Communication Renovation: The Printed Book

Communication Renovation: The Printed Book

“The printing press is an integral part of the general history of civilization.”

-Steinberg, p. 11

In the mid-1400s, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press with movable type, he never could have predicted the consequences of his achievement.

Scribal book production had been slow and tedious. Because there were no standardized controls that scribes could use, manuscripts were often subject to error and inaccuracy. Before the printing press, Christendom was unified, unchallenged, and unchanged because there was no avenue for the circulation of new ideas. The system of transmitting tradition had not been upgraded in years; hence, information was a good, a hot commodity held only in the hands of the educated and privileged.

For the very texture of scribal culture was so fluctuating, uneven and multiform that few long-range trends can be traced. Conditions that prevailed near the bookshops of ancient Rome, in the Alexandrian library, or in certain medieval monasteries and university towns, made it possible for literate elites to develop a relatively sophisticated

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‘bookish’ culture. Yet all library collections were subject to contraction, and all texts in manuscript were liable to get corrupted after being copied over the course of time. (Einstein, p. 10)

After the invention of the printing press, the world evolved to a higher sphere. Eventually, numerous avenues (religion, education, business, etc.) were all transformed. A newly educated bourgeois class of capitalists emerged, bridging the gap between the oligarchy and the serfdom. With the new technology at his fingertips, the Pope attempted to establish a new world order. However, with the new avenue of circulation, a militant Reformation sprung up against the Catholic Church. The printed book helped to improve and restructure religion, education, and business in Europe because of the enhanced communication it provided.

The invention and development of printing with movable type brought about the most radical transformation in the conditions of intellectual life in the history of western civilization. It opened new horizons in education and in the communication of ideas. Its effects were sooner or later felt in every department of human activity. (Gilmore, p. 186)

Printers often operated as press agents, spreading new ideas by the commission of literate sectors. Literacy boomed as new texts, readily available, hit the market, slowly trickling down to the masses. With such a plentiful supply, books became a fast-growing market, the price of knowledge persistently dropping.

Literary controls suddenly popped up, and faulty texts, maps, and other resources were re-examined, re-organized, and re-documented. It became a great period of

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weeding of scribal mistakes and flawed records. Nature suddenly became a thing that could be accurately recorded and publicized. Imagine, maps were once recorded by word of mouth. Now they were able to be definite, sure. Now everyone was on the same page.

Not only were Apothecaries and Surgeons just learned in their particular field of expertise; they could now broaden their minds in all areas of knowledge. All people could now school themselves. This was especially important with regards to scripture.

The Protestant doctrine… proclaimed the duty of everybody to read the book of nature without regard to the authority of… Aristotle, Pliny, Ptolemy, Galen was put forward… everybody… might be a priest to the book of creation in defiance… of the ancient authorities. When Palissy was derided because of his ignorance of the classical languages… he proudly answered… I have no book in heaven and earth and it is given everyman to know and read this beautiful book. (Hookyas, p. 215-16)

Western printers called upon printers to help wage their war against the Turks, spreading war propaganda, calling upon able-bodied young men to come fight for glory and God. Printers were thus in good standing; the new invention was not only used in favor of the Church, but also reaffirmed their feelings of superiority over the barbaric Middle-Eastern Muslims. However, the anti-Catholic movement called Protestantism was not far behind. They were quick to utilize the new technology, and the public were quick to respond.

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Between 1517 and 1520, [Martin] Luther’s thirty publications well over 300.000 copies… Altogether in relation to the spread of religious ideas it seems difficult to exaggerate the significance of the Press, without which a revolution of this magnitude could scarcely have been consummated… through this vehicle Luther was able to make exact, standardized and ineradicable impressions on the mind of Europe. For the first time in human history a great reading public judged the validity of revolutionary ideas through a mass-medium which used the vernacular language together with the arts of the journalist and the cartoonist. (Dickens, Arthur Geoffrey, p. 51.)

And so, ipso facto, we can see how we have the printed book to thank for our freedom of religion. The ability to properly communicate always results in the promulgation of freedom. The gospel could never have been restored to the earth without the help the printing press. The printed book helped to improve and restructure religion, education, and business in Europe because of the advanced communication it provided.

Works Cited:

Dickens, Arthur Geoffrey. Reformation and Society in Sixteenth Century Europe (New York, 1968), 51.

Einstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge University Press. (Cambridge, 1979) p. 10

Gilmore, Myron P. The World of Humanism, Harper Torchbooks. (1962) p. 186

Hookyas, Reijer. Humanisme, Science et Reforme: Pierre de las Ramee 1515-1572 (Leiden, 1958) 215-16