The Lutheran Church is the oldest and largest Protestant church in the
world. Lutheranism had its origins in the Reformation movement of the
1500's - a movement led by Martin Luther.

Luther was born in Germany in 1483, the son of a miner. His parents
gave him a strict religious upbringing. A brilliant student of theology and
scripture, Luther became a monk and an ordained priest in 1507. He soon
earned his Doctorate of Theology and was appointed a Professor at the
University of Wittenberg. 

After years of intensive Biblical study, Luther became torn between devotion
to the church and criticism of some of its teachings. He came to believe that
salvation was a direct gift from God to those who had faith in Jesus Christ -
not by good works or through priests or clerical mediators. This is the
doctrine of "justification through grace, received in faith." 

Luther criticized the church practice of selling "indulgences" as a way of
"paying" for sins and lessening the time to be spent in Purgatory. In 1517 he
nailed his famous "95 Theses" to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg,
to raise these issues for discussion. 

Catholic authorities charged Luther with heresy (false teachings). When he
refused to renounce his beliefs and insisted the papacy was of human, not
divine origin, Luther was excommunicated.

Old Prussia was a colony of the Teutonic Knights (Deutschorden), one of the 
three militaryreligious orders which arose during the crusades for the defense 
of the Holy Land and the protection of pilgrims. They had the same military 
and monastic constitution as the Knights Templars, and the Knights of St. John; 
but their members were all Germans.  They wore a white mantle with a black 
silver-lined cross, and as a special favor an imperial eagle on their arms, which 
descended from them to the royal house of Prussia. Emperor Frederick II and 
Pope Innocent III granted them all the lands they might conquer from the
heathen on the eastern borders of Germany. They were invited by the Duke of 
Poland to defend the frontiers of his country against the heathen Prussians 
(1240). The conquest was completed in 1283. The Knights Christianized, or 
rather Romanized, the Prussians, after the military fashion of Charlemagne in his 
dealings with the Saxons. The native heathenism was conquered, but not
converted.

After nearly two centuries of rule the Knights degenerated, and their power 
declined by internal dissensions and the hostility of Poland. In 1466 they were 
forced by Casimir IV in the Peace of Thorn to cede West Prussia with the 
richest cities to Poland, and to accept East Prussia as a fief of that kingdom.
Martin Luther  inaugurated a different kind of reform. He seized a favorable 
opportunity, and exhorted the Knights, in a public address, March 28, 1523, 
to forsake the false monastic chastity so often broken, and to live in true 
matrimonial chastity according to the ordinance of God (Gen. 2:18). "Your 
order," he argued, "is truly a singular order: it is both secular and spiritual, and 
neither; it is bound to wield the sword against infidels, and yet to live in celibacy, 
poverty, and obedience, like other monks. These things do not agree together, 
as is shown by reason and by daily experience. The order is therefore of no use 
either to God or the world. Trust in God, rather than the empire; shake off the 
senseless rules of your order, and make an end to that hermaphrodite monster 
which is neither religious nor secular; abolish the unchaste chastity of monkery; 
take to thyself a wife, and found a legitimate secular sovereignty."

In January, 1524, an order was issued that baptism be celebrated in the
vernacular tongue, and recommended the clergy to read diligently the Bible, 
and the writings of Luther, especially his book on Christian Liberty. This was 
the beginning of the Reformation in Prussia.

In May, 1525, Georg von Polenz  resigned the secular part of his episcopal 
authority into the hands of the Duke, because it was not seemly and Christian 
for a bishop to have so much worldly glory and power. A few days afterwards 
he married, June 8, 1525, five days before Luther's marriage. In the next year
the Duke followed his example, and invited Luther to the wedding (June, 1526). 
This double marriage was a virtual dissolution of the order as a monastic 
institution.

Duke Herzog Albrecht, acting on the advice of Luther, changed the property 
of the Knights into a hereditary duchy. The king of Poland consented. Most of 
the Knights received large fiefs, and married; the rest emigrated to Germany. 
Albrecht formally introduced the Reformation, July 6,1525, and issued a 
Lutheran constitution and liturgy.