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Johannes Gutenberg: The Father of Mass Communication

It's the dawn of a new era, the closing of the medieval and the birth of the European Renaissance. Western Europe's borders are stabilizing, famines and plagues are becoming less frequent, the Vikings have stopped raiding and the Norsemen have settled down, the powers of the Eastern Europe were holding the barbarian hordes from the east and the Muslim hordes from the south at bay, the Roman Church begrudgingly accepted the Orthodox church's separation, and a general sense of the need for a codified law was sweeping the nations. With many of the burdens of the past couple of 100 years since the fall of the Roman Empire finally starting ease, room was made among all levels of society for other pursuits; artists and musicians found paying patrons, and the church and other's felt comfortable to open up their libraries to expand education and scholarly pursuits.

In this opportune time enter a German blacksmith and goldsmith from the city of Mainz: Johannes Gutenberg, the man that would invent the movable type printing press and forever revolutionize communication and the written word. From a young age he was involved in the family business, and while his father did do some blacksmith work and his mother was a cloth merchant, the main occupation of the family was moneymaking, literally. His family, long ago, had obtained patronage of the bishops of Mainz who commissioned the family shop to be the regions Ecclesiastic Mint. The Catholic Church for some time produced its own money; since the church was present in all nations across Europe, each with its own currency, the church decided it needed a universal currency for trade between members of the clergy and the varies churches, cathedrals, abbeys, monasteries, and nunneries dotting all nations, to make their internal book keeping simpler. The weight, imprint, and exchange rate with other various nations currencies were all determined by the Pope and his cardinals back in Rome. Also, the Catholic Church by this time, had taken a page from the Templar book, and created its own banking system to accommodate travelers. An individual who did not want to carry around  large sacks of coins on a long journey could deposit the money with a church at his starting location and receive a chet or note of the amount. When they arrived at their location they could turn in the chet to the local diocese to receive that money back, minus a small administrative fee. The Knights Templar had developed this system and service during the crusades for those making the long and arduous journey to the holy land and back, but the church saw the benefit of this practice across the whole of Christendom.

Examples of Ecclesiastical coin

Providing such services for powerful patrons such as minting money for bishops has its perks, but also comes with potential pitfalls. The good times came to end for a teenage Johannes when a peasant uprising targeted the patricians of the city, including the current bishop. To avoid being made themselves targets of the rioters and being caught up in the chaos, the family moved to Strasbourg, to live with members of Johannes's mother's family. While there he attended the University of Erfurt (its most famous alum, Martin Luther, would arrive nearly a century later) were he developed a love for reading and advocated for wider literacy. But one of the major obstacles of literacy was the fact that material was in short supply; books and other material were are rarity as everything was hand written and painstakingly copied by hand, mostly by a small population of monks locked away in monstrosities. This problem would be one of the driving forces to Johannes later thought process.

Erfurt University, still open today

In 1437 Johannes joined the Strasbourg militia as their official goldsmith, and though it did not pay much he made money and connections on the side teaching many members of the militia who were young 2nd or 3rd born sons of noble houses the art of gem polishing and jewel crafting. It was during this time he started to experiment with different metals in which to eventually craft his movable type. After, he engaged in several failed business ventures (and cons), including trying to sell refurbished and polished metal mirrors he and his partners claimed were holy relics of Charlemagne's that converted sunlight into holy light. With money running low and investors growing impatient with his failures Gutenberg decided to go all in on his on again off again pet project of movable type printing. He asked his brother-in-law for a loan and locked himself away for four years in a private workshop back in his home town of Mainz.

Printing in itself was nothing new. Works of art made from woodcarving or copper engravings were already being used as templates for printing using a procedure called intaglio. Intaglio printing consisted of covering the entire template in ink and then wiping off the surface ink, the remaining ink being trapped with in the etched/cut grooves. The template is then pressed over a piece of paper or parchment, the ink inside the groves transferring on to the material. While it was impractical to make whole plates for each page one document (the number of full plates would have been a waste of storage space and template material), many artists started selling multiple copies of their work in this way. One of the most successful at this time in and around Germany was a man whose name is forgotten, but historians call The Master of Cards (for his many unique playing card prints). He joined Gutenberg in his workshop, advising him on printing techniques and materials.

Examples of the Master of Cards print work

In 1450, the movable type printing press was complete and the first work printed was a German poem Gutenberg used as a showcase to try and attract investment. This new kind of press allowed for the creation of temporary templates, made up of pieces instead of one solid piece of wood or metal. The most notable and innovative of these pieces was the creation of the moveable type, the individual letters or common words that can be moved around and arranged into any configuration on the template. A moneylender named Fust and his son-in-law took note and provided Gutenberg the funds to open up a new print shop and the construction of two of Gutenberg's presses. 1452 the shop opened for business. The main profitable production was that of textbooks and Latin premiers, but the big money was in printing indulgences on behalf the local churches. 

With his involvement with the church once again, came the resurfacing of his old ideals of bringing literacy to the masses. But such an endeavor would require more financial backing from Fust who was reluctant as the shop was not turning out as much profit as he initially hoped. Faust would need to be influenced by an outside force. Gutenberg saw the opportunity in city of Frankfurt: Archbishop Aeneas (who later in life would become Pope Pius II), was a Papal Legate, there to negotiate a marriage between the German Emperor Fredrick III and the Princess Eleonore of Portugal.  Gutenberg came up with a proposal to receive official church blessing for his project, that what better tool to teach people to read then the Holy Bible which the church could distribute to their flocks:

"It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams.Through it, God will spread His Word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men. Religious truth is captive in a small number of little manuscripts which guard the common treasures, instead of expanding them. Let us break the seal which binds these holy things; let us give wings to truth that it may fly with the Word, no longer prepared at vast expense, but multitudes everlastingly by a machine which never wearies to every soul which enters life."

With the Archbishops blessing and promises to act as distributor in hand he convinced Fust to loan him more money for his great project, and set one of his two presses to exclusively print what would later be known as the Gutenberg Bibles. The bibles were 1,286 pages of paper or vellum with Latin translation of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament written in various font types and ink combinations. And while some art and stylizing was printed, margins were left wide for additional, more personalized artistic accessory, including the rubrication (The oversized and stylized first letter of a new chapter). One copy in particular which now sits in Princeton University, was designed with the help of Gutenberg's old friend Master of Cards. Of the estimated 180 Gutenberg Bibles made, only 49 are known to still exist.

The church made good on its promise and sold the bibles as fast as the were completed with editions not only across Germany and France, the base of Catholic power, but as far off as England, Sweden, and Hungary. The Church was more then pleased with this new way to spread the word of god.

"All that has been written to me about that marvelous man seen at Frankfurt [sic] is true. I have not seen complete Bibles but only a number of quires of various books of the Bible. The script was very neat and legible, not at all difficult to follow—your grace would be able to read it without effort, and indeed without glasses." Letter from Archbishop Aenaes to lead Vatican Judge and Administrator Cardinal Carvajal

 And while the Church and those that bought the bibles, mostly lesser nobles and members of the up and coming merchant class, did use the book to spread the literacy of Latin, the expense and distribution of the books was not adding up for Fust. He sued Gutenberg and the Archbishop, in 1455, on accusations of misappropriations of funds and wanted his full investment back. Archbishop was dropped from the case, as any profits the Church made from the sales usually went on to directly fund the next one. The onus was put straight on Gutenberg who admitted that he may have mislead Fust about the profitability of the bible project, and that to him it was never about the money. The court gave the workshop and presses to Fust as compensation. He lived most of the rest of his life skating on the edge of poverty, at one point even being exiled from his home during a power struggle between powerful church magnates, he himself caught up as a pawn. But in 1465, Gutenberg, now an old man, was recognized for his achievements by the Church and given an annual stipend of money, grain, and wine, and made a member of the court of Archbishop Adolph Von Nassau as an advisor. He died in 1468 and was buried in a Franciscan church, which later was destroyed and the grave-site lost.

Gutenberg's contribution to society is unmistakable and his press is one of the cornerstone inventions of our technological rise. He is recognized by nearly every scholar and historian as one of the key figures in cultural development, and one of the Renaissance Era's greatest men. The Vatican Library, one of the greatest repositories of knowledge and written works in the world, credits him as an honorary founder. Gutenberg's press has lead to a vast and almost innumerable increase in the distribution/dissemination of knowledge and the spread of literacy among the middle classes. Countless have paid their respects to the man that made mass communication a conceivable concept. The great American writer/satirist Mark Twain once wrote of him:

"What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg. Everything can be traced to this source, but we are bound to bring him homage, … for the bad that his colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the good with which mankind has been favored."

History at the Movies #2: Hacksaw Ridge

The Power of Faith and Conviction

How do you reconcile your spiritual and secular obligations? It is a question that still plagues large parts of American society today, and the answer is not easy at all to many; much to the ire of those that place more value on secularism over religious conviction or those that truly believe the word of God is always superior to the laws of man or societal norms. Hacksaw Ridge depicts this struggle that Corporal Desmond Doss found his own answer to, during one of the nations most trying and bloodiest times; and with those answers preformed one of the most miraculous events in military history. 

The movie plays out in two distinct halves. The first half is his fight for his spiritual beliefs against an American military, who at the time were hostile to the high ideals of living and expressing ones religious belief if they contrasted the status quo. The second half, is very real and physical struggle to do ones duty and have faith in God in the hellish chaos of the battlefield, but in doing so he become one of the greatest combat medics ever known and a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

Desmond Doss (played by Andrew Garfield) of Lynchburg, Virginia, was a carpenter and later military shipyard worker, and a devote Seventh-Day Adventist. Though he had a deferment exempting him from the draft due to his employ in the shipyard, he felt an overwhelming sense of duty and responsibility, as he felt it unfair he should be safe at home while others were in the line of fire. He enlisted in the United States Army as a Conscientious Objector, a designation usually applied to draftees, refusing to wield a weapon against another human being. His deeply held religious beliefs, as well as two traumatic incidents at home, forbade him from even potentially harming another human being, including even touching a weapon. His aim was to preform as a front line combat medic, to provide healing and comfort to those suffering on the battlefield. This view severely frustrated not only his unit but also sergeant Howell (played by Vince Vaughn), Lieutenant Glover (Played by Sam Worthington), his superiors.

"I knew if I ever once compromised, I was gonna be in trouble, because if you can compromise once, you can compromise again."

Lieutenant Glover and Sergeant Howell

Through beatings from his fellow recruits (who Doss refused to rat out), pressure from his sergeant (who at first was enraged by Doss, but then felt sorry for him), and an attempt to have him declared mentally unfit for service (which the army psychologist rebuked to Glover), Doss refused to give up his convictions and his place in the service. Finally after refusing to pick up a rifle as a direct order from the company colonel, Doss was arrested and set to be court martialed for disobeying a direct order. In dramatic Hollywood fashion Desmond's father, in his old WWI uniform, shows up in court with a letter from his former lieutenant, now a general with considerable influence, excusing Desmond and reaffirming his status as a Conscientious Objector. The truth of the event was less monumental: Desmond father contacted chairman of the church's War Service Commission in Washington, Carlyle B. Haynes, who in turn threatened to start on independent investigation into the matter. This prompted the case to be dropped before the judges convened. And so Desmond goes off to war.

"With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me to wanna put a little bit of it back together."

The movie skips ahead in Desmond's career, not even acknowledging his roles in the Battles of Guam and Leyte. We are fast forwarded to the Battle of Okinawa. Okinawa, the culmination of the American Island Hopping Campaign of the Pacific theater of WWII, was an 82 day long battle to take the island everyone saw as America's gateway to a final invasion of Japan. In April 1945, Lieutenant Glover and Sergeant Howell's 1st Battalion, 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division, including Desmond Doss, were assigned to take a ridge and plateau of land on top of the Maeda Escarpment, nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge for the sheer brutality of the fighting has been up there and viscous wounds of previous soldier's failed attempts to take it. After a day and a half day of fighting, and suffering heavy casualties, they too were forced to retreat back down the cliff. But Desmond was separated from the general retreat going back for one of the wounded. After recovering the man and lowering him to safety, Doss made the decision to stay up on the ridge all night trying to bring back as many of the wounded as possible, including a handful of Japanese soldiers. Each new rescue attempt came with its own challenges; Japanese patrols, sniper fire, the enemy tunnels that honeycombed the entire area, improvising tourniquets and other temporary treatments. And though exhausted after each rescue implored God to give him the strength to get "...just one more!". In all he is credited with the rescue and recovery of 75 wounded in one night, including Sergent Howell, even while wounded himself 4 times.

The Maeda Escarpment was about half as high as the movie portrayed it

After he himself was finally rescued from the ridge and treated for his wounds he became an instant hero to his fellow soldiers, especially those like Glover, that had previously mocked him for his beliefs. A few days later Glover's men would attempt a second attack on the ridge, but this time refused to head up until Desmond had led them in prayer. That day they would take the ridge, but not before Desmond Doss's last act of bravery. A Japanese grenade landed near were Doss and Glover were standing, Doss, seeing the grenade, shoved his Lieutenant into a hole before he himself was blown back by the blast. He would sit out the rest of the war convalescing from his injuries.

Corporal Desmond Doss Receiving the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman

With the exception the some details surrounding his wife Dorothy (played by Teresa Palmer), and the aforementioned court martial, the movie by all accounts is as near perfect accuracy you get in a historic biopic. In fact several other rescues that occurred that night were omitted from the film because director Mel Gibson thought the audience would never believe it, even though they really happened. And of course, as with Saving Private Ryan, you have the usual calls (from the usual ant-war sources) against so called war glorification and overt graphic violence, but again just like with Ryan, these editorials have been rebuked by experts and the men that were there. There is no doubt that director Mel Gibson's religious charismatic style of film making is all over the piece, but it not only works is wholly appropriate. Andrew Garfield is wonderfully likable as Doss with his aw shucks country attitude and thick southern accent. Sam Worthington's Glover is a character who your inclined to dislike at first but grow to understand and respect, making the transition very smooth and subtle through the film. But to me the most memorable performance had to be Vince Vaughn as Sergeant Howell, Doss's drill sergeant and later platoon leader. The role is a far cry from what we are use to seeing from Vaughn but he fit the bill very naturally, selling his role to me in his very first scene and like Worthington making a wonderful transition in how you view the character.

The movie's message is to find strength in conviction, and that strength need not come from muscle of the arm or the barrel of gun; is one of surprising inspiration. There was no wringing of the hands, no questioning one's faith; this was of a man whose beliefs were absolute to him. It is a nice change to see a movie were someone so secure in their beliefs that nothing, not society, military, or war, will change them. And that standing, unquestionable, to what you believe can yield great achievements. Too many stories now a days insist that a hero second guess himself, or go through some cathartic moment to achieve greatness. Desmond found is conviction and his mettle before the events that made him a hero, and it is his unwavering faith in God that helps him achieve the impossible

On a side note, the making and success of this movie is a bit of a redemption story for it's director Mel Gibson. For a few years now Gibson had been shunned by Hollywood, made a pariah by his several deplorable actions that he has since tried to make up for. Over the years he has tried with apologies, charitable works, and through the advocating of friends like Jodie Foster and Robert Downy Jr., to get back into the public's good graces. Many saw this movie as his last best hope of returning to the film industry. And it may have been the reprieve he was seeking.Try as they might his critics and the Hollywood elites could not bring themselves to disregard this story that had to be told, and was told brilliantly. Praise was deserved and had to be heaped upon the man they loved to hate this past decade. And with the exception of a few newspaper editorial's damming Gibson for all eternity for his past indiscretions, no matter what he does. The majority of the public looks like they are ready to move past it. What this means for the future career for the man who not only brought us this magnificent film, but other greats like Braveheart and Passion of the Christ, only time will tell.

No matter how you may feel about Mel Gibson the movie is well worth a watch from both a inspirational stand point and (more importantly as this blog is concerned) historical stand point. It is extremely well made, well acted, and has awe inspiring shots and dialogue. So for now, put the kids to bed, butter up some popcorn, and marvel at achievements of a man who had God on his side during a time that almost seemed godless.