Other authors, including Ian Green and C. S. L. Davis have examined the way in which the growth of printing and wider distribution of Biblical and religious texts developed in parallel with the spread of Protestantism in Europe. This new title would seem to trace similar developments around the increasing availability of a range of other prophetic works.
Jonathan Green. Printing and Prophecy; Prognostication and Media Change 1450-1550. The University of Michigan Press. (December 15, 2011)
From the publisher: Printing and Prophecy: Prognostication and Media Change 1450-1550 examines prognostic traditions and late medieval prophetic texts in the first century of printing and their effect on the new medium of print. The many prophetic and prognostic works that followed Europe's earliest known printed book — not the Gutenberg Bible, but the Sibyl's Prophecy, printed by Gutenberg two years earlier and known today only from a single page — over the next century were perennial best sellers for many printers, and they provide the modern observer with a unique way to study the history and inner workings of the print medium.
The very popularity of these works, often published as affordable booklets, raised fears of social unrest. Printers therefore had to meet customer demand while at the same time channeling readers' reactions along approved paths. Authors were packaged—and packaged themselves—in word and image to respond to the tension, while leading figures of early modern culture such as Paracelsus, Martin Luther, and Sebastian Brant used printed prophecies for their own purposes in a rapidly changing society.
