It is hard to argue against Pettegree's basic position here. As he shows, Luther was a consummate propagandist. In many ways an early example of a radical politician he was able to create a network of likeminded thinkers who used their positions to articulate a set of common arguments. The publishing industry that grew up around Luther was based not on a need for him to individually profit (he received no money from the sales of books and pamphlets) but on the need to get the word out. Luther rapidly became a bestselling author, outstripping any other writer. Five years after he produced the Ninety-Five Thesis that began the Reformation, Luther was Europe's "most published author ever".
Part of the reason for this was that Luther himself was prolific, and his arguments clearly met a ready audience. But Luther's notoriety was also part of the appeal. Readers wanted to know more about this monk that was challenging the Pope. But a really big reason for his popularity was that Luther wrote in German, appealing directly to the masses over the heads of the Latin read establishment. His work could be read, and understood much more easily than the opaque defensive arguments of the Catholic church.
But Luther also carefully constructed the basis for the new industry. He brought to Wittenberg a printer and set him up as a business. He helped create and construct the town's university shaping it into a centre of evangelical thought, and he created a readily recognisable brand that pushed his ideas.
All this Pettegree explains in detail, and ties it into the story of Luther's life and times. He shows how Luther's engagement with argument and events (such as the Peasant War) meant a constant stream of new material and, how other events, such as high profile debates and even Luther's death, were managed by Luther and his admirers to fit the brand image.
While Pettegree's general argument is unchallengeable, I did feel that there was one aspect to the story that was missed. This is the way that Luther's ideas arose out of a time of transformation in the German economy, and the beginnings of the rise of a new economic class who had an interest in production for the sake of profit. Pettegree hints at this. He notes, for instance, that the "achievement" in creating "brand Luther" was a "very personal one" for Luther whose youth working for his father in the "copper-mining industry" was an experience he put to "very good use". It is hard not to see Luther as having a unique understanding of the print industry not simply because of his understanding of language and design, but also because of his knowledge of bourgeois industry. Thus there was a dialectical interaction between developments in German society that were encouraging capitalist interests and the rise of the new religious ideas. Luther's genius was to bring the two together and to create the first mass propaganda machine. But Luther's ideas feel on fertile ground - and that in itself, as Pettegree shows, was in part down to Germany's changing political dynamics. Without these factors coming together Luther may well have been little more than another radical chanting his discontent at the church before being condemned to death.
Andrew Pettegree's biography of Luther puts an interesting, if not entirely new, framework on the Reformation. It is an interesting, engaging and refreshing look at a personal story that has been told many times before. Perhaps most importantly though it shows that while Luther began the Reformation he had to also create the networks that would sustain it. Most of that was the men (and a few women) that argued his position, but there was also a whole new industry behind it as well, that Luther personally shaped.
Related Reviews
Roper - Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet
MacCulloch - Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700
Tawney - Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Wilson - The People and the Book: The Revolutionary Impact of the English Bible 1380-1611
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