Jonathan Green's Printing and prophecy provides readers with a study of prophetic publications in the first century of the print trade in German-speaking regions. Beginning with Johannes Gutenberg, Green analyses works of prophecy, astrology and prognostication from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. Not simply a study of prophetic thought and beliefs, the book instead uses this literary and print genre to analyse the motives of early printers in publishing such works, considerations of printers and authors regarding the presentation of these ideas in print, as well as the significance of prognostic writings in understanding late medieval and early modern readership and society. In these purposes, the author enhances our understanding of the early print trade, early printed books themselves, the importance of prophetic publications, and of the society which consumed this prognostication.

At the outset of the book, Green asserts that the prophet is ‘first and foremost, a media phenomenon’ (p. 1), noting the transmission of the message to its intended audience as a consistent element of prophetic communication. He argues that this prophetic purpose fits nicely with the aims of early printers, both in claims to exclusive access to particular texts, as well is in the ability to disseminate that text to a wide audience.

With this conducive relationship established, Green then demonstrates that prognostic publication was already present at the birth of the print trade. This is apparent in the nineteenth-century discovery of a leaf from Sibyl's prophecy as being among the earliest of Gutenberg's printed works. Green argues that the decision to produce this work must have been strategic: the printer knew the type of material that his audience would want and would be willing to purchase. Gutenberg's decision to publish this work is seen as evidence that he anticipated the popularity that prophetic and prognostic works would retain into the early modern period. However, Green goes further, suggesting that, though other genres – such as devotional literature – may have been just as popular, Gutenberg may have seen prognostication as ‘a metaphor for print literacy’ (p. 31): just as such predictions came to the prophet directly from the divine hand, with no interceding textual antecedent, so too ‘the new books of the age of print … were made available as never before and bypassed error-prone human copyists’ (p. 32).

The book then turns to examine other early printed prognostic works, which Green uses to examine several aspects of the early print trade. Johannes Lichtenberger's Prognosticatio (1488) provides an example of the mingling of astrological predictions, prophetic sources and contemporary events. It also demonstrates how paratextual elements could be manipulated by the printer to suit his own purposes. Green argues that, though Lichtenberger saw himself as a prophet, the printer used the title page, illustrations and the colophon to emphasise certain characteristics of the work. While in his text Lichtenberger emphasised prophetic elements in his work, the title page described its astrological sources, and the colophon depicted Lichtenberger as a forest hermit. This latter was done to associate the compiler of these prophecies with Brother Reinhart, one of Lichtenberger's prophetic authorities, whose reputation is then derided in the pages following the colophon, which Green attributes to the printer. He argues that the printer deliberately undermined Lichtenberger's authority in order to de-emphasise the more dangerous prophetic claims of the work, so that the book might escape the attention of the censors and, thus, make more profit. In the first half of the sixteenth century the republication of Johann Carion's Interpretation and revelation of the true heavenly influences also demonstrates interventions into the original text by printers, as well as authors' concerns about them. Carion objected to the reprinting of his book, which combined his prognostications with elements of Lichtenberger's work, as well as those from the Sibyl prophecies. He believed that these additions diminished his reputation as a practitioner of scientific astrology.

The differing advice to readers in several prognostications also demonstrates the change in readership that occurred because of printing. Johannes Tortsch's Onus mundi, compiled in the early fifteenth century but printed in several editions between 1481 and 1522, gave readers instructions to share its contents and direct others to read the work. On the other hand, readers of Lichtenberger's Prognosticatio were told to remain silent about his predictions, drawing a distinction between his skilled and learned efforts, and the lack of ability of amateurs and those ignorant of astrology. Green argues that this demonstrates how Tortsch's work, originally compiled in manuscript in Latin, would have been intended for a largely theologically-trained audience, while Lichtenberger was very much aware that his work would be read by a lay audience whose proper role was not to spread prophecy. Lichtenberger's readers, themselves products of the nascent print revolution, were instead to reflect quietly upon his work, rather than spread it as idle chatter or gossip.

Beyond their function for authors and printers, prognostic works also said much about late medieval and early modern society. These publications represented the anxieties of the period, including apprehension about social and political structures. Though such publications speculated about impending and sometimes calamitous change, they ultimately served the purpose of reinforcing the existing political and religious order. Here paratextual elements again play a part, with dedicatory epistles reinforcing existing societal frameworks, and with concern sometimes raised over the ability of accompanying illustrations to prompt popular unrest. Green argues that, though astrological predictions were not really useful in predicting the future, they ‘responded to readers’ desires for knowledge of the future … by giving readers ways to think about and things to do with their hopes and fears’, directing these concerns ‘in a socially useful fashion’ (p. 136). This was achieved through the prospect of readers warding off predicted future disasters through their obedience to the existing political and religious authorities, as well praying for the continuance of those structures. Prophecy and prognostication provided for the stability of the social order, despite its preoccupation with imminent change.

Green concludes by asserting that prophetic tracts placed readers within a continuing narrative, collapsing ‘distinctions between past and present, text and interpretation, and author and audience’ (p. 154). In this, his study demonstrates much more than the nature of prophetic thought in the first century of print; it also provides an understanding of printers and their motivations, of the early printed texts themselves, as well as of the readership and society that read them.