understand that Luther was a part of rather than the center of a dynamic century. He was affected by his times just as much as he affected them. In this first chapter, we seek to understand the world in which Luther lived. To understand the man, one must also understand his times. The church at the dawn of the sixteenth century is a perplexing institution because it was so full of contradictions. On the one hand, the papacy and Roman curia were corrupt institutions; largely governed by