ABSTRACT
The following illustrations and commentary examine some of the visual images of the peasant found in popular literature and propaganda at the time of the German Peasant War. The historian of such popular movements is often preoccupied with written source materials, understandable enough in the context of the early sixteenth century. The development of printing and the spread of literacy represent a major social and cultural phenomenon, and the waves of written polemic and propaganda which flooded Germany as the great debate on religion unwound during 1520–25 created the first genuine mass literature and mass audience of the modern period. It is all too easy, therefore, to overlook visual evidence, but we argue two reasons why it is so important.
