A Press for Revolution
Where would our generation be today without the invention of the internet? A simple answer might be the library, walking from aisle to aisle searching for that certain text possessing the information we seek. Today, the ability to pull out a laptop or even a cell phone and search for answers to any question the mind can ponder has become second nature and most certainly caused a shift in how we, as a society, process and store information. This “digital culture”, sparked by the invention of the computer and consequently thousands of other devices, has changed the way in which we interpret and store information; everything we need to know is now only a “click” away. Similar to the profound effect the internet has had on our generation is the cultural overhaul experienced in Europe following the invention of the printing press in the 15th Century.
Before Johannes Gutenberg awarded Germany with the first printing press ever seen in Europe, citizens relied on hand-written manuscripts, which due to the intense labor requirements were expensive and thus predominantly aimed at the upper class demographic (Butler). Furthermore, there was a severe lack of consistency among texts that were copied, as translations and reproductions of works would often end up looking only somewhat similar to the original they attempted to recreate. The most popular texts were, for the most part, the only ones that would ever be copied since doing so took such a large investment of time and therefore religious works had somewhat of a monopoly in the area of hand-written books (Butler). What few texts the middle and lower classes ever did posses often portrayed the ideals of the Catholic Church and rarely did they get a chance to explore other subjects. Instead, intensive reading of a single text and the need to retell stories to those without their own copies prompted a tendency to memorize entire books so that they eventually no longer depended on the actual text. Subsequently, the citizens of Europe were starving for new information, new thoughts to stimulate their minds.
It was around the mid-15th Century that Gutenberg’s printing press emerged and over the next couple decades the technology spread through the continent like a wildfire. Immediate effects included the mass-availability of books due to the relatively lower production costs compared to the wood-block and hand-written methods of the past (Butler). The printing press also influenced major change in how people read. Before this widespread availability of books, there was a general practice of intensive reading, or the reading of one text many times (Carmody). However, since the ability to copy texts became both dramatically cheaper as well as easier, a shift towards extensive reading, the reading of many texts just one time, occurred and consequently citizens expanded their range of knowledge by diversifying the types of books they read (Carmody). One point to consider is how our reliance on texts today for information has substantially decreased the amount of memorization we as a people practice. Whereas in Classical times it was a common practice to memorize books and speeches so that one could retell the stories to others who did not posses such texts, today our society is increasingly dependent on print and now the digital form which negates the need for memorizing everything we want at our disposal. This is not to say that people during the Middle Ages had a greater capacity for memorization, rather the necessity put on them to recall the information in a text without possessing it put a value on taking the time to remember every last word so that the book could be passed on to others.
Since everyone had access to books after the invention of the printing press, information spread rapidly across towns and countries and consequently the literacy rate sky-rocketed. Still, the print form of popular works was not immediately accepted by the upper class since they saw value and quality in the hand-written works that comprised their collections (Butler). Lower class citizens, however, jumped at the opportunity to get their hands on new information, a gesture that signaled the beginning of a revolution in the way knowledge is attained and the value associated with literacy (Butler). Possibly the most dramatic change caused by the invention of print was the shift away from the Church and towards secular texts. Before the printing press, heretic views in hand-written manuscripts could be destroyed once and hence vanish forever, but the ease with which hundreds of copies of such opposing thoughts could be reproduced overwhelmed the Church and brought power, along with a newfound freedom, back to the people. This move sparked uproar in the religious community, who declaimed the evils wrought by the arrival of the printing press, the same evils that were unknowingly aiding in the soon-to-be Scientific Revolution (Butler). With the ability for the most intelligent people to share their thoughts easily through print, ideas and theories gained support across Europe and science began to challenge religion as the dominant subject in books.
One text which flourished along with the invention of the printing press is Dante Alighieri’s La Divina Commedia, or The Divine Comedy, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest works in world literature (Asensi). Written at the end of his life around 1321 C.E., Dante’s epic poem explores the afterlife on a journey “through hell, purgatory, and heaven during which he encounters historical and mythological creatures, each symbolic of a particular fault or virtue” (Asensi). Even before the printing press, hand-written copies of this text were extremely popular and reached a large audience, so its success following the evolution of print could’ve been expected (Asensi). The immediate effect the printing press had on Dante’s work was to expand the demographic of citizens it reached, as even the lower class could now experience what is still today regarded as one of the most influential works in Italian literature. The fact that Dante chose to use the Italian language instead of Latin for The Divine Comedy signaled a transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance Period (Asensi). Furthermore, Dante did not align himself with the Church’s strict ideals of the time. Instead, his epic poem expressed the opinion that church and state should be separate, a seemingly heretic view for the times; one that, thanks to the printing press, would be spread across Europe and forever change the balance of power that leaned heavily in favor of the Church before this revolution (Asensi).
Despite modern society’s transition from the print culture to a digital one, the effects of the printing press can still be felt today. Our expansion of knowledge through the diversity of books available to us is thanks to the ability to easily reproduce texts. The stranglehold that the Church had on what could and could not be written was overwhelmed and set free by the printing press, allowing for new thought to influence the world we live in now. The printing press made our world bigger by allowing information, and more importantly the exact same information cited by its actual author, to travel across nations in the form of thousands of books. Today, our digital culture does so in the blink of an eye over the internet, a concept that would amaze the print culture of the late 15th Century. However, it’s important to understand that without the transition to print, there is no transition to digital. Instead, one grows from the other, just as our society grew from Guttenberg’s.
