IT ALL STARTED WITH THE WATERSHED MOMENT WITH THE INVENTION OF THE GUTENBERG PRESS
A Watershed Moment Defines An Age!
Invention is a kind of
muse, which, being possessed of the other advantages common to her sisters, and
being warmed by the fire of Apollo, is raised higher than the rest.
John Dryden (1631 – 1700), English poet and
playwright
THE SERENDIPITY OF ENTERPRISE
As late as
the 14th century, institutions for the manufacturing of knowledge
were limited to isolated groups of churchmen, among them the clerical skeptics,
who were essentially amateurs
when it came
to natural philosophy doing mysterious investigationS as a sideline to their
ecclesiastical responsibilities. This
isolation and somewhat surreptitious practice would end with explosive finality
one hundred years later when a German goldsmith got the date wrong. The consequences of that mistake would shake
the Roman church to its foundation, and create an entirely new technological
age. This fortuitous event marks the
continuing story of human serendipitous breakthroughs. And it involved printing.
Printing
would radically change not only the process of printing but the very way
knowledge would be recorded and disseminated.
It would change the nature of knowledge, itself, and how that knowledge
would be generated, used, and made more accessible to people.
In
1439, in the German town of Mainz, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg found that he had been misinformed as to the
date of a Pilgrim’s Fair in nearby
Aachen. Gutenberg had agreed to sell
small mirrors to these pilgrims. When he
found out that the fair was to be held a year later, he revealed to his
co-inventors an alternative opportunity: make
individual letters of metal to combine and recombine them to print words on
paper. The new typeface would
radically change the world of documentation in the West, replacing as it did
manuscripts.
The
reason for Gutenberg’s misadventure in making polished mirrors believed to
capture holy light from religious relics of Emperor Charlemagne’s collection
was Aachen having suffered a severe flood postponing the exhibition one year. In debt to his investors, and unable to repay
them, Gutenberg promised to share a “secret.”
It was the idea of movable type.
A limited
amount of printing with engraved wooden blocks was already available, but they
could only be used to print one image and quickly wore out. The secret advantage to Gutenberg’s metal
typefaces was that they lasted, and single reproduced letters were
interchangeable.
So, this
German went from a blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, and publisher to
introducing a new technology in printing to Europe. His introduction of mechanical movable type
printing to Europe started the Printing
Revolution and is regarded as the most important invention of the second
millennium, the seminal event which ushered in the modern era of human history.
It
played a key role in the development of the Renaissance,
Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment,
the Scientific Revolution, and in an
ancillary fashion provided the impetus to the American and French
Revolutions. It did so because it
laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based
economy and the spread of learning to
the masses, thus providing the foundation for progressive compulsory
education for all children whatever their means.
Gutenberg
in 1439 was the first European to use the printing
press and movable type in
Europe. What followed was the invention
of a process for mass-producing movable type, and the use of oil-based ink for
printing books, adjustable molds, mechanical movable type, and the use of a
wooden printing press similar to the agricultural screw press of the period.
Truly
incredible was that his invention represented the combination of these elements
into a practical system that allowed mass production of printed books, which
was economically and viable to printers and readers alike.
The invention of mechanical movable type printing would permanently alter the
structure of European society in the Era
of the Renaissance with an unrestricted circulation of information,
including revolutionary ideas, transcending borders, and capturing the
imagination of the masses.
A quarter-century
later, it was the perfect fodder for the Reformation as the German people were
primed for challenging political and religious authority. The sharp increase in literacy broke the
monopoly on the literate elite and bolstered the emerging Middle Class. Martin Luther’s translation of the Holy Bible
into German had a two-prong effect: it solidified the Reformation and promoted
the idea of German nationalism. It also
accelerated the collapse of feudalism and the rise of capitalism.
Meanwhile,
across Europe because of accessible and speedy printing, European vernacular
languages flourished to the detriment of the once-dominant French of the
aristocracy and Latin of the Church.
Like all
crucial inventions, by the 19th century, Gutenberg’s hand-operated
style press was replaced by the steam-powered rotary press allowing printing on
an industrial scale, which across the world became the sole medium for modern
bulk printing.
EARLY WOODEN PRINTING PRESS, 1568
Living in Strasbourg in 1444, it is believed here he perfected and unveiled the secret printing based on his research. After this, there is a four-year gap finding him back in Mainz in 1448 where he worked on copper engravings. Gutenberg’s major work was the Gutenberg Bible (known as the 42-line Bible), which was acclaimed for its aesthetic appeal and technical quality. The future Pope Pius II was moved to write in 1455:
“All that has been written to me of this marvelous man seen at Frankfurt is true. I have not seen complete Bibles but only a number of queries of various books of the Bible. The script was very neat and legible, not at all difficult to follow – your grace would be able to read it without effort, and indeed without glasses.”
It is not clear when
Gutenberg conceived the Bible project, but the work was commenced in 1452. At the same time, the press was also printing
other more lucrative texts (possibly Latin grammars). There is also speculation that there were two
designated presses: one for the pedestrian texts, and one for the Bible.
Ironically, one of the profit-making
enterprises of the new press was printing thousands of indulgences for the church in 1454 – 1455. The Roman Catholic Church was Gutenberg’s
first “house account,” which took full advantage of this new disseminating
leverage. However, with this single
invention, the map of Europe would change, and the power of the Catholic Church
would diminish as the nature of knowledge upon which political and religious control
rest would never again be the same.
Printing across the European
continent was spreading at extraordinary speed.
In 1455, there was no printed text in Europe. By 1500, there were 20 million books in
35,000 editions or one book for every five European residents. Also, in 1455, the only printing press in
Europe had been Gutenberg’s. By 1500,
there were presses in 245 cities from Stockholm, Sweden to Palermo, Sicily. No innovation in history had spread so far
and so fast.
As mentioned,
the first to take advantage of this new technology was the Church failing to
recognize its possible threat to its power.
Instead, Rome believed printing could strengthen its social authority
through the production and dissemination of identical devotional books. This would possibly establish liturgical
conformity and obedience on an unprecedented scale.
Then in 1466,
Rome made a move to entrench its power even further among the growing literate
non-Latin speaking peoples in the rising artisan class of German readers by
publishing the Bible in the German vernacular.
The idea caught on, and again, the church didn’t recognize the threat to
its authority.
In 1471, an
Italian bible was on sale in Venice. In
1477, the Delphi Press had printed a Dutch bible. By 1500, there were 30 editions of the Bible
in six languages. With this development,
the Catholic authority of Rome commenced unraveling.
GUTENBERG BIBLE, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS,
WASHINGTON, DC
Gutenberg missed this gathering storm as he died in 1468 and was buried in the Franciscan church at Mainz. This church and cemetery were later destroyed, his grave was lost to posterity. Before he died, in January 1465, he was honored for his achievements with the title of Hofmann (gentleman of the court). His contribution lives and is reflected well into the 21st century.
Power of the printed word
American humorist and author Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) put it simply:
“What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to
Gutenberg. Everything can be traced to
this source, but we are bound to bring him homage, for the bad that his
colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the
good with which mankind has been favored.”
THE SERENDIPITY OF ECCLESIASTICAL OUTRAGE
To start with, the Bible
was to have unexpected political consequences.
It gave native permanence to the native tongue in which the Bible was
printed. In doing so, it strengthened
the unity and power of the ruler in that language community. Despite the fact Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania,
Wales, Ireland, Catalonia, and Finland were in economic dependence on more
powerful countries, their national identity was strengthened by being able to
read the Bible in their respective languages.
Conversely,
over time, languages in which the Bible was not printed either disappeared or
became provincial dialects subordinate to the political and economic dominant
language of the region. The political
result of print languages imposed by kings who were in control of the presses
would lead to a new kind of society, a nation.
Thanks to
printing a Christian now saw himself as a member of a nation that before
printing had not existed. With a
national language, monarchs began to enforce their local tongues with laws,
taxes, armies, and bureaucracies that went with them.
No European used the press more
effectively to promote and manipulate its new print-generated national identity
than the Augustinian priest philosopher and German Protestant reformer than
Martin Luther (1483 – 1546).
MARTIN LUTHER’S 95 THESES SPARKED THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN PRINT FROM 1522
Within only
two years, Luther’s tracts were distributed in 300,000 printed copies
throughout Germany and Europe. Luther,
the son of a miner, entered the University of Erfurt in 1501, taking his degree
in 1505. Before this, he had been
studying Scriptures, spending three years in the Augustinian monastery at
Erfurt. In 1507, he was ordained a
priest and lectured on philosophy at the University of Wittenberg where he
discovered a talent as an influential preacher.
On a mission to Rome in 1510 – 1511,
he was appalled by the conditions he found there. After his return to Wittenberg, his career as
a reformer began. Money was greatly
needed in Rome for its massive building projects. The church sent emissaries out everywhere to
seek funds using the ruse of the sale of indulgences. Indulgences were purported to ease a person’s
arrival in heavenly paradise by reducing or bypassing a stay in Limbo.
Luther’s
indignation at this shameful practice was carried on by the Dominican friar
Johannes Tetzel (1465 – 1519) who performed the role with great ostentation and
gusto, which provoked Luther. As a professor
of Biblical Exegesis at Wittenberg (1512 – 1546), he began to preach the
doctrine of salvation through faith alone
and not through works. On October
31, 1517, he drew up a list of 95 theses on indulgences denying the pope the
right to forgive sins and nailed this document to the church door at Wittenberg.
JOHANNES TETZEL, MARTIN LUTHER’S NEMESIS LEADING UP TO THE REFORMATION
Were this to have happened at an
earlier time, a time before the invention of Gutenberg’s movable printing
press, only conjecture can manage the impact of his message. But in 1517, with printing established as a
viable technology, there was no doubt. The
printing press took Luther’s fight with Pope Leo X (1475 – 1521) to the streets
of Europe with astonishing speed. A
printed version of his protest of the Roman Church appeared everywhere in
Germany within two weeks of its publication, and all over Europe within a
month.
MOVABLE METAL TYPE, AND A COMPOSING STICK, DESCENDED FROM GUTENBERG’S PRESS
CULTURAL SHIFTS THAT FOLLOWED GUTENBERG
The structure of society was in
transition and so the function of society followed. Efforts were employed to standardize
vernacular grammar and vocabulary while punctuation was introduced. Printing of languages became another vehicle
of conformity and codification paving the way for linguistic purity.
This was especially true in Elizabethan England. Printed books in the English language were rapidly
standardized across the realm. To
register a sense of this, the King James Bible created since the time of King
Henry VIII introduced the vernacular language in English Protestant churches
in 1611 and remained essentially the same until 1970.
The new print languages created unprecedented ease in domestic communications among speakers of widely different accents that existed in French, English, and Spanish. By reading their formal common tongue on the page, citizens became aware of their commonality and began to take pride in this new nationalistic perception of themselves. Thus followed an English, French, and Spanish way of thinking.
In England, the crown had been quick
to realize the potential of print to induce ideological conformity in the form
of the Book of Common Prayer (1549). Its
justification was the economy of production and the uniformity of worship. Henry VIII (1491 – 1547) of England also
ordered the standardization of grammar, spelling, and punctuation into a
uniform system of learning. Education
and religion were cast into the same conformist vernacular mode. Rules for social behavior were now set down
everywhere in black and white. A century
and one half after Gutenberg, the press had rationalized laws and produced
draconian regulations.
Printing had come to define and diffuse
power outward from the old papacy-centered watertight authority of the church
to disseminate it among the new nation-states on the periphery. This came to isolate people within these new
state boundaries with a new sense of national identity and separation. Commercial activity became easier to regulate
and manage with the aid of printed passports, safe conducts, mandates,
invitations, legal notices, and national paperwork of all kinds. The economics of the new nations began to
grow and to develop their own devices as well as distinct characteristics.
Books became popular among merchants
who typically knew little or no Latin.
Political and religious propaganda could also be used to mobilize the
growing literate middle class. The circulation
of engravings carrying pictures of kinds and princes heightened the visibility
of royalty. Portraits of rulers were
framed and hung in both great houses and peasant hovels throughout Europe. This raised the mass media creation of the public
image, which had previously been used effectively only by Roman Emperors.
Writers of various nations began
delving into the past and writing patriotic histories which were meant to claim
one nation superior to another. In
Protestant-controlled countries, this practice aided the monarchs moving them
away from papal control. Oddly enough,
the Roman papacy accelerated this process by sponsoring the printing of the
Bible in the vernacular of a people, away from the Latin, diminishing Catholic
Christendom and leading to the unexpected consequences of becoming increasingly
irrelevant.
THE GUTENBERG LEGACY
To this day, Gutenberg’s
contribution to modernity remains relevant.
There are many statues of him in Germany including the famous one by
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1837) in Mainz home of the Johannes Gutenberg University of
Mainz along with a Gutenberg Museum on the history of early printing.
In 1961, the Canadian philosopher and scholar Marshall McLuhan entitled his pioneering study of the printing culture and the amoral advancing tidal wave of media ecology, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man.
Gutenberg remains one of the towering
figures in popular history. In 1999, the
A&E television network ranked him the number one influential person in the
second millennium, while Time-Life Magazine
picked his invention as the most important of that of the second
millennium. He even has an asteroid
named for him, 777 Gutemberga as well
as the subject of two operas.
United
States Postal Service stamp commemorates Johannes Gutenberg from 1452-1952
THE HUMAN DANCE OF BIBLIA POLYGLOTTA
The
remarkable new printing press conferred on secular authority a new “cut &
control” tool that could attack the core of religious beliefs. Its origin was the Council of Trent in 1545 when Rome convened an Ecumenical Council to discuss matters to combat Martin Luther. It approved the printing of standardized
liturgical versions of Catholic scripture and worship.
Christopher Plantin (1514 – 1589), a French printer in
Antwerp (now Belgium), ran the biggest publishing house in Europe. His Biblia
Polygotta (1568 – 1573) included Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, French and Dutch
Bibles.
Plantin was suspected of Calvinist sympathies, although Antwerp at that time was
firmly Roman Catholic. He developed a
plan to prove his loyalty to the Catholic King Philip II of Spain (1527 – 1595)
by producing a polyglot version of the Bible, in five languages. The king
promised to finance the effort, but in completing the project Plantin was
nearly bankrupt. The king sent the
Spanish theologian Benito Arias Montano to Antwerp to watch over the production
of this eight-volume of printing, which was printed in 1,212 copies in 1572.
The first four volumes contain the Old Testament. The left page has two columns with the Hebrew original and the Latin translation, the right page has the same text in Greek with its Latin translation. Underneath these columns, there is an Aramaic (language of Jesus) version on the left-hand page and a Latin translation of this on the right-hand side. For printing, the Hebrew text Plantin used among others Daniel Bomberg’s Hebrew type.
Volume five contains the New
Testament in Greek and Syrian, each with a Latin translation, and a translation
of the Syrian into Hebrew. Volume six has the complete Bible in the original
Hebrew and Greek, as well as an interlinear version that has the Latin
translation printed between the lines. The last two volumes contain
dictionaries (Hebrew-Latin, Greek-Latin, SyrianAramaic, grammar rules, list of
names, etc.) that were of value to scholars.
A complete copy of this Bible is on
display at the Plantin Moretus Museum (the site of the original printing press)
in Antwerp, Belgium, including the typefaces which were designed for this
project.
Plantin’s print house would change
history because it would enable printing to generate the greatest force for
change radically modifying the nature of knowledge itself. This suddenly widened the gulf between those
with specialist knowledge and those without.
It all started when Plantin created
an entirely new kind of Bible for King Philip II of Spain in 1566. More importantly, it added luster to the
king’s eminence which was not missed by other monarchs.
The Biblia Polygotta contained appendices that held vast amounts of
data from biblical genealogies to maps of the Holy Land notes on Hebrew
idioms and the origin of the language plans on the Temple in Jerusalem, Jewish
antiques, history of the tribes of Israel, and essays on biblical coins as well
as weights and measures. There were
Syrian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek dictionaries in grammar, variant readings of
the text, indices, and no fewer than eighteen treatises on archeological and
philosophical matters. The Biblia Polygotta caught on immediately
with other appendices of the Bible beginning to appear in all other Europe.
One of Six Volumes of Biblia Sacra Polygotta
In this human dance, something
stunning was set in motion, something that would change the Western world
forever. When these biblical scholars
finished their work, they didn’t stop as researchers. They turned to research of other things. This seeded an extraordinary explosion in
knowledge. It was the aftereffect of
this diligence that would influence all aspects of 16th-century
European life, and in the process, help to shape the modern world.
The new knowledge specialists, not
yet commonly referred to as “scholars,” set up intellectual book networks
across Europe, exchanging information on anything from maps to data on
instruments to flower balls to plant seeds to rare stones.
The only other book of comparable
size to the Biblia Polygotta were
almanacs. These collections of
encyclopedia knowledge attracted the skills of these new researchers. Almanacs had existed in the limited form
before printing, but now they appeared everywhere in massive numbers and
radically increased the amount of data in circulation. Almanacs in the 16th century were
selling at the rate of 400,000 copies a year.
Data contained in these almanacs
encouraged specialists in other disciplines to create their specialized
almanacs. So, subsequently, there was
the Seamen’s Calendar, Weaver’s Almanac,
Farmer’s Almanac, and so on. Each
publication rigorously pruned its special data for accuracy and
standardization. Readers came to trust
and use the information with confidence.
Still, again in this instance, the “cut
& control” nature and manner of accumulating knowledge were to increase
the fragmentation of society and to differentiate people into esoteric
conclaves. Paradoxically, not unlike the
Information Age of the 21st
century, it was bringing people closer and separating them at the same
time.
A new industry involved in which
earlier editions of these almanacs were reviewed, revised, and updated for
current relevance. Anatomists, for
example, opened bodies and discovered discrepancies in anatomical drawings for
the position of organs, blood circulation, and the nervous system
circuitry. The tool of print provided a
new way of thinking about the world as education took on new significance and
roles. Knowledge not only had to be
created and disseminated but managed for its expected impact.
Today, we take for granted the
structure and function of our primary, secondary, and university educational
systems. It was Martin Luther, however,
with his obsession with the need to create an ordered hierarchical society of
literate and docile believers that provided the impetus. Luther structured education into a classified
and graded process that submitted learners to standardized examinations. Tests identified the level of ability and monitored
deviance and ignorance.
THE CHURCH GOES ON THE OFFENSIVE: SOCIETY OF JESUS
To combat the surge of the Protestant
Reformation which had taken full advantage of this printing miracle which the
Roman Church had fumbled, the Catholic establishment turned to create several
Ignatius Loyola colleges throughout Europe, the first opening in Portugal in
1542.
Saint Ignatius
of Loyola (1491 – 1556), was a Spanish knight from Basque, a member of a noble
family, a hermit, theologian, and a priest since 1537. , and theologian. He founded the Society
of Jesus (Jesuits) and, on 19 April 1541, became its first Superior
General. Ignatius emerged as a religious
leader during the Counter-Reformation with to the Roman Catholic Church along
with absolute obedience to the Pope.
After being
seriously wounded in the Battle of Pamplona in 1521, he underwent a spiritual
conversion while in recovery. The De Vita Christi (Life of Christ) written
by Ludolph of Saxony in 1374 inspired him to abandon his previous military life
and devote himself to labor for God, following the example of his spiritual
leader
Francis of
Assisi. After experiencing a vision of
the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus at the shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat in
March 1522, he went on to Manresa where he prayed for seven hours a day in a
nearby cave, formulating his Spiritual Exercises. In September 1523, he reached the Holy Land
to settle there but was called back to Europe by his Franciscan order.
Between 1524 and 1537, Ignatius studied theology and Latin at the University of Alcala in Paris. In 1534, he arrived in the latter city during a period of antiProtestant turmoil which forced John Calvin to flee France. Ignatius and a few followers bound themselves by vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as they found the Society of Jesus in 1539, approved in 1540 by Pope Paul III, as well as Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises which was approved in 1548. Loyola also composed the Constitutions of the Society. He died in July 1556, was beatified by Pope Paul V in 1609, and canonized a saint by Pope Gregory XV in 1622, and declared patron of all spiritual retreats by Pope Pius XI in 1922. Ignatius' feast day is celebrated on July 31. Ignatius is the Patron Saint of Soldier, the Society of Jesus, and the Basque Country.
IGNATIUS IN ARMOR
[If interested in the training of Jesuits to this day, I recommend
reading “Mean Astutely Trained” by Peter McDonough, 1992). It
seems no accident that the present pope, Francis I, is also the first Jesuit
priest ever to be pope, and in a time of challenge not unlike that of the high
Middle Ages.]
Jesuits as “Soldiers of Christ” defend the faith, not with guns but with
intellectual prowess. Jesuit
universities to this day stress a uniform curriculum of high standards and
achievements. Course material is
formalized and taught under strict theological supervision while students are
monitored at all times by priests, prefixes, and rectors to be certain to
conform to the discipline.
By the 17th
century, another key figure would emerge in education. John Amos Comenius (1592 – 1670), a Czech
educational reformer. He aimed to teach
all things to all men. Settling in
Lissa, Poland in 1628, he worked out his new theory of education and was chosen
Bishop of the Moravian Brethren in 1632.
Merchants in England, France, and
Germany were eager to follow his vocational lead as they wanted the young
prepared for the new emerging capitalistic economy free of direct church
control.
The new
Comenius commercial schools taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, the
essential elements for success in the expanding economy. In 1640, envisioning a new way to engage
young minds, he created his Orbis
Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World
in Pictures), the first picture book for children. It was also the first book ever published to
use visual aids to learning.
Earlier, King Henry VIII of England saw the wisdom in bringing knowledge makers under the control of the realm. His first initiative was to found the Royal College of Medicine in London. In 1540, English surgeons established a society to regulate the new profession of surgery. In the same year, the Royal College of Physicians was established, and in 1617, the Society of Apothecary.
As professional societies had established themselves in print, members of such societies increasingly used books to communicate with each other. The language of each profession became increasingly incomprehensible to those outside the profession. This staid and select community of reading and writing specialists would be shaken to its foundation, however, when the world as it was conceived and recorded in print was shattered by yet another paradigm shift: the discovery of America.
NEXT – EIGHTEEN – NWL – THE SHATTERING OF CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
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