Role of the printing press in the Reformation

The role of the printing press in the Reformation was fundamental to its success in Europe. It was through propaganda and the utilization of the printing press that Martin Luther’s ideas were able to spread throughout Europe with writings that people could understand and imagery that would not need the Catholic Church to interpret what it meant. Cost effective pamphlets that could be easily passed from person to person and region to region would lay the ground work for the questioning of Catholic ideologies and ensure that the personal choice of religious beliefs would now be left up to the people to decide.

Background

The Protestant Reformation had come about because Catholics began to question the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church – they saw it as a belief system that had diverged from what it was originally intended to practice and as a result thought that a reformation of practices and ideologies would bring the church back to its Christian roots with the use of scripture as a guideline by the leading reformer Martin Luther . Luther had challenged the Pope and the church on clerical abuses, excesses and the sale of salvation which was criticized in his 95 Theses that was supposedly posted on the doors of Wittenberg Castle Church in 1517. The vehicle which enabled Martin Luther and like hearted reformers to bring their ideas to the public domain for mass consumption was the printing press, this technical innovation was developed by Johann Gutenberg in 1439. [Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1998. Pg 58.] It is the printing press and Martin Luther’s desire to bring his translation of the bible to the vernacular so people throughout society that wished to read the Bible would be able to access and interpret it for themselves. The printing press had allowed for cost effective, rapid mass production of pamphlets and books to spread the Protestant ideologies and the condemnation of the Catholic Church – as a result pamphlets began to spread the Protestant propaganda like wildfire throughout Western Europe and with Luther bringing the laity into the Protestant fold his success and support was ensured while the religious schism of the 16th century had begun.

The use of the printing press in the Reformation acted as the chief facilitator in relaying Protestant ideologies; Luther had begun to transmit ideas with success because he reached out to a broad audience that included the laity with simple pamphlets and imagery. [Mark U. Edwards, Printing, propaganda, and Martin Luther (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1994) Pg 15. ] He would encourage the populace to turn their back on Roman Catholicism and embrace a reformed Christianity that would right the wrongs in the Catholic Church that included such issues as clerical abuses and excesses. The printing press would be the agent of agitation in Early Reformation Europe; change would come about through an inundation of pamphlets that would be available to anyone that was interested – Luther had found his catalyst to effect change.

Pamphlets

With the advent of the printing press the use of the pamphlet brought along with it many dividends that would assist Martin Luther in spreading his ideas. These pamphlets would be ideal in transmitting messages that were considered subversive at the time because they were small and easily transportable. The term flugschriften or “flying writings” was applied to pamphlets during the Reformation because of their diminutive size; in fact the average size was a mere 32 pages [Edwards,15. ] - the small size of these pamphlets also allowed for an amazing number of them to be produced and disseminated throughout Europe.

Tubingen Flugschriften is a project that examines pamphlets from 1500-1530 and through this project the sheer amount of propaganda is evident through the use of these “flying writings”. Hans – Joachim Kohler who leads the project has estimated that there were approximately 10 000 pamphlet editions that were produced between these years [Edwards, 17.] - more significant than the number of editions printed is that 20% of these were written by Luther himself. The publishing of Luther’s own work saw a tremendous increase throughout the Reformation, and the printing press was directly responsible for this trend – in 1518 there were 87 printings of his work, whereas the peak amount was reached in 1523 with 390 printings. [Edwards, 17.]

This illustrates that his work was popular and not only were people buying copies of his work; they were buying enough for works to go into multiple printings. Between 1520 and 1526 there were approximately 6.6 million copies sold over 6 thousand editions, [Edwards, 21.] the reason which Luther and the Reformation experienced such successful amounts of sales of pamphlets was that they were written in the vernacular, or common language. While a small percentage of publications were written in Latin, this severely reduced the audience to the educated and members of the clergy – when pamphlets began to be produced in the vernacular the church vehemently opposed this because they were supposed to be the sole group that was responsible for spreading this information under the authority of the church. One issue that Luther had to tackle was the spread of wildcat printing, an example of this could be when a member of the congregation would transcribe a sermon by Luther and would then be printed by an unauthorized press. It is this issue that helped and hindered Martin Luther, it would help because his works would be widely available and read but it also meant that money could be lost because reprints would be printed and sold before expensive first editions were sold out legally. [Louise W. Holborn. “Printing and the Growth of a Protestant Movement in Germany from 1517 to 1524,” Church History 11, No. 2 (June, 1942), 131.]

Response of the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church had impaired its own way of producing propaganda with having texts that were written in Latin, leaving few who could interpret what they were saying. Between the years of 1518 and 1544 Luther produced 2551 printings in comparison to the paltry 514 printings that Catholics had produced during the same time. [Edwards, 29.] These mass amounts of writing that the reformation was producing had put the Catholic Church in a quandary; they could choose to respond to Protestant propaganda and address issues that were brought up, but this would only bring attention to this radical movement that began to sweep Europe. Their second option would be to ignore it altogether, yet this would have the same effect and propaganda would grow without any negative input from the Catholics. The Catholic Church’s choice to maintain their writings in Latin would severely reduce the amount of people that would purchase them, this would help the Reformers cause because printers would not support the Catholics based solely from the vantage point of wanting a successful business. Printers were in the business of making money, they ultimately print that which is most popular and would sell the most – the Reformers use of the vernacular in their writings facilitated this. [Richard G. Cole. “Reformation Printers: Unsung Heroes” Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3. (Autumn, 1984), 339.] Public interest lay with the Reformer ideas and the successive reprints of Protestants pamphlets shows where the demand of the customer was.

An anonymous author, either a Catholic or someone who simply disliked Luther, attacked the reformer in writing, describing him as “the destroyer of the faith of Christ and a seducer of simple Christians.” [Edwards, 57.] By printing propaganda in the vernacular the inclusion of the laity had begun, the Catholic Church has viewed this as a subversive action that went around their authority and would allow people from all facets of society to debate the topics of belief and how religions should be practiced. The topics of theology that were debated and were of importance to Luther included spiritual equality for all baptized and that Christians must through faith rely solely on God’s promise of forgiveness. [Edwards, 82.] The radical side of Luthers propaganda came through when he began to criticize the Catholic Church with the 95 Theses which was posted in 1517 at the start of the Protestant Reformation. His attacks continued as he criticized the Catholic Church of clerical fraud and papal tyranny and in the 2nd of a series of treatises published in 1520 On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church for the first time publicly announced that the Pope was the Anti-Christ. This idea that the Pope was the Anti-Christ had fed into Reformation propaganda; pamphlets had detailed a popular legend that Elias and Enoch were two prophets sent by God to reveal the anti-Christ and that Martin Luther was the angel of the apocalypse sent to fight the Pope. [Edwards, 90.]

The Catholic Church’s inability or denial to argue scripture with Luther also fed into the continual propaganda, Luther had offered to debate topics that were relevant to the church but they had refused to – this refusal of a debate would indicate that Luther’s knowledge and dedication to the scripture was clearly a threat to the Catholic Church and they had realized that it may have been an argument that they could not win. In 1521 at the Diet of Worms, Luther was asked to renounce his words and ideas in regards to the Catholic Church, Luther’s insubordinate speech defied the Catholic Church and Papacy and declared “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason--I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other--my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. [Brian Gerrish, Old Protestantism and the New (T and T Clark International, 1994), 54] Luther’s published books and pamphlets were a growing concern for the Catholic Church, especially because of the growing numbers of his works and his great influence. While the church attempted to censure him, no one author came within 1/10 of the number of prints Luther had published, illustrating the Church's inability to keep the propaganda campaign on equal footing: they were losing this contest. [Edwards, 139.]

The way in which the Catholic Church would respond then would be to attempt to differentiate and draw a distinct line between Protestant Reformers and Catholics and show that Protestants were responsible for civil unrest and rebellions. Two examples of this counter propaganda include Hieronymus Emser and his response to Luther’s work which Emser accused Luther of causing rebellions and civil unrest. Through the use of five proofs that confirmed this idea – Emser’s work criticized Luther’s beliefs and practices in relation to the spiritual and secular and alludes to several examples that illustrated how Luther inflamed rebellion. [Edwards, 154.] Another example of Catholic propaganda that was not that effective was the pamphlet by Thomas Murner entitled The Great Lutheran Fool – its ineffectiveness could be rooted in its length which was 4800 lines and a disorderly structure that would not appeal to the masses, Catholic propaganda was inadequate in comparison to the Reformers efforts. [Robert W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular propaganda for the German Reformation (England: Cambridge University Press), 239.]

=

A discussion on Protestant propaganda during the Reformation without the brief mention of woodcuts and imagery would not provide a complete picture on the extent of this issue. A main trait of imagery that featured Martin Luther depicted him as a Saint and a divinely inspired tool of God. The use of the dove in portraits and woodcuts was significant because it suggested Luther had been chosen specifically to carry out these changes to the Catholic Church with the backing of God – [Scribner, 18.] it also solidified the idea of Luther as a reformer and that anyone that decided to challenge him would be challenging God and as a result would be considered a servant of the devil. One of the most successful examples of visual propaganda used in the Reformation was Lucas Cranach's Christi and Anti Christi, this work was composed of 26 woodcuts – 13 of them had illustrated how Christ and saints and how they lived, while the other 13 had contrasted Christ with that of the Pope as the Anti-Christ. [Scribner, 149. For a reprint of this work, see Luther, Martin (1521). [http://books.google.com/books?id=tbvV9F4tLEUC&pg=PA265#PPA253,M1 "Passional Christi und Antichristi"] . Reprinted in W.H.T. Dau (1921). "At the Tribunal of Caesar: Leaves from the Story of Luther's Life". St. Louis: Concordia. (Google Books)] Although there is some text to accompany the images the stark contrast between Christ and the Anti-Christ makes it glaringly obvious and easily accepted for the lay reader who may be illiterate that the Pope was not doing work that would benefit Christianity – Scribner notes in For the Sake of Simple Folk:Popular propaganda for the German Reformation that this pamphlet sold no less than 1 edition in Latin and 10 German editions over the course of a few years. [Scribner, 157.]

Notes