7 important dates in the Reformation life of Martin Luther

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Monday, October 31, 2022

Luther’s German New Testament is released – Sept. 21, 1522

A statue of 16th-century theologian Martin Luther holds a Bible in the hand on the marketplace during the celebrations to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Luther's nailing of his 95 theses on the doors of the nearby Schlosskirche church on October 31, 2017 in Wittenberg, Germany. | Carsten Koall/Getty Images

Prince Frederick the Wise placed Luther under his official protection after Luther had been declared a heretic, allowing the Reformation leader the time to work on a German language translation of the Bible.

The year after the Diet of Worms, Luther completed a German translation of the New Testament, which was printed on Sept. 21, 1522. The edition was controversial due to it being in a vernacular language rather than in the Latin that was mandated by the Roman Catholic Church.

“It is estimated that three thousand copies of Das Newe Testament Deutzsch were printed in Wittenberg,” explained the Christian Study Library.

“The sales were so strong that by December a second, new edition was printed. Evidently, people ignored the pope's ban of Luther's writings. And the order that Duke George of Saxony gave in 1522 to surrender the translation with its ‘heretical’ notes and glosses fell upon deaf ears.”