How Did the Printing Press Change Christianity?

[Sunstone]

Yes, and now we see the more assiduous posters on discussions forums supporting their claims with links to reference material.......

So where are yours, then?

Good point! Many years ago, I begin to give up on trying to persuade people. It was a long process, but it is now nearly complete. I typically do not include links in my posts because I don't give a hoot these days whether anyone believes me. I mostly post because I love to write.

 

[Terry Sampson]

the printing press meant the church could now print and sell loads more indulgences, the granting of indulgences made reformers , and the series of responses to them were a key driver of the Reformation.

Indubitably. Sometimes I think of RF as a kind of "Castle Church door in Wittenberg" and a couple of feisty monks among us are tap-tap-tapping up our theses in any space we can find.

Many years ago, I begin to give up on trying to persuade people.

I'm still struggling with the issue myself. Not so much to persuade, although there is that. But as often, if not more often, to provide a brief summary of how I got from Point A to Point 765.3 in the same universe. I don't mind bona fide corrections; it's the accusations of unintelligibility that disturb me. At my age, I still find "reality checks" useful. I don't get many from my wife or dog, and don't have kids to keep tabs on me. And the politeness of waitresses in restaurants and clerks in stores appears more and more superficial day by day.

 

[Augustus]

IIRC the printing press meant the church could now print and sell loads more indulgences,

Gutenberg made money printing indulgences as a sort of side business even as he printed Bibles, not unlike an author selling short stories to support a novel in progress. “Indulgences had been around for centuries, an opportunity for the faithful to atone and have their sins remitted by, say, good works, fasting, going on Crusade or a pious donation,” Janes wrote. The first instance of Gutenberg printing them was in 1454.

“The document itself is just a form, boilerplate as we say today. Take that to your confessor, be in a state of grace, and you’ve gotten yourself out of Purgatory. This was big business for everybody involved, for the printers but mainly for the church. Print runs ran into the thousands, and in one case at least 190,000 indulgences were printed.

“Gutenberg’s legacy is obvious — the printing processes he pioneered spread widely within decades, helping to nourish the emerging Renaissance and Enlightenment that led Europe out of the Middle Ages,” Janes wrote.

Several decades later, complaints about abuses in the indulgence process led to the creation of “broadsides,” a format that led to the development of newspapers.

Documents that Changed the World: Gutenberg indulgence, 1454

 

[Terry Sampson]

Gutenberg made money printing indulgences a

I've been thinking about the possibility of persuading Pope Francis to distribute indulgences to severely troubled individuals, not just to ease their minds in the midst of their griefs, but to be used as carrots to motivate them to take baby-steps, if not larger steps, to get their "stuff" together.

I haven't discussed the matter with a couple of our local RF madhatters to see if that would induce them "to get a grip", "bite the bullet", and start to make a move toward the door out of the hell they're in. But I'm seriously considering doing so.

 

[Altfish]

Bible literacy became much more widespread. Literacy in general became more widespread because texts were much more available. No longer did Christians have to subscribe to whatever the only literate man in town, the local priest or monk, told them, whether this was true or not. Furthermore, Martin Luther's rebellion against the Catholic Church succeeded, at least in part, because printing spread the news and message of his doings quickly.

This

Keeping the flock in ignorance was a benefit to religious leaders; they could 'interpret' the scriptures as they wished prior to printing press and improved literacy. I seem to remember that the Catholic Church maintained this into the 1960s by only doing mass in Latin

 

[Augustus]

Keeping the flock in ignorance was a benefit to religious leaders; they could 'interpret' the scriptures as they wished prior to printing press and improved literacy.

Another way the printing press altered Christianity was its ability to spread Protestant anti-Catholic polemics like this which, to this day, are uncritically accepted by 'Rationalists' despite their scant regard for factual accuracy.

It's quite funny how many of the arguments presented by 'Rationalist' atheists are, unbeknown to them, simply sectarian polemics that grew out of good, old-fashioned religious bigotry.

 

[Vouthon]

@Sunstone I would say the invention of the printing press democratized the "market-place" of Christian ideas.

By this, what I'm saying is that it offered an hitherto unparalleled means of quickly disseminating new theological concepts and radical beliefs, which meant that the Reformers of the 16th century had a communication method available to market and promote their theologies which preceding Christian sects (such as the medieval Lollards, Waldensians and Cathars) lacked.

This might be one of the reasons why the Protestant Reformation spread so quickly from Germany to France, Britain, Scandinavia and Switzerland etc. whereas earlier attempts at reform (with the exception of the Papal Reformation of the 12th century and the Hussites in the 15th century Bohemia) had failed.

I think the printing press opened the minds of readers to new possibilities and in this way 'loosened' the hold that orthodox Christianity and the established Roman church had over the faithful in a number of European countries. Particularly key to this were the early prints of the Bible in the Vernacular, such as William Tyndale's New Testament (1522) and Martin Luther's German Bible (1534). With books more freely available to the masses than ever before, every literate person could now hope to read Scripture for themselves, rather than mediated through clerics at the pulpit or theologians at universities.

A theological idea that was notably conducive to such an environment is the Protestant doctrine, preached by Luther and Calvin, of the "priesthood of all the faithful" which emphasised that no intermediary (i.e. a cleric) was needed between an individual and God but that all believers were in some sense equal before God. This led to the formation of a less hierarchical model of church structure in Calvinism, with Presbyters / ministers rather than bishops and priests, and the even more radical ecclesiology of Baptists and other congregationalist churches which abolished pretty much all clerical titles and roles, rendering all Christians laity.

On the negative side of the equation, it also enabled the Protestant Reformers to spread sometimes woefully inaccurate portrayals or caricatures of Catholic doctrine which have had a pernicious influence till this day.