Narrative from the Perspective of What Contemporaries Knew and When They Likely Knew It

Ironically, most Luther biography and accounts of the German Reformation offer a distorted picture of the attraction and progress of the early Reformation, not because the historian knows too little but because the historian knows too much. Those contemporaries who followed the progress of the Reformation with engaged interest were undoubtedly a small minority within the population of the German-speaking lands. But as events proved, they were an influential minority made up of many leaders, opinion makers, and activists. Yet the great preponderance of even this relatively small group never met Luther face-to-face, never heard him preach with any regularity if at all, and had little or no correspondence with him. They learned of him and of his message through the press or through conversation or preaching. And though there could be several steps in the transmission, the ultimate source for that conversation or sermon was printed material.

We historians loose sight of this fact in our commendable zeal to ferret out as much information about the past as possible. We forget that, except perhaps for a few of Luther's students, no contemporary read Luther's works in light of his pre-Reformation lectures on Psalms, Galatians, and Romans. No member of Luther's reading public was privy to all his many letters, and very few corresponded with him at all. Only a few hundred attended his Reformation lectures at the University of Wittenberg. Merely a handful took their meals at Luther's table and noted down his remarks. Yet modern histories ground much of their presentation and interpretation on these privileged sources of information.

There is another source of distortion that comes from knowing too much. Since historians know how things turned out, we tend to structure our narrative around issues and events that have significance for later developments. But contemporaries did not have such advantage, so they were just as likely to become entranced by historical dead-ends and to be preoccupied by developments or ideas that, as it turned out, had no future. Just because we know, for example, that Luther's three

great treatises of 1520—To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Freedom of a Christian , and On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church —were to become the defining works of the whole Reformation movement, we should not automatically assume that contemporaries would recognize their significance. They had no way of knowing that these treatises marked a parting of the ways. In fact, these treatises were likely to have been understood initially in ways quite different from the meaning they took on in the light of subsequent events.

With these sources of distortion in mind, I attempt in several chapters to reconstruct the progress of the early Reformation as it was likely experienced by the most engaged participants. I attempt to ask what this influential minority could have realistically known of Luther and his message and when they could have known it. To answer this question, I take my clue from what was printed and reprinted, where it was printed and reprinted, and when. This approach yields a narrative for the early Reformation movement that is in some respects strikingly different from conventional accounts.