Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

Notwithstanding such criticism on the part of a few scholarly churchmen, the influence of Rome and of the Church generally, during the earlier work of the printers, was very largely favourable and had not a little to do with the support given to the work which might easily otherwise have been given up for lack of adequate business return. The Church of Rome felt itself at this time sufficiently secure in its control of the minds of men to be prepared to utilise to full advantage all methods for distributing its doctrinal literature, and to have no dread as to these same means being used for the scattering of heretical teachings. The popes of the time, largely influenced by the spirit of the Renaissance, gave a cordial welcome to the revival of scholarly interests and to the printing-press as an important means for furthering the general education and the intellectual development of the community. Their interest was by no means limited to the distribution of doctrinal works, but in these earlier years of publishing they welcomed, and to a considerable extent co-operated in, the production of editions, for general circulation, of the works of the pagan classics.

Hegel says, in his Philosophy of History, that the renewed interest in the studying of the writings of the ancients found an important support in the service of the printing-press. He goes on to point out that the Church felt no anxiety concerning this renewed interest in pagan literature, and evidently did not imagine that this literature was introducing into the minds of men a new element of suggestion and of inquiry.

It may be considered as one of the fortunate circumstances attending the introduction of the art of printing that the popes of the time were largely men of liberal education and of intellectual tastes, while one or two, such as Nicholas V., Julius II., and Leo X., had a very keen personal interest in literature and were collectors of books.

The fact that Leo X. was a luxury-loving, free-thinking prince rather than a devoted Christian leader or teacher, may very probably have been in the end a service for the enlightenment and development of his own generation and of the generations that were to come. An earnest and narrow-minded head of the Church could, during the first years of the sixteenth century, have retarded not a little the development of the work of producing books for the community at large.

It was a number of years before the dread of the use of the printing-press for the spread of heretical doctrines and of a consequent undermining of the authority of the Church assumed such proportions in the minds of the popes in Rome and with the bishops elsewhere, as to cause the influence of the Church to be placed against the interests of the world of literature. As a result of this early acceptance by the Church of the printing-press as a useful ally and servant, the first Italian presses were supported by bishops and cardinals in the work of producing classics for scholarly readers, while at the other extremity of the Church organisation, and at a distance of a thousand miles or more from Rome, the Brothers of Common Life were using the presses in their Brotherhood homes for the distribution of cheap books among the people.

Berthold von Henneberg, Elector of Mayence, speaks of “The Divine Art of Printing.”[433] The Carthusian monk, Werner Rolewinck, writes, in his Outline History of the World (Fasciculus Temporum): “The art of printing which has been discovered in Mayence is the art of arts, the science of sciences, by means of which it will be possible to place in the hands of all men treasures of literature and of knowledge which have heretofore been out of their reach.”

Joh. Rauchler, the first Rector of the Tübingen High School (later the University of Tübingen), rejoices that through the new art so many authors can now be brought within the reach of students in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, authors who are witnesses for the Christian faith, and the service of whose writings to the Church and to the world is so great, that he can but consider “this art as a gift directly from God himself.”[434] Felix Fabri, Prior of the Dominican monastery in Ulm, says, in his Historia Suevorum, issued in the year 1459, that “no art that the world has known can be considered so worthy, so useful, so much to be esteemed, indeed, so divine as that which has now, through the Grace of God, been discovered in Mayence.”

The first printing work done by the Brothers of Common Life dates from 1468. They appear to have promptly utilised their scribes as compositors and their illuminators as designers for the new form in which their books were produced. Many of the Benedictine monasteries which had for so many centuries led the way in the preservation and the multiplication of literature at once associated presses with their monasteries and had their monks trained in the art of setting type and of printing sheets.

Among the monastery printing-presses were those of the Carthusian monastery in Strasburg, the monastery of S. Ulrich and Afra, in Augsburg, and the Benedictine monasteries in Nuremberg and Rostock. As a rule, in places where the work of scribes had been active, the printing-press found a ready acceptance. It was not long, however, before so great a development in the methods of the printing business was brought about that it became difficult for the monasteries to carry on the work effectively, and by the middle of the sixteenth century the production of books in monasteries had practically ceased.

The favourable relations between the Church and the printers were checked by the Humanistic movement, which, a generation or more before the Reformation, began to bring into question the authority of the Church and the infallibility of papacy. The influence of the Humanistic teachers was so largely furthered by the co-operation of the printers that the jealousy and dread of the ecclesiastical authorities were promptly aroused, and they began to utter fulminations against the wicked and ignorant men who were using the art of printing for misleading the community and for the circulation of error. The ecclesiastics, who had at first favoured the widest possible circulation of the Scriptures, now contended that much of the heretical teaching was due to the misunderstanding of the Scriptures on the part of readers who were acting without the guidance of their spiritual advisers.