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Reformation Printers: Unsung Heroes

Author(s): Richard G. Cole


Source: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 327-339
Published by: The Sixteenth Century Journal
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Sixteenth Century Journal


XV (3) 1984

Reformation Printers: Unsung Heroes


Richard G. Cole
Luther College
IT IS FREQUENTLY STATED that the Reformation would have been impossible or would have had little chance of popular acceptance without
the rapid spread of typography. The implications of the media revolution go much further than the suggestion that popular acceptance of
the Reformation was enhanced by the utilization of the printing press.
The Reformationitself seems to be almost unthinkable without taking
into consideration the printed pages of Luther's sermons, essays, addresses, and biblical translations. Indeed, the Reformation went hand
in hand with book and press. There is in all the centuries preceding the
sixteenth century nothing comparable to the print media explosion of
the 1520s, an upsurge of activity that coincided exactly with the Reformation in Germany.
Individual authors and their specific works are only half of the
story of the printing dimension of Reformation times. The people who
cast the type and rolled the ink are frequently overlooked by scholars
because they are regarded as mere cogs in the wheel of the printing
revolution. The Reformation printer formed an important part of the
rapidly growing number of literate people and became an elite, albeit
numerically-small new class, a class not based on traditional lines of
political status and economic wealth but one based on a very high
degree of literacy. In ascertaining the relative merits of the Reformation printer, one may ask: "Is the typist of the paper as important as
the author?" No, but one is tempted to reply that the Reformation
printer played an especially crucial and significant part in the publishing of the Reformation pamphlet, especially in the early and critical
years of the Reformation. Printers were often well-educated, skilled,
versatile, and pragmatic individuals. They had to ascertain their markets, obtain the necessary manuscripts and then see them through the
press. Oftentimes they teamed up with scholarly humanists who
served as proofreaders and artists for illustrations.
What was Luther's attitude toward the printers? In Luther's
printed works, especially in his Table Talks and Letters, he on occasion
addresses his thoughts to the various printers who published his
works. Shortly before the beginning of the Reformationin a letter written on September 9, 1516, to George Spalatin, the chaplain and private
secretary of Frederickthe Wise, Luther discusses his intentions to prepare some of his exegetical lectures on the Psalms for publication. But,

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Sixteenth Century Journal

he maintained, when he finished this task, he wanted them to be printed


with his direct supervision, which in this case meant that the printing
would have to be done locally by Johann Grunenberg, who had been
printing in Wittenberg since 1508. Luther continues by stating that
another reason for local printing was that his work would be printed in
a rougher typeface. Luther wrote: "I am not impressed with publications printed in elegant type by famous printers. Usually they are
trifles, worth only the eraser."'
The resulting avalanche of Luther's Reformation pamphlets
printed by dozens of printers in many places followed Luther's wishes.
Thousands of Reformation pamphlets were printed in a homely format
with bold type. Later, Luther was to regret that some of his printers
were indeed not only unknown but did inelegant or even poor printing.
In another letter to Spalatin, written in 1521, Luther notes how unhappy he is with the printing done by Grunenbergon his treatise On Confession. Luther wrote: "It is printed so poorly, so carelessly, and confusedly, to say nothing of bad typefaces and paper. Johann the printer
is always the same old Johann and does not improve." Luther went on
to suggest that errant printing compounds confusion in later editions.
Bad printing is a sin, said Luther. "I shall send nothing more until I
have seen that these sordid money-grubbers, in printing books, care
less for their profits than for the benefit of the reader."2Grunenberg
may have been a bad printer but some years later Luther seemed to
have forgotten his vexations with him, and in 1532 he stated that
Grunenbergwas a man of scruples and honestly worriedabout making
too much profit in his printing. Further, "Grunenberg,"said Luther,
"was a godly man and was blessed."3
At least in the early years of the Reformation Luther felt that it
would be necessary to keep a close working connection with his printers, not only for the sake of correctness but because he liked to be close
at hand to suggest portions of the Bible that he would like to see illustrated, as he did in the case of Hans Lufft, the famous and rich Wittenberg Bible printer.4Luther realized the tremendous power of printers
and their products; words in print became virtual missiles on the battlefield of ideas. The power of the printed word is suggested by Luther
in his treatise On the Papacy in Rome (1520), which was an attack on
the Franciscan pamphlet writer Augustine Alveld of Leipzig. Luther
'Luther's Works, ed. H.T. Lehman (Philadelphia:Fortress Press, 1963), 48: 18-19.
Hereafter cited as LW.
2LW,48: 292.
'LW, 54: 141.
4Carl C. Christensen, Art and the Reformation in Germany (Athens, Ohio: Ohio

University Press, 1979), p. 110.

Printers: Unsung Heroes

329

writes: "If he (Alveld) had not put his apelike book into Germanto poison poor laymen, he would have been too insignificant for me to bother
with."5 If a bad book could be poison, presumably a good one would be
a useful weapon or, as Luther once stated, a book could be a "new vexation for the Antichrist and his soldiers.'"6After twelve more years of
much printing and writing, Luther could look back from the apex of his
successful career as a reformer and be a bit more reflective about the
value of a printed work. He said in one session reported in Table Talk
that he would like it if it were possible to have all of his books destroyed so that only the sacred writing of the Bible would be read. He
was afraid that even his followers would forsake the Bible and only
read commentaries upon commentaries. But since it was entirely unlikely that hundreds of thousands of copies of his works could or would
be destroyed, he conceded that: "I would like my books to be preserved
for the sake of history in order that men may observe the course of
events and the conflict with the Pope ...."7 Later in the fall of 1538
Luther echoed the same sentiments when commenting on the writings
of his co-reformerJohann Brenz. Luther said Brenz wrote such a big
commentary on twelve chapters of Luke that it "disgusts the reader to
look into it."8 Apparently, Luther had become so accustomed to the

brief Reformation polemical pamphlet that longer works such as he


himself had done earlier no longer appealed even to him.
Luther sensed that he was riding the crest of a printing boom and
a wave of a relatively new technology. Perhaps it was only natural for
a scholar of Luther's caliber to be interested in the various forms of
communication, but the special needs and problems of a reform movement added a special impetus not only for Luther but also for his printers, who were eager to serve the new market for published materials. If
printers are the essential link in the new communication process, then
more needs to be known about these people of enterprise and skill. One
of the problems in obtaining an in-depth picture of the Reformation
printer is that with relatively few exceptions not a great deal of information has survived on the printer, or if it has, it is widely scattered.
Available information is often poorly indexed, if indexed at all. The
names of printers are seldom indexed in, for example, published editions of Luther's works or in sixteenth-century pamphlet catalogs.
Several years ago this writer conducted a computerized sorting of the
bibliographical information contained in the relatively large collection
of sixteenth-century Reformation pamphlets (Flugschriftensammlung
6LW, 39:
6LW, 48:
7LW, 54:
8LW, 54:

103.
230-231.
274.
311.

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Sixteenth Century Journal

Gustav Freytag) located in the City and University Library in Frankfurt am Main. In the coding of the material I included the coding of
printer's name and location of publication as well as other data. Since
the names of printers had never been indexed for the collection, the
print-out gave me something especially useful to help me understand
better the printing dimension of the Reformation. In the overall sample of over three thousand pamphlets, there were three hundred and
ninety names of obscure printers who in the course of the sixteenth
century had rolled their presses in over one hundred different geographical locations (see figure 1). In the portion relating specifically to
works by or about Luther there were over four hundredand fifty-seven
editions of pamphlets printed by fifty German printers in twelve different locations. About twenty percent of the Luther editions were
without a printer's mark or colophon. From the list of names on the
print-out, I have been able to gather data on most of Luther's printers,
but neither is my present study nor the Freytag collection the total
picture (see figure 2).
What kind of people were the Germanprinters? The printers of the
Reformation may rival the humanists as being one of the first identifiable secular groups bringing their support to the cause of the Reformation. Some years ago Bernd Moeller argued that aside from the humanists, copper miners were the first group to identify with the early Reformation.9What about the printers? Certainly, they are a smaller percentage of the population yet probably a more significant group than
the miners. There is some evidence that the printers, who were likely to
be above average in skill and education, often opted for Reformation
theology. Not only did the printer turn the talents of his trade to printing of Reformation books, but he, in some cases, chose a career in the
parish. Ernest Schwiebert in his "Reformation Lectures" gathered a
number of interesting statistics from the old Wittenberger Ordiniertenbuch of 1539 (first published in 1844).10 Nine occupations were
listed from which people had come before they opted to become emergency lay preachers. The occupations included merchants, burghers,
stonemasons, sextons, schoolmasters, clothiers, and printers. Of the
total of thirty-five people listed in various categories, over one-thirdof
them listed their occupation as printer. The high rate of printers be"Quotedin Steven E. Ozment, TheReformationin the Cities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 124. Two recent books with much useful information are Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1979), and MiriamU. Chrisman,Lay Culture,Learned Culture


(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
10ErnestSchwiebert, "Reformation Lectures delivered at Valpariso University"
(Valpariso:MimeographedCopy, 1937), p. 285.

Printers: Unsung Heroes

331

TOWNS
Altenburg
Augsburg
Bamberg
Basel
Erfurt
Leipzig
Munchen
Nurnberg
Strassburg
Tubi ngen
Ulm
Wittenberg
Zurich
Zwickau
Unknown

,
0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

"

473

200

Number of polemical editions by Luther and his friends. Some of the total are editions of
the same work.

Figure 1. The Years 1518-1529


Major centers of pamphlet production as indicated by data from the years
1518-1529 in the Freytag Collection.

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Sixteenth Century Journal

PRINTERS

Jorg Gastel
S. Grimmand M.Wirsung
JohannGrunenberg
Jobst Gutknecht
GabrielKantz
MelchiorLotter
Hans Lufft
SilvanOtmar
MelchiorRamminger
Georg Rhau
ChristianRodinger
Nicolaus Schirlentz
WolfgangStockel
665

Unknown
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Numberof polemical pamphleteditions by or about Luther,some are differenteditions of


same work.

Figure 2. Works by Martin Luther and other reformers. Data is from the Freytag
Collection.

Printers: Unsung Heroes

333

coming preachers is much greater than one might expect to be the normal rate. Even though Schwiebert's sample is a small one, the results
add some weight to the assertion that typographic people had a special
affinity for the Reformation.
One of the outstanding printing families noted for their production
of Luther's pamphlets and Bibles and also for their early espousal of
Lutheran doctrine was Melchior Lotter and his sons, Melchior the
Younger and Michael, who was married to Luther's first cousin once
removed on the Lindemann (maternal)branch of his family tree." Melchior the Elder learned the printing trade and marriedDorothea Kachelofen, daughter of the Leipzig printer, ConradKachelofen. As so often
happened in the sixteenth century, printers who married daughters or
widows of printers usually got a printing press in the bargain. Lotter,
up to the time of the Reformation, printed short works on handicrafts,
mining, school instruction, popular medicine, religious and astrological tracts, folk literature and items on politics. He was, indeed, one of
the foremost printers in the diocese of Meissen and was the official
printer for the bishop. Melchior the Elder apparently spent some time
with Luther at Leipzig during the debates in 1519 and formed with
him a lasting friendship. Lotter's father-in-law(Kachelofen)turned his
press over to his son-in-law and spent most of his time running the
Kachelofen tavern, which served as the Luther headquarters during
the debates with Eck. The contact of Luther with Lotter led to the establishment of a branch printing office in Wittenberg, manned by his
two sons, Melchior and Michael.12 After 1519 Duke George of Saxony
discouraged Evangelical publications in Leipzig, a factor which also
encouraged the branch operation in Wittenberg. Melchior the Elder
continued to publish Lutheran works, albeit clandestinely. One of his
chief assistants in the print shop in Leipzig, Hermann Tulich, later
became a professor at Wittenberg.'3
Another reason behind the formation of a branch office in Wittenberg was that Philip Melanchthon, the young Greek professor at Wittenberg, felt the urgent need to have printed Greek texts for his students. Hand copying of Greek texts seemed obsolete and unnecessary
in the age of typography. When Michael and Melchior the Younger arrived in Wittenberg, they brought with them Latin and Greek type, as
well as bold-faced Gothic. Besides printing many books for the university, they published many of Luther's writings as well as works by
"Ian Siggins, Luther and his Mother (Philadelphia:Fortress Press, 1981), p. 30.
Also see W. G. Tillmans, "The Lotthers: Forgotten Printers of the Reformation,"Concordia Theological Monthly 22 (1951): 261.
12Alfred Gotze, Die hochdeutschen Drucher der Reformationzeit

ter, 1963), p. 29.


- ',W. G. Tillmans, "The Lotthers ...," p. 261.

(Berlin:de Gruy-

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Sixteenth Century Journal

Melanchthon and Carlstadt. Soon after the arrival of the Lotters in


Wittenberg, Luther planned to have them republish works already
done by Grunenberg, the printer with the clumsy type and careless
typesetters.'4 Also, Luther and his new printers decided that certain
types of publications should be printed in fascicles. The sale of the first
printing would determine how many more to produce, and the printer
would not be stuck with extra sheets. This subscription system may
well be one of the first times books were printed in this fashion.15 After
a few years Melchior the Younger left Wittenberg quite suddenly and
returned to Leipzig. His father was ill, and he may have returned to
help his parent, or Melchior the Younger may have been nettled by a
new and aggressive printer in Wittenberg by the name of Hans Lufft.16
Nevertheless, Melchior the Younger remained an ally of Luther and
continued to publish Reformation tracts until his death in 1542.
Michael Lotter continued working in Wittenberg and kept printing fascicles of Luther's Churchand House Postil until 1529, at which
time he left Luther's city and went to Magdeburg. Eventually,
Michael Lotter joined those reformerswho opposed the Augsburg and
Leipzig interims of 1548, two years after Luther's death. He followed
the theology of the "hard line" and "pure"Lutherans led by Flacius Illyricus, the strong opponent of Philip Melanchthon. In sum, the Lotters may have been some of the most important printers of the early
and stormy years of the Reformation. They were skilled printers and
sensitive and responsive to Lutheran evangelical ideas. Certainly, they
prospered financially, but they are, indeed, at least three of the unsung
heroes of the Reformation.
In the middle 1520s the rising star in the Wittenberg printing
scene was Hans Lufft, who lived and printed in Wittenberg from 1523
to 1584.17 Lufft printed a variety of pamphlets but most of his pamphlet work was completed by 1534. Between 1534 and 1574 Lufft's
press produced thousands of Luther Bibles.18Lufft was an accurate
and neat printer and was one who was devoted to Luther and the cause
of Reformation. His success in mass producing Bibles ultimately
gained a fortune as well as fame for Lufft. He became the richest man
in Wittenberg.20Lufft's daughter married the prominent Wittenberg

14LW,

48: 150.

15LW, 48: 150, note 8.


16W. G.

Tillmans, "The Lotthers...."

17Josef Benzing, Buchdruckerlexikon

p. 263.
des 16. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt a/M.: Klost-

ermann, 1952), p. 181.


18Gotze,p. 54.
19Walter G. Tilimans, The World and Men Around Luther (Minneapolis: Augsburg,

1959), p. 162.
20Gotze,p. 54.

Printers: Unsung Heroes

335

physician Andrew Aurifaber, and Luther himself attended the wedding.21By 1550 Lufft was aRatsherr (memberof the City Council),and
in 1563 he became mayor of Wittenberg. Indeed, Lufft's career is a remarkable combination of skill and business sense which projected him
to the forefront of Luther's printers.
About the same time as Lufft was beginning his printing career in
Wittenberg, a number of other printers were appearing on the scene.
Besides the Grunenbergs(Johann, Hans and George), the Lotters, and
Lufft, six more printers had appearedin Wittenberg by 1525. As early
as 1521 Andreas Carlstadt had invited Nickel Schirlentz to set up his
press in his house. Schirlentz published a large number of pamphlets
by and about Luther and continued to publish until 1547. Some of the
other printers were undoubtedly apprentices who had begun to print
with their own colophons. For example, Hans Weiss had worked with
the Lotters until 1525 and then published a number of Luther's pamphlets on his own press. In 1539 Weiss was called to Berlin and was offered a printing monopoly by Elector Joachim II; Weiss became the
first printer in Berlin.22
There almost seemed to be an epidemic of printing fever in Wittenberg. The famous portrait painter and woodcut artist Lucas Cranach
the Elder became a partner with Christian Doring, a goldsmith, livery
stable and restaurant owner, and set up a printing establishment. Between 1522 and 1525 several dozen Luther pamphlets came off their
press.23Joseph Klug did most of the printing for them until 1525 when
he too became an independent and with his son published song books.
Klug was the first to publish Luther's "A Mighty Fortress.' '24 Cranach's talent for utilizing woodcut illustrations made him a natural to
become involved in the printing business since the woodcut illustration became the hallmark of the Reformation polemical pamphlet.
Cranachwas a very close friend of Luther, and Luther addressed him
in letters with terms of endearment.25Strangely, Cranach's Reformation printing venture with Christian Doring has not received much attention. Colin Clair,in his recent workA History of European Printing
(1976), does not mention Cranachas a printer. Curiously, he does mention a press set up in 1911 in Weimar known as the CranachPress.26At
any rate, Cranach later became mayor of Wittenberg, in 1537 and
again in 1540. Cranach's wife was the daughter of the mayor of
Gotha.27
21LW, 54: 269.

22Gotze,p. 56.
23Ibid., p. 50.
24Ibid.,p. 53.
25LW, 48: 201, note 2; LW, 49: 103.
26Colin Clair,A History of European Printing (New York:Academic Press, 1976), p.
27Gotze, P. 2.
411.

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Sixteenth Century Journal

Josef Benzing in his Lexicon of Printers (BuchdruckerLexikon)


lists twelve printers active in their trade in Wittenberg during the crucial decade of the 1520s. All but one of these (Symphorian Reinhart)
are represented in the Freytag data as printers of Luther's works.
As one might expect, Wittenberg had become a powerful communications center for the spread of the Reformation. Other important
centers of Reformation printing were Nurnberg, Augsburg, Zwickau,
Erfurt, and Basel. These cities are well known for their Reformation
activity and Reformation printing, facts which are confirmed by the
tabulating of Freytag data. There were dozens of other locations in
which the works of Luther and many other reformerswere produced. If
it were possible to know all of the editions of Luther's works from
every press in Germany, it would be a safe assumption that printers
who opted for Reformation works in general would print as much of
Luther's work as they could. It was as John Froben of Basel wrote to
Luther: "We have sold about all of your books except ten copies, and
never remember to have sold any more quickly."28
The imperial city of Augsburg was another locus of Reformation
printing in the early years of the reform movement. Of the fourteen
printers active in the 1520s the Freytag data (whichis only one sample
and not a definitive list) indicates that seven people, or sixty-five percent of the printers in Augsburg, printed works by Luther. Augsburgers such as Sigismund Grimm, a doctor of medicine and owner of an
apothecary, joined forces with Marx Wirsung, a rich merchant, and
published a number of Luther's sermons.29Silvan Otmar, the son of a
prominent Augsburg family, became one of the most prolific printers
of Luther's and of other Reformation figures. Silvan had distinguished
himself prior to the Reformation with his printing of a pre-Luthervernacular German Bible.30Otmar's son, Valentin, followed in the same
tradition. Other Augsburg printers in the 1520s such as Melchior
Ramminger and Heinrich Steiner were productive printers but in later
years ran into financial troubles. Steiner, for example, tried to enhance
his sales by using a false printing location; he claimed his work was
produced in the holy city of Wittenberg rather than Augsburg.3"
28JohannFroben to Luther (February 14, 1519) cited in H. J. Hillerbrand,The Reformation in its own Words (London: SCM, 1964), p. 76.

29Gotze,p. 2.
30Ibid.,pp. 5-6. Lucien Febvre was impressed by how much political and religious
radicalismcould be found among typographic people. He writes: "A Augsbourg, par exemple, Hetzer, correcteurde Silvan Otmar, est Fun chefs du clan baptiste de le ville: luimeme 6crit quelques libelles."See Lucien Febvre and Henri Jean Martin, L'Apparition
du Livre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1958), p. 441.
31Ibid., p. 9.

Printers: Unsung Heroes

337

In the imperial and commercial city of Nurnberg seven out of nine


or seventy-five percent of the total number of printers noted for pamphlet editions published Luther's work even though the regulations
imposed by the magistrates discouraged overly controversial works.
Hans Hergott actually was exiled from Nurnberg for printing Anabaptist works. One of the most prolific Nurnberg printers of Luther's
works was Jobst Gutknecht, who was not afraid to have his name connected with Luther; Gutknecht frequently printed with a colophon. In
general the list of names of printers and places that emerge in the
Freytag collection of Reformation pamphlets seems significant. There
are almost fifty identifiable printers of Luther's works in the 1520s
printing in twelve separate locations in the Freytag data alone. There
are another seventy printers in various locations printing mostly Reformation tracts. Overall for the sixteenth century, there are three hundred and ninety-one printers, eight hundred and ninety-four authors
and one hundred and twenty-five cities noted in the Freytag data.
Forty-two of the locations that surface in the Freytag data are mentioned by Schottenloher in his great bibliography of the sixteenth century as the object of significant historical research based on the historical records of printing.32Eighty-two of the smaller locations where
printers lived and worked have not been the subject of specific print
research. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the contention that
if a German printer published pamphlets especially in the 1520s, he
published Protestant materials. What is often thought of as a war of
pamphlets between the followers of Luther and pope in Rome may be
seen as a lopsided one.
There were, however, many significant German Catholic printers
and a fairly broad-based genre of Catholic materials paralleling the
work of the Lutheran printers in the 1520s. But as a group their number seems far less impressive than those printing on the side of the
Evangelicals. Some Catholic printers, such as Wolfgang Stockel, printer in Leipzig, printed Catholic materials only reluctantly after he was
forced by Duke George in 1522 to cease publishing Luther's works.
But before Stockel acquiesced to the duke's orders, he tried his hand in
operating a small press in Grimma in the Austrian Alps. There he published works by Luther's co-worker Johann Eberlin, but apparently
Stockel ran into financial difficulty in Grimma and moved to Dresden,
where he printed solely for Catholic polemicists such as Emser, Cochlaus, Alfeld, Petrus Sylvius, and others.33Also, there were men such as
32KarlSchottenloher, ed., Bibliographie zur Deutschen Geschichte im Zeitalter der
Glaubenspaltung 1517-1585 (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1940), vol. 4.

33Gotze,p. 21. Gotze writes of one printer, Johann Singriener of Vienna, that he
"bleibt Katholik" as if it were a rarity among printers to remain Catholic (p. 51).

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Sixteenth Century Journal

Johann Gruninger, one of the few Catholic priests in Strassburg, who


until 1531 printed the works of Murner, Cochlaus, Dietenberger,
and Wimpfeling. One Catholic polemist, Thomas Murner, became his
own printer in order to engage more effectively in the propaganda
wars. As a pamphleteer Murner had tried to link Lutheran reformers
with the peasant bands who rose up in insurrection between 1523 and
1526. Murnerset up his own press in Lucerneand published there until
1529.34Another prominent Catholic printer in the early Reformation
was Johann Weissenberger, a printer-priestin Landshut. Weissenburger published three hundred copies of the papal bull against Luther
and a number of pirated second editions of Catholic polemics by Johann Eck, Johann Eckhard, Thomas Murner, a reprint of the Edict of
Worms, and a number of anonymous pamphlets directed against
Franz von Sickingen and the knights.35 Finally, there was Alexander
Weissenhorn, who printed in Augsburg from 1528 to 1539 for Catholic
polemicists such as Cochlaeus, Eck and after 1539 printed exclusively
for the Ingolstadter theologians. Weissenhorn's press produceda flock
of Catholic polemics.36
Given the extent of the explosion of pamphlet literature even as
early as 1521, it is not surprising that the Edict of Worms of 1521 declared that all Lutheran books and pamphlets be burned. A few years
later, in 1525, Ferdinand, the brother of Emperor Charles V and ruler
of the Hapsburg possessions of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carninola, forbade the buying and selling or printing of works by Luther
and his co-workers.37Although local officials had orders to destroy
heretical materials, they often hesitated to interfere with pamphlet
printing either because they were sympathetic to the ideas contained
therein or they refused to interfere with the powerful economic interests of the printing business.38Moreover, because of the decentralized
nature of pamphlet printing, distribution was often rapid;local authorities were often confronted with a fait-accompli.A final complication in
the Catholic move to suppress Protestant printers was the fact that by
as early as 1521, there was a tacit acceptance in some areas, such as
Electoral Saxony, of the spirit if not the fact of cuis regio, eius religion
a condition of local control militating against uniform regulation of
any kind.
34Benzing, p. 113.
35Karl Schottenhoher, Die Landhuter Buchdrucker des 16. Jahrhunderts (Nieuw-

koop: de Graaf, 1930, 1967), pp. 2, 4-5.


36Gotze, p. 10.

37Friederich Kapp, Geschichte

des Deutschen

Buchhandels

(Leipzig, 1886), pp.

431-432.
38Louise Holborn, "Printing and the Growth of the Protestant Movement in Germany from 1517 to 1534," Journal of Church History 9 (1942): 135.

Printers: Unsung Heroes

339

Certainly, Luther's printers were eager to reap the fruits of good


business whether it be a tavern or a printing shop. But many printers
seemed to have a special devotion to the Reformation. They, indeed,
were the unsung but often prosperous heroes of the Reformationmovement.

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