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Mostly because I think your actual point regarding the role of the printing press is completely apt in general. It's one of my favorite ways to make a point - that leaps forward in communication technology are one of the best, most thorough ways to connect social, material, and intellectual history.
So this isn't an argument. I'm recommending some books about a historical moment you seem interested in because I've had some experience reading about that moment. But reading the books is better than hearing it from an anonymous stranger on the internet. If I write a long post, which I'm apparently about to do, then all you get is "walleye said this" and rejecting what I tell you would be utterly fair. Because everything I know about this period is from those (and other) books. And they're really good books that I think more people should read.
But sure, I can be more specific if you want:
I don't think Gutenberg was a monk. I looked it up when it seemed like you were saying that, and the closest I could find was maybe a loose affiliation with the Victorines and the slight possibility that he was a Franciscan tertiary. But neither of those roles are monks by any useful definition of the term.
That might seem like majoring in minors and maybe it is, and I guess it's possible that you're pointing to some other person credited with introducing the printing press in the west. But you mentioned Gutenberg and he's pretty commonly credited with the printing press so there you go. The reason why it might be important that he's not a monk is that you're drawing a really bright line social history (you're writing off the top of your head - so fair enough) that positions The Church and Gutenberg, the monk, as water carrier for the church on, explicitly, the issue of vernacular bibles and implicitly on the emerging issues of Luther's Reformation.
But the Church didn't draw a bright line on vernacular translations. Sometimes they were allowed. Sometimes they were even encouraged. Sometimes they were banned. The Vulgate itself was a vernacular translation, and the church self-consciously acknowledged the role of human translation in its production and, furthermore, the self-conscious selection of different editions of St. Jerome's translation. When it was time for Gutenberg to print his bible, they didn't have the option of choosing just The Vulgate. They needed to select a particular edition, and that selection process itself requires editorial decisions, which are the heart of translation.
Generally, the church had a fairly (I shouldn't exaggerate that - but "fairly" seems good enough) open stance toward vernacular translations of the bible. Innocent III's papacy and the next few popes leading up to the papal schism did, indeed, view restrictions on the vernacular bible as an important part of their desire to consolidate power in the papacy. But those efforts fizzled, badly, which is one of the reasons the papal schism occurred in the first place. A useful rule of thumb is that the institutional church usually associated vernacular bibles with outbreaks of heresy. If there was a heretical movement in an area that, uh, concerned the Church, then they would crack down on vernacular translations. During the period I just named, Innocent III (early 13th century) and his immediate successors had a few heretical movements to address - but in my view that shows the need for moderation when it comes to making this particular point about the printing press: that it exacerbates existing divisions in society rather than creates them.
That's not actually at odds with what you're saying overall, so again - my objection here is with the bright line that your social history is drawing and not with the existence of any line. It's just murky. Everything is always murky.
Anyhow, those heretical movements (Cathars in 13th century France-ish, Lollards in 14th and 15th century England, and Hussites in 15th century Bohemia) did invite persecutorial church attention (oh shit, read R.I. Moore's "Formation of a Persecuting Society" if you're interested in a big, aggressive argument about how this process leads to the development of the idea of European-ness) and that attention did indeed focus to some degree on vernacular translations of scripture, but I think there are two key points to make about that:
1) Where there was no heretical movement to prosecute, the Church generally appreciated skilled, authorized translations of the bible. So in the non-Cathar areas of France, people (rich people, and very few of them, to be sure) had access to the bible in French. Ditto Germany prior to the Lutherans. And Bohemia prior to Huss. And England prior to Wycliffe and the Lollards. I'm not here to treat the church of the late middle ages as this benevolent, liberal force. But an important thing to keep in mind was that the church definitely believed that there's a lot of value in standardized, authorized translations of the bible as educational tools to *prevent* heresy. There's been a longstanding truism in Church history that people definitely believed back in the middle ages that heresy usually came from the frontiers rather than the cities. That's absolutely not true (hell, the arch-heretic Marcion himself didn't get any traction until he literally came to ROME, which is the exact opposite of the frontiers) but the perception was widespread and had a certain intuitive sense to it: if you don't teach people what to believe, they'll make it up themselves; and the areas where the church was most clearly failing to teach people was at the borders of Christendom.
2) This process of the bubbling up and growth then spread then acceptance of dissent against the Church is incredibly fluid and that fluidity runs from well before the invention of the printing press through that period. Wycliffe used a vernacular bible in England sixty years before Gutenberg to support and spread a series of arguments against the Church. His own writing was both in Latin and in (middle) English. Jan Hus used a vernacular bible in Bohemia thirty years before Gutenberg to support and spread a series of arguments against the Church. He also read Wycliffe's latin work (I don't think Hus read English, but I do know there were a few English figures thoroughly involved in the Bohemian Reformation, like Peter Payne on the proto-Protestant side and Henry Beaufort on the proto-Catholic side so I guess it's possible) and engaged and assimilated his arguments into his own work. Martin Luther read Hus, and therefore Wycliffe by proxy, certainly because of the printing press though given the spread of 15th century Bohemian reformation into Germany it's possible he wouldn't have actually needed it. And then Luther used a vernacular bible to support and spread a series of arguments against the Church alongside these prior reformers.
But again, the reason why I didn't want to argue is that your central point about the printing press has merit and so, if you want, you're free to regard this stuff as extraneous details. I mean, I don't think they're extraneous at all, but this is a post about gun violence and you're making a broad analogy about communication technology so you'd be absolutely justified in saying that.
And Luther is a great point to stick that on because Wycliffe's movement fizzled out once he lost the political support that welded his theological positions onto nascent English nationalism positioned against Rome. Though the way I usually teach Wycliffe is that he "won" in a rather odd sense of being identified as a heretic by the church and still dying naturally in his own bed rather than being set on fire. That's a big W in the late 14th century. And Hus' movement only partly succeeded (the church of the moravian brethren and Czechslovak Hussite Church did actually survive the 15th century and should be understood as Protestant traditions that pre-date Luther) for pretty much the same reason. Its only traction was when it was paired with pro-Bohemian/anti-Rome nationalistic sentiment and when that sentiment was smashed (and sold out, in the case of the Taborites) then the movement itself died out.
But Luther succeeded! And the printing press is a huge reason why. I'll clarify here that, in my view (and Ozment's, which is why I recommended that short little prize of a book. if you only read one, read that one) the actual most important contribution of the printing press in terms of turning a carefully detailed, high-minded academic dispute over soteriology and the existence of inherent righteousness into a mass movement against the roman catholic church wasn't vernacular bibles but rather the *insanely* crude and aggressive woodcuts and propaganda that exploded out of Germany in favor of Luther. Never discount the political id. People might say they want to read the bible and understand its subtle gestures at God's grace, but if you want to move people then a woodcut of a giant, satanic vulture pooping out monks works a lot better to get people fired up:
https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Reformations441/DeOrtuetOrigineMonachorum.jpg
So yeah, look. This is an incredibly rich period that I think you've sort of caricatured in your post. That's not any great sin, as its unreasonable to expect you to write thousands of words about the 16th century to make an argument about gun violence. All this is completely ancillary, and a lot of it can definitely be understood as supporting your point. So it didn't seem worth arguing about. If somebody expresses the slightest interest in this period, my instinct is to recommend some books because that's what people who cared about this stuff did for me. ______________________________
"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"
--Walleye's Dad
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