Contrary to the historiographical commonplace "no Reformation without print" Cultures of Communication examines media in the early modern world through the lens of the period’s religious history. Looking beyond the emergence of print, this collection of ground-breaking essays highlights the pivotal role of theology in the formation of the early modern cultures of communication. The authors assembled here urge us to understand the Reformation as a response to the perceived crisis of religious communication in late medieval Europe. In addition, they explore the novel demands placed on European media ecology by the acceleration and intensification of global interconnectedness in the early modern period. As the Christian evangelizing impulse began to propel growing numbers of Europeans outward to the Americas and Asia, theories and practices of religious communication had to be reformed to accommodate an array of new communicative constellations – across distances, languages, cultures.

1. Introduction: Cultures of Communication, Theologies of Media in Early Modern Europe and Beyond
   Christopher Wild and Ulrike Strasser
2. The Absolute Medium: Nicholas of Cusa on the Mediality of Christ
   Christian Kiening
3. Fragmentation and Presence: Reformation Debates and Cultural Theory
   Lee Palmer Wandel
4. ‘Here I Stand’: Face-to-Face Communication and Print Media in the Early Reformation
   Marcus Sandl
5. Mediated Immediacies in Thomas Müntzer’s Theology
   Helmut Puff
6. ‘Sing unto the Lord’: An Anthropology of Singing and Not-Singing in the Late Reformation Era
   Susan C. Karant-Nunn
7. Reading Images, Printing Voices: Simulation of Media and Epistemic Reflection in German Baroque Literature
   Daniel Weidner
8. Divine Messengers and Divine Messages: Angelic Media in Early Modern Hispanic America
   Andrew Redden
9. On Reading Missionary Correspondence: Jesuit Theologians on the Spiritual Benefits of a New Genre
   Markus Friedrich
10. Early Modern Translation Theories as Mission Theories: A Case Study of José de Acosta: De procuranda indorum salute (1588)
    Renate Dürr
11. Apocalyptic Times in a ‘World without End’: The Straits of Magellan around 1600
    Susanna Burghartz

Edited by Helmut Puff, Ulrike Strasser, and Christopher Wild