How did the invention of the printing press affect the spread of the reformation?
It had a great effect. Prior to the printing press, controversial matters of public debate were more easily contained and confined to smaller geographic areas. While societal change has often resulted from such discourse, such change took longer because word traveled either by word of mouth, which was subject to both dispute and mistranslation, or handwritten documents, which took weeks, months or longer to be inscribed by a fairly limited class of skilled scribes. Gutenberg’s printing technology was scarcely more than fifty years old when Martin Luther nailed a copy of his The 95 Theses to that church door in Wittenburg in October, 1517. It was instantly controversial. It was translated into Latin, the tongue of the Catholic Church, from German and printed extensively. Within two weeks, the controversy had spread throughout Germany, and within two months, all of Europe. Without the printing technology, such a major societal shift would have still been possible, but would have taken ma
