I suspect that the introduction of moveable type to Germany greatly contributed to both witchcraft panics and anti-Jewish pogroms.
Even before the first actual, regular newspaper was published in 1604, Germany was rife with "news sheets" that printed all sorts of lurid and fantastical tales in order to increase sales. Think of modern-day tabloids or FOX News at their worst. And all those tales must be true, or else they wouldn't have been printed, right?
Some of the tales are rather amusing (like the Sankt Andreasberg cat that gave birth to 300 kittens and a goat in a single night while under the influence of a comet). But then there's a tale of a Jew who supposedly tried to "torture" blessed altar bread and, when he could not destroy it "with fire or water", he tried to "bake it into a cake". And then the dough became red, and he beheld a vision of Baby Jesus within the oven...
Such tales took on lives of their own, and helped keep all sorts of bigotries alive. Just like modern-day social media do...
(By the way, if anyone can give me some recommendations for scholarly works on the early era of mass printing, I am all ears - so far, I've mainly picked up individual anecdotes.) #printing#witchcraft#antisemitism#history
