The Printing Press as Threat and Messiah

A threat to the church, messiah to the masses.


Folksonomies: politics information power

The Invention of Printing Threatens the Church

This new invention of printing has produced various effects of which Your Holiness caimot be ignorant. If it has restored books and learning, it has also been the occasion of those sects and schisms which daily appear. Men begin to call in question the present faith and tenets of the Church; the laity read the scriptures and pray in their vulgar tongue. Were this suffered the common people might come to believe that there was not so much use of the clergy. If men were persuaded that they could make their own way to God, and in their ordinary language as well as Latin, the authority of the Mass would fall, which would be prejudicious to our ecclesiastical orders. The mysteries of religion must be kept in the hands of the priests.

Notes:

[Cardinal] Thomas Wolsey.

Folksonomies: religion information printing press print

Contrast

The Printing Press is the Messiah

The printing press has come like a true Messiah to emancipate the great family of mankind from this double yoke. This Messiah is immortal, and its saving powers must be universal and perpetual. By this, and by no other Messiah, can man be saved from ignorance and misery; the only hell that he has to fear. It will prove the true Messiah of the Jew, of the Christian, of the Mahometan, and of the Pagan. It is a Messiah for all, and it will go on to unite under the name and title of Man and Citizen the whole human race, or all those animals who have the gift of speech, and its consequent, reason. I hope to see the day, or I fear not but it will arrive, when every man of property shall consider a printing-press, a necessary piece of furniture in his house; and prize it more than our present aristocrats prize their hounds and horses.

Notes:

It serves all religions and one should exist in every home.

Folksonomies: science literacy revolution printing press