Context

Martin Luther was born in Germany in 1483, during a time where the Holy Roman Empire ruled central Europe. The empire was a merging of principalities, cities, and peasantry ruled by the Emperor (Mauslein, 2018). During this time, indulgences were bought to gain one’s salvation or that of a loved one. This funded not only the Holy Roman Empire, but the church (Mauslein, 2018).  Luther saw that there was inconsistency with the teachings of the Roman church, particularly with indulgences.

Luther was a professor of theology in Wittenberg in 1517 when he wrote his 95 Theses  in protest of the selling of indulgences (The British Library, 2016). This has been argued to be the printed document that founded Luther’s movement against the Catholic church (Pettegree, 2017). Within less than four years of writing his book, Luther was labelled a heretic, and condemned by the Holy Roman Empire (Morris, 2019). Luther continued to publish works, printing 65 original works within three years after publishing the 95 Theses (Pettegree, 2017). At this time, a large portion of the books published were editions of biblical texts, sermons, liturgical books, and devotional tracts (Pettegree, 2017). Printers were conscious of printing out any texts that might deviate too radically from manuscripts readers were familiar with, resulting in many unsold copies of books (Pettegree, 2017). Pettegree argues that Luther’s movement provided access to new readers by introducing new printed works that were produced efficiently, and at a lower cost (Pettegree, 2017).  Passional du Christi und Antichristi  is an example of a Reformation pamphlet used as Protestant propaganda. The pamphlet openly criticized the Catholic clergy, and Luther, believing the Pope to have selfish worldly desires,  painted the Pope as the anti-Christ (The British Library, 2017).  His works were not received well by the church, and there are many occasions where he was required to retract his works, such as with the Diet of Worms in 1521 (Bagchi, 2016). Many Reformation pamphlets omitted authorship to prevent prosecution (Babchi, 2017). By 1530, years after the printing of Passional du Christi und Antichristi, many countries in Europe enacted legislations to prevent any production, circulation, and even authorship of Lutheran texts (Pettegree, 2017). Unfortunately,  Luther’s distinct printing developed together with Cranach made his work easily identifiable, endangering anyone that had access to or distributed his work. Lutheran works now had to be smuggled discreetly, and disguised as orthodox devotional tests, with any signs of workmanship removed from title pages to prevent identification (Pettegree, 2017).