Goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg may have invented the movable-type printing press around 1450 in Meinz, Germany to create his monumental Bibles, but Venice is where the Printing Revolution began by giving the nascent industry a major push and changing men’s lives. The Republic of Venice soon earned a reputation for being the cradle of the new technology. It became the Silicon Valley of the publishing world.

The new medium reached Italy in 1462 via a Benedictine monastery in Subiaco in the Sabine Mountains where St. Benedict of Nursia had dwelt in the wilderness with other hermits in the early 6th century. The monastery of Santa Scolastica in Subiaco had a very active scriptorium, a room set apart for writing or copying of manuscripts. The monastic scribes or amanuenses would endure the drawn-out task of copying a manuscript and the discomfort of inadequate light and lack of heating in winter.