The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself

We are unusually well informed about Bernard's news network, because over five hundred of his letters survive.1 But in some respects Bernard is utterly characteristic of the news world of the medieval period. At this time regular access to news was the prerogative of those in circles of power. Only they could afford it; only they had the means to g

This is the one part of the early modern news world that has no clear equivalent today. In the Europe of the sixteenth century, however, singing played an important role in mediating news events to a largely illiterate public. The news singers, sometimes blind and often accompanied by children, would sing out their wares, then offer printed version

If we examine the management of opinion in one particularly important jurisdiction – the great imperial city of Augsburg – it is striking how often these interventions were prompted not by print but by seditious singing. In 1553 a bookseller got into trouble when he passed around a tavern a song mocking Charles V's recent humiliation at the siege o

Questions of this sort were particularly pertinent for the traditional clients of news in medieval society: Europe's rulers and merchants. They might study pamphlets to take the temperature of public debate, but they needed their own sources of news for more precise intelligence. For those in positions of power, the confidential despatch remained t

Although many of the pasquinades were bitingly topical, the confusion of the two forms was unfair. The avvisi could be cynical, but with rare exceptions were not openly offensive. Their value lay in their reliability as news; the writers could not exaggerate for effect, nor indulge in wishful thinking. In the clear distance between the avvisi and p

With so much false information swirling around, it was sometimes necessary to take extraordinary steps to ensure that true reports were given credence. Since the battle of Barnet (1471) took place very close to London, wild rumours circulated in the city, and the first reports of the Yorkist victory were not believed. It was only when a mounted rid

Couriers were expected to keep to strict timetables. In the 1420s couriers from Florence were expected to reach Rome in five or six days, Paris in twenty to twenty-two, Bruges in twenty-five and Seville, a journey of two thousand kilometres, in thirty-two days. The annotations on the letters exchanged between Andrea Barbarigo in Venice and correspo

The first to make money from selling news were a group of discreet and worldly men who plied their trade in the cities of Italy. Here in Europe's most sophisticated news market they offered their clients, themselves powerful men, a weekly handwritten briefing. The most successful ran a shop full of scribes turning out several dozen copies a week. T

To prevent the sermon becoming an undignified scrum, senior clerics would negotiate their arrival in advance. This was the case with the great master of the indulgence campaign, Raymond Peraudi, whose appearances were carefully orchestrated in a flurry of printed pamphlets.65 So at this level a sermon was always news, and as often as not it was pre