Reformation Propaganda and Martin Luther Discussion Purpose: When Protestant Reformation began the movement gained support and was successful because Mart

Reformation Propaganda and Martin Luther Discussion Purpose: When Protestant Reformation began the movement gained support and was successful because Martin Luther and his followers utilized a recent invention to disseminate their ideas to the public: the printing press. Through this use of technology, Luther and his followers circulated pamphlets, letters, biblical excerpts, and woodcuts (a type of print making) depicting the evils of the Catholic Church. One of Luther’s supporters was the artists Lucas Cranach, who designed numerous Anti-Catholic woodcuts at Luther’s behest. The purpose of Writing Assignment #2 will be to examine, analyze, and discuss how Cranach’s Reformation woodcuts were used to disseminate Luther’s ideas and what their message to the common man was. This is an analytical writing assignment that will be based on your readings and knowledge of the Reformation, Luther’s works, and your own interpretation of these artistic productions. Directions: 1) Before you begin this assignment you must watch Lecture #9: The Reformation, read the Nine-Five Theses by Martin Luther, and “The Reformation a Very Short Introduction” on Canvas. 2) After reading the preliminary materials, examine the woodcut prints in pages 2-7 of this document. Pay particular attention to the imagery issued, the accompanying poetry, and the actions of the characters depicted. 3) Write 5 pages analytical essay that answers the following question in a thesis statement and with supporting arguments/evidence: What are 2-3 ways in which Martin Luther and Lucas Cranach depict the Papacy in these visual sources, and, why do you think this could have been a successful way to persuade the common public? Your essay must include: A clear introduction with a clear thesis statement/argument.Evidence that supports your thesis statement. This can include descriptions of the woodcuts and the accompanying poems, excerpts from articles on Canvas, or from Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. A conclusion that reiterates your argument. Requirements: 5 full pages, Double-Spaced, 11 or 12 pt. font size Citations of Sources: Please cite all your sources including any ideas from the articles, quotes from the primary documents, and the woodprints using either parenthetical citations or footnotes. NO OUTSIDE INTERNET SOURCES. I WILL KNOW IF YOU USE THEM! Parenthetical Citation Examples – These are in-text citations (Martin Luther, Ninety-Five Thesis, thesis #4) or (Lucas Cranach, Figure 1)Footnote Citation Examples – At the end of the page. On MS WORD click on ReferencesàInsert Footnote 1 Martin Luther, Ninety-Five Thesis, thesis #4 2 Lucas Cranach, Figure 1. Figures to Analyzes: Figure 1. “Here the Kissing of the Pope’s Feet is taunted.” From Against the Papacy in Rome, Instituted by the Devil Lucas Cranach, ca. 1545 Text: Latin: PAPA LOQVITUR. Sententiae nostrae etiam iniustae metuendae sunt. Responsio. Maledetta Aspice nudatas gens furiosa nates. Ecco qui Papa el mio belvedere.” Translation: THE POPE SPEAKS: Our sentences are to be feared, even if unjust. Response: Be damned! Behold, o furious race, our bared buttocks. Here, Pope, is my ‘belvedere’ Figure 2. “The Pope is Worshiped as an Earthly God” From Against the Papacy in Rome, Instituted by the Devil Lucas Cranach, ca. 1545 Figure 3. “The Birth and Origin of the Pope” From Against the Papacy in Rome, Instituted by the Devil Lucas Cranach, ca. 1545 Figure 4. “The Pope as Doctor of Theology and Master of the Faith” From Against the Papacy in Rome, Instituted by the Devil Lucas Cranach, ca. 1545 Accompanying y poem written by Martin Luther: Der Bapst kan allein auslegen Die schrifft: und jrthum ausfegen Wie der Esel allein pfeiffen Kan: und die noten recht greiffen. The pope alone can interpret the Scriptures and sweep out error just as much as the ass alone can play the pipes and understand the notes correctly Figure 5. “The Kingdom of Satan and the Pope (2 Thessalonians 2)” From Against the Papacy in Rome, Instituted by the Devil Lucas Cranach, ca. 1545 Figure 6. From the Passional Christi vnnd Antichristi. [The Passionary of Christ and the Anti-Christ] Lucas Cranach, ca. 1521 Explanation: Christ humbly washes the feet of his disciples (left). The pope has his feet kissed by his subordinates (right). Copyright © 2009. OUP Oxford. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or
applicable copyright law.
Peter Marshall
The
Reformation
A Very Short Introduction
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Chapter 1
Reformations
A German event
It starts in a thunderstorm in the summer of 1505. On the road
near Erfurt, in the Germany principality of Saxony, a young law
student is caught in the downpour, and fears for his life amidst the
ferocious strikes of lightning. He prays to St Anne, the mother of
the Virgin Mary, offering a bargain: if she will spare his life, he
will become a monk. A fortnight later, he bangs on the door of
the Erfurt house of the reformed Augustinian friars, one of the
strictest of all the religious orders.
Martin Luther told the story about himself, decades later, and it
may not have happened that way. But everything about the tale is
significant: the intensity of the medieval cult of the saints, the
combined quest for material and spiritual salvation, the setting in
Germany. Asking why the Reformation started in Germany is a bit
like asking why the Communist Revolution started in Russia, or
the telephone was invented in America – it happened there
because it happened there. Some important ‘preconditions’ seem
absent. In contrast to Hussite Bohemia, or Lollard-flecked
England, Germany was pretty much a heresy-free zone in the
decades around 1500, with little formal challenge to the authority
of the Church. What was distinctive was its political structure.
Unlike the emergent national monarchies of France, England, and
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The Reformation
Spain, Germany was politically fragmented – a patchwork of petty
princedoms, ecclesiastical territories, and self-governing cities,
under the nominal suzerainty of the grandly named Holy Roman
Emperor. The office was elective, the emperor chosen by seven
territorial ‘Electors’ (including three archbishops). At the time of
Luther’s entry into the monastery the throne was occupied by the
Habsburg dynasty, in the person of Maximilian I. Imperial
business was conducted at meetings of the Reichstag, or ‘diets’ of
the imperial estates, at which electors, princes, and towns were all
represented, and took the opportunity to formulate their
grievances, often about the need for reform in the Church.
Germans compensated for political weakness with a passionate
cultural and linguistic nationalism. The international scholarly
movement for the revival of ancient learning known as humanism
(not to be confused with modern secular humanism) had a
German limb, which found in the writings of the Roman historian
Tacitus descriptions of a free and vigorous Germanic people,
underlining a contemporary sense of subjugation. The nasty side of
German nationalism was an intense Italo-phobia. The far side of
the Alps was a source of moral and cultural corruption – and, with
one brief exception, all 15th- and 16th-century popes were Italians.
There was a political context for this prejudice; Germany was the
one important part of Western Europe outside Italy itself where
the papal aspiration to direct ‘monarchical’ government of the
Church still had some real purchase. The kings of France, Spain,
and England were dutiful sons of Rome. But in a quiet way they
had been nationalizing the Church in their territories, securing the
right to nominate bishops, for example, and using that power to
reward loyal servants. The vacuum of centralized control in
Germany meant that popes retained greater power to appoint to
ecclesiastical offices, and, via the prince-bishops, to extract
taxation from the populace – always a fertile source of bitterness.
Anticlericalism – an antipathy to the political power of the clergy –
does not equate to rejection of Church teachings. All the evidence
suggests that early 16th-century Germany was a pious and
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orthodox Catholic society. But national and anticlerical
resentments abounded, and they found their voice in Luther.
The Luther affair
Reformations
On 31 October 1517, Luther nailed a long list of points for
disputation – Ninety-Five Theses – to the door of the church near
the castle in the Saxon capital of Wittenberg. It is a moment that
has reverberated in history, the day on which the Protestant
Reformation was born and the Middle Ages suddenly dropped
dead. The reality is more prosaic. Some scholars have denied that
the Theses were ever posted at all. It seems likely that they were,
but this was hardly a world-shattering act. Luther was now a
professor at the recently founded University of Wittenberg, and the
conventional method of initiating academic debate within the
theology faculty was to post theses in advance. Because of its handy
location, the door of the Castle Church served as the university’s
bulletin board, and Luther’s gesture has been seen as no more
dramatic than pinning up a lecture list in a modern college. The
Theses themselves were not particularly revolutionary: they did
not reject the authority of the pope, or call for the founding of a
new church, and they addressed a fairly minor and obscure point of
theology. There was in 1517 no blueprint to reform the Church, no
foreseeable outcome. Political circumstances, combined with
Luther’s stubbornness and eventual willingness to think the
unthinkable, allowed it all to get out of hand.
The original issue was indulgences. These were an outgrowth of the
Church’s teaching on sin and penance. Confession to a priest
guaranteed forgiveness from God, but the legal-minded thinking of
the Middle Ages maintained this still left a ‘debt’ to be paid for sin.
Some of this could be worked off in this life through performance
of penances. The rest would be extracted in purgatory – a place in
the afterlife where the souls of all but the truly wicked and the
excessively saintly would suffer for a while before being admitted,
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The Reformation
1. Lucas Cranach’s 1520 portrait of Martin Luther depicts him as
still very much the Catholic friar
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Reformations
debt-free and purified, into heaven. Indulgences were a certificate
remitting some of the punishment due in purgatory in exchange
for performance of a good work (they were originally developed as
an inducement for people to go on crusade) or giving money to a
good cause. Popes argued that, as heads of the Church on earth,
they could draw on the ‘surplus’ good deeds of the saints to
underwrite indulgences. The system had a coherent underlying
logic, but it was open to abuse, and had been criticized by some
thinkers, especially humanists, long before Luther. The papal
indulgence issued in 1515 looked particularly dodgy from the
viewpoint of moralists and reformers. It was designed to raise
money for a prestige project, the building of the new Renaissance
Basilica of St Peter in Rome. Its sale in Germany was arranged by
one of the worst of the worldly prince-bishops, Albrecht of
Brandenburg, who was to keep a share of the proceeds to pay back
the bankers who had financed his purchase of the archbishopric of
Mainz. Fronting the campaign was a Dominican friar, Johan
Tetzel, who went about his business in an effective but crude and
materialistic way, employing the advertising jingle, ‘as soon as the
coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory to heaven springs’.
Luther was appalled by Tetzel’s methods, and by a popular
response which seemed to show no understanding of the need for
true repentance. There was also no love lost between the
Dominicans and the Augustinians. When Pope Leo X first heard of
the controversy, he dismissed it lightly as ‘a quarrel among friars’.
Luther meanwhile was edging towards a momentous conclusion –
if the Church and pope could or would not reform an evident abuse
like indulgences, then something must be wrong with the entire
structure of authority and theology. For some years Luther had
been nurturing doubts about the elaborate ritual mechanisms for
acquiring ‘merit’ in the eyes of God, and coming to the view that
faith alone was sufficient for salvation. Luther’s ‘radicalization’
came into full view in the course of a 1519 debate staged in Leipzig,
against a clever orthodox opponent, Johan Eck. Earlier, Luther
had conventionally appealed against the pope to the authority of a
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The Reformation
general council. But by comparing Luther to Jan Hus, Eck
manoeuvred him into declaring that the Czech heretic had been
unjustly condemned by the Council of Constance, and that
councils, like popes, could err in matters of faith. This left only the
scripture as an infallible source of religious authority. After
Leipzig, there was no going back. Luther was excommunicated by
Leo X in 1520, and responded, characteristically, by publicly
burning the papal bull of excommunication in Wittenberg. He also
published a series of pamphlets castigating the ‘Babylonian
captivity’ of the Church, rejecting the necessity of obedience to the
Church’s canon law, reducing the number of sacraments from
seven to three, and calling on the emperor and German nobility to
step in and reform the Church.
Why did what is sometimes seen as an authoritarian Church not
crush Luther sooner, before he could do so much damage? The
answer is mired in German and international politics. In January
1519, Emperor Maximilian died. The obvious successor was his
grandson, Charles. But by a succession of happy dynastic accidents,
Charles had inherited, in addition to the ancestral central
European Habsburg lands, the wealthy territories of the
Netherlands and the kingdom of Spain. The imperial title would
cap unprecedented superpower status, and the pope was not alone
in wishing to prevent his getting it. For a time, the seven imperial
electors enjoyed immense leverage. One of them was Luther’s
territorial prince: Elector Frederick ‘the Wise’ of Saxony. Frederick
was thoroughly old-fashioned in religion, but immensely proud of
the university he had founded, and of its new superstar professor.
He thus protected Martin Luther from his enemies. When Charles
(who could pay larger bribes) was duly elected, Luther was
summoned under safe conduct to the imperial diet at Worms. In
front of the dignitaries Luther refused to recant his errors,
proclaiming ‘here I stand, I can do no other’ – a veritable slogan of
individual freedom and modernity. In fact, these words may have
been a later gloss on what Luther actually said, a declaration that
he would not retract anything, for ‘my conscience is captive to
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the Word of God’, a perhaps less appealing motto for moderns.
In the aftermath of Worms, Frederick smuggled Luther away to his
castle at the Wartburg, where, hidden from the world for nearly
a year, he translated the New Testament into powerful and
idiomatic German.
Reformations
In the course of these travails, Luther had become a celebrity, and a
German national hero. Humanists (mistakenly) hailed him as one
of their own, blowing away the barbarous ‘sophistries’ of academic
theology. Town burghers and rural peasants alike saw in him an
icon of resistance to judicial and economic oppression by agents of
the Church. He also became in the early 1520s a runaway
best-selling author, the J. K. Rowling (or perhaps the Richard
Dawkins) of his day. Unlike the writings of Wyclif or Hus, Luther’s
books and pamphlets were printed. The co-incidence of Luther’s
protest and the new technology of the printing press seemed to
later 16th-century Protestants a veritable providence of God. In
fact, printing was not so new. Gutenberg had printed his Latin
bible in Mainz almost thirty years before Luther was born, and a
well-established printing industry existed in many European cities,
with Catholic devotional works the largest category of imprint.
Yet Luther’s explosion into print marked a momentous turning
point in the history of the press, the employment of the printed
book for the transmission of opinions, rather than merely
knowledge or edification. Here again, the fragmented nature of
German society helped. Elsewhere, printing tended to be
concentrated in a few towns and cities (in England, nearly all books
were produced in London). But in Germany, presses were widely
scattered across the empire’s many urban centres, making them
more difficult for central authority to control.
Zwingli and the beginnings of radicalism
The protest against Rome was not just Luther’s affair. He was the
prophet, rather than in any concrete sense the leader of the
movement, and the Reformation involved discrete reformations
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The Reformation
from its earliest stages. Events in the Swiss city of Zürich bear this
out. The moving figure here was the resident preacher at the
principal town church, Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), who by his
own account ‘began to preach the Gospel of Christ in 1516 long
before anyone in our region had ever heard of Luther’. Zwingli
differed from Luther in having a stronger background in
humanism, and a deep acquaintance with the works of Europe’s
leading Christian humanist, and scourge of obscurantism in the
Church, Desiderius Erasmus. This was to be significant for the
different directions taken by Luther’s and Zwingli’s theologies.
On the question of authority, Zwingli developed a similar position
to Luther’s: scripture was the sole basis of truth, and the power of
popes and councils was illusory. Zwingli’s ‘Ninety-Five Theses’
moment came in Lent 1522, when he presided over a meal of
sausages that ostentatiously breached the rules for abstaining
from meat in the run-up to Easter. Christian ‘liberty’ in such
matters was a central plank of Zwingli’s, as of Luther’s, teaching,
and no doubt an important element in its popular appeal. In the
aftermath of the sausage incident, Zürich’s town council backed
Zwingli against the local bishop, and gave him the opportunity to
defend his views in a (rigged) public disputation. In 1524, religious
images were removed from the city churches, and fasting and
clerical celibacy were abolished. In 1525, the Latin mass was
replaced with a vernacular communion service. This was a pattern
of ‘urban reformation’ replicated across much of Germany and
Switzerland in the 1520s, as mini-Luthers and mini-Zwinglis
sprang up to demand reform from the pulpit, and town
magistrates, sensing the popular mood, decided to recognize their
demands. In Switzerland, however, the pace of change tended to be
quicker – the important German cities of Augsburg and
Nuremberg, for example, did not unequivocally opt for
Lutheranism until the early 1530s.
Change was swift in Zürich, but not quick enough for some.
A group around the humanist Konrad Grebel felt that Zwingli was
acting too slowly in getting rid of statues of the saints, and broke
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Reformations
decisively with him in 1523. Their slogan of ‘not waiting for the
magistrate’ put them at odds with all who wanted the
implementation of Reformation to be an orderly and official
business. One result of the assault on tradition, and the exaltation
of the status of scripture, was to encourage people to read the bible
themselves, yet the lessons they drew from it were not always those
approved by the leading preachers. Noticing that the practice of
baptizing infants was nowhere described in scripture, Grebel
began rebaptizing adult members of his group. Zwingli’s successor
in Zürich, Heinrich Bullinger, would later coin the term
‘anabaptists’ (rebaptizers) to describe them, a label freely applied
by both Catholics and Protestants to all on the radical end of the
Reformation spectrum. Luther, meanwhile, was having his own
problems with the people he was soon to start calling schwärmer –
enthusiasts or fanatics. During Luther’s enforced absence in the
Wartburg over 1521–2, his collaborator Andreas von Karlstadt
decided to force the pace of change in Wittenberg, removing
images from the churches and celebrating mass in German. Luther
approved the ends, but not the way of proceeding, and on his
return reversed the changes. Karlstadt became one of Luther’s
bitterest critics, comparing the gradualist approach to allowing a
small child to carry on playing with a sharp knife. Luther accused
Karlstadt of having swallowed the Holy Spirit ‘feathers and all’.
The potability of the Holy …
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