Power Of Printing In The Renaissance

Power of Printing in the Renaissance:

How The Response To It Changed Culture

Printing in the renaissance was a two-tone affair in terms of outcomes. There was the technological adeptness of the presses to swiftly spread ideas around in a way that was not possible before, eliminating barriers of geography and to an extent, wealth, and the long term outcomes of sociological change and growth of theory.

The impact of written word is obvious. The renaissance rejuvenation of knowledge through this medium is clear. Repeating this praise seems redundant, and this essay will examine how printing affected society through the Church, vernacular print and renaissance culture, ultimately leading to profound changes in thinking and social norms by opening

Ogania, in his Early Venetian Printing Illustrated, presents the presses of Colonia, Manthen de Gerretshem, Vindelus, Valdafer and Manutius, among many, as enthusiastically printing in Latin, Greek and the vernacular works of canon law, as well as writers of their time, like Boccaccio and classics such as Cicero (9-11), to pick a select few. The breath of topic, mean and the number of individual presses devoted to the spread of both new and classical ideas also shows the aesthetic beauty with which these pieces were presented, acknowledging the artistic importance of thought along with its intellectual counterpart.

In a time where there were no uniform rules guiding printers, the threat posed by them could have seemed quite real to a Church already under scrutiny and threatened by the spread of other religions. “Three quarters of the books published between 1445 and 1520 were works of religious nature: bibles, psalms, gospels and the like. This success alarmed the religious authorities” (Perez 180). The papal bull of May 4th of 1515 has praised the press, but otherwise called for measures of censure “to prevent thorns from growing among the good plants and poison from mixing with

The need to correct Bibles grammatically was opposed by Scholastics, backed by the Church, who believed that editing would distort or alter the meaning of the Bible. It was, as Perez notes, “introducing a secular perspective in a domain that until then had been the exclusive preserve of theologians”(Perez 193). Yet the counter reformation clash between humanists and scholastics over whether pagan classical literature endangered the soul, saw the biggest period of book censorship (Grendler 64) but also spread of still more ideas. “Vernacular literary titles, devotional works, and classics in the original and in translation were reprinted more often than legal, medical, mathematical, and scientific works.” (Grendler