A familiar story holds that the printing press caused the Protestant Reformation by spreading reformers' ideas. Print certainly mattered; Luther's pamphlets reached unprecedented audiences. The press's role, however, was contingent on the dense networks of literate clergy and merchants that already existed in much of northern Europe — without those readers, the pamphlets would have moved little.
Which choice best describes the function of the third sentence in the text?
- A
It introduces an unrelated technology.
- Bcheck_circle
It qualifies the press's causal role by identifying a precondition for its impact.
- C
It restates the second sentence using different examples.
- D
It rejects the role of the printing press in the Reformation.
Explanation
The third sentence concedes print mattered but specifies the literate-network precondition. B captures this qualifying function.