• DOI:10.14315/arg-1975-jg07
• Corpus ID: 163518886

The Reformation in Print: German Pamphlets and Propaganda

@article{Cole1975TheRI,
  title={The Reformation in Print: German Pamphlets and Propaganda},
  author={Richard Glenn Cole},
  journal={Archiv f{\"u}r Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History},
  year={1975},
  volume={66},
  pages={102 - 93}
}

• R. G. Cole
• Published 1975
• History
• Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History

Scholars toward the end of the fifteenth century enjoyed a perfected printing technology and its products, beautiful folio Bibles, dictionaries, classical and medieval works, and a variety of secular publications. The sixteenth-century pamphlet represents a marked shift in the use of the printing press, a shift most noticeable in German areas and one coinciding with Reformation. The brief, blunt, and vulgar reformation tract intended for a wide and unlearned if not confused audience became a major tool of those who sought diange in the religious loyalities of large numbers of people. There is some evidence to illustrate the contention that those holding firmly to Catholicism ignored the propagandistic potential of the printing press. It is possible that Catholic theologians and statesmen who were long accustomed to power and authority felt little need to experiment with radically new methods of mass communication. Catholic reluctance was reinforced by tactile medieval habits of oral, visual, and ceremonial methods of communication. As late as 1590, for example, hand written liturgical books were still in demand for use in Catholic diurches and there were a number of ecclesiastics who would not pray from a printed book. For Protestants the power of the spoken word in and out of the pulpit or in disputation was important; yet, the print dimension appears to be a primary if not generic aspect of the Reformation process. The influence of Reformation events on communication forms has not received adequate attention. Fortunately for students of sixteenth-century pamphlet literature, a large and representative sample collected by the nineteenth century man of letters, Gustav Freytag, is extant and has been superbly catalogued by Paul Hohenemser for the City and University Library in Frankfurt am Main. Hohenemser was familiar with the collecting methods of Gustav Freytag and realized that Freytag's collection is a reasonable sample of small book and pamphlet production. When viewed against what is commonly known about