Allyson Creasman's new book offers a fresh look at the dynamics of religious change in the early modern city. By digging deeply into the archival records of Augsburg, Creasman takes us beyond generalities and out of the churches—into the streets, taverns, and bookshops where religious ideas intertwined with community life and political order.

The book takes a broad view of censorship, encompassing controls of speech and song as well as print. This perspective enables the author to consider communication in its varied forms, offering new insights into the shifting interplay between oral and written, “high” and “low” culture. Creasman persuasively challenges the presentism of much historical discussion of censorship. In her view, early modern censorship involved negotiation between government and community about the standards for orderly public discourse, rather than a tyrannical suppression of freedom.

Notions of censorship in the Reformation era have often been associated with such easy targets as the papal Index of Prohibited Books. And of course, an older brand of scholarship painted Luther and his followers as heroes of free expression, bravely facing repressive authorities. As Creasman points out, however, all early modern governments viewed censorship as part of their duty to protect the public—from harmful ideas as well as harmful acts. Creasman finds that in many ways citizens agreed with them, whether Protestant or not.

Creasman's study focuses mainly on the Imperial city of Augsburg, whose rich archives enable her to trace the flow of ideas through government attempts to control them. After an overview of censorship law in the Holy Roman Empire, the chapters move largely chronologically, from the early days of the Reformation, through reactions to the Interim of 1548 and the religious peace of 1555, the crisis sparked by introduction of the new Gregorian calendar in the 1580s, and finally the Thirty Years’ War. At the same time, there is a thematic progression from investigating the general strategies of authorities and citizens to dissecting their responses to the press of events.

Creasman argues that through all the shifting religious composition of governing bodies, the central goal of censorship was an attempt to promote civic peace and communal consensus. Thus Protestant Nuremberg could prosecute the authors and printer of an anti-papal pamphlet, even though it delighted Martin Luther. In Augsburg, which became an officially biconfessional city by mid-century, authorities had to strike an especially tricky balance. The Lutheran majority was inclined to suspect unequal religious treatment from the Catholic-dominated government, despite its claims of neutrality. And for all its censorship efforts, religious polemic and conflict intensified.

Creasman's most remarkable findings emerge from her detailed case studies of incidents in which authors, printers, singers, sellers, and others fell afoul of the censorship laws. By following trails and networks among manuscript texts, printed works, and unruly speech and song, she shows how misleading it can be to focus on print alone. Ideas flowed in many directions and were shaped by many individuals of little fame. Particularly revealing are the instances she uncovers in which authors or printers engaged in self-censorship, internalizing the standards they expected the city to apply. Often enough they guessed wrong and generated arrest records that provide Creasman with valuable evidence. The vagueness of the standards, along with inconsistent enforcement, made for a large gray area—with room for interplay and negotiation between citizens’ conceptions of good order and those of the authorities.

I must mention a couple of blemishes, though they do not seriously detract from the book's value. I was taken aback to read, after citation of estimated literacy rates of about 30 percent in urban areas and 4–5 percent overall, that scholars combining urban and rural literacy rates could arrive at an estimate of one in forty-three (for those who do the math, 2.3 percent). Consulting the source, I find the latter figure is actually an estimate of access to Luther's writings based on publication data—something Creasman leaves rather unclear. In a later chapter, I was startled by a casual mention of Augsburg's banning of certain Lutheran hymns. This was surprising not in itself, but because the ban is not discussed anywhere else. It seems highly relevant to the prior extended treatment of censorship and confessional relations (where people were being prosecuted for singing other songs). I would have liked to learn more about it.

Quibbles aside, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of communication in the early modern city. Creasman's cases provide a fascinating look at how citizens interacted with their governors, with each other, and with conflicting religious ideas. She analyzes these engagements with much intelligence and insight. Historians of the Reformation have been learning not to assume a simple trickling down of the new teachings to a passive audience. Creasman offers strong evidence, from the ground up, for a more realistic social history of ideas.