Manuscripts, Books, and Maps: The Printing Press and a Changing World

Introduction

The history of the book presents us with a complete, observable communications revolution. The historical record is such that we can watch the whole of a vast socio-cultural, political, and economic change happen over a period of some three to five hundred years (depending on whose perspective you prefer). By following the developments in manuscript and print book production, tied to the changes in the technologies used to produce those texts, we can also chart the various changes in social organization, politics and economics from the feudalism of the 7th century, through to the advent and advance of early capitalism in the 15th century.

The implications of the printed word are vast. There are those who argue that Martin Luther and the Protestant revolution could not have taken place if it were not for the printing press. While this is not entirely valid, the press and the already wide distribution of books and other printed matter in Luther's time certainly added to the distribution of his ideas and work. In the shifts in the world from the mid 15th century to the end of the 18th century, it is possible to trace the divergence of science from religion and the opening up of the new world.

In order to understand the effect of printing in the 15th century, you have to go back to the 7th century and see how the book world was organized prior to the advent of printing. Then you can see what changed along with the introduction of printing.

It's easy, reading an author like historian Elizabeth Eisenstein , to think that the printing press was somehow the single most important invention of the Middle Ages, that it and it alone was responsible for the changes of the European Literary, Scientific and Artistic Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. Her position is close "technological determinism". She isn't completely determinist - she sees the other factors that were at play, but she still privileges the printing press. However, there are other important factors that contributed to the rise of intellectual activity in Europe in the mid-15th century.

For instance, if you look at the argument of Lucien Febvre and Henri Martin in their work, The Coming of the Book, you get a different picture of that same revolution. Febvre and Martin contend that society in Europe changed during the Renaissance because of a secularization of learning that occurred with the growth of the university. They date the important changes from the 13th century.

In their view, print came along and sustained that revolution, with the promotion of vernacular languages and new information. But the early Italian Renaissance was initiated by a social restructuring of learning through the emergence of a university system.

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This page last updated on: Jan 30 1997