Protestant Reformation Rhetorical Analysis

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Josh Simpson HIS 214.01 Professor Andrew Evans 5 October 2011 Tools of Persuasion Religious reformers during the Protestant Reformation strategically employed a variety of rhetorical techniques in their literature and art in order to persuade the population into accepting and supporting their ideas about Christianity. Through the comparison of the two sects of Christianity, humor, fear, empathy, and the repetition of these themes in their works, reformers were able to successfully impact the people’s views on religion. Art is a very simple and effective way to convey a message to people especially if they do not have a mastery of the language. With this in mind the reformers created different posters, pamphlets and woodcuts but the message that they carried was the same, if you are following the teachings of Catholicism you will not know the joy of salvation and will spend all of eternity in Hell. In a woodcut pamphlet by Lucas Cranach from 1521 he compares and contrasts the life of Jesus Christ and the Pope’s actions to accurately portray the corruption that had blinded the Catholic Church. In the top left scene Christ is shown washing the feet of the poor, which is contrasted with rulers…show more content…
In another pamphlet by Lucas Cranach from 1545 he creates a hilarious picture in which two peasants are actually defecating into the Pope’s crown (Cranach, 16). Underneath is written “The pope has done to the kingdom of Christ/What is here being done to his own crown” (Wiesner, 16). This quote is a clear and unambiguous representation to how Protestants felt about the Pope and the Catholic Church at this time. To the reformers, the Pope had disregarded the teachings of Christ in such a disrespectful way that the only way to truly visually represent how they felt was through this
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