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Department of History

Term 2 Week 9: Reformations

This week we look more closely at the role the press and other forms of communication played in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. We also begin to consider the question of censorship, which came to the fore during the Reformation period.

Seminar Questions

  • How important was print in the spread of heterodox ideas in Italy (compared to other parts of Europe)?
  • Evaluate the effect of the Catholic Reformation on the Italian print market.
  • How important were Reformation ideas in spurring the development of control mechanisms for print in Italy?
  • What kinds of mechanisms were developed and how effective were they?

Essential Reading

Further Reading

  • Edoardo Barbieri, “Tradition and change in the spiritual literature of the Cinquecento,” in Gigliola Fragnito (ed.), Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2001), 111-33.
  • Sara Mathews-Grieco, “Pedagogical Prints: Moralizing Broadsheets and Wayward Women in Counter Reformation Italy”, in Géraldine Johnson and Sara Matthews Grieco (eds.), Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge, 1997), 61-87.
  • Christopher Black, The Italian Inquisition (New Haven, 2009), chapter 7.
  • Ugo Rozzo and Silvana Seidel Menchi, "The Book and the Reformation in Italy," in J.-F. Gilmont (ed.), Reformation and the Book (Aldershot, UK, 1998)
  • Anne Jacobson Schutte, "The lettere volgari and the crisis of evangelism in Italy," Renaissance Quarterly 28, no. 4 (1975): 639 - 688.
  • Massimo Petta, "Books and Devotion in Milan (1570-1590)", in Bridging the Gaps: Sources, Methodology and Approaches to Religion in History, ed. Joaquin Carvalho (Pisa, 2008).
  • Rose Marie San Juan, "Corruptible Bodies and Contaminating Technologies: Jesuit Devotional Print and the 1656 Plague in Naples," in Claire L. Carlin (ed.) Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe (London, 2005), 107-123.
  • Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540 - 1605 (Princeton, NJ, 1977).
  • Paul F. Grendler, "Venice, science, and the Index of Prohibited Books," in O. Gingerich (ed.), The nature of scientific discovery (Washington D.C., 1975), 335 - 347.
  • Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (London, 1980).
  • Andrea Del Col (ed.), Domenico Scandella, Known as Mennochio: His Trials Before the Inquisition (1583-1599), translated by John & Anne C. Tedeschi (Tempe, AZ, 1997).
  • John J. Martin, Venice's hidden enemies: Italian heretics in a Renaissance city (Berkeley, 1993).
  • Kevin M.Stevens, "Vincenzo Girardone and the Popular Press in Counter-Reformation Milan: A Case Study (1570)," Sixteenth Century Journal 26, no. 3 (1995): 639 - 59.
  • Sara Mathews-Grieco, "Persuasive Pictures: Didactic Prints and the Construction of the Social Identity of Women in Sixteenth-Century Italy," in Letizia Panizza (ed.), Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society (Oxford, 2000), pp. 285- 314
  • Ugo Rozzo, "Italian literature on the Index," in Gigliola Fragnito (ed.), Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2001), 194-222.
  • Conor Fahy, "The Index Librorum Prohibitorum and the Venetian Printing Industry in the Sixteenth Century,"Italian Studies 35 (1980): 52 - 61.
  • Gigliola Fragnito, Proibito capire. La Chiesa e il volgare nella prima eta moderna (Bologna, 2005).
  • John Tedeschi, "Florentine Documents for a History of the Index of Prohibited Books" in J.A. Tedeschi (ed.),The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghampton, N.Y. 1991).
  • Giorgio Caravale, "Forbidding Prayer in Italy and Spain: Censorship and Devotional Literature in the Sixteenth Century. Current Issues and Future Research," in M.J. Vega, J. Weiss and C. Esteve (eds), Reading and Censorship in Early Modern Europe (Barcelona, 2010), 57-78.

Comparative Reading

  • Steven Ozment, “Pamphlet Literature of the German Reformation,” Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research, Edited by Steven Ozment (St. Louis, 1982)
  • Miriam Usher Chrisman, Lay Culture, Learned Culture. Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1490-1599 (New Haven, 1982).
  • Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550 - 1640 (Cambridge:, 1991).
  • Mark Edwards, Printing, Propaganda and Martin Luther (Berkeley, CA, 1994).
  • Andrew Pettegree, The Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge, 2005).
  • Robert Scribner, For the Sake of the Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation, new ed. (Oxford, 1994).
  • Francis Robinson, ‘Technology and Religious Change: Islam and the Impact of Print’, Mod. Asian Studies, XXVII (1993).

Web Resources