A Juxtaposition of the Past In the late fifteenth century, as the printed word began to eclipse the illuminated manuscript, a storm of intellectual unease swept across Europe. One storm of intellectual unease rumbled in the mind of Filippo. He admired books but despised printers. To Filippo, printers were not artisans but exceptional and foreign interlopers. He considered them to be lowly, typical, awfully commercial, beggar-thieves that had no care for language or learning,