To the Christian Nobility
To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate (1520)
Martin Luther, in German, on purpose
A pamphlet that names the shape of an argument before arguing with it, which is why it still works.
- Catch rate
- 56 / 255
- Base research
- 358
- Stat total
- 358
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
A pamphlet, not a treatise. Four thousand copies gone in a fortnight and reprinted everywhere.
It does not argue with the defence. It draws the defence — three walls — and then takes them down in order.
Thin, and it knows it. Written fast, in German, for laymen, and it left Luther holding positions he had to defend for the rest of his life.
The fastest thing in the era. German rather than Latin, addressed to the nobility rather than the faculty, and in every market town before Rome had finished reading it.
Cited for this book
August 1520, in German, addressed over the heads of the theologians to the German nobility. Its first section is the cleanest piece of argumentative architecture the Reformation produced: three walls the Romanists have drawn round themselves — that temporal power has no jurisdiction over them, that only the pope may interpret Scripture, and that only the pope may call a council — taken down in that order, the third collapsing on its own once the first two are gone.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Cobbler and the Smith | Ethics | Argument | 80 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 38 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 40 | Trumpets of Jericho | Rationality | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
| 42 | All of the Spiritual Estate | Ecclesiology | Argument | 88 | 100% | 10 |
| 44 | Taken to a Desert | Ecclesiology | Argument | 86 | 100% | 10 |
| 46 | The Second Wall | Bible | Argument | 88 | 100% | 10 |
| 48 | The Three Walls | Rationality | Argument | 90 | 100% | 10 |
| 50 | Called by an Emperor | History | Argument | 92 | 100% | 5 |
Read it: Three Walls of Straw
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in German.
“The Romanists have, with great adroitness, drawn three walls round themselves, with which they have hitherto protected themselves, so that no one could reform them…”
Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), trans. Wace & Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation (1883), public domain, elided.
“…a cobbler, a smith, a peasant, every man has the office and function of his calling, and yet all alike are consecrated priests and bishops…”
Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), trans. Wace & Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation (1883), public domain, elided.
“If a little company of pious Christian laymen were taken prisoners and carried away to a desert, and had not among them a priest consecrated by a bishop, and were there to agree to elect one of them… this man would as truly be a priest, as if all the bishops and all the Popes had consecrated him.”
Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), trans. Wace & Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation (1883), public domain, elided.
“…the most celebrated Nicene Council was neither called nor confirmed by the Bishop of Rome, but by the Emperor Constantine; and after him many other Emperors have done the same… But if the Pope alone had the power, they must all have been heretical.”
Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), trans. Wace & Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation (1883), public domain, elided.
August 1520, in German, addressed over the heads of the theologians to the German nobility.
Three walls: that temporal power has no jurisdiction over the clergy, that only the pope may interpret Scripture, and that only the pope may call a council. Taken down in that order — and the third falls on its own once the first two are gone.
The prisoners-in-a-desert electing their own priest is the whole doctrine of the priesthood of all believers in one sentence, and it is an argument, not a slogan.