What events led up to and followed Martin Luther and his ninety-five theses? It is difficult for most people to imagine that a man, like Martin Luther, could affect the world so profoundly in such a short time. However, that is exactly what he did and over a period of only sixty-three years. Some of the most dramatic events in religious reform took place during Martin Luther's lifetime. He forced the scholar to stop and carefully examine the practices of the Church and he enabled the layman to do the same. At a time when indulgences and pardons were at their peak and the Catholic Church reigned supreme, Martin Luther chose to preach against them and against Church doctrine. With a single document, his Ninety-five Theses, he walked the halls of the Vatican, broke the strong hold of the Catholic Church, and brought Christian reform to all parts of Europe and the world. No one can deny it, after his Ninety-five Theses. According to these theses, Martin Luther was on the path to serious reform, but he was not always on this path. He was born in 1483, the son of a coal miner and was strong-willed from early in his life (Mullett, 26). As a child, Luther was sometimes beaten up to 15 times a morning while he went to school. Martin Luther's father initially arranged for him to become a lawyer and began training him from a young age, insisting that he learn Latin (Mullett, 29). In 1505 he received his master's degree and, according to his father's wish, he enrolled in the law faculty of the University of Erfurt. However, that same year, he was derailed after a traumatic experience while walking home from school to his parents' house. As Martin Luther was walking home, he suddenly found himself trapped in a terrible flash of lightning... in the middle of a sheet of paper... listening to his lectures. They struck at the roots of papal sovereignty and would create a scandal among ecclesiastics in high places. By questioning the practice of Indulgences (the collection of money to compensate for sins) and the belief in Purgatory (a medium between heaven and hell that one could hang on) Luther touched the very core of the foundations of the Catholic Church and ended up separating from it with a very strong audience. In 1520-1522, “Lutheranism” became a sect. When he understood what was happening, the reformer was dismayed; he insisted that people should follow Christ and not Luther. But he had then become, in the popular imagination, a saint, a miracle worker, a prophet, the apostle of the last days, almost a reincarnated Christ. He had been assigned a place in the multi-layered mythology of the German people..