The exhibit makes clear that Luther's spectacular success was in large part a propaganda phenomenon. His broadside against Catholic Church practices might have gone unnoticed were it not for the introduction a few decades earlier of a new technology: the printing press. Luther's challenge to church authority was incendiary, and German printers immediately recognized a hot property.
"As an entrepreneurial venture, they set the 95 Theses into type, printed them and reproduced them," says Rassieur. "When they saw how rapidly they were selling, they made copies and copies and copies. It went viral."
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