The importance of the printing press should not be underestimated. The shift from script to print culture involved a European-wide transformation with every major city in Europe adopting a printer’s workshop by the beginning of the 16th Century. Coinciding with this invention, it is clear to see the turmoil of the century: the fragmentation of Catholicism, the Scientific Revolution, the triumph of Capitalism – the list could go on. This cultural shift is historically accepted; however, the cause of change is faced with an inconclusive debate. Considering the timing of the invention with such upheaval, arguably it was the printing press that was the primary agent of change. Ultimately the printing press enabled the overhaul of dogmatic religious thought, and ushered in the scientific revolution, which many historians’ regard as the official starting point of Europe’s “modern era”. However, to define the invention as a revolution in itself would be incorrect. A revolution implies a change to the social structure, and the printing press did not do this in isolation. Instead, the technology lubricated the conditions for which a revolution could take place – the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. Therefore, whilst there was no printing revolution in absolute terms, the invention was nonetheless a crucial event in Early Modern Europe.
The printing press helped fundamentally undermine the relationship between religious and secular powers in Europe. It did so by facilitating the spread of the Protestant Reformation – the event which signified the end of Church hegemony in many parts of Western Europe. The common connection made between the printing press and the Reformation is a supply- side one. Printing allowed the mass production of biblical texts and sermons translated into the vernacular and permitted the spread of these ideas across large distances through reprinting. If we take Luther’s 95 Theses nailed to a church’s door as an example; within weeks there were three separate editions influencing people in up to three different cities. This new-found ability to spread unorthodox ideas turned small-scale rebellions into complex, organized rebellions which had a much higher chance of success. A key example of this is the Peasants War in 1525, Europe’s most widespread revolt hitherto the French Revolution. The main revolts began in southern Germany, soon spreading throughout Germany and into Switzerland and Austria. The unprecedented spread was expedited by the publication of ‘The Twelve Articles’, a list of grievances the peasants were revolting against. This list was printed over 25,000 times in just two months. Despite the revolt eventually being defeated, news of the protest, due to the printing press, sent signals which aroused and helped organize further protest, culminating in the European Wars of Religion, eventually ending the Catholic dogmatism within Europe. The importance of the printing press is strengthened by examining previous challenges made to Catholicism. The heretical movements of the Albigenses and Waldensians were easily suppressed, without the Church having to worry about their ideas proliferating. The Church had easily crushed all previous challenges because it always had superior internal lines of communication than its challengers. However, the printing press changed this, providing power to a community that would otherwise be amorphous. It is no coincidence that all attempts to reform the Church prior to the invention failed. As Dickens summarises, ‘unlike the Wycliffe and Waldensian heresies, Lutheranism was from the first child of the printed book.’ Many historians’ postulate that the Reformation would have happened eventually, regardless of the printing press, degrading its importance. However, quantitative studies by Jared Rubin showed using multiple regression analyses, that just the presence of a printing press increased the probability that a city would become Protestant by 1600 by 57.4%. These results significantly surpass the required threshold for statistical significance, demonstrating that the press was fundamentally important in the spread of the Reformation. This is one of the primary reasons why the spread of printing was so important: where it spread, religious authority was more likely to be undermined. Despite the Reformation being the ‘revolution’, completely altering social structures throughout Europe, the printing press made the revolution possible by reinforcing nonconformist ideas and allowing them to take spread on a much larger scale.
Similarly, to the reorientation of Religion within Europe, the printing press reoriented scientific thought by lifting the ceiling on knowledge that scribal culture had set. One of the most significant effects of print, Eisenstein suggests, was that it lubricated the conditions for which feedback and correction became both possible and frequent. The printed book or map, contrasting to the handwritten manuscript, became standardized, uniform in its hundreds of copies. It therefore became possible for publishers to seek corrections and advice from readers. Within this arrangement, knowledge was accumulated in the exchange between readers and publishers, contributing to a permanent body of knowledge – no longer stymied by the cycle of rapid decay and loss. This change led to a motivation to question the ancients and to consider new ideas, aided by the fact that new generations did not have to start from the beginning but rather focus on cognitive advancement, giving rise to ‘modern’ science. A key example if this is the development of the Heliocentric Theory, a watershed in the study of astronomy: Copernicus, compared the ideas of Ptolemy and Aristotle and able to see clear inconsistencies, published ‘De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium’, completely challenging the orthodox Geocentric theory. Although this cross-referencing seems trivial, this exchange of ideas was simply not possible before the advent of printing, especially when considering geographical boundaries. It is highly unlikely that Corpernicus, a Polish astronomer, would have come across the works of Aristotle, a Grecian philosopher. Printing allowed the diffusion of ideas across Europe and therefore was fundamental in the ushering of the Scientific Revolution. As However not only did the printer allow for scientific advancement amongst the elite, it also hugely expanded the intelligentsia, as more information through the written word became accessible and disseminated. Before the printing press, books were hugely expensive due to the time-consuming nature of hand-scribing each book. Consequently, only the wealthy elite could afford such books, isolating education and literacy in the upper classes. However, the invention of printing cut the price of copying and reproducing books, and so books became both affordable and available to the masses. The Ripoli Press could produce 1,025 copies in the same amount of time it would take the scribe to produce one. Furthermore, it is estimated that by 1500 there were ‘fifteen to twenty million copies of 30,000 to 35,000 separate publications’, many translated into the vernacular. This was important as it paved the way for the expansion and decentralization of education, now available to a much wider audience. A key example of this is the story of Niccolo Tartaglia; as a result of living in poverty, he was self-educated, taking full advantage of the diffusion of books into the lower classes. He went on to publish a book outlining mathematical reasoning for projectile motion as well as the translation of Euclid’s geometry. As Eisenstein summarises: ‘it was clearly the printed book that sent science from its medieval habits straight into the boiling scientific revolution. The rapid dissemination of knowledge to whole new classes created new modern attitudes to science’. Clearly the printing expanded the ‘school of thought’, which also contributed to the Scientific Revolution.
As this essay has shown, the invention of the printing press laid the foundations for the Reformation. Despite the argument that the Reformation could and potentially would have happened without the communication technology, it is clear that the press acted as a catalyst, encouraging protest, and increasing the probability of its success. It did so by allowing a simple idea to spread, resulting in organized and integrated protest, in comparison to the fragmented protests that can be seen before the invention. This was important as it meant that revolutionary changes to social structures became possible, which is exactly what is seen during the Reformation. The overhaul of Catholic strongholds took Europe much closer to the modern world we know today. In addition, it fundamentally changed the method of scientific endeavor by creating an era of cross-reference and co-operation through the expansion and availability of books. Similarly there was a diffusion of knowledge throughout the population, an idea which Rabelais, a French renaissance writer reflects: ‘All the world is now full of learned men, of most skilled preceptors, of vast libraries…neither in Plato' s time nor in Cicero' s was there ever such opportunity for studying’. Consequently, there was an explosion of knowledge, directly as a result of the printer, highlighting its importance in ushering the Scientific Revolution. Considering both the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation are revolutionary events in Early Modern Europe, and the printing press lubricated the conditions for both to take place, it can be said that the invention was extremely important.