24 | Mass Media and Historical Change
far-reaching) that Gutenberg’s invention promoted a premature formation of
proto-national identity.
When viewing contemporary perceptions of this invention in general, one
sees that in Western Europe positive assessments predominated to an extent
not attained by later changes in the media landscape. Even critics largely wel-
comed the printing press and merely denounced its misuse. The clergy, in
general, also approved. A statement in praise of the good readability of the
Gutenberg Bible made by Pope Pius II in 1455 is actually on record. Printing
was repeatedly described as a gift from God, and in the fifteenth century,
clerics had already begun to appreciate the flawless transfer, the exactness of
the copy, and the advantage to be gained by believers who could more inde-
pendently engage in the study of religious texts. The disadvantage, in the mind
of contemporaries, was the increasing circulation of vernacular texts, as well
as the alleged mass production of redundant books and the printers’ greed for
profit. The abundance of books in particular had already been criticised in the
time before the invention (Giesecke 1991: 161, 169; Neddermeyer 1998: 384;
Scholz 2004: 12–18).
In contemporary perception, credit was soon given to the new medium
for not restricting itself to a particular target group (Scholz 2004: 18). Not
least out of commercial interest, printers saw to it that books became avail-
able to a wide audience. As shown by an evaluation of prefaces written by
printers from Lyon in the sixteenth century, they addressed the growing
group of educated, wealthy citizens, who had been discovered as an addi-
tional target group next to that of scholars, with a somewhat educational
claim (Vogel 1999: 272). Having said that, the actual number of literates
around 1500 is exceedingly difficult to determine. It is estimated that 2 per
cent of the population in the German territories were readers (around three
hundred thousand). One century later, the estimate number of readers had
doubled (Würgler 2009: 94).
Regional, confessional, and gender-related differences as well as the urban–
rural gradient make estimation difficult. Men in urban areas and reformed
Protestants had a higher rate of alphabetisation. The highest rates in Europe
can probably be found in northern Italian cities, where about a third of all
boys attended school, and 10 to 20 per cent of all residents were thus able to
read in a city such as Venice (Fremmer 2001: 67; Grendler 1989: 77). Gen-
erally, it is thought that at least in the Central European cities up to 10 per
cent of people were able to read, and that from 1450 onwards readers from the
urban middle classes increasingly gained on the literate clergy (10–30 per cent
according to Würgler 2009: 95). However, print-work reached significantly
more people, which becomes clear when considering broadsides. For in the
sixteenth century, texts were still intended primarily to be read out in churches,
public spaces and inns, and not for the individual, silent reader (Körber 1998: