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Luther was a great writer and a pretty decent thinker. He was hit by lightning as a youth. He supposedly dedicated his life to a saint and made a deal with God to serve Him if he would bring him out of his suffering. His father wanted him to be a lawyer and had him trained by Catholic universities towards that effect. He went into monastic life after the lightning strike, rejecting his father.
He was an accomplished teacher at a time when the schools were the only place Catholic "government" existed in a teaching role. There were no seminaries. Partly, that's the reason you had some clerical people like priests or friars who were using the Church as a way to escape civic duties, and they also used their office as clergy for ill gotten gain. Yes, a few sold indulgences. That became the famous wrong.
Luther wanted the popes to ignore the Renaissance, the finding of America, the missionary work in China and Africa, the construction of a new basilica on top of St. Peter's bones, the nonstop production of Bibles, all those minor things that were going on, and to focus intently on this great evil being committed by a few priests.
Monastic life was a separate existence from stratified society: commoner, civic leader, nobility. It was devout and based on Scripture, especially Acts. Humanists outside of monasteries were trying to reconcile a new Bible. They did not have the manuscripts we have today nor the knowledge nor the capability of using knowledge as we do today.
In this context, Luther had many objections. Mainly, when he brought these forward in a famous debate with another academic from the Church, he got his clock cleaned. He lost the debate before an open and objective jury, and that's why he posted his the sises. He insisted on attention from the pope on the matters that he thought were most important. The pope was not phased, though he was concerned because he needed Luther in Wittenberg to be a good teacher. Luther wanted to revamp teaching in his own image, and he got used by nobility to create a rift between German commoners and the Church. He really believed he was doing right when he told his king, Holy Roman Emporer Carlos V, that if "it can't be found in Scripture, I won't abide by it," a.k.a. so la Scripture. Of course everything in the Catholic Church came from both oral AND written tradition, the latter being Scripture (you bonehead, Luther!)
The available Biblical manuscripts for humanists who decided to take the newly resurgent Greek ideas and rework the Bible like Wycliff (who did an awful English translation) were from the 10Th-14th centuries. They did not have available the old cod exes or manuscripts from any time earlier in Western Europe (outside of the Vatican). So first off, the notion that these people were capable of issuing a better Bible than the Vulgate is a joke. They were working off very recent copies done in languages they barely understood.
Luther's major objections to the Church were the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which he simultaneously kissed up to and tore down in his opinion pieces. And interpretation of the Bible. He edited out several books of the Bible because they were brick walls to his way of thinking (Epistle of James for example).
The major objection of the people like Freddy of Saxony who protected Luther from Carlos V, was land ownership by the Church, especially monasteries. WHY did monasteries have so much land?
Was it because of many popes like Gregory the Great, whose family owned half the island of Sicily and donated all their land to the Catholic Church? Was it because the nobility sought favor with the Church by giving it large tracts of land? Monasteries were the source of all Bibles. If you have one in your hands today, you owe a huge debt to the monks of the Catholic Church between around 200-1600 A.D. Bibles were made from parchment. Had been since the 4Th Century by papal decree. Because paper did not last, and producing a Bible before the printing press was a huge labor. So monasteries had to have a ton of land to produce the numbers of Bibles needed throughout the world. Oh, why? Because parchment is made from cattle skin. It takes around 700 full size cattle to make ONE Bible out of parchment. The Church employed commoners, fed them, ministered to them, and that took lots of land. Nobility liked that relationship because it took the "government" burden off of them.
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What were Luther?s chief objections to the Romans Catholic Church?
