Among academics involved in the study of Northern Renaissance prints (reproducible graphic artworks), an orthodox position can be said to have emerged. This position regards Renaissance prints as passive representations of their time – documents that reliably record contemporary events, opinions, and beliefs – and therefore as an important means of accessing the popular contemporary consciousness. In contrast, pioneering studies such as those by Scribner and Moxey take a strikingly different approach, according to which Northern Renaissance prints were purposeful, active, and important shaping forces in the communities that produced them. Scribner, for example, contends that religious and political prints of the German Reformation (ca.1517-1555) functioned as popular propaganda: tools in a vigorous campaign aimed at altering people's behavior, attitudes, and beliefs.