“Would that he worked to curb this restless, uneasy temperament which is apt to boil over in every direction.” So wrote John Calvin — no mean polemicist himself — about Martin Luther. The comment did not derive from personal experience. The two great leaders of the Protestant Reformation never got to meet, and even the single letter that Calvin wrote to Luther failed to reach its addressee. This, however, hardly mattered. There was no need for a reformer in 16th century Christendom to have talked with Luther to be familiar with his temperament. The imprint of his personality was stamped on almost everything he wrote and said. And what Luther wrote and said had become, by the time Calvin came of age, very big news indeed.
To describe the Reformation as a Twitter spat that got out of hand would obviously be anachronistic. Nevertheless, it is not entirely so: for it hints at a quality of Luther’s genius that we, in the age of social media, are perhaps peculiarly qualified to appreciate.
When, in 1517, the previously obscure professor of theology at Wittenberg published 95 theses challenging Church doctrine on salvation, they promptly went viral. “A mere squabble of envious monks.” So the Pope, with the lordly tone of a politician in 2010 turning his nose up at Twitter, is said to have dismissed the imbroglio.
Pretty soon, however, the flame war had got out of hand. Luther turned out to have a genius for publicity beyond anything that Europe had witnessed before. A mere four years after he had posted his 95 theses, his name had come to sound across Germany, and far beyond. Even the emperor, Charles V, had found himself perturbed by it. When, 500 years ago this month, a great assembly of the empire’s power-brokers, a “diet”, was convened in the city of Worms, Luther was on its agenda.
On 26 March, a summons duly arrived in Wittenberg. Luther was instructed “to answer with regard to your books and teachings”. He was given three weeks to comply. He also received a personal assurance from the emperor of safe conduct to the diet. This, however, was not entirely reassuring, for history suggested that the word of an emperor could not always be trusted. Nevertheless, Luther answered the summons. He set off from Saxony for Worms. The journey proved a triumph. Welcoming committees toasted him at the gates of city after city; crowds crammed into churches to hear him preach. As he entered Worms, thousands thronged the streets to catch a glimpse of him. Luther was the man of the hour.
How had he done it? “Luther spoke,” as Diarmaid MacCulloch has put it, “at many levels: he debated with scholars, shouted from the pulpit, wrote vigorous German and sang his message in German hymns and songs.” He was — to coin a metaphor — a digital theologian faced by ponderously analogue foes. The technology he exploited was, of course, the printing press. No one had recognised its potential as readily as Luther, nor leveraged it to such seismic effect. The impact of his 95 theses had been crucially dependent on his determination to have them broadcast as widely as possible. He carried on as he had begun.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe