Demonic Printers
October 31, 2005
I recently encountered this item in Isaac D’israeli’s Curiosities of Literature:
In the year 1561, was printed a work, entitled “the Anatomy of the Mass.” It is a thin octavo, of 172 pages, and it is accompanied by an Errata of 15 pages! The editor, a pious monk, informs us that a very serious reason induced him to undertake this task: for it is, says he, to forestal the artifices of Satan. He supposes that the Devil, to ruin the fruit of this work, employed two very malicious frauds: the first before it was printed, by drenching the MS. in a kennel, and having reduced it to a most pitiable state, rendered several parts illegible: the second, in obliging the printers to commit such numerous blunders, never yet equalled in so small a work. To combat this double machination of Satan he was obliged carefully to reperuse the work, and to form this singular list of the blunders of printers, under the influence of Satan.
Though it is the most vituperative example I know, this monk’s sentiments were rather typical of his time. After his New Testament was published, Martin Luther became enraged with his printer for introducing errors into the text. He also faced the problem of “pirate” printers before the era of copyright who copied his text badly without his supervision. There was also the threat of the appropriation of his text by Catholics like Emser whose (1527) version of Luther’s Bible (quite rightly) omits Luther’s insertion of the word “alone” in Romans 3:28.
Problems of this sort were a continuous source of worry, anger and frustration for Luther throughout his life. He feared that after his death his translations would be altered and anyone would be free to make their own. He also expressed distaste toward the explosion of printed religious matter other than scripture several times. He does so in his preface to the Wittenberg (1539) edition of his collected works in an attempt to distance himself from this situation.
Such anxiety and hostility toward textual variation and proliferation is both humorous and instructive, cutting against simplistic, popular conceptions of the Reformation and the modern age as being based in the unqualified goods of “truth and accuracy” enabled by the emergence of print and a class of intellectuals engaged in ensuring the truth and accuracy of materials published for the public benefit.
This is Demonic Printers in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Happy “Reformation Day” | Next: Bullshit Studies | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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