Francis Foster

that's why the romans created the act that they are that's what they were trying to do now news really begins and maybe francis this differs entirely from what pbs told you and so i apologize um about in the 1400s along the river rhine now the rhine is a very special river in european history

It begins in the mountains of Switzerland, it goes through Germany, and then it empties into the North Sea in modern-day Netherlands, Holland.

And along this river, we see a tremendous amount of Protestant movements emerges.

Germany at this time period is not a united country, even though technically it's the Holy Roman Empire.

There's different princes and principalities and dukes and so on.

And your royal leader, your princely leader, could decide what flavor of Protestant you were or whether you're still with the Roman Catholic Church.

And you would be on a boat going down the Rhine, and you would be, if you were a Protestant, you'd look out on Catholic cities, and you know that if you came to shore, the chances of you being tried and burnt alive as a heretic were very high.

And yet, on the river, 10 feet from shore, in the current, you were safe.

And your cargo was safe, for the most part.

And that's not to say that all Protestants were united either.

Protestants executed Protestants.

These religious wars were intense.

But just as the Gutenberg in the city of Mainz, that's sort of on the east bank or the left side of the, looking from above, of the Rhine River,

Almost in the dead middle of the German Rhine is Mainz.

And in that city, not far from the docks, is this guy, Gutenberg, with the movable type printing presses.

There are others who have similar devices, maybe not as good as his.

And he's printing the Bible, and he makes so much money printing the Bible in the vernacular, he can afford to take speculation in printing other things.

So he prints catalogs, he prints books,

opinions, he prints religious tracts, including for denominations that he doesn't share the values of, with the idea that even if it's banned in Mainz, he can bundle it down to the docks, put it on a boat, and the city that's paying for it further down the Rhine will take the cargo and he'll make the cash.

So as long as he's not caught with it, everything's fine.