PRINTING AND THE
RENAISSANCE
Decoration
DecorationPRINTING AND THE RENAISSANCE:A PAPER READ BEFORETHE FORTNIGHTLY CLUB OFROCHESTER NEW YORK BYJOHN ROTHWELL SLATER.
Decoration
NEW YORK
William Edwin Rudge
1921
[1]
PRINTING AND THE RENAISSANCE:
A PAPER READ BEFORE THE
FORTNIGHTLY CLUB OF
ROCHESTER
N. Y.
PRINTING did not make the Renaissance; theRenaissance made printing. Printing did not beginthe publication and dissemination of books.There were libraries of vast extent in ancientBabylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome. There were universitiescenturies before Gutenberg where the few instructed themany in the learning treasured up in books, and whereboth scholars and professional scribes multiplied copiesof books both old and new. At the outset of any examinationof the influence of printing on the Renaissance itis necessary to remind ourselves that the intellectual lifeof the ancient and the mediaeval world was built uponthe written word. There is a naive view in which ancientliterature is conceived as existing chiefly in the autographmanuscripts and original documents of a few great centersto which all ambitious students must have resort. Avery little inquiry into the multiplication of books beforeprinting shows us how erroneous is this view.
We must pass over entirely the history of publishingand book-selling in ancient times, a subject too vast foradequate summary in a preliminary survey of this sort.With the fall of Rome and the wholesale destructionthat accompanied the barbarian invasions a new chapter[2]begins in the history of the dissemination of literature.This chapter opens with the founding of the scriptorium,or monastic copying system, by Cassiodorus andSaint Benedict early in the sixth century. To these twomen, Cassiodorus, the ex-chancellor of the Gothic kingTheodoric, and Benedict, the founder of the Benedictineorder, is due the gratitude of the modern world. Itwas through their foresight in setting the monks atwork copying the scriptures and the secular literatureof antiquity that we owe the preservation of most of thebooks that have survived the ruins of the ancient world.At the monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by SaintBenedict in the year 529, and at that of Viviers, foundedby Cassiodorus in 531, the Benedictine rule required ofevery monk that a fixed portion of each day be spent inthe scriptorium. There the more skilled scribes were entrustedwith the copying of precious documents rescuedfrom the chaos of the preceding century, while monksnot yet sufficiently expert for this high duty were instructedby their superiors.
The example thus nobly set was imitated throughoutall the centuries that followed, not only in the Benedictinemonasteries of Italy, France, Germany, England,Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, but in religious houses of allorders. It is to the mediaeval Church, her conservatismin the true sense of the word, her industry, her patience,her disinterested guardianship alike of sacred and ofpagan letters, that the world owes most of our knowledgeof antiq                        
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