What events led to and followed Martin Luther and his ninety-five theses? It is difficult for most people to imagine it possible that a man, like Martin Luther, could influence the world so profoundly in such a short period of time. However, this is exactly what he did and in a period of only sixty-three years. Some of the most spectacular events of religious reform took place during the life of Martin Luther. It forced scholars to stop and take a hard look at the practices of the church and allowed laypeople to do the same. In a time when indulgences and pardons were at their peak, and the Catholic Church reigned supreme, Martin Luther chose to preach against them and against the doctrine of the Church. With one document, his Ninety-Five Theses, he walked the halls of the Vatican, broke the strong hold of the Catholic Church and brought Christian reform to all parts of Europe and the world. No one can deny that, after his Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther was on the path to serious reform, but he was not always on that path. He was born in 1483, the son of a coal miner and had a strong will from the beginning of his life (Mullett, 26). In his childhood, Luther was sometimes beaten up to 15 times in one morning while attending school. Martin Luther's father had first arranged for him to become a lawyer and began training him for this at an early age, insisting that he learn Latin (Mullett, 29). In 1505 he obtained a master's degree and, according to his father's wishes, enrolled in the faculty of law at the University of Erfurt. That same year, however, he reportedly had a derailment after a traumatic experience while walking home from school to his parents' house. As Martin Luther was returning home, he suddenly became trapped in a terrible bolt of lightning... in the middle of a sheet of paper... as he opened his lectures. They struck at the roots of papal sovereignty and were destined to create a scandal among the ecclesiastics of the highest spheres. By questioning the practice of Indulgences (the collection of money to compensate for sins) and the belief in Purgatory (a middle ground between heaven and hell that one might dwell on) Luther struck the links to the very core of the foundations of the Catholic Church and eventually separated from it with a very strong following. In 1520-2 "Lutheranism" became a sect. When he realized what was happening, the reformer was shocked; he insisted that people should follow Christ, not Luther. But by now he had become, in the popular imagination, a saint, a miracle worker, a prophet, the apostle of the last days, almost a reincarnated Christ. He had been given a place in the multi-layered mythology of the German people.