produce copies of the same work with much greater speed and accuracy. Although the technique was a far cry from the automated processes of Gutenberg, it marked a major leap forward in medieval information technology. Most of the surviving bestiaries from this period have a hurried, inelegant quality to them—further evidence of mass production. While a few finely wrought specimens survive, the majority bear the mark of hurried production, with spare illustrations and sometimes sloppy handwriting. Most of the surviving bestiary manuscripts of this period feature only a single illustration per passage, while earlier versions contained many more.
In the age just before Gutenberg, the technologies that facilitated the distribution of bestiaries placed the book in a central role in both technological and cultural change. Bestiaries became an importantforerunner of later popular books, in both form and content. The images they contained became a cornerstone of popular Christian iconography for centuries to come, cropping up regularly in the church architecture of the day as sculptural adornments in even the simplest of parishes, where illiterate parishioners would listen to sermons and Gospels and then find those lessons reinforced in the visible symbols of the church architecture. Bestiaries also figured prominently in the medieval school curriculum, taking a place as one of the standard instructional texts along with Cato, Aesop, and Prosperus. This entrenchment in the popular nonliterate psyche explains the hold these images would later have on successive English generations. The images so imprinted themselves on the popular consciousness that they eventually appeared in tapestries, paintings, mosaics, and even fabric cloth. English authors from Spenser to Shakespeare to C. S. Lewis regularly drew on animal imagery that can be traced directly back to the
Bestiary
.
Long after the
Physiologus
faded from the popular fancy, the images and themes it contained persisted, insinuating themselves into the symbolism of later ages. The
Bestiary
’s legacy extends beyond our lingering fascination with imaginary animals, however. Its success helped fuel a popular demand for books that would plant the seeds of the Gutenberg revolution.
A RUMOR IN MAINZ
In 1458 the king of France dispatched one of his spies to the German town of Mainz, where rumor had it that a troop of printers had created an ingenious new device, capable of reproducing manuscripts mechanically. No scribe needed.
The historical impact of Gutenberg’s printing press requires no corroboration here. Suffice it to say that without the advent of movable type, we would live in an unimaginably different world. Today, we instinctively view the arrival of the printing press as an unqualified boon: the engine of democracy, modern scholarship, and individual expression. For all its positive byproducts, however, the history of the printing press turns out to be far less rosy than we might imagine.
Gutenberg’s machine arrived in Europe not as a benign force for personal enlightenment but as a profoundly disruptive technology that triggered a series of painful and often bloody conflicts. The arrival of the Gutenberg press may have ultimately heralded an unprecedented boom in reading and writing, but it also serves as a cautionary tale. Just 10 years before the French king dispatched his spies, Gutenberg had invented his movable-type system, signaling a staggering technological leap forward from the block printing technology already in use. Recognizing the potential value of his invention, Gutenberg had sworn his printers to the medieval equivalent of a nondisclosure agreement, making them promise to breathe not a word of it outside the print shop. It was a futile promise. Word of the invention soon found its way out of Mainz and into neighboring municipalities. By the time the rumor reached the king of France, word had already started to spread throughout continental Europe.
In the age just before Gutenberg, the technologies that facilitated the distribution of bestiaries placed the book in a central role in both technological and cultural change. Bestiaries became an importantforerunner of later popular books, in both form and content. The images they contained became a cornerstone of popular Christian iconography for centuries to come, cropping up regularly in the church architecture of the day as sculptural adornments in even the simplest of parishes, where illiterate parishioners would listen to sermons and Gospels and then find those lessons reinforced in the visible symbols of the church architecture. Bestiaries also figured prominently in the medieval school curriculum, taking a place as one of the standard instructional texts along with Cato, Aesop, and Prosperus. This entrenchment in the popular nonliterate psyche explains the hold these images would later have on successive English generations. The images so imprinted themselves on the popular consciousness that they eventually appeared in tapestries, paintings, mosaics, and even fabric cloth. English authors from Spenser to Shakespeare to C. S. Lewis regularly drew on animal imagery that can be traced directly back to the
Bestiary
.
Long after the
Physiologus
faded from the popular fancy, the images and themes it contained persisted, insinuating themselves into the symbolism of later ages. The
Bestiary
’s legacy extends beyond our lingering fascination with imaginary animals, however. Its success helped fuel a popular demand for books that would plant the seeds of the Gutenberg revolution.
A RUMOR IN MAINZ
In 1458 the king of France dispatched one of his spies to the German town of Mainz, where rumor had it that a troop of printers had created an ingenious new device, capable of reproducing manuscripts mechanically. No scribe needed.
The historical impact of Gutenberg’s printing press requires no corroboration here. Suffice it to say that without the advent of movable type, we would live in an unimaginably different world. Today, we instinctively view the arrival of the printing press as an unqualified boon: the engine of democracy, modern scholarship, and individual expression. For all its positive byproducts, however, the history of the printing press turns out to be far less rosy than we might imagine.
Gutenberg’s machine arrived in Europe not as a benign force for personal enlightenment but as a profoundly disruptive technology that triggered a series of painful and often bloody conflicts. The arrival of the Gutenberg press may have ultimately heralded an unprecedented boom in reading and writing, but it also serves as a cautionary tale. Just 10 years before the French king dispatched his spies, Gutenberg had invented his movable-type system, signaling a staggering technological leap forward from the block printing technology already in use. Recognizing the potential value of his invention, Gutenberg had sworn his printers to the medieval equivalent of a nondisclosure agreement, making them promise to breathe not a word of it outside the print shop. It was a futile promise. Word of the invention soon found its way out of Mainz and into neighboring municipalities. By the time the rumor reached the king of France, word had already started to spread throughout continental Europe.
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