Historical milestones are alluring. They invite us to view history as a series of complex social, political, and linguistic events, inter alia, that result in one dramatic and unprecedented instance of change. In his most recent monograph, Joachim Knape, professor of rhetoric at the University of Tübingen, argues that April 18, 1521 exemplifies such a watershed moment: when Martin Luther, standing before the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, publicly refused to recant his polemical writings against the papacy.

The first hundred pages of the book provide social and political context, situating Luther's arrival at the imperial assembly within the broader setting of late medieval religious culture and patterns of dissent. Special attention is given to figures such as Girolamo Savonarola, John Wycliffe, and Jan Hus. Thereafter, the author delineates rhetorical maneuverings from the papal legate Girolamo Aleandro (or Aleander), Luther himself, and finally Emperor Charles V. As Knape demonstrates midway through the work, Luther's audacious response and refusal to submit before established authorities not only allowed the Reformation to survive but also established a principle of protest (“das Prinzip Protest”) that has come to define modernity itself.

The Lutheran episode at Worms is well-known to historians of the Protestant Reformation and early modern period. And in this regard, the intellectual history traced by Knape covers familiar ground. More unorthodox, if appealing for a nonacademic audience, is the book's framing of Luther's journey around the dual themes of “protest” and “modernity.” This may leave some academic readers slightly uneasy, as the thorny problem of what “modernity” can mean is given rather broad strokes. Having said this, scholars interested in the immediate social and rhetorical engagements of Luther at Worms—including the importance of print culture and humanism to the early evangelical movement—will find refreshing perspective in Knape's study.