PROGRESS OF SCIENCE TO 1450 A.D. 189 



dowry, and the blending of staples enabled a better cloth to be 

 made. The Flemish weavers mixed Spanish with English wool for 

 their best textures. 



During the Arab domination of the south, Jaen, Granada, Valencia, 

 and Seville had been great centres of silk culture and manufacture. 

 Edrisi says that in the kingdom of Jaen in the thirteenth century 

 there were 3000 villages where the cultivation of the silkworm was 

 carried on, while in Seville there were 6000 silk looms, and Almeria 

 had 800 looms for the manufacture of fancy brocades, etc. We are 

 also told that a minister of Pedro the Cruel owned 125 chests of silk 

 and gold tissue. In the twelfth century, a very flourishing trade in 

 silks, velvets, and brocades was carried on with Constantinople and 

 the East generally. Even in the fourteenth and early fifteenth cen- 

 turies, the silks of Valencia and the bullion embroideries and gold and 

 silver tissues of Cordova and Toledo were unsurpassed in Christen- 

 dom, though heavily handicapped by the growing burdens placed 

 upon craftsmen by labor laws and racial prejudice, and the dis- 

 couragement of luxury by sumptuary regulations. Hume. 



THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. Before the middle of the 

 fifteenth century, printing was done chiefly from fixed blocks of 

 wood, metal, or stone, as is the case to-day in the printing of en- 

 gravings, wood cuts and the like. The introduction of movable 

 types, capable of an almost infinite variety of combination was 

 therefore a forward step of fundamental importance, since the 

 same letter or picture could be used over and over in new com- 

 binations where previously it could be used but once. Until quite 

 recently, it was generally held that the invention of the art of 

 printing from movable types was the work of Johann Gutenberg 

 (1397-1468) of Mainz on the Rhine, aided by Johann Faust or 

 Fust, a rich citizen of Mainz. Of late, however, the claim of 

 Gutenberg has been much disputed. 



The controversy about the person and nationality of the inventor 

 [of the art of printing] and the place of invention resembles the rival 

 claims of seven cities to be the birthplace of Homer. . . . The best 

 authorities agree on Gutenberg. Jacob Wimpheling wrote in 1507 . . . 

 ' Of no art can we Germans be more proud than of the art of printing, 



