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Formation and Relocation of European Libraries in the Confessional Age (c.1500 ̵c. 1650) and Their Afterlife
This book is about the creation, relocation, and reconstruction of libraries between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Confessionalization, that is, the era of religious division and struggle in Northern Europe following the Reformation and Counter–Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the time different creeds clashed with each other, but it was also a period when the political and intellectual geography of Europe was redrawn. Centuries–old political, economic, and cultural networks fell apart and were replaced with new ones. Books and libraries were at the centre of these cultural, political, and religious transformations, frequently taken away as war booties and appropriated by their new owners in distant locations.
The protestant reformation was critical to the efflorescence of printing in England between 1547 and 1553. Celyn David Richards explores English print culture during this turbulent period, as an official programme of reform, new censorship dynamics and increasingly sophisticated commercial relationships contributed to the trade’s rapid expansion. Edward VI’s reign saw unprecedented levels of religious print production, London’s first publishing syndicate, and a climate of protestant ascendancy which helped English print culture to make up ground on its continental counterparts.
The heightened role of religion in the public sphere can become either a source of violence or a source of reconciliation. Considering Indonesia as a pluralistic state in terms of religion despite the fact that Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, a basic question arises: Would it be possible for religion to play a pivotal role in the public sphere of Indonesian society without seeking hegemonic control of social, political, and intellectual life? This book offers positive suggestions of how religion can develop as a transformative and liberating force in Indonesian public affairs. Based on Calvin’s and Neo-Calvinist Legal Theory, this book suggests that it is only within the realm of civil society that Indonesian religion will be able to promote the ideas of democracy, tolerance, and human rights in Indonesian public affairs. In short, far from being anti-pluralist, Indonesian religion evolves as a liberating force in the life of society, nation, and state.