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Article: The First Years of Printing.
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- January 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The rise of a merchant class in Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries led to the creation of universities. By the end of the thirteenth century, universities had been established in Bologna, Padua, Siena, and Vicenza in Italy, as well as in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and Ghent in Flanders (which is in today's Belgium).
With the secularly supported universities came students seeking knowledge that could not be found in the books locked away in monasteries. Near the universities, stationers provided paper and libraries of textbooks that had been carefully studied and compared to other books for accuracy. When a student needed a text for a class, he ...