Symphonic Meditation on “Ein’ Feste Burg” [ORGAN]
The Black Death — the worst pandemic in human history — first struck Europe around 1343. Although spread around Europe by ships carrying plague infested rats, there is evidence that it could also be spread airborne. Whereas COVID had a mortality rate somewhere around 1 in 1000, the Black Death had a mortality rate around 900 in 1000. The Plague took several years to run its course, and it returned to ravage Europe every couple decades or so until the 19th century. The first rampage of the plague was the worst.
In Catholicism when one is dying, one needs the Last Rites administered by a priest to ensure your entry straight into Heaven. The most committed priests of course wouldn’t hesitate to administer Last Rites to parishioners dying of Plague, and thus caught it themselves. Thus the Plague had the effect of culling the most committed and honorable priests, tending to spare the slothful. Matters were made worse when the Church — desperate to replenish the ranks of the priests — necessarily had to lower their standards and training to almost nothing. And thus the Church experienced a massive dumbing down and drop in integrity across the board. The corruption in the Church was still thriving when Luther posted his 95 theses in 1517.
Luther’s 95 theses mostly addressed the problem of ‘indulgences’: from the Church you could buy yourself a “get-out-of-sin-free card”, without having to trouble yourself with repenting for your sin and reforming your behavior. This amounted to big money: In 1515, Pope Leo X granted a plenary indulgence to finance the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. It applied to almost any sin, and no other indulgences could be offered by priests for the eight years in which it was offered. Political rulers found indulgences problematic because local economies suffered when the money for indulgences left a given territory. Rulers often sought to receive a portion of the proceeds or prohibited indulgences altogether, so indulgences had both theological and economic implications.
When Luther posted his 95 theses, he was only seeking reform WITHIN the Catholic Church. But in 1521 Luther was excommunicated, and the die was cast. What had started out as objecting to the indulgences, blossomed into his ideas around ‘salvation by faith alone’, and armed with a new cutting edge technology called the printing press, Luther changed history.