Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The Introduction argues that early modern exchanges of information were shaped by the social dynamics of face-to-face exchanges long into the age of print. It proposes to study these dynamics through the lens of an exceptional but little-known source, namely Johannes Rütiner’s Commentationes, and by bringing together the histories of information and sociability. A close reading and contextualization of Rütiner’s notes on hundreds of conversations allows us to explore what the inhabitants of a sixteenth-century town talked about, what kind of information they valued, through which channels such information reached them, and how it was then processed, shared, criticized, contradicted, and employed as a means to forge and strengthen social bonds. Zooming in on a small sixteenth-century town moreover enables us to examine what the early modern communications revolution looked like outside of the large printing centres upon which historians of communication have so far bestowed much of their attention, and to a community which did not directly partake in its novelties. At the same time, Rütiner’s notes also force us to rethink both what constituted valuable information in the sixteenth century and who was able to provide it. To this end, the introduction introduces the concept of ‘communicative capital’, and argues that such diverse content as jokes, gossip, rumours, and tales could serve as currency on the early modern marketplace of information.