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AI Reimagines Martin Luther for Reformation Day
A Tribute to the famous German monk with AI art
On October 31, 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther changed the world. He didn’t know it at the time but his act of frustration would unleash waves of protest and reform that shook the very foundations of Europe and sent ripples of change throughout history.
In 1517, Luther was a theology professor at the University of Wittenberg and the provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia.
The trigger for Luther’s protest and titanic battle with Rome came from a Dominican priest named Johann Tetzel. Commissioned by Pope Leo X, Tetzel was selling indulgences as part of a massive fundraising campaign to finance the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Though the sale of indulgences was not permitted in Wittenberg itself, many Germans nevertheless traveled from Wittenberg to purchase them. And many of them, upon their return home, showed their purchased pardons to Luther and claimed they no longer had to repent for their sins.
It was the last straw for a man who had, in several ways, already grown frustrated and…