Text was scarce in medieval Europe. Manuscripts were expensive and time-consuming to produce. If a text were to survive, it had to be copied over and over, in an endless succession of generations. Failure to replenish a text with a new copy endangered its very existence. Significant numbers of texts that were once readily available in the medieval period no longer exist because new manuscripts were not generated from the few remaining copies before they were destroyed or lost. Those works that were copied, survived, although they too were subject to loss through copyist's error and censorship.

Books in this period were produced largely for the educated elite of clerics and scholars. Innovations, including the introduction of paper in the twelfth century, stimulated the production of works in vernacular languages and made texts slightly more accessible. But it was the introduction of printing with moveable type that revolutionized the written word. Printing made it possible to produce an unthinkable number of seemingly identical copies of texts quickly and cheaply. Not only was the future of a text secured when printed in multiple copies, the work was also easily disseminated. Printing satisfied the renaissance's demand for knowledge, enflamed the popularity of the reformation, and ushered in an age of communication. The written word would soon become common.

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