The Ninety-five Theses
Luther’s 1517 disputation on indulgences, printed in several cities that year and used by the essay as an example of rapid dissemination.
Document · 1517Sources & confidence: Qualified confidence
Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Library of Congress description of the 1517 printed disputation and early editions.
- Library of Congress: Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum
1517 Latin disputation by Luther; Nuremberg printing and three editions by the end of 1517 in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel.
- Wikidata entity API: The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings
Identifies The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings, an anthology rather than the 1517 disputation; basis for replacing the identifier.
- Wikidata: Ninety-five Theses
Label and description identify Luther’s disputation on indulgences; used only for identifier matching.
What this check doesn’t establish
- Catalogue text was available in indexed retrieval, but direct opening failed. It does not establish circulation across Europe within weeks or resolve the door-posting debate.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
The Library of Congress describes three printed editions by the end of 1517, in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel. This supports early dissemination, but not the stronger claim that copies reached all Europe within weeks.
The essay also uses the familiar door-posting story. This audit did not resolve the evidence for that episode and does not present it as an established fact. The viral-pamphlet comparison is the essay’s analogy.
In the essays
- You Can't Shame a Fork
Read the essay
People
- Martin Luther
Author
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/works/luther-95-theses.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-25