Luther had been prompt to recognise the value for his work of the new art. He was equally keen in his appreciation of the fact that if the fight against Rome was to secure a popular support, it was necessary to reach with the teachings of the Reformers not only the limited circles of the educated, but the masses of the people. It was for this purpose that Luther, first among the leaders of the Reformation, put forth his sermons, tracts, and controversial pamphlets at once in the language of the people, and he completed his great appeal to the understanding and the moral sense of his fellow countrymen with the stupendous and magnificent achievement of the German Bible. For thousands of Germans, the first practical knowledge of the existence of the possibilities of the printing-press came to them with the sight of the sheets of the Wittenberg pamphlets or of the volumes of the Wittenberg Testament. It would doubtless have seemed to Luther a small thing in his life’s work that, while carrying on his great fight against Rome, he was also laying the foundation of the book-trade of Germany and of Europe, but this was a matter of no little moment, if only for the lasting influence of the Reformation itself. The historians of the time are certainly in substantial accord in the conclusion that the enormous impetus given to the education and active-mindedness of the people through the distribution and the eager acceptance of the writings of the Reformers, the habits then formed of buying and of reading printed matter, the incentive secured for the work of the printers and the booksellers, and the practice that came into vogue of circulating books and pamphlets by means of pedlars and colporteurs in districts far beyond the reach of the book-shops, had both an immediate and an abiding effect upon the reading habits of the German people and did much to bring about the development of the publishing and bookselling business in Germany. Luther’s life covered the sixty-three years between 1483 and 1546. At the time of his birth, the printing-press had been in operation for a third of a century. When, in 1517, he printed, in Wittenberg, his first book (a collection of sermons on the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer), the production of printed books was still an unfamiliar art. The principal German centres of the new publishing trade were Basel, Frankfort, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. In the North of Germany, much less had been done, although, for some years, there had been presses in Cologne, and a beginning had been made in Leipzig. It was the Reformation and the superior intellectual activity of the Protestants that transferred the literary and publishing preponderance from South to North Germany, a preponderance that through the succeeding centuries has continued and has increased. The list of Luther’s works is not a long one, and is made up in great part of pamphlets. His chief writings may be briefly summarised as follows: