CHAPTER 17 • Section 2
Printing Spreads Renaissance Ideas
The Chinese invented block printing, in which a printer carved words or letters on
a wooden block, inked the block, and then used it to print on paper. Around 1045,
Bi Sheng invented movable type, or a separate piece of type for each character in
the language. The Chinese writing system contains thousands of different characters, so most Chinese printers found movable type impractical. However, the
method would prove practical for Europeans because their languages have a very
small number of letters in their alphabets.
Printing Spreads
Renaissance Ideas
Critical Thinking
Gutenberg Improves the Printing Process During the 13th century, block-
• Why do you think the Bible was the first
book printed with movable type? (Many
Europeans were religious.)
• How would you compare and contrast
the impact of the printing press with
the impact of the Internet? (information
easier to access, changes affect society,
more ways to access information today,
Internet spreads information faster)
Global Impact
The Printing Press
The history of book making is
outlined below:
• 2700 B.C. Egyptians write books on
papyrus scrolls.
• 1000 B.C. Chinese make books by
writing on strips of bamboo.
• A.D. 300 Romans write on sheets of
parchment (treated animal skin).
• A.D. 800 Irish monks hand-write and
hand-illustrate The Book of Kells.
• About 1455 Gutenberg prints the first
complete book on a printing press.
SKILLBUILDER Answers
1. Drawing Conclusions About 100
2. Making Inferences Europe and Asia
D. Possible Answer
It made books
readily available
and cheap enough
for people to afford.
printed items reached Europe from China. European printers began to use block
printing to create whole pages to bind into books. However, this process was too
slow to satisfy the Renaissance demand for knowledge, information, and books.
Around 1440 Johann Gutenberg, a craftsman from Mainz, Germany, developed a printing press that incorporated a number of technologies in a new way. The
process made it possible to produce books quickly and cheaply. Using this
improved process, Gutenberg printed a complete Bible, the Gutenberg Bible, in
about 1455. It was the first full-sized book printed with movable type.
The printing press enabled a printer to produce hundreds of copies of a single
work. For the first time, books were cheap enough that many people could buy
them. At first printers produced mainly religious works. Soon they began to provide books on other subjects such as travel guides and medical manuals.
The Printing Press
Recognizing
Effects
What were the
major effects of the
invention of the
printing press?
A copyist took five months to
produce a single book.
Many inventions are creative
combinations of known technologies.
In 1452, Johann Gutenberg combined
known technologies from Europe and
Asia with his idea for molding movable
type to create a printing press that
changed the world.
5 months
1 book
One man and a printing press could
produce 500 books in the same
amount of time.
Screw-type Press
An adaptation of
Asian olive-oil
presses made
a workable
printing press.
Movable Type
Letters that could
be put together in
any fashion and
reused was a
Chinese idea.
5 months
Paper Using paper massproduced by Chinese
techniques, rather than vellum
(calf or lambskin), made
printing books possible.
Ink Oil-based
inks from 10thcentury Europe
worked better
on type than
tempera ink.
500 books
SKILLBUILDER: Interpreting Graphics
1. Drawing Conclusions About how many
books could a printing press produce in
a month?
2. Making Inferences Which areas of the
world contributed technologies to
Gutenberg’s printing press?
484 Chapter 17
Name
Date
GEOGRAPHY APPLICATION: MOVEMENT
CONNECTIONS TO MATHEMATICS
CHAPTER
Trade in Renaissance Europe
17
Directions: Read the paragraphs below and study the map carefully. Then answer
the questions that follow.
Section 2
Cologne and Novgorod—made up the League’s
governing body.
Along with a great growth in ship traffic in the
upper European region, land transport also
increased. Cloth, metals, and other goods such as
ﬁsh, timber, animal skins, tar, and turpentine were
brought to ports and exchanged for the raw goods
of Scandinavia and Russia. The League eventually
set up branch offices in England and created
monopolies to protect their commerce. However,
in the early 1600s, the League was hit by internal
strife and foreign attacks and was so weakened that
it disbanded. At this time, English and Dutch merchants took over control of shipping in the region.
F
or centuries Venice and other coastal Italian
city-states had a monopoly on trade in their
region, the Mediterranean Sea. As a result, around
1200, European merchants to the north began
organizing far-ranging, controlled trade routes of
their own.
Northern European cities formed a federation
called the Hanseatic League. By the 1300s the
League had incorporated most of the Baltic and
North Sea ports, with German states serving as a
go-between. Lübeck, built in the 1200s, was situated in a sheltered port and became the “mother
town” of the League, which stretched from Russia
to England. Merchants from the nearly 100-member cities—including such inland locations as
Comparing Book Production Methods
484
Chapter 17
Venetian trade route
To relate the spread of information to geography, have
students complete the Geography Application for
this chapter.
Stockholm
a
North
Sea
Ba
ENGLAND
lt
Lübeck
London
AT L A N T I C
O C E A N
Novgorod
Se
Edinburgh
Bruges
i
Danzig
Hamburg
RUSSIA
Kiev
Cologne
Paris
GERMAN
STA
ST
STATES
ATES
FRANCE
LLyons
yons
Milan
sp
Have student pairs copy a paragraph from a book by hand
and record how long it takes. Next, ask them to estimate
the amount of time it would take to copy the entire page.
Tell them to multiply this amount by the total number of
book pages. Their answer represents the estimated number of hours required to create a handwritten version of
the book. Challenge student pairs to estimate how long it
Hanseatic trade route
S C A N D I N AV I A
Bergen
Point out the part of the Global Impact feature that
explains how a person with a printing press could do 500
times as much work as a copyist in the same amount of
time. Ask students, What would be the effects of such an
invention? (Information could spread more widely and
more quickly.)
Ca
Purpose To understand the revolutionary impact of the
printing press
Renaissance Trade Routes
c
Task Comparing methods of book production
would take to reproduce a set of these books for the
entire class.
© McDougal Littell Inc. All rights reserved.
Class Time 45 minutes
ia
n
V
enice
Venice
Marseilles
B
ITAL
IT
ITALY
ALY
Y
V
alencia
Valencia
Se
a
ck Sea
la
Constantinople
Naples
Cadiz
A S I A
Algiers
TTunis
unis
Me
A F R I C A
0
0
500 Miles
1,000 Kilometers
dit
erra
Beirut
nean
Sea
TTripoli
ripoli
Alexandria
European Renaissance and Reformation 29
In-Depth Resources: Unit 4
CHAPTER 17 • Section 2
The Legacy of the Renaissance
The European Renaissance was a period of great artistic and social change. It
marked a break with the medieval-period ideals focused around the Church. The
Renaissance belief in the dignity of the individual played a key role in the gradual
rise of democratic ideas. Furthermore, the impact of the movable-type printing
press was tremendous. Some historians have suggested that its effects were even
more dramatic than the arrival of personal computers in the 20th century. Below is
a summary of the changes that resulted from the Renaissance.
Changes in the Arts
• Art drew on techniques and styles of classical Greece and Rome.
• Paintings and sculptures portrayed individuals and nature in more realistic
and lifelike ways.
• Artists created works that were secular as well as those that were religious.
• Writers began to use vernacular languages to express their ideas.
• The arts praised individual achievement.
Changes in Society
• Printing changed society by making more information available and
inexpensive enough for society at large.
• A greater availability of books prompted an increased desire for learning and
a rise in literacy throughout Europe.
• Published accounts of new discoveries, maps, and charts led to further
discoveries in a variety of fields.
• Published legal proceedings made the laws clear so that people were more
likely to understand their rights.
• Christian humanists’ attempts to reform society changed views about how
life should be lived.
• People began to question political structures and religious practices.
Renaissance ideas continued to influence European thought—including
religious thought—as you will see in Section 3.
SECTION
2
• William Shakespeare
• Johann Gutenberg
USING YOUR NOTES
MAIN IDEAS
CRITICAL THINKING & WRITING
2. Which of the events listed
3. How did Albrecht Dürer’s work
6. COMPARING How were the works of German
do you think was most
important? Explain.
reflect the influence of the
Italian Renaissance?
painters different from those of the Flemish painters?
Give examples.
4. What was one way the
7. ANALYZING MOTIVES What reasons did humanists give
Renaissance changed society?
for wanting to reform society? Explain.
5. Why was the invention of the
8. RECOGNIZING EFFECTS How did the availability of cheap
printing press so important?
1400
Critical Thinking
• In what ways did Renaissance art connect to the past? (copied Greek and
Roman styles, created religious works)
In what ways did it break with the past?
(increase in secular art, more realistic
style, use of vernacular, emphasis on
the individual)
• How did printing and publishing affect
social reforms? (made social reforms
more widespread because information,
including Christian humanist works,
was distributed more widely and freely)
ASSESS
ASSESSMENT
TERMS & NAMES 1. For each term or name, write a sentence explaining its significance.
• utopia
The Legacy of the
Renaissance
SECTION 2 ASSESSMENT
Have students work individually to
answer the questions. Then have them
share with the class their answers for
item 2.
Formal Assessment
• Section Quiz, p. 267
books spread learning?
1600
9. WRITING ACTIVITY CULTURAL INTERACTION Reread the
primary source quotation from Christine de Pizan on
page 482. Write a one paragraph opinion piece about
the ideas expressed there.
RETEACH
Use the Reading Study Guide for Section
2 to review the main ideas of the section.
Reading Study Guide, pp. 159–160
INTERNET ACTIVITY
Use the Internet to find information on the number of books published
in print and those published electronically last year. Create a pie graph
showing the results of your research.
INTERNET KEYWORD
book publishing statistics
In-Depth Resources: Unit 4
• Reteaching Activity, p. 42
European Renaissance and Reformation 485
ANSWERS
1. utopia, p. 482
• Willliam Shakespeare, p. 483
2. Sample Answer: about 1440—Gutenberg
invents printing press (most important);
1450s—Northern Renaissance begins;
1509—Erasmus writes The Praise of Folly;
1516—More writes Utopia;
mid-1500s—Elizabethan Age begins; late
1500s—Shakespeare writes plays and poems.
3. He portrayed classical myths, religious
subjects, and realistic landscapes.
4. Possible Answer: More people were exposed
to ideas because they could read the
information in their own language.
• Johann Gutenberg, p. 484
5. It made more information available not only
to scholars but also to ordinary people.
6. German painters such as Dürer used classic
myths and religious subjects. Flemish painters
such as Bruegel focused on ordinary subjects
and used a great amount of detail.
7. They wanted people to live a Christian life. To
do so they had to give up greed, corruption,
and war and provide education for women
and children.
8. More people could afford books and the ideas
could be shared with those who could not
read. More information led to more
discoveries. Literacy increased.
9. Rubric Paragraphs should
• clearly state an opinion about de Pizan.
• support the opinion with facts and details.
Rubric Pie charts should
• have a title.
• clearly label data for print and
electronic books.
• cite at least two sources.
Teacher’s Edition
485