ABSTRACT
Though flowery and partisan, Friedrich Blume’s ebullient assessment of the effect Luther’s songs had in the sixteenth century holds true today. Luther’s songs and those of his followers did do more to spread Protestant doctrine than other media. The reason for their enormous influence did not have so much to do with divine inspiration, as Blume implied, as with the role of popular vernacular song in early modern culture and with the known powers of music as a memory and didactic tool. Luther’s songs, and the polemical and propagandistic ballads they inspired, had a greater effect on the opinions of the average people than his writings, which most of the people were unable to read, and his sermons, which few outside Saxony ever heard.
