Brand Luther

How an Unheralded Monk Turned His Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe–and Started the Protestant Reformation

A ground-breaking study on the 'brand' of Luther, released with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in mind. When an obscure monk named Martin Luther tacked his 'theses' on the door of the Wittenberg church in 1517, protesting corrupt practices, he was virtually unknown. Within months his ideas spread across Germany, then all of Europe; within years their author was infamous, responsible for catalysing the violent wave of religious reform that would come to be known as the Protestant Reformation and engulfing Europe in decades of bloody war. Historian Andrew Pettegree illustrates Luther's great gifts not simply as a theologian, but as a communicator - indeed, as the world's first mass-media figure; its first brand.