R. W. Scribner – författare

In this book R. W. Scribner provides the first detailed analysis of the forms of propaganda - such as illustrated broadsheets, picture books, title pages, and book illustrations - which were aimed at the illiterate and semi-literate during the Reformation, and reproduces many of the vast corpus of prints which still survive in scattered locations in Germany.Dr Scribner advances new and original interpretations of these illustrations, revealing how visual propaganda exploited popular belief and the coarser aspects of popular culture, while at the same time being a product of them. This, he suggests, explains why the Reformation appealed to the broad masses of sixteenth-century people, even though the propaganda was unable to educate them in the more complex theological aspects of the Reformation message.As well as raising important questions about the Reformation as a religious phenomenon, the book is a contribution to the understanding of early modern popular culture, and the nature of propaganda in a pre-industrial society; it is also a detailed historical study of the sixteenth-century woodcut. In develolping an interdisciplinary analysis combining the methods of iconography, semiology, sociology, and folklore, Dr Scribner presents a fruitful new approach to the study of popular mentalities. Hailed as a pioneering study of great importance on its original publication in 1981, For the Sake of Simple Folk is now available in paperback for the first time, with a new Introduction and additional chapter.'The reproduction of such a formidable body of "documentation" in the text is a major achievement . . . important and pioneering study', Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Studies in the field of popular religion have for some time been among the most innovative in social and cultural history, but until now there have been few publications providing any adequate overview for Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. This volume presents the results of recent research by younger scholars working on major aspects of this subject. The nine essays range over nearly four centuries of German history, encompassing late-medieval female piety, propaganda for radical Hussite dissent, attitudes towards the Jews, legitimation for the witchcraze on the eve of the Reformation, attempts to implement Protestant reform in German villages, Reformation attacks on popular magic and female culture, problems of defining the Reformation in small German towns, Protestant popular prophecy and formation of confessional identity, and the missionising strategies of the Counter-Reformation.

Over the past twenty years, new approaches to the history of the Reformation of the Church have radically altered our understanding of that event within its broadest social and cultural context. In this classic study R. W. Scribner provided a synthesis of the main research, with a special emphasis on the German Reformation, and presented his own interpretation of the period.Paying particular attention to the social history of the broader religious movements of the German Reformation, Scribner examined those elements of popular culture and belief which are now seen to have played a central role in shaping the development and outcome of the movements for reform in the sixteenth century. Scribner concluded that 'the Reformation', as it came to be known, was only one of a wide range of responses to the problem of religious reform and revival, and suggested that the movement as a whole was less successful than previously claimed.In the second edition of this invaluable text, C. Scott Dixon's new Introduction, supplementary chapter and bibliography continue Scribner's original lines of inquiry, and provide additional commentary on developments within German Reformation scholarship over the sixteen years since its first publication.