Martin Luther wrote this direct appeal to the German nobles in 1520, three years after his defiant act of challenging the authority of the Catholic Church by attaching his “Disputation on the Power of Indulgences,” better known as the Ninety- Five Theses, to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, an act often identified as the start of the Protestant Reformation. Luther, a Catholic priest and university professor of theology, wished to see the church to which he’d committed his life undertake substantial reform. Catholic officials refused. Luther likewise refused to publicly recant his claims, which made him an enemy of both Pope Leo X and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and he found it necessary to go into hiding. Now an outcast whose life was in danger, Luther sought protection in his native Germany, which was provided to him by the powerful noble Frederick III of Saxony.