'On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church' Summary

The book was circulating in print not quite a week when the papal bull against Luther arrived in Wittenberg in October 1520.The bull and the book were being prepared simultaneously. 

Luther accuses the Roman church and the papacy of keeping the church in captivity, equating Rome with the biblical Babylon that exiled the Israelites from their homeland, holding them captive in Babylon. According to Luther, the pope was holding the church in captivity through the use of the sacramental system and Rome's theology. 

In 1521 Martin Luther was requested to either confess or recant his books, including his treatise The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. The book was a critique of the medieval Roman church's system of sacraments. The treatise is a summary of Luther's thinking on the sacraments and it is still the confessional Lutheran relationship to the number of sacraments.