Part 8

The noble youths Sebastian and Raphael dei Orlandi have not suffered the illustrious Vegetius (a man most worthy of every praise), in his speech On Military Discipline, any longer to lurk in neglect and squalor. And especially for this cause they have concerned themselves that he should be printed, that the youths of Italy, drowsy with long sloth and cowardice, moved by the example of ancient virtue, might at length awake, since, besides his remarkable teaching on his art, we hold him so perfect in virtues of every kind, that not only by meditating on his art may a tyro become an excellent soldier, but that every age may be made more expert, every spirit more watchful, finally every human character more excellent. At Pescia, April 2d, 1488, Sigismund Rodt being the architect of the work.

Between 1471 and 1474 Ulrich Han printed a dozen or more books at Rome with Simon Chardella, a merchant of Lucca, whose help, if we may trust the colophon to the Commentary of Antonio de Butrio on the Decretals, was given from the purest philanthropy.

Finis est huius secundi libri eximii ac celeberrimi utriusque iuris doctoris domini Anthonii de Butrio super primo decretalium in duobus voluminibus: quem quidem et nonnullos diuersorum electorumque librorum a domino Vdalrico Gallo almano feliciter impressos a prudenti equidem uiro Simone Nicholai chardella de lucha merchatore fide dignissimo: sua facultate cura diligentia amplexos: quia pauperum census diuitumque auariciam miseratus, ab egregiis uero uiris emendatos, in lucem reddidit anno salutis M.cccc.lxxiii. die xv nouembris III anno pontificatus Sixti IV.

Here ends this second book of the distinguished and most renowned doctor of both laws, Master Antonio de Butrio, on the first of the Decretals, in two volumes. And this and some of the divers selected books successfully printed by Master Ulrich Han, a German, have been financed and diligently supervised, in his compassion for the means of the poor and the avarice of the rich, by the prudent Simone di Niccolo Chardella of Lucca, a merchant of the highest credit; corrected by noble scholars and published in the year of salvation 1473, on November 15th, in the third year of the pontificate of Sixtus IV.

Single books, of course, were financed by people of many classes and ranks, from kings, princesses, and archbishops down to the Spanish bell-ringer who paid for a Lerida Breviary, as its colophon very explicitly sets forth.

Breuiarii opus secundum Illerdensis ecclesie consuetudinem ex noua regula editum clareque emendatum per dominum Laurentium Fornes, virum doctum, eiusdem ecclesie presbiterum succentoremque, prehabita tamen ab egregio Decano ceterisque Canonicis eiusdem ecclesie licentia, Anthonius Palares campanarum eiusdem ecclesie pulsator propriis expensis fieri fecit. Impressitque venerabilis magister Henricus Botel de Saxonia alamanus, vir eruditus, qui huic clarissimo operi in urbe Illerde xvi Augusti anno incarnationis dominice millesimo quadringentesimo lxxixº finem fecit. Amen.

A Breviary according to the use of the church of Lerida, edited in accordance with the new rule and clearly corrected by Master Lourenço Fornes, a man of learning, priest and sub-cantor of the said church, with allowance previously obtained from the illustrious Dean and the rest of the Canons, published at his own cost by Antonio Palares the bell-ringer. Printed by the venerable master Heinrich Botel, a German of Saxony, an erudite man, who brought this glorious work to an end in the town of Lerida on August 16th, in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1479. Amen.

We might have imagined that, a bell-ringer being sometimes equivalent to a sacristan, and the sacristan being often responsible for the choir-books, the commission to print this Breviary was given by Palares only in the name of the chapter. We are, however, so distinctly informed that he caused the book to be printed “propriis expensis” (at his own cost), that no such explanation is tenable, and we must imagine either that the bell-ringer was actuated by very creditable motives, or else that he saw his way to dispose of the books. On either view of the case, this bell-ringer’s edition may, perhaps, rank for strangeness with that of the poems of Gasparo Visconti, printed to the number of a thousand copies by Franciscus Corniger, a Milanese poet, to whom he presumably stood in the relation of a patron.

Ne elegantissimi operis lepos mellifluus temporis edacis iniuria tibi, lector optime, aliquando periret, aut illustrissimi auctoris inclyta memoria aeuo obliteraretur, ne etiam posteritas, hac delectatione defraudata, cupidineis lusibus careret, Franciscus Tantius Corniger, poeta Mediolanensis, hos rithmos Gasparis Vicecomitis lingua uernacula compositos, quanquam inuito domino, in mille exempla imprimi iussit, Mediolani anno a salutifero Virginis partu M.cccc.lxxxxiii. Quarto Calendas Martias. Finis.

Lest to your loss, excellent reader, the honeyed grace of a most elegant book should some day perish by the wrongs of devouring time, or the noble memory of the most illustrious author be blotted out by age, lest also posterity, defrauded of their pleasure, should lack amorous toys, Franciscus Tantius Corniger, a Milanese poet, ordered these Rhythms of Gasparo Visconti, written in the vernacular tongue, to be printed, against their master’s will, in an edition of a thousand copies, at Milan, in the year from the Virgin’s salvation-bringing delivery 1493, on February 26th. Finis.

No doubt Gasparo Visconti duly repaid the admiration thus shown for his poems; but though the admiring friend or patron was not without his uses in the fifteenth century, and even now is occasionally indispensable, when all is said and done the success of a book depends on the reception it meets from an unbiased public, and it is to the public, therefore, that its appeal must finally be made. Colophons recognize this in different ways—sometimes, as we have seen, by praising the book, sometimes by drawing attention to its cheapness, very often by the care with which they give the exact address of the publisher at whose shop it can be bought. Vérard’s colophons are particularly notable in this respect. What could be more precise than the oft-repeated directions which we may quote from his edition of “Le Journal Spirituel” because of the careful arrangement of its lines?

Cy finist le Journal spirituel Imprime a paris pour honnorable homme Anthoine Verard bourgoys marchant et libraire demorant a paris deuant la Rue neufue notre dame a lymage sainct Jehan leuangeliste ou au palais deuant la cha- pelle ou lon chante la messe de mes- seigneurs les presidentz. Lan mil cinq cens et cinq le seziesme iour de decembre.

Here ends the Spiritual Journal printed at Paris for an estimable man Antoine Vérard burgess, shopkeeper, and bookseller dwelling at Paris before the New Street of Our Lady at the image of Saint John the Evangelist or at the palace before the cha- pel where is chanted the Mass of the Lords Presidents. In the year one thousand five hundred and five, the sixteenth day of December.

Occasionally a verse colophon would be employed to tempt a purchaser to come to the publisher’s shop, as in the case of the French translation of the “Ship of Fools” by Jodocus Badius from the German of Sebastian Brant, printed by Geoffroy de Marnef in 1497. This ends:

Hommes mortels qui desirez sauoir Comment on peut en ce monde bien vivre Et mal laisser: approchez, venez veoir Et visiter ce present joyeux livre. A tous estats bonne doctrine il livre Notant les maux et vices des mondains. Venez y tous et ne faictes dedains Du dit livre nomme Des Fols la Nef Si vous voulez vous en trouuerez maints Au Pellican cheux Geoffroy de Marnef.

Mortal men who fain would know How well to live in this world below, And evil quit: come hither, see, And with this book acquainted be. To each estate good rede it gives, Notes all the evils in men’s lives. Come hither, all, and think no shame Of this said book, which has to name The Ship of Fools. You’ll find good store if in you’ll drop At honest Geoffroy Marnef’s shop, Where the Pelican rules.

As to advertisements of cheapness, in addition to instances already incidentally noted we may take as our example another colophon partly in verse—that to the edition of the “Liber cibalis et medicinalis pandectarum” of Matthaeus Silvaticus printed at Naples by Arnold of Brussels in 1474.

Explicit liber Pandectarum quem Angelus Cato Supinas de Beneuento philosophus et medicus magna cum diligentia et emendate imprimendum curauit, et in clarissima et nobilissima atque praestantissima dulcissimaque ciuitate Neapoli, regum, ducum, procerumque matre, prima Aprilis M.cccc.Lxxiiii. Idcirco excelso deo gratias agamus.

Noscere qui causas et certa uocabula rerum Et medicas artes per breue queris iter, Me lege: nec multo mercaberis: Angelus en me Sic et diuitibus pauperibusque parat. Cui tantum me nunc fas est debere, Salernum, Urbs debet quantum, patria terra, mihi.

Here ends the book of the Pandects which Angelus Cato Supinas of Benevento, a philosopher and physician, has procured to be printed, with great diligence and correctly, in the most illustrious, most noble, most excellent, and most delightful city of Naples, mother of kings, dukes, and nobles, April 1, 1474. For which cause let us give thanks to God on high.

Who’d quickly learn each ill to diagnose, The terms of art and all a doctor knows, Let him read me, nor will the cost be great, My Angel editor asks no monstrous rate. To whom, Salernum, I as great thanks owe As thou upon thy offspring canst bestow.

No doubt in this instance the book was much obliged to its editor for his care in revising it, and the great medical school of Salerno might justly be expected to be grateful for the publication of an important medical work: the trouble of the situation was that there were so many of these not wholly disinterested benefactors in the field at the same time. Editions, it is true, were mostly small, owing to the slowness of the presswork; and, no doubt, each several printer reckoned that he had all literary Europe for his market. But when Rome was vying with Venice, and the rest of Italy with both, and almost every important press was turning out classical editions, the market quickly became overstocked, and great printers like Wendelin of Speier at Venice and Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome found that they had burnt their fingers. Hence a commercial motive reinforced that natural self-esteem which still causes every editor to assume that his method of crossing a _t_ or dotting an _i_ gives his edition a manifest superiority over every other. In the next chapter we shall see how editors persistently depreciated their predecessors; but we may note here how, even when he had Chardella to help his finances, Ulrich Han could not help girding at rival firms. Thus in his edition of the Decretals of Gregory IX he bids his readers buy his own text with a light heart and reckon its rivals at a straw’s value.

Finiunt decretales correctissime: impresse alma urbe Roma totius mundi regina per egregios uiros magistrum Udalricum Gallum Alamanum et Symonem Nicolai de Luca: cum glosis ordinariis Bernardi Parmensis et additionibus suis: que paucis in libris habentur: summa diligentia et impresse ac correcte. Quas, emptor, securo animo eme. Talia siquidem in hoc uolumine reperies ut merito alias impressiones faciliter floccipendes. Anno domini M.cccc.Lxxiiii. die xx mensis Septembris, Pontificatus uero Sixti diuina prouidentia Pape quarti anno quarto.

Here end the Decretals, most correctly printed in the bounteous city of Rome, queen of the whole world, by those excellent men Master Ulrich Han, a German, and Simon di Niccolo of Lucca: with the ordinary glosses of Bernard of Parma and his additions, which are found in few copies; both printed and corrected with the greatest diligence. Purchase these, book-buyer, with a light heart, for you will find such excellence in this volume that you will be right in easily reckoning other editions as worth no more than a straw. In the year of our Lord 1474, September 20, in the fourth year of the Pontificate of Sixtus IV, by divine providence Pope.

If Han relied on the superiority of his work to defeat his rivals, other publishers preferred to have the advantage of coming earlier to market, and we find Stephanus Corallus, at Parma, actually apologizing with a very vivid metaphor for misprints in his edition of the “Achilleis” of Statius on the ground that he had rushed it through the press to forestall rivals. Of course, the rivals were envious and malevolent,—that might be taken for granted,—but the assumption that a purchaser was to acquiesce in bad work in order that Corallus might hurry his book out quickly only for his own profit was merely impudent.

Si quas, optime lector, hoc in opere lituras inueneris nasum ponito; nam Stephanus Corallus Lugdunensis inuidorum quorundam maliuolentia lacessitus, qui idem imprimere tentarunt, citius quam asparagi coquantur id absoluit, ac summo studio emendatum literarum studiosis legendum tradidit Parme M.cccc.lxxiii. x Cal. April.

Should you find any blots in this work, excellent reader, lay scorn aside; for Stephanus Corallus of Lyons, provoked by the ill will of certain envious folk who tried to print the same book, finished it more quickly than asparagus is cooked, corrected it with the utmost zeal, and published it, for students of literature to read, at Parma, March 23, 1473.

When publishers were as ready as this to forestall each other, a cry for some kind of regulation of the industry was sure to be raised, and at Venice, the greatest book-mart in the world, regulation came in the form of the privilege and spread thence to various countries of Europe. I do not at all agree with the opinion which Mr. Gordon Duff has expressed so strongly, that the power of freely importing books given by Richard III was by any means an unmixed blessing, or that its revocation by Henry VIII fifty years later had disastrous effects on English printing. Printing started late in England and was handicapped by the impoverishment wrought by the Wars of the Roses. The facility with which all learned books were supplied from abroad quickened the growth of English learning, but restricted the English printers to printing and reprinting a few vernacular books of some literary pretensions and an endless stream of works of popular devotion and catch-penny trifles. Neither Oxford nor Cambridge could support a permanent printer, and English scholars were obliged to have their books printed abroad. Nevertheless, free trade, however hardly it might press on a backward industry, was infinitely better than the privilege system, which was altogether haphazard and liable to gross abuse. For the story of its introduction and development at Venice, the reader must be referred to Mr. Horatio Brown’s “The Venetian Printing Press” (Nimmo, 1891), a book which leaves a good deal to be desired on its purely typographical side, but which is quite admirable as regards the regulation of the industry. Our concern here is only with the privileges in so far as they make their appearance in colophons. The earliest colophon in which I have found allusion to them is six years later than the first grant which Mr. Brown records, that to Marc’ Antonio Sabellico in September, 1486, for his “Decades rerum Venetarum,” printed by Andrea de Torresani in 1487 (Hain *14053). By 1492 the system must have been in full swing, as is shown by this colophon to the “Liber Regalis” of Albohazen Haly, printed by Bernardinus Ricius:

Impressum Venetiis die 25 Septembris, 1492, opera Bernardini Ricii de Nouaria, impensa vero excellentissimi artium et medicine doctoris domini magistri Ioannis dominici de Nigro, qui obtinuit ex speciali gratia ab illustrissimo ducali dominio Venetorum Quod nemini, quicumque fuerit, liceat tam Venetiis quam in universa ditione Veneto dominio subiecta, imprimere seu imprimi facere hunc librum, aut alibi impressum in predicta ditione vendere, per X annos, sub pena immediate et irremissibilis omnium librorum, et librarum quinquaginta pro quolibet volumine. Que quidem pena applicetur recuperationi Montis Noui.

Printed at Venice on September 25, 1492, by the pains of Bernardinus Ricius of Novara, at the expense of the most excellent doctor of arts and medicine, Master Giovanni Dominico di Nigro, who obtained, by special grace, from the most illustrious dogal government of the Venetians that no one soever should be allowed, either at Venice or in the entire dominion subject to the Venetian government, himself to print this book or cause it to be printed, or to sell in the aforesaid dominion a copy printed elsewhere, for ten years, under the penalty of the immediate and irremissible forfeiture of all the books, and a fine of fifty lire for any volume, the penalty to be applied to the restoration of the Monte Novo.

The three points as to the duration of the privilege, the amount of the fine, and the charity to which it was to be applied are here stated quite plainly, but many publishers preferred to leave the amount of the penalty mysterious by substituting a reference to the grace itself, as for instance is the case in the edition of Hugo de S. Caro’s “Postilla super Psalterium,” printed by the brothers Gregorii in 1496.

Et sic est finis huius utilis et suauis postille super totum psalterium. Impressa autem fuit Venetiis per Iohannem et Gregorium de Gregoriis fratres, impensis Stefani et Bernardini de Nallis fratrum, suasu reuerendissimi patris et predicatoris egregii fratris Dominici Ponzoni. Habita tamen gratia ab excelso Venetorum dominio ne quis per decennium primum imprimere possit aut imprimi facere seu alibi impressam vendere per totum dominium &c. sub penis &c. prout in ipsa gratia plenius continetur. Completa uero fuit die 12 Nouembris, 1496.

Thus ends this useful and delightful lecture on the whole Psalter. And it was printed at Venice by the brothers Giovanni and Gregorio dei Gregorii, at the expense of the brothers Stefano and Bernardino dei Nalli, on the persuasion of the most reverend father and preacher, the noble brother Dominico Ponzoni. Grace was granted by the exalted government of the Venetians that no one for the first ten years should print it, or cause it to be printed, or sell a copy printed elsewhere, throughout the whole dominion, &c., under penalty, &c., as is more fully contained in the grace itself. And it was finished on November 12, 1496.

The Gregorii followed the same course, in their 1498 edition of S. Jerome’s Commentary on the Bible, a work (rather condescendingly praised by the printers) which it is amazing to find on the privileged list at all.

Habes itaque, studiosissime lector, Ioannis et Graegorii de Gregoriis fretus officio, ea nouiter impraessa commentaria: Vnde totius ueteris et noui testamenti ueritatem rectumque sensum quam facillime appraehendere possis: quae si tuae omnino bibliotecae ascripseris magnam consequeris uoluptatem, maioresque in dies fructus suscipies. Venetiis per praefatos fratres Ioannem et Gregorium de Gregoriis, Anno domini 1498, die 25 Augusti. Cum priuilegio quod nullus citra decem annos ea imprimere ualeat nec alibi impressa in terras excellentissimo uenetorum dominio subditas uenalia afferre possit sub poenis in ipso contentis.

Thus you have, most studious reader, thanks to the good offices of Giovanni and Gregorio dei Gregorii, these commentaries newly printed, whence you can very easily apprehend the truth and right meaning of all the Old and New Testament, and by adding these to your library you will obtain a great pleasure and receive daily greater profit. At Venice by the aforesaid brothers Giovanni and Gregorio dei Gregorii. With a privilege that no one within ten years may print them or bring for sale copies printed elsewhere into territories subject to the most excellent government of the Venetians, under the penalties therein contained.

The instances we have quoted so far are of references in colophons to privileges granted to the printer-publishers. They were granted also (as in the case of Sabellico) to authors, and from his translation of Seneca’s plays we learn that Evangelio Fossa obtained from the Senate protection for all his writings.

Finisse la nona Tragedia di Senecha ditta Agamemnone in uulgare composta per el uenerabile Frate Euangelista Fossa da Cremona. Impressa in Venesia per Maestro piero bergamascho a le spese de zuan antonio de Monsera. Nel anno M.cccc.lxxxxvii. adi xxviii zenaro. El Venerabile Frate Euangelista Fossa compositore de la presente opera a Impetrado gratia che nesuno possa imprimere ne far imprimere opera chel compona hic per anni x. poi che la hara data fora, sotto pena da ducati x. per ogni uolume come apare nella gratia. Amen.

Here ends the ninth Tragedy of Seneca, called Agamemnon, composed in the vulgar tongue by the venerable Brother Evangelista Fossa of Cremona. Printed in Venice by Master Piero Bergamascho at the expense of Juan Antonio of Monsera. In the year 1497 on the twenty-eighth day of January. The venerable Brother Evangelista Fossa, the composer of the present work, has obtained a grace that no one may print or cause to be printed a work of his composition for ten years after his publication of it, under penalty of ten ducats for every volume, as appears in the grace. Amen.

Privileges were obtainable not only by publishers in Venice itself, but also by those in the towns under Venetian rule, and the two following examples are taken respectively from a Quadragesimale printed by Angelus Britannicus at Brescia in 1497, and a Martianus Capella printed by Henricus de Sancto Urso at Vicenza in 1499.

Explicit quadragesimale quod dicitur lima vitiorum. Diuino huic operi Angelus Britannicus ciuis Brixianus optimo fauente deo: eiusque genetrice Maria: finem optatum imposuit: cuius fidem solertiamque principes veneti charipendentes: ne quis alius opus ipsum infra sex annos imprimat: aut impressum vendat in ditione sua: preter ipsius angeli nutum: Senatusconsulto pena promulgata cauerunt: anno domini M.cccc.lxxxxvii. die xviii Aprilis.