of course [is] the nail that shook the world as it were, the Ninety-Five Theses and that there's a mythology about it of course the idea that Luther came down and with a hammer and he nailed these things into the cathedral doors as a protest and thus you know everyone suddenly you know started seeing the errors of the Catholic Church as it were and became you know followers of Luther and broke off the shackles of the pope and so you know that every 31st of October we see that it's this popular thing [to] celebrate Reformation Day. But the truth is if you went back in time to 31st of October 1517 and you're sitting outside the cathedral doors in Wittenberg you would be looking and saying "well all right... what's going [on]? when's this thing kicking off, man?" Sit down, relax. You know, people going into the church, coming out from mass and it's [the] vigil day of all saints. People will be picking up whatever they would need for the feast day, being... it's a general commerce around Wittenberg. "Well, when is this thing supposed to happen?" It gets to the end of the day, people start going in for vespers and he might see a clerk come by from the university with a bucket of glue because you actually didn't nail into university cathedral doors back then, even though they did serve as a bulletin board. You pasted it with glue and then you eventually varnish the whole thing and make it all look nice again after you removed all the older signs and paste and such and do it again. So you might have seen a monk maybe come up and paste the... Ninety-Five Theses up on the cathedral or and then he would have taken, you know, put up the other notices and gone back to the university.
You may be thinking, who cares if the Ninety-Five Theses were nailed or glued? What's the big deal? The big deal is controlling the narrative. A 2022 article from TGC, argues the image of a nail being hammered into the church door "is powerful, and as Protestant heirs of [Luther's] theological convictions, we appreciate the sense of confidence and finality the image carries." I think TGC has nailed it: Rome's defenders will do whatever they can to control the narrative. They want to minimize the heroic Reformation and the negative blight of the medieval Roman Catholic church. Previously their efforts were directed towards the Ninety-Five Theses being mailed, now they're arguing for glue. Both are attempts to de-dramatize the impact of the Reformation origin narrative.
The guest in the video does not document the assertion. This is understandable given that the information was being disseminated in a free style YouTube interview. There are though serious modern historians making the glue claim. For instance, the Reformation historian Peter Marshall states,
Neither the Wittenberg statutes nor the notifications of Melanchthon and Rörer make any mention of hammer and nails, whose habitual use would surely have done considerable damage to any wooden door functioning day-to-day as a university ‘bulletin-board’. As the historian Daniel Jütte has established, there is considerable evidence that sixteenth-century people more commonly used glue or wax when pasting up placards and notices in public places.
None of this rules out the possibility that Rörer was accurately reporting a posting of theses which took place prior to a failed disputation in Wittenberg, or that Luther personally undertook the task of fixing placards to the doors of All Saints and St Mary’s. Yet had he done so, it would have been an unusual, and presumably noteworthy, gesture of personal challenge, which leaves us with the unresolved problem of why neither Luther nor anyone else made mention of it prior to the 1540s (Marshall, Peter. 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation (pp. 64-65). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition).
But is it even certain that Luther would have used hammer and nails? This question has apparently never been asked before. None of the extant sixteenth-century texts mentioning Luther's posting of his theses explicitly address the use of hammer and nails. And in the contemporary statutes of the University of Wittenberg, the Pedell's duties to strike are explained, but there is no mention of a hammer to be used for this purpose.
Similar questions are raised by the earliest pictorial depictions of the posting of the theses - a pictorial motif which, by the way, only gained momentum in the seventeenth century: there is nothing to be seen here of hammer and nails. Instead, Luther is seen in front of a poster of theses that seems to hang on the church door as if by magic. It was not until the nineteenth century that the hammer became a common image ingredient, and this tendency towards the heroic depiction of a hammer-wielding reformer fitted in well with the increasing German nationalist appropriation of the historical Luther. Finally, during the First World War, a Germanic poet wrote the pathos-rich lines: "You stand at the anvil, Luther hero, / Panted by rage. And we, all Germany, joined you, / Are your blacksmith helpers."
Now it can be objected that some broadsheets and announcement slips from the early modern period have survived, which obviously show nail marks. However, there are also references to other methods in contemporary sources. A portrait of a donor by the Flemish painter Petrus Christus (around 1455), which is now in Washington, shows a devotional sheet in the background, which is attached to the wall with sealing wax (a forerunner of sealing wax). Certainly, this is an interior scene, but the Antwerp source from 1521 mentioned above speaks of "attaching or attaching" (slaen en plekken) to church doors, whereby "plekken" is to be understood as attaching with glue or wax. And the aforementioned Basel notary even speaks only of "staple", not of "(an-)schlagen". Another record by the same Basel notary makes it even clearer what was meant by "staple" here: he explicitly mentions that he had "publicly sniffed a similar note of protest with wax" on a door.
The implications for Luther's case are obvious: even if Luther affixed his 95 theses to the church door - which, as shown, is quite plausible - it is by no means clear that this was necessarily done with a hammer in his hand, let alone with the heroic gesture suggested by pictorial and cinematic representations from much later times. If Luther did not send the university pedell anyway, it is quite conceivable that on October 31, 1517, he stood in front of the Wittenberg Castle Church not with hammer and nails, but with glue or sealing wax.
To my knowledge, neither of these historians are Roman Catholic, although according to Peter Marshall's Wiki entry "Marshall began his career as a teacher: he was a history teacher at Ampleforth College, a Roman Catholic private school in North Yorkshire." At face value, both appear to be secular historians.
Conclusion
To summarize the above claims: the earliest accounts of Luther and the Wittenberg door come from Luther's close associates, Philip Melanchthon and Georg Rörer. These accounts do not mention a hammer and nail. These details appear to have been introduced in a later century. From 1455 and 1521 paintings (neither depicting Wittenberg), it appears glue was one of the methods used in affixing documents. Daniel Jütte concludes, "...it is quite conceivable that on October 31, 1517, he stood in front of the Wittenberg Castle Church not with hammer and nails, but with glue or sealing wax."
There is no definitive evidence the Ninety-Five Theses were not nailed to the Wittenberg Door. Even historian Daniel Jütte above states "...some broadsheets and announcement slips from the early modern period have survived, which obviously show nail marks." Nor do I know of any evidence from previous centuries in which defenders of Roman Catholicism quibbled about glue or nails. Earlier generations of Rome's defenders were primarily educated and published books and articles against Luther and the Reformation. They were not beyond slinging whatever mud they could pick up at Martin Luther or the Reformation. It surprises me that none of them mentioned glue.
Also note that Rome's defenders contradict themselves: one denies the nailing of the Ninety-Five Theses completely, the other includes the church door with a bucket of glue. They are though right about one thing: Luther was not intending to start the Reformation on October 31, 1517. However upset he was about the abuse of indulgences, he was not intending to transform Western Europe.
An old blog comment left by a Lutheran pastor and author (Kris Baudler) makes a pertinent observation:
To this day, university and church doors serve as bulletin boards from Tübingen to Oxford, studded with everything from nails and tacks to tape and chewing gum announcing everything from concerts to lectures, baby sitting services to guitar lessons. Popping a couple of nails into a door to hold a debate proposal of considerable weight would have been neither remarkable nor noticeable. Additionally, as is well documented, Luther relied on Röhrer for his publishing skill, speed, and accuracy.
In the video, Rome's defender says there were no nails, only glue. To believe in nails on the Wittenberg door is "mythology." This is going beyond what historian Daniel Jütte is asserting: Glue was one of the methods used, not the sole method. It is within the realm of possibility that the Ninety-Five Theses were glued. Even if they were though, the righteous indignation of Luther to the rampant societal and Papal abuse of indulgences is not diminished, nor is the collective positive impact of the Reformation. Rome's defenders may think the glue argument is meaningful, I do not. Until there's definitive historical proof, I'll stick with hammer and nails.
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