INTRODUCTION
This article tells the story of two German weather books that were published a combined seventy-seven times from 1505 to 1605 and whose editions bear traces of the cultural hallmarks of sixteenth-century German lands.Footnote 1 The tale begins in the culturally influential city of Augsburg and extends to all of the early German centers of printing. The artistic influences of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) shape an early chapter of the narrative. A decisive episode takes place in Wittenberg, where the books’ relationship to Lutheran teachings was established. The story concludes during the high point of the era of religious confessionalization. These notable places, individuals, and trends are linked here by their connections to the content and marketing of these weather books. The books provided broad audiences with guidance for observing the weather and they infused popular culture with learned knowledge about nature. Their commercial success and wide circulation offer a sweeping view of the significance of natural observation of the weather across German-speaking society throughout the sixteenth century.
The books’ numerous editions evince their commercial success.Footnote 2 The Wetterbüchlein (Weather booklet) was printed twenty-two times from 1505 to 1549 with only minor alterations in its content. The Bauern Practica (Peasants’ practica) was printed fifty-five times from 1512 to the first years of the seventeenth century, and, although it added content over the decades, the original textual material from its earliest editions was included in every subsequent printing. Book printing was a business and the production of a book involved an up-front investment by the printer who published it. If books did not sell well enough to inspire confidence for future marketability, then they were not reprinted. These books were winning products for those earning a living from their production.
In addition to their many editions, the books also had wide circulation. Since the books were printed in the small quarto format, printers relied on selling many copies to be profitable; the print run of any edition would have easily numbered over one thousand copies.Footnote 3 In the first wave of their production from 1505 to the mid-1520s, the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein were typically around eight folios in length. A booklet of this size might have sold for as little as a quarter of a laborer's daily wage.Footnote 4 Even as longer versions of the Bauern Practica appeared after 1530, reaching to a length of around forty-eight folios by midcentury, the books always remained in an accessible quarto format with a simple production quality. The seventy-seven known editions of the two books suggest that there was a strong market for them in sixteenth-century German lands. Their format and production in great quantities indicate that a large audience accessed them.Footnote 5
While it is difficult to conclusively ascertain precisely who viewed these books, their content suggests that they reached a popular audience. I use the term popular in this article as Alison G. Stewart does, in referring to printed media that “had the broadest possible audience, one that spanned various classes and sectors of society.”Footnote 6 The books were directed, as stated in the long title of the Wetterbüchlein, to “anyone who is learned or unlearned.”Footnote 7 Their subject matter of the weather was relevant to everyone.Footnote 8 They were vernacular books written in the common language of the day.Footnote 9 They were also affordable and their small size made them easy to carry and use on the move. After 1530, revisions to new editions of the Bauern Practica made them even more accessible to unlearned and semiliterate audiences. These changes included added mnemonic devices for learning the book's content, increased visual material, rhyming couplets for ease of oral transmission and memorization, and the inclusion of other practical tools. Handwritten annotations in nine extant copies of the books suggest that people did actually apply content from the books to their daily lives.Footnote 10 The lack of marginal notes in most surviving copies of these ephemeral books does little to disprove that contemporaries actively used them, since so few copies remain and the ones that would have been used by common people in the wear and tear of daily life are the least likely to be preserved for posterity.Footnote 11
How do the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica, as popular media, relate to popular culture? Dating at least back to the work of Weber and Durkheim in the early twentieth century, theorists of early modern European society have developed a myriad of formulations to account for divisions in society as well as elements that unified it.Footnote 12 On the one hand, scholars have recognized numerous divisions in society, such as the distinction drawn in the Wetterbüchlein itself between learned and unlearned people.Footnote 13 On the other hand, despite those divisions, within society “a relatively unified ‘culture’ was formed.”Footnote 14 Peter Burke accounts for cultural unity—while also setting its limits—by dividing early modern society into elite and common social groups as well as “great” and “little” cultural traditions.Footnote 15 He argues that common people only participated in the little tradition, or popular culture, while elites participated in both cultural traditions.Footnote 16 Thus, while he acknowledges that “broadsides and chap-books seem to have been read by rich and poor, educated and uneducated,” Burke sees this as an example of elites participating in popular culture rather than an instance of common people participating in something that spanned his great and little traditions.Footnote 17
I contend, however, that the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica connected elite and common people, uniting them in a shared popular culture that spanned society's divisions.Footnote 18 Specifically, the books made a path for people from across society to participate in natural observation together, and offered their audiences guided instructions for gaining knowledge about the weather through natural observation.Footnote 19 This article focuses on the act of observation as it was represented rhetorically and visually in the two books. In the sixteenth century, a new printed genre of learned astronomical publications bearing the name observationes created “a bridge from the small circles formed by generational chains of teachers and pupils to a wider astronomical community.”Footnote 20 The Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein facilitated an even broader popularization of formerly esoteric learned methods for natural observation. Like the learned observationes, the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein presented a special type of observation that was “not simply an act of observing but an act guided by a rule, protocol, or code of behavior.”Footnote 21 These books offered their audiences methods that would enable them to transform common experiences into learned observation.Footnote 22
Printers successfully marketed the books by appealing to their accessibility. The figure of the peasant was used to exemplify that the books were for everyone. As depicted in these books, peasants actively participated in the study of nature and the production of natural knowledge. Historians of science have begun to broaden their scope of investigation, now including contributions “from the margins” when considering the production of knowledge.Footnote 23 New studies no longer see knowledge creation as just the work of elite scholars, but trace how artisans, merchants, and people from around the globe created knowledge.Footnote 24 Along with giving attention to a broader range of human actors, such scholarship often emphasizes the ways that objects were instrumental in the production of knowledge.Footnote 25 This study builds on both of those tendencies by exploring how the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica depicted German peasants joining in processes of knowledge creation by making use of the physical books themselves. Peasants have not previously been included in studies of the production of knowledge, but these sixteenth-century books broaden the view of how extensively learned instruction for observing nature permeated society—making participation possible for peasants.
The representations of peasants in the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica also offer a novel perspective within scholarship on Renaissance art, where considerably greater attention has been paid to them. Scholars have carefully traced treatments of peasants in the works of notable Northern European artists such as Dürer, Sebald Beham (1500–50), and Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1525/30–1569). Scholars have also analyzed common depictions of peasants as grotesque and engaged in bawdy behavior, debating whether these portrayals are pejorative, neutral, or were intended to be viewed in multiple ways.Footnote 26 This scholarship offers insights into how potentially satirical, ironic, and disparaging depictions of peasants might have reflected social hierarchy, class divisions, urban disdain for rural culture, and even historical imagination. Another theme that scholars have identified, particularly in the work of Breugel, is the depiction of “peasant labor and leisure.”Footnote 27 These neutral or positive portrayals from the second half of the sixteenth century show peasants diligently at work or enjoying respite from their efforts.Footnote 28 Often, in those later depictions as in earlier ones, they were shown in landscape scenes that evoke a connection between peasants and the natural world and firmly establish the peasant as an object of study.Footnote 29 Larry Silver teases out these connotations in asserting that Dürer's interest in studying the peasant arose from “that wide-ranging interest in capturing the fullness of all humanity and nature.”Footnote 30 In all of these manifestations, the artist passively observes peasants as if they were part of the natural world.
The peasants in the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein, however, reveal a distinct trajectory of the peasant image. As depicted in these books, peasants are not merely part of nature; they actively participate in the study of nature and the production of natural knowledge. With the idea of popular culture as something that spanned divisions between common and elite, one can recognize the possibility that peasants were, at times, integrated into a shared culture with elites, rather than always relegated to the outside and to the passive position of being observed. In the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica, the peasant naturalist becomes the figure of common men and women employing the practice of guided observation. The books promised that anyone could produce true knowledge of nature by following the established techniques of learned observers.Footnote 31 The Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein show that ties existed between learned Renaissance thought, vernacular printing, and popular culture in sixteenth-century German lands. After an initial overview of the textual content of the books, this article surveys the print history of the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica during three major eras of their production: 1505–29, 1530–49, and 1550–1605.Footnote 32
NATURAL WEATHER: THE TEXTUAL CONTENT OF THE BOOKS
The Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica taught common people how to observe nature and gain knowledge about the weather. A Bavarian astronomer named Leonhard Reynmann (fl. ca. 1504–25) wrote the Wetterbüchlein in 1505.Footnote 33 The only clues about Reynmann's biography come from this book and the series of other astrological books he authored.Footnote 34 In 1504, Reynmann wrote Die auslegung vnd bedeütung der Siben grossen Coniunctionen (The interpretation and meaning of the seven great conjunctions), which he dedicated to Count Wolfgang I of Oettingen (1456–1522).Footnote 35 It evidently earned the count's favor, as Reynmann also dedicated the Wetterbüchlein to him and reported in its preface that the book was carried out at the count's request.Footnote 36 Through the early 1520s, when his record ends, Reynmann wrote other notable astrological works that were printed in Nuremberg.Footnote 37 The author of the Bauern Practica is unknown, but the text appears to have originated from Upper Germany in Bavaria or Austria around 1480.Footnote 38 It was first printed in 1512, several years after the first edition of the Wetterbüchlein. While the text of the Bauern Practica had circulated in manuscript form for decades prior to being printed, Reynmann did not borrow text from manuscript copies of the Bauern Practica in his Wetterbüchlein. Although the two books entered the print market in the early sixteenth century with related subject matter, they contained entirely distinct textual content. In a short dedication at the beginning of the Wetterbüchlein, Reynmann juxtaposed his work with “other peasants’ rules,” indicating that he was aware of either the Bauern Practica or other texts similar to it and thought his book would appeal to audiences also familiar with those.Footnote 39
Fifteenth-century astrometeorology heavily shaped each of these books. During that era, astrologers commonly predicted the weather based on the influence of planets and stars using a system that Ptolemy (ca. 90–168 CE) developed in detail, but which scholars also refined in the Middle Ages.Footnote 40 For instance, Leonhard Reynmann assembled the content of the Wetterbüchlein primarily from Guido Bonatti's (d. ca. 1300) Book of Astronomy (printed 1491) and Firminus de Bellavalle's (fl. 1338–45) On Atmospheric Change (printed 1485).Footnote 41 Moreover, he attributed parts of his book to the Arab polymaths Al-Kindi (ca. 801–73) and Haly Abenragel (ʿAlī Ibn Abī l-Rijāl; d. after 1037/38) and additionally cited Gerard of Cremona (ca. 1114–87), Alain de Lille (ca. 1128–1202), and Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200–80), as well as his own contemporary, Johannes Lichtenberger (d. 1503).Footnote 42 All of these scholars operated within an Aristotelian cosmology of the earth at the center of a closed universe. According to Aristotle (384–322 BCE), the four elements in the sublunary realm were subject to celestial influences.Footnote 43 In both the Wetterbüchlein and the Bauern Practica, the influence of the heavens on matter below the moon—including the weather—was accepted as a part of nature.Footnote 44
The long title of the Wetterbüchlein succinctly characterizes what its content offered and for whom. The title reads: “Weather Booklet. Of true knowledge of the weather. So that anyone who is learned or unlearned, through entirely natural signs, may really and thoroughly know and recognize the variation of the weather. Drawn from and based on the rules of the highly renowned astrologers and additionally reinforced through daily experience.”Footnote 45 The title identifies “true knowledge” as the book's product. More precisely, the title presents a path to gaining knowledge of the weather. The book offered its audience—“anyone who is learned or unlearned”—techniques for comprehensibly observing natural signs. In other words, it provided a guide to natural observation so that anyone could discern the information contained in nature about the weather. Learned astrologers are listed as the source of this information, with their rules transmitted through the book itself. The book promised its users the opportunity to employ proven methods of natural observation that had been well established within learned circles.Footnote 46
The text of the Wetterbüchlein comprises thirteen short chapters describing observable natural phenomena and what they indicated about the weather. Chapter 1 addresses circles that are sometimes visible around the sun, moon, or stars.Footnote 47 Depending on the number and color of the circles, they portended clear weather or precipitation. Other chapters explain how to predict weather based on the appearance of the sunrise, sunset, clouds, rainbows, winds, and storms.Footnote 48 Chapter 7 explicitly incorporates astrology by highlighting specific celestial configurations as particularly significant for making weather predictions.Footnote 49 In chapter 8, “Of Knowledge of the Weather from the New and Full Moon,” Reynmann echoes Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos in explaining that if the moon shines brightly for the three days before a new or full moon it means nice weather, while a dark moon indicates stormy weather.Footnote 50 The book concludes with a peasants’ rule of rhyming couplets filled with numerous meteorological interpretations of mundane events, such as dogs eating grass which portended imminent rain.Footnote 51 The Wetterbüchlein, therefore, catalogues natural events in the skies and on the ground that were viewed as significant for predicting the weather.
The text of the Bauern Practica similarly compiles a variety of techniques for making predictions based on natural observation. The Bauern Practica presents weather observation on certain days, particularly during Christmastime, as a means of augury for predicting future weather and a variety of other events during the upcoming year.Footnote 52 The book opens with the pronouncement, “The wise and clever masters and stargazers have found how one may see and realize on holy Christmas about the outcome of the weather for the whole year.”Footnote 53 The book lists what sunshine during the day and wind at night during the twelve days of Christmas portended for the following year.Footnote 54 It also notes astrologically significant days throughout the year, such as Saint Urban's Day on May 25, which was believed to indicate whether or not the wine harvest would be fruitful.Footnote 55 Finally, the Bauern Practica also guided readers in interpreting the appearance of the new moon and its significance for the weather.Footnote 56 Thus, the Bauern Practica, like the Wetterbüchlein, offered its audience guidance for how to observe nature in a way that would provide knowledge about the weather.
The books transmitted methods for natural observation from learned circles to broader audiences.Footnote 57 This guided observation functioned according to what Lorraine Daston has defined as “the ontology of scientific observation: how expert observation discerns and stabilizes scientific objects for a community of researchers.”Footnote 58 In this case, the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica identified specific observable features in nature and brought their significance into focus for a popular audience. With access to these books, people received programmatic instructions for joining the community of those who knew how to read nature for knowledge about the weather. The two books promised that anyone could participate in expert observation of the select natural phenomena highlighted within them. With a view of the textual content of the books, it is now possible to trace how that content was marketed and presented in their numerous editions throughout the sixteenth century.
ALBRECHT DÜRER AND THE FASHIONING OF THE PEASANT IMAGE, 1505–29
This section traces the paratextual presentations, especially the title woodcuts, of the Wetterbüchlein and the Bauern Practica in their first wave of publication from 1505 to 1529.Footnote 59 During these years, printers carefully coordinated woodcut images with the textual content that offered learned guidance to a popular audience. Although it seems fitting that peasants would adorn a book titled Bauern Practica, that pairing only coalesced over time. Initially, the books featured images of the learned guides, not the audience. The extant editions of the two books reveal the process by which printers landed on the peasant as the dominant visual representative of the Bauern Practica and, eventually, of the Wetterbüchlein as well. The peasant image accompanying the text of the Bauern Practica offered a model of common people using the information contained in the book. How the peasant was fashioned in the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein owed more to Albrecht Dürer than to anyone else. His portrayals of peasants in everyday life proved to be a fitting match for printers seeking to depict the accessibility of their books’ content.
The first Wetterbüchlein was most likely published in 1505 by the printer Hanns Froschauer (d. 1523) in Augsburg.Footnote 60 The commercial success of the book began in earnest in 1510 when another four editions were printed, three in Augsburg and one in Munich.Footnote 61 In 1511 and 1512, multiple new editions were printed in Augsburg and one was printed in Erfurt. The Wetterbüchlein remained marketable, with another four editions printed in Augsburg through 1515. Its commercial success was surpassed, however, even in this first wave of publications, by the Bauern Practica.Footnote 62 In 1512, Johann Sittich (d. ca. 1515) published the first edition of the Bauern Practica in Augsburg and it was printed four additional times there through 1518, as well as a total of nine other times in Munich, Erfurt, Strasbourg, Leipzig, Cologne, and Nuremberg through the early 1520s.Footnote 63 The late 1520s saw a gap in the production of both books. In 1530, they returned with new editions and a second wave of marketability.
In the first wave of editions, the printers of the Wetterbüchlein and the Bauern Practica synchronized the textual and visual features of the books. Words and images combined to convey guidance for natural observation. The woodcuts of the earliest editions of the Wetterbüchlein and the Bauern Practica depict the learned producers of the books’ content. Three of the four 1510 editions of the Wetterbüchlein feature woodcuts on the title page and each of them depict a learned man or men in scholarly robes.Footnote 64 These figures represent members of the learned circles whose methods for natural observation were made available in the book itself. The title page of one of these 1510 editions, printed by Johann Otmar (d. ca. 1516), is particularly worthy of attention (fig. 1).Footnote 65 It shows a scholar in his study.Footnote 66 He is dressed in robes and sits with his gaze fixed upon an armillary sphere, which he holds in his hand. This pose highlights the art of astronomy as a source of the information contained within the book's pages. On the desk beside him sits a large open book. Rolling terrain and mountains below a starry sky are visible through a vast open window. The woodcut was made by the notable Augsburg artist Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473–1531), whose initials, “HB,” are visible on the side of the desk.Footnote 67 The title woodcut had appeared two years earlier on the cover of a satirical prognostication printed in Augsburg by Erhard Oeglin (ca. 1470–1520).Footnote 68 Oeglin was a close acquaintance and occasional collaborator of Otmar's and was likely his connection to the woodcut.Footnote 69 The woodcut itself is not explicitly satirical, making it applicable for use in a variety of printed works related to astronomy.Footnote 70
Figure 1. Title page, Uon warer erkantnũs des wetters, Reynmann, 1510a. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Rar. 1494, fol. 1r (VD16 R 1624).
The image implies that the Wetterbüchlein were the output of a scholar who combined technical expertise with attention to the natural world. Otmar's printing house used the same woodcut in two subsequent editions of the work, suggesting that its representation of the Wetterbüchlein was a commercial success.Footnote 71 Otmar's second edition of the Wetterbüchlein, likely printed in 1512, also contains another woodcut at the conclusion of the book; it portrayed a learned man in robes standing outside charting the positions of the heavens with an astrolabe.Footnote 72 A partially visible armillary sphere also sits on the ground in the bottom left corner of the picture. This second woodcut presented another image of the exemplary scholar observing nature.Footnote 73
The early success of the Wetterbüchlein in Augsburg, including the marketing of the book as an accessible guide to natural observation from learned scholars, was a catalyst for the initial publication of the Bauern Practica. The Augsburg printer Johann Sittich produced the first printed edition of the Bauern Practica in 1512. Up to and during that year, four different printers in Augsburg and Munich had printed editions of the Wetterbüchlein and most of them had printed multiple editions of it. Sittich was not among their number. Sittich, however, found textual content that he could market to the same audiences who were making the Wetterbüchlein a profitable book for his Augsburg colleagues in the printing industry. He used the text of the Bauern Practica, a manuscript that had previously only circulated by hand copy, as the exemplar for a new publication. In his preparation of the text, Sittich made minimal alterations to it.Footnote 74 To the existing title, which he copied directly from the manuscript, he added the introductory words, “In this booklet is found and recognized.”Footnote 75 He likewise copied the rest of the text within the book directly from the manuscript.
For his title image, Sittich used a large, high-quality woodcut with a striking resemblance to Burgkmair's The Astronomer, which Otmar had used for his Wetterbüchlein (fig. 2). In Sittich's woodcut, which features detailed shading and elaborate ornamentation, there appears, once again, a robed scholar sitting in his study. This time an armillary sphere hangs from the ceiling, suspended below an ornate cluster of grapes. The scholar sits on a throne-like chair and holds open a book; as he reads, he actively follows along with his finger or, perhaps, annotates the book. His gaze is indefinite and may be directed at the book, the armillary sphere before him, or past them both to the view from the window, which again features a view of the landscape. Visible in the distance are level and mountainous terrains, trees, possibly a river or a road, and above them all the clouds, stars, and moon. Various other books litter the study, giving the impression of an active work space. In using a woodcut with similar content to Otmar's title woodcut for the Wetterbüchlein, Sittich chose to also frame the Bauern Practica as the work of learned men. He visually depicted the “wise and clever masters and stargazers” credited on the title page of the Bauern Practica as the sources of the book's content.Footnote 76 The earliest editions of the Wetterbüchlein and the Bauern Practica, therefore, emphasized the learned sources of the books’ content in their visual displays.
Figure 2. Title page, Jn dysem byechlein wirt gefunden vnd verstanden der pauren Lyessen vnd Regel, ca. 1512. Herzog August Bibliothek, A: 16.4 Astron. (2), fol. 1r (VD16 B 795).
Starting in 1513, a different trendsetting Augsburg printer, Johann Schönsperger the Younger (ca. 1480–1543), employed a new marketing strategy for the Bauern Practica. In the title woodcut, he replaced the learned producer of the text with a depiction of the book's popular audience (fig. 3). Schönsperger had already printed two editions of the Wetterbüchlein before he printed his first Bauern Practica with this innovation. For this edition, he used a generic border around a small woodcut showing two peasants, a man and a woman. Both members of the couple stand outside and are gesturing to the heavens, where the moon, stars, and sun are all visible. The image portrays peasants applying the rules for learned observation found in the booklet. The new image was so commercially successful that Schönsperger used it on the title page of the Bauern Practica for three different editions.Footnote 77 Schönsperger was an able marketer of the Wetterbüchlein and the Bauern Practica; he printed eight editions of the two works altogether, more than any other printer before 1530. He also successfully printed both works simultaneously between 1513 and 1518. Schönsperger's pioneering use of peasant imagery quickly caught on with other printers, who made portrayals of peasants the dominant representation of the Bauern Practica. Only slightly later would peasants also adorn the Wetterbüchlein.
Figure 3. Title page, Jn disem biechlein wirt gefunden der pauren Practick, 1513. Herzog August Bibliothek, A: 253.1 Quod. (19), fol. 1r (VD16 ZV 1124).
Schönsperger's title page featuring peasants looking up at the sky incorporated visual elements that had circulated since the 1490s. Printed scenes depicting people gesturing toward the sun, moon, and stars reflected a broad interest in celestial observation in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German lands.Footnote 78 For example, a small woodcut accompanying a sermon on Luke 21 in an anonymous 1497 postil book depicts Jesus directing his disciples’ gaze to the skies (fig. 4).Footnote 79 This scene offers a visual example of guided observation. Here Jesus is shown teaching his disciples, and subsequent Christians through the Gospel of Luke, how to observe the heavens and meaningfully read what they convey about the last days. Guided observation of the skies was satirized in chapter 65 of Sebastian Brant's (1458–1521) Das Narrenschiff (The ship of fools), first published in Basel in 1494 with woodcuts produced by Albrecht Dürer (fig. 5).Footnote 80 By showing the fool ironically guiding a learned man's observation of the skies, this woodcut inverted the transmission of knowledge from learned to unlearned people for humorous effect.Footnote 81 This image in the Narrenschiff and the one in the postil offer examples from the 1490s of scenes where people look up at the skies. The Bauern Practica would later match the structure of these scenes but show peasants as the ones observing the heavens.
Figure 4. Hie hebt sich an das ewangelibuch, 1497. Woodcut. Herzog August Bibliothek, A: 11.6 Theol., fol. 3v (ISTC ie00086000).
Figure 5. Sebastian Brant. Das Narrenschiff, chapter 65, 1494. Woodcut. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Rar. 121, fol. 81v (BSB-Ink B-816).
The visual features and characteristics of the peasants who populated this type of scene in the Bauern Practica also derived from artistic representations in the 1490s. Dürer was particularly responsible for fashioning the appearance of the peasants who adorned the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein. When Dürer turned his attention to peasants in a pioneering series of drawings and engravings in the 1490s, he portrayed them in their lifelike qualities, free from grotesque or distorted features. A drawing from the mid-1490s, Rustic Couple and Three Peasants, features a couple gesturing toward the sky and a separate scene of three peasants talking with one another (fig. 6).Footnote 82 Dürer may have produced the drawing in preparation for his engraving, Three Peasants in Conversation, which features many of the same elements as the three peasants on the left of the drawing (fig. 7).Footnote 83 This drawing and engraving are representative of Dürer's work on peasants in the 1490s, which portrayed common men and women in a neutral way and engaged in mundane activities.
Figure 6. Albrecht Dürer. Rustic Couple and Three Peasants, 1496. Drawing. © Kupferstichkabinett. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (KdZ 4270).
Figure 7. Albrecht Dürer. Three Peasants in Conversation, ca. 1497. Kulturhistorischen Museum Magdeburg (Gr.53.59).
It was precisely this depiction of the peasant as a normal, everyday person that came to animate the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein. In some instances, the peasants in the woodcuts of these books were derived from Dürer's original creations. His influential work on peasants was widely duplicated in the early sixteenth century. The engraving Three Peasants in Conversation was copied at least fifteen different times by contemporary artists, including as an etching by Augsburg's Daniel Hopfer (ca. 1470–1536).Footnote 84 The three peasants were also featured on the covers of the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein starting with an edition of the Bauern Practica published in Cologne around 1518 (fig. 8).Footnote 85 In this woodcut, the peasants are placed into the familiar structure of stars, moon, and sun above observers, including a middle figure gesturing to the heavenly bodies with an extended arm, which was later added to complete the scene.
Figure 8. Title page, Jn desem boechgelyn wyrt gefunden der Buren Practick, ca. 1518. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, Bg III 791, fol. 1r (VD16 B 833).
Not every peasant portrayed in editions of the Bauern Practica or Wetterbüchlein was a direct copy from Dürer, but his realistic fashioning of peasants as innocuous men and women in the 1490s established the look that the peasants in these two books maintained throughout the sixteenth century. The disproportionate, drunk, defecating, or otherwise coarse peasants frequently portrayed in the sixteenth century by artists including Beham and Bruegel are nowhere to be found in these two books.Footnote 86 Disparaging depictions of peasants would not have fulfilled the function of the peasant in the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein, which was to exemplify the accessibility of the books’ content for a broad audience. Dürer's 1490s peasants supplied the books’ early producers with models of simple people who turned out to be commercially successful representatives of the books’ users. Significantly, the peasants in the two books included women as well as men, offering a rare Renaissance portrayal of women participating in natural observation and the production of knowledge.Footnote 87
Over the rest of the sixteenth century, creators of new editions of the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica would add further nuance to the role of the peasant in the books, but not until after a pause in production from the mid-1520s. The exact reasons for the lull in new editions are difficult to know for certain.Footnote 88 One possibility is that the market for astrological works was crowded by publications focused on the great conjunctions that began in 1524, pushing out books like the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica that were equally applicable to any year. Indeed, in 1523 Leonhard Reynmann wrote a new book for that occasion entitled Practica vber die grossen vnd manigfeltigen Coniunction der Planeten die im̃ jar M.D.XXiiij (Practica about the great and manifold conjunctions of the planets which appear in the year 1524).Footnote 89 Another possibility is that the Peasants’ War of 1525 somehow restricted the market or heightened the risk for printers to create a book for peasants. The biggest shift in German printing during these years, though, was the emergence of Martin Luther (1483–1546) as the most prolific author of the day.Footnote 90 The features of evangelical printing in the 1520s—such as the rapid circulation of a text via local reprints, the stark increase in vernacular printing, and the use of illustrations to reach semiliterate audiences—shaped the market in which new editions of the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein would have to compete.Footnote 91 In the 1520s, Luther irrevocably changed the German print market. It is very significant, therefore, that when new editions of the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein reemerged in 1530, one of the books had received an update in Wittenberg.
WITTENBERG AND THE SECOND WAVE OF NEW EDITIONS, 1530–49
Wittenberg was a small, provincial town with a young university when Martin Luther became famous and made it the home of a new evangelical movement. The town's development as a center of printing aided its influence throughout German lands.Footnote 92 On the back of the introduction of the religious pamphlet, Wittenberg printers trumped established order in the German book trade, and the town rose to the top of all German centers of book production.Footnote 93 Over the course of the entire sixteenth century, more books were produced in Wittenberg than in any other city in German lands.Footnote 94 The practice of rapidly reprinting marketable books from Wittenberg in new cities further amplified the cultural impact of publications that originated there.Footnote 95 It was into this altered world of German print that the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein reemerged with new editions in 1530. In the 1530s and 1540s, the Wetterbüchlein saw its last print run while the Bauern Practica would continue to be reprinted throughout the rest of the century.
In these new editions, the books displayed strong continuity with editions from the first wave of their publication, in both their textual content and paratextual elements. The books continued to offer guidance on how to discern the weather through natural observation. The image of the peasant was still used to emphasize the accessibility of the books. In the 1530s, peasants began to appear on the title pages of the Wetterbüchlein as well as the Bauern Practica. A woodcut created by Hans Burgkmair showing a peasant and the four elements was featured on a 1530 Wetterbüchlein.Footnote 96 Other editions of the Wetterbüchlein feature a title woodcut with another adaptation of two of the peasants from Dürer's Three Peasants in Conversation (fig. 9).Footnote 97 In this woodcut, the familiar peasants are placed in a setting that combines natural and human-made features with the heavens, mountains, vegetation, and houses all visible together. In the scene, two peasants look at each other as one gestures upward, suggesting that they are in conversation about what is observable in the heavens. The woodcut presented the Wetterbüchlein as giving its audience the ability to observe nature and discern its significance for themselves where they lived. The picture showed that anyone could gain useful knowledge from the content within the book.
Figure 9. Title page, Wetterbüchlein vonn warer erkantnuß des wetters, Reynmann, 1538. SLUB Dresden / Digital Collections / Meteor.224, fol. 1r (VD16 R 1638).
Some title woodcuts during these years depicted the use of books even more explicitly. One title woodcut of a Bauern Practica displays the common scene of two peasants outside under the skies with one gesturing upward (fig. 10). Rather than standing, however, one of the two men in the scene is sitting on a log, using a stump as a lectern for an open book, presumably the Bauern Practica itself. The seated man resembles one of Dürer's three peasants, who can be identified by his hat and clothing, which are unique to this figure among Dürer's art and earlier Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein woodcuts. In this scene, however, in addition to watching the sky, the man has been given another task. He has become the teacher and stepped into the role previously attributed to the learned man.Footnote 98 His right hand is placed on the open book in a similar pose as the scholar in his study that Johann Sittich used as the title woodcut for the very first printed Bauern Practica (fig. 2). In the second wave of editions of the Bauern Practica and the Wetterbüchlein, the peasant became the guide to learned observation of the weather. With access to the Bauern Practica, he could now join the scholar as a learned observer of nature and transform the outdoors into his own study.Footnote 99 This image of the outdoor peasant posed as a scholar in his study represents a popularization of learned knowledge—which is exactly what the books offered their audiences.
Figure 10. Title page, Bauren Practica / oder Wetter Büchlin, ca. 1540. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Rar. 1942#Beibd.3, fol. 1r (VD16 B 816).
While both books were marketed as being accessible for everyone, only the Bauern Practica was actually revised to be more accessible to popular audiences. Notably, this revision came from the hands of Wittenberg printer Georg Rhau (1488–1548) and also served to synchronize the promotion of popular natural observation with Martin Luther's evangelical theology.Footnote 100 The new 1530 Wittenberg edition of the Bauern Practica directly confronted the compatibility between evangelical beliefs and the book's instructions for gaining knowledge of the weather through natural observation. In these years, “Lutheran reformers were by no means united in their assessment of the value of natural knowledge.”Footnote 101 Martin Luther occasionally expressed skepticism of natural divination based on astrology.Footnote 102 That view, however, was not the only one that emanated out of Wittenberg. Luther's closest colleague, Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), held a very favorable opinion of the usefulness of the study of nature, including the art of astrology. Fourteen years Luther's junior, Melanchthon came to the University of Wittenberg in 1518 as a professor of Greek and was a central figure of the evangelical movement for the rest of his life. His most notable legacy within Lutheranism is as the leading author of foundational theological creeds of the religion, including the 1530 Augsburg Confession. In the sixteenth century, Melanchthon also successfully reformed education in German lands, earning him the designation of Praeceptor Germaniae (Teacher of Germany).Footnote 103 He propagated a distinctly Lutheran natural philosophy that emphasized the providence of God.Footnote 104 Even before he published famous pronouncements of his views on the subject later in the decade, features of Melanchthon's natural philosophy were on full display in the 1530 Wittenberg Bauern Practica. The Bauern Practica actually served as an opportune vehicle for spreading his ideas about the study of nature.
Careful attention to the relational dynamics within Luther's inner circle in Wittenberg reveals a crucial component of the cultural context of the 1530 Wittenberg edition of the Bauern Practica. Although Luther occasionally ribbed Melanchthon for his interest in astrology around the dinner table and rehearsed some common critiques of astrology in his 1527 preface to a new edition of the prophecies of Johannes Lichtenberger, he did not censor the production of popular astrological publication in his hometown.Footnote 105 The charismatic Luther was at the center of deep emotional ties that bound together his closest co-laborers in the evangelical movement.Footnote 106 He maintained tight control over operations in Wittenberg, including print production. As Melchior Lotter (ca. 1490–1544) learned the hard way in 1525 when he was forced to move his printing business out of Wittenberg, Luther had ultimate leverage over his printers by the mere fact that he could choose to stop sending them work.Footnote 107 The printer of the 1530 Bauern Practica, Georg Rhau, had a completely different experience with Luther.Footnote 108 A professional teacher of music before he successfully claimed his place in the burgeoning world of Wittenberg print production in 1523, Rhau maintained a close friendship with Luther throughout the rest of their lives. They shared a love for music and Rhau was a frequent guest at Luther's house for nights of music with friends, including Melanchthon.Footnote 109 Rhau applied his expertise in music to his work as a printer, creating a niche market for himself with the production of music books.Footnote 110 He also displayed creativity and originality with works on nature, including a successful book entitled Ein newes Pflanzbüchlein (A new plant booklet), which in 1529 became the first published book on gardening and was reprinted an additional ten times in numerous cities.Footnote 111 Rhau was a talented and trendsetting printer. In his hands, the Bauern Practica received an update with astute attention to current market conditions for books on nature and a theological basis from the inner sanctum of Wittenberg.
A new foreword to the Bauern Practica, appearing for the first time in Rhau's 1530 edition, artfully combined clever marketing for the book, pastoral admonition, and a justification for the study of nature.Footnote 112 The harmony between the content of this text and Melanchthon's subsequent writings about natural philosophy supports Gustav Hellmann's suggestion that Melanchthon contributed to the production of this edition, even though it remained entirely anonymous.Footnote 113 Melanchthon viewed nature as reflective of God's providential design and, therefore, useful for learning about God.Footnote 114 Since it was created by God, nature was also seen as a means for learning from God. The 1530 foreword to the Bauern Practica makes this very argument. It reads: “It was and is a common proverb: It must be a good friend who warns one of harm. But the bearer of a good and happy message is also worthy of reward.”Footnote 115 After putting the reader into a favorable disposition with this uncontroversial truism about friendly behavior, the author draws a weighty conclusion from its general principle. The foreword continues that all practicas and prophecies—in this context a clear reference to the content of the book itself—can be sources of such good or bad news, in addition to the “written revelation of the Holy Spirit.”Footnote 116 The author lists specifically what these extrabiblical sources include: the marvelous course of the heavens, the view of the planets and other stars, and the foundation of long, skillful experience.Footnote 117 Citing astrology and experience—or, learned natural observation over time—as means of predicting the future, the author affirms the formula previously advanced by Reynmann in the Wetterbüchlein.Footnote 118 The foreword continues that from observation of nature one can discover “future good fortune and misfortune, storms and thunderstorms” and either give good news or true warnings.Footnote 119 Ultimately, the good news and warnings have a spiritual purpose—helping others “to fear, love, and trust God the almighty.”Footnote 120
Melanchthon echoed this appeal to piety in his 1536 defense of astrology against Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's (1463–94) formidable critiques from the late fifteenth century. In his preface to Johannes Schöner's (1477–1547) Tabulae Astronomicae Resolutae (1536), Melanchthon argues: “From the stars’ positions many things may be revealed about bodily health, about talents and temperaments, about many misfortunes in life, stormy weather, and changes in republics. But most of all, contemplation and attention to such matters is conducive to prudent behavior. The Christian religion neither objects to this opinion, nor do sacred writings damn such predictions, for they occupy the same part of Physics as do the predictions of medical doctors … therefore, it is both pious to understand God's works and to observe the forces imparted to them.”Footnote 121 The foreword of the 1530 Bauern Practica aligns perfectly with this statement from Melanchthon. It offers tangible instructions for how one could piously use the information contained in the book. The author of the foreword goes so far as to assert that proper Christian love orders one to use the book and the work “of the naturalistic and artful astrologer” contained within it, and then to tell others the good or bad news.Footnote 122 The news would facilitate further piety in the hearer. If a good, fruitful year is on the horizon, the news could help one avoid pride and false security, stay in the fear of God, and have true hope.Footnote 123 If an unfruitful year with thunderstorms, famine, pestilence, and war is predicted, then one should not despair like unbelievers, but should trust in God's loving-kindness and pray to the Lord Jesus Christ, confess sin, and hope for grace.Footnote 124 The admonition to pray for grace mirrors the emphasis on God's providence that was central to Melanchthon's natural philosophy. God is not portrayed as being limited by the stars. Repentance and appeals to God's loving-kindness reflected confidence that God had the power to overrule the natural influences of the heavens.
Just as the new 1530 foreword contained a Lutheran—albeit, via Melanchthon—endorsement of the utility of natural observation for common people, Georg Rhau's updates to the Bauern Practica made the book even more practical to use. The foreword contains a concluding passage extolling the form of the book as “simple for everyone to read.”Footnote 125 It also advertises that the “Common Practica” was good from year to year, until the end of the world.Footnote 126 With this line of thought, the printer was clearly positioning the book as an alternative or supplement to annual prognostications, suggesting that he believed that people who purchased those books would also be interested in this one. The author also emphasizes the book's accessibility by noting that while only experts could read the meaning of the course of the stars, everyone can observe the weather during Christmastime.Footnote 127 Here the invitation to observe nature and to participate in the construction of natural knowledge is offered to all.
In a version of the book that saw four new editions in 1530, Rhau reworked the original content of the Bauern Practica with supplemental sections and gave it a new title. These changes reached new heights in making the Bauern Practica accessible to more people. The title of this new version of the Bauern Practica was “Common Practica or Prophecy of the Old Wise Men. From Year to Year Always True.”Footnote 128 In these editions, the content of the original manuscript text and earlier printed editions are faithfully reproduced, but have been changed from prose to rhyming couplets.Footnote 129 Furthermore, in addition to the foreword, Rhau added several other new sections that substantially lengthened the work as a whole. This informational content included: when the four seasons begin and end; a Cisio Janus for aiding memorization of the holy days in each month; a table based on astrology for determining the best times for bloodletting; sections on the four elements and four complexions; a section on the four winds; and regimens for each of the twelve months.
The changes and additional content augmented the original presentation of the Bauern Practica as a book of practical use for a general audience. It was packaged in a way that gave the book the broadest possible public. The rhyming couplets made the original content of the Bauern Practica easier to follow when heard aloud and easier to memorize. The new sections in the book contained information to aid people in keeping track of the calendar throughout the year and organize their everyday routines accordingly. This was practical information for people who wanted to order their behavior according to astrological influences and desired the means for tracing natural cycles with precision. It also served to transmit Lutheran theology.
Rhau was also the printer responsible for one final alteration in the Bauern Practica that had a lasting legacy. In 1533 he published another edition of the work, keeping the content from the “Common Practica” in place, but gave it a new title. For the rest of the century, the Bauern Practica was predominantly known as the Bawern Practica oder Wetter Büchlin (Peasants’ practica or Weather booklet), a title that Rhau was the first to attach to the Bauern Practica.Footnote 130 It did not borrow any content from Reynmann's Wetterbüchlein, but it did usurp his title. In that edition, Rhau also attributed the Bauern Practica, for the first time, to Albertus Magnus, Al-Kindi, Haly Abenragel, and Ptolemy, further associating it with the learned origins of the Wetterbüchlein.Footnote 131 Indeed, at the beginning of the 1530s the Bauern Practica and Reynmann's Wetterbüchlein were still on parallel trajectories and competing in the same print markets.
The Wetterbüchlein was printed seven times in the 1530s, with most of the editions concentrated in the earliest years of the decade, starting with the reemergence of new editions of the Wetterbüchlein and the Bauern Practica in 1530. The Bauern Practica was also printed seven times in the 1530s. In the 1540s, however, the intertwined print history of the two books parted ways for good. The Wetterbüchlein was printed only two last times in that decade, while the Bauern Practica was printed another five times on its way to continued marketability in the second half of the sixteenth century. Unlike the updated version of the Bauern Practica, in the 1530s the Wetterbüchlein remained unchanged apart from two modifications to the title page: the aforementioned inclusion of woodcuts depicting peasants (fig. 9) and the addition of the name of author Leonhard Reynmann, which had previously been known only from the dedicatory preface.Footnote 132 Only in its final printing did the Wetterbüchlein receive an update somewhat comparable to what Rhau did with the Bauern Practica.
In Dortmund in 1549, the physician Tarquinius Schnellenberg (d. 1561) integrated the material from the original Wetterbüchlein into a work he called Ein newes Wetterbüchlein (A new weather booklet) in which he added new sections on medicine, as in the 1530 Bauern Practica, addressing topics such as the four elements and bloodletting.Footnote 133 At that time, Schnellenberg's printer, Melchior Soter (fl. 1544–51), ran the first and only printing shop in the city.Footnote 134 A new foreword written by Schnellenberg made the case that the Wetterbüchlein was useful for practicing medicine and emphasized the astrological and natural bases of the book. Schnellenberg echoed the views of Melanchthon, explaining that astrology was a gift from God.Footnote 135 He explicitly placed astrology into a natural framework over which God was named sovereign.Footnote 136 As in the text from Melanchthon cited above, Schnellenberg drew a link between weather and the field of medicine through astrology. Despite duplicating parts of the successful formula of the Bauern Practica, Schnellenberg's new Wetterbüchlein was not reprinted.Footnote 137 For the rest of the century, only the title of Leonhard Reynmann's book, not its content, would continue to be reproduced.
THE BAUERN PRACTICA IN THE CONFESSIONAL AGE, 1550–1605
From 1550 through the first years of the seventeenth century, an additional twenty-seven editions of the Bauern Practica were printed in German lands. The book was printed consistently in the 1550s, 1560s, 1570s, and 1580s, with peaks in the early 1560s and late 1570s. In the 1590s production stopped, only to see a resurgence around the turn of the century. Confessional consolidation and standardization marked German lands during these decades.Footnote 138 Although the Bauern Practica did not have explicit confessional markers, it was already embedded in Lutheran culture. During these years, the book was published primarily, but not exclusively, in Lutheran cities.Footnote 139 The center of production for new editions of the Bauern Practica shifted to Frankfurt am Main, a locus of book distribution due to the annual book fair there.Footnote 140 In these years, new editions of the work were commonly printed with some variation of Georg Rhau's title Bawern Practica oder Wetter Büchlin; these generally featured all the content he added to the original work, as well as more sections that contained further practical information and aids for observing nature.Footnote 141
The Bauern Practica had great consistency throughout the entire sixteenth century. Besides preserving the original textual content of the 1512 edition in every new edition, the portrayal of learned information passed to the hands of common people remained steady. As the book developed, its new content made it accessible to and useful for increasingly broad audiences. The use of the image of the peasant to represent the book's practicality was also amplified as new editions incorporated more woodcuts throughout its pages. New images matched new content that supplied aids for intelligently observing nature. The following overview and images are drawn from a typical edition for the era, published in Frankfurt am Main around 1560 by Weigand Han (ca. 1526–62).Footnote 142 Not every subsequent edition had all the elements described below, but this edition is quite complete.Footnote 143
In the text and in diagrams, the Bauern Practica provided aids for keeping track of the calendar and the movements of the planets and stars.Footnote 144 This information based on learned knowledge presented numerous ways for anyone to independently determine astrological influences throughout the year and throughout the day. The Cisio Janus, a clever mnemonic device, allowed people to memorize the number of days in each month and the church calendar as short poems for every month in rhyming couplets. For instance, January's poem is thirty-one words long and the individual words of each line fall on the holy days of the month. January's opening couplet contains eleven words, “(1)Jesus (2)the (3)Child (4)was (5)circumcised / (6)Three (7)Kings (8)of (9)Orient (10)came (11)riding.”Footnote 145 These two lines convey that January 1 is the day on the liturgical calendar for celebrating the circumcision of Jesus eight days after his birth, and that January 6 is Epiphany, which is called Drei Königs Tag (Three Kings’ Day) in German. Knowing the calendar was vital for keeping track of astrologically significant days of the year, and the Cisio Janus made it easy to commit to memory. It was also a feature of the book particularly well suited for verbal transmission from a reader to semiliterate audiences of the book.
The book also contained a chart for calculating the cycle of the moon and several sections explaining which planets and stars were influential during various times of the year and what activities should be done or avoided accordingly. In one chart (fig. 11), scenes from the four seasons are shown with accompanying text that contains the following information for each season: its wind, its zodiac signs, its months, its humor, its element, its temperature and wetness, and its part of the day.Footnote 146 So, summer has the east wind Euros; the zodiac signs Cancer, Leo, and Virgo; the months of June, July, and August; the choleric humor, or yellow bile; its element is fire; it is warm and dry; and its part of the day is sunrise.Footnote 147 All of this content highlights a process of increasingly refined and accessible presentations within the Bauern Practica of the harmony between natural knowledge and daily life in all of its seasonal varieties. By 1560, a single page could visibly render the comprehensive framework for making sense of observed nature that had always underlain the Bauern Practica.
Figure 11. Henricus von Uri. Bawren Practica / Oder Wetterbüchlin, ca. 1560. Woodcut. Zentralbibliothek Zürich: AW 6056, fol. 38v (VD16 B 822).
In these later editions of the Bauern Practica, the image of the peasant continued to function as it had before, modeling the skillful observation of nature by common people. In fact, in these editions the peasant image was used even more widely than before and in specific new contexts. Whereas earlier title woodcuts showed peasants observing the skies and even teaching out of the Bauern Practica, the peasant was put to more varied tasks in illustrations throughout the pages of these later editions. For instance, numerous woodcuts depicting peasants at work under the influence of the stars complemented textual content prescribing monthly activities. In Weinmonat (an archaic synonym of Oktober), to take one example, a small woodcut depicts men harvesting and crushing grapes and then storing the juice in barrels (fig. 12).Footnote 148 The astrological sign for the month, Scorpio, is also pictured in the scene of preparing wine. As in earlier depictions of peasants in the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica, the peasants seen here are not satirical figures, but instead illustrate a bridge between natural knowledge of the cosmos and everyday life.
Figure 12. Henricus von Uri. Bawren Practica / Oder Wetterbüchlin, ca. 1560. Woodcut. Zentralbibliothek Zürich: AW 6056, fol. 9v (VD16 B 822).
In one particularly marketable feature of the Bauern Practica in the second half of the sixteenth century, the peasant image is put to an even more practical use. The Bauern Practica included instructions for making a sundial with a straw and one's left hand. The accompanying title for the section explains that it was “for farmers, messengers, sailors, merchants, and everyone who journeys over water or land.”Footnote 149 Keeping track of the hour of the day would allow a person to apply the information in the book about the different influences of planets throughout the day. A wealthy person might own a pocket sundial such as the one created in 1599 by Paul Reinmann (d. 1608) of Nuremberg (fig. 13). For everyone else, if they had access to a Bauern Practica, a straw would suffice. This feature of the book was appealing enough to warrant space on the title page of an edition published around 1600.Footnote 150 With this knowledge of how to use one's hand as a clock, a person could stay connected to the cosmos however remotely they wandered. A detailed image demonstrated how to hold the straw under one's thumb and across the palm with numbers on each finger showing the hour of the day (fig. 14).Footnote 151 A second woodcut also demonstrated how one should position the entire body in summer and winter to use the hand sundial (fig. 15).Footnote 152 This image of the peasant even eclipsed the peasant as a learned man seen in the last section (fig. 10). No longer a representative picture of a peasant teaching a pupil, by demonstrating a proper stance for the hand sundial, the image of these peasants actually taught the viewer of the book directly. It is this austere image of peasants discerning the time of day in a remote field that best epitomizes what the Bauern Practica and Wetterbüchlein promised in some fashion throughout the entire sixteenth century: techniques for common people to independently gain knowledge from nature.
Figure 13. Paul Reinmann. Sundial, 1599. British Museum, London (00442155001).
Figure 14. Henricus von Uri. Bawren Practica / Oder Wetterbüchlin, ca. 1560. Woodcut. Zentralbibliothek Zürich: AW 6056, fol. 44r (VD16 B 822).
Figure 15. Henricus von Uri. Bawren Practica / Oder Wetterbüchlin, ca. 1560. Woodcut. Zentralbibliothek Zürich: AW 6056, fol. 46v (VD16 B 822).
CONCLUSION
In the sixteenth century, producers of the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica developed the image of the peasant naturalist: a simple person skillfully observing nature. In this context, peasant men and women represented the possibilities for new sectors of society to access and use learned information through print. While depicted realistically, the peasants in these books were also designed as part of an extended marketing campaign and served a function analogous to actors or models in modern advertising. It is too limiting to suppose that the Wetterbüchlein and Bauern Practica were directed specifically or primarily to peasants. In keeping with the definition of popular employed throughout this article, I argue that these books are best understood as being marketed to as broad of an audience as possible, one that spanned society. From a commercial perspective, it makes sense that the printers who invested in these books wanted to sell them as widely as possible. Ultimately, then, the image of the peasant intelligently observing the heavens or sitting in the seat of the scholar represented the promise that “anyone who is learned or unlearned” could gain a true knowledge of the weather.Footnote 153
These books visually and textually conveyed a message about themselves; namely, that they could transmit the skills necessary for learned observation of nature. The books, therefore, mediated the popular production of knowledge in multiple ways. On one level, they gave common people a practical guide to easily observable natural occurrences and provided simple ways of discerning their significance. On a more foundational level, however, the marketers of these books propagated the idea that common people could produce knowledge from nature in the first place. In addition to circulating the technical information within the books, each new edition also reinforced the notion that finding naturalistic explanations for phenomena was open to everyone. Based on the commercial success of these two books, that was an idea German society was ready to embrace in the sixteenth century.
