Prior to the fourteenth century all learning was monopolized by the
church. Its power was exercised to make every branch of knowledge
harmonize itself with the teachings of Catholic Christianity. In
revolt against these shackles arose a few independent spirits who
sought to rest religious doctrine on the foundations of reason to
some degree, at least. Nevertheless, superstitions still clung to
and mingled with all these new studies, and the age did not witness
their separation. The higher intelligence traveled gradually, but very
slowly. The art of printing came to its assistance and proved to be its
strongest auxiliary. To Germany belongs the glory of this invention,
and she can boast no higher service rendered to mankind. The art of
wood-engraving was the preliminary step which led to it. It was soon
employed for pictures of sacred scenes and persons; so that the many
who could neither read nor write had a sort of Bible in their picture
collections. But the grand conception of making movable types, each
bearing a single letter, and composing the words of them, was first
formed by John Gutenberg, of the patrician family of Gänsefleisch, of
Mayence. He was driven from his native city by a disturbance among the
guilds, and went to Strasburg, where he invented the art of printing
about the year 1450. Great trouble was experienced in discovering the
proper material in which to cut the separate letters; neither wood
nor lead answered well. Being short of resources, Gutenberg formed a
partnership with John Faust, also of Mayence. Faust’s assistant, Peter
Schöffer, afterward his son-in-law, a skillful copyist and draughtsman,
discovered the proper alloy for type-metal, and invented printing-ink.
In 1461 appeared the first large book printed in Germany, a handsome
Bible, exhibiting the perfection that the art possessed at its very
origin.
When Adolphus of Nassau captured Mayence in 1462, the workmen skilled
in the art, which had been kept a secret, were scattered through the
world; and by the end of the fifteenth century the principal nations of
Europe, and especially Italy, France, and England, had become rivals
of Germany in prosecuting it. Books had previously been transcribed,
chiefly by monks, upon expensive parchment, and often beautifully
ornamented with elaborate drawings and paintings. They had therefore
been an article of luxury, and confined to the rich. But a book printed
on paper was easily made accessible to all classes, for copies were
so numerous that each could be sold at a low price. Beside books of
devotion, the writings of the Greek and Latin poets, historians and
philosophers, most of which had fallen into oblivion during the Middle
Ages, now gradually obtained wide circulation. After the fall of
Constantinople, and the subjugation of Greece by the Turks, fugitive
Greeks brought the works of their forefathers’ genius to Italy, where
enlightened men had already begun to study them. This branch of
learning, called “the Humanities,” spread from Italy through Germany,
France, England, and other countries, and contributed powerfully to
produce a finer taste and more intelligent habits of thought, such
as put to shame the rude ignorance of the monks. It was the art of
printing that broke down the slavery in which the blind faith of the
church held the human mind; and even the censorship which Rome set up
to oppose it was not able to undo its work.
Just as the convents fell before the art of printing, so did the
castles of the robber knights before the invention of gunpowder. Thus,
at the coming of the Reformation, these degenerate remnants of the
once noble institutions of knighthood were swept away. It is supposed
by many that the knowledge of gunpowder was brought into Europe from
China during the great Mongolian emigration of the thirteenth century,
the Chinese having long possessed it. The Arabs, too, understood how
to make explosive powder, by mixing saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur.
But all the Eastern makers produced only the fine powder, and the
art of making it in grains seems to have been the device of Berthold
Schwarz, a German monk of the Franciscan order, of Freiburg or Mayence,
in 1354; and he is commonly called the inventor of gunpowder. He had
a laboratory, in which he devoted himself to alchemy; and is said to
have made his discovery by accident. But as early as 1346, a chronicle
reports that there was at Aix “an iron barrel to shoot thunder;” and
in 1356 the armory at Nuremberg contained guns of iron and copper,
which threw missiles of stone and lead. One of the earliest instances
in which cannon are known to have been effectively used in a great
battle was at Agincourt in 1415. But gunpowder was long regarded
with abhorrence by the people, and made its way into general use but
slowly.[B]