Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion

by Andrew Pettegree

Why did people choose the Reformation? What was in the evangelical teaching that excited, moved or persuaded them? Andrew Pettegree tackles these questions directly by re-examining the reasons that moved millions to this decisive and traumatic break with a shared Christian past. He charts the separation from family, friends, and workmates that adherence to the new faith often entailed and the new solidarities that emerged in their place. He explores the different media of conversion through which the Reformation message was communicated and the role of drama, sermons, song and the book. His findings offer a persuasive new answer to the critical question of how the Reformation could succeed as a mass movement in an age before mass literacy.

Genres: History, Theology, Nonfiction, Cultural, European History, Religion

252 pages, Paperback

First published June 23, 2005

About the author

I began my career working on aspects of the European Reformation. My first book was a study of religious refugee communities in the sixteenth century, and since then I have published on the Dutch Revolt, and on the Reformation in Germany, France and England, as well as a general survey history of the sixteenth century. In the last years the focus of my research has shifted towards an interest in the history of communication, and especially the history of the book. I run a research group that in 2011 completed a survey of all books published before1601: the Universal Short Title Catalogue. This work continues with work to incorporate new discoveries and continue the survey into the seventeenth century.

In 2010 I published an award-winning study of The Book in the Renaissance, and in 2014 The Invention of News: a study of the birth of a commercial culture of news publication in the four centuries between 1400 and 1800. I return to the Reformation for a study of Luther’s media strategy, published in 2015 by Penguin as Brand Luther, 1517, Printing and the Making of the Reformation. I am now engaged in a study of the book world of the seventeenth century Dutch Republic, to be published in 2019 as Trading Books in the Age of Rembrandt.

I am the lead editor of two monograph series: the St Andrews Studies in Reformation History, and The Library of the Written Word. In 2012-2015 I served a three year term as Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society.

I welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students working on any aspect of the Reformation or Book History.

Reviews

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Pettegree’s "Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion" helps readers grasp how Martin Luther, John Calvin, and the other reformers were able to effectively spread their message across Europe. In many respects, Pettegree’s book is an important study of media and communication as he devotes each chapter to a different medium that the reformers were able to utilize to spread their theological tenets, such as the sermon, visual images, and pamphlets and books. He further declares that the book’s intent is to “explore the process of persuasion by recognizing this as a layered and complex process, proceeding in different ways, and at different points in the political process by which states or cities made a choice of confessional allegiance” and he explains that that process began with awareness, leading to identification, leading to understanding, and culminating in activism.

Christians believe that conversion is necessary to secure salvation but a passion for evangelism can sometimes make us forget how bewildering and heartrending such a decision can be for those who give up long-held ancestral or cultural beliefs. One of the important points Pettegree raises is that conversion from Rome to one of the strands of Protestantism was deeply devastating as “Religious divisions ended friendship, caused division between neighbours and kin, damaged relations with parents beyond repair, sometimes even caused rejection by a spouse of children” and some converts were even killed for their convictions. Given these tensions, it may have been interesting for Pettegree to further explore how internecine theological tenets divided families and friends. Though the common folk may have lacked the doctrinal precision of Luther or Theodore Beza, they surely had some simplified theological or folk beliefs. For instance, what would be the ramifications for a family in which the children aligned themselves with the Reformed churches while their parents continued to be Catholics and how would they approach the afterlife together? Would the parents have pleaded with their children to purchase indulgences in order to free them (a little earlier) from Purgatory? Would those who became Protestant be wracked by doubt and hesitancy as to whether or not Purgatory might indeed be real? How did Luther’s theology of justification by “faith alone” affect how people understood Purgatory? The fissures caused by religious division are far more muted in our day than during the Reformation; many Christians I know in Vancouver regularly change churches (e.g. Baptist to Mennonite Brethren) with little thought to the doctrinal distinctives of each denomination and little outcry from friends and family.

Two key elements typical in Protestant worship were not regular occurrences during the medieval Church. According to Pettegree, sermons were not always given alongside the medieval mass as “preaching was by and large not embedded in the fabric of routine worship,” though when sermons were given, they lasted upwards of four to five hours, were dramatic, and participatory. The reformers moved sermons to a place of prominence while drawing upon the best practice of pre-Reformation preaching: “a sense of the sermon as performance; a belief that preaching could transform…lives…a belief that the spirit of God was embodied in the preacher, and that the preacher’s rhetorical skill worked with divine grace.” Scholars of the reformers’ preaching relate that their sermons featured “the repetition of themes, so useful for oral transmission of complex ideas; the frequency of numbered lists of ideas, again a practical device to aid memory; the simplicity and vividness of the language; and the combination of rather dry exposition of text – purely a transmission of data and doctrine – with intensely emotional and evocative language in exhortation.” Related to this was the increased attention the reformers gave to educating Christians as sermons would have familiarized believers with Scripture. Before the Bible was translated into the vernacular by Luther and other reformers, access to the words of Scripture would have been rare, let alone if one did not hear a sermon from week-to-week at church and even after vernacular Bibles were available, not everyone was wealthy enough to purchase a family Bible or literate enough to read it for themselves. Additionally, those who lived away from towns would be even less likely to hear a sermon.

Many of the techniques used before the Reformation and by the reformers themselves continue to be used in Protestant preaching. The regular preacher at my church, Ken Shigematsu, is an effective and polished communicator who uses rhetorical tools to convey his points. For instance, in describing to a Christmas Even audience how God became man in Jesus Christ in the Incarnation he pointed out that “chili con carne” is “chili with meat, with flesh – the Incarnation, con carne.”
Another key medium for the spread of the reformers’ ideas was through song. Pettegree contends that communal worship through song was “For many people…the part of the service they found most congenial, and it played a profound part in inculcating a sense of loyalty and identification with the new worship tradition.” Before the Reformation, communally sung worship was not a regular part of medieval Church worship but singing was a common practice at work and the reformers were able to effectively tap into this favoured pastime. Pettegree recounts that Thomas Müntzer translated the Gregorian chant into vernacular German but that Luther insisted that not only the words but the music itself also had to be common, hence his appropriation of familiar tunes. Communal singing has a powerful solidifying effect; just as Canadians sing “O Canada” together before a hockey game so too would Protestants sing their theology as one and in the process, they learned their theology; thus, singing hymns was a form of pedagogy and the most popular and powerful hymns were those that proclaimed the Reformations’ theology. Luther’s contention that worship had to be set alongside familiar musical tunes also bears relevance to the “worship wars” among Christians today – should churches sing traditional hymns or contemporary praise music? Just as the music of Gregorian chant may not have been familiar to most believers in the era of the Reformation, so too most traditional hymn music is alien to modern ears. Do bands such as Hillsong United carry on Luther’s legacy by not only producing worship with modern lyrics but also in “vernacular music?”

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

For such a short book, it felt very comprehensive.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read January 20, 2010. Argues that print culture was actually only part of the wider "culture of persuasion" that was deployed in selling the Reformation in the first fifty years after Luther, when a deep engagement with the faith was most important. In addition to printed materials, reformers also used preaching and sermons, singing of psalms, songs and ballads, performance of reformed mystery plays, woodcuts and other art forms to spread the message of the Reformation and new ideas about justification. All of this contributed to the creation of a culture in which the decision to convert was softened of its initial shock and danger. The last two chapters discuss the strategies employed by Protestant states to ensure among subjects a high degree of understanding of and engagement with the Protestant faith. Discuss catechism and the redirection of the "culture of persuasion" into state-building enterprises, which were increasingly text-dependent, and which created a "culture of belonging". Somewhat revisionist in its dating of the era of confessionalization, which according to Pettegree could not have started until after 1580.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful book -- shows some of the complications of the Reformation era, not to mention little known facts about that time. My favorite from this book is the fact that John Foxe attributed the success of the Reformation to "players, printers, and preachers."

[Christopher Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andrew Pettegree’s Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion is concerned with the question of how and why the Reformation garnered the allegiance of the 16th-c. masses. Pettegree notes that the decision to convert—and conversion was generally a conscious decision in the Reformation’s first generation (2)—could be extremely traumatic. So why did people convert? Was it due to the content of the Reformers’ message, as Diarmaid MacColluch has argued (5)? Was it due to the advent of the printing press, as suggested by Elizabeth Einstein (7)? While Pettegree admits that there some truth in both these views, his book could be characterized as a monumental effort to problematize them. Once the ground is cleared of misconceptions, he constructs an elaborate, nuanced, and convincing portrait of the role that different media played in the emergence of the Reformation.

If persuasion is limited to the transfer of ideas, it could be argued that the Reformation met with limited success. The Reformers were extraordinarily pessimistic about the impact of their preaching; they saw little evidence that the Gospel had been internalized and that it was producing real transformation in believers (20,4). To the extent that persuasion in this sense was accomplished, Pettegree argues, it was done by word-of-mouth. Preaching, song, catechism, and conversation in public places were the most effective media by which the Reformation message was conveyed (8,212). These were particularly well-adapted to reaching illiterate, non-urban congregations (39,193). Unlike most historians before him, Pettegree does not think that books played an important role in this process. Besides the somewhat trivial problem of poor eyesight (107-9), there was the problem of illiteracy. Although some scholars suggest that the literate read aloud to the illiterate, Pettegree finds only one example of this occurring with a non-biblical text (119). Even the literate, moreover, may not have actually read most of the books they purchased—these were status symbols, or “badges of belonging” (156-9,216). Although woodcuts have occasionally been cited as a possible bridge between the printed medium and the illiterate, the truth is that most woodcut images were actually very complex and were not designed to be understood without reading the text around them (112-7). Like the books within which they were contained, they were luxury items and “badges of belonging” (116). And while smaller pamphlets were less expensive than books, they seem generally to have been purchased by social elites and bound together as collections in order to make them respectable library items (160). Their particular role appears to have been “the multiplication effect of reinforcement,” in which many voices make the same point and thereby give the impression of overwhelming force (162-3).

But if the ability of books to convey the message of the Reformation to the masses has been exaggerated, Pettegree also seems to imply that the importance of conveying the message has itself been exaggerated, at least in terms of explaining the spread of Protestantism. That he has deprecated books, pamphlets, and woodcuts as “badges of belonging” does not mean that they were unimportant in the Reformation’s proliferation. And that Protestant drama was most effective where the Reformation was already established and quickly secularized to become little more than a form of entertainment does not mean that it was insignificant, either (96). Quite to the contrary, in fact. The Reformation displaced medieval systems, structures, and relationships, leaving people with a profound sense of alienation (211). Protestants had to create “new solidarities,” a new “culture of belonging” (213). The miracle and mystery plays that had been so central in medieval Catholic piety were replaced by new Protestant dramatic forms, which had the double effect of being an attack on Catholic piety and of erecting new Protestant cultural associations. That they were little more than “shared recreation” (214) does not diminish their significance. Similarly, “badges of belonging” were important in constructing shared Protestant identity (216-7).

Pettegree’s argument is highly compelling. This is surprising, considering that the misconceptions he so confidently assaults—like for example the primacy of the printing press in disseminating the message of the Reformation—are such staples of Reformation historiography. But this argument, in particular, may still be open to question. Even if reading was not an option for the illiterate majority of the population, it was an option for intellectuals and undoubtedly played an important role in the recruitment of preachers, songwriters, authors, playwrights, and civil officials. True, probably many if not most of the books that were purchased by wealthy elites were never actually read. But some of them must have been, and this surely cannot have failed to have an effect in educated circles. We might posit a sort of “trickle-down” theory of the effect of print publications. If the literate did not read aloud to the illiterate, it is probably still the case that the literate preached to the illiterate some of the things they had learned from books.

Pettegree also makes regrettable omissions at a few points. For example, he informs his readers very briefly that Zwingli was hostile to the use of music in worship (54). How, one might ask, did this affect the progress of the Swiss Reformation? If singing was one of the two most effective ways that Protestant teachings were disseminated, one might expect to find that the Reformation proceeded very differently in Switzerland than it did elsewhere. I am not aware of any evidence for this, but if there is some I would have liked to see Pettegree explore it. At this point, I think, he missed a golden opportunity for a comparative study that might have validated or invalidated this aspect of his thesis. Secondly, Pettegree largely neglects the Anabaptists. While the Anabaptists are mentioned a few times in the book, they are usually only discussed insofar as they affected the course of the Magisterial Reformation. True, the Anabaptists may be more difficult to study given the paucity of evidence. But they would make particularly interesting subject-matter for an exploration of the construction of shared identity. And finally, Pettegree also fails to offer any really measured commentary on the extent to which he thinks drama affected the spread of the Reformation vis a vis the other media under consideration. Of course, these ultimately are relatively minor objections.

Besides the material cited to directly support his thesis, Pettegree offers a few really penetrating insights that help add nuance to the story of the Reformation. In particular, the way that he weaves the story of the various reform movements together is truly admirable. Regional studies often miss the kinds of international connections that Pettegree makes when, for example, he charts the diaspora of Genevan metric psalmody across the continent. Another interesting observation Pettegree makes is that while Luther’s central doctrine of justification by faith resonated with a few intellectual clerics, it was a difficult one for the laity to absorb. They were much more interested in doctrines like sola scriptura, which was not only extraordinarily simple but also reinforced in every major rhetorical medium. And finally, Pettegree’s treatment of the differences between the printing industry in the Reformation’s various locales complicates but also enriches the story of the Reformation’s progress. Printing and Protestantism were organically connected; while each might have been able to survive without the other, their union ensured that both thrived. In both Wittenberg and Geneva, an enormous print industry was built almost entirely around the celebrity of the major reformers. Both cities experienced a significant influx of both population and wealth. Although Pettegree does not suggest that this material prosperity directly affected the spread of the Reformation, one cannot help but wonder whether the dramatic increase of these cities’ cultural and material gravity was viewed by Protestants as a providential sign.

While perhaps not perfect, Pettegree’s study of the Reformation and its media is magisterial and unlikely to be superceded in the near future. It seriously complicates some landmarks on the Reformation historiographical scene, and crafts a new, compelling narrative with which any serious historian studying this period will unquestionably have to reckon.

[JAMES · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would not exactly call this a page turner for the person casually interested in Reformation ideas, but it covers a lot of ground and there's a lot of interesting material to chew on. Who knew the early protestants were so into singing? Certainly not I.

I would not say I got a "picture" of what it was like to make the decision to give up the church that was so central to life, and go to another church. Maybe that's because there was no single reason for that decision, but a number of factors that might influence one individual or another. Still it's a book I will probably be pondering for a while, and possibly even re-reading.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a study of the various media by which the Reformation advanced—preaching, song, drama, visual arts, the book, and ephemeral print—this book is a resounding success. In the chapter on the visual arts, Pettegree offers a compelling corrective to Scribner's emphasis on the woodcut as a means of spreading Reformation ideas to the masses. The chapters on print are quite thorough; one can see the beginnings of his later The Book in the Renaissance. His overall assessment of the relative importance of the media is quite helpful.

The only downside to the book is that it did not live up to all its own ambitions. The opening chapter advances a provocative theory of conversion and confessionalization that never really gets borne out by the text. The final two chapters attempt to return to this question, but do not do so in a manner that integrates well with the main content. Nevertheless, his emphasis on public persuasion and the decision-making capabilities of the crowd do offer useful new approaches on confessionalization.

I would definitely assign the various media chapters of this book for reading in a relevant course.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a shorter monograph looking at the various mediums through which the message of the Reformation was passed. It studies various print, preaching, drama, and music and attempts to soften the age-old thesis that the printing press and literate culture was the reason why the Reformation was able to succeed. His arguments are a good addition to the thinking on this period, even if some of them may not gain much traction.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good stuff. On the great cultural change the Reformation brought .

[Chantal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great handbook for our media and persuasion during times of Reformation course. Writing an academic review on it as we speak though that probably won't make it onto goodreads. ;)