Overview: Martin Luther’s attack on the all-powerful Catholic Church was a knife to the heart of an empire that had endured for over a thousand years. Nailing his treatise to the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral, this previously obscure German monk changed the world forever, unleashing forces that plunged Europe into war and chaos. But Luther would do more than revolutionize the Church, he offered the Christian world a new vision of man’s relationship with God and, in turn, redefined man’s relationship with authority in general.