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Chaucer said his clerk needed 
twenty books to fill his shelf

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It took ten scribes
... to feed one clerk

3
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it's sort of a little like 
the agricultural revolution

4
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it take ten farmers to feed one city folk

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after the agricultural revolution

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it's one farmer feeds twenty city folk.

7
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and it was the same sort of thing as far as

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scribes providing book provisions

9
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for friars and for lay men,
lay professionals,

10
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In other words,
it's an economy of scarcity

11
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that you're dealing with

12
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and people are starved, in a sense,
 for more books

13
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On the other hand it means
they read very intensively

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what works they have

15
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I came across a comment... let's see,
it was in Oxford,

16
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where all the books on medicine...

17
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and on theology... had gone.

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The friars had taken them 
for their houses of studies,

19
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and so the professor there, the don,
didn't have any books to rely on.

20
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There's nothing new about saying
that printing was important in the reformation

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what's interesting to me is though, 
the way

22
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printing becomes an emancipatory force
for the first time.

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I don't think the church thought of it
as an emancipating force

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until the split came with Luther,
the Lutheran revolt,

25
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and the lutherans saw it 
as a way of emancipating

26
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the population from the hold of Rome

27
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emancipating the Germans 
from the domination of the Italian pope.

28
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and this theme was then taken over 
by Protestants in other countries 

29
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and in England of course
it was very much that printing was...

30
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a way of emancipating the English 
after Henry 8th and under Edward etc

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So for the first time, I think,
from the Reformation on...

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printing becomes associated with rebellion...

33
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and emancipation.

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Then the church begins to change its position

35
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and becomes much more ambivalent 
about this wonderful thing

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and the Council of Trent creates 
the index of prohibited books

37
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and different institutions to control

38
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a technology they had previously welcomed.

39
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So that the split is what creates

40
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a different attitude in many different regions
towards printing.

41
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There's the governor of Virginia, 
Governor Berkeley,

42
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who wrote to his overseers in england 
in the 17th century saying:

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"Thank god we have no printing in Virginia, 

44
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and we shall never have it 
as long as I'm governor!"

45
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But of course they were using 
printed books in Virginia

46
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because they came from maryland, 
they came from all over,

47
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he just didn't want the printing press there
because he thought it was a source of heresy

48
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and this was a reaction to the english civil war
 and the pamphlet wars,

49
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 they were called "paper bullets"
in that period.

50
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The pamphleteer is an interesting figure, 
there's no question. 

51
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The pamphlet wars are something that -

52
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I mean you get certain manifestos 
in the age of the scribe,

53
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there's no doubt about that...

54
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and political documents and so forth

55
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and you have wars,
civil wars,

56
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you have the empire versus 
the church in Germany

57
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But you don't t have the kind of continuous

58
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arguments going on 
between one faction and another

59
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that you have with these pamphlet wars

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where the fallout does lead to people,

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which I say,

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converting to different causes.

63
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The big cost is the reams of paper

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which you have to have in advance

65
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that's the big outlay.

66
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But the press itself is a small wooden press

67
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you know, people used to put them on rafts

68
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and float down to another town 
if they were in trouble with the authorities.

69
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It was very moveable.

70
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 A piece of moveable property,
and the printing shop, 

71
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depending on whether you have 
ten presses or one press... 

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There were printers that were almost holes 
in the wall...

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if they were printing subversive material,

74
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they could sort of hide their presses very quickly

75
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it's a technology that involves 
large spaces and a lot of outlay,

76
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or a very small operation.

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Sort of a one-man thing.

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These things were operating 
in basements or attics or garrets, 

79
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however you'd like to call them.

80
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 The case of the Copernican theory
is a good one, 

81
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because the printers were the ones
who were hunted down

82
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if they printed the forbidden text.

83
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So, we think of persecuting the authors,
but it was really the printers.

84
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And it did sort of quiet,

85
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It succeeded to a certain extent,
it seems to me.

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in dampening initiative in Catholic countries.

87
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In no European country that I can think of
was there such thing as a free press.

88
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But after the war of Dutch independence,

89
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there were so many 
- Holland did not have a state church -

90
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and there were so many different 
little provinces and communities

91
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that you could actually take your press

92
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if you were in trouble in one community

93
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down to your cousin in another town 
and set up printing there. 

94
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And they,
I mean that's the way it...

95
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So they didn't have a free press 
as far as institutional controls went

96
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but they had a free de facto press, because

97
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institutional controls were not centralized.

98
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and that's a sort of miniature 
of Europe as a whole.

99
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Protestant Europe,

100
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whereas in Catholic Europe 
things were pretty well centralized.

101
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The key example
is the index of prohibited books of course,

102
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The church making an effort to see that
throughout Europe

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Catholics would not print...
or sell... or purchase 

104
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anything on this list,

105
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which while rich patrons could manage to avoid
 through black markets and things

106
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ordinary people couldn't
and printers were prosecuted.

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And in fact I have a case of one dutch printer

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who looked at the index of prohibited books
and used it for his publication program,

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because he knew these were titles 
that would sell well. 

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It's a ricochet but it would only work 
as a ricochet if Europe was divided.