section_path: Beginnings/Spread
section_name: Spread
paragraph_text: Spread
  
  Roper argues that "the most important reason why Luther did not meet with Hus's fate was technology: the new medium of print". Luther was publishing his views in short but pungent treatises that gained unexpected popularity: he was responsible for about one-fifth of all works printed in Germany in the first third of the 16th century. German printing presses were scattered in many urban centers which prevented their control by central authorities. Statistical analysis indicates a significant correlation between the presence of a printing press in a German city and the adoption of Reformation.
  
  Reformation spread through the activities of enthusiastic preachers such as Johannes Oecolampadius (d. 1531) and Konrad Kürsner (d. 1556) in Basel, Sebastian Hofmeister (d. 1533) in Schaffhausen, and Matthäus Zell (d. 1548) and Martin Bucer (d. 1551) in Strasbourg. They were called "Evangelicals" due to their insistence on teaching in accordance with the Gospels (or Evangelion). Luther and many of his followers worked with the artist Lucas Cranach the Elder (d. 1553) who had a keen sense of visualising their message. He produced Luther's idealised portrait setting a template for further popular images printed on the covers of books. Cranach's woodcuts together with itinerant preachers' explanations helped the mainly illiterate people to understand Luther's teaching. The illustrated pamphlets were carried from place to place typically by peddlers and merchants. Laypeople started to discuss various aspects of religion in both private and public all over Germany.
  
  The self-governing free imperial cities were the first centers of the Reformation. The Evangelical preachers emphasized that many of the well-established church practices had no precedent in the Bible. They offered the Eucharist to the laity in both kinds, and denied the clerics' monopolies, which resonated with popular anti-clericalism. It was not unusual that their supporters attacked clerics and church buildings. Violent iconoclasm was common. In some cities such as Strasbourg and Ulm, the urban magistrates supported the Reformation; in the cities of the Hanseatic League the affluent middle classes enforced changes in church life. Cities located closer to the most important ideological centers of the Reformation—Wittenberg and Basel—adopted its ideas more likely than other towns. This indicates the significance either of student networks, or of neighbours who had rejected Catholicism.
  
  The sociologist Steven Pfaff underlines that "ecclesiastical and liturgical reform was not simply a religious question... since the sort of reforms demanded by Evangelicals could not be accommodated within existing institutions, prevailing customs, or established law". After their triumph, the reformers expelled their leading opponents, dissolved the monasteries and convents, secured the urban magistrates' control of the appointment of priests, and established new civic institutions. Evangelical town councils usually prohibited begging but established a common chest for poverty relief by expropriating the property of dissolved ecclesiastic institutions. The funds were used for the daily support of orphans, old people and the sick, but also for low-interest loans to the impoverished to start a business. Luther was convinced that only educated people could effectively serve both God and the community. Under his auspices, public schools and libraries were opened in many towns offering education to more children than the traditional monastic and cathedral schools.