If I had to baptize a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the Elbe, hang a stone around his neck and push him over with the words 'I baptize thee in the name of Abraham.'
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"I cannot pray without cursing."
"The more you read the Bible, the more you will love it; the more you love it, the more you will read it."
"Sixthly, they ought to be deprived of the opportunity to practice usury, and all their cash and treasure of silver and gold should be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping."
"You must say my sins are not mine; they are not in me at all; they are the sins of another; they are Christ's and none of my business."
"Even if the Antichrist appears, what greater evil can he do than what you have done and do daily?"
German theologian whose 95 Theses (1517) launched the Protestant Reformation and broke the Catholic Church's monopoly on Western Christianity. Closely associated with Philipp Melanchthon (Lutheran systematizer) and John Calvin (later Reformer who built on Luther's break). For an intellectual contrast, see Pope Leo X, Renaissance pope (1513-1521) — Leo X's indulgence sales triggered Luther's break and Leo excommunicated him in 1521 — Luther's entire Reformation is structured as a direct answer to the indulgence-funded Vatican Leo represented.
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Luther is saying that if forced to baptize a Jewish person, he would rather drown them in the Elbe River than perform a genuine Christian baptism. He invokes Abraham's name as a mocking substitute for the Trinity, signaling that he considers Jews unworthy of Christian sacraments. The statement expresses violent rejection dressed in theological language, treating murder as preferable to religious inclusion of Jewish converts.
Luther spent his later years writing virulent antisemitic tracts, most notoriously 'On the Jews and Their Lies' (1543), which urged burning synagogues, destroying Jewish homes, and expelling Jews from German lands. Initially he had hoped Jews would convert to his reformed Christianity; when they refused, his rhetoric turned genocidal. This quote captures that embittered late-career hostility and reflects his willingness to sanctify violence through scripture.
In early modern Europe, Jews faced expulsions, ghettoization, and blood libel accusations across German-speaking lands. The Reformation (1517 onward) intensified religious polarization, and Luther's antisemitic writings circulated widely through the new printing press. His words later provided ideological cover for centuries of persecution, culminating in Nazi propagandists citing him directly in the 1930s to justify the Holocaust.
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