In n 2017 we will celebrate a momentous milestone, the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther, Augustinian monk and doctor of theology, nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. This was to shake church and society to its foundations, and the world has never since been the same.

Protestant Christians are Luther's grateful beneficiaries. And the wider world too can be thankful, for Luther did much to free humanity from superstition and fear, and to recover the nobility and vocation of all human beings as made in God's image.

To get the most out of celebrating the Reformation next year, it would be good to prepare now by asking: "What was the world like 500 years ago, in 1516, the year before the hammer blows of the Reformation?" For the better we understand Luther and his world in 1516, the better we understand his actions in 1517.

First, what was happening in the world in general? In 1492 Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas, and Europe was forced to think about the earth in a larger way. In about 1512 Copernicus printed his Commentariolus, a pamphlet given to his friends proposing heliocentrism, the hypothesis that the earth orbits around the sun instead of visa versa. This would likewise bring a radically new vision of the universe.

In the church, the "warrior-Pope" Julius II, who as Pope had led his troops into battle against Italian cities, had died in 1513. The extravagant Giovanni de Medici was crowned his successor, and as Leo X (1513-21) he bankrupted the Vatican and accelerated Luther's rise. From 1512-17 the Roman Catholic Fifth Lateran Council tried to reform the more obvious abuses of the church, but succeeded only in banning the printing of books without Rome's authorisation.

Luther's own timeline is well known. Born in Eisleben in 1483 to a reasonably prosperous mine owner, in 1502 he began studying for the legal profession. A thunderstorm in 1505 drove him to call out to Saint Anna for help, and finally, against his father's wishes, to enter the Augustinian monastery of Erfurt. His first mass was celebrated in 1507. In 1510 he visited Rome, where he was scandalised by the insincerity and immorality. By 1511 he was transferred to Wittenberg University in eastern Germany to teach theology. His first lectures were on the Psalms in 1513, to be followed by Romans in 1515, and Galatians in 1516.

The year 1516 was also momentous beyond the walls of Wittenberg. The teenage Archduke Charles was crowned King of Spain. Later, as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1519-56), he would seek to crush the Reformation. Henry VIII's eldest child Mary was born in 1516. As England's Queen (1553­1558), "Bloody Mary" had 283 Protestants burnt at the stake for their faith. Selim I (c.1465-1520), the Sultan of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, conquered Egyptian forces near Aleppo, and thus brought Syria, Palestine, and Egypt under Islamic Rule.

In the arts in 1516, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) joined the French court of Francis I; Michelangelo (1475-1564) finished his giant sculpture of (the horned) Moses; Raphael (1483-1520) painted The Sistine Madonna; Ariosto (1474-1533) wrote his influential Orlando Furioso, celebrating Christian knightly chivalry over against Islamic aggression; and Thomas More (1478­1535) published his Utopia. In Italy, music was engraved on to plates for mass printing for the first time, and the Holy Roman Empire's mail service was extended to Rome and Naples. Furthermore, the Dutch Humanist Erasmus published his scholarly edition of the New Testament with parallel Greek and Latin texts.

Back in Wittenberg, still in 1516, Luther was frantically busy, so wrote to a friend in October:

I could use two secretaries. I do almost nothing during the day but write letters. I am a conventual preacher, reader at meals, parochial preacher, director of studies, overseer of 11 monasteries, superintendent of the fishpond at Leitzkau (58km from Wittenberg!), referee of the squabble at Torgau (69km distant), lecturer on Paul, collector of material for a commentary on the Psalms, and then, as I said, I am overwhelmed with letters. I rarely have full time for the canonical hours and for saying mass, not to mention my own temptations with the world, the flesh, and the devil. You see how lazy I am.

Philip Schaff has described the lectures on the Psalms as "exegetically worthless, but theologically important". Most vitally, Luther came to see that the Messiah who cried out in agony in the 22^nd Psalm was bearing the sins of others. Luther's lectures on Romans built on this. God is the one who is "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (3:25).

Luther later described his discoveries on the eve of 1517: "Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that 'the just shall live by faith'. Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the 'justice of God' had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love."

As a result, his Galatian lectures were delivered with evangelical passion, "with the energy of intense conviction and the freshness of personal experience". Luther also read the sermons of the German mystic and preacher Johannes Tauler (c.1300-61), and was struck by the Dominican preacher's vision of an inward and practical Christian life, so different to the mechanical religious life of his contemporaries.

It was his pastor's distress for the plight of his beloved German people that drove Luther further.

The 16^th century Roman Church hawked indulgences across Europe, certificates that purported to shorten the agony of the named recipient in purgatory. The power of the indulgence was linked to the supposed merit of relics: purported pieces of the bodies of Jesus and His apostles and saints, and pieces of the cross and crown of thorns and other paraphernalia. Luther's patron, Frederick the Elector, had an enormous private collection of this rubbish. Leo X didn't hesitate to take advantage of the fear and ignorance of the people to raise millions from the sale of indulgences, and Saint Peter's Basilica was built on this gigantic fraud.

The misplaced trust that people put in indulgences grieved Luther, as did the flow of wealth from hard-working German people to Rome. In 1516 Luther worked to expose and preach against this false gospel. He was knowingly biting the hand that fed him, for some indulgence money flowed back to Wittenberg to support Luther's own church and university, but his pastor's passion drove him forward.

And so this was Martin Luther and his world in 1516, the year before the Reformation. Rome still ruled. Luther still prayed to Mary, still relied on the intercession of the saints, and still celebrated the mass.

But the 1516 frustrations of Luther the German, Luther the theologian, and, not least, Luther the pastor, would break out in 1517 with his posting of his 95 Theses.

In 2016 let's remember Luther the frustrated pastor, as we look forward to the half-millennial anniversary of the Reformation that he sparked, to the thanks and praise of God.