Free 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 by Andrew Pettegree Page B
Authors: Andrew Pettegree
emerging forms of early modern media. The result is a book that does not just commemorate the Reformation but helps us to view its history in a completely different way.”-C. Scott Dixon, author of Protestants: A History from Wittenberg to Pennsylvania
“ Brand Luther tells two tales. The first is an engaging biography of the German reformer Martin Luther. The second is a stimulating account of the first time the printing press helped shape a mass movement. Andrew Pettegree deftly combines these two stories to show how an abstract academic dispute grew into the Reformation that divided western Christendom. This is history-writing at its best!”-Dr. Amy Nelson Burnett, Paula and D.B. Varner Professor of History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
“Andrew Pettegree’s Brand Luther brings new excitement and insight to the persistent question of why Martin Luther’s calls for reform revolutionized western Christianity when earlier critiques had not. Drawing on his deep knowledge of the Protestant Reformation and the early modern printing industry, Pettegree has crafted a compelling narrative that conveys the excitement, chaos, and uncertainty of the first decades of the Protestant Reformation. In Pettegree’s incisive telling, the Reformation is just as crucially a “commercial revolution” as a theological one. He presents Luther as an innovative, forward-thinking mover of the print industry whose mastery of the new medium of print transformed both Christianity and the business of printing. Pettegree places the interactions among Luther, the emerging print industry, and the economic development of the city of Wittenberg at the center of the Reformation drama, returning a sense of suspense to a well-known story and emphasizing the fact that Luther’s success and long-lasting influence was never a foregone conclusion.”-Karen E. Spierling, editor , Calvin and the Book: The Evolution of the Printed Word in Reformed Protestantism
About the Author
Andrew Pettegree is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews, where he was the founding director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. He is the author of a number of books on the Reformation and the history of communication, including Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion , The Book in the Renaissance , which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2010, and The Invention of News . In 2015 The Invention of News won the Goldsmith Prize of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He lives in Fife, Scotland.
A LSO BY A NDREW P ETTEGREE
The Invention of News
The Book in the Renaissance
Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion
Europe in the Sixteenth Century
Emden and the Dutch Revolt
PENGUIN PRESS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
Copyright © 2015 by Andrew Pettegree
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Illustration credits appear here .
ISBN 978-0-698-41017-6
Version_1
P REFACE
N 2017 WE MARK the five-hundredth anniversary of one of the seminal moments in Western civilization: the inception of the Protestant Reformation. From small beginnings, a theological quarrel in eastern Germany, emerged a tumultuous movement of renewal and reform; questioning, defiant, and ultimately utterly divisive. Within a generation the whole concept of reform had changed its meaning. Advocates of the movement now known as Protestantism had separated themselves from the Western Catholic tradition; the division was permanent and, as it turned out, irreconcilable. Over the next two
“ Brand Luther tells two tales. The first is an engaging biography of the German reformer Martin Luther. The second is a stimulating account of the first time the printing press helped shape a mass movement. Andrew Pettegree deftly combines these two stories to show how an abstract academic dispute grew into the Reformation that divided western Christendom. This is history-writing at its best!”-Dr. Amy Nelson Burnett, Paula and D.B. Varner Professor of History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
“Andrew Pettegree’s Brand Luther brings new excitement and insight to the persistent question of why Martin Luther’s calls for reform revolutionized western Christianity when earlier critiques had not. Drawing on his deep knowledge of the Protestant Reformation and the early modern printing industry, Pettegree has crafted a compelling narrative that conveys the excitement, chaos, and uncertainty of the first decades of the Protestant Reformation. In Pettegree’s incisive telling, the Reformation is just as crucially a “commercial revolution” as a theological one. He presents Luther as an innovative, forward-thinking mover of the print industry whose mastery of the new medium of print transformed both Christianity and the business of printing. Pettegree places the interactions among Luther, the emerging print industry, and the economic development of the city of Wittenberg at the center of the Reformation drama, returning a sense of suspense to a well-known story and emphasizing the fact that Luther’s success and long-lasting influence was never a foregone conclusion.”-Karen E. Spierling, editor , Calvin and the Book: The Evolution of the Printed Word in Reformed Protestantism
About the Author
Andrew Pettegree is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews, where he was the founding director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. He is the author of a number of books on the Reformation and the history of communication, including Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion , The Book in the Renaissance , which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2010, and The Invention of News . In 2015 The Invention of News won the Goldsmith Prize of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He lives in Fife, Scotland.
A LSO BY A NDREW P ETTEGREE
The Invention of News
The Book in the Renaissance
Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion
Europe in the Sixteenth Century
Emden and the Dutch Revolt
PENGUIN PRESS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
Copyright © 2015 by Andrew Pettegree
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Illustration credits appear here .
ISBN 978-0-698-41017-6
Version_1
P REFACE
N 2017 WE MARK the five-hundredth anniversary of one of the seminal moments in Western civilization: the inception of the Protestant Reformation. From small beginnings, a theological quarrel in eastern Germany, emerged a tumultuous movement of renewal and reform; questioning, defiant, and ultimately utterly divisive. Within a generation the whole concept of reform had changed its meaning. Advocates of the movement now known as Protestantism had separated themselves from the Western Catholic tradition; the division was permanent and, as it turned out, irreconcilable. Over the next two
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