Dear students, we were discussing how in the 1400s, the invention of the printing press radically transformed how information was communicated around the world. Well, earlier this week, a new book came out that brings that time period to life through the retelling of a bookseller who sold only illuminated manuscripts (those were the books done by scribes with hand illustrations) and how printing threatened that booksellers that existed.
Perhaps something you’d like to read on your weekends. Get it on Amazon or at a local bookstore, IF you still have a local bookstore near you. To take a free peek inside this book , The Bookseller of Florence, for this interesting historical time period–click here. And for a review of the book in The NY Times see the article The 15th-Century Wool Worker’s Son Who Made Books for Princes and Popes.
Complements of T. Goetz
One thing that can be seen throughout this article are the similarities between then and now pertaining to human behavior whenever new technology threatens an old way of doing things. Gutenberg printing press challenged the norms on several levels. The powers that be were confronted with the realization that any type of knowledge whether it favored them on that, can be easily disbursed to the masses. This was a concern as one French official voiced his fearfulness of stupid ideas spreading amongst the people because it was so easily accessible through printing. The inefficiency of scribing was made obvious since the best scribe in one establishment produced two books in a single year, 600 pages each. There is no comparison with a printing press’s ability to print multiple copies of a book in a day. Even though the two forms of printing coincided in the 1500s, the days of the scribes being the chief printers was numbered. As powerful establishments such as the church understood the potential, they began to equip some convents with printing presses while training the nuns in typesetting. Book production was exploding exponentially. Spiritual content was spreading faster and faster and printed scientific content was transforming industry and universities. The nuns in Florence Italy were amongst the scribes whose careers survived by transitioning into modern printing press production.