A revolutionary look at Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the
birth of publishing, on the eve of the Reformation's 500th
anniversary When Martin Luther posted his "theses" on the door of
the Wittenberg church in 1517, protesting corrupt practices, he was
virtually unknown. Within months, his ideas spread across Germany,
then all of Europe; within years, their author was not just famous,
but infamous, responsible for catalyzing the violent wave of
religious reform that would come to be known as the Protestant
Reformation and engulfing Europe in decades of bloody war. Luther
came of age with the printing press, and the path to glory of
neither one was obvious to the casual observer of the time.
Printing was, and is, a risky business--the questions were how to
know how much to print and how to get there before the competition.
Pettegree illustrates Luther's great gifts not simply as a
theologian, but as a communicator, indeed, as the world's first
mass-media figure, its first brand. He recognized in printing the
power of pamphlets, written in the colloquial German of everyday
people, to win the battle of ideas. But that wasn't enough--not
just words, but the medium itself was the message. Fatefully,
Luther had a partner in the form of artist and businessman Lucas
Cranach, who together with Wittenberg's printers created the
distinctive look of Luther's pamphlets. Together, Luther and
Cranach created a product that spread like wildfire--it was both
incredibly successful and widely imitated. Soon Germany was
overwhelmed by a blizzard of pamphlets, with Wittenberg at its
heart; the Reformation itself would blaze on for more than a
hundred years. Publishing in advance of the Reformation's 500th
anniversary, Brand Luther fuses the history of religion, of
printing, and of capitalism--the literal marketplace of ideas--into
one enthralling story, revolutionizing our understanding of one of
the pivotal figures and eras in human history. From the Hardcover
edition.
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