Meserve, Margaret (Author)
Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 2021
Language: English
Edition Details: TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction -- Urbi et orbi -- Humanists, Printers, and Others -- Sixtus IV and his Pamphlet Wars -- Broadsides in Basel -- The Holy Face, Imprinted and in Print -- Refugee Relics -- Kissing the Papal Foot -- Brand Julius -- Conclusion
Physical Details: 456
How did Europe's oldest political institution come to grips with the disruptive new technology of print?Printing thrived after it came to Rome in the 1460s. Renaissance scholars, poets, and pilgrims in the Eternal City formed a ready market for mass-produced books. But Rome was also a capital city—seat of the Renaissance papacy, home to its bureaucracy, and a hub of international diplomacy—and print played a role in these circles, too. In Papal Bull, Margaret Meserve uncovers a critical new dimension of the history of early Italian printing by revealing how the Renaissance popes wielded print as a political tool. Over half a century of war and controversy—from approximately 1470 to 1520—the papacy and its agents deployed printed texts to potent effect, excommunicating enemies, pursuing diplomatic alliances, condemning heretics, publishing indulgences, promoting new traditions, and luring pilgrims and their money to the papal city. Early modern historians have long stressed the innovative press campaigns of the Protestant Reformers, but Meserve shows that the popes were even earlier adopters of the new technology, deploying mass communication many decades before Luther. The papacy astutely exploited the new medium to broadcast ancient claims to authority and underscore the centrality of Rome to Catholic Christendom. Drawing on a vast archive, Papal Bull reveals how the Renaissance popes used print to project an authoritarian vision of their institution and their capital city, even as critics launched blistering attacks in print that foreshadowed the media wars of the coming Reformation. Papal publishing campaigns tested longstanding principles of canon law promulgation, developed new visual and graphic vocabularies, and prompted some of Europe's first printed pamphlet wars. An exciting interdisciplinary study based on new literary, historical, and bibliographical evidence, this book will appeal to students and scholars of the Italian Renaissance, the Reformation, and the history of the book.
...MoreReview Christa Lundberg (2023) Review of "Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome". Technology and Culture (pp. 606-607).
Similar Citations
Book
Andrew Pettegree;
(2015)
Brand Luther: 1517, Printing, and the Making of the Reformation
(/p/isis/citation/CBB925632224/)
Book
Erik A. Heinrichs;
(2019)
Plague, print, and the reformation: the German reform of healing, 1473-1573
(/p/isis/citation/CBB314265731/)
Chapter
Dondi, Cristina;
(2013)
The European Printing Revolution
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001500581/)
Book
Paolo Sachet;
(2020)
Publishing for the popes : The Roman Curia and the use of printing (1527-1555)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB502414700/)
Chapter
Philippe Marion;
Natalija Majsova;
(2022)
The Edifying Structures of the Bijou Imaginary. An Investigation into Images, Rhetoric, Memory, and Politics
(/p/isis/citation/CBB898615536/)
Chapter
Sébastien Fevry;
Adeline Werry;
(2022)
The Editorial Strategy of the Bijou Collection: When Media Diversification Reinforces an Edifying Ambition
(/p/isis/citation/CBB828383161/)
Book
Piotr Tafiłowski;
(2017)
Inkunabuły zawierające treści geograficzne w zbiorach polskich. Z dziejów komunikacji społecznej i naukowej w dawnej Polsce [The Incunabula with Geographic Content in Polish Collections. A Study on the History of Scientific Communication in Fifteenth-Century Poland]
(/p/isis/citation/CBB012660221/)
Article
Drew Starling;
(2023)
“A Simple, Short, and Exact Account of the Facts”? The Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques in the Eighteenth-Century French Information Press
(/p/isis/citation/CBB072631047/)
Article
Sebouh D. Aslanian;
(2014)
Port Cities and Printers: Reflections on Early Modern Global Armenian Print Culture
(/p/isis/citation/CBB607089726/)
Book
Alexandra Hill;
(2018)
Lost Books and Printing in London, 1557–1640. An Analysis of the Stationersʼ Company Register
(/p/isis/citation/CBB397035713/)
Article
Matthew Coneys;
(2021)
Pilgrimage, Print, and Performance: Giuliano Dati’s Roman Cantari
(/p/isis/citation/CBB165446839/)
Article
Alessandra Celati;
(2018)
Contra medicos: Physicians Facing the Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Venice
(/p/isis/citation/CBB880189448/)
Article
Tarrant, Neil;
(2014)
Censoring Science in Sixteenth-Century Italy: Recent (and Not-So-Recent) Research
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001420237/)
Chapter
Johnson, Carina L.;
(2007)
Stone Gods and Counter-Reformation Knowledges
(/p/isis/citation/CBB000775020/)
Article
Kristen Windmuller-Luna;
(2015)
Guerra com a lingoa: Book Culture and Biblioclasm in the Ethiopian Jesuit Mission
(/p/isis/citation/CBB356287996/)
Article
Els Stronks;
(2019)
Curiosity, Youth, and Knowledge in the Visual and Textual Culture of the Dutch Republic
(/p/isis/citation/CBB089009139/)
Article
Jon Arrizabalaga;
(2007)
De la copie à l’édition : Francesc Argilagues et les manuscrits médicaux aux premiers temps de l’imprimerie (fin xve-début xvie siècle)
(/p/isis/citation/CBB017442302/)
Book
Rudolf Gamper;
(2017)
Joachim Vadian 1483/84–1551: Humanist, Arzt, Reformator, Politiker
(/p/isis/citation/CBB704761770/)
Book
Kittler, Friedrich;
Enns, Anthony;
(2010)
Optical media: Berlin lectures 1999
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001180070/)
Article
Vermij, Rienk;
(2010)
A Science of Signs: Aristotelian Meteorology in Reformation Germany
(/p/isis/citation/CBB001031519/)
Be the first to comment!