To What Extent Was the Printing Press an Agent for Change?

1432 Words6 Pages
Amid the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries many social, political and economic changes were occurred in the Western European world, a number of which were driven forward due to the advancement of the printing press in this era. The invention of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press was used as an agent for change in a number of ways throughout this period, but none as prevalent as its use during the Protestant Reformation. The successful spread of the Reformation is heavily linked to and reliant upon the printing press. The theory held by various scholars is that without the use of the printing press, information regarding Martin Luther’s accusation of church corruption, and his Reformation ideals would never have reached such a broad audience. Two examples that make this clear are the vast amount of broadsheets, pamphlets and even cartoons, for those who were illiterate that were distributed quickly, significantly contributing to the success of the Reformation, and the way reformers such as Luther and Calvin were not able to be suppressed by the church in the same quick to act manner as it had done with heretics in a pre-Gutenberg Press era. Due to an extension of literacy among laypeople and the reliance of record keeping in government, cheaper and more efficient ways of writing were sought after in the west. Replacements for both expensive parchment and skilled scribes, who in their small numbers began to command increasingly high salaries. Western Europe began to import paper from the East and finally a reduction in costs was achieved. The next phase of trying to find a new and more cost effective way to print was trial and error, including printed books via woodcuts, however as each page needed its own woodcut this was only marginally better than using a scribe. It wasn’t until the middle of the fifteenth century that the technologies that had existed

More about To What Extent Was the Printing Press an Agent for Change?

Open Document