The Baltic Battle of Books: Formation and Relocation of European Libraries in the Confessional Age (C. 1500-C. 1650) and Their Afterlife: 116 (Library of the Written Word)

This book is about the creation, relocation, and reconstruction of libraries between the late Middle Ages and the Age of Confessionalization, that is, the era of religious division and struggle in Northern Europe following the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the time, different creeds clashed with each other, but it was also a period in which the political and intellectual geography of Europe was redrawn. Centuries-old political, economic, and cultural networks fell apart and were replaced with new ones. Books and libraries were at the centre of these cultural, political, and religious transformations, frequently seized as war booties and appropriated by their new owners in distant locations.

Jonas Nordin, PhD, is Professor of Book and Library History at Lund University. His research is mainly focused on book culture and intellectual history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Gustavs Strenga, PhD, is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Greifswald and a Senior Researcher at the National Library of Latvia. The history of medieval Livonia, memory studies, remembrance of medieval heroes, ethnicity in the Middle Ages, gift giving as a historical phenomenon, and book history are his main academic interests.

Peter Sjökvist, PhD, is Associate Professor of Latin at Uppsala University and Rare Books Librarian at Uppsala University Library. His research interests are early modern occasional poetry, dissertation culture, and literary spoils of war.