Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town Into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--And Started the Protestant Reformation (23 page)

BOOK: Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town Into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe--And Started the Protestant Reformation
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T
HE
W
ARTBURG

After the excitements of Worms and four years at the center of events, it was not easy for Luther to endure the isolation of the Wartburg.

For the most part Luther was happy to turn to less pungent tasks. For his absent congregation he offered a long reflection on confession and several smaller meditations on the Psalms. He cleared away the last stages of a German translation of the
Magnificat
that had been interrupted by the journey to Worms. By the summer he was ready to
embark on the two major projects that would occupy much of his time at the Wartburg. The first would be a sequence of postils, or homilies on the Epistles and Gospels prescribed for the Sundays and festival days of the church year. These could be used either for private devotion or as models for sermons.

One of the cruelest deprivations of Luther’s months at the Wartburg was his inability to preach. He was by now deeply rooted in Wittenberg. He fed off the devotion and affection of his Wittenberg congregation, who provided a vital sounding board by which he could measure the clarity and coherence of his lay theology. In this time of separation Luther could at least provide spiritual comfort, and he bent himself to the task with his usual sense of purpose.

This major project would stretch over several months and involved several changes of mind on Luther’s part. These were dictated partly by the difficulty of securing the necessary reference texts from Wittenberg; there was also the perpetual problem of the quality of Wittenberg printing. By this point Luther had finally recognized that Rhau-Grunenberg could not be trusted with complex projects. In the period immediately before Lotter’s recruitment from Leipzig, Rhau-Grunenberg had got himself into serious difficulties publishing Luther’s second lecture series on the Psalms, having printed far too many copies of the first sheets. Clearly he had miscalculated the print run, and probably the paper necessary for such a big book. The solution, which would also be adopted for other substantial projects, was to publish in segments or fascicules, purchased on a subscription basis and then bound together by the owner when the work was complete. This served to salvage Rhau-Grunenberg’s work on the Psalm lectures, though Luther hinted darkly that he would insist on a reprint “in a more distinguished typeface” on the Lotter press.
33
But with Luther at the Wartburg and unable to supervise the press in person, the relationship with Rhau-Grunenberg came close to total collapse. For some reason, and against all experience and logic, Luther had assigned the printing of the postils to Rhau-Grunenberg. But when he saw the proof sheets of Rhau-Grunenberg’s work on his book
on confession (
Von der Beicht
) he could contain himself no further.
34
The resulting tirade to Spalatin is worth quoting at length:

I have received the second and third set of printed sheets of the book
On Confession
from you; I had previously received them from Philip, too, along with the first set. I cannot say how unhappy and disgusted I am with the printing. I wish I had sent nothing in German. It is printed so poorly, so carelessly and confusedly, to say nothing of the bad typefaces and paper. John the printer is always the same old John and does not improve. For goodness sake, under no circumstances let him print any of the German postils! What I have sent of them should be stored away, or rather returned to me so that I may send it somewhere else. What good does it do to work hard if such sloppiness and confusion causes other printers [who may reprint from this first edition] to make more mistakes that are worse. I do not want the Gospels and Epistles to be sinned against in this way; it is better to hide them than to bring them out in such a form. Therefore I am sending you nothing now, although I have finished almost ten large manuscript sheets of the [postil]. I shall send nothing more until I have seen that these sordid money-grubbers, in printing books, care less for their profits than for the benefit of the reader. For what does such a printer seem to think except, “It is enough that I get my money; let the readers worry about what and how they will read it.”
35

Having thus skewered Rhau-Grunenberg he added rather ominously, “Philip has sent me three sets of printed sheets of the
Latomus,
which I like very much.” This, of course, was printed by Melchior Lotter.
36
Luther also seems to have ensured that responsibility for publishing his work
On Confession
was passed to Lotter after Rhau-Grunenberg’s unsatisfactory first edition. Lotter reprinted it twice in 1521.
37

Allowance should obviously be made here for Luther’s state of mind. He was at this point suffering seriously from constipation. The
packages from Wittenberg also brought medicines, with which he was obliged to dose himself regularly. He chafed at the lack of exercise, and attempts to cheer him by the occasional ride out with his hosts achieved nothing, since he had little interest in hunting (“this bittersweet pleasure of heroes . . . a worthy occupation indeed for men with nothing to do”).
38
The regime in the Wartburg was taking its toll, both physically and mentally. His previous weekly bulletin had complained bitterly that part of one of his texts seemed to have been mislaid, and that the
Magnificat
was taking such an inordinate time to appear.
39
It is clear from this that Luther very much missed his day-to-day involvement in the work of the press. He was used not only to exercising close supervision over the quality of Rhau-Grunenberg’s work, but also to managing the work flow through the printers’ shops. On August 6 he told Spalatin, “I wish [the printing] of this
Defense
of Philip’s postponed until such time as the presses are idle, unless you think otherwise. The same should have been done with Psalm
Exsurgat,
because there are other things that are more necessary and urgent.”
40
And after calming down, he did allow printing of the postils to continue: “But I do want it to be printed on folio paper with Lotter’s typefaces, since it will be a large book. I would divide it into four parts of the year, from quarter to quarter, so that it will not be too heavy and expensive.”
41
This was a recurring theme. Earlier in the summer he had told Spalatin that he would be shifting some of the material from one volume of the postils to another, to keep down the price: “I am doing this so that not too big a book frightens readers and buyers.”
42

Of course, and rather paradoxically, it is only because he is away from Wittenberg that one has this positive proof of the true extent of Luther’s everyday involvement with the nuts and bolts of the printing process. He has, in his absence, to articulate instructions that normally he would have conveyed in person, in the print shop, talking to Rhau-Grunenberg or Lotter. But these letters do provide very precious evidence of Luther’s keen understanding of the technical and practical disciplines of bringing his works into the public domain. Of his fellow authors perhaps only Desiderius Erasmus showed such a close
appreciation of how important it was to be directly engaged with every stage of the work.

The winter of 1521 brought other trials. Luther had cause to be increasingly concerned about the loyal but wayward Karlstadt and his influence over the university in Luther’s absence. In the fury at Luther’s condemnation and nervousness over his fate it was dangerously evident that the reform movement might get out of hand. In December Luther paid a brief, perilous, and clandestine visit back to Wittenberg to confer with allies as to what should be done. Returning to the Wartburg he devoted himself to a new task, the translation of the Bible into German. He began with the New Testament, and within eleven weeks had completed a first draft, though it was always intended that this would be thoroughly revised, with the help of colleagues, on his return. This, it was clear, could not be much longer delayed. The plan had been that Luther would remain out of sight at the Wartburg until Easter, but the news of the confusion in the churches of Wittenberg and turbulence in the university faculty was ever more alarming. Luther would not have been comforted to know that Melanchthon had despaired of restraining Karlstadt and was considering leaving Wittenberg altogether. Ignoring the elector’s firm instructions that it was not yet prudent for Luther to be seen in public, Luther left the Wartburg at the end of February, resurfacing in Wittenberg, to general astonishment, on March 6, 1522. The age of protest was at an end. Now began the harder work of creating a new church.

6.

B
RAND
L
UTHER

HEN
L
UTHER RETURNED FROM
the Wartburg in March 1522 he had been a public figure for four years. An increasingly fascinated German public had followed every twist and turn of his dramatic life: his confrontations with authority, his bold defiance, his improbable escapes from terrible disaster. Needless to say his reappearance in Wittenberg after ten months of seclusion was a major public event. His sudden disappearance on the road from Worms had been the subject of anxious, even anguished, speculation among his followers. Albrecht Dürer was not the only one who suspected he had been secretly done away with; Dürer thought they would come for Erasmus next.
1
So when Luther reappeared, hale and hearty, his followers rejoiced that once again he had defied the odds and triumphed against the forces massed against him.

For Luther’s enemies, also increasingly numerous, came the dawning realization that the best chance to lay hands on Luther and put an end to his defiance had now passed. For the rest of his life he would be living, and increasingly rooted, in Wittenberg. As an excommunicated heretic and outlaw the protection that could be afforded by the electors of Saxony was strictly circumscribed; any longer journeys would now be freighted with risk. So while Luther would continue to minister to his
Wittenberg flock for another twenty-four years, for those elsewhere in Germany, his allies and his printed books would have to stand surrogate for his commanding presence.

By the end of 1522, nearly five years after he first addressed a German public in the
Sermon on Indulgence and Grace,
Luther had published some 160 different writings. About a third of these were in Latin, and these texts were important for, as we shall see in the next chapter, persuading clerical colleagues to join his crusade for a reformed Christianity and played a vital role in the success of his movement. But what made Luther truly exceptional was his willingness to step outside his own clerical caste and reach out to the Christian people of Germany. They responded with an interest and enthusiasm unprecedented in recent history. By the end of 1522, his German works had been published in 828 editions. The next eight years would see the publication of some 1,245 more, an estimated total of some two million copies.
2
The production, sale, and distribution of these books was a mammoth undertaking. In the process Luther and his friends had recast both the German publishing industry and the reading public.

To understand the full extent of this transformation, it is helpful to cast our eyes back to the state of the book industry before Luther. In the first age of print, roughly the seventy years before the Reformation, the archetypal book would have been long, expensive, and in Latin.
3
In choosing books to publish, the first printers took their cue from what they knew of the book market before print was invented. Most customers were churchmen, scholars, or students, with a smattering of rich collectors from the nobility. Consequently the first printers aligned their production to the established best sellers in these customers’ favored fields: religion, academic texts, chronicle histories, and so on. Books became more plentifully available, but remained expensive. A personal collection of more than thirty titles was still very unusual.

The Reformation put books into the hands of many purchasers from outside these established groups. Many of these new readers would never previously have owned books. Even if they had one or two, these
would have been treasured family possessions, a Book of Hours or a chronicle; for the same price they could now buy several dozen Reformation
Flugschriften
. And many people did precisely this; ordinary citizens for whom books had previously been a comparatively marginal phenomenon were now repeatedly exposed to the literature of the Reformation, in a wild profusion.

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