The invention of printing

The invention of printing transformed the possibility of spreading the Bible: cheap paper alone could not overcome the cost and slowness of copying books by hand, but printing made large-scale circulation possible. The book therefore treats the new art not merely as a technical advance, but as the providential counterpart to papermaking and a means of preparing for the Reformation.

The Problem of Scarce Books

Before printing could make books widely available, the materials on which they were written were themselves difficult to obtain. The book traces the scarcity of writing materials to the interruption of communication between Egypt and Europe after the Saracen conquest of Egypt in the seventh century. Papyrus, previously cheaper than parchment, could no longer be procured in Europe, and books were written on parchment alone. Manuscripts could be so valuable that old writing was erased to make the material usable again.

The resulting scarcity put books beyond the reach of most private readers. Monasteries of considerable standing might possess only one missal, while even prominent scholars struggled to obtain complete works. The book recounts that the Countess of Anjou paid two hundred sheep, five quarters of wheat, and equal quantities of rye and millet for a copy of homilies by Haimon, Bishop of Albertstadt. The example makes the cost of books concrete: access to written learning could require payment in livestock and grain, not merely money.

Papermaking eased the shortage of materials but did not by itself solve the problem of access. A manuscript still had to be copied by hand. Dr. Beattie estimated that writing out a Bible would cost at least as much as building an ordinary country church. As late as 1471, according to Dr. Robertson’s account, Louis XI had to pledge a considerable quantity of plate and obtain a nobleman’s guarantee in order to borrow the works of the physician Rasis from the faculty of medicine in Paris. Even a king’s loan of books involved collateral and a binding obligation to return them.

The Invention and Its Development

The book places the invention of printing in Germany or Flanders around 1420. Its earliest described form used wooden blocks, each engraved with the characters of an entire page. About thirty years later, printing with movable types was discovered, allowing the characters to be arranged and reused rather than cutting every page as a single block. Within less than a century of the art’s invention, printing had been brought to perfection in France by Robert Stephen and his son Henry, whom the author identifies as both eminent printers and scholars.

The account distinguishes the invention of paper from its later development into a general article of trade. A note acknowledges Lord Kaimes’s statement that paper was made no earlier than the fourteenth century, and clarifies that this refers to its general manufacture as a trade rather than to the earlier invention of the art. This distinction supports the book’s chronology: it presents papermaking as an earlier condition of possibility and printing as the later means of multiplying texts.

From Manuscript Scarcity to Wider Circulation

Printing completed what papermaking had begun. The author’s central comparison is between a manuscript Bible, whose copying could cost as much as a church, and the printed book, which could be reproduced in such numbers that every family—and nearly every person—might have a Bible. The contrast is not simply between two techniques: it marks a change in who could plausibly possess and read Scripture. Before printing, a parish might struggle to afford even one Bible; after its development, the multiplication of books made broad access conceivable.

The book also notes that stereotype, described as a recent improvement, further reduced the expense of the sacred volume. It associates this reduction in cost with the era of Bible Societies, extending the argument beyond the original invention: successive improvements in reproduction continued to enlarge the potential reach of Scripture.

Providence and the Reformation

The timing of printing gives the invention its particular significance in the book’s interpretation. Printing arose in the century before the Reformation and, the author argues, was perfected just when it was needed to circulate revived religious truth. Papermaking is cast as the harbinger of a revival of learning; printing, in turn, as the harbinger of the Reformation. The metaphor of heavenly artillery brought to the place of combat presents printed books as instruments in a struggle over religious authority and the dissemination of the Bible.

This interpretation depends on the relationship between technological means and religious purpose. The book argues that the promised spread of the Gospel could not effectively reach the mass of people while books remained prohibitively scarce and costly. The arrival of two arts that sharply reduced those barriers, at the point when their use could serve that wider circulation, is therefore read as evidence of Divine Providence. The author reinforces this claim by pointing to the account in Exodus of God giving Bezaleel, Aholiab, and other skilled workers the abilities needed to make the tabernacle: artistic and mechanical skill, in this reading, can be given for the service of sacred purposes.

Printing’s significance thus lies both in what it did and in when it became effective. It multiplied books, lowered the practical barriers to Bible ownership, and furnished a medium through which religious teaching could travel beyond the limits of handwritten copying. In the book’s larger account, the press did not act alone: paper made reproduction less costly, improvements in printing increased its scale, and expanded reading made the resulting texts usable. Together, these developments helped prepare the circulation of Scripture associated with the Reformation.