Print Culture at the Crossroads

Elizabeth Dillenburg, Ph.D. (2019, University of Minnesota) is an assistant professor of history at the Ohio State University at Newark. Howard Louthan, Ph.D. (1994, Princeton University), is director of the Center for Austrian Studies and professor of history at the University of Minnesota. His books include The Quest for Compromise and Converting Bohemia. Drew B. Thomas, Ph.D. (2018, University of St Andrews), is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin. He is the author of The Industry of Evangelism: Printing for the Reformation in Martin Luther’s Wittenberg (Brill, 2021).

List of Figures and Tables



Introduction: Towards a Literary Culture of Central Europe

 Howard Louthan



Part 1: Confessional Diversity and the Book: A Hungarian and Transylvanian Case Study

1 Hearing the Word of God

 The Aural and Symbolic Presence of Bibles in Early Hungarian-Speaking Calvinism

 Graeme Murdock



2 The Minister’s Reading List

 Religious Books in the Libraries of Transylvanian Lutheran Clergy

 Maria Crăciun



3 The Posthumous Reception of an Antitrinitarian Bishop at Home and Abroad

 The Afterlife of György Enyedi’s Explicationes

 Borbála Lovas



4 Books for Transylvanian Greek Catholics

 Confessional Printing with Cross-Confessional Sourcing

 Radu Nedici



5 Liturgical Books after the Council of Trent

 Implementation, Innovation and the Formation of Local Tradition in the Habsburg Lands

 Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux



Part 2: The Renaissance World of Central Europe

6 Making Erasmus Speak Czech

 Female Patronage and Production of the 1533 Czech Translation of the New Testament

 Jan Volek



7 Praise of Bohemian Folly

 Context and Consequences of the Histories of Brother Jan Paleček

 Martina Pranic



8 Cum imaginibus, cum iconibus

 Cataloguing Printed Images in Early Modern Libraries

 Magdalena Herman



9 Early Modern Polish Travellers Purchasing Books in Italy

 Ownership Evidence as a Source of Information

 Marianna Czapnik



10 Facing the ‘Turk’ in the Book Culture of Central Europe

 Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik



Part 3: Martin Luther and the Book

11 Reused Matrices, Adopted Iconographies and Misleading Images

 Woodcuts on the Title Pages of Luther’s Early Sermons on the Sacraments

 Grażyna Jurkowlaniec



12 The Lotter Printing Dynasty

 Michael Lotter and Reformation Printing in Magdeburg

 Drew B. Thomas



13 Mistaken Authorship

 A Study of the First Edition and Reprints of the Pamphlet Ein Mandat Jesu Christi

 Jiří Černý



14 The Dream of a Border-Crossing Bible

 A Study of Ungnad, Trubar, Vergerio, Konzul and Their Co-Workers

 Luka Ilić and Marija Wakounig



15 The Reformation, the Book, and the Clergy

 The Place of Holy Scripture in the Churches of the Duchy of Pomerania and Clerical Identity in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

 Maciej Ptaszyński



Part 4: Local Communities and the Book

16 Printing and Post-Tridentine Catholicism in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

 Magdalena Komorowska



17 Buying Bound Books in Sixteenth-Century Cracow

 Using Inventories and Bindings to Uncover a Thriving Retail Market

 Katarzyna Płaszczyńska-Herman



18 Publishing Books in Early Modern Jewish Prague

 Olga Sixtová



19 Printing of Learned Literature in Hebrew, 1510–1630

 Toward a New Understanding of Early Modern Jewish Practices of Reading

 Pavel Sládek



20 The Standard and the Exceptional in a Provincial Print Shop

 The Case of Early Modern Oels

 Maria Piasecka



Part 5: Print Culture in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe

21 Trusting Facts, Trusting People

 Approbata, Endorsements and Authoritative Knowledge in the Early Modern Jewish Book Trade

 Joshua Teplitsky



22 The (Swéerts-)Sporcks and Their Subjects

 Local and Transcultural Printing and Distribution of Heterodox Books in Eighteenth-Century Bohemia

 Veronika Čapská



23 The Circulation of Jewish Esoteric Knowledge in Manuscript and Print

 The Case of Early Modern East-Central Europe

 Agata Paluch



24 “That Little Golden Book”

 Eastern Slavic Translations of the Imitation of Christ, 1628–1799

 Liudmyla Sharipova



Epilogue: The Hand Press and Political Dissent

 Forbidden Print in Central Europe, 1800–1848

 James M. Brophy



Index