Print Culture and the Modern World
The print revolution and its impact
Explain how print changed society, religion and politics in Europe.
A new reading public. Print made books cheaper and quicker to produce, and they reached far more people. Before, reading was for the elite; ordinary people lived in an oral culture: they heard sacred texts, ballads and folk tales read or sung aloud, together. Now a reading public grew. But most people could not read, so printers published ballads and folk tales with lots of pictures, which were read aloud in villages and taverns. Oral culture entered print, and print was passed on orally: the hearing public and reading public mixed.
Martin Luther and the Reformation. Print let people who disagreed with authorities spread their ideas. In 1517, Martin Luther wrote his Ninety Five Theses, criticising practices of the Roman Catholic Church, and a printed copy was pinned to the door of a church in Wittenberg. His writings were reprinted in huge numbers. This split the Church and began the Protestant Reformation. In just a few weeks, 5,000 copies of his New Testament translation were sold, with a second edition within three months. Luther called printing 'the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one'.
Print and dissent; fear of print. Even poorly educated people now read and interpreted religion for themselves. Menocchio, a 16th-century Italian miller, read local books and formed his own view of God and Creation. The Church's Inquisition (a court to punish 'heretics') questioned him twice and executed him. The Church then tightly controlled publishers and kept an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558. Many feared print would spread rebellious and irreligious ideas. The scholar Erasmus complained that 'swarms of new books' were filling the world, many of them stupid, scandalous or seditious (against the government).
The reading mania. In the 17th and 18th centuries, churches set up village schools, and by the end of the 18th century literacy in parts of Europe reached 60 to 80 per cent. People wanted books, and printers produced more and more:
- pedlars carried little books to villages: almanacs (yearly calendars with dates of tides and eclipses), ballads and folk tales;
- in England, penny chapbooks, sold by pedlars called chapmen for a penny, cheap enough for the poor;
- in France, the 'Bibliothèque Bleue': cheap little books on poor paper with blue covers;
- newspapers and journals carried news of wars and trade, plus entertainment;
- ideas of Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Rousseau reached ordinary readers.
'Tremble, tyrants!' By the mid-18th century, many believed books could change the world and free society from despotism (rule by one person with unchecked power). The French novelist Mercier called the printing press 'the most powerful engine of progress', and warned: 'Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!'
Did print cause the French Revolution? Historians give three arguments:
- Print spread the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers, who said everything should be judged by reason, and attacked the Church's sacred authority and the king's despotic power.
- Print created a culture of dialogue and debate: all values and institutions were questioned.
- By the 1780s, writings and cartoons mocking the royals showed them enjoying luxury while ordinary people suffered.
But be careful: people also read royal and Church propaganda, and they chose what to accept. Print did not simply fill their heads; it made it possible to think differently.
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