On the mechanisation of the art of scribing

Abstract

In objective terms, the appearance of the printing press in the mid-15th century represented, perhaps, one of the most significant signs of the new impetus that society was gaining at that time, as well as the announcement of what was to become, from those years onwards, the culture of print within written communication. Far from symbolising a break or a rupture, the new artefact signified a step forward in the configuration of the European world, which in those decades still combined late medieval habits and the identity of the imminent modern world. The main subject of numerous essays and studies, the one we present here today aims to examine in depth some aspects of the instrument that promoted the "mechanisation of the art of scribes".