The People Of The Printing Press

With attention on the Church, because the days of Pope Francis seem to be numbered, I would like to explain who the Protestants are.

One invention opened up an entirely new dimension in religion. That invention was the printing press.

All major religions have some kind of sacred scriptures. But until the invention of the printing press all such scriptures had to be handwritten. This made books very rare and valuable. A monk might spend his life making a copy of the Bible. 

At Hereford Cathedral there is still a library where the books are chained to the shelf. This is because, before the printing press, books were so valuable. The following illustration and caption are from the Wikipedia article "Hereford Cathedral Library".

There was no reason for the average person to be literate because they would probably never see a book in their lifetime. Stained glass windows, in churches, were intended as a "picture book" for people who couldn't read and didn't have access to books.

This made necessary religious leaders, who had access to training in the scriptures. The average person could only go by what they were told, as far as what to believe. This meant that the religious establishment had a tremendous amount of power over people, which sometimes invited corruption.

The printing press was invented in the Fifteenth Century. The city that is most associated with it is Mainz, in Germany. The printing press changed everything. Books could be mass-produced, instead of laboriously copied by hand. For the first time, mass education became possible. Knowledge need no longer be the preserve of the very few.

The Renaissance had been going on in Europe. This is from a French word meaning "rebirth", although it wasn't called that at the time. The Renaissance was all about regaining knowledge that had been lost during the "Dark Ages", and gaining new knowledge. A major factor driving the Renaissance was the conquest of Constantinople (renamed Istanbul) by the Ottomans. This led many scholars to load manuscripts onto pack animals and move to Western Europe. This drove the intellectual reawakening.

The printing press and these new manuscripts were made for each other. The manuscripts were mass printed and many more people were educated than formerly. This changed the whole social order.

Nothing would change the social order like the mass printing of the Bible. It would change the whole world. What would become of the established church if people could read the Bible for themselves? They wouldn't need the church to "interpret" it for them anymore. Priests had always been among the few educated people but what would happen to their status if many people were educated?

The leadership of the Catholic Church felt threatened by anyone being able to read the Bible for themselves, and did all they could to stop the printing and distribution of Bibles. William Tyndale, from my native Gloucestershire, was heroic in translating and distributing the Bible in English, and was finally martyred for it.

Not only did the printing press make possible mass education and people reading the Bible for themselves, anyone could now express their opinions more widely by printing and distributing pamphlets. This included opinions on corruption in the established church.

What ended up happening is that northern Europe, with the exception of Ireland, split from the Catholic Church. This is known as the Reformation and the now non-Catbolic Christians were known as Protestants, because they were protesting against corruption in the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church tried to stop the separation by force. It was ultimately unsuccessful but resulted in a century of warfare. This was the second great separation. Nearly five hundred years before the eastern Catholics had separated to form the Eastern Orthodox Church.

With many more people educated, and anyone able to read the Bible for themselves, religious leaders had much less of a role with the Protestants. There was no requirement to believe the same as everyone else. There was no set Protestant belief system, other than the Bible. Anyone could read the Bible for themselves and decide which church to join, or start their own church.

This was the beginning of the modern idea of freedom. From this Protestant idea of religious freedom came democracy and free enterprise. These were not new ideas but had never been implemented on a large scale until the Reformation. America, with it's emphasis on freedom, is very much a Protestant creation. 

Protestants had a strong sense of progress and improvement and it is no coincidence that the Reformation, in northern Europe, was followed by the Industrial Revolution. 

The risk of regimented religious services is that it will foster a "follower" mentality and, if the society should ever secularize, the people will then be prone to follow a dictator. Protestants are free and it is striking that there has never been a Protestant dictator. Adolf Hitler gained control of historically-mostly Protestant Germany, where the Reformation actually started, but he was from a Catholic family and his original power base was mostly-Catholic Bavaria. 

When a religion has a power center and a powerful leader, although it may have been necessary before the printing press, it may breed conflict and corruption. Protestants have no such center or leader, everyone is free to read the Bible and think for themselves. The result is lack of conflict. The only primarily religious war between Protestants that I can think of is England's Civil War, between the Puritans and Royalists (Cavaliers).

What Protestants have, instead of an all-powerful leader, are evangelists. There are multiple evangelists, anyone can become an evangelist and people can listen to whichever ones they like. Evangelists have no actual authority.

Following the Reformation, the Catholic Church implemented it's own Counter-Reformation. This brought about many of the reforms that had been demanded in the first place. If these reforms had been carried out before the Reformation, there probably wouldn't have been a Reformation. So much of what the Catholic Church is today is the result of the Counter-Reformation. This means that the Catholic Church is a Reformed church also, and Pope Francis has praised the Reformation.

There is a downside to Protestantism that, as a Protestant myself, I am the first to admit. Protestants are the most individualistic people in the world because the printing press empowered the individual, over the establishment, as the internet is doing today. But there are people who need someone to tell them what to think and what to believe, and cannot stand not "fitting in" with other people. This is the reason for cults.