The following blog entry is part of Battle Castle’s interactive history fiction game, Masters of Constantinople. If you like Battle Castle and want to learn more about fortifications, medieval war and 15^th century life, be sure to play at www.mastersofconstantinople.com.

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Believe it or not the Black Death, which began to ravage the populations of Europe in the fourteenth century, was an important factor in the invention of the printing press. The beginning of this long, circuitous chain of events can be found in the rise of towns and cities in Western Europe, which sparked trade with the outside world all the way to China. Trade exposed Europe to rag paper, block printing, and the Black Death. 

For centuries the Chinese had made paper from the pulp of water and old rags pressed in a squeeze press into paper. Arabs learned these skills from the Chinese when they took Chinese prisoners familiar with the practice at the Battle of Talus River (751 AD). The practice spread through the Muslim world and via Moorish Spain hit Western Europe in the late 12^th century. The Black Death catalyzed the invention of the printing press in the west in three main ways-

1. The massive death toll of the waves of Black Death that swept Europe in the 14^th and 15^th centuries left significant amounts of clothes that fell into disuse. They were often among the things bequeathed to survivors of the plague- who also inherit greater wealth they use to buy new clothes. When clothes wear out they become rags- and these began being made into paper in great quanitities in the 14^th century. It was cheaper than parchment (sheep’s skin) and vellum (calf’s skin). 
2. The plague killed off monks in higher numbers than the rest of society in many places- they spread through the close quarters of monasteries and sometimes wiped out whole communities. For ages monks had been almost solely responsible for the production and copying of manuscripts. As monks died out the price of hand copies went up just as the price of paper was dropping due to the greater quantities of available rags. This drove the search for a better, cheaper, and faster way to copy books. 
3. The decline of the church and the rise of secular learning and artwork of Renaissance. The rise of painting and the development of oil-based paints leads to the discovery of an ink that stuck to metal type.  

Block printing had existed for centuries in the east before it came to Western Europe. Nevertheless, the invention of movable type was a western one, dependent on European advancements in the mining and working of metals. Johannes Gutenberg, the man who combined rag paper, squeeze press, and movable type into first printing press in 1451, was a goldsmith. Whereas block print required the setting of an entire page of text and could only be used once, movable type allowed the separate letter to be re-arranged and re-used. Ultimately, the quick, cheap, and easy reproduction of written works with the printing press led to a rapid acceleration in the creation and dissemination of ideas, which in turn led to the explosion of learning in the Renaissance.

Sources:

Awesome chart showing causes and effects of printing press- http://www.flowofhistory.com/category/export/html/40

History of Paper- http://www.paperrep.com/content/paper-hist.aspx

Van Doren, Charles.  A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future.  New York: Ballantine, 1991.

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Jennifer Lynn Jordan is an author and medieval blogger. She is also a doctoral student in medieval history and teaching fellow at SUNY Stony Brook.