ABSTRACT
What weight should we give the polemical songs of the Reformation? How important were they, really, to the dramatic spread of Luther’s teachings across early modern Germany? And what role did they actually play in subverting the religious authority of the Roman Catholic Church? Decisive answers to these questions are difficult, if not impossible, to find. We cannot interrogate witnesses from the time as to what finally convinced them to turn from Catholic teaching and adopt the Reformation. It can sometimes be a challenge even to decide whether a particular believer adhered to Catholic or Lutheran teachings. As Gerald Strauss observed in his Luther’s House of Learning, even when a city was nominally Evangelical, the daily practices and beliefs of its people were not always that different from those in ‘Catholic’ cities in the sixteenth century. The propaganda of the time did divide into two clear camps, however. Pamphlets, woodcuts and sermons made perfectly clear that there was a correct belief and an incorrect, even Antichristian belief. Likewise, polemical songs drew distinct lines between good Christians and their enemies. While most propaganda of the day disappeared within months or years, the songs of the Reformation proved to be long-lived. Many of them are still in use today in Christian churches, with the original words, with translations, or in contrafacta.1
