Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German monk, theologian, and the pivotal figure of the Protestant Reformation, whose 1517 Ninety-five Theses challenged the sale of indulgences and split Western Christianity. His Table Talk (Tischreden) is not a book he wrote but a posthumous collection of his informal remarks, jotted down by students and dinner guests and first published in 1566. He is a wholly different person from the American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., born four centuries later.