Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517-1648

Description:

"This book...focusing on censorship in the imperial cities of the German southwest during the Empire's tumultuous 'long Reformation', from the first impulses toward religious reform in the 1520s through the end of the Thirty Years' War....aims to reassess the Reformation's spread by examining how censorship impacted public understanding of reform. It reveals the networks through which ideas circulated and examines how legal controls and social pressures combined to shape religious consciousness and precipitate change. Drawing primarily on criminal court records, trial transcripts, and journals of the period, it reveals the lively mix of rumor, gossip, cheap print, and popular song circulating in the city streets, and in the process, how ordinary Germans appropriated and adapted the printed message to their own purposes. In analyzing how print and oral culture intersected to fuel popular protest and frustrate official control, the book highlights the limits of both the reformers' influence and the magistrates' authority. In this, it challenges our traditional understandings of the urban Reformation."--Introduction, p. 3.

subjects: Reformation,  Censorship,  History,  Reformation, germany,  Religious literature, history and criticism,  Freedom of information,  Germany, church history

Places: Germany

Times: 17th century,  16th century