Poets, Peasants, and Pamphlets: Who Wrote and Who Read Reformation Flugschriften?

Abstract

In the early 1520s, there appeared from the press of Michael Buchführer in Erfurt a pamphlet entitled A Dialogue or Conversation between a Father and a Son concerning the Teachings of Martin Luther and Other Matters of the Christian Faith. It was an unremarkable publication, a typical Reformation Flugschrift in almost every respect: it was quarto size, sixteen pages long, unbound, with a woodcut illustration on the title page depicting the main events described in the pamphlet. The dialogue is between a student home from the university of Wittenberg and his peasant father: the son converts his father to Luther’s cause, and his mother consigns to the flames the family’s prized letter of indulgence. The pamphlet is anonymous.