Newman, Jane O. “The Word Made Print: Luther's 1522 New Testament in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Representations (Summer 1985): 95-113.

In the following essay, Newman discusses the epoch-making role of printing in the dissemination of the German Bible.

In a letter written in 1556, a Reformed citizen of the Swiss town of Zug describes the events that led to the mass burning of Bibles that occurred in his town in that year.¹ The townspeople were divided, according to the letter writer, between those who read “the Gospel, the pure teaching, the word of God” with great enthusiasm for themselves, and those of the “papist” persuasion terrified to read the Holy Scripture on their own. The split had developed over the years, he explains, because local preachers, lax on the issue of lay access to the Word, had allowed vernacular New Testaments in particular to circulate among Zug's largely Catholic citizenry...