The role of martin luther in the religious revolution during the sixteenth century

Execution of Jan Hus in Konstanz

Fifteenth-century Europe experienced a technological revolution in the invention of the printing press with movable type that bears comparison with that of computers today.

Although in the earlier era dissemination of such an invention and the realization of its effects took several generations, its transformation of the processes of communication was drastic.

Johann Gensfleisch Gutenberga goldsmith by craft, tried to conceal his manufacture of movable type and a machine for printing with it. There were in his day no patents or copyrights to shield the inventor against pirating. The length of time needed to carve the type compelled him to borrow money on which to live, and this eventually catapulted him into bankruptcy.

Before the banker Johann Fust confiscated his press and began to use it himself, Gutenberg managed to produce his famed line Bible, dated approximatelyand several smaller works.

Perugia, ItalyNuremberg, Demand for the output of the few early presses was modest, coming mainly from the few Latinate men of the day. Over the next two generations, the largest cities, great noble courts, and leading monasteries sought presses. The second half of the fifteenth century was a time of overlapping technologies: In the early sixteenth century, Martin Luther quickly saw the advantages of making his vernacular treatises available cheaply to a growing body of avid lay followers.

His rebellion against the Catholic Church made him a celebrity, and it stimulated the publishing industry. In his new book, Brand Luther, Andrew Pettegree has summed up: Wittenberg publishers turned out at least 2, works, an average of 91 per year.

This vast blossoming of what was essentially a new industry was entirely due to Martin Luther.

The Protestant Movement | The Pluralism Project

The presses of other cities turned out thousands of Reformation and a few Counter-Reformation books, pamphlets, and broadsheets of their own. The success of Protestantism over all owed much to printed propaganda. Catholic adversaries of the reform movement never fully exploited the printing press for their own purposes.

At least eleven editions appeared during alone, in more than seven cities around the Holy Roman Empire. View Item Information Response to Murner whether the King of England or the Godly Doctor Martin Luther is a Liar, As the novelty of the Reformation faded and religious nonconformity became ubiquitous if persecuted, publishing houses issued all manner of literature of interest to lay audiences.

Elizabeth Eisenstein has noted the extent to which the exchange of scientific discovery, as well as theory, relied on the presses to overcome the disadvantages of dispersing hand-copied findings among individuals.

Entertainment increasingly took the form of reading fiction. Religious life itself employed published devotional aids of various types, from prayer and advice books to poetry and edifying personal testimony. Books circulated as loans, from one friend to another. In the process of passing from hand to hand, books were sometimes worn out.

Books were treasured assets whose recipients were designated in wills.

Books, pamphlets, and illustrated broadsheets were read aloud at home and in taverns, which gave the illiterate, too, access to their content. The availability of printed matter at reasonable prices provided an additional incentive to learn to read.

The free circulation of publications produced a perceived need on the part of authorities in a disciplinary age to develop agencies of censorship. Individual titles as well as the publishers themselves now required licenses.

Exchanges between territories were, however, so frequent that the most determined censors were challenged to ensure that no forbidden works saw the light of day. In the main, where there was demand, the printing presses would fill it. Print and Propaganda in the Protestant Reformation.

University of Arizona Libraries. Selected titles from University of Arizona Special Collections: Catholicon, Mainz, Hartmann Schedel AP Euro Finals. STUDY. PLAY. The father of Renaissance Humanism. Declared Martin Luther a heretic and forbid any German Prince from sheltering him. Victory over the Spanish Armada at the end of the sixteenth century was achieved by.

England.

Reformation: Definition and History | regardbouddhiste.com - HISTORY

First man credited with a . Martin Luther’s refusal to recant at the Diet of Worms in April signaled a turning point in the Reformation that swept throughout Europe in the sixteenth century.

The Reformation followed centuries of effort by clerics and theologians to address moral and religious decline in the Western church. Martin Luther, (born November 10, , Eisleben, Saxony [Germany]—died February 18, , Eisleben), German theologian and religious reformer who .

Massive religious rallies led by Martin Luther and other Protestant leaders c. The printing press c. Europe was more prosperous and culturally advanced than the rest of the world by the sixteenth century.

d. Europe's universities had autonomy in which scholars could develop ideas reasonably free from both the Church and secular authorities.

Roger Williams

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation was sparked by Martin Luther, a German monk whose studies of the Bible led him to attack the leadership of the Catholic Church in his day. First, Luther insisted that religious authority lay not primarily in church traditions, nor in the hierarchy of bishops and popes, but in the Bible alone.

When German peasants, inspired in part by Luther’s empowering “priesthood of all believers,” revolted in , Luther sided with Germany’s princes.

By the Reformation’s end, Lutheranism had become the state religion throughout much of Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltics.