The Long Way Back to Ourselves

5.8

The Printing Press: When Copying Became Cheap

This episode traces how, within fifty years of Gutenberg, thirty thousand editions had been printed in Europe, correcting the claim China simply failed to exploit printing, since Korean movable type from 1377 predates Gutenberg but woodblocks suit character scripts. It follows historian Andrew Pettegree's thesis that Luther's success was largely a printing event, tested against Jan Hus, who held similar views a century earlier and was burned in 1415 but had no press. You learn the same technology spreading Luther's pamphlets spread the witch-hunting manual Malleus Maleficarum, and the episode corrects the death toll, once cited in the millions, to tens of thousands. It concludes cheaper copying produced not enlightenment, but a century and a half of religious conflict.