The Role of the Printing Press in Advancing the Protestant Cause
A brief look at how three women harnessed the power of the printing press as they advanced the Protestant principle of the primacy of Scripture
With the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the cost of publishing decreased significantly, making it relatively easy for people to have their ideas published. The most common form of publishing in the 16th and 17th centuries was pamphlets because they could be mass-produced at a reasonable cost and distributed widely.[1] Access to the printing press was not limited to the academic elite, but available to anyone who could pay. This, alongside of the equalizing force of the Reformation’s emphasis on the priesthood of believers, meant that “common people had a means to influence public opinion beyond the local marketplace and tavern, independent of established authority.”[2]
Argula von Grumbach was the first woman “to harness the printing press to her cause, breaking taboo after taboo”[3] as she argued her case against the University of Ingolstadt, which was, in her opinion, unfairly punishing a young student for holding to the biblical principles of the Reformation over against official Catholic teaching.[4] Grumbach not only published her own letters, but she was so confident in the rightness of her position that she published her opponent’s responses as addendums to her letters, so that the public could judge for themselves who was correct. This confidence is best exemplified in her publication of a poem which she wrote in response to a derogatory anonymous poem that was circulating at the university.[5]
Lady Eleanor Davies likewise made use of the printing press to have her prophecies shared across England. Davies’ works were published illicitly, in that she had them printed by a printing press that was not “certified by the Stationer’s Company,” and her works were not “read and approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, or some other designated official.”[6] When she delivered her first prophecy in 1625 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, he ignored it, but Davies resolved to have it published broadly in 1633. This act of publication led to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, ordering Davies to be imprisoned in the Tower of London and for her published works to be burned.[7]
Lucy Hutchinson represents a different relationship with the printing press. As a well-respected author, Hutchinson had published a chronicle of her husband’s participation in the Civil War (1644)[8] and the first English translation of Lucretius’ The Nature of the Universe (1650), and she was one of the first British women to write a long-form poem.[9] It is this work, Order and Disorder, which demonstrates a different approach to publishing as compared to Grumbach and Davies. For Grumbach, there was no shame in having her published pamphlets bear her name. For Davies, while her prophecies were technically pseudonymous, she took great pride in signing her prophecies using creative anagrams like: “O a Sure Daniel” or “A Snare O Devil” or “Reveale O Daniel.”[10] For Lucy Hutchinson, she could have published Order and Disorder publicly because of her established reputation as an author, but because her Puritan leanings were politically dangerous, she chose not only to wait on publishing Order and Disorder for nearly twenty years,[11] but also, when she chose to publish the first five cantos in 1679, she did so anonymously.[12]
Whatever the motivation and/or result of publication, each of these women embraced the new technology of the printing press to share their writings, and these writings, despite their varied genres, demonstrate the Reformation emphasis on the primacy and unity of Scripture.
[1] “The best available evidence suggests that the cheapest pamphlets cost the equivalent of one or two pence in most currencies.” Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 159.
[2] Russell, Lay Theology in the Reformation, xiii.
[3] Matheson, A Woman’s Voice in the Reformation, 2.
[4] See Argula von Grumbach, “The Account of a Christian Woman (1523)” in Matheson, 72–91.
[5] This poem was supposedly written by a student, but was most likely written by George Hauer. Matheson, 160.
[6] Cope, Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies, xii.
[7] Ibid., xvi; Phyllis Mack also notes that “the magistrates judged that she was dangerous because she had acquired the reputation of a ‘cunning woman’ among the common people.” Phyllis Mack, “Women as Prophets during the English Civil War,” Feminist Studies 8, no. 1 (1982): 18.
[8] Lucy Hutchinson, Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. N.H. Keeble (London: Dent, 1995).
[9] Hutchinson, Order and Disorder, xii.
[10] Commenting in a postscript to the letter introducing her prophecy, Lady Eleanor explains her decision to cryptically sign her prophecy using an anagram: “To maske my name with boldnesse to unmaske Error I crave no Pardon, the manner let none despise; Dreames in times past have beene interpreted, our Fathers in divers manners have beene spoken unto, the Winde bloweth where it listeth.” Davies, “A Warning to the Dragon and All His Angels (1625),” 5.
[11] An early manuscript of the text appears to be dated to 1664, which means she probably started the work as early as 1660. Hutchinson, Order and Disorder, xvi.
[12] “Had they appeared under the signature of a regicide’s wife, she would have provoked the kind of public scrutiny, and perhaps searches of her papers, that she was anxious to avoid.” Hutchinson, xiv.