CHAPTER III.

THE PRINTER-PUBLISHERS OF ITALY, 1464-1600.

THE reproduction and distribution of the works of classical writers to such an extent as not only to influence the scholarly thought of the time, but to widen enormously the circles of society reached and affected by intellectual influences, became possible only through the new art of printing which had been brought across the Alps by German workmen; while the prompt utilisation of printing for the service of scholarship called for the devoted labour of printers who were themselves scholars and who were prepared to subordinate and even to sacrifice, in the cause of a literary ideal, their immediate business advantage. It was to the high scholarly ideals and courageous and unselfish labours of Aldus Manutius and his immediate successors no less than to the imagination, ingenuity, and persistency of Gutenberg and Fust, that the Europe of 1495 was indebted for the great gift of the poetry and the philosophy of Greece. Mayence and Venice joined hands to place at the service of the scholarly world the literary heritage of Athens.

The close of the fifteenth century witnessed a great expansion in more than one direction of European thought. In the West, Columbus had opened up a new world, and his discovery, while giving manifold incentives to the men of action, must also have served as a powerful stimulus to the imagination of the thinkers of the time, in its suggestions concerning the possibilities of the future. In the East, the printers of Venice were making use of scholars from Constantinople to rediscover for Europe the vast realm of Greek thought, and to bring Homer, Plato, and Aristotle to the knowledge of the students of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. Perhaps in no other epoch of the world’s history has there been so great an expansion of the possibilities of thought and of action, so suggestive a widening of range of the imagination, as in the decade succeeding 1492.

The introduction into Italy of the art of printing was due to Juan Turrecremata, who was Abbot of the monastery of Subiaco, and who later became Cardinal. He was a native of Valladolid in Spain, and his family name was Torquemada, of which name Turrecremata is the Latinised form. The Cardinal has been confused by Frommann[447] with the Torquemada who was Inquisitor-General of the Inquisition during the period of its most pitiless activity. The latter probably belonged to the same family, but his Christian name was Tomas, and he was not born till 1420, thirty years later than the Cardinal. Juan Torquemada had, however, been one of the confessors of Queen Isabella, and was said to have made to her the first suggestion of the necessity of establishing the Inquisition, in order to check the rising spirit of heresy. He did not realise what a Trojan horse, full of heretical possibilities, he was introducing into Italy in bringing in the Germans and their printing-press.

The monastery of Subiaco was some sixty miles from Rome. Among its monks were, in 1464, a number of Germans, some of whom had, before leaving Germany, seen or heard enough of the work done by the printers in Mayence or Frankfort to be able to give to the Abbot an idea of its character. The Abbot was keenly interested in the possibilities presented by the new art, and with the aid of these German monks he arranged to bring to Subiaco two printers, Conrad Schweinheim, of Mayence, and Arnold Pannartz, of Prague, who were instructed to organise a printing-office in the monastery. They began their operations early in 1464, their first work being given to the printing in sheet form of the manuals of worship or liturgies used in the monastery.

In 1465, they published the first volume printed in Italy, an edition of a Latin syntax for boys, edited by Lactantius. This was followed in the latter part of the same year by an edition of Cicero’s _De Oratore_, and in 1467, by the _De Civitate_ of Augustine.

It was only the enthusiasm of the Abbot that rendered it possible, even for a short period, to overcome the many obstacles in the way of carrying on a printing-office in an out of the way village like Subiaco. But the difficulties soon became too great, and in 1467, the two German printers found their way, under the invitation of the brothers Massimi, to Rome, where they set up their presses in the Massimi palace. There they carried on operations for five years, during which time they produced a stately series of editions of the Latin classics, including the works of Cicero, Apuleius, Gellius, Cæsar, Virgil, Livy, Strabo, Lucan, Pliny, Suetonius, Quintilian, Ovid, together with editions of certain of the Church Fathers, such as Augustine, Jerome, and Cyprian. They also published a Latin Bible, and the Bible commentaries of Nicholas de Lyra, in five volumes.

With the production of the last work, the resources which had been placed at their disposal by their friends the Massimis and by another patron, Bussi, Bishop of Aleria, were exhausted. The Bishop addressed an appeal to the Pope on their behalf, setting forth the importance of their work for the “service of literature and of the Church.” Sixtus IV., who had just succeeded to the papacy, while apparently not affected by the dread which influenced future popes concerning the pernicious influence of the printing-press, evidently did not share in the enthusiasm of the Bishop as to its present value for the Church. He was also somewhat avaricious and preferred to use his money to provide for a large circle of relatives rather than to support a publishing business. The printers were, therefore, unable to secure any aid from the papal treasury, and, in 1472, they brought their business to a close. Schweinheim transferred his activities to the work of engraving on copper, while concerning the further undertakings of Pannartz there is no record.

During the seven years of their operations in Subiaco and in Rome, these two printers, who constituted the first firm of publishers in Italy, had printed twenty-nine separate works, comprised in thirty-six volumes. The editions averaged 275 copies of each volume, the total output aggregating about 12,500 volumes. There is no record of any attempt being made to secure for this first list of publications the protection of privileges, and there could in fact have been at the time no competition to fear.

Shortly after the cessation of Schweinheim’s business, Turrecremata became a cardinal, and he immediately invited another German printer, Ulrich Hahn, from Ingolstadt, to settle in Rome. Hahn’s first publications were the _Meditationes_ of the Cardinal himself, and these were followed by a number of editions of the Latin classics. The learned Campanus, Bishop of Teramo, was one of Hahn’s patrons and gave also valuable service as a press-corrector, working so diligently that at one time he reserved for himself only three hours’ sleep. The Bishop writes with great enthusiasm to a friend concerning the art of printing, “by means of which material which required a year for its writing could be printed off ready for the reader in one day.”

Other German printers followed Hahn, and before the close of the century more than twenty had carried on work in Rome with varying success. The influence of the Church was at this time decidedly favourable to the new art, and nearly all the Roman printers of the earlier group were working at the instance of ecclesiastics, and often with the direct support of ecclesiastical funds. It is to the Church of Rome, therefore, that belongs the responsibility for the introduction into Italy of the printing-press, the work of which was later to give to the Church so much trouble. The little town of Subiaco can, as the record shows, claim the credit of the first printing, while it was in Rome that the first publications of importance were produced.

The leading place, however, in the production of books was almost from the outset taken by the printers of Venice, and as well for the excellence of their typography as by reason of the scholarly importance of the publications themselves, the Venetian printers maintained for many years a pre-eminence not only in Italy but in Europe. The distinctive prestige secured by Venice came through the printing of Greek texts, the beginnings of which, under the direction of Aldus Manutius, will be referred to later.

=Venice.=--The first book printed in Venice was the famous _Decor Puellarum_, a treatise of instruction for young girls as to the ruling of their lives. Its date has been claimed by Venetians to be 1461, but it appears from the judgment of the best authorities that this date must have been erroneous and that the volume really appeared in 1471. The printer of the _Decor Puellarum_ was Jenson, a Frenchman, and the contest for priority in Italian publishing has rested between him and the two Germans of Subiaco.

Another printer whose first Italian volume, _Epistolæ Familiares_, appeared in Venice in 1470, was also a German, John of Speyer. A fourth volume in this earlier group of publications bore the title _Miracoli della Gloriosa Verzine_. This was the only one of the four which was printed by an Italian, Lavagna of Milan, while it was also the only early printed book in the Italian language.

In the year 1493, the earliest official document relating to the printing-press in Venice was published by the Abbate Jacopo Morelli, prefect of the Marcian Library. That document is an order of the _Collegio_ or cabinet of Venice, dated September 18, 1469. The order was proposed by the Doge’s councillors, and grants to John of Speyer, for a period of five years, the monopoly of printing in Venice and in the territory controlled by Venice. John did not long enjoy the advantages of this monopoly, having died in 1470, but the business was continued by his brother Windelin, to whom, apparently, was conceded the continuance of the monopoly.

John of Speyer was one of the few of the earlier printers who left information concerning the size of their editions. If he had also thought it important to specify the price at which the books were sold, we should have had data for calculations concerning the relative profit from the different works.

Of the _Epistolæ Familiares_, the first edition comprised but one hundred copies, but the demand must have been greater than had been calculated for, as four months later the printing of a second edition of six hundred copies was begun, which was completed (in two impressions) within the term of three months.

The printer, Nicolas Jenson, was born in the province of Champagne about 1420, and was brought up in the Paris Mint. He was sent to Mayence in 1458 by Charles VII. to learn the secrets of the new art of printing. He returned to France in 1461, shortly after the accession of Louis XI. It is not clear whether the new king was less interested than had been his predecessor in the development of French printing, or whether Jenson was afforded any opportunity for exercising his art in Paris. In 1465, however, he is heard of in Venice, and he began there, in 1470, a printing and publishing business which soon became the most important in Italy.

There were many reasons to influence Jenson in his choice of Venice as the scene of his operations. In the first place, the tide of printers was flowing steadily towards Italy. Apprentices who had acquired the new art in Germany set out to seek their fortunes by the exercise of their skill. It was natural that they should turn to Italy, where the nobles were rich, where learning had its home, where there were already many manuscripts available for the printers, and where there was a public, both lay and ecclesiastic, ready to pay for the reproductions. The Venetian Republic offered special attractions in the security afforded by its government, and in the protection and liberty she promised to all who settled in her dominions. Venice was, moreover, the best mart for the distribution of goods, and the trade in paper was facilitated by the ease and cheapness of sea-carriage.

The first rag paper was made about the year 1300, and the trade of paper-making soon became an important one in Italy. In 1373, the Venetian Senate forbade the exportation of rags from the dominions of the Republic, an act which recalls the edict of Ptolemy Philadelphus in 290 B.C., forbidding the exportation of papyrus from Alexandria.

The position of Venice secured for it exceptional facilities for becoming a literary and a publishing centre, facilities in some respects similar to those which eighteen hundred years earlier had given to Alexandria the control of the book production of its time. The Venetian Contarini, writing in 1591, speaks of “the wonderful situation of the city, which possesses so many advantages that one might think the site had been selected not by men but by the gods themselves. The city lies in a quiet inlet of the Adriatic Sea. On the side towards the sea, the waters of the lagoons are spread out like a series of lakes, while far in the distance the bow-shaped peninsula of the Lido serves as a protection against the storms from the south. On the side towards the main land, the city is, in like manner, surrounded and protected by the waters of its lagoons. Various canals serve as roadways between the different islands, and in the midst of the lakes and of these watery ways arise in stately groups the palaces and the towers of the city.”

It was by the thoroughness of the protection secured for Venice through its watery defences, no less than by its isolated position outside of, although in immediate connection with, the Italian territory, that the Republic was enabled to keep free from a large proportion of the contests petty and great that troubled or devastated Italian territory during the sixteenth century.

When it was drawn into a conflict, its fighting was done very largely by means of its fleets, operating at a distance, or with the aid of foreign troops hired for the purpose, and but rarely were the actual operations of war brought within touch of Venetian territory. Its control of the approaches by sea prevented also the connections with the outer world from being interfered with. The city could neither be blockaded nor surrounded, and in whatever warlike operations it might be engaged, its commercial undertakings went on practically undisturbed. It was under very similar conditions that Alexandria secured, in literary production and in publishing operations during the fourth and the third centuries B.C., pre-eminence over Pergamus and the other Greek cities of Asia Minor. The fact that manuscripts and printing-presses could be fairly protected against the risks of war, and that the road to the markets of the world for the productions of the presses could not easily be blocked, had an important influence during the century succeeding 1490, in attracting printers to Venice rather than to Bologna, Milan, or Florence. The Venetian government was also prompt to recognise the value of the new industry and the service and the prestige that were being conferred upon the city by the work of the printer-publishers and their scholarly editors. The Republic gave, from the outset, more care to the furthering of this work by privileges and concessions and by honourable recognition of the guild of the printers than was given in any other Italian state. To these advantages should be added the valuable relations possessed by Venice with the scholars of the Greek world, through its old-time connections with Constantinople and Asia Minor. It was through these connections that the printers of Venice secured what might be called the first pick of the manuscripts of a large number of the Greek texts that became known to Europe during the half-century succeeding 1490.

These texts were brought in part from the monasteries, which had been spared by the Turkish conquerors in the Byzantine territory and in Asia Minor, while in other cases, they came to light in various corners of Italy, where the scholars, flying from Constantinople after the great disaster of 1453, had found refuge. As it became known that in Venice there was demand for Greek manuscripts, and that Venetian printers were offering compensation to scholars for editing Greek texts for the press, scholars speedily found their way to the City of the Lagoons. To many of these scholars, who had been driven impoverished from their homes in the East, the opportunity of securing a livelihood through the sale and through the editing of their manuscripts must have opened up new and important possibilities.

In 1479, Jenson sold to Andrea Torresano of Asola, later the father-in-law of Aldus Manutius, a set of the matrices punched by his punches. These matrices were probably the beginning of the plant of the later business of Aldus. In 1479, Pope Sixtus IV. conferred upon Jenson the honourary title of Count Palatine. He was the first nobleman in the guild of publishers, and he has had but few successors. He died in 1480.

John of Windelin, John of Speyer, and Nicolas Jenson, the three earliest Venetian printers, employed three kinds of characters in their type--Roman, Gothic, and Greek. The Gothic character secured, as compared with the others, a considerable economy of space, and its use became, therefore, more general in connection with the increased demand from the reading public for less expensive editions. Before the Greek fonts had been made, it was customary to leave blanks in the text where the Greek passages occurred and to fill these in by hand.

It was the practice of the later printer-publishers to place in their books the date, place of publication, and their own names, and considering how much the editing, printing, and publication of a book involved, it was natural that those who were responsible for it should be interested in securing the full credit for its production. It is nevertheless the case that quite a number of books, of no little importance, were issued by the earlier printers without any imprint or mark of origin, an omission which, as Brown remarks, is certainly surprising in view of the high esteem in which printers were held and of the large claims made by them upon the gratitude of their own age and of future generations.

The larger proportion of the outlay required for these early books was not the expense of the manufacturing, heavy as this was, but the payments required for the purchase of manuscripts, and for their revision, collation, correction, and preparation for the type-setters.

The printer-publisher needed to possess a fair measure of scholarly knowledge in order to be able to judge rightly of the nature of the editorial work that was required before the work of the type-setters could begin. If, as in the case of Aldus, this scholarly knowledge was sufficient to enable the printer himself to act as editor, to revise the manuscripts for the press, and to write the introduction and the critical annotations, he had of course a very great advantage in the conduct of his business.

As an example of the cost of printing in Venice at this period, Brown cites an agreement entered into in 1478 between a certain Leonardus, printer, and Nicolaus, who took the risk of the undertaking, acting, therefore, as a publisher. An edition of 930 copies of the complete Bible was to be printed by Leonardus for the price of 430 ducats, the paper being furnished by Nicolaus. Twenty of the copies were to be retained by Leonardus, and the cost to Nicolaus of the 910 copies received by him would have been, exclusive of the paper, about $2150, or per copy about $2.50. The cost of the paper would have brought the amount up to about $3. The selling price of Bibles in 1492 appears to have varied from 6 ducats to 12 ducats, or from $30 to $60, but it is probable that these prices covered various styles of bindings.

The years between 1470 and 1515 witnessed a greater increase in the number of printers at work in Venice, a considerable proportion of the newcomers being Germans. With the rapid growth in the production of books, there came a material deterioration in the quality of the typography. The original models for the type-founders had been the letters of the manuscripts, and it was the boast of the earlier founders that their type was so perfect that it could not be distinguished from script. The copyists realised that their art was in danger, and, in 1474, they went so far in their opposition in Genoa as to petition the Senate for the expulsion of the printers. The application was, however, disregarded; the new art met at once with a cordial reception, and from the beginning secured the active support of the government.

The trade of the printers could, however, not rest upon a secure foundation until the taste for reading had become popularised. The wealthy classes were not sufficiently numerous to keep the printing-presses busy, while it was also the case that for a number of years after the invention of printing, a considerable proportion of the wealthier collectors of literature continued to give their preference to manuscripts as being more aristocratic and exclusive. The earlier books issued from the presses were planned to meet the requirements of these higher class collectors, whose taste had been formed from beautiful manuscripts. With the second generation of printers, however, a new market arose calling for a different class of supplies. The revival of learning brought into existence a reading public which was eager for knowledge and which was no longer fastidious as to the beauty of the form in which its literature was presented. By 1490, a demand had arisen for cheap books for popular reading, and in changing their methods to meet this demand, the printers permitted the standard of excellence of their work to suffer a material decline.

Brown gives an abstract from the day-book of a Venetian bookseller of 1484-1485, the original of which is contained in the Marcian Library. Even at that early date, we find represented in the stock of the bookseller, classics, Bibles, missals, breviaries, works on canon law, school-books, romances, and poetry.

The record shows that the purchases of the bookseller from the publisher were usually made for cash, and that for the most part he received cash from his customers. In some cases, however, these latter made their payment in kind. Thus a chronicle was exchanged for oil; Cicero’s _Orations_ for wine; and a general assortment of books for flour; while different binders’ bills were settled, the one with the _Life and Miracles of the Madonna_, and the other with the series of the _Hundred Novels_. The proof-reader was paid for certain services with copies of a Mamotrictus, a Legendary, and a Bible, and an account from an illuminator was adjusted with an Abacus, (a multiplication table, or a condensed arithmetic).

The prices of books ruled lower than might have been expected, the cheapest being volumes of poetry and romance. For instance, Poggio’s _Facetiæ_ sells for nine soldi, and the _Inamoramento d’Orlando_ for one lira, while Dante’s _Inferno_ with a commentary, brings one ducat, and Plutarch’s _Lives_, two ducats. A small volume of Martial brought fifteen soldi. The editions of certain printers realised higher prices than those of the same books by other printers whose imprint did not carry with it so much prestige.

It was during the last ten years of the fifteenth century that the business of printing and publishing in Venice reached its highest importance as compared with that done elsewhere. It was this decade that witnessed the founding of the Greek press by Aldus, Vlastos, and Caliergi, the first printing in Arabic and in the other Eastern languages, and the beginning of the publication of romances and _novelieri_.

The part taken in these new undertakings by Aldus Manutius was of distinctive importance, not only for Venice and Italy, but for the civilised world. He was a skilled printer, and an enterprising, public-spirited publisher, and he was, further, a judicious and painstaking critic and editor, and a scholar of exceptional attainments. To him more than to any other one man is due the introduction into Europe of the literature of Greece, which was in a measure rediscovered at the time, when, by the use of the printing-press, it could be placed within the reach of wide circles of impecunious students to whom the purchase of costly manuscripts would have been impossible.

In his interest in Greek literature, as well as in his scholarship and public-spirited liberality, Aldus was a worthy successor to the Roman publisher of the first century who had earned the appellation of Atticus on account of the attention given by him to the reproduction for the reading public of Italy of the great classics of Greece. Atticus was, however, a man of large means, gained chiefly through his business as a banker and a farmer of taxes, and it appears to have been to him a matter of indifference whether or not his publishing undertakings returned any profits on the moneys invested in them. Aldus began business without capital and died a poor man. Not many of his books secured for the publisher profits as well as prestige. He lived modestly and laboured continuously, but he expended in fresh scholarly publishing undertakings all the receipts that came to him from such of his ventures as proved remunerative.

As before pointed out, the payments made by Aldus for the work of editing his series of classical publications, payments which were probably the first ever made in Italy for literary work in connection with printing, were not only of material service to many of the impecunious Greek scholars, but must have served as precedents for fixing, for Italy at least, a market value for literary service. The payments to the Greek refugees included in a number of cases compensation for the use of the manuscripts they had brought with them, manuscripts which not infrequently constituted practically everything in the shape of property that they had been able to save from the grasp of the Turks. For a number of the more scholarly of these refugees, places were made in the universities, or as we should now say, Chairs were endowed, for instruction in the language and literature of Greece. Aldus himself took the initiative in inducing the Venetian Senate to institute such a professorship in Padua for his friend Musurus.

For a number of years, a larger proportion of the scholars and the manuscripts was absorbed by Venice than by any other of the Italian cities. The production of books progressed more rapidly in Venice than elsewhere, and the art of bookmaking reached a higher perfection there during the first decade of the sixteenth century than in any city in Europe. As before noted, however, Subiaco had preceded Venice in the printing of books, while the use of Greek type, in which Venice so rapidly attained pre-eminence, occurred first in Milan. The introduction of illustrations into book-printing probably originated in Rome.

=Aldus Manutius.=--It seems to me in order, for the purpose of my narrative, to present in some detail the record of the life and work of Aldus. The history of any representative printer-publisher whose career belonged to the earlier stages of the business of making and selling books, would have value in throwing light on the extent of the difficulties and obstacles to be overcome and on the nature of the methods adopted; the career of Aldus possesses, however, not merely such typical value but a distinctive and individual interest, as well because of the personality of the man as on the ground of the exceptional importance, for his own community and for future generations, of the service rendered by him.

Aldus Manutius was born at Bassiano in the Romagna, in 1450, the year in which Gutenberg completed his printing-press. He studied in Rome and in Ferrara, and after having mastered Latin, he devoted himself, under the tutorship of Guarini of Verona, to the study of Greek. Later, he delivered lectures on the Latin and Greek classics. One of his fellow students in Ferrara was the precocious young scholar Pico della Mirandola, whose friendship was afterwards of material service. In 1482, when Ferrara was being besieged by the Venetians and scholarly pursuits were interrupted, Aldus was the guest of Pico at Mirandola, where he met Emanuel Adramyttenos, one of the many Greek scholars who, when driven out of Constantinople, had found refuge in the Courts of Italian princes. Aldus spent two years at Mirandola, and under the influence and guidance of Adramyttenos, he largely increased his knowledge of the language and literature of Greece. His friend had brought from the East a number of manuscripts, many of which found their way into the library of Pico.

In 1482, Aldus took charge of the education of the sons of the Princess of Carpi, a sister of Pico, and the zeal and scholarly capacity which he devoted to his task won for him the life-long friendship of both mother and sons. It was in Carpi that Aldus developed the scheme of utilising his scholarly knowledge and connections for the printing of Latin and Greek classics. The plan was a bold one for a young scholar without capital. Printing and publishing constituted a practically untried field of business, not merely for Aldus but for Italy. Everything had to be created or developed; knowledge of the art of printing and of all the technicalities of book-manufacturing; fonts of type, Roman and Greek; a force of type-setters and pressmen and a staff of skilled revisers and proof-readers; a collection of trustworthy texts to serve as “copy” for the compositors; and last, but by no means least, a book-buying public and a book-selling machinery by which such public could be reached.

It was the aim of Aldus, as he himself expressed it, to rescue from oblivion the words of the classic writers, the monuments of human intellect. He writes in 1490: “I have resolved to devote my life to the cause of scholarship. I have chosen in place of a life of ease and freedom, an anxious and toilsome career. A man has higher responsibilities than the seeking of his own enjoyment; he should devote himself to honourable labour. Living that is a mere existence can be left to men who are content to be animals. Cato compared human existence to iron. When nothing is done with it, it rusts; it is only through constant activity that polish or brilliancy is secured.” The world has probably never produced a publisher who united with these high ideals and exceptional scholarly attainments, so much practical business ability and persistent pluck.

The funds required for the undertaking were furnished by the Princess of Carpi and her sons, probably with some co-operation from Pico, and in 1494, Aldus organised his printing-office in Venice. His first publication, issued in 1495, was the Greek and Latin Grammar of Laskaris, a suitable forerunner for his great classical series. The second issue from his Press was an edition of the Works of Aristotle, the first volume of which was also completed in 1495. This was followed in 1496 by the Greek Grammar of Gaza, and in 1497 by a Greek-Latin Dictionary compiled by Aldus himself.

The business cares of these first years of his printing business were not allowed to prevent him from going on with his personal studies. In 1502, he published, in a handsome quarto volume, a comprehensive grammar under the title of _Rudimenta Grammatices Linguæ Latinæ, etc. cum Introductione ad Hebraicam Linguam_, to the preparation of which he had devoted years of arduous labour. Piratical editions were promptly issued in Florence, Lyons, and Paris. He also wrote the _Grammaticæ Institutiones Græcæ_ (a labour of some years), which was not published until 1515, after the death of the author.

It will be noted that nearly all the undertakings to which he gave, both as editor and as publisher, his earliest attention, were the necessary first steps in the great scheme of the reproduction of the complete series of the Greek classics. Before editors or proof-readers could go on with the work of preparing the Greek texts for the press, dictionaries and grammars had to be created. Laskaris, whose Grammar initiated the series, was a refugee from the East, and at the time of the publication of his work, was an instructor in Messina. No record has been preserved of the arrangement made with him by his Venetian publisher, a deficiency that is the more to be regretted as his Grammar was probably the very first work by a living author, printed in Italy. Gaza was a native of Greece, and was for a time associated with the Aldine Press as a Greek editor.

In 1500, Aldus married the daughter of the printer Andrea Torresano of Asola, previously referred to as the successor of the Frenchman Jenson and the purchaser of Jenson’s matrices. In 1507, the two printing concerns were united, and the savings of Torresano were utilised to strengthen the resources of Aldus, which had become impaired, probably through his too great optimism and publishing enterprise.

During the disastrous years of 1509-1511, in which Venice was harassed by the wars resulting from the League of Cambray, the business came to a stand-still, partly because the channels of distribution for the books were practically blocked, but partly also on account of the exhaustion of the available funds. Friends again brought to the publisher the aid to which, on the ground of his public-spirited undertakings, he was so well entitled, and he was enabled, after the peace of 1511, to proceed with the completion of his Greek classics. Before his death in 1515, Aldus had issued in this series the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer, Pindar, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Lysias, Æschines, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, and others, in addition to a companion series of the works of the chief Latin writers. The list of publications included in all some 100 different works, comprised (in their several editions) in about 250 volumes. Considering the special difficulties of the times and the exceptional character of the original and creative labour that was required to secure the texts, to prepare them for the press, to print them correctly, and to bring them to the attention of possible buyers, this list of undertakings is, in my judgment, by far the greatest and the most honourable in the whole history of publishing.

It was a disadvantage for carrying on scholarly publishing undertakings in Venice, that the city possessed no university, a disadvantage that was only partly offset by the proximity of Padua, which early in the fifteenth century had come under Venetian rule. A university would of course have been of service to a publisher like Aldus, not only in supplying a home market for his books, but in placing at his disposal scholarly assistants whose services could be utilised in editing the texts and in supervising their type-setting. The correspondence of members of a university with the scholars of other centres of learning, could be made valuable also in securing information as to available manuscripts and concerning scholarly undertakings generally. In the absence of a university circle, Aldus was obliged to depend upon his personal efforts to bring him into relations, through correspondence, with men of learning throughout Europe, and to gather about the Aldine Press a group of scholarly associates and collaborators.

The chief corrector or proof-reader for Greek work of the Press was John Gregoropoulos, of Candia. Some editorial service was rendered by Theodore Gaza, of Athens, who took part, for instance, in the work on the set of _Aristotle_. The most important, however, of the Greek associates of Aldus was Marcus Musurus, of Crete, whose name appears as the editor of the _Aristophanes_, _Athenæus_, _Plato_, and a number of other of the Greek authors in the Aldine series, and also of the important collection of _Epistolæ Græcarum_.

Musurus was an early friend of Pico, and later of his nephew, Alberto Pio, and it was at Carpi that he had first met Aldus, with whom he ever afterwards maintained a close intimacy. In 1502, probably at the instance of Aldus, Musurus was called by the Venetian Senate to occupy the Chair of belles-lettres at Padua, and he appears to have given his lectures not only in the University, but also in Venice. Aldus writes: “Scholars hasten to Venice, the Athens of our day, to listen to the teachings of Musurus, the greatest scholar of the age.”

In 1503, the Senate charged Musurus with the task of exercising a censorship over all Greek books printed in Venice, with reference particularly to the suppression of anything inimical to the Roman Church. This seems to have been the earliest attempt in Italy to supervise the work of the printing-press. It is natural enough that the ecclesiastics should have dreaded the influence of the introduction of the doctrines of the Greek Church, while it is certainly probable that many of the refugees from Constantinople brought with them no very cordial feeling towards Rome. The belief was very general that if the Papacy had not felt a greater enmity against the Greek Church than against the Turk, the Catholic states of Europe would have saved Constantinople. The sacking of Constantinople by the Christian armies of the Fourth Crusade was still remembered by the Christians of the East as a crime of the Western Church. There were, therefore, reasons enough why the authorities of Rome should think it necessary to keep a close watch over the new literature coming in from the East, and should do what was practicable to exclude all doctrinal writings, and the censorship instituted in 1502 was the beginning of a long series of rigorous enactments which proved, however, much less practicable to carry out in Venice than elsewhere in Italy.

Other literary advisers and associates of Aldus were Hieronymus Alexander (later Cardinal), Pietro Bembo, Scipio Carteromachus, Demetrius Doucas, Johann Reuchlin, and, above all, Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose learning rivalled that of Musurus, and who, outside of Italy, was far more widely known than the Greek scholar.

It was in the year 1500 that the scheme took shape in the mind of Aldus of an academy which should take the place in Venice that in Florence was occupied by the academy instituted by the Medici. The special aim of the Aldine Academy, to which Aldus gave the name _Ne-accademia Nostra_, was the furthering of the interest in, and knowledge of, the literature of classic Greece. Aldus himself was the first president of the Academy, and while the majority of the members were residents either of Venice or of Padua, the original list included scholars of Rome, of Bologna, and of Lucca, Greeks of Candia, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and others from distant places.

Aldus applied to the Emperor Maximilian for a diploma giving imperial sanction to the organisation of his Academy, but the Emperor, although, as is shown in other correspondence, friendly in his disposition to the printer, was from some cause unwilling to give an official recognition to the Academy. The constitution of the Academy was printed in Greek, and certain days were fixed on which the members gave their personal consideration to the examination of Greek texts, the publication of which was judged likely to be of service to scholarship.

With the editorial aid of certain members of the Academy, Aldus arranged to print each month, in an edition of one thousand copies, some work selected by the Council. This Council, therefore, took upon itself in the matter of the selection of Greek classics for presentation, a function similar to that exercised 300 B.C. by the scholars appointed for the purpose in the Academy of Ptolemy Philadelphus, while some of its functions might be paralleled by those exercised to-day by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press of Oxford. It was the hope of Aldus that this Venetian Academy would take upon itself larger responsibilities in connection not only with Greek literature but with arts and sciences generally. When, however, with the death of its president, the Academy lost the service of his energetic initiative, its work soon came to a close.

For the sale of his publications, Aldus was in the main dependent upon direct correspondence with scholars. In Italy prior to 1550, bookselling hardly existed as an organised trade, and while in Germany there was a larger number of dealers in books, and the book-trade had by 1510 already organised its Fair at Frankfort, the communications between Italy and Germany were still too difficult to enable a publisher in Venice to keep in regular relations with the dealers north of the Alps. Paris was probably easier to reach than Frankfort, but the sales in Paris were not a little interfered with by the Lyons piracy editions before referred to, and even by piracies of the Paris publishers themselves. Aldus succeeded, however, before his death in securing agents who were prepared to take orders for the Aldine classics, not only in Paris, but in Vienna, Basel, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. With Frankfort he appears to have had no direct dealings, as his name does not appear in the list of contributors to the recently instituted Book-Fair.

As an example of a business letter of the time, the following lines from a bookseller in Treviso, who wanted to buy books on credit, are worth quoting:

_Alde, libros quos venales bene credere possis Hic pollet multa bibliopola fide. Fortunis pollet quantum illa negotia possunt; Hoc me, Manuti, credere teste potes! Ignoras qui sim, nec adhuc sine pignore credis; Te meus erga ingens sit tibi pignus amor._

(You have books for sale, Aldus, which you are able to entrust to me, if as a dealer, you have sufficient faith. This confidence would secure for you as much business advantage as is possible in such transactions. You can accept in this matter my personal word. You do not know who I am, and do not make a practice of giving credit. My great regard for you should, however, serve as a sufficient pledge.)[448]

The business of the time was done very largely by personal correspondence, and as the knowledge of his editions of the Greek classics came to be spread abroad, Aldus found himself overburdened with enquiries calling for personal replies. In order to save time in replying to such enquiries, Aldus printed on a folio sheet the descriptive titles of his publications with the prices at which they were offered. This sheet, printed in 1498, was the first priced catalogue ever issued by a publisher.

The orders that came to Aldus for his books differed in one important respect from those received by a publisher or bookseller to-day. The buyers did not write as a matter of ordinary business routine, or as if they were conferring any favour upon the publisher in taking his goods, but with a very cordial sense of the personal obligation that the publisher was, through his undertakings, conferring upon them and upon all scholarly persons. As an example of many such letters, I will quote from one written in 1505, from a Cistercian monastery in the Thuringian Forest, by a scholarly monk named Urbanus:

“May the blessing of the Lord rest upon thee, thou illustrious man. The high reward in which you are held by our Brotherhood will be realised by you when you learn that we have ordered (through the house of Függer in Augsburg) a group of your valuable publications, and that it is our chief desire to be able to purchase all the others. We pray to God each day that He will in His mercy, long preserve you for the cause of good learning. Our neighbour, Mutianus Rufus, the learned Canonicus of Gotha, calls you ‘the light of our age,’ and is never weary of relating your great services to scholarship. He sends you a cordial greeting, as does also Magister Spalatinus, a man of great learning. We are sending you with this four gold ducats, and will ask you to send us (through Függer) an _Etymologicum Magnum_ and a _Julius Pollux_, and also (if there be money sufficient) the writings of Bessarion, of Xenophon, and of Hierocles, and the Letters of Merula.”[449]

Troublesome as Aldus found his correspondence, letters of this kind must have been peculiarly gratifying as evidence that his labours were not in vain.

He had similar correspondence with the well-known scholar, Reuchlin, an appreciative friend and a grateful customer, who in 1501, at the time of the first letters, was resident in Heidelberg, and also with Longinus and the poet Conrad Celtes in Vienna. The latter was later of service to Aldus in securing for his Press valuable manuscripts from Bohemia, and from certain monasteries in Transylvania. The name of Celtes is further of note in the literary history of Germany because to him was issued the earliest German privilege of which there is record. It bears date 1501, and protected the publication of an edition by Celtes of the writings of the Benedictine nun Hroswitha (Helena von Rossow), who had been dead for 600 years.

The most famous of the transalpine scholars with whom Aldus came into relations was, however, Desiderius Erasmus, of Rotterdam, or to speak with more precision, of Europe. Erasmus has many titles to fame, but for the purposes of this treatise his career is noteworthy more particularly because he was one of the first authors who was able to secure his living, or the more important portion of this, from the proceeds of his writings. The career of Erasmus belongs properly to the chapter on Germany, as it was in Basel, at that time a city of the Empire, that he made his longest sojourn, in close association with his life-long friend Froben, the scholarly publisher whom Erasmus called the “Aldus of Germany.”

In 1506, Erasmus, who had been in England for a second visit, came to Italy, where he lectured in the Universities of Bologna and Padua, and from Padua he was induced by Aldus to transfer himself to Venice. There he remained during the year 1508, making his home with the publisher, and rendering important service as a literary adviser and in editorial work. There is no record of any formal or continued business arrangement between the scholar and the publisher, and it is very possible that no such arrangement took shape.

Erasmus took charge of the preparation for the press, among other works, of the Aldine editions of _Terence_, _Seneca_, Plutarch’s _Morals_, and _Plautus_. For his work on the _Plautus_ he tells us that he received twenty pieces of gold (_i. e._, ducats). Later, however, he denied with some indignation, in writing to Scaliger, that he had worked as a “corrector” or proof-reader for Aldus. It should be borne in mind that in connection with the many difficulties in securing from more or less doubtful manuscripts trustworthy texts, and in educating compositors to put such texts correctly into type, the work of reviser, press-corrector, or proof-reader, in the earlier days of printing, demanded a very high standard of scholarship and a wide range of knowledge. There was, therefore, no reason why Erasmus should have been ashamed to admit that he had done work of this kind. Some years later he gave to his friend Froben, the great publisher of Basel, similar service and co-operation. The intimate relations of Erasmus with Aldus and Froben, by far the greatest publishers of the time, had no little influence in furthering the world-wide circulation secured for his works.

While in Venice, Erasmus also supervised the printing of a revised edition of his _Adagia_ (Proverbs) which appeared in 1508. For this work, Aldus obtained a privilege both in Venice and in Rome, and there were printed in Venice alone eight editions. When, however, in 1520, Paul Manutius undertook again to reprint the _Adagia_, he found that he had to contend with an increasing hostility on the part of the Church against anything bearing the name of Erasmus. The book was finally issued anonymously, and it was described in the catalogue as the work of “_Batavus quidam homo_” (a certain Hollander).

In 1512, Aldus printed, under the instructions of Erasmus, (who was, however, at that time no longer in Italy) the _Colloquies_ and the _Praise of Folly_. There is unfortunately no record of the publishing arrangement arrived at for these, but as Erasmus complained bitterly of the loss and injury caused to the author through the wide sale of the piracy issues, it is fair to assume that he had reserved an interest in the authorised editions. In the introduction to his _Adagia_, Erasmus writes as follows: “Formerly there was devoted to the correctness of a literary manuscript as much care and attention as to the writing of a notarial instrument. Such care and precision were held to be a sacred duty. Later, the copying of manuscripts was entrusted to ignorant monks and even to women. But how much more serious is the evil that can be brought about by a careless printer, and yet to this matter the law gives no heed. A dealer who sells English stuffs under the guise of Venetian is punished, but the printer who in place of correct texts, misleads and abuses the reader with pages the contents of which are an actual trial and torment, escapes unharmed. It is for this reason that Germany is plagued with so many books that are deformed (_i. e._, untrustworthy). The authorities will supervise with arbitrary regulations the proper methods for the baking of bread, but concern themselves not at all as to the correctness of the work of the printers, although the influence of bad typography is far more injurious than that of bad bread.”

The relations of Aldus with Johann Reuchlin were longer and more intimate than with Erasmus. It was natural enough that the scholar who may properly be called the founder of Greek studies in Germany, should have come into close relations with the publisher who had undertaken to produce Greek texts for Europe and who had founded a Greek academy in Venice. In 1498, Aldus printed the Latin oration which Reuchlin had addressed to Pope Alexander VI., in behalf of the Prince Palatine Philip, and from that date the two men remained in regular correspondence with each other. In 1502, Aldus, writing to Reuchlin (who was at that time in Pforzheim), gives, as to a trusted friend upon whose sympathy and intelligent interest he could depend, the details of his publishing undertakings and of his plans and hopes for the future, and asks for counsel on various points. A few months later, in another letter, Aldus writes:

“I am hardly able to express my gratification at your friendly words concerning the importance and the value of my publishing undertakings. It is no light thing to secure the commendation of one of the greatest scholars of his time. If my life is spared to me, I hope more fully to deserve the praise that you give to me for service rendered to the scholarship and enlightenment of the age.”

Reuchlin was not only a friendly counsellor of the Venetian publisher, but a valuable customer also for his books. In addition to purchasing for his own library a full series of the Aldine editions, Reuchlin appears to have interested himself keenly in commending these to his scholarly acquaintances, not only, as he states, in order to encourage a great undertaking, but for the purpose of doing service to German students. In 1509, Reuchlin was appointed by the Duke of Bavaria, Professor of Greek and Hebrew in the University of Ingolstadt, the first professorship of Greek instituted in Germany. Reuchlin said more than once that the work of his Chair had been made possible only through the service rendered by Aldus in providing the Greek texts.

The influence of Aldus not only on the publishing standards but on the scholarly and literary conditions of Germany, was in fact widespread and important. Kapp, the historian of the German book-trade, speaks of it as more important than that of all the German publishers of his generation. This influence was due not only to the publishing undertakings of the Aldine Press, but to the intimate relations maintained by its founder with many of the German scholars, relations which helped to establish a community of interests between the literary centres of Italy and Germany and to direct German scholarship into new paths. The separation of political boundaries had no significance for a man with the humanitarian ideals of Aldus, while the fact that Latin was the universal language of scholarship and of literature, helped not a little to bring about that community of feeling among scholars which was the special aim of the Venetian publisher. In 1502, Aldus writes to John Taberio, in Brescia:

“I am delighted to learn that so many men of distinction in the great city of Brescia are, under your guidance, devoting themselves with ardour to Greek studies. The expectations with which I undertook the publication of Greek texts are being more than realised. I am, in fact, not a little astonished to find that even in these sad times of war in which my undertakings have been begun, so many are found ready to give the same ardour to scholarly pursuits that they are giving to fighting against the infidel and to civil strife. Thus it happens that even from the midst of war arises literature, which has for so many years lain buried. And it is not only in Italy, but also in Germany, in France, in Pannonia, in Spain, and in England, and wherever the Latin language is known, that young and old are devoting themselves to the study of Greek. The joy that this brings to me causes me to forget my fatigues, and redoubles my zeal to do what is in my power for the service of scholarship, and particularly for the students who are growing up in this time of the renaissance of letters.”

During the first years of the sixteenth century, the difficulties in the transmission either of merchandise or of money were many. The packages of books which Aldus had occasion to send to Reuchlin in Stuttgart, for instance, came forward sometimes by way of Milan, Vienna, or Basel, and later through Augsburg. The Augsburg banking-house of Függer, founded about 1450, possessed in 1500 (and for half a century thereafter) connections which enabled them to take charge not only of what we should call mercantile bills and banking credits, but also of the forwarding and delivery of the goods against which the bills were drawn. They carried on what to-day would be called an express business, and in a majority of instances the instructions were evidently to make collections on delivery. During the first half of the sixteenth century, the Függers, with their branch houses in Florence, Venice, and Genoa, supplied the most valuable machinery for the transaction of business between Italy and Germany. These communications, however, were of necessity very frequently interrupted by the troubles of the times.

In 1510, Mutianus Rufus writes to Urban that “in connection with the conflicts between the French and the Venetian soldiers, the passes of the Alps have been blocked, so that literature from Venice can no longer find its way into Germany. I had hoped with the next Frankfort Fair, to be able to place in the hands of my students the beautiful Aldine editions. But my hopes were in vain. When the Fair was opened, there was not a single volume from Italy. We shall be able this spring to do nothing in our classical schools. Oh, the stupidities of war!”

In 1514, the Elector Frederic the Wise of Saxony applied to the several powers interested for a safe conduct for his librarian, Spalatin, whom he desired to send to Venice to purchase directly from Aldus the Aldine classics for the library of Wittenberg. Some difficulties intervened, however, as Spalatin appears never to have reached Venice. It was doubtless due to the long-continued wars between the Emperor and the States of Italy, that Aldus was unable, during his own lifetime, to establish direct agencies in Germany for his publications. We find record of such agencies in Frankfort, Basel, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, first in the time of his son, agencies which were extended by the grandson.

The active work of Aldus extended over a period of twenty years, from 1495 to 1515. This time included the wars of 1500, 1506, 1510, and 1511, in which Venice was directly engaged, wars which had of necessity much to do with the interference with his business, and with the difficulties, of which he makes continual complaint, in securing returns for his sales. “For seven years,” writes Aldus in 1510, “books have had to contend against arms.” There appears to have been no single year of the twenty in which he was free from pressing financial cares, while from time to time the work of the presses and in the composing room came to an actual standstill for want of funds. During these twenty years he printed not less than 126 works which previously existed only in manuscript form, and the manuscript copies of which had to be secured and carefully edited.

It is probable that Aldus, in his own enthusiasm concerning the value and importance of the re-discovered classics, had overestimated the extent of the interest that could be depended upon for these classics throughout the world. It is evident, however, that there were enough scholars in Italy, Germany, France, and the Low Countries, to assure a widespread demand for the Aldine editions, and that the larger part of the publisher’s difficulties consisted in the lack of convenient machinery for making known to these scholars the fact that such books had been prepared, for the delivery of such copies as might be ordered, and for the collection of the payments due.

Another serious difficulty with which Aldus had to contend was the competition of the piratical copies of his editions which promptly appeared in Cologne, Tübingen, Lyons, and even so close at home as Florence. The most serious interference with his undertakings appears to have come from the printers of Lyons, who in their enterprising appropriations from Paris on the one hand and from Nuremberg, Basel, and Venice on the other, speedily won for their city notoriety as the centre of piratical publishing. The Lyons printers printed editions of the Aldine Latin classics, making a very close imitation of the cursive or italic type, and issued the volumes without imprint, date, or place of publication.

The privileges secured from the government of Venice had effect, of course, only in Venetian territory. Privileges were given by the Pope for a number of the Aldine publications, and these covered, in form, at least, not only the States of the Church but the territory of all States recognising the papal authority, while the penalties for infringing such papal privileges were not infrequently made to include excommunication. There was, however, no machinery by means of which the papal authority could be brought to bear upon Catholics infringing or disregarding the privileges, and as a fact the papal privileges proved of very little service in protecting the literary property either of Aldus or of later literary workers. A further word concerning the privileges issued in Venice and in the other States of Italy will be given in a later division of this narrative.

Apart from this important work in the scholarly and editorial divisions of publishing, Aldus made several distinctive contributions to the art of book-making. He was, as before stated, the first printer who founded complete and perfect fonts of Greek type, fonts which for many years served as models for the printers of Europe. He invented the type which was first called cursive, and which is known to-day as italic, a type having the advantage of presenting the text in a very compact form. (The cursive font was said to have been modelled on the script of Petrarch.) And finally, he was the first publisher who ventured upon the experiment of replacing the costly and cumbersome folios and quartos, in which form alone all important works had heretofore been issued, with convenient crown octavo volumes, the moderate price of which brought them within the reach of scholars of all classes and helped to popularise the knowledge and the influence of classic literature. This constituted a practical revolution in publishing methods.

Aldus had possibly read the remark of Callimachus, the librarian of the Alexandrian library in 290 B.C., that “A big book is a big nuisance.” These Aldine classics, while printed in octavo (_i. e._, upon a sheet folded in eights), were of a size corresponding more nearly to what would to-day be known as a sixteenmo, the size of the sheet of paper being smaller than that used to-day. Aldus had no presses which would print sheets large enough to fold in sixteen or even in twelve. The price of these small octavos averaged three _marcelli_ or two francs, say forty cents. Making allowance for the difference in the purchasing power of money between the year 1500 and the year 1895, I judge that this may represent about $2.00 of our currency.

For centuries the Aldine editions served as the authoritative texts for the authors presented, and even to-day they stand as a wonderful monument of the imagination, the learning, the courage, and the persistency of their publisher. Good Italian though he were, Aldus was by some of his countrymen charged with want of patriotism on the ground that if he helped to make the study of the classics easy for the Barbarians of the outer world, they would no longer need to come for their learning to Italy, heretofore the centre and source of all scholarly enlightenment. To this effect writes Beatus Rhenanus in his introduction to the Works of Erasmus:

_Quidam Venetiis olim Aldo Manutio commentarios Græcos in Euripidem et Sophoclem edere paranti dixit: Cave, cave hoc facias, ne barbari istis adjuti domi maneant et pauciores in Italiam ventilent._

Kapp is of opinion that the dread was well founded and that the distribution throughout Germany and France of popular editions of the classics, did have the result of keeping at home many students who would otherwise have crossed the Alps. That they were now able to secure, at moderate cost and in their own homes, learning for which heretofore they had been obliged to make long and costly journeys, was due to the unselfish and public-spirited labours of Aldus. It was, therefore, with good reason that he was held in high regard by the Humanists of Germany. They sought his friendship and nearly overwhelmed him with correspondence. In 1498, Conrad Celtes and Vincenzo Longinus commemorated his service in verse. Aldus thanked them for their courtesy, and in sending them as an acknowledgment copies of his _Horace_ and _Virgil_, he asked them to bring him into communication with any scholarly Germans who were interested in the classics. Aldus did not, however, consider it wise to print the ode of eulogy that Celtes had written upon the Emperor Maximilian, because he was afraid of causing offence to the Bohemians and Hungarians through whose scholars he had secured not a few rare manuscripts.

Throughout Germany the productions of the Aldine presses were received with enthusiasm. Mutianus Rufus speaks of himself as weeping with joy when there came to him from a friend the precious gift of the editions of _Cicero_, _Lucretius_, and other classics. He and his friends Urban and Spalatin deprived themselves almost of the necessaries of life, in order to save moneys with which to bring across the Alps the other volumes of the series. Pirckheimer and Reuchlin were among the first of the German buyers of the Aldine classics. Hummelsburger writes in 1512 to Anselm in Tübingen, “I shall buy my Hebrew books in Italy, where Aldus has printed them in beautiful texts.... Germany no less than Latium owes a great debt to Aldus.”

The political status of Italy and its division into a number of states or principalities which carried on independent policies and which were frequently in active warfare with each other, entailed serious difficulties upon the new business of publishing, difficulties which, while troublesome enough for Aldus in Venice, were still more serious for his competitors in Florence and Milan. A privilege secured for Venice was not binding even in times of peace outside of Venetian territory, while in the frequently recurring times of war, any privileges which a Venetian or a Milanese publisher had been fortunate enough to secure in the Italian States were abrogated in fact if not in form. In this respect, the early publishers of Paris, whose privileges covered (nominally at least) the territory of the kingdom, had a decided advantage over their rivals in the much divided territory of Italy or of Germany.

Aldus had the feeling, for which in his case there appears to have been sufficient ground, that his business undertakings, with which were connected far-reaching plans for furthering scholarly knowledge, were absolutely dependent upon his own continued and persistent personal attention. While he had succeeded in securing the services of scholarly associates to share with himself the editorial responsibilities of his work, he does not appear to have been able, with the material at his command, to train up any assistants competent to take any important share in the business management. One of his many complaints concerning the repeated interruptions which interfere with his important daily labours, might have been uttered by many a publisher of later times. He writes in 1514 (the year before his death) to his friend Navagerus:

“I am hampered in my work by a thousand interruptions.... Nearly every hour comes a letter from some scholar, and if I undertook to reply to them all, I should be obliged to devote day and night to scribbling. Then, through the day come calls from all kinds of visitors. Some desire merely to give a word of greeting, others want to know what there is new, while the greater number come to my office because they happen to have nothing else to do. ‘Let us look in upon Aldus,’ they say to each other. Then they loaf in and sit and chatter to no purpose. Even these people with no business are not so bad as those who have a poem to offer or something in prose (usually very prosy indeed) which they wish to see printed with the name of Aldus. These interruptions are now becoming too serious for me, and I must take steps to lessen them. Many letters I simply leave unanswered, while to others I send very brief replies; and as I do this not from pride or from discourtesy, but simply in order to be able to go on with my task of printing good books, it must not be taken hardly.... As a warning to the heedless visitors who use up my office hours to no purpose, I have now put up a big notice on the door of my office to the following effect: ‘Whoever thou art, thou art earnestly requested by Aldus, to state thy business briefly and to take thy departure promptly. In this way thou mayst be of service even as was Hercules to the weary Atlas. For this is a place of work for all who may enter.’”

Aldus Manutius died January 25, 1515, (Venetian style, corresponding to February 6, 1515, modern style) aged sixty-five years. Until 1529, the business was carried on for the heirs by his father-in-law, Torresano, and in that year was taken over by Paul Manutius, the son of Aldus. In 1540, Paul took into partnership his son, Aldus the younger, and the firm took the title of _Aldi Filii_. With the death of Aldus the grandson, in 1597, the family, in its main line, became extinct, and the work of the Aldine Press, which had continued for a little more than a century, came to a close. To his children, Aldus was able to bequeath little besides his fame and the value of his name. The moneys that had been earned during his work of twenty-five years from the successful undertakings had been for the most part absorbed in other ventures which were either unremunerative, or from which the returns came but slowly. The carrying out of such great publishing plans required, in fact, business connections and methods which did not yet exist, and was dependent also upon the continuance of peace in Europe for a quarter of a century, an impossible condition for the beginning of the sixteenth century.

In entering upon business ventures under such difficult circumstances, Aldus was doubtless, from a business point of view, unwisely optimistic; but it is difficult not to admire the public spirit and the pluck with which, in the face of all difficulties, he persisted till the day of his death in the great schemes he had marked out for himself.

While his work had brought no wealth, his life had been rich in the accomplishment of great things and in the appreciation given to his labours. It was also his fortune to gather about him and to come into relations with many noteworthy men, who as friends and co-workers shared his enthusiasm, and who gave with him unselfish labour for a scholarly ideal. Partly because the editors and the publishers were working for results other than profits, partly because the books published were (with a few noteworthy exceptions, like the writings of Erasmus) not original works, but editions of old classics, and partly because the whole business of publishing was still in its infancy, the history of the Aldine Press does not present any important precedents as to the compensation earned by authors for their productions, or as to the protection of the author’s property rights in these productions. The relations of Aldus with all the authors, editors, and scholars with whom he had to do were however more than satisfactory; they were cordial, resting in a number of cases on a close personal friendship. The scholars regarded the publisher as one of themselves, and, in fact, accepted him as a leader.

It is evident that Erasmus, whose writings formed an important property, was satisfied with the returns secured for him by Aldus. He speaks with cordial appreciation of the services rendered by his “authorised publishers,” Aldus of Venice, and Froben of Basel, and speaks further of the losses caused to himself by the competition of the piracy reprints of Lyons and Paris. It appears, therefore, that he retained a continued interest in the sale of his authorised editions, but unfortunately no details of his publishing arrangements have been preserved.

The history of the publishing work of Aldus, while not presenting precedents for royalty or copyright arrangements, constitutes nevertheless a very important chapter in the history of property in literature. Aldus was able, by combining skilled editorial labour with selected classics, to create a great literary property, which needed only distributing machinery and a peaceable Europe to become commercially valuable. He set the example also, for Italy at least, of securing privileges in each of the Italian States possessing any literary centres, and although he was not always able to prevent piratical reprinting on the part of his competitors in Florence, or even always to keep out of other cities in Italy the piracy editions from Lyons, he accomplished something towards the ideal of a copyright that should hold good for Italian territory. He even had hopes of securing, through the authority of the Pope, a system of copyright that should prove effective in all Catholic States, and it was not until long after Aldus’s death that the attempts to establish a Catholic copyright system were given up by publishers as practically futile.

His latest biographer, Didot, himself both a fine scholar and a great publisher, contends that Aldus accomplished more than the greatest scholars of his time for the spread of learning and the development of literature; and the testimony of the three great scholars who were contemporaries and near personal friends of the Venetian publisher, Musurus, Reuchlin, and Erasmus, fully bears out M. Didot’s opinion. It was the exceptional combination of a creative imagination and scholarly knowledge with practical business ability and unfailing pluck and persistency, that enabled the young tutor to create the Aldine Press, the work of which will cause to be held in continued honour, in the history alike of scholarship and of publishing, the memory of Aldus Manutius.

=The Successors of Aldus.=--Paul Manutius, the son of Aldus, continued for some years the business of the Aldine Press, giving special attention to editions of the writings of Cicero. In 1561, he accepted an invitation from Pope Pius IV. to come to Rome and to take charge there of the publication of the writings of the Fathers of the Church, and of such other works as might be selected. The amount required for the organisation of an adequate printing-office was to be supplied from the papal treasury. Paul was to receive an annual stipend of 500 ducats, together with one half of the net profits realised from the sales of the works published, and the contract was to continue for twelve years.

An interesting series of letters has been preserved, written by Paul to his brother Manutius in Asola, and to his son, Aldus the younger, in Venice. These letters, which are quoted by Renouard, Frommann, and Didot, contain a number of details and references which throw light not only upon the personal relations of the writers, but upon the business conditions of the time. We learn that Paul was a good deal of an invalid throughout his working years, and we gather the impression that his feeble health was an important ground for the apparent lack of ambition which made him willing to give up his work as an independent publisher in Venice and to accept the position of Pope’s printer in Rome.

We also learn that his son Aldus, while bright-witted, was lacking in persistency and in industry. The youngster never, in fact, accomplished anything of importance. Paul had himself inherited the scholarly tastes of his father, and had received a good classical education, but he does not appear to have possessed very good business faculty, and he made no distinctive mark as a publisher. The Pope had, however, asked for his aid rather as a scholarly editor than as an experienced man of business.

Pius appears to have been impressed with the belief that the printing-press, under scholarly management, could be made of service to the cause of the Church in withstanding the pernicious influence of the increasing mass of the publications of the German heretics. These Protestant pamphlets and books were not merely undermining the authority of the Church in Germany, Switzerland, and France, but were even making their way into Italy itself. The first issues of the Aldine Press in Rome were the _Decrees_ of the Council of Trent, in a variety of editions, the writings of Cyprian, and the letters of S. Jerome.

Pius V., who in 1565 succeeded Pius IV., was equally favourable to the undertakings of the printing-office, and gave to Paul the necessary support. The work was carried on in a building which was the property of the municipality, and some issues arose with the magistrates concerning its continued use as a printing-office. From a letter dated September 27, 1567, it appears that the magistrates had required that Paul should pay taxes or license-fees on his printing business, which they classed as a trade. He took the ground that printing was not a trade but an art, and that it was so defined in the invitation given to him to come to Rome, and in the agreement executed with him by the Pope. He contended, further, that, as the Pope’s printer, whose work was devoted to the Church, he was in any case entitled to exemption from the municipal taxes imposed on traders. The Pope does not appear to have fully backed up his printer in this contention, and a compromise was finally arrived at under which a portion of the proceeds of the business was paid to the magistracy. The precise terms of the arrangement are not clearly stated, but it seems probable that the half share of the profits previously payable to the papal treasury was divided into two portions, one of which went to the municipality.

The profitable part of the business was in the printing of the official editions of the Catechisms and Breviaries. Paul complains, in fact, that the presses are so occupied with the work of the Breviaries, that he is not able to make progress with the printing of his own _Commentaries on the Letters of Cicero_. In June, 1568, Paul writes to his son Aldus, who was now of age, expressing his regret that the young man was not interested in devoting himself to carrying on the printing-office in Venice. Aldus had, it seems, expressed a preference for the study of law. The business in Venice was finally turned over to Basa, who paid, for a term of five years, twenty _scudi_ gold a month for the use of the existing material and for the good-will.

In July, 1569, difficulties began to accumulate about the printing-office in Rome. The Pope was less interested and the magistrates were troubling the office with what Paul calls unintelligent interference. There were, in fact, too many parties interested in the management of the business to enable its control to be easily or consistently exercised. Paul’s health was also failing seriously and he was longing for rest and for leisure to carry on his scholarly undertakings. In 1570, the ownership of the receipts of the printing-office was somewhat simplified, the change being probably due, in part at least, to the representations of Paul that the many-headed control was unworkable.

In May, 1570, Paul writes rather pathetically to Aldus: “In my case, scholarship and industry have never brought rest or fortune.... I pray God that you may be better favoured.... I must beseech you, however, to put away childish things. It is full time that you recalled to yourself the honourable traditions of our family.... My own active work must be nearly over.”

In June, of the same year, he again counsels Aldus, who had for some time been betrothed, to make a speedy marriage, and then to concentrate himself upon the work of the printing-office in Venice. He advises against a a plan that the young man had in view, of opening a retail book-shop. He emphasises, however, that there is no chance of success for a printer-publisher without the most persistent and arduous labour.

In 1571, Paul’s failing strength compelled him to leave Rome, resigning (as he hoped, for a time only) the income of the papal printing-office. He devoted the winter months to the completion of his _Commentaries on the Orations of Cicero_. The work was published in 1578-9 (after the author’s death) by his son Aldus in Venice, and, under arrangement, by Plantin in Antwerp. The negotiations with Plantin had been completed by Paul. He had specified the form and style of the Antwerp edition, and had arranged to take his share of the profits in the shape of a royalty on the sales.

In 1572, Paul being yet in Milan, one of his hopes was fulfilled in the marriage of his son Aldus. “Now,” he wrote, “I can pass my days in peace. I feel hopeful for your future and rejoice that our line is to be continued.” Later in the year, with no little difficulty (partly on the ground of his feeble health, and partly because of the floods and wretched roads) he made his way to Venice for a brief visit. He wanted to see his son’s wife, and he desired also to give personal instructions for the printing of his _Commentaries_. “I feel very hopeful,” he writes, “concerning the sale of my _Cicero_, and hopeful also that it will not be reprinted (in piracy editions) during my lifetime.”

Paul was obliged to leave Venice before the printing of his work was begun, and the letter written after the receipt of the first sheets expresses his bitter disappointment at the manner in which this all-important commission had been attended to. “If you had had in your hands some utterly contemptible scribble,” he writes, “you could hardly have printed it in a more tasteless and slovenly style ... and you knew I had this undertaking so much at heart!... I have instructed Basa to burn all the sheets that have been printed, and to print these signatures again, with a proper selection of type and on decent paper.”

Aldus the younger seems never to have had his heart fairly in his business, and under his management (or lack of management), the prestige of the Aldine Press in Venice fell off sadly. He appears to have been extravagant, or at least uncalculating, in his expenditures, and was also spending moneys which he could ill afford, not like his grandfather for manuscripts and type, but for clothes and artistic curiosities.

Paul had accepted the pressing invitation of the new Pope, Gregory XII.; to resume his place as manager of the printing-office in Rome, but with less exacting duties, and with a fixed salary. A plan was even talked over between the Pope and Paul for the establishment of another printing-office, which should be devoted entirely to the publication of classical works and of “expurgated” editions of works, portions of which had been condemned in the Index. Paul was to act as editor and supervisor of the series, because his name was already recognised as that of a scholarly authority. The scheme never, however, took shape. Paul’s strength failed rapidly, and he died in the spring of 1574.

While he had devoted many years to his business as a printer-publisher, and had maintained the reputation of his name for a high standard as well of typography as of scholarly writing, his own preference had been for a scholarly rather than a business career. He went on with the work of his Press very largely because he felt that it was a duty he owed to his father’s name and memory. His own memory is, however, chiefly to be honoured for his scholarly edition of _Cicero_, with its comprehensive and analytical commentaries, an edition which long remained the accepted authority for Europe.

A few years after the death of Paul, his son Aldus gave up the attempt to carry on the Press in Venice, a work for which he had never been really fitted, and accepted a position in the University of Bologna, as professor of archæology. The printing business was sold, and the Aldine Press, after a century of work, came to an end.

=Milan.=--During the fifteenth century, Italy presents a curiously complex and varied series of pictures and conditions. We find, together with constantly recurring civil strife, successive wars of invasion from the North and from the East, and in the train of the frequent armies, those inevitable camp followers, pestilence, famine, and misery. To the contests against the French and German invaders and the strifes between states and cities, were added schism and discord in the Church itself, and there were long periods during which pope was contending against anti-pope for the right to rule the world as the infallible head of an infallible church. Yet these years, when the land was troubled by schism and devastated by strife and pestilence, were years during which the cities of Italy were becoming rich with an active and prosperous trade; while it was also at this time that the art of Italy brought forth its greatest production and that the development of its literature made most important advances. The vitality of the people was so exuberant, its productive force so enormous, that notwithstanding the frightful waste caused by war and pestilence, its energies were still sufficient for some of the greatest of artistic creations, for active and scholarly work in the new learning and literature, and for a sharp competition for the leadership of the world’s commerce and industries. A typical example of the life and strife of the time is afforded by Milan, the capital of Lombardy. Its position as the northernmost of the great cities and in the centre of the open territory of the plains, exposed it to the first attacks of invaders from across the Alps, while the ambition of the rulers and of the people kept it in frequent strife with its Italian rivals. Its trade seems to have continued active, however, (except when armies were actually at its gates) and while in art more important work was done in Florence, the first steps in the new literature, that is, in the literature connected with printing, were taken in Lombardy.

The first printing in Milan was done in 1469 by Philip of Lavagna, who was followed in 1470 by Antonio Zarotus. In the printing of books Milan holds precedence, therefore, over all the towns of Italy except Subiaco and Rome, antedating Venice by about a year. The publishing undertakings of the Lombardy capital never, however, rivalled in importance those of Venice. In 1476, Paravisinus, printed an edition of the Greek Grammar of Laskaris, the first volume printed in Europe in Greek characters. In the previous volumes containing Greek text, this had been printed in Latin characters. The editor of the Grammar was Demetrius, a refugee from Crete. He was also the editor of the first edition in Greek of _Homer_. The first Missal was printed by Zarotus in 1475.

While in Rome the work of printing was begun by a German and in Venice by a Frenchman, the first printers in Milan were native Italians. Among the earlier of the Lombard printer-publishers, we find the name of Alexander Minutianus, a learned professor, who devoted himself to the editing of a valuable series of Latin classics, and whose publishing activities extended over a term of twenty years. Minutianus published in 1498-99, in four folio volumes, the first complete edition of _Cicero_. The relations of Milan with the cities north of the Alps were more intimate at this time than those of any other Italian city, and it was natural, therefore, that as the printing business in Lombardy increased in importance, German printers should begin to seek employment there. The first whose name is recorded was Waldorfer (or Valdarfer) from Regensburg, whose work began in 1474, and who brought with him fonts of Gothic type. Waldorfer printed an edition of _Pliny’s Letters_ and a selection of the _Orations of Cicero_. These were followed by the _Commentary_ of Servius on _Virgil_, and by the first issue in print of the famous _Decameron_ of Boccaccio. The _Decameron_ had been written in 1353, and had, therefore, waited 120 years for a publisher. In 1493, Henricus Germanus and Sebastian Pontremulo printed the first Greek edition of _Isocrates_. In Milan, however, work in law, science, and medicine constituted a more important proportion of the earlier publications than in Venice or in Rome. The De Honate Brothers were printing as early as 1472, works in jurisprudence, and Frommann is of opinion that before 1480 several firms were devoting their presses exclusively to the departments of law and science. In 1472, a company was formed for the printing and publishing of books, probably the first publishing association in existence. There were at first five members or associates, as follows:

Antonio Zarotus, a printer from Parma; Gabriel degli Orsoni, a priest; Colla Montana, an instructor in the High School (he was concerned some years later in the murder of the Duke Galeazzo Maria); Pavero de’ Fontana, a professor of Latin, afterwards editor of _Horace_; and Pedro Antonio de’ Burgo, of Castiglione, a lawyer. Subsequently a sixth associate was added, Nicolao, a physician and a brother of the last named.

The Association was organised for a term of three years and its purpose was stated to be the instituting of a printing-office, with not less than four presses, and the carrying on of a book-manufacturing and publishing business. The capital was to be contributed in equal shares by four of the associates, the printer, Zarotus, investing no money, but contributing his knowledge of the business and undertaking its general management. The printer was to receive one third of the net proceeds, and the remaining two thirds were to be divided equally among his four associates. From the printer’s share were to be repaid the first expenditures contributed by the other four. The subsequent expenditures were to be met by the sales of the books. The person acting as corrector for the press, usually one of the scholarly associates, secured as his compensation one or two copies of the work corrected.

The selection of the books to be printed was to be made by the unanimous decision of the whole board, and the selling price was also to be fixed by the board. The organisation was to remain secret, and all employees were to take an oath of secrecy and obedience. Each member bound himself to give no council or aid to any other publishing concern and to print no work with another printer except under the permission of his associates. At the termination of the agreement, the printer was to have a right to purchase at a valuation the presses and the manuscripts.

The capitalist of the concern was the lawyer Antonio de’ Burgo, and he found the funds (100 ducats) with which the first operations were initiated. Under a supplementary agreement, the lawyer Burgo and his brother the physician assumed for their individual account one half of the rent of the premises and purchased three additional presses. These presses were kept at work exclusively in the production of a series of works in the departments of law and medicine. The printer Zarotus took charge of the manufacture of these books for the brothers Burgo, in addition to those printed for the Association. The editorial work in selecting the material and in preparing them for the press was cared for by the Burgos, who also appear to have attended to the publishing details.

The brothers paid over to the treasury of the Association twenty-five ducats for the use of the plant (type, etc.) outside of the presses, and were to pay also one fourth of the proceeds of the sales of their series. Each associate was also to receive a copy of each book printed.

The brothers agreed to print no books excepting in the departments of canon and civil law and of medicine, and the Association was to include in its list no works in these departments. The penalty for infringing this provision was fixed at 200 ducats.

The brothers were not at liberty to dispose of their portion of the printing-office to any other parties. At the end of three years, the presses and publications belonging to the two Burgos were transferred, on an appraisal, to Zarotus.

No records have been preserved of the results of their undertakings, or of those of the Association as a whole. The fact, however, that as early as 1472, only eight years after the introduction of printing into Italy, there should have been sufficient business, or even expectation of business, to warrant the organisation of such a publishing company, is certainly noteworthy, if only as evidence of the intellectual activity and business enterprise of the Italy of the fifteenth century. It is curious also that special provision should have been made for legal and medical publications, as the literary interests of the period of the Renaissance, which had so much influence in furthering the activities of the earlier Italian printers, were so largely classical.

It was necessary for the first publishers to be both printers and scholars, and this necessary condition of early publishing undertakings, the association of adequate scholarship with technical knowledge required for the making of books, was fully provided for in the Milan company, which included, as we have seen, two classical professors, one theologian, one jurist, and one physician.

More than a century later, in 1589, was organised the Guild of the Printers, Publishers, and Booksellers of Milan. During the hundred years that had passed since the printing-press began its work in Lombardy, the city had known various rulers, and had, for a brief term, enjoyed independence. By far the larger portion of the century had been for Lombardy periods of turmoil, and the years of uninterrupted peace had been few. It was, therefore, not surprising that the business of the production of books had developed more rapidly and more prosperously in Venice, Rome, and Bologna, which were from their position better protected against the mischances of war.

In 1589, Lombardy was a portion of the great Spanish Empire, and (as it contained few heretics) it was enjoying under the rule of Philip II., a period of peace and of comparative prosperity. The charter of the Guild or Corporation of the Printers and Publishers was confirmed by King Philip himself. The Stationers’ Company of England had received its charter from Queen Mary in 1556, or thirty-three years earlier. The Guild of the Venetian Printers dated from 1548, and was the earliest association of the kind in Europe. The affairs of the Guild of Milan were managed by a board of directors, comprising a Prior, a Bursar, and two Councillors. The Board had charge of the property of the corporation, and was responsible also for the protection of its privileges under the charter, and for the defence of any of its members whose rights might be assailed. It rested also with the Board to see that the regulations of the Corporation were properly carried out, and in the event of any assessment being laid upon the organised Printers and Publishers, it was the duty of the Bursar to apportion the payments equitably among the members of the Guild.

To the Board was also given authority to adjudicate disputes not only between members of the Guild, but between the members and outsiders, and its jurisdiction extended over the entire duchy. From the decisions of the Board there was, as a rule, no appeal. In case, however, the issue involved any complicated questions of law, so that it became necessary for the Board to call in the counsel of a jurist, an appeal could be made from the decision arrived at to a special court of arbitration, which was also, however, to be made up of members of the Guild. The roster of the Guild was in the special control of the Prior, and this record was of special importance, because no one whose name was not on this roster as a member in good standing was permitted to print or to sell books in Milan, under a penalty for each offence of fifty gold _scudi_.

No one was eligible for membership who had not served an apprenticeship of eight years to a printer or book-dealer in Milan. The fee for admission was, for one born in Milan, thirty lire, for others one hundred lire.

One purpose of the organisation of the Guild was to prevent the competition of foreign printers and booksellers from breaking down the trade of the Milanese. A more legitimate object was to keep the business of printing, publishing, and selling books in the hands of trained men of high character, good education, and technical training, who should conduct their work in a manner worthy of the repute of Milan. It had been the complaint that many unworthy and unskilled men had crowded into the business of making and selling books, lowering the standard of the trade and diminishing the profits. It was complained also that the paper-manufacturers or paper-dealers had undertaken to sell books, notwithstanding a specific statute prohibiting them from so doing. The royal commissioner, whose sanction was required to validate on behalf of the King the regulations of the new Guild, stipulated, however, in confirming the renewal of this prohibition, that the paper-makers should still be permitted to sell certain special books which had for some years been in their hands, but that no other publications must be sold by any paper-dealer who had not secured membership in the Guild as a properly qualified bookseller.

It is not easy, after an interval of three centuries, to decide whether this undertaking for the closer organisation of the book-trade was really prompted, as was contended, by the desire to keep on the highest possible plane the business of making and selling books, or whether it was the result of a selfish desire on the part of the older Milanese dealers to increase their profits and to keep out competitors. It is probable there was a mixture of motives, but it is certain that in Milan, as in other book centres, the formation of the Guild gave an important incentive to printing and publishing, improved the quality of the work done, and tended to keep the business in the hands of a good class of men, and it is evident also that such results must have brought advantages also to the general public.

The more important of the regulations of the Guild can be summarised as follows:

1. No member of the Guild shall reprint or shall sell any book issued by another member, provided such book has not before been printed in Milan, and provided also that the edition claiming protection shall itself have been printed in Milan. A book printed outside of the duchy cannot secure the protection of a Milanese privilege. The penalty for infringement is the forfeiture of the copies printed and the payment of ten gold _scudi_.

2. Each publication shall bear the imprint of its printer or publisher (usually, of course, the same person).

3. Apprentices and assistants must be registered on the records of the Guild.

4. The sale of books in any places other than the registered shops or places of business is forbidden; and the purchase of books from apprentices or from any not known to be duly authorised dealers is also made a misdemeanour.

5. The sale of books on Sundays or holidays, either in the shops or in the dwellings, is forbidden.

6. No printer or dealer must use for his sign a token identical with or closely similar to that already in use with an authorised printer or dealer.

These regulations appear to have had the desired effect of repressing if not of entirely exterminating the business of the unauthorised printers and traders. In 1614, however probably for the purpose of impressing a fresh generation of unauthorised traders, the Guild secured a fresh royal edict, which again confirmed the authority of the Guild and enjoined, under heavy penalties, the strictest obedience to its regulations.

Frommann points out that in the application for this new decree, the Guild no longer lays stress upon the necessity of upholding the dignity and honourable standard of the book-trade, but emphasises the risk to the Church and to the community of believers if uneducated and irresponsible persons, not familiar with the lists of forbidden works, should be permitted to print or to sell books. Experience had evidently made clear to the publishers that with a government like that of Spain (which might be described as despotism tempered by the Inquisition) this class of considerations would be much more influential than any thought of upholding the dignity of the business of making and selling books.

The petitioners make reference to the decree accompanying the latest _Index Expurgatorius_, which forbids any one from carrying on business as a printer, publisher, or bookseller, who has not taken oath before the ecclesiastical superiors or the Inquisitor of his district to conduct his business in full loyalty to the holy Catholic Church, and to give explicit obedience to all the decrees and enactments of the Church and of the Inquisitor for the regulation and supervision of the press.

The petitioners go on to state that this edict of the Church has largely fallen into disregard because ordinary traders, _merzeranii_, uneducated and irresponsible men, not trained to the book-business and having no knowledge of or no respect for the _Index Expurgatorius_, have been allowed to print and to sell books, to the detriment not only of the legitimate book-trade, but of the Church and of the community. The King (Philip III.) appears to have agreed with the Guild that this interference with an organised book-trade (which from the very fact of its organisation could be and was effectively supervised by the Church) constituted a very dangerous abuse.

The new edict, with its severe penalties, and with the effective co-operation of the local inquisitors and other ecclesiastics, appears to have had the effect desired. We hear no more from the publishers of Milan about irresponsible competition, and the business prospered as far as was practicable within the rather narrow limits fixed by the censorship of the Church. The most noteworthy productions of the Milanese presses between the years 1500 and 1700, were, as stated, in the departments of jurisprudence and medicine. The greater activity of publishing in these two departments may very possibly have been in part due to the fact that they were less affected by the ecclesiastical censorship.

=Lucca and Foligno.=--The little city of Lucca is entitled to mention in connection with the introduction of printing into Italy, if only because it was the only city in Italy (and possibly the only one in Europe), in which the new art secured the direct support and co-operation of the government in the form, first of a municipal decree in favour of the printing-press, and secondly of a direct subvention from the municipal treasury in encouragement of the first printer. The printer was Clemente, a native of Padua, who was engaged in business in Lucca as a scribe and illuminator. It was made a condition of the appropriation (the amount of which is not stated) that the printer, who was to be classed as a public functionary, was to hold himself in readiness to teach the art to all who might desire to learn. Clemente established his press in Lucca in 1477, and printed there in that year, an edition of the _Triumphs of Petrarch_. He had previously printed in Venice a work by John Mesne, of Damascus, on universal medicine, a large folio of 400 pages.

A still smaller city than Lucca, Foligno in Umbria, enjoys the distinction of having received as its first printer, Johann Numeister, who had been a pupil and assistant of Gutenberg himself. After the death of his master, Numeister came to Italy with the intention of setting up a press in Rome. He was induced to settle at Foligno at the instance of Orfinis, a wealthy citizen, who supplied the funds necessary for the undertaking. The first publication of the Foligno Press was _Leonardi Aretini Bruni de Bello Italico adversus Gothos_, which bears date 1470.

The imprint states that the book was “printed by Numeister in the house of Emilianus de Orfinis.” The second work selected was an edition of the _Divina Commedia_ of Dante, the manuscript copy of which had been collated and corrected for the press by Orfinis. Orfinis died in 1472, just before the printing of the _Commedia_ was completed. Numeister paid a tribute to his patron in the last line of the rhyming imprint:

_Nel milla quatro cente septe e due Nel quarto mese; a di cinque et sei, Questa opera gentile impresso fue, Io maestro Johanni Numeister opera dei Alla dicta impressione, et meco fue, El Elfuginato, Evangelista mei._

--Humphreys interprets the words “Evangelist mine” as standing for “the one who made me known to the world.”[450] M. Bernard writes, “better Evangelist than I am.” The last volume bearing the name of Numeister was an edition of Torquemada’s _Contemplations_. With his death in 1479, the brief record of the press of Foligno comes to a close.

=Florence.=--Florence, which for a century or more had been the centre of the intellectual life of Italy, and which presented in its great collection of manuscripts, its central position, and its important trade connections, distinctive advantages for the work of book-publishing, was comparatively late in giving attention to the new art, and the issues from the Florentine presses before the close of the fifteenth century, were much less important than those of Venice and of Milan.

The first book printed in Florence, a commentary on Virgil, by Servius, bears date 1471. It was issued by Bernardo Cennino, and appears to have been his sole publication.

Cennino was by trade a goldsmith, and had been associated with Ghiberti in the work on the famous gates of the Baptistery.[451] An enthusiast about the artistic pre-eminence of Florence and of Italy, he was said to have been jealous of the glory that had come to Germany through the invention of printing, and he determined to master the art without German aid.[452] In the colophon to his work, he describes the labour of the creation of his press, a labour which included the engraving of the steel punches and the casting of the type. His publishing venture was costly and probably unprofitable, and he appears to have printed no second book. He continued, however, in connection with his trade as a goldsmith, the work of engraving punches for type.

The German printers speedily found their way to Florence as they had already done to Rome, Venice, and Milan. In 1472, a certain Peter, describing himself as “de Moguntia,” (of Mayence) printed an edition of the _Philocolo_ of Boccaccio, and in the same year, he issued the _Triumphs of Petrarch_.

The subscription reads: “Master Peter, son of John of Mayence, wrote (_scripsit_) this work in Florence, the 12th day of November, 1472.”

Humphreys points out that this imprint is an example of the habit of the early printers of considering their art as a kind of magical _writing_ rather than as a mechanical contrivance.

The most important of the early printer-publishers of Florence was Nicholas of Breslau. In 1477, he published Bettini’s _Monte Sancto di Dio_, which, according to Humphreys, presents the first example of illustrations by means of engraved plates. In 1478, Nicholas published an edition of Dante, the most elaborate that had yet appeared. Dante had evidently already taken possession of the intellectual interest of Italy, and as early as 1472, no less than three editions had appeared. The fact that the poetry of Dante was given to the public in Italian, secured for it a much wider range of popular appreciation than was within reach of works written in Latin. The same was true of the works of Boccaccio and of Petrarch, which, with the aid of the printing-press, promptly came into the hands of large circles of readers. _Petrarch_ was first printed in 1470, and _Boccaccio_ in 1471, and thereafter editions of both authors followed rapidly.

In 1474, a press was set up in the monastery of San Jacopo di Ripili, near Florence, by two monks of the Brotherhood of S. Dominic. The greater part of the books printed by them were distributed among the monasteries as gifts or in exchange, but as the reputation of their publications increased, they found it necessary to accept orders from booksellers and from the outside public. Later, they added a type-foundry to their plant.

=Genoa.=--The first printing-office in Genoa was established in 1471 by a German from Olmutz, named Moravus, who associated with himself, in 1474, an Italian named Michael da Monaco. The scribes, or _manuscriptists_, as they called themselves, made a vigorous protest against the new art. They addressed, in 1471, a petition to the magistracy in which they prayed to be protected from the competition of these newly arrived printers, at least as far as the production of Breviaries, Donati, and Psalters was concerned, as upon the multiplication of these they depended for their livelihood. Humphreys states that the original of this petition is still in existence.[453] The record of the reply given by the magistrates has not been preserved.

The printers were evidently not forbidden to print these books of service, as editions were speedily produced. The influence of the scribes appears, however, in the end, to have been sufficient to establish a kind of cabal against the printers, and in the course of a year or two the German gave up the attempt and removed his press to Naples. There was doubtless in all the Italian cities a large measure of jealousy and opposition on the part of the old _librarii_, _stationarii_, and _scriptores_, but Genoa appears to have been the only city where they were strong enough actually to drive out the printers, at least for a time.

The first Hebrew Bible printed in Europe was issued in Soncino in 1488, from the press of Abraham Colonto. It is described as a very fine piece of typography and as note-worthy for the artistic chapter-headings and for the elaborate decorations of the marginal borders of the pages.

END OF VOLUME I.

The Question of Copyright

Comprising the text of the Copyright Law of the United States, and a summary of the Copyright laws at present in force in the chief countries of the world; together with a report of the legislation now pending in Great Britain, a sketch of the contest in the United States, 1837-1891, in behalf of International Copyright, and certain papers on the development of the conception of literary property and on the results of the American law of 1891.

COMPILED BY GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM, A.M.,

Secretary of the American Publishers’ Copyright League.

Second Edition, revised, with additions, and with the record of legislation brought down to March, 1896, octavo, gilt top, $1.75

CONTENTS.--The law of Copyright in the U. S. in force July 1, 1895.--Directions for securing Copyright.--Countries with which the U. S. is now in Copyright relations.--Amendments to the Copyright Act since July 1, 1891.--Summary of Copyright legislation in the U. S., by R. R. Bowker.--History of the contest for International Copyright.--The Hawley Bill of January, 1885.--The Pearsall-Smith scheme of Copyright.--Report of the House Committee on Patents, on the Bill of 1890-91, by W. E. Simonds.--The Platt-Simonds Act of March, 1891.--Analysis of the provisions of the Act of 1891.--Extracts from the speeches in the debates of 1891.--Results of the law of 1891 (considered in January 1894).--Summary of the international Copyright cases and decisions since the Act of 1891.--Abstract of the Copyright laws of Great Britain, with a digest of the same by Sir James Stephen.--Report of the British Copyright Commission of 1878.--The Monkswell Copyright bill of 1890, with an analysis by Sir Frederick Pollock.--The Berne Convention of 1887.--The Montevideo Convention of 1889.--The Nature and Origin of Copyright, by R. R. Bowker.--The Evolution of Copyright, by Brander Matthews.--Literary Property: an historical sketch.--Statutory Copyright in England, by R. R. Bowker.--Cheap Books and Good Books by Brander Matthews.--Copyright and the Prices of Books.--Copyright “Monopolies” and Protection.--States which have become parties to the Convention of Berne.--Summary of the existing Copyright laws of the world (March, 1896).--The status of Canada in regard to Copyright, January, 1896.--General Index.

_NOTICES._

A perfect arsenal of facts and arguments, carefully elaborated and very effectively presented.... Altogether it constitutes an extremely valuable history of the development of a very intricate right of property, and it is as interesting as it is valuable.--_N. Y. Nation._

A work of exceptional value for authors and booksellers, and for all interested in the history and status of literary property.--_Christian Register._

Until the new Copyright law has been in operation for some time, constant resource must be had to this workmanlike volume.--_The Critic._

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

New York: 27 West 23d St. London: 24 Bedford St., Strand

Authors and Their Public

In Ancient Times

A Sketch of Literary Conditions and of the Relations with the Public of Literary Producers, from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Roman Empire.

By GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM, A.M.

Author of “The Question of Copyright,” “Books and their Makers During the Middle Ages,” etc.

Second Edition, Revised, 12º, gilt top $1.50

_NOTICES._

The Knickerbocker Press appears almost at its best in the delicately simple and yet attractive form which it has given to this work, wherein the chief of a celebrated publishing house sketches the gradual evolution of the idea of literary property.... The book abounds in information, is written in a delightfully succinct and agreeable manner, with apt comparisons that are often humorous, and with scrupulous exactness to statement, and without a sign of partiality either from an author’s or a publisher’s point of view.--_New York Times._

A most instructive book for the thoughtful and curious reader.... The author’s account of the literary development of Greece is evidence of careful investigation and of scholarly judgment. Mr. Putnam writes in a way to instruct a scholar and to interest the general reader. He has been exceptionally successful in describing the progress of letters, the peculiar environment of those who are interested in the career of the dramatist and the philosopher, and that habit of mind characteristic of Hellenic life.--_Philadelphia Press._

A most valuable review of the important subject of the beginnings of literary prosperity. The book presents also a powerful plea for the rights of authors. The beginnings of literary matters in Chaldea, Egypt, India, Persia, China, and Japan are exhibited with discrimination and fairness and in a very entertaining way. The work is a valuable contribution upon a subject of pressing interest to authors and their public.--_New York Observer._

The work shows broad cultivation, careful scholarly research, and original thought. The style is simple and straightforward, and the volume is both attractive and valuable.--_Richmond Times._

The volume is beautifully printed on good paper.... Every author ought to be compelled to buy and read this bright volume, and no publisher worthy of the name should be without it.--_Publishers’ Circular, London._

The book is one that will commend itself to every author, while at the same time it is full of entertainment for the general reader.--_London Sun._

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS New York: 29 West 23d St. London: 24 Bedford St., Strand

Books and Their Makers During the Middle Ages

A Study of the Conditions of the Production and Distribution of Literature from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Close of the Seventeenth Century.

By GEO. HAVEN PUTNAM, A.M.

Author of “Authors and Their Public in Ancient Times,” “The Question of Copyright,” etc., etc.

In two volumes, 8º, cloth extra (sold separately), each $2.50

=Volume I. 476-1500.= (Ready April, 1896.)