Selling the Reformation

As the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation ap­proaches, we can expect the publication of many books to herald and accompany it. Some may be wearisome, but others will provide genuine insight into the origins of Protestantism and its meaning for the modern world. Brand Luther, by Andrew Pettegree, founding director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, falls into the latter category.

Drawing on his expertise in the history of printing and the book, Pettegree offers a novel approach to the story of Martin Luther and the Lutheran Refor­mation. The connection between printing and the advent of Protestantism is old news, but Pettegree breathes new life into the topic by demonstrating how deeply involved Luther was in the design and production of his printed works, how deliberate he was about promoting the print industry in Wittenberg and elsewhere, and how printers contributed directly to the astonishing success of Protestantism by promoting “Brand Luther”—the distinctive look of Protes­tant publications.

Pettegree stresses that no one could have predicted this success in the opening decades of the 16th century. Luther was an unknown and unpublished monk-professor who worked at a minor university in a backwater town that did not even have a printing press until 1502. This press produced an unremarkable number of Latin books each year for the town’s scholars. All of this changed with the advent of Brand Luther.