The Renaissance spread to Germany, France, England, and Spain in the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. In it is migration northward, Renaissance culture adapted itself to conditions unknown in Italy, such as the growth of the monarchical state and the strength of lay piety. In England, France and SPain, Renaissance culture tenden to be court-centered and hence anti-republican. In Germany, no monarchical stated existed but a vital tradition of lay piety was present was present in the Low Countries. The Brethren of the Common Life, for example, was a lay movement emphasizing education and practical piety. Intensely Cristian and at the same time anticlerical, the people in such sharpening their wits against the clergy, not to undermine faith, but restore it is ancient apostolic purity.
Two factors operated to accelerate the spread of Renaissance culture after 1450: growing economic prosperity and the printing press. Prosperity -- the result of peace and the decline of famine and the plague -- led to the founding of school and colleges. In these schools the sons of gentlemen and nobles would receive a humanistic education imported from Italy. The purpose of such an education was to prepare men for a career in the church or civil service.
By the middle of the 15th century several print masters were on the verge of perfecting the techniques of printing with movable metal type. The first man to demonstrate the practicability of movable type was Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398-1468), the son of a noble family of Mainz, Germany. A former stonecutter and goldsmith, Gutenberg devised an alloy of lead, tin and antimony that would melt at low temperature, cast wll in the die, and be durable in the press. It was then possible to use and reuse the separate pieces of type, as long as the metal in wich they were cast did not wear down, simply by arranging them in the desired order. The mirror image of each letter (rather than entire words or phrases), was carved in relief on a small block, Infividual letters, easily movable, were put together to form words; words separated by blank spaces former lines of type; and lines of a type were brought together to make up a page. Since letters could be arranged into any format, an infinite variety of texts be printed by reusing and resettin the type.
By 1452, with the aid of borrowed money, Gutenberg began his famous Bible project. Two hundred copies of the two volume Gutenberg Bible were printed, a small number of which were printed of vellum. The expensive and beautiful Bibles were completed and sold at the 1455 Frankfurt Book Fair, and cost equivalent of three years´pay for the average clerk.
Roughly fifty of all Gutenberg Bibles survive today.
Two factors operated to accelerate the spread of Renaissance culture after 1450: growing economic prosperity and the printing press. Prosperity -- the result of peace and the decline of famine and the plague -- led to the founding of school and colleges. In these schools the sons of gentlemen and nobles would receive a humanistic education imported from Italy. The purpose of such an education was to prepare men for a career in the church or civil service.
By the middle of the 15th century several print masters were on the verge of perfecting the techniques of printing with movable metal type. The first man to demonstrate the practicability of movable type was Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398-1468), the son of a noble family of Mainz, Germany. A former stonecutter and goldsmith, Gutenberg devised an alloy of lead, tin and antimony that would melt at low temperature, cast wll in the die, and be durable in the press. It was then possible to use and reuse the separate pieces of type, as long as the metal in wich they were cast did not wear down, simply by arranging them in the desired order. The mirror image of each letter (rather than entire words or phrases), was carved in relief on a small block, Infividual letters, easily movable, were put together to form words; words separated by blank spaces former lines of type; and lines of a type were brought together to make up a page. Since letters could be arranged into any format, an infinite variety of texts be printed by reusing and resettin the type.
By 1452, with the aid of borrowed money, Gutenberg began his famous Bible project. Two hundred copies of the two volume Gutenberg Bible were printed, a small number of which were printed of vellum. The expensive and beautiful Bibles were completed and sold at the 1455 Frankfurt Book Fair, and cost equivalent of three years´pay for the average clerk.
Roughly fifty of all Gutenberg Bibles survive today.
