Persuaded by Script: Handwriting in the Age of Print (original) (raw)
Related papers
Texting Art in the Reformation: Reading Martin Luther’s Aesthetic
Anaphora, 2017
There is an amazing breadth between what would become Roman Catholic art and Protestant art, if we may call it that for the ease of identification recognizing the non-homogeneity of religious fervor, at the time of sixteenth century reform movements. In many ways art on the aesthetic level, just like liturgy, theology and church structures, was grappling with issues of semantic control, or the lack thereof, in the conflictual environment of ideas. Two diverging trends appeared in liturgical art; one traditional, focused upon the visual perception of faith common to Orthodox and Roman Catholic heritage, and another contrary move towards a new non-visual, textual perception of faith rooted in new reforming ideas first articulated most clearly in Martin Luther. In an effort to 'control' the interpretation of sacred scripture and theological agendas Martin Luther would leave behind a heritage of an artistic aesthetic derived from the word. In the case of liturgical art, this word was not the image of Christ, though there is an obvious linkage as we shall see, but the medium of the printed and stenciled text that was meant to limit, clarify and in the end, endue certainty and sanctity through the power of its textual world; What the world of paint could not control, the world of grammar could with its structure of order-of subject, noun, verb, and preposition.
Early Reformation Literature From the Printing Shop of Mattheus Crom and Steven Mierdmans1
Nederlandsch archief voor kerkgeschiedenis, 1994
just over 450 years ago-a certain Jan Schats from Louvain was submitted to a judicial interrogation at which he was called upon to justify his religious beliefs. Together with a number of other evangelically-minded fellow townsmen he was involved in what was later to be known as the Louvain heresy trial.2 I shall be returning to this trial in what follows but I would now like to draw attention to a detail in Schats's statement. After he had been questioned about the books he owned, he had to say where he had bought one of them. From 'a stranger in Antwerp standing in the churchyard', he had originally replied. This vague answer was obviously not accepted, and on a second occasion Schats confessed the true name: Mattheus Crom.3 Together with his partner and brother-in-law Steven Mierdmans, this Antwerp printer did indeed play an important role as the purveyor of religious literature for the evangelically-minded circle in Louvain. Throughout the proceedings of the trials we encounter titles of suspicious books which appear to have come from the printing shop of Crom and Mierdmans.4 They thus occupy a solid position in the series of printers in the service of the Reformation.5 1 This article is a slightly revised version of a lecture delivered on 23 September 1993 at the symposium 'Religie in overgang. Godsdienstige beleving in de Nederlanden 1520-1565', organised on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Department of History at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. 2 C.C. de Bruin, 'Beschouwingen rondom het Leuvense ketterproces van 1543', in: Rondom het Woord, 9 (1967) pp. 249-59. 3 C.-A. Campan (éd.), Mémoires de Francisco de Enzinas, t. 1-2 (Bruxelles etc. 1862) p. 344.
Journal of the Early Book Society, 2023
This volume provides fresh insights into sermon production in specific regions, and each article concludes with a valuable bibliography of relevant primary and secondary sources. Essays focus on the transition from manuscript to print and from Catholicism to Protestantism, and show how a living faith can transcend borders, harness technology, and reach its intended audiences even during periods of profound spiritual reform. Contributors ask important questions about how medieval sermon literature circulated, why textual evidence is patchy in certain countries, and how the content, form, theological orthodoxy, and audiences of sermons evolved over time.
Napis Pismo poświęcone literaturze okolicznościowej i użytkowej
How an unheralded monk turned his small town into a center of publishing, made himself the most famous man in Europe and started the Protestant Reformation (New York: Penguin Press: 2015)]. [Unless indicated otherwise, quotations in English were translated from Polish editions]. 2 Popular imagination stores an image of Martin Luther tacking his famous thesis to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg in a gesture of protest and challenge thrown down to the institution of the Catholic Church. Many sources claim it is a mere legend which is not to be taken too literally (A. Krzemiński, "Korzenie" [Roots], in: Marcin Luter i reformacja. 500 lat protestantyzmu [Martin Luther and the Reformation. 500 years of Protestantism], Polityka. Pomocnik historyczny [Politics.
Z Badań nad Książką i Księgozbiorami Historycznymi, 2021
Over the centuries, the typographic medium and book printing responded to the political, economic, cultural, and social conditions very sensitively. The author deals with social influences on the development of book printing in Bratislava from the fifteenth century when the first printer is documented in the town. She ponders the reasons for the long absence of typographic activities in Bratislava from the late fifteenth century to the early seventeenth century. Paradoxically, the Reformation gave an impetus to the further development of book printing in Bratislava, as a Catholic printing house was established there in direct response to Reformation printing in Hungary. Therefore, the author also examines the conditions of Reformation printing to which the beginnings of publishing activities are tied in the territory of Slovakia. In the second part of the study, she focuses on Catholic Revival literature published in Bratislava in the seventeenth century, which played an important r...