5 ms·

I just finished reading this book, and the point I'm making comes almost directly from that. https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/patrick-wyman/the-verge/9781538

by AlanSE 5y ago

I just finished reading this book, and the point I'm making comes almost directly from that. https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/patrick-wyman/the-verge/9781538701171/ https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/patrick-wyman/the-verge/9... Luther grew up in a mining community, where people where crass and confrontational. He had a frank, direct, and powerful rhetorical style that was forged in that environment. While he had several career options, a lightning strike made him get superstitious and become a monk. He was good at it. Take these 2 things - book smarts and an argumentative edge, and now a new twist enters the story... The printing press! The printers were in it to make money. His impact on history wasn't nailing a thing to a church door. The guy ran circles around the Church defenders because he replied quick, effectively, and he was the darling of the printers who controlled the medium. It's not just about having the best argument, it's about fitting the format of the medium. Luther would deliver retorts in the space and time frame that the printers wanted. You can easily imagine how this would drown out the defenders of the Church (especially since it's salacious) and impact public opinion. But that phase only lasted so-many years. Before long, the situation got out of his control, and that's kind of when you might say Protestantism started.

krsdcbl 5y ago
today you could very well say he was a media-savvy influencer
Archelaos 5y ago
> and now a new twist enters the story... > The printing press! Not quite so new. At the time Luther published his 95 Theses in 1517 the printing press with movable types has been around pretty much as long as the computer has been around for us in 2021: for three quarters of a century.
- est31 5y ago
  And we are still not done computerizing society.
1123581321 5y ago
That explanation is fun, and not exactly wrong, but there were many factors brewing, and attempts at just about every part of what we call the Reformation had been attempted on some level in the hundred years preceding except perhaps the allied states' standard against the HRE. Most acute factors were probably the combination of the financial crisis, simony, absent bishops, Medici cultural and political influence over Rome, peasant revolts and prior attempts at schism or reformation, discontent between German princes and HRE, increasing prevalence and affordability of printing which promulgated new understandings of Aristotle and Augustine in addition to enabling more widespread publication of dissent. It's a rich topic, certainly worth reading extensively about; I'll be sure to check out the book you linked.
- AlanSE 5y ago
  I was listening to some podcast episode from the author Patrick Wyman. He was doing an interview with Mike Duncan(?) in a very casual way. I really latched onto a point about Martin Luther - that his personality traits directly affected the course of events toward the Reformation as we know it. History is probably a lot more chaotic than we give it credit for. Whenever an upheaval happens and the world gets turned upside down, we can always go back and trace structural trends in that direction. This fails to capture how many transformations failed to happen. Printing was getting more affordable, but the printers themselves couldn't stop going out of business. The technology arc of lowering costs, but that doesn't map directly to profits and they just kept going bankrupt. I'm really fascinated by the role of pamphlets. We keep talking about the press in the context of books, but Luther's legacy wasn't in publishing full-length books. This has come up again and again through history. In the 1600s, pamphlets played a role in the English revolution, and it did in the French Revolution as a whole universe of revolution presses sprung up. Were these like newspapers? Or was it some shorter and more targeted form of political hit piece? Luther came out dropping rhetorical bombs. I get how reading stuff can radicalize you. I've felt that energy in my own life, but overwhelming volume of media we get combined with our longer life spans does some intellectual inoculation. I can only imagine the anger that could be stoked with the written word at that time. It's not a forgone conclusion, because most people are garbage at writing convincingly.

by AlanSE 5y ago

krsdcbl 5y ago

today you could very well say he was a media-savvy influencer

Archelaos 5y ago

> and now a new twist enters the story... > The printing press! Not quite so new. At the time Luther published his 95 Theses in 1517 the printing press with movable types has been around pretty much as long as the computer has been around for us in 2021: for three quarters of a century.

est31 5y ago
And we are still not done computerizing society.

1123581321 5y ago

That explanation is fun, and not exactly wrong, but there were many factors brewing, and attempts at just about every part of what we call the Reformation had been attempted on some level in the hundred years preceding except perhaps the allied states' standard against the HRE. Most acute factors were probably the combination of the financial crisis, simony, absent bishops, Medici cultural and political influence over Rome, peasant revolts and prior attempts at schism or reformation, discontent between German princes and HRE, increasing prevalence and affordability of printing which promulgated new understandings of Aristotle and Augustine in addition to enabling more widespread publication of dissent. It's a rich topic, certainly worth reading extensively about; I'll be sure to check out the book you linked.

AlanSE 5y ago
I was listening to some podcast episode from the author Patrick Wyman. He was doing an interview with Mike Duncan(?) in a very casual way. I really latched onto a point about Martin Luther - that his personality traits directly affected the course of events toward the Reformation as we know it. History is probably a lot more chaotic than we give it credit for. Whenever an upheaval happens and the world gets turned upside down, we can always go back and trace structural trends in that direction. This fails to capture how many transformations failed to happen. Printing was getting more affordable, but the printers themselves couldn't stop going out of business. The technology arc of lowering costs, but that doesn't map directly to profits and they just kept going bankrupt. I'm really fascinated by the role of pamphlets. We keep talking about the press in the context of books, but Luther's legacy wasn't in publishing full-length books. This has come up again and again through history. In the 1600s, pamphlets played a role in the English revolution, and it did in the French Revolution as a whole universe of revolution presses sprung up. Were these like newspapers? Or was it some shorter and more targeted form of political hit piece? Luther came out dropping rhetorical bombs. I get how reading stuff can radicalize you. I've felt that energy in my own life, but overwhelming volume of media we get combined with our longer life spans does some intellectual inoculation. I can only imagine the anger that could be stoked with the written word at that time. It's not a forgone conclusion, because most people are garbage at writing convincingly.