Kovarik - the Divine Art

Question 1

What was the intellectual center of knowledge and what were the ideological beliefs of this institution?

Answer 1

The church. It was orientated around the bible and it still had remnants of natural philosophy.

Question 2

What was the main method to copying text and what was the societal repercussions of this?

Answer 2

• By hand by monks and it was very slow.
• Resulted in scarcity in literary works ( seen as works of art).
• Very few people were literate.

Question 3

Who was Gutenberg and when was he born?

Answer 3

• Born in 1398.
• He was first a metal forger and made and sold pilgrim mirrors.
• Created the first moveable type.

Question 4

Explain the history of the moveable type.

Answer 4

• Around 1439, Gutenberg first poured metal into matrices that held blanks for different
  letters of the alphabet.
• First thing he printed → the Bible [1282-page bible] first unbound pages – 1454

Question 5

Explain the economic results for Gutenberg.

Answer 5

• Cost: 30 florins.
  → Tried to sell
  → Sales initially slow
  → Eventually failed
• Fust took over business 1456 – began second wave of printing revolution with popular
  forms of religious book called a psalter.
• By 1480 – every city in Europe had at least one printing company.

Question 6

Where and what was the first known printing mechanism?

Answer 6

• 3500 BC – ‘Printing’ been around since then – “cylinder seals” in Mesopotamia .

Question 7

Who was the person that discovered printing before Gutenberg and why didn’t it catch on?

Answer 7

• Bi Sheng → also solves movable type
  →doesn’t catch on because Chinese is logographic (at least 6000 characters
  needed).

Question 8

What was the initial societal consequence of the moving type?

Answer 8

• Increase in the literacy rate - more wanted to read due to the increase in the availability of readings.
• Rising need for education among nobility and merchants in the Renaissance around the 1200s
• Diffusion of ideas that let us out of the Middle Ages.

Question 9

Explain the diffusion of printing.

Answer 9

• By 1500 → in Venice – 65 printing companies.
• Birthplace of printing was Germany (Mainz) but Venice, Italy was its cradle (Incunabula).

Question 10

Who was Nicholas Jensen?

Answer 10

• 1420-1480 – invented “Roman” type – more legible than Gutenberg’s
  blackletter (gothic) style and was quickly adopted as standard.

Question 11

Why Printing was revolutionary?

Answer 11

• Printing regrouped people and skills + transition from
  copying to printing in mid-to-late 1400s + faster than monks – more could be printed

Question 12

What was the renaissance?

Answer 12

A period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity
& covering the 15th & 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive & surpass ideas
& achievements of classic antiquity. It occurred after the crisis of the late Middle Ages &
was associated with great social change.
– Represents the end of the Middle Ages + desire for new knowledge.

Question 13

What were the new institutions of the Ren?

Answer 13

• Banks + universities + exploration etc.

Question 14

What were the two main goals of early printers?

Answer 14

• Increase the availability of the Latin Bible.
• Recover ancient Roman and Greek manuscripts.

Question 15

What occured linguistically when printing started increasing.

Answer 15

• Works started being produced in vernacular languages.
• Started being printed in different languages.

Question 16

What were the initial effects of printing?

Answer 16

1. Unifying national languages – became cornerstone of national identity
2. Standardization of information – allowed exact reproduction of info in a way that
   manuscript copying did not
3. Social impacts → spread of humanism & individualism
4. Allowed contrasting of ideas

Question 17

What was the relationship between printing and church.

Answer 17

• Church initially saw printing as a divine gift.
• Seen as way to diffuse knowledge of scripture, and printing was also a
  practical aid to Church
• Printing accelerated the Church’s ability to trade cash for the forgiveness
  of sins—a practice known as selling indulgences

Question 18

Why did the church become pessimistic towards printing later on?

Answer 18

Bible now in different languages / vernacular – average person could read now & see
‘truth’ like sin- tax → Church did not like this.

Question 19

Who was Martin Luther?

Answer 19

→ he also used media
→ His 95’ theses – criticism of church – kicked off to protestant revolution/reformation
→ Luther’s point was that sales of indulgences were gross violations of the original idea
of confession and penance
→ New printing press amplified Luther’s voice
→ For first time in history → the power of a revolutionary idea was fully amplified by a
mass medium
→ “God’s highest and extremest act of grace”
→ Followers began to see printing press as an agent of freedom (from bondage to
Roman Church and delivering light of true religion to Germany

Question 20

How did Printing ignite religious revolutions?

Answer 20

Counter-reformation → catholic church fought back against reformation → religious
warfare broke out across Europe and fighting continued for generations
Religious warfare simmered down after Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 → each king
would determine religion of his own nation

Question 21

Explain what is meant by the emergence of religious tolerance.

Answer 21

• Printing → also amplified calls for tolerance and reason
• Sebastian Castellio (1515–63) became one of the first proponents of freedom of
  conscience.

Question 22

Who was John Milton?

Answer 22

→ Argued for tolerance and free speech
→ “marketplace of ideas”
→ Other people started to form other ideas
→ Ability to spread ‘bad ideas’
→ Milton said → media should be impartial about the content & what they spread – people
should have access to everything.

Question 23

Explain the progression from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and state who the prominent figures of this time was.

Answer 23

Tolerance was a large part of the new creed of printing, and it was within this cultural
ferment that the Renaissance gave way to the Enlightenment.
Prominent people in that time = Francois Voltaire (famous quote) + Benjamin Franklin

Question 24

Explain what the scientific and Technical Impacts of the PR.

Answer 24

• Printing was the most obvious and probably the most important element in
  capturing the scientific and technological revolution from the - Renaissance
  forward.
• Printing → spread news of exploration + descriptions of new technologies +
  improvements in medicine + insights into astronomy + information about a host of
  other discoveries
• Printing spurred the exploration of physical and mental horizons with the
  publication of exact maps, charts, and astronomical tables.
• The power of the press also influenced the way geographic discoveries were
  understood.
  the focus at first was on publishing books from classical Greek and Roman
  authorities
• Gradually, scientists adopted the printing press as part of their educational and
  research efforts
• Sometimes reformers used the press to challenge the elites.
• As the horizon of knowledge expanded, the role of printing in forming
  communities became appreciated.

Question 25

When was news in Print

Answer 25

• Commercial newsletters were produced as early as 131 BCE
• A daily newsletter called the Acta Diurna conveyed not only official acts of the
  Senate but also news of crime, divorce, and other items of general interest → Acta
  Diurna usually considered the first example of a mass media publication.
• Around the 1380s, the emergence of banks and international trading made small
  group communication necessary
• Book publishing dominated the printing trade after Gutenberg’s invention caught on,
  but a wide variety of small publications were also coming into print.
• Four basic kinds of news publications emerged between the late 1500s and early
  1700s:
  ➢ Relation → one-time publication about single event (battle, coronation, etc)
  ➢ Coronto → small bound book about news from foreign country
  ➢ Diurnal → regular publication that covered one subj, typically events of gov.
  ➢ Mercury → small bound book that would cover events from single country for 6
  months at a time
• Holland’s printing industry introduced many other innovations around this time,
  including the first newspaper advertisements, the first woodcuts in a newspaper, and
  the first English and French-language newspapers that were printed in Amsterdam
  to evade the strict censorship in England and France

Question 26

Explain censorship.

Answer 26

• News media became important
  ➔ Idea of censorship (started in roman period)
• Four basic principles to censorship used:
  1. Licensing of a printing company itself;
  2. Pre-press approval of each book or edition of a publication;
  3. Taxation and stamps on regular publications; and
  4. Prosecution for sedition against the government or libel of individuals.
• Often both state and Church censored publications.
• The dual system of censorship was widely used in Catholic nations around the world
• Protestant nations were also engaged in political censorship.
  Sweden – First to ban censorship. 1766

Question 27

Who was Voltaire?

Answer 27

Believed in tolerance, rule of law, freedom of opinion
1770 letter → “Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” “I
detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to
write”.

Question 28

Explain what revolutions occured because of the media.

Answer 28

Still central theme → control of these media platforms → Essentially control people’s
ideas
Political revolutions → newspapers triggered political revolutions in England, the United
States, Europe and Latin America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
→ Revolutionaries from the seventeenth to the twentieth century have advocated using
the media of their day to advance the political revolutions they created.
→ The period from the seventeenth to the twentieth century was marked by a shift away
from authoritarian monopolies over public debate and toward the rise of public opinion

Question 29

What was the whig and tory party?

Answer 29

These newspapers existed in a world swirling with political controversy that also
included Whig and Tory political organizations. (caused partisan papers)
Tory party – supported monarchy | Whig party – supported parliament
➔ Whig party leader – Edmund Burke → “fourth estate” = reporters and news ; 3
other estates that represented in Parliament were the nobility, the clergy, the
middle class.