Feike Dietz

: In this article I use the concept of ‘media literacy’ – generally discussed in the context of new
media – to analyse media ability and conversance in seventeenth century Catholic culture. In particular, I
focus on an untitled and anonymous Dutch composite volume which combines handwritten texts, printed
texts and images. By reconstructing the relationship between the manuscript and its printed sources, I
argue that the composite volume was the result of a meditative reading and writing process in which
fragments from the popular religious emblem book Pia Desideria (1624) and other contiguous printed
books were combined in a new multimedial product, which may serve as a means to share (media) skills
and knowledge, and to facilitate the meditation processes of future consumers. I demonstrate that
literacies now associated with new media – such as the ability to actively participate in media practices,
and to consult hypertexts – were vital to early modern Catholics who constructed their identity by using
and producing media. Download: http://www.authorship.ugent.be/article/view/791/799… (meer)