Page - 22 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

22 | Erich Renhart www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 13–32 From Printed Books to Virtual Books Towards the end of the second millennium, we witnessed another change of paradigm: the shift from materiality to virtuality. The conventional form of the book in its entire materiality was challenged by the electronic book, which can exist in dematerialised form, as an agglomeration of dots, the so- phisticated outcome of the mathematical units “+” and “–”. It was now possi- ble for a book to exist without ever having a physical reality. Even deprived of its material being, this kind of book reclaimed the richly illuminated and illustrated book – a development that had started some 150 years earlier with photography and would reach a new peak in our time. The new technologies allow for all opulence imaginable in terms of colour, size and format, writing font, layout, script, etc. Despite all these options, the book as a material emanation still exists. The pluriformity of books produced a pluriformity of setting, giving the reader a new choice – where to access the book. The religious book is one of the cases where we tend to turn to the con- ventional form of the codex – possibly due to emotional aspects. The Number of Copies The number of copies of a book that are produced is often directly tied to its material quality. In the age in which books were the product of a scribe’s hand, any kind of luxury was imaginable for every volume (fig. 6). With book printing came industrial reproduction and an almost immediate loss of individuality. Nevertheless, prominent singular occasions still called for individually tailored books. Veneration of the book is one such occasion, as I now explore. The Book as Object of Veneration Throughout the history of Christian literature, we encounter books as objects of veneration. Here I highlight three situations: the enthroned book (hetoima- sia tou thronou); the kissing of books in the liturgical context; and the private veneration of a book expressing pious devotion. Such distinct situations de- mand extraordinary books of a quality that is in some sense remarkable.