CHAPTER 1
The Spread of the Reformation
In assigning a name to our own age, some scholars prefer “the Postindustrial Period” and others
call it “the Information Age.” Given the virtually worldwide spread of telephones and televisions
—and more recently of copiers, laptop and tablet computers, cell phones, and the web—the latter
is an apt title. With instantaneous communication between different parts of the globe now
possible, the barriers to communication today are political rather than technological.
The present revolution in communications is not the first ever experience in Western history,
however, but actually the third. The first was the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia,
and the second was explored here: the invention of the printing press with movable metal type. In
both of these eras, as well as in our own, new methods of communication did not replace older
ones but rather augmented them, making available a greater range of methods to those with
information or ideas to disseminate. The resulting “multimedia campaign” made the ideas
themselves appear more powerful simply because people heard, saw, and read the same
information many times. As Marshall McLuhan and others have made us realize, the way in
which ideas are communicated shapes both the ideas themselves and how people come to
understand them.
Martin Luther’s reformation was a successful media campaign not only because of the methods
he employed but also because many groups in German society found parts of his message
extremely attractive. He was also able to give voice to religious, social and political grievances
that had been sporadically expressed for years, leading diverse groups to adopt him as their
champion. Some of this broad-based support resulted either from a misperception or from a
deliberately selective interpretation of what Luther actually said. Though Luther did not
consciously attempt to provide something for everyone, this is in fact what he accomplished,
thereby setting a pattern for later religious and political propaganda campaigns. Modern-day
political advertising consultants know that catering to the interests of every social group is the
best way to make a candidate and his or her ideas appealing. With their catchy slogans,
vilification of opponents, musical ditties, and repetition of easily understood concepts, modern
political advertising campaigns are the direct descendants of the Protestant Reformation, though
Luther himself would no doubt be horrified at the thought. Our own communications revolution
may be increasing the speed at which information is spread, but the sixteenth-century
communications revolution was the first to produce a dramatic increase in the size of the
audience, creating the “media markets” that advertisers and political leaders alike now court so
assiduously.
,Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range
NL_ODDNumber range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecThe PROBLEM
Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range NL_ODDNumber
range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecContent Objectives:
1Number range NL_a. to understand Martin Luther’s key theological ideas
2Number range NL_a. to examine the various means by which these ideas were spread
3Number range NL_a. to learn how various groups within German society interpreted these
ideas
4Number range NL_a. to learn about the economic, social, and political background of the
religious movement we call the Reformation
Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range NL_ODDNumber
range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecSkills Objectives:
5Number range NL_a. to assess the symbolic content of visual evidence
6Number range NL_a. to read songs, hymns, or plays for their ideological content
7Number range NL_a. to compare the ideas communicated through different types of evidence
Besides these specific objectives, this chapter lends itself to the broader discussion of the way in
which various ideas have been successfully or unsuccessfully communicated throughout history
or for an even more far-ranging debate, you might discuss the shaping of people’s views of the
world by the means they use to receive information. The latter idea has been most widely
popularized by Marshall McLuhan (especially in the The Global Village and The Medium is the
Message), but Walter Ong’s thoughts on the subject are in fact more stimulating and thought
provoking, especially his conclusions on the relations between religious change and changes in
means of communication. In The Presence of the Word, Ong notes that the two major changes in
the Judeo-Christian tradition, the birth of Christ and the Protestant Reformation, both occurred at
periods in which the basic means of communication were changing: the birth of Christ at the time
when written information was becoming more important than that transmitted orally, and the
Protestant Reformation at the time when hand-written manuscripts gave way to print. For Ong, it
is not simply the new methods but the simultaneous presence of older and newer methods that
explains why first Christianity and then Protestantism spread so rapidly; both religions used
traditional channels while also developing their own, newer methods of communication. Ong also
points out the special importance attached to the “word” in Christianity (Christ himself is defined
in this way in the Gospel of John); in no other religion does “spreading the word” take on quite
the same significance, literal as well as symbolic.
Though The Presence of the Word, as well as Ong’s subsequent The Interstices of the Word,
would probably be difficult for many of your students, we recommend both works, especially the
former, as references for the philosophical implications of alterations in methods of spreading and
receiving information (what Ong terms “changes in the sensorium”). A teaser question for your
class: What is the difference between an oral culture’s perception of a word, as existing in time,
,and a print culture’s perception, as existing in space? In oral cultures, a word disappears after the
sound is uttered; in print cultures, the word can be returned to again and again. Other differences
can be identified as well. Such questions, which may seem to stray from the subject of this
chapter, in reality do not. Protestantism put great emphasis on the written word and the
individual’s ability to have access to that word, whereas Catholicism held that most believers
should merely hear the word and only the elite should actually see or read it.
Another topic suggested by this chapter is the role of literacy. Though there is great dispute about
literacy rates in Renaissance and early modern Europe, most researchers agree that they rose
significantly and that this increase in literacy both contributed to and partially resulted from the
spread of the Protestant Reformation. You may wish to open a discussion on this issue by asking
your students to imagine what a society would be like if the majority of the population could not
read or at least have contact with someone who could read. Has the role of literacy in our society
diminished with the advent of television and the return to an oral sensorium for many people?
How has the reemergence of written messages in electronic media, including texting, blogs, and
tweets, shaped literacy?
Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range
NL_ODDNumber range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecSouRCES AND
METHOD
The first question in this chapter asks students to assess how Luther’s ideas were spread; they
should be able to draw their answers from the sources themselves with no additional background.
The second question—how these ideas were made attractive to various groups—may require
some additional background about the economic, political, and social situation in sixteenth-
century Germany. This frame also makes it possible to explore the reasons Luther’s ideas carried
so much greater impact than those of Wyclif, Hus, and other medieval reformers, even though the
content of their ideas was not radically different. It is important, however, not to let secular
background factors that students forget that the Reformation was initially (and, in terms of
Luther’s involvement, always) a religious movement.
In terms of method, we have advised students to pay attention to both ideas and images and to
make a list of those they find frequently repeated. We have also suggested that they note negative
ideas and images, those that criticize the Catholic Church or an existing situation, and positive
ideas and images, those that are innovative or put greater emphasis on certain aspects of
Christianity. The sophistication of your students will determine whether they need some
assistance in this process. You will want to make especially sure that they include Luther’s most
important ideas—particularly his emphases on faith alone, grace alone, and Scripture alone—and
his criticisms of reason and philosophy and of relying on good works for salvation. These key
ideas come out most clearly in the sermon (Source 1) and in Speratus’s hymn (Source 4).
The hymn also tackles the problematic question of the role played by an individual’s actions if
salvation is totally dependent on God’s free gift of grace. We have discovered that this is often
the first question students raise when they discuss Luther’s or Calvin’s theology: if getting into
heaven is God’s decision, why be good? Verses three and four of the hymn present what will
, become the standard Lutheran answer, that the Law (by which Luther and his followers mean the
requirements set by God in the Old Testament) was fulfilled for all people by Christ, but that if
one has true faith one will freely want to do good things—or as the hymn succinctly puts it, “By
its fruits true faith is known.” Luther himself made this point in many of his later sermons, when
the social upheavals of the Peasants’ War and the more radical ideas of many other reformers led
him to place ever greater emphasis on obedience to authority; again and again he stressed that the
“freedom” Christ had brought to those with true faith was totally spiritual. The sermon reprinted
in this chapter is a very early one from Luther’s most radical period, but we have chosen it rather
than a later, more typically conservative effort to allow students to discover just how
revolutionary Luther’s initial sermons were and to see why so many groups could interpret them
as a call to arms. (You may also point out that the seeds of his later conservatism were already
present, however, particularly in this statement, “When persons are servants or maidservants,
their work should benefit their master.”)
Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range
NL_ODDNumber range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecThE EVIDENCE
Rather than using excerpts, we have reprinted the entire sermon as Source 1 to give students the
full flavor of Luther’s language and allow them to follow his line of argument. You may wish to
comment that this was a relatively short sermon by sixteenth-century standards; both Catholic and
Protestant preachers could orate at great length, and later Protestant services were often several
hours in length. (This tradition continued in Puritan New England, where the devout were often
required to spend five or six hours in church on Sundays. The sermons of Jonathan Edwards often
lasted well over an hour.) Luther’s two hymns (Sources 2 and 3) have been included by primarily
to convey a sense of his style as well as of his exhortations to believers to depend completely on
God for their salvation. The strongly martial flavor of the hymns often obscured this emphasis,
however, for at certain points they also seem to be encouraging the believer to fight for the true
religion: “Let this world’s tyrant rage/In battle we’ll engage.”
We have provided fairly extensive clues to help students understand the content and symbolism
of the woodcuts (Sources 5 through 9). Most depict only negative images, as it was much easier,
and more titillating, to portray the wrongs of the Catholic Church than what was right about
Protestant ideas; Source 5 is the only one containing any positive imagery. The negative
portrayals also drew on a long tradition of criticism of the Church; artists knew people were
accustomed to seeing monks portrayed as wolves or the pope as an avid money collector. The
symbols that expressed the new Protestant theology had to be created fresh, and people had to be
instructed in what they represented. To understand the positive imagery of Source 5, for example,
one would have to know that Luther kept baptism and communion as sacraments, a fact which
not everyone who saw this woodcut would have been aware. The bluntness of Source 9 (the two
men defecating into the papal tiara) may offend some of your students, but ideas were commonly
expressed in crass and vulgar terms in the sixteenth century. Luther himself (to say nothing of
Rabelais) often talked about shitting and farting (his language), and his comments on the Roman
clergy became increasingly scatological as he grew older.
The Spread of the Reformation
In assigning a name to our own age, some scholars prefer “the Postindustrial Period” and others
call it “the Information Age.” Given the virtually worldwide spread of telephones and televisions
—and more recently of copiers, laptop and tablet computers, cell phones, and the web—the latter
is an apt title. With instantaneous communication between different parts of the globe now
possible, the barriers to communication today are political rather than technological.
The present revolution in communications is not the first ever experience in Western history,
however, but actually the third. The first was the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia,
and the second was explored here: the invention of the printing press with movable metal type. In
both of these eras, as well as in our own, new methods of communication did not replace older
ones but rather augmented them, making available a greater range of methods to those with
information or ideas to disseminate. The resulting “multimedia campaign” made the ideas
themselves appear more powerful simply because people heard, saw, and read the same
information many times. As Marshall McLuhan and others have made us realize, the way in
which ideas are communicated shapes both the ideas themselves and how people come to
understand them.
Martin Luther’s reformation was a successful media campaign not only because of the methods
he employed but also because many groups in German society found parts of his message
extremely attractive. He was also able to give voice to religious, social and political grievances
that had been sporadically expressed for years, leading diverse groups to adopt him as their
champion. Some of this broad-based support resulted either from a misperception or from a
deliberately selective interpretation of what Luther actually said. Though Luther did not
consciously attempt to provide something for everyone, this is in fact what he accomplished,
thereby setting a pattern for later religious and political propaganda campaigns. Modern-day
political advertising consultants know that catering to the interests of every social group is the
best way to make a candidate and his or her ideas appealing. With their catchy slogans,
vilification of opponents, musical ditties, and repetition of easily understood concepts, modern
political advertising campaigns are the direct descendants of the Protestant Reformation, though
Luther himself would no doubt be horrified at the thought. Our own communications revolution
may be increasing the speed at which information is spread, but the sixteenth-century
communications revolution was the first to produce a dramatic increase in the size of the
audience, creating the “media markets” that advertisers and political leaders alike now court so
assiduously.
,Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range
NL_ODDNumber range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecThe PROBLEM
Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range NL_ODDNumber
range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecContent Objectives:
1Number range NL_a. to understand Martin Luther’s key theological ideas
2Number range NL_a. to examine the various means by which these ideas were spread
3Number range NL_a. to learn how various groups within German society interpreted these
ideas
4Number range NL_a. to learn about the economic, social, and political background of the
religious movement we call the Reformation
Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range NL_ODDNumber
range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecSkills Objectives:
5Number range NL_a. to assess the symbolic content of visual evidence
6Number range NL_a. to read songs, hymns, or plays for their ideological content
7Number range NL_a. to compare the ideas communicated through different types of evidence
Besides these specific objectives, this chapter lends itself to the broader discussion of the way in
which various ideas have been successfully or unsuccessfully communicated throughout history
or for an even more far-ranging debate, you might discuss the shaping of people’s views of the
world by the means they use to receive information. The latter idea has been most widely
popularized by Marshall McLuhan (especially in the The Global Village and The Medium is the
Message), but Walter Ong’s thoughts on the subject are in fact more stimulating and thought
provoking, especially his conclusions on the relations between religious change and changes in
means of communication. In The Presence of the Word, Ong notes that the two major changes in
the Judeo-Christian tradition, the birth of Christ and the Protestant Reformation, both occurred at
periods in which the basic means of communication were changing: the birth of Christ at the time
when written information was becoming more important than that transmitted orally, and the
Protestant Reformation at the time when hand-written manuscripts gave way to print. For Ong, it
is not simply the new methods but the simultaneous presence of older and newer methods that
explains why first Christianity and then Protestantism spread so rapidly; both religions used
traditional channels while also developing their own, newer methods of communication. Ong also
points out the special importance attached to the “word” in Christianity (Christ himself is defined
in this way in the Gospel of John); in no other religion does “spreading the word” take on quite
the same significance, literal as well as symbolic.
Though The Presence of the Word, as well as Ong’s subsequent The Interstices of the Word,
would probably be difficult for many of your students, we recommend both works, especially the
former, as references for the philosophical implications of alterations in methods of spreading and
receiving information (what Ong terms “changes in the sensorium”). A teaser question for your
class: What is the difference between an oral culture’s perception of a word, as existing in time,
,and a print culture’s perception, as existing in space? In oral cultures, a word disappears after the
sound is uttered; in print cultures, the word can be returned to again and again. Other differences
can be identified as well. Such questions, which may seem to stray from the subject of this
chapter, in reality do not. Protestantism put great emphasis on the written word and the
individual’s ability to have access to that word, whereas Catholicism held that most believers
should merely hear the word and only the elite should actually see or read it.
Another topic suggested by this chapter is the role of literacy. Though there is great dispute about
literacy rates in Renaissance and early modern Europe, most researchers agree that they rose
significantly and that this increase in literacy both contributed to and partially resulted from the
spread of the Protestant Reformation. You may wish to open a discussion on this issue by asking
your students to imagine what a society would be like if the majority of the population could not
read or at least have contact with someone who could read. Has the role of literacy in our society
diminished with the advent of television and the return to an oral sensorium for many people?
How has the reemergence of written messages in electronic media, including texting, blogs, and
tweets, shaped literacy?
Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range
NL_ODDNumber range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecSouRCES AND
METHOD
The first question in this chapter asks students to assess how Luther’s ideas were spread; they
should be able to draw their answers from the sources themselves with no additional background.
The second question—how these ideas were made attractive to various groups—may require
some additional background about the economic, political, and social situation in sixteenth-
century Germany. This frame also makes it possible to explore the reasons Luther’s ideas carried
so much greater impact than those of Wyclif, Hus, and other medieval reformers, even though the
content of their ideas was not radically different. It is important, however, not to let secular
background factors that students forget that the Reformation was initially (and, in terms of
Luther’s involvement, always) a religious movement.
In terms of method, we have advised students to pay attention to both ideas and images and to
make a list of those they find frequently repeated. We have also suggested that they note negative
ideas and images, those that criticize the Catholic Church or an existing situation, and positive
ideas and images, those that are innovative or put greater emphasis on certain aspects of
Christianity. The sophistication of your students will determine whether they need some
assistance in this process. You will want to make especially sure that they include Luther’s most
important ideas—particularly his emphases on faith alone, grace alone, and Scripture alone—and
his criticisms of reason and philosophy and of relying on good works for salvation. These key
ideas come out most clearly in the sermon (Source 1) and in Speratus’s hymn (Source 4).
The hymn also tackles the problematic question of the role played by an individual’s actions if
salvation is totally dependent on God’s free gift of grace. We have discovered that this is often
the first question students raise when they discuss Luther’s or Calvin’s theology: if getting into
heaven is God’s decision, why be good? Verses three and four of the hymn present what will
, become the standard Lutheran answer, that the Law (by which Luther and his followers mean the
requirements set by God in the Old Testament) was fulfilled for all people by Christ, but that if
one has true faith one will freely want to do good things—or as the hymn succinctly puts it, “By
its fruits true faith is known.” Luther himself made this point in many of his later sermons, when
the social upheavals of the Peasants’ War and the more radical ideas of many other reformers led
him to place ever greater emphasis on obedience to authority; again and again he stressed that the
“freedom” Christ had brought to those with true faith was totally spiritual. The sermon reprinted
in this chapter is a very early one from Luther’s most radical period, but we have chosen it rather
than a later, more typically conservative effort to allow students to discover just how
revolutionary Luther’s initial sermons were and to see why so many groups could interpret them
as a call to arms. (You may also point out that the seeds of his later conservatism were already
present, however, particularly in this statement, “When persons are servants or maidservants,
their work should benefit their master.”)
Number range NL1Number range NL_EVENNumber range
NL_ODDNumber range NL_EqnNumber range NL_SecThE EVIDENCE
Rather than using excerpts, we have reprinted the entire sermon as Source 1 to give students the
full flavor of Luther’s language and allow them to follow his line of argument. You may wish to
comment that this was a relatively short sermon by sixteenth-century standards; both Catholic and
Protestant preachers could orate at great length, and later Protestant services were often several
hours in length. (This tradition continued in Puritan New England, where the devout were often
required to spend five or six hours in church on Sundays. The sermons of Jonathan Edwards often
lasted well over an hour.) Luther’s two hymns (Sources 2 and 3) have been included by primarily
to convey a sense of his style as well as of his exhortations to believers to depend completely on
God for their salvation. The strongly martial flavor of the hymns often obscured this emphasis,
however, for at certain points they also seem to be encouraging the believer to fight for the true
religion: “Let this world’s tyrant rage/In battle we’ll engage.”
We have provided fairly extensive clues to help students understand the content and symbolism
of the woodcuts (Sources 5 through 9). Most depict only negative images, as it was much easier,
and more titillating, to portray the wrongs of the Catholic Church than what was right about
Protestant ideas; Source 5 is the only one containing any positive imagery. The negative
portrayals also drew on a long tradition of criticism of the Church; artists knew people were
accustomed to seeing monks portrayed as wolves or the pope as an avid money collector. The
symbols that expressed the new Protestant theology had to be created fresh, and people had to be
instructed in what they represented. To understand the positive imagery of Source 5, for example,
one would have to know that Luther kept baptism and communion as sacraments, a fact which
not everyone who saw this woodcut would have been aware. The bluntness of Source 9 (the two
men defecating into the papal tiara) may offend some of your students, but ideas were commonly
expressed in crass and vulgar terms in the sixteenth century. Luther himself (to say nothing of
Rabelais) often talked about shitting and farting (his language), and his comments on the Roman
clergy became increasingly scatological as he grew older.
