Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome by Margaret Meserve

Abstract

Reviewed by: Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome by Margaret Meserve Christa Lundberg (bio) Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome By Margaret Meserve. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. Pp. xii + 437. Historians of the Reformation have long emphasized the seminal role of printing in spreading Luther's critique of the papacy and galvanizing support for this cause. In associating printing with reform and innovation more generally, it has been thought that traditional religious authorities were suspicious of the new technology—hesitant to adopt it and prone to censorship of it. Margaret Meserve's Papal Bull sets out to challenge this narrative by showing how printing served the papacy in the period between Gutenberg's first publication and the posting of Luther's theses. Eight substantial, thematic chapters convincingly prove this point, highlighting the diverse publications that bolstered papal authority or propagated its message. Along the way, Meserve sheds new light on the cultural and political significance of printing and publication in this period. The titular "papal bull" is one of the many genres of printing that Meserve's book explores, alongside polemical pamphlets, guidebooks for pilgrims to Rome, devotional works, and orations to popes. Still, bulls are particularly central to Meserve's case for papal involvement in printing and for considering communicative practices before and after Gutenberg. The earlier history of these letters or orders reveals how concerns about how to communicate with a wide audience significantly precedes printing (ch. 1). One strategy of publication was to post messages on prominent doors in Rome and other places—this was considered equivalent to personal delivery of the bull. A particularly revealing and recurring challenge was giving notice of excommunication. This was a message that no target audience was interested in receiving. Therefore, it required special measures of posting in surrounding areas. As Meserve shows, printing could not remove these challenges. Instead, the new technology came to play a part within wider systems of publication. The thematic chapters of Papal Bull facilitate consultation on a variety of historical topics from the Pazzi conspiracy to the cult of the Madonna of Loreto. Meserve's method of surveying all printed materials relating to such themes is moreover productive from a book historian's point of view—particularly for considering the question of why certain texts were printed. It is often difficult to explain why a particular edition was made, but patterns emerge in [End Page 606] broad, comparative perspective. In this way, Meserve distinguishes between editions made in pursuit of patronage from others catering to a popular cult and traces collaborations between the papal chancery and various Roman printers. Book historians will also gain fresh perspectives on other, more familiar themes, as Meserve traces the emergence of a "papal" title page in the first decade of the sixteenth century (ch. 8) and discusses how printing could promote greater iconographical flux rather than stability (ch. 6). Papal Bull establishes that the papacy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries used printing with increasing frequency and for a variety of purposes. Meserve thereby extends and adds to Paolo Sachet's Publishing for the Popes (2020), which showed that the papacy pursued printing strategically in the decades after 1527. While Meserve thus contributes to challenging the view that the traditional religious authorities were hesitant to embrace printing, she nevertheless maintains that the papacy made less innovative use of printing compared to its opponents. We encounter examples of the latter throughout Papal Bull, such as the bishop of Trent who attempted to convince an unwilling Pope Sixtus IV to declare Simon of Trent a martyr in the late 1470s by launching a remarkably extensive (if ultimately unsuccessful) press campaign. Another striking use of print by papal critics is the case of two editions of faked proceedings from supposedly ongoing Church councils, one in Florence and another in Basel, produced as attempts to conjure such meetings. Meserve argues that an important reason why the papacy did not turn as eagerly to print is that it had other, more potent political tools at hand: diplomacy, legislation, and warfare. This argument reframes the problem of printing and innovation in a nonjudgmental way by...