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...American life, as they struggle to memorize a basic chronology or analyze a written document. Although we might bemoan the rise of television, video games, and "McNewspapers" that favor style over substance, such reliance upon visual information is hardly unique to our era. Editorial cartoons, posters, and pamphlets for centuries have simplified complex ideas or debates into recognizable "image bytes." Similarly, in earlier times, Roman bas-reliefs, Byzantine icons, medieval stained glass, and Renaissance frescoes conveyed intricate theological and political concepts to a largely illiterate population. Textual sources remain fundamental to the study of history, but teaching students to "read" visual primary sources can provoke their curiosity and enhance their understanding of complex issues. In addition to printed documents (i.e., maps, cartoons, engravings), visual primary sources might include sculpture, paintings, numismatics, architectural designs, and so forth. Because coins, cartoons, and buildings were often designed for mass viewing, analysis of visual primary sources not only teaches students a new skill but also allows us to view historical developments as they were presented to non-elite men and women.
Nowhere is the impact of visual imagery more evident than in the religious conflict of sixteenth-century Europe. Protestants and Catholics alike produced thousands of images designed to glorify their own position and demonize their opponents. (1) Fueled by the invention of the printing press and inexpensive paper, printers and preachers could produce broadsheets and pamphlets that even day laborers and widows could afford. This explosion of "popular" propaganda might or might not represent an accurate sampling of popular opinion in the sixteenth century. (2) It is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to accurately interpret what Everyman (and Everywoman) believed five hundred years ago, particularly about a topic at once as personal and as universal as salvation. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the plethora of cheap, accessible images fundamentally transformed the transmission of ideas. In the same way that television and the Internet revolutionized (and democratized) the acquisition of information in recent decades, pamphlets with simple line drawings expanded the distribution of new concepts more broadly.
This essay describes one method for introducing high school or college students to the Protestant Reformation. This unit can range from two to five classes, depending upon the number of texts and images utilized. The documentary evidence--both visual and textual--provides conflicting perspectives that students must analyze and explain, just as professional historians do. In addition, utilizing visual sources encourages the participation of students for whom English is not a first language as well as those who have trouble comprehending dense theological tracts. Visual sources also can promote interdisciplinary analysis (e.g., history, time arts, and religious studies). In this essay I have chosen to limit my examples to printed visual propaganda, but inclusion of hymns and songs of the Reformation would be useful too. (3) I usually begin with an observation that the Protestant Reformation might have been the first example of a multimedia ad campaign, with the same ideas presented visually, aurally, and textually. My students intuitively understand this approach, and are intrigued by the challenge of discovering similar ideas about sin and salvation in a variety of mediums. Debate about the images regularly spills into the hallway after class, and students consistently mention this unit in their final evaluations as one that taught them to think both more creatively and more analytically.
Historical Background
The Protestant Reformation is traditionally dated to October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther allegedly nailed a copy of his "95 Theses" to a church door in Wittenberg. A former Augustinian monk and a professor of theology, Luther complained...
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