Daily Reading for February 19
The original audience for Luther’s defense of his writings may have been the university context of Wittenberg or Leipzig, or the Imperial Parliament or Diet at Worms in 1521, where the Holy Roman emperor was flanked by the nobility, the clerical hierarchy, and the wealthy burgesses from the towns. When Luther’s arguments were catapulted into print, however, the ordinary reader in town or village could eavesdrop on them. The audience of theology, then, was widening.
The origins of the whole Reformation have often been traced back to Luther’s perhaps apocryphal nailing of his Ninety-Five Theses against indulgences to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. More important than any such symbolic act is that he tossed out philosophical language in favor of biblical and pastoral. The Latin theses, originally conceived for a scholarly disputation among professional theologians, were then translated into German and rapidly broadcast in print, together with explanatory material. This is a good illustration of the widening ripples of attention, as scholars broke out of the halls of learning and “took to the road,” adapting their language as they did so to their new readers. The language of lay authors, moreover, reflected their very different field of experience. . . . Popular pamphlets, colloquies, and disputations could be seen, therefore, as exciting new vehicles that took the sacred language of theology into the public square, the epicenter of secular life.
From “The Language of the Common Folk” by Peter Matheson, in Reformation Christianity, edited by Peter Matheson. Volume 5 in the series A People’s History of Christianity (Fortress Press, 2007).