Day 03 - Erfurt, Eisenach

Today began with a walking tour of the beautiful twisting alleyways and streets of Erfurt.  We learned that Erfurt was a “Wende” or turning point in the life of Martin Luther (“Marty”).  He made the decision to become a monk here.  We spent some time today seeing not only the university where he studied law, but also the Augustinian monastery that he joined after declaring,  “St. Anne, help me and I will become a monk.”  He made this decision while he was traveling between Erfurt and Eiselben during a thunderstorm and thought he was going to be struck by lightning and die. 

We added another question to our understanding of the Reformation today, how am I made righteous?  Marty knew that he would never be perfect on his own and as he studied scripture he came to realize he did not have to be righteous on his own, because he had Jesus.

This afternoon we traveled to Eisenach and toured Wartburg Castle.  After Marty was outlawed by Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms (ewwww! but seriously a Diet is a meeting that is held in an Imperial city and this one happened to be in Worms), he was taken into protective custody (kidnapped) on May 4, 1521, at Wartburg Castle.  Here he took on the disguise of Junker Jörg and changed his appearance by growing a beard and not cutting his hair.  While here Marty began his translation of the New Testament.  We saw copies of the Luther Bible where Marty wanted wide margins so the priests could take notes and add their commentaries alongside the actual text.  His version of the New Testament was translated from the original Greek instead of the Latin Vulgate as others had been in the previous 1,000 years.  Marty’s version was written in the common German language so that everyone could understand it and also included many illustrations done by Cranach telling the stories so those who could not read would still be able to understand.

Today we walked 6.6 miles.