This study explores the careers of Agostino Patrizi, Johann Burchard, and Paris de’ Grassi, who served in Rome’s Office of Ceremonies (c.1466-1528). Amid heightened competition, their diverse strategies achieved personal and institutional successes and lasting impacts on the Catholic Church.

This collection of essays engages with a variety of aspects of early modern book culture in the 16th-17th centuries, considered in the Catholic context. The contributions reflect on the engagement of institutions and authorities in the process of book production, bringing to the fore the role of networks in this process; show the book as a tool of resistance to the Protestant Reformation; give insight into the content and design of book collections; showcase textual production in the context of cultural appropriation and shed light on the role of the image in the propagation of Catholicism. Together the sixteen contributions demonstrate the diversity of the Catholic book in its forms and functions, in various social and national contexts.