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
- Not found in the wild
- 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 |
| 46 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 48 | Trumpets of Jericho | Rationality | Argument | 84 | 100% | 10 |
| 50 | All of the Spiritual Estate | Ecclesiology | Argument | 88 | 100% | 10 |
| 52 | Taken to a Desert | Ecclesiology | Argument | 86 | 100% | 10 |
| 54 | The Second Wall | Bible | Argument | 88 | 100% | 10 |
| 56 | The Three Walls | Rationality | Argument | 90 | 100% | 10 |
| 58 | Called by an Emperor | History | Argument | 92 | 100% | 5 |