A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [48]
BEFORE THE DENSE, overarching, suffocating medieval night could be broken, the darkness had to be pierced by the bright shaft of learning —by literature, and people who could read and understand it. Here Durant is informative. Until late in the fifteenth century most books and nearly all education had been controlled by the Church. Volumes had been expensive, and unprofitable for writers, who, unprotected by copyright, lived on pensions or papal grants, in monastic orders, or by teaching. Few reached wide audiences. Scarcely any libraries possessed more than 300 books. The chief exceptions were those of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, with 600; of the king of France, with 910, and of Christ Church priory, Canterbury, with some 2,000. So valuable were they that each volume was chained to a desk or lectern.
The typographical revolution did not come all at once. The Chinese had designed wooden typography before 1066 and used it to print paper money; block printing in Tabriz dated from 1294, and the Dutch may have experimented with it in 1430. Practical use of it awaited other discoveries—oily ink, for example, and paper. The ink was quickly found. Paper took longer. Muslims had introduced its manufacture to Spain in the 900s, to Sicily in the 1100s, to Italy in the 1200s, and to France in the 1300s. During that same century linen began to replace wool in the wardrobes of the upper classes; discarded linen rags became a cheap source of paper, and its price declined. The stage was set for the main event.
Its star, of course, was Johannes Gutenberg Gensfleisch, who preferred to be known by his mother’s maiden name (his father’s name, Gensfleisch, being German for “gooseflesh”). In 1448 he had moved from Strasbourg to Mainz, where, with the help of Peter Schöffer, his typesetter, he developed engraved steel signatures for each number, letter, and punctuation mark. Metal matrixes were formed to hold the figures, and a metal mold to keep them in line. Gutenberg then borrowed money to buy a press and, in 1457–1458, published his superb Bible of 1,282 outsized, double-columned pages. It was one of the great moments in the history of Western civilization. He had introduced movable type.
The invention of printing was denounced by, among others, politicians and ecclesiastics who feared it as an instrument which could spread subversive ideas. But they were a minority. Copies of the first type-printed book were studied all over Europe; Gutenberg had built a bonfire in Mainz, and printers throughout Christendom flocked to kindle their torches from it. Presses duplicating his—but at no profit to him, since patents, like copyrights, did not exist—appeared in Rome (1464), Venice (1469), Paris (1470), the Netherlands (1471), Switzerland (1472), Hungary (1473), Spain (1474), England (1476), Denmark (1482), Sweden (1483), and Constantinople (1490).
Who were the first readers, and how many were there? Historians have reasoned that businessmen needed books for trade and industry, and middle- and upper-class women wanted them for romantic escape. The difficulty here is that by the most positive estimate over half of the Continent’s male population was illiterate, and the rate among women was higher—perhaps 89 percent. (East of Vienna and north of the Baltic both figures were a great deal worse.) Exact calculations are impossible, but we know that reading was taught before writing. An examination of signed depositions, wills, applications for marriage certificates, bonds, and subscribers to declarations and protests permits a rough reckoning of illiteracy by both class and occupation.
Literacy rates varied from place to place and from time to time, but some general figures are available. The percentage of those who could not read at all was o percent in the clergy and professions. Among gentry it was 2 percent, yeomen 35 percent, craftsmen 44 percent, peasants 79 percent, and laborers 85 percent.