Neander97 / Historical Trivia: The political result of printed books, held far-reaching implications--implications of such importance and vitality as to still be of overwhelming importance in today's world. Thanks in large part to the printing press, European Christians, who prior to 1454 had felt an allegiance to the larger collective known as Christianity, now found membership in a group that prior to printing had never, to an significant extent, existed--a collective focused around a shared language and culture known as a nation.

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The Geo-Politics Of The Printing Press
Printing spread throughout the European World with amazing--and to some observers -- alarming, speed. In 1453 there were no printed texts in existence in Europe, by 1500 the bookshelves of Europe were home to over 20 million books (in 35,000 editions). In 1455 the only moveable type printing in Europe was in Mainz, the Gutenberg press, by 1500 presses were in operation in some two hundred and fifty cities, from Stockholm to Palermo. Presses were established in nearly every university town and major commercial center, by 1600 the nascent industry had produced over 200 million printed texts.

One of the first pillars of the establishment to avail itself of the "power of the press" was the Catholic Church. Between 1455 and 1500 the Church commissioned the printing of over two hundred editions of the Bible. In 1466, in a bid to hold on to its influence over the growing number of individuals who were literate in languages other than Latin, the Church sanctioned the printing of the first vernacular Bible, a German edition published in Strasbourg. The vernacular Bible, proved to be a concept whose time had come and by 1500 it was possible to find thirty vernacular editions of the Bible, printed in six languages--with more editions, in more languages, pouring off the presses ever year. By the time that the Church realized that its vernacular policy may have been a mistake, it was too late to halt the process. The circulation of vernacular Bibles brought unexpected political, social, and even economic change to much of Europe.

These Bibles gave permanence to the languages in which they were printed, and doing so strengthened the unity and sense of collective of their respective language communities. Between 1478 and 1571, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuanian, Wales, Ireland, the Basque homeland, Catalonia, and Finland, to name but a few, all lay within the economic and political sphere of another, more powerful language group. However, these "colonial" peoples proved able to retain and strengthen their sense of "national" identity, largely, because they had access to "their own" versions of the Bible and other religious literature.

Language groups which, for whatever reasons, failed to obtain their own Bibles either disappeared altogether or became mere provincial dialects, subordinate to the dominate political or economical language group of the region. Without the support of vernacular religious literature, the language and political identity of Sicily were subsumed within those of greater Italy, of Provence and Brittany within France, Frisia within the Netherlands, Cornwall within England, etc. The technology and economics of print production and distribution inevitably tended to concentrate output on few, larger markets. Thus, the print industry, itself, contributed to the rapid homogenization of the many dialects of Europe in a few major language groups.

The political result of these new print-languages, held far-reaching implications--implications of such importance and vitality as to still be of overwhelming importance in today's world. Thanks in large part to the printing press, European Christians, who prior to 1454 had felt an allegiance to the larger collective known as Christianity, now found membership in a group that prior to printing had never, to an significant extent, existed--a collective focused around a shared language and culture known as a nation.

The development of "national languages," the loss of a Latin lingua franca, and the fragmentation of Christendom all served to concentrate local control in the hands of independent national or nationalists leaders. In a speech delivered in the late 16th century, Henry IV of France summed up the key point of this new lingual-political system: "As you speak the French language by nature, it is reasonable that you should be the subjects of a King of France. I entirely agree that the Spanish language belongs to the Spaniard and the German to the German. But the whole region of the French language must be mine." And King Henry was more than just a little correct.

Monarchs and their governments now began to encourage, indeed enforce, the use of the national tongue, with laws, taxes, armies, and the state bureaucracies that administered all such endeavors. Once a nation's boundaries had been firmly established through the use of these governmental devices, it became more efficient (for political, economic, and social reasons) to use an single language within those borders. The new print languages, sanctioned and encourage by national leaders, created an unprecedented ease of domestic communication among speakers of the wide variety of accents and dialects that existed within such national language groups as French, Spanish, German, or English. Printing, thus, thrust the inhabitants of small, local, dialectic enclaves into the realm of the larger, national, collective. But that was not all, print languages, as noted above, also served to isolate specific language groups from larger collectives. By exposure to their national tongue on the printed page, subjects of any given nation became even more aware of the ties that bound them to their language group and nation--there was no longer a Christian way of expressing ideas, but now a uniquely "English," or "French," or "Spanish" way of thinking and communicating.

While the printed word certainly aided in the rise of the nation state, and the subsequent consolidation of power in the hands of the rulers of the state, the printed page also acted to counter-balance this tendency to centralization through the dissemination of knowledge and information. Again, intentionally or not, the Catholic Church proved to be a driving force behind this free exchange of information. One outcome of the Council of Trent, convened by the Pope in 1545, was the Church's decision to publish authorized editions of all liturgical Catholic texts.

One of the beneficiaries of this printer's bonanza was Christopher Plantin of Antwerp. Plantin owned the largest printing in house in Europe, a massive enterprize which housed over twenty presses and employed well over two hundred workers. Given the size of his operation and given the fact that Antwerp was at that time a possession of "His Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain," it was only inevitable that Plantin gain substantial publishing contracts for the Church. Plantin did not, however, rely totally on religious texts for its livelihood. Plantin House was also one of the largest commercial printers in Europe, indeed, in the world. Here university professors and churchmen alike worked as proofreaders and text editors; scholars from all disciplines were employed to check texts for factual accuracy and provided editorial advise related to their areas of expertise; artists and artisans labored to created wood carvings and engraving, while merchants and commercial travelers added their unique contributions to the work product that flowed from Plantin's presses. Plantin House had, in short, pioneered the development of an entirely new discipline--a new way of analyzing, processing, and disseminating information--textual criticism.

In 1568, under aegis of Philip II of Spain, Plantin House began work on one of the most ambitious publishing project ever, yet undertaken, an entirely new type of Bible. The new Bible was to be printed in all the biblical languages, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic. In addition to the Scriptures, themselves, the new work was also to contain much of the vast body of commentaries and marginalia that had over the centuries came to be associated with the Bible. Four over four years, an eminent group of religious scholars, under the directorship of King Philip's theological advisor Benito Arias Montaro, labored to complete the new Bible. The final product (known as the "Royal" Bible) was a five volume opus, three of those volumes, the Montaro appendices, contained supplementary materials and commentaries relative to the biblical text--all based on the latest, most reliable scholarly discoveries.

The Montaro appendices present an immense and diverse body of information, touching on everything from biblical genealogies to maps of the Holy Land, from notes on Hebraic idioms and the origin of the language to plans of the Temple in Jerusalem. The appendices presented the reader with "up-to-date" information on Jewish antiquities, histories of the tribes of Israel, essays on biblical coinage, and over eighteen relevant treatises on archaeological, historical, and philosophical matters.

The concepts underlying the compilation and presentation of the Montaro appendices captivated Europe and soon other printing houses across the continent followed Plantin's lead and began employing scholars, cartographers, lexicographers, and a host of other intellectuals to churn out their own compendiums and appendical works. The foremost of these new reference works became known as the almanac. Almanacs provided the reader with information on the phases of the moon, the tides, data on agricultural and animal husbandry practices, commercial arithmetic, and commodity prices, to name but few.

Soon almanacs grew increasingly specialized, individual disciplines and professions began to publish their own journals, the seaman's calendar, the weaver's almanac, the farmer's almanac, etc. Each publication served to standardize the specialist's data and helped to institutionalize standards and accepted practices within a given trade, industry, or profession. As the professions established themselves in print, their membership increasingly came to rely on the printed page as the accepted means of "professional" communication providing the general public with access to what had once been the secret (often esoteric and arcane) knowledge of scholars, professionals, and artisans.

Readings:

Burke, Jackson. PRELUM TO ALBION; A HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HAND PRESS FROM GUTENBERG TO MORRIS (1940)

Butler, Pierce. THE ORIGIN OF PRINTING IN EUROPE (1940/1966)

Cressy, D. LITERACY AND SOCIAL ORDER (1980).

Einstein, Elizabeth L. THE PRINTING PRESS AS AN AGENT OF CHANGE (1979).

Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. THE PRINTING REVOLUTION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE (1983)

Forkert, Otto Maurice. 500 YEARS OF PRINTING ARTS; AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PRINTING PRESS (1940)

Forkert, Otto Maurice. FROM GUTENBERG TO THE CUNEO PRESS (1933).

Hindman, Sandra. PRINTING THE WRITTEN WORD : THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF BOOKS, CIRCA 1450-1520 (1991).

Moran, James. PRINTING PRESSES; HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT FROM THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO MODERN TIMES (1973).

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