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.
[Illustration: TYPE OF THE SUBIACO LACTANTIUS (_exact size._)]
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.
[Illustration: TYPE OF THE ALDINE VIRGIL, 1501 (_exact size._)]
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.