1. Felician Gess, ed., Akten und Briefe zur Kirchenpolitik Herzog Georgs von Sachsen (Leipzig, 1905), 1:641.

2. According to Hans-Joachim Köhler, between 1517 and 1518 there was a 530 percent increase in pamphlet production. Although Köhler gives percentages rather than exact figures, his tables suggest that there was nearly an additional eight-fold (7.8) increase from 1518 to 1524. From these two figures I calculate an increase of more than forty-fold over the eight-year period. As Köhler points out, this rapid increase in production yielded for the years 1520 through 1526 an annual production 55 times higher than the average annual production before 1518. See Hans-Joachim Köhler, "The Flugschriften and their Importance in Religious Debate: A Quantitative Approach," in Paola Zambelli, ed., ' Astrologi hallucinati': Stars and the End of the World in Luther's Time (New York, 1986), 153-175; and "Erste Schritte zu einem Meinungsprofil der frühen Reformationszeit," in Volker Press and Dieter Stievermann, eds., Martin Luther: Probleme seiner Zeit (Stuttgart, 1986), 244-281; and the discussion below.

3. In the period 1518 to 1520, Leipzig produced 29 percent of all the printings of Luther's works: 41 treatises by Luther in 1518, 65 treatises in 1519, 49 treatises in 1520, then 5 in 1521, and none in 1522. See table 3.

4. For the following description, I am indebted to Hans-Joachim Köhler, "Die Flugschriften der frühen Neuzeit," in W. Arnold et al., eds., Die Erforschung der Buch- und Bibliotheksgeschichte in Deutschland (Wiesbaden, 1987), 307-345, esp. 310-314.

5. Ibid., 312.

6. Ibid., 325. More on the likely purchasers in the next section.

7. Köhler, "A Quantitative Approach," 156, who cites Heiko A. Oberman, "Zwischen Agitation und Reformation: Die Flugschriften als 'Judenspiegel'," in Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit: Beiträge zum Tübinger Symposium 1980 , Spätmittelalter und Frühe Neuzeit, vol. 13 (Stuttgart, 1981), 269-289, esp. 287; and Johannes Schwitalla, "Deutsche Flugschriften im ersten Viertel des 16. Jahrhunderts," Freiburger Universitätsblätter 76 (1982):37-58.

8. See John W. Bohnstedt, The Infidel Scourge of God: The Turkish Menace as Seen by German Pamphleteers of the Reformation Era , Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 58, part 9 (Philadelphia, 1968), and his bibliography.

9. See Köhler, "A Quantitative Approach," and "Meinungsprofil," 244-281.

10. Köhler, "A Quantitative Approach," 155. For this same material presented in greater detail, see his "Meinungsprofil."

11. Ibid., 156.

12. From 28 percent German and 72 percent Latin to 74 percent German and barely 26 percent Latin. In the following year the Latin proportion fell to

9.5 percent, marking a 72 percent decline in just three years (Köhler, "Die Flugschriften der frühen Neuzeit," 331).

13. In 1518, 47 percent of the printings of Luther's works are in German. This rises to 63 percent in 1519, 85 percent in 1520, 78 percent in 1521, 95 percent in 1522, and then hovers in the high eighties and low nineties for the rest of the decade. See table 1.

14. Zorzin, 19-83. Zorzin's work also contains a fine bibliography of the relevent literature on pamphlets and publicists during this period.

15. For this figure I have rearranged Zorzin's statistics (Zorzin, 24). There is a discrepancy of 59 editions between my count of the German printings through 1525 (1524 editions) and Zorzin's (1465 editions). I cannot account for this discrepancy except to hypothesize that the difference may be due to the ways in which the two of us dated what were in fact undated editions. For a discussion of my methodology, see the appendix in my Luther's Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531-46 (Ithaca, 1983), 209-211.

16. Köhler, "Die Flugschriften der frühen Neuzeit," 317.

17. We do not have a study for all Evangelical publications comparable to my study of the Catholic controversial theologians ("Catholic Controversial Literature, 1518-1555: Some Statistics," ARG [1988]:189-205). Given that we currently lack a complete bibliography of sixteenth-century imprints, this would be a difficult undertaking. Köhler's bibliography of pamphlet literature and the Munich-Wolfenbüttel bibliographies are currently in progress. When completed they may provide a basis for such a project.

18. See figure 1 and tables 1 to 4. Parts of the following statistics were discussed from another perspective in my Luther's Last Battles , esp. 6-14, 20-23. Bernd Moeller, "Das Berühmtwerden Luthers," Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 15 (1988):65-92, esp. 82-92, persuasively shows using publication statistics for Luther's works through 1519 that Luther had become an incredibly successful auther well before the famous treatises of late 1520. I strongly agree with Moeller's conclusions on this and other points and wish only what we had been aware of each other's research earlier on.

19. The exact ratios are 5.94 to 1 for the period 1516 through 1525, and 3.36 to 1 for the subsequent period.

20. For the logic of this assumption, see the discussion in the introduction.

21. David V. N. Bagchi, Luther's Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518-1525 (Minneapolis, 1991), is the authoritative source on Catholic controversialists during the period under study. Bagchi's chapters 7 and 8 deal in detail with a number of the issues raised in this section.

22. Although we are relatively well supplied with bibliographies of publications for the initial decades of the Reformation, there can be no pretense of completeness in any statistics on Reformation printing. For my survey, I used Klaiber, supplemented and on occasion corrected by other bibliographies, especially Tü. For a critical evaluation of Klaiber, see Jean-François Gilmont, "La bibliographie de la controverse catholique au 16 ^e siècle; quelques suggestions methodologiques," Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 74 (1979):362-371. For Cochlaeus, I used Martin Spahn, Johannes Cochläus: Ein Lebensbild (Berlin, 1898); and for Eck, J. Metzler, ed., "Verzeichnis der Schriften Ecks," in

Tres orationes funebres , Corpus Catholicorum, 16 (Münster, 1930), lxxii-cxxxii. For a discussion of the Tübingen Flugschriften project and other bibliography, see Hans-Joachim Köhler, ed., Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit (Stuttgart, 1981). Although I am primarily interested in Catholic vernacular publications, I included in my statistical survey all Latin and vernacular treatises published in the Holy Roman Empire. Klaiber's bibliography, and hence my survey, is restricted largely to major publicists and hence overlooks many of the small pamphlets published anonymously or by some otherwise obscure individual. Nevertheless, I believe that it represents accurately the general extent and complexion of the Catholic published response to the Reformation. In a recent article based on the Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in the German-speaking Countries (London, 1962), Richard A. Crofts also examines the printing of Catholic and Protestant works ("Printing, Reform, and the Catholic Reformation in Germany [1521-1545]," The Sixteenth Century Journal 16 [1985]:369-381). I discuss our two pieces in my contribution to the Festschrift in honor of Miriam Chrisman ("Statistics on Sixteenth-Century Printing," in The Process of Change in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Miriam Usher Chrisman , ed. Sherrin Marshall [Athens, Ohio, 1988]). I want to thank Miriam Usher Chrisman for her assistance in thinking about the implications of these statistics.

23. See especially Hans Becker, "Herzog Georg von Sachsen als kirchlicher und theologischer Schriftsteller," ARG 24 (1927):161-269. For additional bibliography and a discussion of several of his polemical efforts, see my Luther's Last Battles , 20-67, and Bagchi, Luther's Earliest Opponents , 230-236.

24. See Spahn, Cochläus , esp. 166-229.

25. A. G. Dickens, The German Nation and Martin Luther (London, 1974), 182.

26. See esp. Peter Blickle, Gemeindereformation: Die Menschen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Heil (Munich, 1985; London, 1992), and my review of this book and the associated literature ("Die Gemeindereformation als Bindeglied zwischen der mittelalterlichen und der neuzeitlichen Welt," Historische Zeitschrift 249 [1989]:95-103).

27. See Köhler, "A Quantitative Approach" and "Meinungsprofil."

28. Or at least their understanding of the message. I discuss this problem of reception in subsequent chapters.

29. For an exchange on the issue of literacy, audience, and "effectiveness" of pamphlet literature, see the articles by Moeller, Scribner, and Ozment in Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ed., Stadtbürgertum und Adel in der Reformation: Studien zur Socialgeschichte der Reformation in England und Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1979). See also the essays by Ozment, Moeller, and Scribner in Hans-Joachim Köhler, ed., Flugschriften als Massenmedium . Ozment originally laid out his position in The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven, 1975). Scribner continues the discussion in "Oral Culture and the Diffusion of Reformation Ideas," History of European Ideas 5 (1984):237-256. The best work on publication statistics has been done by Hans-Joachim Köhler in "A

Quantitative Approach" and "Meinungsprofil." See also Scribner's For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge, 1981). Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss, "Protestantism and Literacy in Germany," Past & Present 104 (1984):31-55; Gerald Strauss, Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, 1978); Gerald Strauss, "Lutheranism and Literacy: A Reassessment,'' in Kaspar von Greyerz, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 (London, 1984). On the issue of literacy in general, see, especially, Rolf Engelsing, Analphabetentum und Lektüre: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Lesens in Deutschland zwischen feudaler und industrieller Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1973).

30. Köhler, "Die Flugschriften der frühen Neuzeit," 338, offers a similar analysis.

31. See, for example, Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk .

32. Otto Clemen, ed., Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der Reformation (Nieuwkoop, 1984) 4:88-90, 94-96. For another example from the early Strasbourg press, note the extended title to . . . mancherley büchlin vnnd tractetlin . . . that speaks of those who "read these books or have them read" to them: Martini Luthers der waren götlichen schrifft Doctors, Augustiner zu * Wittenbergk, mancherley büchlin unnd tractetlin. In wölche * ein yegklicher auch einfaltiger Lay, vil heylsamer Christlicher lere und underweysung findet, so not seindt zu * wissenn, einem yegklichen Christen menschen, der nach Christlicher ordnung (als wir alle söllen) leben will. Deren biechlin namen findest du am andern blatt, mit zale der blättern, in wölchem yegklichs eygentlich anfahet, und ein epistel zu * denen die söllich büchlin lesen, oder hören lesen von D. Martini Luther au b gangen. Item Apologia: das ist ein schirmred und antwort gegen etlicher einrede, so geschehen wider D. Martinu * Luthern und seine Ewangelische lere, mit fast schönen wollgegrünten bewerungen, das sein leere, als warhafftig, Christlich, unnd göttlich anzunemen * sey . (Strasbourg: Schürer Erben, 1520). This collection was first published by Andreas Cratander in Basel in May 1520.

33. Matheus Zell, Christeliche Veratwortug * M. Matthes Zell von Keyser b berg pfarrherrs und predigers im Münster zu * Stra b burg, uber Artickel jm vom Bischofflichem * Fiscal daselbs entgegen gesetzt, unnd im rechten vbergeben . (Strasbourg: Köpfel, 1523), b; Tü 217/613.

34. Köhler, "Die Flugschriften der frühen Neuzeit," 318.

35. See my "Catholic Controversial Literature" and "Statistics on Sixteenth-Century Printing."

36. Although the point hangs on exactly what Rublack means by "lutherischer Überzeugungen," I am inclined with Bernd Moeller to feel that the very volume of the printing and reprinting of Luther's works allows the historian to make defensible inferences about the interests and perhaps even the convictions of the reading public. See Hans-Christoph Rublack, "Martin Luther und die Städtische soziale Erfahrung," in V. Press and D. Stievermann, eds., Martin Luther: Probleme seiner Zeit (Stuttgart, 1988), 88-123: "Niemand dürfte die Quantität von Lutherdrucken für Indikatoren von Intensität und Verbreitung von Überzeugungen halten. Der Indikator Ausgabenzahl weist lediglich auf

erhöhte Bereitschaft, das von Luther Angebotene zu lesen. Man kann also nicht die Massenhaftigkeit von Druckschriften, deren Autor Luther war, zugunsten einer adaequaten Massenhaftigkeit lutherischer Überzeugungen überbuchen" (p. 105). Cited in Moeller, "Das Berühmtwerden Luthers," 86, n. 128.