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Today's teaching has been a double lecture on the Reformation & Sweden in the sixteenth century, which gave me an excuse to go into early print culture & partly explain the Protestant success by printed propaganda.
(Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Einbl. YA 296 m)
(Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Einbl. YA 296 m)
I also pointed to how Protestants connected themselves to the past, for instance by claiming Jan Hus as a martyr for their own cause, as seen here in Adriaan van Haemstede's De historien der vromer martelaren.
(Pitts theology library Pitts 1612Haem)
(Pitts theology library Pitts 1612Haem)
And it was a sheer delight to include a mention of one of my favourite satirical works, namely Sebastian Brant's Das Narrenschyff, here from a 1495 print. This poem provides great context for the polarisation of the the public polemics of the C16.
(Metropolitan Museum 30.71)
(Metropolitan Museum 30.71)
What I enjoyed the most, however, was to take the opportunity to point my students to the work on fragments that is necessitated by the Reformation. One example was this C12 fragment of an antiphonary, one of the oldest books used in Sweden.
(Riksarkivet Ant 53)
(Riksarkivet Ant 53)
If I've played my cards right, some of these students might do some work on fragments for future assignments. We shall see.
Getting into the Swedish material was also very rewarding. The Swedish priest Joen Petri Klint (d.1608) compiled a 400-page book of prodigies that he used as evidence of God's disapproval of a new liturgy in 1576.
(Linköpings stiftsbibliotek N 28 Fol, f.101)
(Linköpings stiftsbibliotek N 28 Fol, f.101)
Klint was a staunch Protestant & viewed the new liturgy of 1576 as a way to re-Catholicise Sweden. So he drew on a time-honoured tradition of cataloguing marvels to prove his point.
(Linköpings stiftsbibliotek N 28 Fol, f.124)
(Linköpings stiftsbibliotek N 28 Fol, f.124)
