Saul Greene
11/4/14
English 360-01
The Church
and the Advent of the Printed Text
I personally have never experienced
an oral based society, and neither have any alive today. At least not your
average Joe. People today have only been exposed to text based interaction and
communication. Granted there are still elements of orality that exist, but
nothing like the days before mainstream text. Now someone can pick up a book
written hundreds of years ago and read the author’s thoughts. Text originally
allowed for an aftermarket audience, in fact many written texts were sermons or
compilations of sermons. Text still does
allow for an aftermarket appeal, but in many ways now more than ever, text is
seen as a primary medium to reach an audience instead of an aftermarket
model. So if text changed society in
such a profound way then it must have changed rhetoric. Text has changed the
art of rhetoric in many ways, however none as profoundly as politics. Politics
of classical times were very different from what we see today, in fact for much
of the time leading up to the Renaissance the Church was the authority figure.
In classical times, there was no separation of religion and state, in fact it
wasn’t really present in European politics until the end of the 18th
century. We may think of the reformation as a religious movement, but it was
just as much political because the church was a powerful force in governing
much of Europe. Printed text originally began as a form of an aftermarket
information system, however the church and those alike eventually started to
use this aftermarket material as a primary database of sorts for their message,
in addition to their use of propaganda as a transition into the use of text
over orality.
Our technology golden age is allowing
us to use text to download our thoughts in order for a limitless number of
others to upload it and even possibly make it their own. This comes with many
benefits and many pitfalls. Text changes the way that people interpret
rhetorical information, and the way that institutions convey said information.
It also causes delivery to become a much more important rhetorical convention.
Our text based society has no problem with the framework of using text as the
main medium of communication and knowledge, but when printable text first
emerged there was a bit of a learning curve for society. Though the advent of
print forced the church to give up control of texts and the unilateral ability
to control what reached the people the church entered the textual based world
quite effectively and efficiently with great success. Rhetoric through the use of text became a
gateway for both the church to attempt to reach people through text and for
people to communicate with the masses against the church. Though it may seem
that there was the church and those against the church, it was in fact a bit
more complex than that. Most people of the time believed in Christianity, there
was no doubt about that, however, the opposition was between different sects of
Christianity. The devil was in the details so to speak. The onset of text and
more importantly literacy, which allowed people to be able to read the text was
a groundbreaking change to the way that information was dealt with. The Jesuits
taught people to read the bible for themselves in order to aid the individual
in their own understanding, rather than having to merely hear or be told the
contents of a printed text. Print also
"standardized and preserved knowledge which had been much more fluid in
the age of oral manuscript circulation" (Briggs & Burke, 2002). Before printed text people weren’t
able to express their ideas on a personal level, and the distribution of bibles
led to the emergence of new interpretations and formed new sects with partially
differing beliefs. This had a snowball effect and was what caused the
opposition between certain sects of the church.
When using the word “text” some may
become confused since text and writing has been around for thousands of years.
However, mass produced text and writing was not available until the creation of
the printing press. It would change everything, and Elizabeth Eisenstein wrote
on just that subject in The Printing
Press as an Agent of Change and The
Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. These books illustrated the
printing presses functions such as the ability to standardize something and
retain it as a document forever. They go into detail about how these functions
fueled much of the renaissance, and the Protestant Reform. Eisenstein’s works
showed the importance of the printing press and how both the church and society
adapted to the use of the printing press.
The church jumped on the opportunity
to be able to mass produce texts seeing as when the printing press emerged,
“Church officials had already hailed the new technology as a gift from god” (Eisenstein
145) because of the ability to use it as previously mentioned in an aftermarket
appeal. The Church could now say something and reiterate it later on in printed
texts so that it reached more people than just those present at the time. This helped them in a long term sense when it
came to transitioning onto text being a primary source of information. In fact
the Church was a large part of the transition. The printing press was also
beneficial for those in opposition with other churches of the time. It was a way of allowing ones arguments to be
heard by the masses and it also fueled “the first movement of any kind,
religious or secular, to use the new presses for overt propaganda and agitation
against an established institution” (Eisenstein 145). Rhetoric is all about
reaching the people that one is trying to persuade. Before this revolution,
one’s ability to gauge an audience merely depended on the people present. With
the advent of mass texts came a larger challenge in reaching ones audience
since it would be hard to determine all who would read the text over time
seeing as text is permanent and can be around long after one’s own time. This
is one of many ways that the implementation of text affected and changed
rhetoric.
An interesting aspect of text based
rhetoric that Eisenstein touches on is propaganda. The ability to spread lies
and deceit to the masses was capitalized by all who were able at the time since
it had such a profound rhetorical appeal. However, since the transition to
literacy had only recently began, certain reformers who claimed to be
revolutionaries “left ineradicable impressions in the form of broadsides and
caricatures” (Eisenstein 145) as propaganda to reach the masses since most were
not literate immediately after the emergence of the printing press. Printing
presses could be used to make mass produced posters and pamphlets of propaganda
caricatures and such. Even today some of the most effective rhetoric is
presented in the form of pictures and visuals. However, in classic times the
idea of political correctness existed only in avoiding insulting the church for
one’s safety. Peter Ramus was a good example of someone that did not follow the
guidelines for being politically correct in his time eventually being exiled
and killed. These days one can lose a great deal of credibility and appeal if
the audience does not find a work to be politically correct because our society
values equality and democracy (where everyone supposedly has a voice) rather
than the status quo of classical times which was a monarchy based society and
equality was accepted as being nonexistent.
Though any church could now arguably
print their bible the use of print wasn’t necessarily used to spread the love
of god and his message, rather, text was used in many cases to supposedly shed
“the light of true religion to a god fearing people”( Eisenstein 147). This was
their ethos or credibility, god. God was who the church always called on for
their sense of divinely affirmed credibility. The fear of god was much easier
to put forth to society rather than the love of god mostly because there were
many other “revolutionaries” of the time who preached about the good that their
ideas had to offer. The church relied upon their past credibility throughout
history and their pathetic appeal in a sense. The pathetic appeal however would
not be one of a positive nature, but rather the previously mentioned a fear of
god.
One of the most basic aspects of the
printing press and rhetoric had to do with reaching the people. Sure a picture
was universally understood, but what about texts that were formed from words?
People needed to read the texts in their own language to be able to truly receive
the message that was being conveyed. This was why Eisenstein mentions the
importance of translation to the spread of the bible as a text. The advent of
text affected not only rhetoric on the level of the specific text, but also the
ways that people communicated and worked with one another rhetorically. By that
I am referring to the necessity to translate and share ideas between different
editors and translators. Hearing others ideas and beliefs became more socially
acceptable since printed text allowed and required people to hear one another’s
ideas. Even if the person translating did not agree with the text being
translated, one had to at least show a certain level of submission to others
ideas, even if only to gain a great enough understanding to translate the
piece. This was mostly due to the fact that a translation and a transliteration
are different things. Sure anyone could transliterate each word of a piece into
their language but in a translation the ideas and undertones must carry over
also. Though it may seem simple, translating a text into a different language
was also in essence translating the text into a different culture. This is made
especially difficult by the fact that rhetorical styles and focuses may differ
between texts and cultures.
Overall when assessing the affect
that text had on rhetoric it is important to note the political scenario of the
times. Printed text originally began as a form of an aftermarket information system,
however the church and those alike eventually started to use this aftermarket
material as a primary database of sorts for their message, in addition to their
use of propaganda as a transition into the use of text over orality. The advent
of the printing press allowed for change to occur and rhetoric to evolve into
something that would never be the same, it was only however due to the fact
that there were winds of change already blowing that the printing press took
such hold. There is no doubt that text creating a change in rhetoric would
occur, but the political and social scenario of the time fueled the progression
and evolution of rhetoric in text. This
is the case for many iconic technologies, the internet or one is the example of
a new medium in modern times with which to use rhetoric and it has also
definitely changed rhetoric in many ways. These days we still see the conflict
between the use of rhetoric for pro and anti-political issues, however with the
separation of church and state there are differences between modern and
classical times. This is made especially apparent by the fact that the church
has not done a great job adapting to a world based on the internet as they did
with the transition from oral based literacy to text based literacy.
Works Cited
Briggs, Asa and Burke,
Peter(2005) A Social History of the Media: from Gutenberg to the
Internet(second Edition) Polity, Cambridge.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Revolution in Early
Modern Europe. Vol. 1. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1983.
145-185. Print.
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