Martin Luther's View Of The Roman Catholic Church

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In the 16th century, Martin Luther created an additional branch of the Roman Catholic Church, after he began to question the Church's beliefs, specifically with the Pope’s power, and encouraged the commonwealth to also question the church's authority and religious statements and to denounce them as false.
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Martin Luther was a German friar, Catholic priest, professor of theology, and seminal figure of the 16th-century movement known as the Protestant reformation. He questioned religious authority and went against the commonly accepted religious teachings to become an individual religious mind.
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During the mid 1500s, Luther resided as a friar in the Augustinian Convent, and throughout his stay at the convent he entertained many guests daily. From 1522-1546, some of the guests received by Luther recorded some of his most notable sayings from conversations with Luther. In this quote he is discussing the issues and disagreements he has with the current pope of the church.
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They who, against God’s word, boast of the church’s authority, are mere idiots.”
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Luther rejected many teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, but his primary objection was regarding the usage of indulgences to obtain, through purchase, freedom from God’s punishment for sin. Specifically, in his ninety-five theses, he admonished religious figures for selling indulgences, in defiance of the Pope’s request to remove such writing, which resulted in his banishment and excommunication from the Church.
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In the 17th century, a Frenchman named Voltaire questioned the government's prosecution of religiously diverse people. Additionally, he was an advocate for, and went to great extents to work towards beliefs in freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and religious