Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending

There is a longstanding confusion of Johann Fust, Gutenberg's one—time business partner, with the notorious Doctor Faustus. The association is not surprising to Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, for from its very early days the printing press was viewed by some as black magic. For the most part, however, it was welcomed as a "divine art" by Western churchmen and statesmen. Sixteenth—century Lutherans hailed it for emancipating Germans from papal rule, and seventeenth—century English radicals viewed ...