The Gutenberg Press - The Invention that Changed History
So, let's talk about maybe the clearest and most immediate changes that ended the Middle Ages: The Gutenberg Press.
Now, I will start this entry by reminding everyone that the thing that Gutenberg invented was not the principle (as it is portrayed in the gif above - I just found that one funny) of printing by stemping, nor the concept of using single letters. Those were ideas that had existed before. But until Gutenberg there was one issue: nobody managed to create a material that worked for this. Folks had used a variety of other materials before, but they were all too soft and did not do well with being rearranged and used to print again and again. Gutenberg found the right alloy to use, making this idea finally viable. And that was a massive improvement for everything and everyone.
Before the Printing Press
In this case I do not need to make a section of "before the Middle Ages", as here is only the question of "Was there a Printing Press or not"?
And the first thing you need to understand is "functional literacy". You might have heard before that actually "literacy was not as low in the middle ages as you think", which is kinda true, but also not. A lot of people in the High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages knew to give a signature (not everyone was using their name) and were able to recognize some single words that they might need to recognize regularly. (Usually for when they had to give information to their landlords.)
But calling this literacy is obviously a stretch. There are guiding animals for the blind (not only dogs) that can do as much and have been trained to recognize single words in the ingredients list of things in the super market, to alert their human that there is an allergen in there. You would not call the animal literate.
Meanwhile "functional literacy" actually means that people were able to read and write and communicate through writing. And this was a rare ability before the printing press. Most people did not regularly have access to written materials, so how were they to learn it?
Ironically depending on culture, place, and time there was an ironical shift over the centuries. In some cultures the richest of the rich would refuse to learn to write and read because they could pay others to do it for them, why waste precious mental space? Charlamagne for example in his entire life never learned to read. And Caesar and Cleopatra were noted in the historical record to stand out among many of their peers by not only being able to do both but do it very well.
In the Middle Ages reading and writing was first and foremost the privilege of the clergy. The one social group that throughout the Middle Ages you could be nearly sure would be able to read and write was the clergy. If nobles were able to do it, they had learned it from the clergy most likely (again, the Church had also a near monopol on education in the Middle Ages). Most people who had the ability had learned it from the Clergy. There were exceptions. For one there were autodidacts, and in the late High and Late Medieval Period the guilds at times started to have their own schools that would at least teach some basic skills in this regard, but for the most part, education was closely tied to the clergy. Yes, there was also rich people of big houses who had times privately tutored kids, and throughout the Middle Ages there were again and again women who had acquired the skill in one way or another that made a point out of teaching girls, but that was a political move, of course.
The clergy also was tied to writing in another way: a big chunk of the books we have from the Middle Ages were written by the clergy. Noted before: the people in monasteries were living under the saying of "ora et labora", pray and work. And while working might also incluse things like brewing beer and such, most of it was copying books per hand (manuscripts) or writing. It was a big reason why so much of the Medieval manuscripts were written in clerical Latin. And why the clergy had this control about the bible not being translated. Because they were the ones doing the copies - and not having it translated gave them a lot of soft power. Which again was the way the Medieval church was ruling: soft power, not hard power.
Ironically it was always also their own who were the main force opposing them. It tended to be people of the church who had the strongest opinions on this. Luther, after all, was a monk too. And so were many of those doing translations before him.
But the important thing: most people would not even see a book - other than maybe the one bible that the priest in the local perish had - in their entire lives. So yes, most people could not functionally read or write.
All in all throughout the periods of Ancient Rome and up to the invention of the printing press, functional literacy varied between rates of 5 and about 18% depending on where and when you were. It was generally higher in the cities. But generally speaking: it was just not a widely spread skill.
After the Gutenberg Press
The Gutenberg Press changed everything. I guarantee you, pretty much nothing that happened after the 1450s (with maybe the exception of Columbus stumbling onto the Americas) would have happened in the same way if it had not been for the Gutenberg Press. This was the invention that really, really changed the world.
Luther would not have been the influence he was, if people did not copy his writing and his translation of the bible, which now could happen in large volumes (compared to before) and spread it among the people. Sure, most people could not read it themselves, but at the time there was at least a chance that you knew someone who knew someone who could read.
The Renaissance was partially driven by certain Ancient writings being spread widely (which is also why the Renaissance technically started during the Middle Ages, but everything we remember about it happened after 1450). And of course Enlightenment was also strongly influenced by the availability of texts and people being more easily able to learn things.
Obviously it still needed some time for functional ability to spread. It was not as if there was the printed word and people instantly were able to read. But we know at least that by 1750 the rate of functional literacy had gone to around 50% (a bit higher in the cities, a bit lower in rural areas). Meaning, even if you could not read or write, you probably knew someone who could. So if you wanted to know something or wanted a letter written, you could ask them.
This also allowed political ideas to spread much further suddenly, as everyone who had acquired literacy and knew someone with a printing press could suddenly participate in the politican discussion in some way. Which allowed new and different ideas to spread.
Now, I am talking here about a lot of positive ideas that spread through it (like the idea that kings were not natural and such), but this also obviously held true for bad ideas. There is a good chance that the Witch Hunts would not have happened that way, if the Witches Hammer had not been published and copied so often. If Heinrich Kramer would have been a raging misogynist just 50 years earlier, chances were that his writings would not have had this kind of impact.
And it allowed for fictional storytelling to become a thing in the way we know now. Of course: before there were also stories, but most of them would be transmitted orally by travelling minstrels and by women around a fireplace. But not only could those stories now be written down and published, people could now also make new stories and publish them.
This, I might note, obviously lead to... porn. Obivously it led to porn. It was basically Avenue Que and "The Priting Press is for Porn".
While novels soon also would become a thing, a lot of this first storytelling also happened as pamphlets as those were a lot cheaper to make than books. Duh.
And given that now the information was no longer as controlled, a lot of people really wanted the control back. The chruch in many places wanted printing presses destroyed, and even if not fully destroyed, they wanted to control what was printed. Including censorship of political ideas, and porn. Obviously. (If you ever want to go down a rabbithole, read through arguments about censorships from like 1700, especially in regards to printed porn. I sweat to you, it is the exact same arguments used by antis today. Which also brings me to: I am 100% on the side of de Sade and his right to write sick porn in the 18th century.)
Obviously, the functional literacy rates we have today are mostly connected to the fact that most people will be sent to school. Even the printing press alone could not make this happen. Which is why tomorrow we will talk about education.
But it should be noted: yes, literacy is important. I cannot overstate how important literacy is. Without literacy, we would not be here. And this is exactly why a lot of right-wingers do not want you to be able to read. This is why they hate that skill. Because your ability to read is what allows you to inform yourself and fact check them!
So yeah.
Gutenberg might not have had the idea of printing itself. Never the less, if it was not for him making the idea viable, history would have looked very different.
And also: if you have a fantasy world with very high functional literacy... it is not medieval!
