The Impact of Printing

The Renaissance saw the development of printing in Europe. The art of printing made an immediate impact on European intellectual life and thought. In the fifteenth century, Europeans found out how to print with movable metal type. The development of printing from movable type was a gradual process that occurred about 1450. Johannes Gutenberg, of Mainz, Germany, played a crucial role in completing the process. Gutenberg's Bible, printed about 1455, was the first European book produced from movable type.

By 1500, there were over a thousand printers in Europe who had published almost forty thousand titles (between eight million and ten million copies). More than half were religious books, including Bibles, prayer books, and sermons. Most other were the Latin and Greek classics, legal handbooks, works on philosophy, and an ever-growing number of popular romances.

The effects of printing were soon felt in many areas of European life. The printing of books encouraged scholarly research and the desire to gain knowledge. Printing also stimulated the growth of an ever-expanding lay reading public, which would eventually have an enormous impact on European society. Indeed, the new religious ideas of the Reformation would never have spread as rapidly as they did in the sixteenth century without the printing press.

Printing--and the communication of knowledge that it made possible--allowed European civilization to achieve greater heights and compete for the first time with the civilization of China. The Chinese had invented printing much earlier, as well as printing with movable type. However, their highly structured society made less effort to use printing to increase knowledge of its citizens.

Questions:

1. What reason is given for the rapid spread of new religious ideas during the Reformation?
2. Why do you think the printing of books encouraged people's desires to gain knowledge?