Religious Subcultures and Reading Culture

Abstract

For religious subcultures, the reading of religious books was of great importance, even for Roman Catholics, renowned for their ritual-mindedness and the prevailing limitations in terms of religious reading for laypeople. This article aims to reveal the extent to which the status and role of a subculture affected the printing history and reception of religious books. The Post-Reformation Low Countries – split into the South, where the Catholics were a dominant culture, and the Dutch Republic in the North, where they were a subculture – provides an excellent case study. A very popular meditation book serves as the source for the study, namely Sondaechs Schoole (Sunday school) (1623).