originally developed centuries earlier by the Chinese using wooden printing blocks, the development of moveable (and reusable) metal type is associated with the German printer Johann Gutenberg (c.1398–1468) at Mainz around 1454. In 1456, Gutenberg produced the first printed Latin Bible, now generally known as the “Gutenberg Bible.” This was followed in 1457 by the so-called Mainz Psalter, which established the custom of identifying the printer, the location of the press, and the date of publication on the title-page of the work. From Germany, the technology was taken to Italy, presses being established at Subiaco (1464) and Venice (1469). William Caxton set up his printing shop at Westminster, London, in 1476. The famous Aldine Press was established at Venice in 1495 by Aldus Manutius Romanus. This press was responsible for two important developments: “lower case” letters (so-called because they were kept in the lower of two cases containing the metal type) and the sloping “italic” type (so-called in English-language works, on account of Venice being located in Italy; Aldus himself called the type “Chancery”).
Why would printing have such a major impact upon the Reformation? The arrival of printing meant that works advocating the agendas and leading ideas of the Reformation could be produced quickly and cheaply, and transported over international frontiers, legally or illegally. It was easy for smugglers to conceal books or printed pages, making it difficult to prevent the free international movement of ideas. As a result of this development, anyone who could read and afford to purchase books was able to encounter the sensational new ideas coming out of Wittenberg in the 1520s and Geneva in the 1550s.
For example, in England it was the literate and financially advantaged classes who knew most about Lutheranism in the third decade of the sixteenth century. Lutheran books, banned by the authorities as seditious, were smuggled in through the Hanseatic trade route to Cambridge via the ports of Antwerp and Ipswich. The greater influence of Luther at the University of Cambridge than at Oxford partly reflects the former’s proximity to the continental ports from which Protestant books were being (illicitly) imported. There was no need for Luther to visit England to gain a hearing for his ideas – they could be spread by the printed word (see pp. 266–7). This point is of interest in relation to the sociology of early Protestantism. In both England and France, for example, the first Protestants were often drawn from the upper strata of society, precisely because these strata possessed the ability to read and the money to pay for books (which, as they often had to be smuggled in from abroad, were generally rather expensive).
It is important to note that the Reformation was based upon certain specific sources: primarily the Bible, and secondarily the Christian theologians of the first five centuries (often referred to as “patristic writers”), particularly Augustine of Hippo. The invention of printing had two immediate consequences for these sources, of considerable importance to the origins of the Reformation. First, it was possible to produce more accurate editions of these works – for example, through the elimination of copying errors. By comparing the printed text of a work with manuscript sources, the best possible text could be established and used as the basis of theological reflection. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, humanist scholars rummaged through the libraries of Europe in search of patristic manuscripts which they could edit and publish.
As a result, these sources were made much more widely available than had ever been possible before. By the 1520s, just about anyone could gain access to a reliable edition of the Greek text of the New Testament or the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), a patristic writer particularly favored by both Protestant and Catholic theologians of this age. The eleven volumes of the collected works of Augustine were published at Basle by the Amerbach brothers, after an editorial process lasting from 1490 to 1506. Although only 200 copies of each volume seem to have been published, they were widely used to gain access to the most reliable text of this important writer.
Erasmus of Rotterdam produced the first published text of the Greek New Testament in 1516. (A rival scholarly edition, developed by scholars at the Spanish university of Alcalá, was ready to print by this time, but was not actually published until 1522.) Entitled Novum Instrumentum omne, Erasmus’ work had three main sections: the original Greek text of the New Testament; a new Latin translation of this Greek text, which corrected inadequate existing translations, especially the Vulgate (see pp. 119–20); and finally, an extended commentary on the text, in the form of annotations. Despite some problems, Erasmus’ Greek text was widely respected, and came to be known as “the received text (Latin: textus receptus).”
The work was widely used by those sympathetic to the cause of the Reformation. For the reformers – especially Luther and his colleagues at Wittenberg – the religious ideas of the Reformation drew largely on the Bible and Augustine. The advent of printing, linked with increasingly effective bookselling methods, meant that accurate and reliable texts of both these sources were widely available, thus facilitating both the initial development and the subsequent spread of these ideas. Most of the great vernacular translations of the New Testament of the early Reformation period – such as William Tyndale’s English translation of 1526 – were based on Erasmus’ Greek text.
The importance of printing in spreading the ideas of the Reformation cannot be overstated. Surveys of the personal book collections of French bourgeois families point to the religious implications of this trend. Jacques Lefèvre’s French translation of the New Testament (1523), pointedly addressed “to all Christian men and women,” along with his French translation of the Psalter of 1524, were read widely throughout France and were even distributed free of charge within the reforming diocese of Meaux. Copies of these works, along with the New Testament commentaries of Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Lefèvre himself, are frequently to be found jostling for space on the shelves of bourgeois libraries in the late 1520s.
Most printing presses were located within cities. Recent studies have noted a correlation between the presence of a printing press in a city and its attitude toward the Reformation. If a city had a printing press or publishing house in place by 1500, it was much more likely to have adopted the core ideas of the Reformation by 1600. It has long been known that the Reformation seems to have had some particular appeal to urban populations. So, was this solely due to the presence of printing presses and publishers in urban contexts, or were there other factors of importance?
The Urban Context of the Reformation
The cities of Europe played an important role in the development of the Reformation. The northern European Reformation emerged largely in the self-governing cities of this region, such as Basle and Strasbourg. In Germany, more than fifty of the sixty-five autonomous “Imperial Cities” responded positively to the Reformation, with only five choosing to ignore it altogether. In Switzerland, the Reformation originated in an urban context (Zurich), and spread through a process of public debate within Confederate cities such as Berne and Basle and other centers – such as Geneva and St. Gallen – linked to these cities by treaty obligations. French Protestantism began as a predominantly urban movement, with its roots in major cities such as Lyons, Orléans, Paris, Poitiers, and Rouen.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the success or failure of the Reformation in these cities was dependent in part upon political and social factors. By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the city councils of the imperial cities had managed to gain a substantial degree of independence. In effect, each city seems to have regarded itself as a miniature state, with the city council functioning as a government and the remainder of the inhabitants as subjects.
The growth in the size and importance of the cities of Germany is one of the more significant elements in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century history. It is now thought that about one tenth of the population of the Holy Roman Empire then lived in cities, ranging in size from about fifty thousand inhabitants in the case of Nuremberg to around two thousand inhabitants in most other cases. An extended food crisis, linked with the ravages of the Black Death, led to an agrarian crisis. Wheat prices dropped alarmingly in the period 1450–1520, leading to rural depopulation as agricultural workers migrated to the
