LUTHER AS AN AUTHOR—1483-1546.
IN the long list of the noteworthy men of the sixteenth century, the men who helped to shape the history not only of their own generation, but of long series of generations to come, a leading place, possibly the leading place, must be assigned to Martin Luther.
The story of the bold-hearted Augustinian monk, who, strong in his convictions of the justice of his cause, and strong in his faith that the Lord would protect his own, ventured to assail the abuses and, finally, even to question the authority of the Church of Rome, the only Church then known to Europe, and who dared, standing almost alone, to withstand the mandates of pope and of emperor—this story, forming one of the great dramas of history, has been often told. For the purposes of the present narrative, however, I am not concerned with Luther as a Reformer, as a fighter, or as a Christian hero, but simply with his work and his relations as an author.
It was inevitable, in selecting two authors as examples of the literary activities and of the publishing methods of the first part of the sixteenth century, that one of these two should be Luther, whose writings achieved a larger popularity and exercised a more far-reaching influence than could be claimed for any books of the century. It is to be borne in mind, however, that Luther’s work as an author was not something apart from his interests as a Reformer. He wrote because he felt the spirit of the Lord to be upon him, and because he had the conviction that he was God’s instrument for bringing a message to the world, and for delivering the true Church from the burdens and corruptions that had been brought upon it through the wiles of Satan.
The Reformation was an intellectual revolution, and the immediate work of the Reformers was carried on by argument, presented in part by preaching, but very largely by means of printed material, books and pamphlets. It is difficult to conceive of the accomplishment of the Reformation without the aid of the printing-press, and it is probably, in fact, not too much to say that, without the printing-press, the work done by the Reformers could not have been brought about at all. The Church authorities had, as we have seen, given to the first printers a cordial welcome, and many of the earlier typographers had been indebted to ecclesiastics for all important co-operation and support. After, however, the printers of Wittenberg had begun to send out by thousands the pamphlets of Luther and Melanchthon, and when, a little later, the presses of Geneva and Zurich were being devoted to supplying to a public still nearer to Rome the writings of Calvin and Zwingli; when, in fact, Europe seemed to be full of “winged words,” words the sting of which was nearly always directed against Rome, the ecclesiastics began to realise the extent of their blunder. Repression in various forms was attempted: rigorous censorship, prohibition, confiscation and burning of copies, the Index Expurgatorius, the ban of excommunication on writers and printers of forbidden books—all these and other forms of restriction were put into force, with the very general result of advertising the objectionable literature, of emphasising its importance, and of adding to its circulation and its influence. The Church finally took the printing-press into its own service, and it succeeded, in the course of a generation or two, in training up a school of literary defenders and apologists who, in the period of the Catholic revival, were able, in a measure at least, to hold their own in controversy with the Protestant opponents of Rome. It was certainly the case, however, that, taking the sixteenth century as a whole, the printing press proved one of the most effective of the influences for undermining the authority of the Papacy and for restricting the rule of the Roman Church.
Luther had been prompt to recognise the value for his work of the new art. He was equally keen in his appreciation of the fact that if the fight against Rome was to secure a popular support, it was necessary to reach with the teachings of the Reformers not only the limited circles of the educated, but the masses of the people. It was for this purpose that Luther, first among the leaders of the Reformation, put forth his sermons, tracts, and controversial pamphlets at once in the language of the people, and he completed his great appeal to the understanding and the moral sense of his fellow countrymen with the stupendous and magnificent achievement of the German Bible. For thousands of Germans, the first practical knowledge of the existence of the possibilities of the printing-press came to them with the sight of the sheets of the Wittenberg pamphlets or of the volumes of the Wittenberg Testament.
It would doubtless have seemed to Luther a small thing in his life’s work that, while carrying on his great fight against Rome, he was also laying the foundation of the book-trade of Germany and of Europe, but this was a matter of no little moment, if only for the lasting influence of the Reformation itself. The historians of the time are certainly in substantial accord in the conclusion that the enormous impetus given to the education and active-mindedness of the people through the distribution and the eager acceptance of the writings of the Reformers, the habits then formed of buying and of reading printed matter, the incentive secured for the work of the printers and the booksellers, and the practice that came into vogue of circulating books and pamphlets by means of pedlars and colporteurs in districts far beyond the reach of the book-shops, had both an immediate and an abiding effect upon the reading habits of the German people and did much to bring about the development of the publishing and bookselling business in Germany.
Luther’s life covered the sixty-three years between 1483 and 1546. At the time of his birth, the printing-press had been in operation for a third of a century. When, in 1517, he printed, in Wittenberg, his first book (a collection of sermons on the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer), the production of printed books was still an unfamiliar art. The principal German centres of the new publishing trade were Basel, Frankfort, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. In the North of Germany, much less had been done, although, for some years, there had been presses in Cologne, and a beginning had been made in Leipzig. It was the Reformation and the superior intellectual activity of the Protestants that transferred the literary and publishing preponderance from South to North Germany, a preponderance that through the succeeding centuries has continued and has increased.
The list of Luther’s works is not a long one, and is made up in great part of pamphlets. His chief writings may be briefly summarised as follows:
All the above were printed at Wittenberg.
The greater number of the pamphlets were issued at once in two editions, one Latin and one German.
One of the more important of the earlier pamphlets or Flugschriften of Luther was the Address to the Nobles of Germany, which was printed in August, 1520, and of which five thousand copies were sold in five days. Of the pamphlet containing his controversial address against Eck, printed in 1518, fourteen hundred copies were sold in two days at the Frankfort Fair. The popular interest excited by the writings of Luther and his associates brought about a great change in the trade of the book-shops. Editions of the Fathers and of the lives of the Saints were pushed to one side from the counters or the book-shelves, or were stored away in the warehouses, and even the classics were neglected. All the demand was for the writings of the Reformers. The replies of the defenders of the Church found for some years a comparatively slow sale, as the sympathies of the larger book-publishing centres and of the public reached by them were largely with the Protestants. Some few of the leading publishers, including the two most important in Germany, Froben of Basel and Koberger of Nuremberg, remained, however, in the orthodox fold, and Froben, possibly at the instance of Erasmus, gave up printing the writings of Luther.
Luther’s first publisher was Johann Weissenburger from Nuremberg, who had, in 1513, established himself in Landshut in Bavaria. In Landshut he printed, in 1517, a tract by Luther entitled Tractatus de his qui ad Ecclesias Confugiunt. Later in the same year, the treatise on the Seven Penitential Psalms was printed by Joh. Grunenberg in Wittenberg, also in Latin. This was, however, immediately followed by a version in German, of which in five years no less than nine editions appeared. The ninety-five theses, copies of which, on the 31st of October, 1517, Luther had nailed on the doors of the Wittenberg castle church, were printed in that town, in the same year, in Latin, under the title Disputatio pio Declaratione Virtutis Indulgentiarum. This first edition was followed by three others printed in Wittenberg, and one in Nuremberg. A year later appeared, also in Wittenberg, the first edition in German, which, in the course of the next two years, was followed by twenty-two other editions. These were printed in Wittenberg, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Basel, and Breslau. It does not seem practicable to ascertain, either from the publishing records or from the references in the various biographies, how far these editions were authorised or how far they represented simply the enterprise of piratical printers. What is made quite clear in the various utterances of Luther himself, is the fact that his only desire was to secure for the theses the widest possible circulation. He made no criticism of the action of any of the printers who put into the market editions of this or of his other writings, excepting when such editions, not having had the benefit of the author’s supervision, were printed in incorrect or incomplete form.
The Sermo de Digna Preparatione Cordis was published in 1518, and the German version followed a few months later. Of the original were printed during the next two years eight editions in Wittenberg, Leipzig, and Augsburg, while of the translation, during the same period, were issued no less than thirteen editions. Of the tract entitled Die Deutsche Theologie, printed at once in Latin and in German in 1518, appeared during the succeeding four years from seventy-five to eighty separate editions. The bibliographers are in doubt as to the precise number.[119]
Of the sermon or tract upon the Sale of Indulgences, Kapp records ten authorised editions in the two years succeeding 1518, and three editions issued respectively in Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, which are specifically described as unauthorised. The next of the series of tracts of this year, Decem Precepta Wittenbergensi Predicata Popula, was printed in the Latin form in five editions, and in the German version in seven. Among the latter are included three unauthorised issues, again dating from Leipzig, Augsburg, and Basel. There was also a Bohemian edition issued in Prague in 1520. It is not surprising that printers like Petri, working at so distant a point as Basel, should have felt free, with “missionary” material of this kind for which there was an immediate popular demand, to put forth editions without reference to the author. It is somewhat surprising, however, that unauthorised editions should also have been issued in Leipzig, but a few miles from Wittenberg, as with the leading publishers of Leipzig Luther and his Wittenberg associates had maintained satisfactory relations. Other tracts of this period, the most of which were printed in the same publishing centres, and the editions of which, both Latin and German, were promptly absorbed by the public, were the Resolutiones Disputationum de Indulgentiarum Virtute, the German version of the hundred and tenth Psalm, and the Sermo de Virtute Excommunicationis.
The complete Lutheran version of The New Testament, published in 1522, constituted not only, as the historians of the time make clear, a central fact of first importance in the work of the Reformation, but the most noteworthy of the literary productions of its author. The work is of necessity classed as a translation, but it was a translation into which had been absorbed, in very large measure, the individuality and original thought of the writer. The production of this German Bible was an essential part of the work of the Protestant Reformers. The teaching that Christian believers must base their relations with their Creator upon the inspired Word required that this Word should be placed within reach of all Christians and should be in a form to be understood by the unlettered as well as by the scholarly.
In addition to the great work done by Luther for the world at large, he rendered to Germany the essential service of initiating (or, as some German historians say, of creating) high German literature. The half century’s work of the printing-press had thus far been devoted almost exclusively to the production of books for scholars, printed in Latin, the universal language of scholarship, or, in a few instances, in Greek. The Brothers of Common Life in Holland, and a small number of other printers in North Germany, had printed for the use of the people books of a popular character in low German, platt-deutsch. It was Luther who recognised the better possibilities of development and for literary expression existing in the division of the language known as high German, the form that (with the changes of three centuries) has since been known as German. In selecting this tongue for his own writings, and, what was of more abiding importance, for his version of the Bible, Luther made of it the foundation of modern German literature. He did not, in fact, find a vehicle ready-made and fully fitted for his purpose, but through his own wealth of imagination and study and incisive speech, he contributed not a little to secure for this new language of literature strength and flexibility for forcible and varied expression. The printed books in German before the appearance of the first tracts of Luther, formed but an inconsiderable group, and were restricted practically to chap-books and almanacs, and to popular medicine or herb-lore, a few folk-songs and tales, and some editions of lives of the Saints, printed principally by the Brothers of Common Life.
The labour and natural philological capacity required for such a task as producing a German version of the Bible at a time when no such thing as a German dictionary existed, and when there was, in fact, no accepted standard for literary expression in the German tongue, must have been very considerable. It was peculiarly fortunate that this capacity was, in Luther, united with the strenuousness of purpose and persistent industry which rendered the work possible at all. The final work of his translation was completed in the Castle of the Wartburg, during his sojourn there as a voluntary prisoner in charge of his valiant defender, Ulrich von Hutten, after his return from the Diet of Worms.
The piratical reprinters took prompt advantage of the popular interest in the work. The “enterprising” Petri of Basel was the earliest in the field, getting his first reprint into the market before the close of the year (1522) in which the original had appeared. During the succeeding three years, Petri printed in all seven editions, four in octavo and three in folio. His neighbour and rival, Wolf, printed during the same time five editions, and Schönsperger of Augsburg followed with three. I do not find record of the number of copies comprised in these several editions, but they must have aggregated a good many thousands. In estimating the cost of their production, it is to be borne in mind that the process of taking casts or clichés of the type was an invention of a much later period, and it was, therefore, necessary with each fresh impression to reset the type.
In 1520, a Bull of Leo X. excommunicated Luther, condemned his works individually and collectively, ordered existing copies to be burnt, and prohibited, under severe penalties, the printing, sale, distribution, or even possession of any of his writings. The immediate effect of this Bull was to cause a largely increased sale throughout nearly all parts of Germany for everything that Luther had written, and to bring about also a very considerable demand for them from other countries. Köstlin estimates that by 1520, more than one hundred editions had been printed of the German versions of Luther’s sermons and tracts. This estimate includes, of course, all the unauthorised issues, as well as the editions printed at Luther’s Wittenberg Press. The distribution of these pamphlets was effected only in part through the regular book-trade. Thousands of copies were sold in the market-places by dealers of all kinds, many of whom had never before handled books; and large supplies were distributed among readers out of reach of the book-shops and the market-places, by travelling pedlars and by colporteurs. Many of the latter were travelling students, who were working not for gain, but in the cause of the Reform. These popular tracts of the excommunicated heretic appear to have met the needs of all classes, educated and uneducated, and secured a wider circulation than had heretofore been achieved by any religious works, or, for that matter, by any writings whatever.
During the earlier years of his work, while this work was directed rather against the abuses that had grown up in the Church than against the authority of the Church itself, and before the Reformers had attempted any constructive theology, Luther was able to preserve relations with the leaders of the Humanistic movement, and received encouraging letters from men like Erasmus and Reuchlin, who stood at the head of the liberal scholarship of the time. It was only later, when the Church had cast out Luther and the Lutherans had definitely repudiated the authority of the Church, and when the doctrines of the Lutheran creed had been finally formulated, that Erasmus, who had heartily sympathised with the fight against the abuses of ecclesiasticism, but who believed that the Church Universal should be preserved, and who did not believe in the doctrine of justification by faith, cast in his lot with the opponents of Luther, a decision that was marked by the publication of his famous essay on Free Will. The Reformers took pains, however, to utilise for their cause, as far as practicable, the influence and the learning of the Humanists.
In 1520, Ulrich von Hutten published a translation of the treatise of Laurentius Valla, one of the earliest of the Italian Humanists, which had been first issued in Naples in 1450, and in which was exposed the forgery of the Donation of Constantine. The Donation was the document or edict in which Constantine was supposed to have granted to the Roman See the possession and control of the entire western world, making the Church the heir of the Roman Empire. The scholarly argument of Valla had never been refuted, and its republication at this time dealt a heavy blow to the traditional pretensions of the Papacy; but this purpose did not prevent von Hutten from dedicating his translation to Leo X.
Shortly after the publication of the revised edition of The New Testament, the indefatigable Luther entered upon the still more laborious task of translating the books of The Old Testament, the work upon which continued for a number of years. He secured the help of a group of scholarly collaborators, of whom the most important was Melanchthon. For The New Testament he had had the use of the Greek edition edited by Erasmus, and recently published by Froben of Basel, a volume which, as well for the accuracy of its text as for the scholarly authority, the boldness and the original information of its notes, far surpassed any texts of the Scriptures as yet issued. Luther expresses very freely his obligations to the learning and industry of Erasmus, and never got over his astonishment that a man who had the scholarship and the courage to puncture so many of the unwarranted assumptions of the Roman Church, could still believe that Church to be worth preserving.
The Catholic theologian Cochläus, a violent opponent, says: “Luther’s New Testament was multiplied by the printers in a most wonderful degree, so that even shoe-makers and women and every lay person acquainted with the German type, read it greedily as the fountain of all truth, and by repeatedly reading it impressed it on their memory. By this means they acquired in a few months so much knowledge that they ventured to dispute not only with Catholic laymen, but even with masters and doctors of theology, about faith and the gospel.”[120]
Luther’s young friend, Mathesius, thus describes one of the meetings of Luther and his collaborators on the work of the German Bible: “Dr. Luther came to them with his old Latin Bible, his Hebrew texts, and the portions of his German translation. Philip (Melanchthon) brought the Greek text, and Dr. Kreuziger (Cruciger), besides the Hebrew, the Chaldaic Bible (the translations or paraphrase in use among the ancient Jews); the other professors had with them their ‘Rabbis’ (i. e. the Rabbinical writings of the Old Testament). Each one had previously armed himself with a knowledge of the text and had compared the Greek and Latin with the Jewish version. The president then pronounced a text and let the opinions go round. Speeches of wondrous truth and beauty are said to have been made at these sittings.”[121]
The most important of the publishers who issued unauthorised editions of Luther’s writings was, as stated, Adam Petri, of Basel. During the ten years between 1520 and 1530, he made a special business of the issue of these reprints, and according to Kapp, he derived from them large profits. I find no record of any complaints from Luther directed specifically against Petri. His principal annoyance about reprints had been in connection with inaccurate and incomplete texts, but the Petri Press had a good repute for the excellence of its typography.
In Augsburg, where had appeared some of the earliest issues of the Bible, Hans Schönsperger printed, in 1523, an (unauthorised) edition of Luther’s New Testament, with woodcuts by Schäuflein. In 1524, a complete series of Luther’s writings was printed by Sylvan Othmar. It is not clear whether or not this edition received the sanction of the author. Siegmund Grimm, of Augsburg, acted as the principal publisher of the writings of Hutten. Hase tells us, in his history of the great Koberger publishing house of Nuremberg, that during the ten years succeeding 1517, the sales of the works of theology (orthodox Catholic) of which the Kobergers made a special interest were very seriously lessened through the influence of Luther and of Luther’s writings.
During the years 1520-1523, Magdeburg became a centre for the production and distribution of Protestant polemical literature, and a great number of controversial pamphlets were issued there. Through the influence of Luther, these were for the most part first printed in high German, but towards the latter portion of the period, many of the briefer and less scholastic tracts were issued also in low German in order to reach the lower classes and readers of the Northwest. After the death of the liberal-minded and tolerant Archbishop Ernst, and with the accession of the bigoted Albert of Brandenburg (who was also Archbishop of Mayence), the publishing activities of the city were seriously hampered. The Roman side of the controversy was then taken up in Magdeburg by Dr. Mensing, the Court preacher, and by Dr. Cyclops. Tübingen, however, became for a time the centre for the controversial publications of the Romanists, and it was there that appeared, between 1519-1522, the works and pamphlets of Luther’s opponents, Eck, Cochläus, Dietenberger, Neudorffer, and others.
The presses of Tübingen were, however, also utilised for the cause of the Reformers. In 1529, Primus Truber and Ulrich Morhart issued (under an assumed imprint) a Slovenic or Slovakian version of Luther’s Catechism. The same men printed the first Slovenic primer and dictionary, and were thus instrumental in fixing a printed form for Slovenic literature. In 1530, they printed an edition in Bohemian of Luther’s New Testament, a work that should have rejoiced the spirit of John Huss, dead one hundred and nine years earlier. The work of these enterprising printers was of no little importance in furthering the spread of Lutheran doctrines among the Slovaks of Moravia, Bohemia, and Hungary. In 1557, the Freiherr of Ungnad, an earnest Protestant, placed funds at the disposition of Truber for the printing of editions of Luther’s writings in the Croatian tongue.
In 1518, Luther brought to Wittenberg from Leipzig Melchior Lotter, who was an experienced printer and a man of good training and scholarship. Lotter brought with him a good equipment of presses, type, and moulds, and also a valuable collection of collated texts. In 1519, Luther is able to write with satisfaction to Lange, the Augustinian Vicar in Erfurt: “Lotter has completed the organisation here in Wittenberg of a well-appointed printing-office, fitted for work in three languages.” The languages were probably Latin, Greek, and German, but, a little later, Hebrew fonts must also have been added. Lotter did not give up his business in Leipzig, but after the completion of the organisation of the Wittenberg establishment he placed in charge of it his two sons, and arranged to pass the greater portion of his time in Leipzig. I do not find any record of the arrangement entered into by Luther with Lotter. It seems probable that the printer, who was a man of established business and with resources, entered upon the undertaking in Wittenberg as a venture of his own, on the strength of the assurance from Luther that he could depend upon securing the printing commissions of Luther and his associates and of such further material as might come from the University. Luther had paid Grunenberg for the printing of the earlier volumes, and he probably also retained in his own hands the ownership of the editions manufactured by Lotter. Unfortunately, the accounts of these editions appear not to have been preserved. In 1531, Rhaw printed the Augsburg Confession, his edition of which was accepted as the standard. He printed also many of the writings of Melanchthon. Hans Lufft, whose work continued from 1523 to 1584, printed after 1524 many of the publications of Luther. His special achievement was the production of the German Bible in the several parts and in the completed volume.
The printing and publishing interests of Wittenberg, which had their beginning under the direction of Luther, in the University, continued during a large part of the existence of the University to be associated with and directed by it.
The first issue of Luther’s Bible in low German was printed in Lübeck, in 1533, by Ludwig Dietz, of Rostock. In Jena, Conrad König was agent for the sale of Luther’s works. The price per volume for the Bible was eighteen groschens for Jena, at the Leipzig Fair nineteen groschens, and at the Frankfort Fair twenty groschens.[122]
These earlier printers were fortunate in securing in their offices the services, as revisers and correctors, of learned men who had a scholarly interest in the work. Melanchthon served as editor, reviser, and press-corrector in 1514-15 with Thomas Anshelm in Tübingen. Professor Johann Hiltebrand, of the University of Tübingen, Melanchthon’s predecessor in Anshelm’s office, named himself with pride Castigator Chalcographiæ Anselmitanæ. He had supervised the printing of several Latin and Greek grammars, and also of the Epistolæ Virorum Clarorum, published as a rejoinder to the famous Epistolæ Virorum Obscurorum. Pellican (Conrad) supervised for Petri of Basel the printing of the piracy edition of Luther’s Bible, receiving for his service board during the months he was occupied. The long association of Erasmus with Froben has been already referred to. Rhenanus writes to Erasmus, May 10, 1517: “Lachner promises to secure due acknowledgment to you for your services. In September you will receive payment for the work of revising the text of S. Augustine. He is now arranging the matter with Koberger in Frankfort.”[123]
Kapp is authority for the statement that Luther received for his literary work no honorarium or compensation other than occasional copies of the printed volumes. This statement has reference doubtless only to those publications of Luther’s (many of them wholly unauthorised) which were issued by printer-publishers as ventures of their own. It is probable, however, as before stated, that the Wittenberg editions of the miscellaneous writings, and that of the German Bible, were printed at Luther’s risk and expense, and it is fair to assume that for the sale of these editions, which were his property, the receipts (less some selling commission) were paid over to Luther. The sale of Luther’s writings (both books and pamphlets) certainly exceeded anything that had as yet been known in the book-markets of Germany or of the world, and from the Wittenberg editions alone there must have been some proceeds. The first editions of Luther’s smaller and larger catechisms were printed in 1529 by George Rhaw, who had established himself as a printer in Wittenberg in 1521. He was distinguished as a musician and a mathematician, and, later, became magistrate of the town.
After the publication of the Edict of Worms, Duke George of Saxony took ground against the Reformers and forbade the printing and the distribution of their literature. The authority of the Duke was sufficient to put a stop to the larger portion of the printing that had been carried on in Leipzig for the Reform writers, but Wittenberg was outside of the Duke’s domain, and the Elector Ernest and his successor Frederick, were both friendly to the Lutheran cause. As a result of the restrictions in Leipzig, a number of the exiled printers made their way to Wittenberg, and the presses of Wittenberg became busier than ever. The printing of the German New Testament, begun in April, 1522, was completed on the 22d of September of the same year, the first edition comprising five thousand copies. By the end of July, Luther reports that three presses were at work upon the book. This first edition was printed in folio, and with the simple title, Das Neue Testament, Deutsch, Vuittenberg. Neither the translator nor the printer is specified, and the title-page bears no date. The volume was published at one and a half guilders, the equivalent of twenty-five marks of to-day, or $6.25. The edition was exhausted within three months after publication. The German edition of the Old Testament appeared in divisions; the Pentateuch was issued in January, 1523, and by the end of 1524 had been published all but the Books of the Prophets. There was then a long gap in the publication, the work being finally brought to completion in 1534, in which year appeared the first edition of the entire Scriptures in one volume.
In 1524, the artist, Lucas Cranach, an old friend of Luther, instituted, in company with a goldsmith named Döring, a new printing-office, to which was afterwards confided a large proportion of the work of Luther. Cranach appears to have been a man of varied activities. The portraits from his brush that have been preserved give evidence of continuous work in his studio during this period, while in addition to the printing-office above referred to, he carried on a paper-warehouse and a book-shop. His several portraits of Luther are the chief authority for the Reformer’s personal appearance. In 1534, the Cranach-Döring printing establishment was transferred to three new partners, Goltz, Schramm, and Vogel, who had secured from the Elector Johann Friedrich a privilege covering the complete Bible. They purchased the woodcuts that had been prepared from Cranach’s designs for the Apocalypse, and they appear to have continued to utilise the co-operation of Melchior Lotter (the younger).
Kapp records that during the lifetime of the Reformer, not less than 100,000 copies of Luther’s New Testament were printed in Wittenberg. It would be much more difficult, and probably impracticable, to arrive at any trustworthy estimate of the aggregate of the various unauthorised editions issued in Germany. The circulation of both the authorised and unauthorised editions was very much furthered, outside of the regular channels of the book-trade, by the work of the pedlars and the travelling preachers.
As has before been indicated, it would not be in order to judge by the standards of later times the “reprinting” undertakings of the period of the Reformation. It was not only the case that the larger number at least of these reprinters felt no consciousness of wrong-doing or of the infringement of any rights either of the author or of the original publisher, but that, as far at least as the controversial writings of the time were concerned, they believed they were rendering a material service to the cause, and were carrying out the wishes of the Reformers in securing for these writings the widest possible circulation. The German Bible, having been placed under the ban of the Church, must be classed with the controversial writings referred to, and it was, of course, the most influential publication of the series in extending the doctrines of the Reformation.
At the time of the death of Luther, there appear to have been no privileges in force covering his version of the Bible, although claims to its ownership were asserted by Hans Lufft. In 1500, Rühel and Sulfisch of Wittenberg secured a privilege for printing the Bible, but this evidently did not convey any exclusive right, and should therefore be regarded rather in the light of a permit. Other editions soon appeared in Leipzig, which was the best market for the sale of the Bible, and for the control of this market various contests arose. The restrictions upon the Leipzig publishers in regard to the printing of the Luther versions were gradually removed, but it was not until 1564, and chiefly at the instance of the Duke of Weimar, that this version became common property (literärisches Gemeingut) for all Germany, and was formally declared free of privilege.
Well pleased as Luther and his associates certainly were in being able, either through their own publishers or through the reprinters, to reach so many thousand readers, they were not a little troubled at the inaccuracy and incompleteness of much of the material sold over their names. In September, 1525, Luther writes to inquire whether his printers have not been heedless in permitting thieves or burglars to make away with “copy” or sheets for use in unauthorised printing elsewhere. “It is bad enough,” he says, “for these rascals to get the advantage, through theft, of my labour and pains, but with that I would be patient, if it were not for the shamelessly false and blundering form in which they issue books described as mine.... In looking at one of these appropriated volumes, I find here a big gap, there something entirely transposed, here a sentence falsified, and, again, an entire paragraph left without corrections. It seems to me an abominable thing that we should labour while others secure the results of our toil, leaving for us only annoyance and shame.”
Luther closes his complaint, however, not with any contention for the complete control of his material, but with the very moderate suggestion that the reprinters ought, if only as a matter of Christian feeling (aus Christlicher Liebe), first to wait a few months in order to give to the original edition a fair chance before interfering with it, and, secondly, to print their own issues with a decent regard for correctness and completeness.
In September, 1525, Luther writes to the magistrates of Nuremberg, complaining that a large portion of the proof-sheets of a volume of his sermons had been stolen from his printing-office in Wittenberg, and had been made use of in Nuremberg for the production of a piracy volume. The publication of this volume in advance of the issue of the complete work had caused his printers serious injury. (Wodurch seinen Drückern ein merklichen Schaden zugefügt sei.) He speaks here, it is to be noted, as if the risk and ownership of this publication rested not with himself, but with his printers. He goes on to say in his letter to Nuremberg that he believes the printer Herrgott had been concerned in this affair. He begs the magistrates to use their influence with the local printers to induce them to delay bringing out reprints of his writings until seven or eight weeks after the publication of the original editions; certainly a very moderate request. He concludes, “If you can give me no help in this matter, I shall be obliged to make an open publication to warn the public against these thieves and robbers, but I should be sorry to have to print in such a connection the name of the city of Nuremberg.”[124]
The magistracy promised in reply to this appeal, that an edict should be issued forbidding the reprinting, within a specified time, of Luther’s writings. It appears, nevertheless, that for some years at least no further action was taken. In 1532, however, in response to a renewed appeal from Luther, an edict was issued, not forbidding the Nuremberg printers to issue reprints, but simply forbidding the use on publications printed in Nuremberg of the false imprint of Wittenberg. This prohibition was, however, simply a repetition of a provision of the imperial Act. The Nuremberg edict also insisted upon greater care for an accurate text (besser correctür befleyssen).
In a letter from Luther to Spengler, the Syndic of Nuremberg, dated November 7, 1525, he refers to an association that had been formed of certain leading printers of the Rhine cities to repress or discourage piracy (diese Buberei is the expression used by Luther), and asks the Syndic to induce Koberger to give to the association the aid of his all-important influence and co-operation. It does not appear, however, that the Kobergers interested themselves in the undertaking. Their publications were almost exclusively works of a scholarly character, issued (in Latin) in folio or in quarto, works which did not tempt the German reprinters, whose appropriations were chiefly devoted to volumes of a popular character and to pamphlets, Flugschriften. Aggravating as this very general practice of piratical reprinting was to Luther and to such other authors of the time (a group, however, at best but inconsiderable) who had secured a popular hearing, and also to their authorised publishers, it seems evident not only, as before pointed out, that it furthered very largely the rapid spread of the doctrines of the Reformation, but also that it helped to build up the business of publishing and bookselling, and to develop the habit among the masses of the people of buying and of reading books, and of being influenced by printed arguments.
During the first years of the sixteenth century, instructors and students were much hampered by the scarcity of text-books. When, in 1520, Reuchlin began his lectures in Ingolstadt, he reports that there was in the town no single volume in Greek or Hebrew. He was obliged, therefore, in his instruction work to write out texts in the two languages on black-boards for the students to transcribe. Basilius Amerbach, when he was a student in Tübingen, speaks of hiring on certain hours in the week a copy of the Corpus Juris. Trutwetter, the teacher of Luther, had taken his own classical instruction from Publicus Rufus, a Florentine who had brought to Erfurt, shortly after 1500, the revived Italian enthusiasm for classical studies. The University of Erfurt was one of the oldest in Germany, dating from 1392.
Luther mentions, as if it were an exceptional instance, that in 1506, when he was a student in Erfurt, he had bought a copy of the Corpus Juris (the book from which the lecturer was then giving instruction).[125] It was evidently at this time not common for students to own copies of the text-books in use. Thomas Plater relates in his autobiography that in the school of S. Elizabeth at Breslau, as late as 1515, there was usually but one text-book for each class. The instructor or one of the students would read this for dictation, and the students having taken their notes would memorise them for recitation.[126] When Melanchthon began, in 1524, his lectures on Demosthenes, the only copy of the Orations in town was that owned by the lecturer.
The chief representative of the intellectuality of the Lutheran movement was doubtless Philip Melanchthon. Of Melanchthon’s relations with the literary and publishing activities of the time, the limits of this chapter will not permit any full consideration. It is sufficient to say that, apart from his service as a preacher, and as collaborator on the German Bible, he devoted himself particularly to the work of preparing text-books for higher grade students, a work which earned for him the title of Præceptor Germaniæ. He edited, and himself in part wrote a series of text-books for use in the high schools and universities on the subjects of Latin and Greek Grammar, Rhetoric, Theology, Ethics, Physics, and Physiology. These books displaced in the institutions of Protestant Germany the works of Catholic writers, many of which were survivals of the schoolmen, and were entirely antiquated and inadequate. The contention maintained by so many good Catholics, that no literature that had once been sanctioned by the Church as good and sufficient, could ever lose its value or authority, was of course especially abused when applied to works of instruction. Under the initiative chiefly of Melanchthon, Wittenberg became the centre of instruction for the preachers and teachers of all Lutheran Germany, while for a considerable period Strasburg filled a similar place for the Calvinists of the South-west.
While the immediate direction of this educational work fell to Melanchthon, the inspiration for it, as for so much of the intellectual activity of the Reformation, is very largely to be credited to Luther, who had from an early stage in the Reform work insisted upon the necessity of defending the minds of the younger generation from the influence of the educational traditions and routine doctrinal teachings of the Church schools.
The work of the Lutheran educators would, of course, have been impracticable if it had not been for the rapid development of the publishing and book-selling trade of the country, a development the chief incentive of which is also due to Luther. “Now the printers will have their hands full,” writes Hutten in 1517, to the Count of Neuenar, when he hears of Luther’s declaration against the operations of Tetzel. Hutten’s prophecy was fulfilled far beyond his largest imaginings. The bold attack of Luther was directed not merely at Tetzel and his fraudulent auction sales of God’s forgiveness of sins, but at the corruption and demoralisation of the Church, a demoralisation of which, as Luther recognised, Tetzel and his Indulgences were but an inconsiderable symptom.
The downfall of imperial Rome, which (irrespective of the internal causes) was brought about by persistent Teutonic onslaughts, terminated the period of the world’s history which is, for convenience, called classic or ancient. In like manner, the overthrow of the world-wide domination of ecclesiastical Rome was brought about by the attack of the Teuton Luther, an attack which, backed up by the Teutonic forces of North Europe, developed into a revolution against Italian rule, and terminated the epoch of mediævalism. For long periods to come, however, the questions raised by Luther and his fellow Protestants were to bring anxieties and conflicts upon popes, emperors, princes, and people. These questions were also to provide issues and themes for innumerable writers, and to secure an apparently inexhaustible supply of material for the printing-presses and the booksellers. It is only with this last-named result that, for the purposes of the present study, I am concerned.
According to the statistics of book-production collected with painstaking thoroughness by Panzer, Weller, and Kuczynski, and tabulated by Kapp, the total number of separate works (principally pamphlets, Flugschriften) printed in German in the year 1513 was 90; in 1518, 146; in 1520, 571; and in 1523, 944. The aggregate for the ten years is 3113. Of the total for the decade, no less than 600 were printed in Wittenberg, a place which before 1517 had not possessed a printing-press[127]; this is an indication of the immediate effect produced by the Lutheran movement upon the work of the printers. The revolution in publishing methods brought about in connection with the Reformation was not restricted to the introduction of German as a language for popular publications. Of almost equal importance was the change in the form and the price of books, the costly folios and quartos being replaced by comparatively inexpensive twelvemos and sixteenmos, and by far the larger proportion of the writings which exercised the most immediate influence on the thought of the time being issued in the form of pamphlets. These pamphlets, sold in the market-places, along the highways, and from house to house, by pedlars working for gain, and by colporteurs having a missionary purpose, took the place which in modern times is filled by the magazine or weekly paper.
Luther recognised at once the importance of the printing-press for the work he had in hand, but he was himself amazed at the extent of the public that he was able to reach when, after 1518, his tracts and sermons came to be printed in German. Up to this time these had been originally issued, according to the prevailing practice, in Latin, and only in part translated into German. It is not easy at this period to understand how the middle and lower classes in Germany had been able, by the beginning of the sixteenth century, to secure so general a proficiency in reading as to be able to profit by the pamphlet literature of the time, but, that a widespread elementary education existed, is evident from the circulation secured for these pamphlets, and from their immediate influence upon opinion and belief. I can but think that the high standard of popular intelligence which rendered possible the comprehensive and general acceptance of the doctrines of the Reformers, doctrines largely made known through printed arguments, may very properly be taken as a limitation upon the rather highly coloured descriptions given by D’Aubigné and some other Protestant historians of the extreme ignorance in which the masses of the people had been left under the ministrations of the Church of Rome.
The Edict of Worms of 1521, which committed the Emperor Charles V. to the support of the contentions of the Papacy, and threw the great weight of the Holy Roman Empire against the cause of the Protestant Reformers, marks also an important stage in the history of publishing undertakings in Germany. It announced the beginning of an imperial censorship, a censorship which was confirmed and extended by the Edict of Nuremberg of 1524. The first part of the edict may be summarised as condemning Luther and all his works, while the second, under the head of “regulation of printing” (Gesetz der Druckerey), forbids the printing of all writings that have not secured the explicit approval and sanction of the ecclesiastical authorities. In the regions under Lutheran influence, the only effect of the imperial and ecclesiastical prohibition was, as noted, to increase largely the circulation of the writings of the Reformers. In the districts into which the Reform doctrines had only begun to penetrate, the ecclesiastics were able in great part, at least, to stop the further circulation of the pamphlets, by taking prompt and harsh measures against the colporteurs. From this time and until the close of the Thirty Years’ War, Church and State worked together (though not always in harmony) against the freedom of the Press, on the broad ground that such freedom necessarily resulted in heresy and in treason. The first imperial Act in regard to libellous publications appears to have been framed on the assumption that every writing by a Protestant, even if entirely unconnected with theology or with politics, must be libellous.
Charles V. had been willing to leave the responsibility for the censorship of the Press in the hands of the Church. During his reign, the printers were busying themselves chiefly with controversial material, and in the effects of this upon the minds of the people the State was interested only indirectly. The Emperor Ferdinand was a more faithful, that is to say, a more bigoted, son of the Church than Charles, but he refused to admit that the control of the Press was a Church matter. He took the ground that censorship was a matter pertaining to the State, that is, to the Crown, and that the Bishops could take part in it only as delegates of the authority of the State. This was the contention asserted and finally secured by Francis I. and his successors in France.
In 1528, under the authority of the Emperor, Balthasar Hubmayer, a preacher, printer, and travelling bookseller of Nikolsburg, was burned in Vienna, together with his wife and two apprentices, for spreading false doctrines. Hubmayer had at first accepted the Lutheran views, but had, later, associated himself with the Anabaptists. In 1529, the persecution of the printers and of the Protestants in Austria was for the time relaxed because of the peril of Vienna from the Turks, an exigency which absorbed the full attention of the imperial authorities. In 1564, was published in Rome an Index librorum prohibitorum, the first of a long series.
The censorship was by no means left exclusively in the hands of the imperial or of the ecclesiastical authorities. With no little variation of policy both as to the theory or standard of supervision and as to the methods of carrying out the restrictions imposed, many of the States established censorship of their own, and the same course was taken by a number of the cities like Nuremberg, Strasburg, Frankfort, and others, in which the printing business had begun to assume importance, and where the Church authorities had not already taken charge of the function. In Nuremberg, one of the earliest instances of the exercise of a city censorship occurred in 1527, in the case of a volume containing woodcuts illustrating the history of the Tower of Babel, for which cuts a rhyming text had been supplied by the cobbler-poet, Hans Sachs. The book had been printed without a licence or permission from the magistracy. The magistrates decided that the book must be suppressed. They further cautioned Sachs that the writing of verses was not his proper business, and that he should keep to his own trade of shoemaking. Nun seye solches seines Amtes nicht, gebuhre ihm auch nicht.... Rathes ernster Befehl dass er seines Schuhmachens warte, sich auch enthalte Büchlein oder Reymen hinfür ausgehen zu lassen. The edict was simply an emphatic reiteration of the old proverb, “Shoemaker, stick to your last,” or Ne sutor supra crepidam. The difficulty appears in this case to have been due not to the Lutheran tendencies of Sachs’s rhymes, but to the lack of respect shown to the magistrates in issuing a book without a permit; and to the further breach of authority on the part of a man licensed only as a shoemaker, undertaking also to carry on the avocation of a poet. Sachs’s later history shows, however, that it did not prove practicable to keep the poetic shoemaker from writing and from printing his productions.
Luther was, it should be remembered, thoroughly in accord with Pope and with Emperor in the belief that it was the duty of the believers to stamp out heresy. He only differed with them as to what constituted heresy. In 1525, we find him invoking the aid of the censorship regulations of Saxony and of Brandenburg for the purpose of stamping out the “pernicious doctrines” of the Anabaptists and of the followers of Zwingli. The Protestant princes were, for the most part, more than willing to establish and to maintain a censorship for the presses of their several localities, as such a system served in more ways than one to strengthen their authority, while it could be utilised also to head off undesirable criticism.
As an evidence of the very general distribution secured for Luther’s writings, may be cited a letter, dated February 14, 1519, written to the Reformer from Basel by the publisher Froben, in which he speaks of large supplies of the Basel editions being called for, not only in Germany, but in France, Spain, Italy, Brabant, and England. The reference is to the first collection of Luther’s works, of which impressions were printed in 1518, 1519, and again in 1520.[128] Kapp is of opinion that from these sales the author asked for and received no return either in the form of royalty or honorarium. His purposes were accomplished when his teachings, correctly printed, in editions authorised and supervised by himself, and sold at the lowest prices compatible with accurate typography, had secured the widest possible circulation. While, therefore, Luther serves as an example of a successful author, the most successful, in fact, that the world had as yet seen, his experience as an author did not help to advance the recognition of the rights of an author in his literary productions. To Luther, his writings were not property, to be controlled for the benefit of the author, but great truths and sound doctrine essential for the saving of souls, and to be scattered widely for the benefit of the reader. Köpflin, writing to Luther from Hagenau in 1519, says, “We have printed your books one after another, and within six months have disposed of all the copies.”
Luther himself writes to Cardinal Lang, in the same year, that his books were being read by the theologians of the Sorbonne. Johann Faber, Vicar-General in Constance, writes in 1521 to Vadian, “Through the wrong-doing of irresponsible printers, all kinds of unlettered people have read or have had read to them the teachings of Luther: even the old women in the streets stop to chatter about them.”[129] It is to be remembered that the effective circulation of Luther’s pamphlets (and of all the popular publications of the time) was very much multiplied by the practice on the part of those interested in the doctrines, of reading such pamphlets out loud in the market-places, to all who might be interested. After the Lutheran writings had been put under interdict, such public readings had to be discontinued in the towns and districts which remained under Catholic control; but the pamphlets were still widely (though surreptitiously) sold by pedlars and colporteurs, and the readings continued in places which were less liable to interruption than the inns and market-places.
The jurist Scheurl writes from Nuremberg to Cardinal Campeggi, March 15, 1524, “Every common man is now asking for books or pamphlets, and more reading is being done in a day than heretofore in a year.”[130] In Nuremberg, as in other towns, it became the practice to read the books of Luther out loud in the market-place. Erasmus complains, in 1523, that since the publication of the New Testament, the whole book-trade seems to be absorbed with the writings of Luther, and to be interested in giving attention to nothing else. He says that it is very difficult to find publishers willing to place their imprint upon works written in behalf of the papacy. In one form or another, the German Testament and the other writings of Luther were distributed with surprising rapidity among all classes of people. As an example of the kind of interest they excited, it is recorded that the magistrates of Bremen sent a bookseller to Wittenberg for the purpose of purchasing for their use a set of Luther’s works. The citizens of Speyer are described as having the books read to them at supper, and as making transcripts of them. In hundreds of towns throughout Germany, Luther’s writings were brought to the notice of the people by means of the very edict which had for its purpose their final suppression, and after the Diet of Worms, the demand for them rapidly increased. The preacher Matthäus Zell writes from Strasburg in 1523, “The Lutheran books are for sale here in the market-place immediately beneath the edicts of the Emperor and of the Pope declaring them to be prohibited.”
In the first half of the sixteenth century, means of communication were very imperfect, and the delays and difficulties of transportation of goods from one part of the country to another (particularly on routes away from the rivers) were very considerable. With no trustworthy postal system, and with very restricted facilities for remitting money, the hindrances in the way of ordering books, of delivering them, and of collecting the amounts due for them, must have been very great. In the absence of journals, it could have been by no means an easy matter even to make known to possible buyers the fact that certain books had been published. The booksellers depended for information concerning new publications upon the semi-annual Fair which had been instituted at Frankfort, but at this period it was only the more considerable dealers who could afford to make regular visits to the Fair, while it was also the case that a considerable proportion of possible buyers were not within reach of book-dealers of this class. There were, therefore, in this initial stage of the book-trade, not a few inducements for the production in various places, for supplying the demand of the particular locality, of books of a popular character, and this practice of producing unauthorised reprints, while often causing grievances of one kind or another, was hardly regarded as a misdemeanour, if carried on with moderation and with some little regard for the wishes of the author. The practice had also certain specific advantages for the community, in ensuring prompter supplies of books of present interest, and in furthering the developing of local bookselling and of general education. The material service rendered to the cause of the Reformation by these earlier “book-pirates” has already been touched upon.
Under the pressure of the widespread interest in the writings of the Reformation, publishing business was done in a number of out-of-the-way little towns which would to-day hardly support a printing-press. Lutheran tracts were printed, for instance, in such places as Grimma, Zwickau, and Eilenburg, principally for sale through the pedlars. These issues were very frequently published without imprint or date, and the tracing of the history of their publication has, therefore, been difficult. The patience of the German bibliographers is, however, inexhaustible, and the lists of the presses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are probably now fairly complete.
Kapp says that the Petri edition of Luther’s Testament, printed in Basel, could hardly have found its way as far north as Saxony, and when, therefore, he finds record of the sale of copies in Meissen in 1523, as low as fifteen groschens, when the Wittenberg price was thirty groschens, it is evident that piracy editions must have been produced in the North as well as in the South. The activity of Magdeburg as a centre for the production and distribution of Protestant literature, has already been referred to. After the death of Luther, the publishing trade of Wittenberg, which had been the creation of his personality, slackened, and Magdeburg became the headquarters of the literary interests of the Reformers. The trade in Bibles and hymn books, and in the collected works of Luther was especially important, and continued until the destruction of the city by Tilly in 1631.
The city of Münster was another place where Protestantism had taken a strong hold, and large supplies of the New Testament and of the Lutheran writings were distributed from the presses of Münster throughout Westphalia and the adjoining provinces on the north. The excesses of the Anabaptists, who, under John of Leyden and his associates, had possession of the town for a number of months, 1535-36, were, however, wellnigh destructive of its Protestantism, and proved fatal to its publishing business. In the general havoc which obtained both before and after the overthrow of the Anabaptists, books and printing-presses perished together. When the Catholic Bishop resumed his sway, the production of the Lutheran literature ceased, and there were but few Catholic publications to take its place. The story of the brief and dramatic rule of the Anabaptists in Münster was utilised by Meyerbeer for his opera, The Prophet. In 1562, an edict issued by the Bishop ordered the destruction of all Protestant books in Westphalia, and made it a misdemeanour to print, sell, or possess any such books. The sales continued notwithstanding, the supplies coming mainly from Magdeburg.
In the Austrian dominions, the Church succeeded, in 1525, in inducing the Emperor Ferdinand to prohibit the sale or the possession of Lutheran or Calvinist literature. The book-pedlars succeeded for a time in evading the prohibition and in distributing large supplies of the Testament and of the tracts. The persistency of the Jesuits was, however, in the end successful in crushing out the business. Book-pedlars were treated as malefactors, the peasantry and the townsfolk were frightened, and the demand gradually died away. In other portions of Germany, the circulation of the Protestant literature was, on the whole, increased through the prohibitions. The usual price for the Protestant tracts was one groschen, equal to two and a half cents, or in purchasing power to perhaps twelve cents to-day. Each tract reached, as a rule, a number of readers or of hearers, for the old Oriental and Greek practice of reading aloud to an audience was carried on in hundreds of market-places, shops, and other informal auditoriums.
One of the travelling printers and book-pedlars who came to a tragical end was Johann Herrgott, who has before been referred to as a reprinter in Nuremberg of Luther’s writings, and who appears to have circulated also a number of tracts considered by Luther to be extremely heretical. He was executed, in 1527, in Leipzig, under the instructions of Duke George of Saxony. The Duke was an old-time opponent of Luther, and he appears to have taken the ground that freedom of speech in any direction was objectionable. There was paid for the burial of this too-persistent bookseller the sum of six groschens.
The circulation of the Lutheran tracts was taken charge of not only by the book-pedlars and colporteurs but by a large number of travelling preachers, Prädikanten. These “preachers” were, in part, old-time priests, but in many cases laymen of very varying degrees of education or of ignorance. The Wittenberg tracts gave, however, a supply of ammunition which even the most ignorant preachers could make effective. In reaching the masses of the people, such tracts could be made more serviceable than the rejoinders of the Catholic writers, as these last were, with hardly an exception, written in Latin.
During the troublous times of the war of the peasants, the progress of the Reformation was checked, and the circulation of the Lutheran publications, in the districts affected by the uprising, was for the time brought to a close. As one of the historians expresses it, “The bloody crushing out of the revolting peasants cut through the vital nerve of the Lutheran movement towards the creation of a national Church.... Luther showed, however, the capacity to meet the crisis.... Fortunately for the nation, he now possessed the influence which enabled him to direct.... Repressing, on the one hand, the tumultuous contentions of his followers among the peasants, using his influence, on the other, to temper the fierce indignation of the noble class, he was in a position to do much to further the final settlement, and was able, finally, to save from the ruin that had seemed imminent the beginnings of the Lutheran Church.”[131]
The active leadership of the Reform movement had fallen upon Luther, who, while quite conscious of the power of argument, of which he made full use, was by nature a fighter, and whose very arguments, in their forcible and trenchant and sometimes brutal character, had the effect of verbal cudgels. One characteristic, in fact, of the literature, or perhaps it is more accurate to say of the controversial literature, of the sixteenth century, was the tendency to coarseness of expression, and the frequent use of libels and lampoons. When great scholars like Erasmus and Reuchlin permitted themselves to indulge in satirical invective, of which, judged by the standard of to-day, the coarseness was often more apparent than the wit, it is not surprising that fighters like Luther and Hutten should be ready to indulge in verbal onslaughts which seem more akin to brutal horse-play than to reasonable argument. Luther’s last publication, issued in 1545, was a series of theses written in reply to a fresh condemnation pronounced against him by the theologians of Louvain, in which series he included a final paper against the Zwinglians. His death occurred in 1546.
Enormous as was the circulation of Luther’s writings at the time, and important and far-reaching as was their influence, they have not taken a place in the world’s literature, and but few of them would to-day find readers except among special students of the period. It is to be borne in mind, however, that while the writings of Luther have not lived as books, the teachings and doctrines presented in them have formed the basis of an enormous mass of doctrinal and religious literature, and have continued to direct, or at least to influence, the thought and the faith of a very large division of the Christian world. Luther as an author may be dead, but three hundred and fifty years after his death, his thoughts and teachings are still, through the books of his followers, reaching thousands of readers, and on both sides of the Atlantic his spirit is still preaching in thousands of pulpits.
I have presented this summary of the published writings of Luther simply as an example of the literary undertakings and of the publishing methods of the time. What has been said about the printing and the distribution of the works of Luther could be repeated in regard to the long series of productions of most of the other writers of the Reformation, such as Melanchthon, Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and also those of their opponents, Cochläus, Eck, and the others.
It was doubtless an obstacle in the way of the development of the conception of property in literary productions, that during the first century of the printing-press, so large a proportion of the publications which were the work of contemporary writers, belonged to the class of religious, doctrinal, and controversial literature. The chief purpose of authors like Luther and Zwingli, was, as we have seen, to secure the widest possible distribution for their teachings. They believed that a right understanding of certain doctrines was essential to salvation, and they believed, further, that the responsibility had been confided to them of bringing these doctrines to humanity. It was not easy for authors holding such a conviction to undertake to restrict or control the sale of their writings for the purpose of securing profits for themselves. There would, of course, under the existing conditions, have been many difficulties in the way of carrying out such control if it had been attempted. The fact remains, however, that such attempts were but infrequent. With this attitude on the part of the writers, and of those who were earnestly interested with these writers in establishing creeds and in influencing public opinion, it is not surprising that the practice became general of reprinting any material for which there was demand, or for which it was believed that a demand could be created.
Such reprints were made in many cases by zealous disciples, who multiplied and distributed copies for “missionary” work, but outside of the believers, there were naturally many others, printers and book-pedlars, who were very ready to take advantage of a time of religious fervour or of controversial interest, and to make money by supplying the literature produced by the Reformers or by their antagonists. The objections that came from the authors were mainly on the ground of inaccuracy in the printing of these unsupervised editions. If the cause was to be furthered by the wholesale appropriation and general distribution of their writings, they were estopped from any serious opposition to the reprinters. The habit thus became very generally established on the part of the printers and the booksellers, of regarding literary productions as feræ naturæ, in connection with which no property right could be claimed. The reading public, which, as far as the mass of the people was concerned, came into existence only with the application of the printing-press to the literature of the Reformation, grew up, therefore, with the general belief that nothing more was due to the author than to read his teachings in any form in which they could be obtained, and for these earlier readers any distinction between an authorised and an unauthorised edition was, for more reasons than one, an impossibility. While Luther received moneys from the sale of the Wittenberg editions of his books and possibly from a few others, it is certainly the case that he made no money from these sales. Every gulden that was paid for the books, every pfennig that came in from the fly-leaves or pamphlets, appears to have been at once expended in further printings and in instituting further distributing machinery. The same was the case with the other writers of the Lutheran group and also with Zwingli and the Swiss reformers generally. The books of Calvin formed to some extent an exception. They were less available for popular circulation, and, being addressed more particularly to scholarly readers, were for the most part printed in Latin. For them, the publishing arrangements were more in accord with later methods, and the competition of piracy editions was less serious. It is probable, therefore, that they produced some returns for the author. Some details concerning the Calvin publications are given in the chapter on Robert Estienne. We may conclude that while the Reformation was of important service in furthering the work of the printers, in giving material for the booksellers, and in inducing the habit of buying and of reading printed matter, it probably helped to delay for a number of years the formation of a correct conception of literary productions as property. The one writer of the time who was, however, able to do something to establish such an understanding, and who succeeded also in securing some substantial returns from the sale of his works, was Erasmus. An account of the publishing undertakings of Erasmus has been given in another chapter.