Radical Protestant Propaganda of the Thirty Years' War

support to Sweden’s intervention in the Thirty Years’ War: this is attested to by broadsheets
in which Luther is depicted alongside the Swedish King and the Saxon Elector Johann Georg
I. The audience is reminded of the reformer’s virtue and of his fight against the abuses of a
corrupt Catholic Church. The propagandists’ intention is to give the audience a sense of
belonging to a Protestant tradition of virtue and of being engaged in a battle supported by
God. Like the early Protestants of the sixteenth century they, too, face the forces of the anti-
Christ represented by the Roman Catholic Church. The reoccurrence of Luther’s image in the
propaganda of the Schmalkaldic Wars and the Thirty Years’ War endowed the Protestant
struggle with a sense of continuity: the figure of Luther reminded the audience that they
were engaged in a long-term battle against a deadly enemy, and that they must follow
Luther’s example and remain steadfast. In addition, the association with Luther of the
defenders of the Protestant faith, including Johann Friedrich of Saxony, Johann Georg I of
Saxony, and Gustavus Adolphus, was a method used time and again by propagandists to
convince the audience to believe that they belonged to the righteous side of the battle
which was supported by God. Continuity and, indeed, repetition were also important
features of Reformation propaganda.
Second, while the leaders of the Protestants were made to seem synonymous with piety,
constancy and morality, representatives of Catholicism were deliberately associated with
worldliness and moral corruption. This harsh image of the enemy is particularly prevalent in
propaganda of the first Schmalkaldic War, as well as in the later Thirty Years’ War, when
battles are given eschatological meaning: they are portrayed as part of the final contest
between good and evil, God and the Devil. The Catholics are depicted as those who wish to
pervert the true faith, as subjects of the anti-Christ incarnate, the Pope, and as being
engaged in diabolical attempts to exterminate Protestantism.
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