Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town Into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--And Started the Protestant Reformation (52 page)

Thus we return to the paradox with which we began this book: printing was essential to the creation of Martin Luther, but Luther was also a determining, shaping force in the German printing industry. Many things conspired to ensure Luther’s unlikely survival through the first years of the Reformation, but one of them was undoubtedly print. Books, circulating with uncontrollable rapidity through the German towns, created at least the appearance of a new consensus: that the settled will of the German people was that Luther should be heard. This intimidated and sometimes silenced opponents, and fortified Luther’s far from numerous supporters in the German Estates. But Luther could not have been a force in the German church without his instinctive, towering talent as a writer. This was his most astonishing gift to the Reformation and to the German print industry. After Luther, print and public communication would never be the same again. It was an extraordinary legacy for an extraordinary man.

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CKNOWLEDGMENTS

The idea for this book came from Scott Moyers of Penguin Press; I am grateful to Scott for thinking of me in this context, and for tolerating the adjustment to his concept that allowed me to shift the focus to accommodate my own interest in media and mass communication. This book gave me the opportunity to unite the two abiding passions of my academic life, the Reformation and the early history of printing. The work on the Wittenberg printing industry was undertaken largely in successive trips to Germany, where I made many demands on libraries and received many kindnesses. I am grateful to Martin Treu of the Luther Gesellschaft, Falk Eisermann of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, and Matthias Müller of the German Historical Museum for their help at all stages of this project. I was also able to consult a variety of relevant texts in Paris, Copenhagen, New York, Washington, London, and Edinburgh; collections of Luther’s works are now to be found in many of the world’s great libraries. Especial thanks are due to Florence Poinsot of the Library of the Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français for the warm welcome she offered to me and my graduate student, Drew Thomas. I am also grateful to Ulrike Eydinger for a privileged view of the magnificent collection of German illustrated broadsheets in the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha. Work on sixteenth-century books has also been greatly facilitated by the large number of high-quality, full-text editions now available digitally. Here, the work of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in
making so much of their collection available in this way deserves special praise. Of course, for the book historian the digital image is never a substitute for working book in hand, and I have been privileged to be allowed to do this in so many great collections. But as a means of spreading knowledge of the contents and beauty of so many small and often very rare Reformation pamphlets, digitization has been an enormous benefit.

This text has benefited greatly from being read by a number of friends and colleagues. Scott Dixon, one of the most formidable interpreters of the German Reformation, was kind enough to read the whole text, and saved me from a number of errors. My student Arthur der Weduwen read every chapter as it was written, and Jan Hillgärtner, Saskia Limbach, Nina Lamal, and Drew Thomas all read the first draft of the complete text. Scott Moyers also subjected it to a rigorous workout. The final version is much the better for all of their suggestions and observations. In New York, the staff of Penguin were a model of professionalism, and helpful to me at every stage of the production process. I also owe a particular debt to Jane Cavolina, whose copyediting was a marvel of eagle-eyed clarity. Another student, Amelie Roper, drew my attention to essential literature that I would otherwise have missed. Lucas Kriner drew the maps, and along with his wife, Katie, indulged me in a walking tour of Wittenberg that provided the inspiration for the imagined perambulations in chapter 1.

As these remarks suggest, I have been lucky to be working in an extremely supportive context in St. Andrews, where assembling a community of talented postgraduate students has been one of the great pleasures of my academic career. In addition to the Germanists who examined the text, I thank also colleagues in the Reformation Studies Institute, particularly its director, Bridget Heal, and coworkers in the St. Andrews book historical research group. Together we constructed the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC), an indispensable resource for understanding the wider context of Wittenberg print, and much cited here. Particular reference here should be made to Graeme Kemp, the
project manager of the USTC and the architect of the wonderful search engine that presents this mass of data to the scholarly community.

One of the main surprises in beginning this work was to find how little scholarly attention had been devoted to the Wittenberg printing industry: all the more astonishing in the light of the settled assumption of the close relationship between print and the Reformation. So I was especially grateful for the opportunity to speak at a conference in Wittenberg devoted to the subject of print, and to meet there members of the archaeological research group who have accomplished some of the most illuminating recent work on sixteenth-century Wittenberg. Especial thanks go to Thomas Lang for helping me keep in touch with their publications. Also present at the conference were Eberhard Nehlsen, the great expert on Reformation musical printing, and Christoph Reske, whose survey of sixteenth-century German printers has been a foundational text for this book. Nehlsen’s willingness to share with the St. Andrews group his developing researches reflects a generosity of spirit that equally characterizes Reformation scholars in the Anglo-American research community. This is a good opportunity to thank all those in this group who have been such good friends over the years. Many are students of three great figures who shaped the field when I entered it, Heiko Oberman, Robert Kingdon, and Steven Ozment. The first two have both passed away and are much missed. Their students, along with those of Ozment, continue to be an adornment to the profession. Among those emerging as the new generation of research leaders I owe a particular debt to my former colleague Bruce Gordon, whose insights and deep knowledge of the Reformation have shaped my understanding over many years.

This has been a book long digested but written relatively quickly. Writing always places extra demands on a family, who endure both the absences of research trips and the preoccupied half presence of the writing process. To Jane, Megan, and Sophie, go, as always, my thanks for the greatest happiness of my life.

St. Andrews

October 2015

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BBREVIATIONS

Benzing

Josef Benzing and Helmut Claus, eds.
Lutherbibliographie. Verzeichnis der gedruckten Schriften Martin Luthers bis zu dessen Tod
. 2 vols. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 1966–1994.

CE

Peter G. Bietenholz, ed.
Contemporaries of Erasmus. A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation.
3 vols. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1985–1987.

Corr. Eras.

R. A. Mynors et al., eds.
The Correspondence of Erasmus
. 12 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974–2003.

Correspondence

Preserved Smith and Charles M. Jacobs, eds.
Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters.
2 vols. Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1913–1918.

Letters

Gottfried G. Krodel, ed.
Letters. Luther’s Works,
vols. 48–50. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963–1975.

LW

Jaroslav Pelikan et al., eds.
Luther’s Works.
Philadelphia: Fortress Press / St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–.

Prefaces

Christopher Boyd Brown, ed.
Prefaces
.
Luther’s Works,
vols. 59–60. St. Louis: Concordia, 2011–2012.

USTC

The Universal Short Title Catalogue. http://ustc.ac.uk/.

WA

D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe.
Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–.

WABr

D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe. Briefwechsel.
18 vols. Weimar: Böhlau Nachfolger, 1930–1985.

WATR

D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesammtausgabe. Tischreden.
18 vols. Weimar: Böhlau Nachfolger, 1912–1921.

N
OTES

Chapter One: A Small Town in Germany

1
. For an evocative selection, see Martin Luther,
Table Talk,
ed. Theodore G. Tappert, LW 54. Over the years, twelve different men were involved in recording Luther’s dinnertime utterances, which accounts for the record’s somewhat uneven quality.

2
. For a speculation as to what might have happened had Charles V followed this advice, see Andrew Pettegree, “The Execution of Martin Luther,”
History Review
(March 1996), 20–25, now available online at http://www.historytoday.com/andrew-pettegree/execution-martin-luther.

3
. This section draws heavily on Helmar Junghans,
Wittenberg als Lutherstadt
(Berlin: Union Verlag, 1979) and E. G. Schwiebert,
Luther and His Times: The Reformation from a New Perspective
(St. Louis: Concordia, 1950).

4
. WATR II, n. 2800b, III, n. 3433. Quoted in Maria Grossmann,
Humanism in Wittenberg, 1485–1517
(Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1975), 36.

5
. Friedrich Myconius, quoted in C. Scott Dixon,
Protestants
(Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 10.

6
. Ernest G. Schwiebert, “The Electoral Town of Wittenberg,”
Medievalia et Humanistica
(1945), 99–116, here 108. Cochlaeus was writing in 1524. The sentiment that this was more of a village than a town, and emphasizing the poor state of the local houses, was something of a commonplace, and remarked by friends as well as enemies. See Schwiebert,
Luther
(citing Myconius and Melanchthon).

7
. Schwiebert, “Wittenberg,” 108–9.

8
. Wolfgang Behringer,
Im Zeichen des Merkur: Reichspost und Kommunikationsrevolution in der Frühen Neuzeit
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003).

9
. The production of manuscripts seems to have peaked around 1480, thirty years after the invention of printing. Uwe Neddermeyer,
Von der Handschrift zum gedruckten Buch: Schriftlichkeit und Leseinteresse im
Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit: quantitative und qualitative Aspekte
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998). On Gutenberg see Albert Kapr,
Johann Gutenberg: The Man and His Invention
(Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996).

10
. Andrew Pettegree,
The Book in the Renaissance
(London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010).

11
. Augsburg, Nuremberg, Cologne, Strasbourg, Basel, and Leipzig; Rome, Venice, Florence, and Milan; Paris and Lyon. Figures and analysis drawn from the USTC.

12
. For this variety of means of conversion, see especially Andrew Pettegree,
Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

13
. Below, chapter 12. Christoph Reske,
Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im deutschen Sprachgebiet: auf der Grundlage des gleichnamigen Werkes von Josef Benzing
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2007).

14
. Erwin Iserloh,
Luthers Thesenanschlag: Tatsache oder Legende?
(Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1962). For an English introduction see Iserloh,
The Theses Were Not Posted: Luther Between Reform and Reformation,
trans. Jared Wicks (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968).

15
. Joachim Ott and Martin Treu, eds.,
Luthers Thesenanschlag—Faktum oder Fiktion
(Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2008).

16
. Below, chapter 3.

17
. In 1516 Luther enumerated the residents of the house as twenty-two priests and twelve novices: including servants, forty-one persons in all. WABr I, 72–73.
Letters
I, 28.

18
. Known as a Portiuncula indulgence after the church near Assisi first granted such a valuable privilege.

19
. Paul Kirn,
Friedrich der Weise und die Kirche
(Leipzig: Teubner, 1926; repr., Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1972).