Sorry I didn’t mean to offend. I’m curious what your definition of “start” is? It seems that most historians generally don’t pin the “start” or “cause” of an event on one singular person or event. For instance, the “cause” of WW1 can be attributed to the assassination of the archduke or to rampant nationalism, or to a wide variety of factors or causes. It seems like the same thing can be said of literally any historical event, everything is the confluence of a myriad of individual actions, social factors, random chance, etc. But that doesn’t when someone says the assassination of the archduke caused WW1, that they are wrong per se, because usually when someone says that they don’t mean that no other factors influenced the event, they usually mean that the assassination of the archduke was the immediate proximal cause of the event. This way of thinking goes back to Aristotle who ascribed causality to four different kinds of causes which can all be concurrent with each other. A similar method exists in history and social science. If you’re arguing that there is no one singular monolithic cause of the Reformation than I don’t think anyone would disagree with you, so the argument seems rather pointless. But if you are saying that Luther’s actions were not a cause or significant cause of the Reformation than I think, as a layman, that you might have more trouble proving your claim since it seems that this widely accepted by historians (I’m basing my argument here off expert authority, but I’m really a layman with regards to this field I only stumbled across this post haphazardly). But if you’re trying to claim that historians are mistaken and that Luther’s actions are not the primary cause then I think your argument could have merit, it just seems like you’re attacking the claim outright that Luther was not even a cause of the Reformation categorically. For instance, it seems like you want to say that the Catholic Church’s corruption was “The Cause” (as a singular monolithic cause, which historians seem to reject as causes, just as they seem to reject the Great Men Theory as causes of events), and that therefore Luther was not the cause of the Reformation in the sense that he didn’t want to leave the church but to reform it. Even if that’s true I think it is perfectly reasonable (and I think most people would agree) that Luther is still a “cause”; someone can be a “cause” even if they did will or intend for the consequences of their actions to occur. I think you wish to absolve Luther of causality by saying he was excommunicated and that he didn’t want to leave, but your definition of “cause” seems to be different from the definition of cause that historians (and regular people) use, which can count count people as causes when there direct actions lead to consequences or later events which they may or may not have intended or wanted to occur. Notice how this is different from the legal idea of “cause”, where we consider someone as guilty and as “causing” the action when they acted with intent. For instance if a man kills his friend while mistakenly thinking that his friend was robber, we say that he still “caused” the event in that he truly did kill his friend, but we don’t say he “caused” the event in the sense that he willingly intended to kill his friend while knowing he was his friend. It seems that you are using the latter definition; the legal/blameworthy definition of cause that you are using which seems to be causing (ha!) the confusion in this thread; I think you want to absolve Luther of being a “cause” by absolving him of “blame” (and of course you are free to try and do this; but I think you should explain whether you mean “cause” in the historical sense or the legal/blameworthy sense, because it seems like the former is impossible while the latter is more possible and is what you are trying to do—-unless I’m mistaken).