The Breakthrough of Typographic Printing | 37their forms of communication were indeed successful. The Counter-Reforma-
tion also developed a novel form of visual politics; however, as shown by Jens
Baumgarten, it had no great effect on supporters of the Protestant faith, but
rather served to consolidate its own followers (Baumgarten 2004).
It is important not to view the dissemination of printing with merely
hierarchical-ecclesiastical intentions in mind, but to take into consideration
the printers’ economic outlook. They offered their services to Catholic rulers
as well, for instance in Spain, Portugal, France, and the Habsburg Empire,
without, however, being able to expand their markets accordingly. Although
more recent research emphasises the fact that the position of the Catholic
Church regarding the vernacular translation of the Holy Scriptures was by
no means consistent (Gilmont 1998: 473), the prohibition of vernacular
popular editions for Catholic laymen in non-reformed regions slowed down
the printing business (Eisenstein 2005: 192–99). Because of the Reformation,
the Roman Church suffered the loss of many printing locations in the Reich –
with a few exceptions, such as Cologne – which made the exertion of influence
and censorship difficult. Many printers emigrated north from Oberdeutsch-
land, causing the book market to expand and to relocate its centre.
While the expansion of print media did not automatically provoke criti-
cism of hierarchies, its central role in times of controversy was evident when
religious conflicts arose in the second half of the sixteenth century in Western
Europe. Even in France, where Reformation efforts failed, estimates reveal
about thirteen hundred printed religious texts between 1511 and 1551, with
a total circulation of around one million copies. In 1525, the Parisian theo-
logical faculty prohibited the translation of reformatory writings, but prints
from Antwerp and Geneva supplied the country with texts. Reformatory writ-
ings emerged at the same time as counter-reformatory ones, both reaching
maximum distribution in the 1540s (Higman 1996: 14–22). The religious
conflicts in France, the Eighty Years’ War of the Dutch against Spain, and the
pamphlet culture in the religiously charged English Civil War (1642–1649)
further exemplify how religious issues gave a certain dynamic to the printing
culture and vice versa (Raymond 2003: 164, 202–75).
These considerations on the role of printing during the Reformation again
highlight the fact that the media development generated clearly visible social
changes. Nonetheless, it must be emphasised that many academic theses intro-
duced in this work on the effect of media changes are somewhat far reaching
in parts, and should perhaps be understood as intellectual stimuli for future
research on related sources rather than as provable findings. It has been shown
that the verification of causal relations is difficult, in the first place because
postulated changes did not occur directly after the invention of the new
medium. For as can be seen, Gutenberg’s innovation was a milestone in a
general upheaval rather than a media revolution, its development spanning