Answer:
The printing press had dramatic effects on European civilization. Its immediate effect was that it spread information quickly and accurately. This helped create a wider literate reading public.
Explanation:
long before the printing press was ever even conceptualized, a man was not equipped with the instrument of writing. It was only the spoken word that was passed on. Memory was the tool that was relied on. As a result of this, when writing began to enter the mainstream world, it was condemned by a lot of people, including Socrates, who felt that it would just create forgetfulness and create a ‘show of wisdom without reality’.
This opinion, of course, was extremely ephemeral, though, and soon thereafter, writing had become very common. Still, it remained at the jurisdiction of the elites of society, preserving the written word on papyrus or vellum. In monasteries, cathedrals, and universities of the medieval world, the writing was not done in ordinary language; a special, holy language, Latin, was used for the purpose. This further restricted access to writing to only those who were learned in Latin.
In the 15th century, an innovation enabled people to share knowledge more quickly and widely. Civilization never looked back. Knowledge is power, as the saying goes, and the invention of the mechanical movable type printing press helped disseminate knowledge wider and faster than ever before.
Over the years, the libraries of monasteries became repositories of rare, exquisite, and sometimes, unique texts. Whenever copies were required, they would be made in a special scriptorium, the room of the scribes, where a scribe, usually a monk, would try his best to replicate the text as closely as possible, without making errors. Despite his best efforts, there were often inadvertent errors in the texts. Despite this, copying was seen as holy labor, and many men devoted their lives to it, creating, over the years, some beautiful products, such as the Book of Kells.
But even though the work tried to avoid variability, there were changes that gradually came about. A crucial one that had taken place by the start of the middle ages was the shift from scrolls to codices, the form in which we are acquainted with our books. By reducing the wear and tear that was inevitable from the constant rolling and unrolling of scrolls, the codex made the written word more accessible, and for that, many historians believe it to be an even bigger revolution than the printing press.
Bookselling also became a much bigger vocation in the later middle ages, with stationery shops sprouting up around the young universities of Medieval Europe, around 1350. Here, scribes would copy books on demand.
With the entry of the Gutenberg printing press, all of this, and several other social systems, went through a major overhaul.
Gutenberg’s press had strong associations with the Christian authority. He saw the catholic world as a serious market for his products and began to print Bibles. These newer, ‘approved’, and more uniform bibles became a show for Papal authority, and warded off rival popes, maintaining, and in fact, strengthening authority over Christendom.
Later on, Gutenberg’s printing press was used to print copies of the Catholic priest, Martin Luther’s works, including his Ninety-Five Theses, calling for changes within the church, which were read in huge numbers, technically making Martin Luther the first-ever best selling author. In this manner, the printing press was of paramount importance in spreading the protestant reforms.
