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Joseph: Today on "Travelscope," I begin my journey along the path of the Protestant Reformation, through Switzerland, the country of Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin, and through Germany, the home of Martin Luther.

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Joseph: "Out of love and concern for the truth and with the object of eliciting it"-- so begins Martin Luther's "Ninety-Five Theses" hung on the door of Wittenberg's Castle Church on October 31, 1517.

At the heart of his points of discussion was his condemnation of the sale of indulgences, which promised the Pope's pardon for God's punishments for sin.

Thanks to the printing press, within two months, his "Ninety-Five Theses" spread throughout Europe, where they found fertile ground in Switzerland in Zurich priest Huldrych Zwingli and elsewhere and grew into the Protestant Reformation, which would shape the Western world's religious and cultural future.

In 2017, Germany and Switzerland will begin to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the reformation with tours, events, and festivals in both countries.

I start my travels along the Reformation trail in the German capital of Berlin.

During the spawn of the Reformation, 1517 to 1685, Berlin was a protectorate, a capital, a refuge, and finally a victim of the Thirty Years' War.

After suffering the destruction and horrors of National Socialism, today Berlin is a multicultural, multi-religious city where thoughts of hot and cold wars are fading and the past icons of division like the Berlin Wall symbolize a unified Germany.

It's a natural jumping-off point for my Reformation explorations through Switzerland and Germany.

One of the stops along the Reformation trail is Erfurt, Germany, where Martin Luther's theological enlightenment began.

It was a dark and stormy night when the first seeds of the Reformation were planted.

Not far from Erfurt, where he had studied to become a lawyer, Martin Luther was caught in a terrifying thunderstorm.

[Thunder] Fearing for his life and being a good Catholic young man, he cried out to Saint Anne, the patron saint of miners-- his father's occupation-- "Save me, Saint Anne, and I'll become a monk."

True to his promise and against his father's wishes, on July 17, 1505, he entered an Augustinian monastery.

[People singing hymn in Latin] This was the Augustinian monastery that Luther spent 6 years in.

What was his life like here?

It was just a hard life.

First he had a few weeks to look how the monks lived, so he had time to read the rule and to pray with the monks, but he could have said, "No, I want to leave again."

1505, he became a novice, and then he started to live like all the other monks.

He studied theology.

Mm-hmm.

1507, he was ordained as a priest.

Here on this altar, he had his first Eucharist.

I know that he was very much influenced by Augustine's thought that instead of the authorities, that you should get your faith from the Scriptures.

He learned to pray, to study the Scriptures, to meditate the Scriptures.

He prayed all the Psalms, and the Psalms were very important for him during his whole life.

This was the fundamental things he learned, and then he could have his Reformation ideas.

Joseph: The Martin Luther of the Reformation that most people know lived to be 62 and died in his bed.

Matthias Gose is representing the younger Martin Luther, and he's gonna show me a few of his favorite spots here in Erfurt.

Here, in fact, Martin Luther was much younger than me.

He was a teenager of 17 years when he came first time to town, and here he started his studies, and so let's get started.

Matthias: At our left side, the pink building, that's the main building of the old University of Erfurt... Joseph: Mm-hmm.

and that's exact the place where I-- me, Martin Luther-- did my studies.

I started 1501, and I finished 1505.

What kind of a student were you?

I finished being the second best master of the 7 fine arts, and my father was so proud, he talked to me, "You Sir Master Martin."

Imagine this.

As Martin Luther would say, this is my dear mother, to who I have to say thanks for everything I am.

You can see behind here the great St. Mary's Cathedral.

That has been the place where Martin Luther got his ordination, 1507.

What did the young Martin Luther think about those Catholic churches when he saw them?

I believe he was very impressed to see two Catholic churches standing so close to each other.

He was maybe a little fanatic Catholic man, and so he was really proud to get his ordination in the greatest church of town.

Now, what would the Martin of the Reformation have thought about these two Catholic churches still being here and not reformed?

Maybe he would answer, "My Reformation has not been half as successful as I hoped," but the main churches of town stayed being Catholic because they belonged to the Archbishopric of Mainz.

Ah.

Well, you can't win them all.

This is Merchants' Bridge.

Can you imagine?

It doesn't look like a bridge, but yes.

Unique in Europe.

Only bridge which is totally filled up with two lines of houses-- a lot of artists-- of young, creative people.

Well, the young Martin, did he come here?

Yes, of course.

The young Martin Luther-- he was a mendicant monk.

That meant he had to beg for little stuff-- for money or food, so he was a young begging monk on the bridge.

A begging monk.

Yeah, maybe like this.

Oh, OK. Well, there you go.

Thanks for your donations.

Blessings, blessings.

Now, the old, the Reformation Martin, he didn't have to beg on the bridge.

The older Martin, he was wealthy man.

He was rich, and he got a lot of donations.

He even denied that fact--that he was begging in Erfurt.

He always explained, "I did my begging extra muros"-- Latin words for "outside the city walls."

Thank you for giving us a tour of some of your favorite spots, Martin.

Yeah.

Thank you for your donations.

Here's another one for you.

Joseph, voice-over: In Switzerland, the Reformation first took root in Zurich.

Located on the lake along the River Limmat, Zurich has been a crossroad of commerce and ideas since Roman times.

Two of the city's iconic landmarks are the Grossmunster and Fraumunster churches, where Pastor Huldrych Zwingli first advanced the ideas of the Reformation.

[Organ playing hymn] The Reformation here in Switzerland, in Zurich-- how did it differ from the Reformation that was taking place in other parts of Europe?

That's an interesting story.

You see, Luther, in Germany... Yeah.

he was a monk first, and then he was the most important person for the first step of the Reformation, but then in Switzerland, Zwingli, he came to Zurich as a priest, and he was in the midst of his community here.

The Reformation here is a Reformation of the community of the people of Zurich.

Hmm.

And so the first step was taken in the town hall.

They had this disputation, and they decided that the Zurich church should be reformed according to God's word.

So how did the Reformation, that kind of a Reformation, shape the character of the people of Zurich?

Ethics and morals were more important than in the Lutheran or in the Catholic Reformation, even to the point that some of the reform people became a little moralistic.

Hmm.

I wouldn't love that too much, but I love morals.

I love ethics.

Ethics is always something you apply to yourself.

Hmm.

Yes.

You don't apply it to other people.

Zwingli said, "God's justice and human justice are somehow linked."

One of the things that dramatically changed from the Catholic church and the Reformed church was the church itself.

The icons were taken out.

The saints were taken out.

The gold was stripped down and taken off.

The Second Commandment is very important.

They knew about the power of images.

He said, "It is important that we have the word of God in the center."

What would Zwingli have thought?

You have these beautiful Chagall stained-glass windows.

I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't have been angry.

Why?

Because they are biblical images.

He was not just kind of a weird guy talking about strange stuff.

He was focused on important questions of our religion and of our society.

[Organ music] Is Bach?

It's Bach.

It's a G-minor Fantasy from Johann Sebastian Bach.

What was the relationship between the Reformation and music?

Zwingli didn't like the organ very much in the church.

He said the organ is going to disturb the community.

Zwingli himself was a wonderful musician.

Really?

He played a lot of instruments.

He liked singing very much, but he didn't like the organ in the church, and we have about 300 years had no organs in the church.

So now it's allowed to have music in the church and to have organ music in the church.

Absolutely.

Joseph, voice-over: While Zwingli discouraged music in the church, Luther encouraged it, and in Eisenach, Germany, Johann Sebastian Bach's birthplace, the Bach Haus museum pays witness to Luther's inspiration to one of the world's great composers and musicians.

[Playing music by Bach] Joseph: Here at the museum, every hour, you have a demonstration of the different instruments here, and I understand one of the pieces is a piece "Our Father" composed by Luther.

Yes.

Bach composed more than 100 pieces.

He used his texts in cantatas, passions and oratorians and his melodies.

Luther composed more than 360 religion songs for his first German songbook, and Bach used these melodies for organ music.

And Zwingli forbade music in the church, and particularly organ music.

What was Luther's relationship with music in the church?

Luther said music is a present of God, and so they have to use this music in God's service.

Every Sunday morning, they have to sing and to praise God with music.

[Playing Bach music] Joseph, voice-over: "Luther's hymns have led more souls to eternal perdition than all his other writings and sermons."

The Jesuit Adam Conzen.

Born at the end of the Reformation, Bach was inspired by Luther and the Reformation history of Eisenach's Wartburg Castle.

In January 1521, after the Diet of Worms, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther because he would not recant his "Ninety-Five Theses."

It is reported Luther said, "Here I stand.

God help me.

I can do no other."

3 months later, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire declared Luther a convicted heretic and condemned him to death.

From May of 1521 through March of 1522, Luther hid out in Wartburg Castle under the protection of Frederick the Wise, whom, having consulted with the humanist and reformer Erasmus of Rotterdam, had decided that Luther had been falsely accused.

In order to keep his stay a secret from the powers that be, Luther resided at Wartburg under the guise of Junker Jorg, a long-haired and bearded "Knight George."

It was a nod to Saint George, the patron saint of the town of Eisenach.

Having defied the Pope's power and been declared a criminal worthy of killing without consequences, Luther accepted Frederick's sanctuary at Wartburg, offered for the good of the Reformation.

In this modest and sparsely furnished room, today known as the Luther room, Luther translated the New Testament of the Bible from the original Greek text into German in just 10 weeks.

This living and working space was quite different from the room at Zurich's Grossmunster Church, where Pastor Zwingli was supervising the creation and the subsequent printing of his own German-language Zurich Bible.

Luther and Zwingli were working on the first translations of the Bible into a modern language intended for the common man in more than a thousand years.

In 1519, Huldrych Zwingli, the people's priest, came to Zurich's Grossmunster Church.

Inspired by Luther and the humanist Erasmus, he preached against the Catholic Church for a more authentic Christianity.

Rather than to Rome, he wisely presented his 67 points to the Zurich Town Council, creating the ongoing symbiotic relationship between the Reformed Church and the canton of Zurich.

A primary precept of the Reformation was the accessibility to the people to the word of God, and that meant a translation of the Greek and Latin Bible into the language of the people.

While Luther was in Germany translating the Bible into German, here in the Grossmunster Church, Zwingli was heading the operation to do exactly the same, and that's why this room is so important, because this is where it was done.

There's a bookcase of some of the old Bibles and the original Bible here in the church.

As an additional note, to illustrate the difference between the former church and the Reformed Church, in the Roman Catholic Church, the chalice, which held the wine the blood of Christ, was a beautiful gold, precious chalice, and in the Protestant Church, it was a simple handcrafted wooden chalice, which was equally as effective.

This block of houses are as important to the Swiss Reformation as Zwingli's Grossmunster Church.

This neighborhood housed the 16th-century print house of Christoph Froschauer, where the first complete Zurich Bible, translated by Zwingli into German, was published in 1531.

Until 1564, when Froschauer died, an average of one complete edition of the Bible appeared every year.

The printing press-- the innovation that changed the world and was invented less than 100 years before-- allowed the ideas of the Reformation to spread throughout Europe.

In a sense, because of the printing press, the ideas of Luther and Zwingli went viral.

Zwingli's Zurich Reformation caused a division in the loosely connected Old Swiss Confederacy.

Religious civil conflict threatened to render the Confederation apart, and although a man of peace, Zwingli and his Protestant army of Zurich went to war against their Catholic brethren in Kappel, Switzerland, in 1531.

Outnumbered 3 to 1, his forces were routed, and he lost his life at the age of 47.

"They can kill the body but not the soul" were his last words.

Zwingli did not die in vain.

The Swiss Reformed Church that he established lives on, and many of his ideas created a free-thinking city founded on the Protestant work ethic, which is today one of Europe's wealthiest and its million inhabitants some of its most industrious, yet they know how to enjoy life.

Lake steamers leisurely ply its waters, and there are thousands of restaurants, many open-air, where you can watch the sunset from a lakeside table.

Along the Limmat River, Zurich's baths are where you leave your shoes and worries at the door.

Under the watchful eyes of the Grossmunster, I'm not sure Zwingli would have approved, but a lovely way to spend an evening in Zurich.

Joseph, voice-over: For more than 450 years, the guilds controlled Zurich life, and in the weaver guild house, the Zunfthaus Zur Waag, I sampled some of the local specialties.

Our signature dish is sliced veal Zurich style, with a creamy mushroom sauce with rosti.

I hope you enjoy it.

Zum wohl.

All the best.

Zum wohl.

Joseph, voice-over: Of course, back in Germany, if you're looking for regional specialties, you're looking for a great, fresh glass of beer.

Germans have been brewing beer since, well, the Bronze Age.

So as we acknowledge the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, we also celebrate the 500th year of Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law-- the oldest food safety law in the world.

On April 26, 1516, Dukes William IV and Ludwig X decreed that only water, barley, and hops could be used in the production of beer.

Later, Louis Pasteur discovered that yeast was also naturally present during fermentation.

[Speaking German] I think it must be time for a glass of beer.

[Laughter] While certain exceptions have been made, for wheat beer, for instance-- oh, danke-- the law continues to be honored by German brewmasters, and the common man benefits every day from their dedication.

Prost.

Prost.

Ah.

Joseph, voice-over: For all his spirituality, Luther appreciated human pleasures.

"He who loves not wine, women, and song remains a fool his whole life long," he said.

The Lutherstuben in Eisenach presents a Luther feast with food, drink, and entertainment that he most likely would have appreciated.

We're having a Luther feast tonight.

I don't know what's coming, but sounds like a good thing.

Yeah?

Prost.

Prost.

[Chanting] Prost.

[Music playing] You are the only nobleman at this table.

I will give you the horn.

Whoo!

Thanks to Martin Luther!

Prost.

Thank you, Martin Luther.

Ah.

Skol.

[whip cracks] They're beating people.

[Applause] [Rings bell] [Shouting] [Man speaking German] I hope that's enough for you.

[Speaking German] Here's 1 meter mix of meat.

Joseph: 3 feet of meat.

[Music playing] Legend holds that on October 31, 1517, an angry Martin Luther nailed his "Ninety-Five Theses" to this door on Wittenberg's Castle Church.

Most likely he was following common practice in posting a notice of an upcoming academic discussion that he, as Master of Arts and Sacred Theology and the duly appointed lecturer on these subjects, was organizing.

Whatever the case, his disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences was a literary shot heard round Europe that consolidated the beliefs that had been forming regarding the corrupting sale of indulgences and the general need of reforming the Catholic Church.

Joseph, voice-over: In part two of my Path of the Reformation explorations, we travel to Marburg Castle in Germany for a spiritual confrontation between Luther and Zwingli, as well as follow reformer John Calvin's rise to power in Geneva, Switzerland, a city of refuge.

In the picturesque Emmental Valley, the home of Swiss cheese, we meet the Anabaptists, radical reformers and forebearers of the Amish and Mennonites and reveal their tale of religious persecution throughout Europe.

After more German and Swiss adventures, we return to Wittenberg for a medieval festival and celebration of Luther's marriage to Katherine--a fugitive nun-- and commemorate his death in the town of his birth, Eisleben.

Until then, this is Joseph Rosendo, reminding you of the words of Mark Twain: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."

Happy traveling.

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Mmm!

[Shouting]