I’m pretty sure that if the champions of the printing press were given the opportunity to see how their magnificent new device would transform the written word into a means for women to write about their sexual fantasies involving demons, monsters, and the dead, they would have burned every last one of them.
One of its principal attractions was that it had the potential to democratise knowledge. In the past, the high cost of manuscripts had meant that only the well-to-do could afford them. Now that books could be produced in large numbers, however, printed volumes could be sold for much lower prices, making them available to those of lesser means for the first time. As Bussi remarked, it was possible for even the poorest to build a library of his own and for learning to become accessible to all. Excited by the prospect, some of those associated with presses began writing texts explicitly targeted at furthering the spread of knowledge. In 1483, for example, Fra Iacopo Filippo Foresti of Bergamo (1434–1520) published his Supplementum chronicarum. A sort of ‘bluffers’ guide’ to world history, this was expressly designed to make available to the masses knowledge which had previously been restricted only to the few.
As many observers recognised, this had a range of knock-on benefits. For some, the most important of these was permanence. According to the Florentine humanist Bartolomeo della Fonte (1446–1513), printers could ‘confer eternity’ on whatever they produced. Since printing put more books into circulation, he reasoned, it would ensure that ancient texts were less likely to be lost, and it would crown modern authors with certain fame. Others believed that the ‘flood’ of new books would lead to moral enlightenment. There was some justification for this. Recent research into domestic life has revealed that books of hours were by far the most commonly owned texts; and, as Caroline Anderson has argued, the fact that these books were often kept in the camera (bedchamber/dayroom) suggests that they were read on a daily basis, including by women. It was hence only reasonable to assume that, as printing spread, so virtue would also grow. For the Franciscan friar Bernardino da Feltre (1439-94), God had shed ‘so much light on these most wretched and dark times’ through print that there was no longer any excuse for sin at all.
But not everyone was so enthusiastic. Others, for whom novelty and progress were far from synonymous, regarded printing with open hostility. Of these, none was more vehement than Filippo de Strata.
Like many of his contemporaries, he did not have any particular objection to books as physical objects. Although he is almost certain to have preferred manuscripts, he does not seem to have thought that printed works were, in themselves, unworthy of being read. Printers, however, were another matter. Much like his contemporary, the historian Marcantonio Sabellico (1436–1506), he reviled them as much for their ‘plebeian’ ways as for their foreign origins. To his mind, they were beggars and thieves who had no appetite for work but were always hungry for money. They had come to Italy, babbling in that ugly language of theirs, with no other goal than to put scribes out of a job. What was worse, they had no sense of propriety either. Drunk on strong wine and success, they were hawking books to every Tom, Dick and Harry. In doing so, they were not democratising learning — as Bussi and Foresti liked to believe — but debasing it. Whereas, in the past, the expense and scarcity of manuscripts had ensured that great care was always taken over the preparation of texts, the ease with which books could now be printed — coupled with the intense competition between presses — had led to all manner of rubbish being churned out. These days, Filippo argued, you could hardly open a volume without it being festooned with errors. This clearly did immense damage both to classical scholarship and to education. By putting such defective texts into the hands of the masses, he claimed, even those who could barely speak the vernacular would feel qualified to teach Latin. But since printers were interested only in making a quick buck off such ‘unlettered’ fools, they had no incentive to do any better. All that mattered was getting a new edition on the market as quickly as possible, irrespective of its quality.
For much the same reason, Filippo also believed that printing was a threat to public morality. If printers had sold nothing but religious works, it might not have been so bad; but because they were interested only in profit, they were trying to attract new readers by appealing to their baser instincts. All manner of bawdy and unsuitable volumes were being produced: from the torrid love poetry of Tibullus and Ovid, to the worst kind of modern filth. Given how cheaply such books were sold, it was inevitable that vice, rather than virtue, would flourish.
As an avowed champion of textual AI, it is more than a little sobering to observe how the skeptics of past technological innovations have not only been proven right, but proven right beyond their wildest imaginings.