Luther also translated the Bible into German, which also helped rapidly spread his ideas given the huge recent gains in the development of the printing press (Alcock, 2002: 126), which rapidly led to further divisions. Between 1517 and 1520, Luther’s followers printed over 300,000 of his writings, and his pamphlets were read in universities and by clerics who went on to spread his ideas to even larger audiences across Germany (Philpott, 2000: 226). By the mid-16th century, Lutheranism was firmly established in northern and eastern Germany (Alcock, 2002: 127).