The Treatises Addressed Lay Concerns

Even a simple consideration of these vernacular treatises' topics indicates clearly that they were addressed to the laity.^[20] There were sermons on each of the sacraments of most concern to the laity—baptism, marriage, the Eucharist, confession, and extreme unction. One treatise instructed the laity on how to pray the Lord's Prayer and another on how properly to confess. A lay ethical concern, usury, was addressed, and lay activities such as processions and brotherhoods were examined from Luther's new religous perspective. Even the more general treatises—one on the seven penitential psalms, two printings of the German Theology , and the two mild polemics—dealt, as we shall see, with lay concerns regarding sacramental and popular piety.^[21]

The tone of these pastoral works also indicated that their intended audience was the laity. In these writings Luther was, for the most part, not arguing with or even addressing other theologians. He was laying out his understanding of Christianity for his readers rather than defending it from attack by critics. He explained technical issues in simple terms, undergirded with citations of Scripture, and without benefit of the learned distinctions that graced scholastic sermons and treatises of his age. He largely avoided the vocabulary of theological scholarship or, in the few cases where the technical distinction was important, he patiently defined the term for the laity's benefit. He was, in such cases, "popularizing" the scholastic understanding of various issues as a basis, then, for criticism or outright rejection. Throughout, his writings conveyed a tone of moral earnestness.

Before proceeding to the message of these pamphlets, I should say a few words to possible skeptics. These considerations of topic and tone

indicate the audience Luther intended to reach, but in no way guarantee in themselves that he was successful in reaching and engaging laity. Many of the purchasers of these pamphlets were no doubt clergy, some of whom, to be sure, we know by their own testamony turned around and shared the message with their lay parishioners.^[22] But the number of printings and reprintings, not only in Strasbourg but elsewhere, indicates that laity as well as clergy had to be buying these works. Since Luther's popularity as an author continued to grow for several years beyond this initial period, the natural inference is that readers were at the very least intrigued by what they read. The subsequent Reformation movements in Strasbourg and other cities, involving as they did at least in the initial years significant numbers of burghers outside the narrow ruling circle, suggest that some of this lay readership was more than just intrigued; they were convinced to act on the messages conveyed by these early works. As we shall see in chapter 4, the lay (and clerical) readership did not necessarily appropriate Luther's message exactly as he intended, but they were engaged by his message and in many cases galvanized into taking action on their understanding of its import.