One factor was the newfound accessibility of heretical ideas. When Wycliffe was alive, scribes had to copy out manuscripts by hand in a laborious and expensive process, so reading was the preserve of a small, educated elite. Then, in the middle of the fifteenth century, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. The increasing use of labor-saving devices was a direct response to the challenges created by the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of the plague, because there were now so few workers that labor-intensive processes had become unviable.[57] Printed pamphlets provided a
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