Comment by Nokinside | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nokinside | Hacker News Reader

Seeing history trough individuals can be misleading. There would have been reformation even without Luther.

There were several reformations before Luther. Bible was translated into German and other languages before Luther. Mentel Bible was on it's second printing when Luther started his reformation. Several other successful reform movements started at the same time or little later.

Question is why reformations started at that particular time and why Luther was so successful and several reformations before him failed.

The answer is technology. Printing press revolution had exploded. There was over 1000 printing presses throughout Western Europe when Luther started his reformation. Germany and Italy were the main centers. Pamphlets from reformists spread around like wildfire and the movement was able to grow much faster among common people.

https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/medievalforum/2015/08/19/literacy-an...

>Between 1516 and 1546, 3.1 million copies of Martin Luther’s works were sold in Germany (excluding whole and partial Bible translations). Considering that each reprint had around 1,000 copies, that equates to 3,100 editions of his work alone. Over this period, 1,057 editions were published in Wittenberg, 490 in Augsburg, and in comparison, Basel produced 131 editions. On a shorter time-scale, the number of pamphlet editions produced from 1518 to 1529 is as follows: 181 in Wittenberg, 140 in Augsburg and 61 in Basel. What is more remarkable is that Luther also authored 20% of the 7,500 cheap broadsheets printed between 1520 and 1526. Besides preaching, the Protestant reformers clearly published a large amount of material to disseminate their ideologies to a wider audience.

"The answer is technology. Printing press revolution had exploded."

Luther was instrumental in making the printing presses viable businesses. Most printers would go bankrupt due to the high costs and experimental nature of the printing technology of the time. Even Gutenberg himself went bankrupt I believe. Luther created a new style of theological discourse that was shorter, in the common vernacular, and accessible to the reading public. As the son of a successful miner, he had crucial insights into credit intensive industries that was unique among European academics.

So no, there would not likely have been a Reformation without Luther and the printing press may not have exploded without him either. [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.ca/Brand-Luther-Unheralded-Europe-Reforma...

> Seeing history trough individuals can be misleading. There would have been reformation even without Luther.

Definitely not provable.

Men of character and placement are required to drive history though they will never channel historical forces in directions it is unprepared for. The debate over whether great men make history or history raises up great men is an old and unsettled one.

In the 1500's religious people were abandoning the the Church in numbers. There were 15-20 independent reformers at the Luther's time and maybe 5 of them are still known names.

You remove Luther from the picture and reform changes pace and takes different route but but it still happens.

> You remove Luther from the picture and reform changes pace and takes different route but but it still happens

Does it ?

If the pace and course of events were changed, perhaps the reformation would happen, albeit under a different name. Perhaps not.

A different leader might not have been so resolute or bold (as to pin the grievances on the cathedral door), might not have had the political support of the Elector of Saxony. Certainly the conditions may have been present, but would individuals of sufficient character have been available to kindle change ? It was fortuitous that Germany had both Luther and Fredrick III (aka 'Fredrick the Wise') alive at the same time. Given a slightly less capable Elector the Church could have prevailed; with slightly more flexible Church hierarchy Martin Luthers fiery challenge could have been contained.

Look at it this way:

Would the outcome WWII be the same if Churchill and Roosevelt were replaced by different men? Remove Mao from the picture and is it obvious that course of modern Chinese history would be the same ?

Progress and change are not inevitable. The ingredients of agent and agency must be present and work together[1]

[1]Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr wrote an essay in 1958 dealing with this issue and entitled The Decline Of Greatness. I am unable to find an adequate link to it. It is a fascinating read.

Also see Sidney Hook The Hero in History https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Hero+in+History&stick=H4...

Can we say, "people of character and placement are required to drive history"? Not trying to be the PC police or anything, but your statement is actually made factually incorrect by excluding half of our species.

> Can we say, "people of character and placement are required to drive history"?....

Yes. Thank you

(Although in the past and to this day, the course of history has overwhelmingly been determined by men)

> Although in the past and to this day, the course of history has overwhelmingly been determined by men

insofar as kings and bishops have been men, then yes. the importance of women in history is much less documented because they have not been the heads of large institutional authorities. that doesn't mean that the women weren't playing an important role, just that it wasn't historicized in the same way.

> insofar as kings and bishops have been men, then yes....

Kings, Bishops,Generals, soldiers, priests,aldersmen,mayors, sherrifs,sailors,captains,spies,explorers,adventurers, financiers,writers, historians,scientists have been overwhelmingly male.

Well, all of those men did have mothers. In my experience it is the mothers who usually determine the character of the boys who become men who have typically been the linchpins of history. Would Alexander have been as great without Olympias?

As Wittgenstien said many philosophical questions are just examining misuse of language.

In a universe with a well defined casual chain in macroscopic world, is asking "might have been if X", even meaningful? Even considering indeterministic effects in quantum level, is "might have been" meaningful? (I don't think so since if the effects are essentially random, making predictions about it is useless)

I think the question "unasks" itself if the language is examined thoroughly. I think its from simple conclusion that free will is meaningless term, so "might have beens" is misapplication of illusion of free will to make statements on history.

> Definitely not provable.

A reformation isn't provable, but Christianity has been schism after schism for it's entire existence, it's certainly probably that something reformation like would happen eventually.

> The answer is technology. Printing press revolution had exploded.

No. China had movable type printing presses by 1040 AD, yet there's no evidence that it led to a mass uprising against the state religion at that time.

You're trying to undermine the historical singificance of Martin Luther's spirit and vision by saying that he just happened to be in the right place at the right time when the printing press came along. I don't buy it.

China and Korea had incredibly inconvenient and expensive moveable type that required extensive amount of labor. Page setting in western alphabet was much easier and Gutenberg invented good alloys to make it even easier. In addition Europe benefited from improved paper making technology like pulp mills (developed in Islamic world)

Just saying that Chinese had "moveable type" omits the technological and practical considerations that made European printing press success.

ps. Moveable type did bring some educational and political changes in China (centralism, opposition against government) but the effect was limited because Chinese writing system and inferior printing press technology.

> Just saying that Chinese had "moveable type" omits the technological and practical considerations that made European printing press success.

OK but just saying the Europeans had a superior printing press omits the the radical thinking and acting that made Martin Luther's doctrines a success.

Your position is like saying, baseball became America's national pass-time because of radio. Yes, radio existed and helped, but it wasn't radio broadcasts of soccer or regional hopscotch tournaments. Baseball made a particular appeal to the soul of the people and the time which soccer and hopscotch did not. The medium is not the message; content is king.

Well, was China's state religion in 1000AD as corrupt and perverse as the Church in 1500? Was China's culture similar to European one when it comes to reacting to said pervasive societal injustice? If you cannot convincingly reply "yes" to this questions, your objection is invalid.

And you cannot. Why would the people uprise, printing press or not? Hell, Confucius was practically the inventor of meritocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism#Meritocracy). See also the Chinese chapters in the "Penguin history of the world" by Roberts.

On the other hand, there isn't a single "heretic" that made a sliver of difference before the printing press, while after you have countless ones, Luther being merely the first.

China was in the Song dynasty at the time, which was a still-record-breaking Golden Age the likes of which the world has rarely ever seen before or since. There was no reason for a reformation or religious revolt when things were going so well.

This also views all theological/philosophical systems as equal - perhaps the 'need' for reform was 'dictated' by the actual 'incorrect' religious circumstances of the particular system luther existed in (late middle ages RC in the west)

There would have been reformation even without Luther.

Maybe not. Islam never had a reformation. Some people in the Islamic world say, quietly, that it needs one.

That was my thought as well. Islam has had the printing press nearly as long as Christian Europe but never had a reformation. It takes more than just technology to explain the Reformation.

Your rebuttal fails to take into account the multiple, actual reformers also mentioned here.. Jan Hus, etc, for starters..

It should also be pointed out that the notion of 'reform' here only applies to one portion of christendom, the western portion under the roman pontiff, and so is already a self-selecting sample subset..

I would argue that Islam is currently undergoing it's reformation: to Wahabism.

Its printing press is the internet.

And it's the best funded reformation imaginable, all that oil money goes towards spreading a variant of Islam that does not threaten the House of Saud.

Good point. Wahhabism is Islam's stricter branch, of course. It's in the opposite direction from Luther.

Protestantism was not Luther alone (think Calvin). Taking the bible literally (sola scriptura) and preaching outside of established church channels, led to a blooming of different sects, to pietism, Beeldenstorm, puritanism and religious fervor.

> Taking the bible literally (sola scriptura)

Sola scriptura is the doctrine that the Bible alone is infallible foundation of faith. It necessarily includes the doctrine of Biblical infallibility (the belief that the Bible, understood correctly, contains no morally erroneous teachings), but is orthogonal to the doctrine of Biblical literalism (the belief that the correct reading every part of the Bible is a literal one.)

Islam has never kept it's holy texts locked away where only the elite can read or interpret them, a huge part of the religion is an oral reading so everyone can hear it. And there never was a pope-like figure, the Reformation made Christianity more like Islam where either the monarch is the head of the church or the two branches are separate.

This is usually the rhetoric of the "Islam is an inherently evil religion" crowd, who tend to forget just how terrible the Protestants were.

> Question is why reformations started at that particular time and why Luther was so successful and several reformations before him failed.

I think the reason why Luther was successful is he was the first to die of natural causes. Also it was the wood cutting. Most people were illiterate but the pictures could tell you who the good guys vs the bad guys very easily. Also these and illustrations were EPIC. Sadly my favorite isn't easily findable. He has the Pope with a trumpet up his arse. This one will do http://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/justintaylor/files/2014/...

As someone that was on track for a PhD in Historical Theology (Yes that is an actual actual discipline). So this is right up my ally! I LOVE Martin Luther and most Christians today would have hated good old Martin. If you can read his writings they are actually pretty amazing good reads if he isn't on full tilt rage on the Pope, hatred and lies on the Jews or the horrible Peasant Revolt. We certainly can condemn all people of history with 21st Century eyes but Martin Luther did many other things extremely well.

Here is a great quote: “You say, “What comes out of our mouth must be kept!” I hear it – which mouth do you mean? The one from which the farts come? (You can keep that yourself!)”

From Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil, pg. 281 of Luther’s Works, Vol. 41

Also Johann Bugenhagen's funeral sermon for Martin Luther is normally not written with his opening of asking forgiveness for his coarse use of language and potty mouth.

The BBC History Extra podcast has an interview[1] with Professor Roper about her new book (the subject of the article), and she more or less agrees with your statement about the likelihood of a Reformation with or without Luther, as does the review posted. However, there is much about the tone and vector of the Reformation that may have more to do with Luther's particular idiom than a pure attribution to technology would give credit for. It's difficult to choose either extreme when it comes to conversations about whether history is dictated by the acts of great people, or great people are merely byproducts of the inevitable current of history. I'd hesitate to get behind any single 'answer' to any of these questions.

[1] http://www.historyextra.com/podcast/international-history/ma...

Don't forget Wycliffe translating the New Testament into English back in 1382.

I wish I could upvote you 1000 times. Wycliffe and Tyndale were hugely instrumental.

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