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From Hutton Webster's, Early European History (1917); edited for this on-line publication, by ELLOPOS
» Contents of this Chapter
Page 10
ALDUS AND CAXTON
The new art quickly spread throughout Christian Europe. It met an especially warm welcome in Italy, where people felt so keen a desire for reading and instruction. By the end of the fifteenth century Venice alone had more than two hundred printing presses. Here Aldus Manutius maintained a famous establishment for printing Greek and Latin classics. In 1476 A.D. the English printer, William Caxton, set up his wooden presses within the precincts of Westminster Abbey. To him we owe editions of Chaucer's poems, Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, Aesop's Fables, and many other works.
INCUNABULA
The books printed in the fifteenth century go by the name of incunabula. [7] Of the seven or eight million volumes which appeared before 1500 A.D., about thirty thousand are believed to be still in existence. Many of these earliest books were printed in heavy, "black letter" type, an imitation of the characters used in monkish manuscripts. It is still retained for most books printed in Germany. The clearer and neater "Roman" characters, resembling the letters employed for ancient Roman inscriptions, came into use in southern Europe and England. The Aldine press at Venice also devised "italic" type, said to be modeled after Petrarch's handwriting, to enable the publisher to crowd more words on a page.
[7] A Latin word meaning "cradle" or "birthplace," and so the beginning of anything.
IMPORTANCE OF PRINTING
The invention of printing has been called the greatest event in history. The statement is hardly too strong. It is easy to see that printing immensely increased the supply of books. A hardworking copyist might produce, at the most, only a few volumes a year; a printing press could strike them off by the thousands. Not only more books, but also more accurate books, could be produced by printing. The old-time copyist, however skilful, was sure to make mistakes, sometimes of a serious character. No two copies of any manuscript were exactly alike. When, however, an entire edition was printed from the same type, mistakes in the different copies might be entirely eliminated. Furthermore, the invention of printing destroyed the monopoly of learning possessed by the universities and people of wealth. Books were now the possession of the many, not the luxury of the few. Anyone who could read had opened to him the gateway of knowledge; he became a citizen, henceforth, of the republic of letters. Printing, which made possible popular education, public libraries, and ultimately cheap newspapers, ranks with gunpowder as an emancipating force.
Cf. Jacob Burckhardt's, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY: Table of Contents
url: www.ellopos.net/politics/european-history/default.asp
Cf. The Ancient Greece * The Ancient Rome
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) * Western Medieval Europe * Renaissance in Italy
