What if one monk had kept his objections to himself?

In 1517, indulgences were being sold across Germany to help pay for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Martin Luther, a monk and professor in Wittenberg, believed the practice was wrong. On October 31 he made a choice: he sent 95 theses in Latin to Archbishop Albrecht and asked for the sales to be examined.

Whether he also nailed them to a church door is still debated by historians. What we know is that others translated and printed them, and within a few weeks they were known across Germany.

Had he stayed silent, the quarrel might have remained a local academic debate. That is only a hypothesis. Instead, it is remembered as the start of the Reformation.

Was the Reformation driven more by Luther's ideas or by the printing press that spread them?

#TheHistoryDecodedChannel