Following up on my mention of my new reading, I should mention I am reading about the “pamphlet revolution” right now. Awhile back I made this off-the-cuff remark about Luther as the first blogger. Reading about the new market for exciting pamphlets that sprang up at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, I suspect my label “web 0.0” might be more apt than I was willing to admit.

I was also surprised at how low literacy rates really were in the 1520s. But that didn’t stop the pamphlets from being valued. The fact that the culture was predominately oral simply meant that they were read out loud a lot. Also, much of the mass-produced propaganda consisted of illustrated satirical cartoons. So they could be appreciated by the non-literate.

I almost feel sorry for the authorities in the various German and Swiss provinces and cities. In their fathers’ day, when you had to deal with a “miscreant,” you only needed to banish him and the problem was forever solved. Now you banished a guy and, the following week, his latest attack on you was being read aloud in every tavern in the area. And the next week more brand new material was being circulated.

Ozment at one point claims that the Reformation could have happened without the printing press at all. I have a hard time believing this. This is especially true of the academic revolution that took place. I remember some awesome lectures by Hughes Oliphant Old on the history of the Reformation. I don’t think we can emphasize enough how much the printing press altered the situation for schools. At one time, consulting the works of Augustine, involved learning which monastary housed a copy of the writing in question and traveling for days and weeks and months to go read it.

Within a few decades that was all done. These works were being printed up and sent everywhere.

The first Internet was made of paper and ink.