post. By this time he was disillusioned with
the ambition and greed of the popes and
decided to seek his fortune by allying with
the Medici clan. For this the city of Flo-
rence, which had expelled the Medici, de-
clared him an outlaw. After Alessandro de’
Medici, his patron and protector, was mur-
dered in 1573, Guicciardini allied himself
with Cosimo de’ Medici, a boy whom
Guicciardini believed he could manipulate
and through whom he hoped to rule Flo-
rence as a regent. Seeing through his
machinations, however, Medici dismissed
Guicciardini and exiled him to his country
home.
With his hopes of power and influence
in Florence ended, Guicciardini began to
writeThe History of Italy, the work for
which he is best known. In great detail,
this work describes events in Italy in the
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
He also set down his thoughts on politics
and religion in theRicordi Politici,acom-
mentary on the works of Machiavelli, and
essays collected under the title of Political
Discourses.
SEEALSO: Machiavelli, Niccolo; Medici,
Cosimo de’
Gutenberg, Johannes .......................
(ca. 1398–1468)
German inventor whose new system of
movable type pioneered the craft of book
printing in Europe. Gutenberg was born
in Mainz into a successful merchant fam-
ily that fled the city during an uprising
against its patricians in 1411. His where-
abouts after this event are unknown until
he moved to Strasbourg, now in France, in
the early 1430s. A skilled goldsmith and
craftsman, Gutenberg was inspired by the
idea of a system of cast-metal type that
would allow an easier and more efficient
production of manuscripts.
Although wood-block printing had ex-
isted for centuries in China, the medieval
manuscripts of Europe were painstakingly
created by hand, with scribes carefully
drawing letters and illustration into sheets
of vellum that were then bound together.
Gutenberg mechanized this process by cre-
ating a system of movable type—small
pieces of metal with matrices punched into
the face in the form of individual letters.
The type, for which Gutenberg invented a
method of mass production, could then
be set into a large wooden matrix, or
frame. Paper or vellum could then be
placed over the frame, where the inked
type created the image of a letter by
being pressed against it. Gutenberg adapted
the wine press to serve as a printing
press, and also developed new varieties of
paper and printing inks that were moreJohannes Gutenberg. THELIBRARY OFCON-
GRESS.Gutenberg, Johannes