CHAPTER X

EARLY PRINTING IN ITALY AND SOME OTHER COUNTRIES

The new invention found more favour in Italy than in any other country, for more presses were established there than anywhere else. The printers, however, were all Germans, and before 1480 about 110 German typographers were at work in twenty-seven Italian cities. They kept the secrets of their trade well to themselves, and not till 1471 was any printing executed by an Italian. In May of that year the _De Medicinis Universalibus_ of Mesua was executed at Venice by Clement of Padua, who accomplished the truly wonderful feat of teaching himself how to print. Another Italian, Joannes Phillipus de Lignamine, printed at Rome some time before July 26, 1471, and it is therefore uncertain whether he or Clement of Padua was the first native printer of Italy.

The first press established in Italy was that set up in the Benedictine monastery of St Scholastica at Subiaco, a few miles from Rome, by two German typographers, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz. There they issued Cicero's _De Oratore_ in 1465, the first book printed in Italy. In their petition to the Pope, referred to below, they say that they had printed a _Donatus_, presumably before the Cicero, but no such work is known, and some have thought it was only a block-book. In the same year they issued the works of Lactantius, "the Christian Cicero," the first dated book executed in Italy. It is also one of the earliest books to adopt a more elaborate punctuation than the simple oblique line and full stop in general use. The _Lactantius_ has a colon, full stop, and notes of admiration and interrogation. Both these books are printed in a pleasing type which is neither Gothic nor Roman, but midway between the two.

Two years later Sweynheim and Pannartz removed to Rome, where their countryman, Ulric Hahn, was already at work, and prosecuted their business with so much energy, and apparently so little prudence or regard to the works of other printers, that at the end of five years they had printed no less than 12,475 sheets which they could not sell, and were in such financial straits that they petitioned the Pope for assistance for themselves and their families. Whether they obtained it is unknown, but the partnership was soon after dissolved, and the name of Pannartz alone appears in books of 1475 and 1476. When these two printers died is uncertain.

Venice was the next city of Italy to take up the new art. There, in 1469, Joannes de Spira, or John of Spires, executed Cicero's _Epistolæ ad Familiares_. He obtained a privilege from the Venetian Senate with regard to his productions, and, more than that, a monopoly of book-printing in Venice for five years. He died, however, less than a year later, and his monopoly with him. His brother Vindelinus carried on his work, and was succeeded by Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, who, from a technical point of view, was perhaps the most skilful and artistic of early typographers.

The most famous printer of Venice, however, and the most famous printer of Italy, and perhaps of the world, is Aldus Manutius, born in 1450, but his fame rests less on his actual printing, which, though good, is not unequalled, than upon the efforts he made for popularising literature, and bringing cheap, yet well-produced books within the reach of the many. He saw that the works printed in such numbers by the Venetian printers, who paid attention to quantity and cheapness and altogether ignored the quality of their productions, were faulty and corrupt, and that textually as well as typographically there was room for improvement. He applied himself to the study of the classics, above all to the Greek, hitherto neglected or published through Latin translations, and secured the assistance of many eminent scholars, and then, having obtained good texts, turned his thoughts to type and format. The types he cast for his first book, Lascaris' _Greek Grammar_, were superior to the Greek types then in use. Next he designed a new Roman type, modelled, so it is said, upon the handwriting of Petrarch. It called forth admiration, and won fame under the name of the "Aldino" type. Its use has continued to the present day, and it is known to almost everyone as _Italic_. It was cut by Francesco de Bologna, who was probably identical with Francesco Raibolini, that painter-goldsmith who signed himself on his pictures as _Aurifex_, and on his gold-work as _Pictor_.

The advantage of the Aldino type, at the time of its invention, when type was large and required a comparatively great deal of space, was that its size and form permitted the printed matter to be much compressed, while losing nothing in clearness. The book for which it was used could be made smaller, and printed more cheaply. In 1501 Aldus inaugurated his new type by issuing a _Virgil_ printed throughout in "Aldino." It occupied two hundred and twenty-eight leaves, and was of a neat and novel shape, measuring just six by three and a half inches. This book, which was sold for about two shillings of our money, marks Aldus as the pioneer of cheap literature--literature not for the wealthy alone, but for all who loved books. A proof of the popularity of the new departure is afforded by the fact that the _Virgil_ was immediately forged, that is to say, reproduced in a number of exceedingly inferior copies, by an unknown printer of Lyons.

The Aldine mark, which appears on Aldus' edition of Dante's _Terze Rime_ in 1502, and on nearly all the numerous works subsequently issued from this famous press, is a dolphin twined about an anchor, and the name ALDVS divided by the upper part of the anchor. This device continued to be used after the death of Aldus Manutius in 1515 by his descendants, who carried on the work of the press until 1597.

France was somewhat late in availing herself of the advantages offered by the new art, although Peter Schoeffer had had a bookseller's shop in Paris. In 1470, Guillaume Fichet, Rector of the Sorbonne, invited three German printers--Ulric Gering, Michael Friburger and Martin Cranz--to come and set up a printing-press at the Sorbonne. The first work they produced there was the _Epistolæ_ of Gasparinus Barzizius. For this and a few other volumes they used a very beautiful Roman type, but after the closing of the Sorbonne press in 1472 they established other presses elsewhere in Paris and adopted a Gothic character similar to that of the contemporary French manuscripts, and therefore more likely to be popular with French readers.

The first work printed in the French language, however, is believed to have been executed, chiefly, at any rate, by an Englishman, probably at Bruges, five years later, that is, about 1476. The book was _Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes_, the Englishman was William Caxton. Caxton also printed at the same place, and about the year 1475, the first book in the English language--a translation of _Le Recueil_. In both these works he may have been assisted by Colard Mansion, believed by some to have been his typographical tutor, though so eminent an authority as Mr Blades holds that _Le Recueil_ was printed by Mansion alone, and that Caxton had no hand in it. As with so many other questions concerning early typography, there seems to be no means of deciding the point.

The first work in French which was issued in Paris was the _Grands Chroniques de France_, printed by Pasquier Bonhomme in 1477.

Holland and the Low Countries can show no printed book with a date earlier than 1473, while the celebrated city of Haarlem's first dated book was produced ten years later. But printing was very possibly practised in these countries at an earlier period, and some undated books exist which those who ascribe the invention of typography to Holland consider to have been executed by Dutch printers before any German books had been given to the world. Those who stand by Germany of course think otherwise.

In the year just named--1473--Nycolaum Ketelaer and Gerard de Leempt produced Peter Comestor's _Historia Scholastica_ at Utrecht, and Alost and Louvain also started printing. The types of John Veldener, the first Louvain printer, have a great resemblance to those used by Caxton, and have led some to believe that Veldener supplied Caxton with the types he first used at Westminster. About the same time, Colard Mansion, noted for his association either as teacher or assistant with Caxton, is supposed to have introduced printing into Bruges. His first dated book was a _Boccaccio_ of 1476, and he continued to print until 1484, when he issued a fine edition, in French, of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. After this nothing more is known of him. Blades thinks that his printing brought him financial ruin, and suggests that he may have joined his old friend Caxton at Westminster, and helped him in his work, but this is only conjecture. We have already seen that it was from Colard Mansion's press that the first printed books in the English and French languages were produced.

The first Brussels press was established by the Brethren of the Common Life, a community who had hitherto made a speciality of the production of manuscript books. At what date they began to print in Brussels is uncertain, but their first dated book, the _Gnotosolitos sive speculum conscientiae_, is of the year 1476. The Brethren also had an earlier press at Marienthal, near Mentz, and subsequently set up others at Rostock, Nuremberg, and Gouda.

The Elzevirs belong to a somewhat later period than that with which we are concerned in these chapters, but a name so famous in bibliographical annals as theirs cannot well be passed over. The first of the Elzevirs was Louis, a native of Louvain, who in 1580 established a book-shop in Leyden, gained the patronage of the university, and opened an important trade with foreign countries. Certain of his sons and successors became printers as well as booksellers, and produced work of the highest excellence. Some of them opened shops or set up presses at Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht, and also established agencies or branches elsewhere, and extended their trade all over Europe. The history of the partnerships between different members of the family, and of the sixteen hundred and odd publications which they printed or sold, is a complicated subject upon which there is no need to enter here. The last of the Elzevirs, a degenerate great-great-grandson of the first Louis Elzevir, was Abraham Elzevir of Leyden, who died in 1712, leaving no heir, and at whose decease the press and apparatus were sold.