Show that a document’s audience is a historical claim, not a guess
Three steps, the way the exam actually works: work through the lab, write down your own observations, then answer a 8-point free response. What you recorded goes to the grader with your writing, so a conclusion that does not follow from your own evidence will cost you the point — exactly as it would with a real reader.
Predict before you look
- A text written for specialists and a text written for the public differ in language, length and form before they differ in content. Name one feature you would look for to tell them apart.
- Luther was excommunicated in 1521. Write down what you currently believe the Ninety-Five Theses were arguing for — you will check that belief against the text.
Nothing to submit here — these are to think through, so the prediction below is an informed one rather than a guess.
Commit to an answer now. It is not graded and being wrong costs nothing — the point is to have something specific to reconcile against once you have the data.
Answer every prediction to unlock the lab. A sentence is enough.
Run the investigation
Predictions first
The procedure and the simulation unlock once you have committed above. Observing before predicting is how a wrong intuition survives a lab intact.
Record what you found
This is your reading of the source, not ours. The grader sees them, so your conclusions have to follow from what you actually recorded.
| Year of the Ninety-Five Theses | |
|---|---|
| Year of the Declaration of the Rights of Man | |
| Years between the two documents(Subtract the earlier year from the later one.) | years |
| The strongest phrase attacking the indulgence trade | |
| Any phrase denying papal authority — or “none found” | |
| The audience the lab names | |
| Two features of the document’s FORM that support that audience |
Answer the free response
Using the document you analyzed: (a) Quote the strongest phrase you found against the indulgence trade, and state precisely what Luther argues repentance actually is. (b) Using your “authority” cell, explain what the Theses do NOT do, and why that matters for dating the break with Rome. (c) Using the two formal features you recorded, explain how a historian infers intended audience from a document’s form rather than from its content. (d) The Theses were translated into German and printed within weeks. Explain how a document can have an effect its author did not intend, and state what this case shows about the printing press as a cause of the Reformation.
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