May 30, 1518

Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute

Luther sends his Resolutiones toward Pope Leo X

Luther sought shelter under Leo X's name in the same document in which he insisted that he could not retract.

30 May 1518: a covering letter to Staupitz

Martin Luther dated a covering letter to Johann von Staupitz on 30 May 1518, sending him the Resolutiones — his extended explanations and defences of the Ninety-Five Theses — for transmission toward Rome.

Staupitz, Luther's Augustinian vicar-general and mentor, received a fair copy along with the request to forward it and commend it to the pope.

Two addresses inside one manuscript

The manuscript carried separate prefatory addresses to Staupitz and to Pope Leo X. A surviving 1518 printing preserves both.

In the address to Leo, Luther presented the theses as propositions for disputation rather than settled dogma, explained how their unexpected circulation had overtaken him, and sought the pope's protection for his fuller explanation.

He remained formally deferential to Leo throughout the document, even while saying that he could not retract his theses.

What the date does not mark

30 May is securely attached to the letter to Staupitz and is the conventional date of the accompanying papal address. It is not the day the whole work was written: Luther worked on the Resolutiones principally between January and March 1518, and it reached print only afterward.

The work explained one controversy across 95 propositions — indulgences and the related questions of penance and papal power. It was not a summary of Luther's theology as a whole.

Nor was it commissioned as neutral explanation. Leo's order to Luther's Augustinian superiors called for a retraction, and the evidence supports saying Luther sent an explanation in response to the developing Roman case.

Sources

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What the sources leave uncertain

May 30 is securely attached to Luther’s letter to Staupitz and is the conventional date of the accompanying papal address. It should not be represented as the day on which the entire Resolutiones was written.
Leo’s order to Luther’s Augustinian superiors called for a retraction. The evidence supports saying that Luther sent an explanation in response to the developing Roman case, not that Leo personally commissioned a neutral 'summary of Luther’s theology.'