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Print and popular religious literature stimulated many distinctive individual interpretations of faith even among little-educated working people. In the sixteenth century, Menocchio, a miller in Italy, began to read books that were available in his locality. He reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic Church. When the Roman Church began its inquisition to repress heretical ideas, Menocchio was hauled up twice and ultimately executed. The Roman Church, troubled by such effects of popular readings and questionings of faith, imposed severe controls over publishers and booksellers and began to maintain an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558.

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In 1295, Marco Polo, a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in China. As China already had the technology of woodblock printing. Marco Polo brought this knowledge back with him. Now Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe.

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Gutenberg was the son of a merchant and grew up on a large agricultural estate.

(i)Here handle was used to turn the screw and press down the platen over the printing block that was placed on top of a sheet of damp paper.

(ii)Gutenberg developed metal types for each of the 26 characters of the Roman alphabet and devised a way of moving them around so as to compose different words of the text.

(iii)This came to be known as the moveable type printing machine, and it remained the basic print technology over the next 300 years.

(iv)Books could now be produced much faster than was possible when each print block was prepared by carving a piece of wood by hand.

(v)The Gutenberg press could print 250 sheets on one side per hour.

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Reason of Martin Luther: 
In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses criticising many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. A printed copy of this was posted on a church door in Wittenberg. It challenged the Church to debate his ideas. Luther’s writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and read widely. This lead to a division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s translation of the New Testament sold 5,000 copies within a few weeks and a second edition appeared within three months. Deeply grateful to print, Luther said, ‘Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.’ 

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Gandhi said in 1922: ‘Liberty of speech ... liberty of the press ... freedom of association. The Government of India was then seeking to crush the three powerful vehicles of expressing and cultivating public opinion. The fight for Swaraj meant a fight for this threatened freedom before all else ...’