|
Today's Featured Biography
Martin Luther
 Martin Luther, the greatest of the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century, was born at Eisleben on November 10, 1483. His father was a miner in humble circumstances; his mother, as Melancthon records, was a woman of exemplary virtue, and particularly esteemed in her walk of life. Shortly after Martin's birth his parents removed to Mansfeld, where their circumstances ere long improved by industry and perseverance. Their son was sent to school; and both at home and in school his training was severe. His father sometimes whipped him, he says, "for a mere trifle till the blood came," and he was subjected to the scholastic rod fifteen times in one day! Luther's schooling was completed at Magdeburg and Eisenach, and at the latter place he attracted by his singing the notice of a good lady of the name of Cotta, who welcomed the lad into her family and provided him with a comfortable home during his stay there. Here under Trebonius he made good progress in Latin. In 1501, when he had reached his eighteenth year, he entered the university of Erfurt, with the view of qualifying himself for the legal profession. He went through the usual studies in the classics and the schoolmen, and took his degree of doctor of philosophy, or master of arts, in 1505, when he was twenty-one years of age.
Previous to this, however, a profound change of feeling had begun in him. The death of a friend, and the terror of a thunder-storm, deeply impressed him. Chancing one day to examine ...
...read more of the Biography of Martin Luther
|
