Martin Luther
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MARTIN LUTHER: THE RELUCTANT REVOLUTIONARY<br />
PROF. M. M. NINAN<br />
He was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia by his religious order in 1515. This meant he<br />
was to visit and oversee each of eleven monasteries in his province.<br />
Having acquitted himself with evident success, and in a manner to please both parties, <strong>Luther</strong><br />
returned to Wittenberg in 1512, and received the appointment of sub-prior.<br />
In 1512, he was appointed director of studies in his Augustinian cloister.<br />
In 1515, was made district vicar in charge of eleven monasteries.<br />
In 1511, he began preaching within the cloister and<br />
in 1514, to the Wittenberg parish church.<br />
His academic promotions followed in quick succession.<br />
On October 19, 1512, <strong>Martin</strong> <strong>Luther</strong> became a doctor of theology, more specifically Doctor in Biblia,<br />
and became university professor of Bible. He offered exegetical lectures on Psalms (1513-1515),<br />
Romans (1515-1516), Galatians (1516-1517), and Hebrews (1517-1518).<br />
21 October 1512, was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of<br />
Wittenberg, having succeeded Staupitz as chair of theology. He spent the rest of his career in this<br />
position at the University of Wittenberg<br />
His further appointment as district vicar in 1515 made him the official representative of the<br />
vicar-general in Saxony and Thuringia. His duties were manifold and his life busy. Little time was<br />
left for intellectual pursuits, and the increasing irregularity in the performance of his religious duties<br />
could only bode ill for his future. He himself tells us that he needed two secretaries or chancellors,<br />
wrote letters all day, preached at table, also in the monastery and parochial churches, was<br />
superintendent of studies, and as vicar of the order had as much to do as eleven priors; he lectured<br />
on the psalms and St. Paul, besides the demand made on his economic resourcefulness in<br />
managing a monastery of twenty-two priests, twelve young men, in all forty-one inmates. His official<br />
letters breathe a deep solicitude for the wavering, gentle sympathy for the fallen; they show<br />
profound touches of religious feeling and rare practical sense, though not unmarred with counsels<br />
that have unorthodox tendencies. The plague which afflicted Wittenberg in 1516 found him<br />
courageously at his post, which, in spite of the concern of his friends, he would not abandon.<br />
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