The Role of the Press in the Debates over Authority

From Luther's first appearance on the public stage, his critics turned the debate towards questions of authority. And when Luther finally responded in the vernacular press, his critics saw him taking an inherently subversive approach to disseminating his dangerously subversive message. To defy the authorities of traditional Western Christendom—the papal magisterium, the decisions of councils, the teachings of the Latin and Greek Fathers, the judgments of universities, and the traditional interpretation of Scripture—made Luther a heretic. To do so by addressing a broad public in the vernacular language through the medium of the press made him a rebel. It was appalling enough to the defenders of the old faith that Luther denounced the papacy, cashiered the spiritual estate of the clergy, rejected monasticism and

celibacy, and redefined the sacraments and other practices of traditional Christianity. But Luther compounded his enormity when he disseminated his program through thousands of vernacular pamphlets spread among the common people. Much of the dispute of these early years swirled around the issue of authority: who governs and on what basis, who decides and on what grounds? Printing not only spread the dispute to the far corners of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and beyond, it inherently favored Luther's side of the argument. In a crucial way, it not only conveyed Luther's message but also embodied it.

It is a recurring theme of this book that the printing press played far more than just an assisting role in this many-sided contest over authority. It broadcast the subversive messages with a rapidity that had been impossible before its invention. More than that, it allowed the central ideological leader, Martin Luther, to reach the "opinion leaders" of the movement quickly, kept them all in touch with each other and with each other's experience and ideas, and allowed them to "broadcast" their (relatively coordinated) program to a much larger and more geographically diverse audience than had ever been possible before. Yet, paradoxically, printing also undermined central authority because it encouraged the recipients of the printed message to think for themselves about the issues in dispute, and it provided the means—printed Bibles especially—by which each person could become his or her own theologian.

Under the banner "Scripture alone," Luther and his fellow Evangelicals waged war against the traditional authorities for deciding disputes over doctrine and practice. The propaganda barrage led this charge, dismantling the claims for the papal magisterium, the decisions of councils, and the teachings of scholastics, Fathers, and canon lawyers. The press also offered to its public thousands of copies of the Evangelical's primary authority, the Scriptures. Yet in an irony that Catholic publicists were quick to seize upon, the press also quickly revealed that the Evangelicals were unable always to agree on the right understanding of their sole authority. The contested authority of Scripture is another recurring subject of the book.

Finally, Luther's enormous propaganda successes gradually conferred on him unusual personal authority. Those impressed by his message tended to think highly of the messenger. Those who fitted his message to biblical prophecies of the Antichrist and the Endtimes were inclined to view Luther himself within biblical categories of prophet

and saint. The press, then, allowed Luther to acquire a charismatic authority that could also be brought into play in his publications. Not surprisingly, then, his public authority itself became an object of debate. The development of this personal authority and its deployment are further topics of this book.