This volume is published as part of the series The Spread of Printing, a history of printing outside Continental Europe and Great Britain. The print edition is available as a set of eleven volumes (9789063000257).

This volume is published as part of the series The Spread of Printing, a history of printing outside Continental Europe and Great Britain. The print edition is available as a set of eleven volumes (9789063000257).

Analysis of the evolution of Icelandic society.

To many observers, folklore and book culture may appear to be opposites. Folklore, after all, involves orally circulated stories and traditions while book culture is concerned with the transmission of written texts. However, as Kevin J. Hayes points out, there are many instances where the two intersect, and exploring those intersections is the purpose of this fascinating and provocative study. Hayes shows that the acquisition of knowledge and the ownership of books have not displaced folklore but instead have given rise to new beliefs and superstitions. Some books have generated new proverbs; others have fostered their own legends. Occasionally the book has served as an important motif in folklore, and in one folk genre--the flyleaf rhyme--the book itself has become the place where folklore occurs, thus indicating a lively interaction between folk, print, and manuscript culture. The author begins by examining the tradition of the Volksbucher--cheaply printed books, often concerned with the occult, whose powers are said to transcend the written text. Hayes looks in depth at one particular Volksbuch--The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses--and proceeds, in subsequent chapters, to discuss a variety of folktales and legends, placing them within the context of book culture and the history of education. He closes with an examination of flyleaf rhymes, the little verses that book owners have inscribed in their books, and considers what they reveal about the identity of the inscribers as well as about attitudes toward book lending, book borrowing, and the circulation of knowledge. Solidly researched and venturing into areas long neglected by scholars. Folklore and Book Culture is a work that will engage not only folklorists but historians and literary scholars as well.

The Use of Hereford, a local variation of the Roman rite, was one of the diocesan liturgies of medieval England before their abolition and replacement by the Book of Common Prayer in 1549. Unlike the widespread Use of Sarum, the Use of Hereford was confined principally to its diocese, which helped to maintain its individuality until the Reformation. This study seeks to catalogue and evaluate all the known surviving sources of the Use of Hereford, with particular reference to the missals and gradual, which so far have received little attention. In addition to these a variety of other material has been examined, including a number of little-known or unknown important fragments of early Hereford service-books dismembered at the Reformation and now hidden away as binding or other scrap in libraries and record offices. This is the fullest examination of Hereford liturgical sources ever undertaken and may stimulate similar and much-needed studies of other diocesan uses, in particular Sarum and York. As well as describing in detail the various manuscript sources, the rare single edition printed Hereford texts, the missals and breviaries, are also discussed. Unlike books of the Sarum and York rites, these ’one-offs’ were never revised and reissued. In addition to the examination of these sources, William Smith discusses the possible origins of the rite and provides an analysis of the Hereford liturgical calendar, of the festa, including those of the cathedral’s patron St Ethelbert and the no less famous St Thomas Cantilupe, that helped to make Hereford use so distinctive.

The Use of Hereford, a local variation of the Roman rite, was one of the diocesan liturgies of medieval England before their abolition and replacement by the Book of Common Prayer in 1549. Unlike the widespread Use of Sarum, the Use of Hereford was confined principally to its diocese, which helped to maintain its individuality until the Reformation. This study seeks to catalogue and evaluate all the known surviving sources of the Use of Hereford, with particular reference to the missals and gradual, which so far have received little attention. In addition to these a variety of other material has been examined, including a number of little-known or unknown important fragments of early Hereford service-books dismembered at the Reformation and now hidden away as binding or other scrap in libraries and record offices.

Religious Reading in the Lutheran North opens up the doors to a part of early modern European history that has often been overlooked. In the Nordic countries, an abundance of religious literature in the vernacular was produced in the centuries following the Reformation, and reading was almost exclusively taught to children in a Lutheran Protestant setting. Literacy rates were high, and by the mid eighteenth century around ninety per cent of both men and women could read. The eight contributions to the present book investigate different aspects of religious reading in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Greenland, looking at the publication and dissemination strategies of authors and clergymen, as well as reading habits and interpretations among Scandinavian readers.