Half a millennium ago today, on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, and kicked off the Reformation. He also, as it happened, kicked off well over a century of religious violence in Europe, a hot new diplomatic trend that would only abate once the imperial age began and we all started fighting about gold rather than god.
Anyway. Since both relate to the battles between the two halves of western Christendom, the 500th anniversary of Luther’s protest seems like a great moment to regurgitate my favourite fact about European history. It’s this:
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