Luther's 95 Theses
Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Within two weeks copies printed on Gutenberg-style presses had circulated across Germany. Within two months they were in France, England, and Italy. The Catholic Church's monopoly on religious authority, built over more than a millennium, broke against a technology that had existed for only seventy years. It was the first mass-media decentralization event in European history.
The 95 Theses were reprinted and distributed across Germany within two weeks — a speed that would have been impossible a century earlier. The printing press made mass dissent economically feasible for the first time.
01 · Medici & Monarchs
Information was property of whoever owned the fastest couriers. The Medici bank, founded 1397, was the Bloomberg terminal of its era — papal accounts, royal debts, grain prices across the Mediterranean, all passing through one family's ledgers in Florence.
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