Denifle-Weiss, O.P., /Luther und Luthertum in der ersten
Entwicklung/, 1906-9. Weiss, /Lutherpsychologie als Schlussel zur
Lutherlegende/, 2 auf., 1906. Hausrath, /Luthers Leben/, 2 Bde.
1904. Kostlin-Kawerau, /Martin Luther, Sein Leben und seine
schriften/, 1903. Cardauns, /Zur Geschichte der Kirchlichen Unions
--und Reformsbestrebungen von 1538-42/, 1910. Laemmer, /Monumenta
Vaticana historiam ecclesiasticam saeculi XVI. illustrantia/,
1861. Raynaldus, /Annales Ecclesiastici/, 1735 (tom. xx.-xxi.).
Armstrong, /The Emperor Charles V./, 1902. /Cambridge Modern
History/, vol. ii. (The Reformation), 1903. Kidd, /Documents
Illustrative of the Continental Reformation/, 1911. For a fairly
complete bibliography on this period of history, cf. Grisar's
/Luther/ (Eng. Trans., vol. i., xv.-xxv.; Cambridge Modern
History, ii., pp. 728-64; Hergenrother-Kirsch, Bd. iii., pp. 4-8).

The religious revolt that had been foretold by many earnest
ecclesiastics began in Germany in 1517. Its leader was Martin Luther,
the son of a miner, born at Eisleben in 1483. As a boy he attended
school at Eisenach and Magdeburg, supporting himself by singing in the
streets until a kind benefactress came to his assistance in the person
of Ursula Cotta. His father, having improved his position in the
world, determined to send the youth to study law at the University of
Erfurt, which was then one of the leading centres of Humanism on the
northern side of the Alps. But though Luther was in close touch with
some of the principal classical scholars of Germany and was by no
means an indifferent classical scholar himself, there is no evidence
of his having been influenced largely in his religious views by the
Humanist movement. He turned his attention principally to the study of
philosophy, and having received his degree in 1505, he began to
lecture on the physics and ethics of Aristotle.