Allyson F. Creasman. Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517–1648: “Printed Poison and Evil Talk.”

Abstract

Allyson F. Creasman's book studies the flow of ideas during the German Reformation from the formative years of urban reform to the confessionalized atmosphere of the Thirty Years' War. At one level, it “aims to reassess the Reformation's spread by examining how censorship impacted public understanding of reform” (p. 3). This requires close study of the publishing industry and its control in the urban environment, which Creasman does using archival materials and regional literature from the imperial cities of Augsburg and Nuremberg. But the book is more than just a case study in the history of print. Creasman, mindful of both the nature of communication in the early modern period as well as the recent concerns of Reformation historiography, defines her terms very broadly. She does not just study the printing and censorship of texts but undertakes a nuanced exploration of how these texts interacted with other forms of communication, from neighborhood rumor and communal readings to public debates and ritual action, and thereby “created a filter through which the reform message was understood” (p. 78). Rather than focus on how censorship worked (or failed to work) to place restrictions on the publication of texts or limit the free circulation of ideas (though the book does examine these practical issues), Creasman adopts a notion of censorship that makes it a dynamic element in the communication process. Censorship was not just the top-down imposition of order; it was part of a dialogue—“as much a product of public opinion as a force acting upon it” (p. 227)—that not only prescribed and enforced notions of civic order but was itself shaped by the energy of communal opinion.