Print and the first public shere

Questions

1.What kind of information were spread by printed texts in 15th and 16th centure Europe?

Printing in the 15th and 16th century did not necessarily lead to the writing of new books containing new knowledge but it was mainly used for writing down old knowledge and sources . In this way people were able to compare and contrast many views so as to produce their own opinion about theories and ideas.

Having said that the information that was spread by printed texts this period was mainly concerned with the following subjects:

Religion: the vernacular Bible was available to all and not only to the pope , the priests and the doctors of theology. This led to religious changes.

Medicine: almanacs appeared authored by doctors of medicine .surgeons write on their art and even on medicine e.g. pregnancy and childbirth.

Sciences: Mathematics (arithmetic, geometry), astronomy , geography (new maps of the world are printed).Doctors

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and mathematicians write almanacs that contained also bits of agricultural information for landowners and farmers who could then teach them to their servants.

Literature: print was very important because a lot of ancient sources that survived in the Arab world were brought back in Europe. Aristotle, Platon , Euclid were brought back along with Arab scholarship.

Pamphlet literature developed the political and cocial consciousness since people increased their stock of national events

2.What kind of people read them?

During the 15th and 16th century literacy was not distributed evenly among people. The literacy rate was higher among urban artisans and tradesmen than among peasants .

In the cities printers, well off merchants, small merchants, craftsmen, semi skilled workers having connection with guilds and confraternities, schoolteachers and few women in the families of wealthier merchants were...