HOW YA GONNA KEEP 'EM DOWN ONCE THEY LEARN TO READ...:

The economic consequences of the Protestant Reformation were first brought to the academic community's attention by sociologist Max Weber. Living in Prussia, Weber noticed that Protestant cities tended to be more affluent than Catholic ones, leading him to reflect on the possible correlations between Protestantism and prosperity. 

In his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber argues the Reformation and economic success were causally linked. His thesis has been confirmed by many studies, including one by economists Sascha Becker and Ludger Woessman, who looked at data from 452 counties in Prussia from 1871 and concluded that Protestants had a significantly higher income than Catholics. 

Although the literature concurs with the crux of Weber's argument, there is some disagreement on which aspects of Protestantism are conducive to having a higher income. Weber identified two economically beneficial qualities that the austere Luther helped inspire in his followers: a tireless work ethic and an entrepreneurial spirit. 

"The ability of mental concentration," Weber wrote in The Protestant Ethic, "as well as the absolutely essential feeling of obligation to one's job, are here most often combined with a strict economy which calculates the possibility of high earnings, and a cool self-control and frugality which enormously increase performance."

Becker and Woessman settled for a different explanation. According to them, the Protestant Reformation boosted Europe's economy by improving literacy rates. For much of the Middle Ages, clergymen were the only members of society who were taught to read and write and did so in a language only they could comprehend: Latin.

This gave the Catholic Church exclusive access to Christian texts, allowing it to operate as an intermediary between man and God. Luther, aligning himself with an earlier reformer named John Wycliffe, believed religious wisdom should be accessible to everyone. To that end, he translated the New Testament into German, the same language in which he wrote his most influential work. 

So great was Luther's impact on literacy in Germany that, without him, the country's printing industry may well have died off in its infancy. In a 2016 lecture, historian Andrew Pettegree explains how the preacher's steadily growing readership helped turn his home base of Wittenberg from a sleepy, destitute town into an economic center, at least as far as the book trade was concerned. 

"Printers got an immediate return for minimum investment," Pettegree exclaims. "Luther, it very quickly became clear, was a safe bet for the printing industry." 

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