Buchdruck und Reformation in Genf (1478-1600): Ein Überblick

Abstract

This article links profits from the rich literature in the fields of Reformation history and book-history in order to analyse the relation between printing and the Reformation in Geneva from 1478 to 1600 in a general historian’s perspective. Although various genres of religious and literary (illustrated) books have been printed for a local market since 1478, texts with evangelical  tendency have not been produced in Geneva before 1536. Therefore, the ideas of Reformation were rather introduced by evangelical preachers than by the printing press. But after that Geneva became the centre of protestant or better: Calvinist printed propaganda in French (and Latin) until the early 1560s. Because of changing political contexts – French wars of Religion and the comeback of the Duke of Savoy as a neighbour – and the emerging of reformed printing in France forced Geneva to redirect their production towards more learned and non-religious books in Latin (humanism, classical authors, science). Nether the less, the production of (Genevan) Bibles and texts of Calvin and his followers and successors did not cease.