From Serfs to Merchants: A Journey through Scribal Literacy to Print

            For centuries, printed text has been the primary medium for exchanging information and ideas throughout Europe and the Americas. It is difficult to imagine a world without securely bound paper pages, neatly printed with alphabetic text expressing a range of bold to mundane thoughts. However, we have a great number of individuals, innovations and social movements to thank for the existence of this most widespread form of media. Before books, we were dwellers in a dark age and many could argue that it was our pursuit of print that delivered us into the age of enlightenment. And yet, it took more than the advent of the printing press to create the widespread change that occurred between 1100 and 1600 AD.  Societies turned upside-down, the world became round and man ardently sought to find his place on earth as well as the limits of his power.

During the Middle Ages, social upheaval in Western Europe spurred the rise of a new social class, the middle class. While feudalism reined, the social casting system was almost impenetrable.  Young serfs took up the plow just as their fathers had before them and the gentry, a small populace of powerful families, had a firm grip on the bulk of Europe’s wealth. Slowly, however, this elitist system of began to change. Adventurous merchants and Crusaders returning from the Far East toted fine silks, perfumes, spices, gems and gold along with them. The news of these riches eventually spread throughout the countryside and reached rural manor houses secluded amidst sloping pastures and expansive hunting grounds. Historian Steven Tischler would agree that ironically, it was the gentry, desirous of these exotic luxuries, who unwittingly paved the way for the new, market economy of Western Europe, the merchant class and ultimately, the downfall of Europe’s seemingly omnipotent manorial society (6).

Merchants traveled together for safety, driving their caravans along lonely, rutted roads and upon reaching far-flung manor houses set-up fairs nearby to satisfy the gentry’s desire to procure the latest fashionable treasures from far away lands. Over time, merchants and their cohorts began to settle in these stops along their trade routs and fairs developed into towns. The merchants however paid handsomely in taxes to the king, securing autonomy from the wealthy overlords (Tischler, 7).  Consequently, peasants who once labored only to serve their gentry lord and his family began to flee the manorial grounds, spurred-on by growing opportunities for employment outside of the manor. Finding work in construction, tailoring, candle making and furniture manufacturing in the growing cities now protected by the king, allowed more and more serfs, over time, to shed the yoke of the oppressive feudal system (Tischler, 9). 

Enthusiasm for commerce spread and kings soon realized their need for easier access to the young trade-rich settlements scattered throughout their kingdoms. To provide roads and infrastructure for these developing towns the expansive land shares, once under the control of Europe’s gentry, were divided and sold by order of the king. They built roads through Europe’s wilderness and provided more land to the new townships so they could expand, adding wealth to the royal purse through the merchants’ back pockets. By the fifteenth century, irreversible change had occurred. The influence of these families dissipated to such a degree that the control of entire cities changed hands from the aristocracy to the ever-strengthening merchant class (McGrath, 6).  Traditional attitudes about wealth also lost their foothold in the new market economy; affluence was no longer reserved for old families with old money. Thus, entrepreneurial endeavors became as fashionable as they were lucrative and savvy businessmen eagerly sought new investment opportunities such as the coveted printing press.  

In the early part of the Middle Ages however, books were scarce, precious objects belonging only to the religious and the rich. Although often, even highborn owners of small religious texts, (the books most common in those days) did not have the literacy skills to read them. The clergy were the primary literate members of society, acting as heads of correspondence for kings and lords as well as managing the reproduction of important texts, as skillful scribes. However, as commerce and trade grew along with the merchant/middle class, perspectives on literacy changed. Theologian Alister McGrath illustrates this new perspective, writing:

[T]he new culture of the Italian Renaissance, which swept through Western Europe in the fourteenth century, saw literacy as being a social accomplishment, rather than just a useful administrative tool. Being able to read was now seen as the key to personal fulfillment; to own books was a statement of social status, sending out powerful signals concerning both the financial and intellectual standing of the household. (7)

This novel trend towards literacy traveled from Italy across Europe and helped foster a rebirth of Classical ideals, namely: science, exploration, arts and letters. Thus, this continental drive to achieve scientific and cultural advancement made literacy and the widespread circulation of innovative texts a major social priority.

            As literacy gradually increased among affluent Europeans, the growing market demanded new and numerous reading materials. Yet, several major factors complicated the process of mastering print technology. The first, being paper. In the Middle Ages, Paper was difficult to acquire and documents, for the most part, were written on costly parchment or vellum, both of which were made from the hides of animals.  It was not until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that the Chinese technique for papermaking was adopted by Europeans (Chappell, 5).  However, once grasped by entrepreneurial artisans, the method of making paper on a wire frame from mashed and boiled pulp, spread quickly. And, as outlined by author and type designer Warren Chappell in his book A Short History of the Printed Word, “between the later end of thirteenth and the end of the sixteenth century more than 16,000 individual [papermakers] were [operating] throughout Europe” (17). Interestingly, an epoch rife in art, literature and exploration coincided with this substantial increase in paper supply.

            While immensely significant figures such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Leonardo da Vinci and Christopher Columbus were utilizing the prevalent pulp-made paper in their crafts, effectively changing the face of history, bookmakers faced another hurdle in their quest to develop a printing method that was both efficient and beautiful (Chappell, 17). Block printing started in China and was used widely across Asia since the early eighth century. Historians believe it reached Europe by the end of the fourteenth century; yet the earliest example of this is a woodblock portrait of St. Christopher dated in the year 1423 (Chappell, 11). This method, though quite lovely, especially for portraits and illustrations, is a labor-intensive process of carving full-page blocks of unique text and is wasteful in that the blocks are impossible to reuse for the making of other books. Because of the slow and costly nature of this method, it could not support the surge in demand for reading materials that took place towards the end of the fifteenth century.

A favorite text at this time was the devotional “Book of Hours [which] became a conventional wedding gift for the nobility, and, later for the rich bourgeoisie” (Manguel, 129).  Families across Europe, be-they the elite of the merchant class or old aristocrats from the age of manors, sought to distinguish themselves with books. Although the codex had long been established as the most common and convenient form for books, readers desired them in various sizes and styles depending on their budget and purpose. Royalty, for example, coveted lavish texts made with intricate details, rich colors and extreme proportions, while, students, scholars and clergy men collected more modest texts, bound in easy to carry sizes. “Soon enterprising book-sellers started manufacturing small collections . . . in this manner” (Manguel, 128) appealing to niche markets, while numerous others raced to develop a new technology in order to make this booming enterprise even more fruitful.

Several innovators tried and a few of them even succeeded in developing mechanisms similar to those used in Gutenberg’s printing press.  However, only Johann Gutenberg a young engraver and gem-cutter from Mainz, Germany succeeded, as historian Alberto Manguel explains, “devising all the essentials of printing as they were employed until the twentieth century: metal prisms for moulding the faces of the letters, a press that combined features of those used in wine-making and bookbinding, and an oil-based ink –– none of which had previously existed” (133).  It was sometime in the 1440’s when Gutenberg put the finishing touches on his history-making contraption; and between 1450 and 1455 he produced a bible with forty-two lines to each page (Manguel, 133). This was the first book ever printed from type; and pages from the book, now admiringly referred to, as Gutenberg’s Bible, were first displayed to an astonished crowd at the Frankfurt Trade Fair in March of 1455. Patrons were so delighted with the new print technology that copies were sold before all of the pages in the first copy had been inked (Manguel, 133-134). Gutenberg’s invention changed books and reading from that point on. Since his texts were cleanly printed and relatively cheap to buy, it did not take long before readers all over the Western World were seeking books printed in this new fashion.

 Printing presses began appearing in all of Europe’s major capital cities.  Scholars have since “calculated that more than 30,000 incunabula (a seventeenth-century Latin word meaning “related to the cradle” and used to describe books printed before 1500) were produced on these presses” (Manguel, 134). Time passed and the technology spread. Over the centuries, innovation and capitalization in the craft changed the face of book making beyond what Gutenberg and his contemporaries might have imagined.  By the nineteenth century, so many books were being published and read in such a variety of places that they took on a more pedestrian style. Readers no longer regarded books as lavish prizes kept in the home, indicative of personal wealth and social status; they were bought to be used – read, and then re-read, held in breast pockets, toted by school children and stacked among others upon library shelves. Literacy became widespread and children who attended school learned the basics of reading at an early age. This era brought-on a new and wholly unexpected challenge for readers, however, there were too many books!  Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have complained about the overwhelming number of important texts to read, yet, he advised, “all these books are the majestic expressions of the universal conscience, and are more to our daily purpose than this year’s almanac or this day’s newspaper” (Manguel, 53).

Now, the world is littered in books. We have been enjoying and rejecting the innovations and ideals presented in their pages for almost six hundred years. The majority of the world’s governments, education systems, social infrastructures and individual identities depend upon access to printed media. And yet, the technology of texts, which seems so accessible now and is enjoyed by so many, was not easy to attain. Without the early explorers who brought riches to Europe, essentially, tempting noblemen into relinquishing their stronghold over the masses, we may never have seen a world ready for textual insights. Without the masterful techniques developed by the people of China, we may never have acquired the necessary elements for print technology. It took many nations and many sacrifices, therefore, print technology is and will remain one of the worlds most important universal triumphs.

Works Cited

Chappell, Warren and Robert Bringhurst. A Short History of The Printed Word.

Vancouver, BC: Hartley & Marks Publisher, 1999. Print.

Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Print

McGrath, Alister. In The Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it

Changed A Nation, A Language and A Culture. New York: Anchor, 2002. Print

Tischler, Steven. Making Sense of United States History to the Civil War. New York:

SUNY Empire State College, 2011. Print.

--- ---. “Making Sense of United States History to the Civil War: From Manner to

            Market to America.” Class Lecture Series, SUNY Empire State College,

            Manhattan, NY, September 12 – 27, 2011.