Essay: Ferdinand Magellan and Martin Luther King

While both Magellan and Luther had large effects on the world especially in the time period they were in, Luther started the biggest reformation in world history and Magellan was the first person to circumnavigate the Earth a trip the ended up taking 4 years.  The effects of each of their lives will forever have a lasting effect on our world but for different reasons.
Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483 and from a relatively young age disliked the way the Church would work and run itself.  The church in the late 1400s and early 1500s was very corrupt in multiple ways.  There was bribery, corruption, selling “indulgences”, and other problems that needed to be fixed and were common in that day and age.  He would later release the Ninety-Fifth Thesis in 1517 which would then start what we now know as the “Protestant Reformation”.  Luther taught that the Bible is the central source of religious authority and that salvation is reached through faith and not deeds like what the Catholic church used.  In 1520 he was told by Pope Leo X to get rid of the Ninety-Fifth Thesis, but he refused and in 1521 was excommunicated by Charles V from the Catholic Church for it.  After he translated the bible into German instead of Latin so that more people could read it and it was later translated to English.  In 1526, Luther started to make what would be a new church and from 1526 to 1529 organized an entirely new church system and To avoid confusing or upsetting the people, Luther avoided extreme change. He also did not wish to replace one controlling system with another. He concentrated on the church in Saxony acting as an adviser to churches in new nearby territories, which many followed his model, Saxon. He worked closely with the John the Steadfast who he looked to for leadership and funding on behalf of a church that had recently broken off of Rome.
Ferdinand Magellan was born in 1480 in Saborosa, Portugal to a family of a minor nobility and at age 12 he and his brother Diogo traveled to Lisbon to be pages for Queen Leonora’s Court.  While Ferdinand was there he was introduced to sea exploration and heard many great stories about the Portuguese and Spanish rivalry for spices and spice trade in the Spice Island.  This caused Magellan to develop an interest in sea exploration in his early life and later developed into something he would look into doing for his career.  In 1513 he was on the giant 500 ship 15,000 soldier fleet sent to Morocco to challenge the governor who didn’t pay tribute to the Portuguese.  Magellan was seriously injured and was left with a limp in his walk for the rest of his life.  In 1517 he went to King Manuel and tried to get support to explore the western seas, but was denied multiple times by the king.  This caused Ferdinand to change his nationality and he would go onto Spain to try and get support there.  After arriving he would meet Diogo Barbosa and would marry his daughter Beatriz Barbosa(they would give birth to a child, Rodrigo, a year later).  The Barbosa family(who Ferdinand married into)had many connections including those who were responsible for Spain’s sea exploration and soon after would meet with the King of Spain.  The 18 year old King Charles I, who was king at the time, granted support to Ferdinand and he would set sail in August of 1519.  He set sail with 5 ships, The Trinidad, The San Antonio, the Conception, the Victoria, and the Santiago.  The fleet itself was called the Armada de Moluccas.  More than a year later in October 1520 Magellan came to the strait the is known today as the Strait of Magellan in Chile.  After more than a month of suffering inside the Strait Magellan reemerged in the Pacific Ocean to which he would name Mar Pacifico for its “peacefulness”.  With little known about the geography of the world after Chile the ships ventured on thinking it would be a brisk trip across the ocean, but ended up taking more than 3 months and in early 1521 he arrived in Guam.  They then sailed to the island of Cebu in the Philippine archipelago(island chain)and became friends with the locals of the island.  The Cebu asked Magellan to help them in a battle against the neighboring island, to which his crew told him not to but he did anyways, and ended in his death on April 27, 1521 by a poison arrow.  His crew eventually made it to the Spice Islands in November of 1521, and only 1 ship the Victoria would make it back home to Spain loaded with many spices and 18 of the remaining crew which was more than 100.  Ferdinand is often credited with the discovery of the Pacific Ocean and even though at this point in time the earth was thought to be round and not flat Magellan confirmed it undoubtedly.  Magellan is also credited as the first person to circumnavigate the globe, but he died more than halfway through the journey and his crew would finish almost 2 years after his death.  His slave, Enrique, was the first to circumnavigate the globe as he was one of the original 100+ people on board of the Armada and one of the remaining 18 when they arrived back in Spain in 1522.
Ferdinand and Luther both had considerably effects on history, Luther had a more considerable effect than Ferdinand.  Luther is credited with starting the Protestant Reformation which separated all Protestant churches from the Roman Catholic church.  Luther’s teachings were also passed down for the later generations all the way to the late 18th century.  It could be argued that Ferdinand had a bigger effect with the fact that he “discovered” the Pacific Ocean , and made many geographical changes as to what was known then about the Earth.  If he would of lived through the journey and done more after it, he may of had a bigger effect on history, but the fact remains that if you asked 5 people who he was 1 could tell you who he was.  Ferdinand’s discoveries may have had a bigger effect in the 16th century, but after almost 500 years it can be said that Luther had a large effect on history.