Revolution in Print: Evaluating the Impact of the Printing Press

The printing press should be considered a revolution. The invention marked the departure from the rigid Middle Ages that centred around the Catholic Church, to an ever-expanding, modernising world that began to prioritise the importance of literature and knowledge. The printing press began to spark ideas of revolution, most notably fuelling the Protestant Reformation, where Martin Luther’s 95 Theses directly challenged papal authority and the use of indulgences by the Church for their own gains. This article will explore how the printing press was instrumental in spreading new ideas and challenging pre-existing societal structures, ultimately concluding that it was a revolution.  

German goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg, embarked on the journey of inventing the world’s first practical and moveable machine to produce texts at faster rates. Prior to its invention, books were primarily handwritten by monks in monasteries, and were produced slowly and rarely, with the estimated number of books only existing in the thousands. Within the first fifty years of the printing press, this number reached over nine million. In 1440, the creation of the press marked an expansion in the ways knowledge and ideas could be spread, produced, and read, and books were manufactured more quickly, for much lower costs.  

This was particularly felt across Europe, where the invention spread rapidly across the continent, with important city centres, such as Paris and Venice, adopting the press. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that the printing press was not accepted globally at first. The Ottoman Empire, for example, legally restricted its usage due to religious authorities, who feared the mass production of sacred texts, like the Quran. However, it was eventually adopted worldwide by the end of the nineteenth century. Despite its slow acceptance, it should still be considered a revolution due to the fact that it received such varied reactions across the globe and played an important role in fuelling further revolutions.  

The Gutenberg Bible was the first book to be printed and distributed across Western Europe. The book consisted of over one thousand printed pages and led to what is often referred to as the ‘Gutenberg Revolution’, in which printing became popularised, and texts increasingly began to be produced, facilitating future revolutions. Luther’s 95 Theses worked to criticise the Catholic Church, and with the aid of the printing press, his book reached wider audiences, instead of only achieving limited circulation within close circles, allowing discontent to manifest itself throughout Europe. The spread of scientific knowledge also gained significant traction. Copernicus, for instance, originally handwrote his astronomical theories in his manuscripts. He then utilised the printing press and published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, which detailed his heliocentric theory, which Galileo’s observations later confirmed in 1610.  

Though often overshadowed by more immediate fifteenth-century events, such as the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and not possessing the typical indicators of a revolution on the surface, such as violent uprisings or radical political change, the invention of the printing press certainly served to circulate knowledge that heightened tensions and fuelled the revolutions that followed. The power of the printing press, therefore, should not be underestimated in the timeline of revolutions, as it remains one of the key inventions that caused an unprecedented shift in history, moving from the Middle Ages into the early modern period. As you currently read this, the printing press is echoed in my writing, the writing of others, the books you read, the degree you do – it is undeniably a revolution that continues to withstand the test of time. 

Bibliography 

Barker, Nicolas, ‘The Invention of Printing: Revolution within Revolution’, The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 35.2 (1978) pp.64-76

Eisenstein, Elizabeth, ‘In the Wake of the Printing Press’, The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 35.3 (1978) pp.183-197 

Gingerich, Owen, ‘Copernicus and the Impact of Printing’, Vistas in Astronomy, 17.1 (1975) pp.201-218

Rubin, Jared, ‘Printing and Protestants: An Empirical Test of the Role of Printing in the Reformation’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 96.2 (2014) pp.270-286