Includes bibliographical references (p. [489]-532) and index.

ch. 1. Luther's Europe -- ch. 2. Early years -- ch. 3. Flight to the monastery -- ch. 4. Years of silence -- ch. 5. Rome and Wittenberg -- ch. 6. Lectures on the Psalms -- ch. 7. Lectures on Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews -- ch. 8. Controversy over indulgences -- ch. 9. Preparing for battle -- ch. 10. Beyond Heidelberg -- ch. 11. Leipzig debate -- ch. 12. Discovery of the gospel -- ch. 13. Plunge into the unknown -- ch. 14. Breaking point -- ch. 15. Freedom of a Christian -- ch. 16. Progress to Worms -- ch. 17. Exile in Patmos -- ch. 18. Back to Wittenberg -- ch. 19. Tribulation -- ch. 20. September Testament -- ch. 21. Authority of princes -- ch. 22. On the Jews -- ch. 23. Worship and ethics -- ch. 24. Opposition and divisions -- ch. 25. Peasants' Rebellion -- ch. 26. Marriage -- ch. 27. Attack on Erasmus.

Marius follows Luther from his birth in Saxony in 1483, during the reign of Frederick III, through his schooling in Erfurt, his flight to an Augustinian monastery and ordination to the outbreak of his revolt against Rome in 1517, the Wittenberg years, his progress to Worms, his exile in the Wartburg, and his triumphant return to Wittenberg. Throughout, Marius pauses to acquaint us with pertinent issues: the question of authority in the church, the theology of penance, the timing of Luther's "Reformation break-through," the German peasantry in 1525, Muntzer's revolutionaries, the whys and hows of Luther's attack on Erasmus. In this personal, occasionally irreverent, always humane reconstruction, Luther emerges as a skeptic who hated skepticism and whose titanic wrestling with the dilemma of the desire for faith and the omnipresence of doubt and fear became an augury for the development of the modern religious consciousness of the West. In all of this, he also represents tragedy, with the goodness of his works overmatched by their calamitous effects on religion and society.