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The first author of international fame

This print of 1617 shows a dense composition of closely-packed figures entwined with beautifully designed lettering, which to a contemporary audience, used to stark headlines and the immediacy of photography and film, looks confused and complicated.

Broadsheets such as this, however, represent an early form of mass communication.
Since the fifteenth century, the traditional method of narrating stories to a semi-literate audience was to show important events in sequence in the manner of a strip cartoon.

Luther, the main subject here, appears several times to show the part that he played at different points of the story: in the background he literally receives the word of God in a torrent of letters seen pouring into his book, and to the right of the print he appears to Friedrich the Wise in the dream. On the left he is seen inscribing his theses against the sale of indulgences on the church door; an event of 1517 when Luther publicly challenged a much-hated practice of the Catholic Church.

One hundred years later, Protestants chose to commemorate this episode as the beginning of the Reformation.

The most striking aspect of this print is the enormous size of Luther’s quill pen which strikes through the lion, a visual metaphor for Pope Leo, and then knocks the pope’s tiara off his head. Luther’s supporters are shown pulling feathers from his quill pen, as if to be inspired by his words. Together with the elaborately engraved title, Luther’s large pen emphasises the significance of the written word to the circulation of his ideas.

His works were published in German to appeal to as wide a public as possible, as opposed to Latin, the language of the Catholic Church and of scholars and academics. Hundreds of thousands of his sermons were published. Martin Luther was, in effect, the first author of international fame.

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This print of 1617 shows a dense composition of closely-packed figures entwined with beautifully designed lettering, which to a contemporary audience, used to stark headlines and the immediacy of photography and film, looks confused and complicated.

Broadsheets such as this, however, represent an early form of mass communication.
Since the fifteenth century, the traditional method of narrating stories to a semi-literate audience was to show important events in sequence in the manner of a strip cartoon.

Luther, the main subject here, appears several times to show the part that he played at different points of the story: in the background he literally receives the word of God in a torrent of letters seen pouring into his book, and to the right of the print he appears to Friedrich the Wise in the dream. On the left he is seen inscribing his theses against the sale of indulgences on the church door; an event of 1517 when Luther publicly challenged a much-hated practice of the Catholic Church.

One hundred years later, Protestants chose to commemorate this episode as the beginning of the Reformation.

The most striking aspect of this print is the enormous size of Luther’s quill pen which strikes through the lion, a visual metaphor for Pope Leo, and then knocks the pope’s tiara off his head. Luther’s supporters are shown pulling feathers from his quill pen, as if to be inspired by his words. Together with the elaborately engraved title, Luther’s large pen emphasises the significance of the written word to the circulation of his ideas.

His works were published in German to appeal to as wide a public as possible, as opposed to Latin, the language of the Catholic Church and of scholars and academics. Hundreds of thousands of his sermons were published. Martin Luther was, in effect, the first author of international fame.