 It was this issue of indulgences that in 1517 led Luther to write ninety-five theses intended for debate or disputation on the topic, criticising this widespread practice as selling the remission of sins; this practice had been intensified by the efforts of Pope Leo X to raise funds for a new basilica of St Peter in Rome, efforts that were spearheaded locally by a Dominican friar Johann Tetzel. While according to legend Luther nailed the text of the theses to the church door, in reality it seems he merely sent them to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, and perhaps they were posted up on the door by someone else; but it was thanks to printed versions that they soon began to circulate more widely. This condemnation of indulgences was an act of some defiance within the politics of the Church, as was the criticism of the authority of the power of the Pope which Luther associated with it; but earlier in the same year Luther had taken a step of a more intellectually radical kind with another set of theses, that have come to be called his Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, and which grew out of his lectures and reading in previous years, particularly his engagement with Psalms, Paul’s letters, and the works of Augustine and the latter’s attacks on Pelagianism. In this disputation, written with characteristic vehemence, Luther sketched out what may be called an uncompromising Augustinianism in opposition to what are portrayed as the more Pelagian positions of figures such as Scotus, Ockham, and Biel, behind which was said to stand the malign influence of Aristotle. At the heart of this dispute, as we shall see, is the key issue of grace, and whether this can be attained and earned through our efforts by “doing what in us lies” (facere quod in se est). This question raised in the context of scholastic theology also provides the intellectual background to Luther’s argument against indulgences in the Ninety-Five Theses, which to him were in effect just another dubious method of gaining merit.