Of Maro now to Venice doth impart.
Let some of Polycletus praise the skill,
Parrhasius, or what sculptor else you will;
Who loves the stainless gifts the Muses give
Will pray that Wendelin’s renown may live;
Not that his volumes make so long a row,
But rather for the grace and skill they show.
1470.
The colophon to the Petrarch claims credit for the restoration of a true
text, a point on which the scholars of the Renaissance were as keen, up
to their lights, as those of our own day, and which is often emphasized
in their laudatory verses as the one supreme merit:
Que fuerant multis quondam confusa tenebris
Petrarce Laure metra sacrata sue,
Christophori et pariter feruens Cyllenia cura
Transcripsit nitido lucidiora die.
Vtque superueniens nequeat corrumpere tempus
En Vindelinus erea plura dedit.
The songs that Petrarch to his Laura made
With many a doubt obscure were overlaid:
Now, by Cristoforo’s and Cyllenio’s care,
Than day itself their text shall shine more fair.
Lest by corrupting time they still be tried,
Wendelin these printed copies multiplied.
In 1471 Wendelin, or his correctors, lest their inspiration should be
too hard worked, invented a simple couplet which would apply to any book
equally well.
Impressum formis iustoque nitore coruscans
Hoc Vindelinus condidit artis opus.
Printed from forms, with modest splendors bright,
This Wendelin designed to give delight.
This is found in the “Apophthegmata” of Plutarch, the “Memorabilia” of
Valerius Maximus, the “Singularia” of Pontanus, the “Aureae Quaestiones”
of Bartolus de Saxoferrato, etc.; and must have been a welcome second
string in case of need. Nevertheless, when a second edition of Sallust
was called for, Wendelin’s private poet was equal to the occasion,
producing the quatrain:
Quadringenta iterum formata uolumina nuper
Crispi dedit Venetis Spirea Vindelinus.
Sed meliora quidem lector, mihi crede, secundo
Et reprobata minus antea quam dederat.
The verses are so incredibly bad, not merely in their entire disregard of
quantity, but in grammar as well, that it would be pleasant to reproduce
the peculiar iniquity which makes their charm. What the writer meant to
say was something to the effect that:
Wendelin of Speier to Venice now once more
Of printed Sallusts hath given hundreds four.
But here all’s better, all may trusted be:
This text, good reader, is from errors free.
Faithfully to reëcho the discords of the original is above the present
translator’s skill.
As money troubles thickened about him, Wendelin’s colophons became less
buoyant and interesting; but in 1473, when the transfer of his business
to John of Cologne and Manthen of Gerresheim was impending, we find these
verses in one of the huge law-books in which the early printers were so
bold in investing their money—the “Lectura Bartoli de Saxoferrato super
secunda parte Digesti Veteris”:
Finis. M. cccc. lxxiii.
Non satis est Spire: gratissima carmina Phoebo,
Musarum cantus, historiasque premi.
Omnis habet sua vota liber. Non cessat ab arte.
Has pressit leges, Iustiniane, tuas.
Spira tua est virtus Italas iam nota per urbes,
Ore tuum nomen posteritatis erit.
1473.
’Tis not enough for Speier to print the songs
That Phoebus loves, the Muses’ tales and lays:
Each book is favored. Not for rest he longs,
But thus to print Justinian’s laws essays.
Speier, now Italy’s cities know thy glory,
And future ages shall repeat the story.
When Wendelin resumed business on his own account in 1476, he published
very few books; but one of these, the “Divina Commedia” of Dante, printed
in that year, has an Italian colophon in the ambitious form of a sonnet:
[Illustration: Dante. Divina Commedia. Venice: Wendelin of
Speier, 1476.]
Finita e lopra del inclito e diuo
Dante alleghieri Fiorentin poeta
La cui anima sancta alberga lieta
Nel ciel seren oue sempre il fia vivo.
Dimola benvenuto mai fia priuo
Deterna fama che sua mansueta
Lyra opero comentando il poeta,
Per cui il texto a noi e intellectiuo.
Christofal Berardi pisaurense detti
Opera e facto indegno correctore
Per quanto intese di quella i subietti.
De Spiera Vendelin fu il stampatore:
Del mille quattrocento e settanta setti
Correuan gli anni del nostro signore.
Here ends the work of Dante, the most high
Florentine poet, famed to every age,
Whose holy soul now finds glad harborage
(Aye may he there abide!) in heaven’s clear sky.
From Benvenuto d’Imola let none try
To wrest the credit due for comment sage
On this great poem, by which every page,
Poet himself, he helps to clarify.
Pesaro’s son, Christoph Berardi hight,
Hath all corrected, though with many a fear
Of lofty themes, hard to pursue aright.
The printer Wendelin, who from Speier came here:
And since Christ’s birth there urges now its flight
The fourteen hundred six and seventieth year.
This putting of dates into verse is sad work. In Jenson’s early
colophons, instead of dates (which are added in prose), we have the
name of the reigning doge to wrestle with. Thus, in his edition of the
“Rhetorica” and “De Inuentione” of Cicero we find the following verse and
prose colophon:
[Illustration: Cicero. Rhetorica. Venice: N. Jenson, 1470.]
Emendata manu sunt exemplaria docta
Omniboni: quem dat utraque lingua patrem.
Haec eadem Ienson Veneta Nicolaus in urbe
Formauit: Mauro sub duce Christoforo.
MARCI TVLLII CICERONIS ORATORIS CLARISSIMI RHETORICORVM LIBER
VLTIMVS FELICITER EXPLICIT.
.M.CCCC.LXX.
Omnibonus with his learned hand hath these
Copies revised, skilled in two languages;
And Nicolas Jenson shaped them by his pains
At Venice, while Cristoforo Moro reigns.
The last book of the Rhetorics of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the
most renowned orator, comes happily to an end. 1470.
So again in an edition, of the same year, of the Letters to Atticus we
have a similar colophon, the poetical portion of which might easily have
led a reader to believe that he was invited to buy a work by Atticus
himself instead of letters mainly addressed to him:
Attice, nunc totus Veneta diffunderis urbe,
Cum quondam fuerit copia rara tui.
Gallicus hoc Ienson Nicolaus muneris orbi
Attulit: ingenio daedalicaque manu.
Christophorus Mauro plenus bonitate fideque
Dux erat: auctorem, lector, opusque tenes.
MARCI T. C. EPISTOLAE AD ATTICVM BRVTVM
et Quintum fratrem, cum ipsius Attici vita feliciter expliciunt.
M.CCCC.LXX.
All Atticus is now in Venice sold,
Though copies were right rare in days of old.
French Nicolas Jenson this good gift has brought,
And all with skill and crafty hand has wrought.
Our doge, Cristoforo Moro, true and kind.
Thus book and author, reader, here you find.
The Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero to Atticus, Brutus, and
his brother Quintus, with the life of the said Atticus, come
happily to an end. 1470.
In the next year we have to deal with the little group of vernacular
books printed by Jenson, to one of which the omission of an X from
the date in the colophon has given such notoriety. The three which
are correctly dated are: (i) “Una opera la quale se chiama Luctus
Christianorum ex Passione Christi, zoe pianto de Christiani per la
Passione de Christo in forma de Meditatione.”
COLOPHON: A Christi Natiuitate Anno M.CCCCLXXI. Pridie nonas
Apriles a preclarissimo librorum exculptore Nicolao gallico.
Impressa est passio christi dulcissima.
In the year 1471 from Christ’s Nativity, on April 4th, by
the most famous engraver of books, Nicolas Jenson, there was
printed The Most Sweet Passion of Christ.
(ii) “Parole devote de lanima inamorata in Misser Iesu.”
COLOPHON: MCCCCLXXI. Octauo Idus Aprilis: per Nicolaum Ienson
gallicum opusculum hoc feliciter impressum est.
1471, April 6th, by Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, this booklet
was happily printed.
(iii) “Una operetta la quale si chiama Palma Virtutum zioe triumpho de
uirtude: la quale da Riegola forma et modo a qualunque stato,” etc.
COLOPHON: Deo Gratias. Amen. Opus Nicolai Ienson Gallici.
M.CCCCLXXI.
Thanks be to God, Amen. The work of Nicolas Jenson, a
Frenchman. 1471.
It will be noticed that the second colophon is shorter than the first,
and it should be mentioned that in yet another book of the same kind,
the “Gloria Mulierum,” Jenson did not trouble to put his name at all,
doubtless thinking, according to the view propounded in our first
chapter, that these little vernacular books of devotion would bring him
no particular credit. If we look now at the book with the misprinted
date, “Una opera la quale si chiama Decor Puellarum, zoe Honore de
le Donzelle: la quale da regola forma e modo al stato de le honeste
donzelle,” we find this colophon:
[Illustration: Decor Puellarum. Venice: N. Jenson, 1461 for
1471.]
Anno a Christi Incarnatione MCCCCLXI per Magistrum Nicolaum
Ienson hoc opus quod Puellarum Decor dicitur feliciter
impressum est. Laus Deo.
In the year from Christ’s Incarnation 1461, by Master Nicolas
Jenson, this book, which is called Maidens’ Honor, was happily
printed. Thanks be to God.
Just as the subjects of all the books are of the same class, and just as
they are all printed in the same types and the same size, so we find a
general agreement in the colophons (as compared with those used by Jenson
in the books issued in 1470), tempered with modifications which seem to
fall into an orderly sequence. In subject the “Pianto de Christiani” and
“Parole devote de l’anima inamorata” seem to pair best together, and
the “Decor Puellarum” (regola de le honeste donzelle) with the “Palma
Virtutum” (regola a qualunque persona). The first two are exactly dated
within three days of each other, the second pair have only the date
of the year. Probably there were two sets of compositors, one of whom
printed the first pair, the other the second, and we see them starting
by calling Jenson a “most famous engraver of books,” dropping these
flowers in the “Decor Puellarum,” and quickly getting down to the curt
formula of the “Palma Virtutum.” The typographical evidence, without
further corroboration, would entitle us to feel sure that the omission
of a second X in the date MCCCCLXI was purely accidental,[4] but it
is satisfactory to find that the form of the colophon itself makes it
impossible to separate it from its fellows and unreasonable to place it
earlier than the fuller and more boastful form used in the “Pianto de
Christiani.”
Though the colophons of his vernacular books were thus already tending to
curtness in 1471, Jenson still paid some attention to those of his Latin
publications. Thus, in an edition of Suetonius’s “Lives of the Caesars”
of that year we find the quatrain:
Hoc ego Nicoleos Gallus cognomine Ienson
Impressi: mirae quis neget artis opus?
At tibi dum legitur docili Suetonius ore
Artificis nomen fac, rogo, lector ames.
M.CCCC.LXXI.
Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, I
This book have printed. Who’ll deny
The skill it shows? Then, reader kind,
The while ’tis read please bear in mind
The printer’s name with friendly thought
Who this Suetonius has wrought.
1471.
In the “De Bello Italico aduersus Gotthos” of Leonardo Aretino, printed
in the same year, we find this sentiment expressed more concisely in a
couplet which could be inserted in any book:
Gallicus hunc librum impressit Nicolaus Ienson.
Artifici grates, optime lector, habe.
Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, took
The pains to put in print this book.
Then to the craftsman, reader good,
Be pleased to show some gratitude.
Lastly, in this same year, we have two variants of a prose colophon which
contains a fine phrase of epigrammatic brevity. In an edition of the
“Familiar Letters of Cicero” it runs:
MCCCCLXXI.
Opus praeclarissimum M. T. Ciceronis Epistolarum Familiarium a
Nicolao Ienson Gallico viuentibus necnon et posteris impressum
feliciter finit.
1471.
A very notable book, the Familiar Letters of Marcus Tullius
Cicero, printed by Nicolas Jenson for this and also for future
generations, comes happily to an end.
The phrase, but slightly enlarged, recurs in the “Institutes of
Quintilian” of the same year.
Quintilianum eloquentiae fontem ab eruditissimo Omnibono
Leoniceno emendatum M. Nicolaus Ienson Gallicus viuentibus
posterisque miro impressit artificio annis M.CCCC.LXXI Mense
Maii die xxi.
Quintilian, the fountain of eloquence, corrected by the most
learned Omnibonus Leonicenus, was printed by Nicolas Jenson, a
Frenchman, with wonderful craftsmanship, for this and future
generations, in the year 1471, on the 21st day of the month of
May.
After this, until he joined John of Cologne, Jenson’s colophons become
short and featureless. Meanwhile, however, a third printer, Christopher
Valdarfer of Ratisbon, had set up a press at Venice, and toward the
close of 1470 joined in the contest of poetical colophons. His first
contribution to it appears to be these three couplets in praise of his
edition of Cicero’s “De Oratore”:
[Illustration: Cicero. De Oratore. Venice: C. Valdarfer, 1470.]
ANNO DO. M.CCCC.LXX.
Si quem oratoris perfecti audire iuuabit
Materiam: fons est hoc Ciceronis opus.
Hic tersum eloquium uelut Attica lingua refulget:
Christophori impressus hic liber arte fuit.
Cui stirps Valdarfer patria estque Ratispona tellus.
Hunc emat, orator qui uelit esse, librum.
Who’d know the perfect orator’s stock-in-trade
Only this work of Cicero let him read,
Where polished speech, like Greek, doth light impart,
And all is printed by Cristoforo’s art,
Whose clan’s Valdarfer, Ratisbon his home.
The would-be orator need but buy this tome.
In the following year he issued another volume of Cicero, containing
thirty orations, and added to it, doubtless by the hand of “Lodovico
Carbo,” his corrector, seven couplets of verse whose phrasing has somehow
impelled me to render them into disgracefully jingling rhymes:
[Illustration: Cicero. Orationes. Venice: C. Valdarfer, 1471.]
Germani ingenii quis non miretur acumen?
Quod uult Germanus protinus efficiet.
Aspice quam mira libros impresserit arte:
Quam subito ueterum tot monumenta dedit
Nomine Christophorus, Valdarfer gentis alumnus,
Ratisponensis gloria magna soli.
Nunc ingens Ciceronis opus causasque forenses,
Quas inter patres dixit et in populo,
Cernis quam recto, quam emendato ordine struxit:
Nulla figura oculis gratior esse potest.
Hoc autem illustri Venetum perfecit in urbe
Praestanti Mauro sub duce Christophoro.
Accipite hunc librum quibus est facundia cordi:
Qui te Marte colet sponte disertus erit.
M.CCCC.LXXI. LODO. CARBO.
Of praising German talent what tongue can ever tire?
For what a German wishes, ’tis done as soon as said.
The skilful printing of this book should cause you to admire.
How quickly, too, are published all these records of the dead.
’Tis Christopher who prints them, of the old Valdarfer stock,
A credit and a glory to the soil of Ratisbon;
Who issues now the speeches of great Cicero _en bloc_,
“To the Senate,” “To the People,” and his Pleadings every one.
You may see the order follows the best editorial school:
No appearance could more justly please the eye.
’Tis printed here in Venice, ’neath the noble Moro’s rule;
Who Cicero reads no other road to eloquence need try.
1471. Lodo. Carbo.
After 1471 Valdarfer moved from Venice to Milan, where books from his
press began to appear in 1474. Adam of Ammergau made some original
contributions to the poetical tradition, but in his 1472 edition of
Cicero’s Orations conveyed, and very clumsily, a couplet from Valdarfer’s
edition of the previous year:
Hoc ingens Ciceronis opus, causasque forenses
Quas inter patres dixit et in populo,
Tu quicunque leges, Ambergau natus ahenis
Impressit formis. Ecce magister Adam.
M.CCCC.LXXII.
Who prints you now the speeches of great Cicero _en bloc_,
“To the Senate,” “To the People,” and his Pleadings every one?
Know, reader, that in Ammergau is his ancestral stock;
’Tis Master Adam of that place has this edition done.
1472.
The Venetian verse tradition seems now to have settled down into a
convention that a new printer should announce his arrival in Latin
elegiacs, but need not continue the practice. Franciscus de Hailbrun
complied with it to this extent in some dull lines in an edition of the
“Quadragesimale” of Robertus de Licio in 1472; and it is in another
edition of the same work that Panzer first records three couplets which,
with the addition of a prose sentence, also constant in form, occur in
numerous books printed by Bartolommeo de Cremona:
[Illustration: Caracciolus. Quadragesimale (and several other
books). Venice: Bartolommeo of Cremona, 1472.]
Quem legis impressus dum stabit in aere caracter
Dum non longa dies uel fera fata prement,
Candida perpetue non deerit fama Cremonae.
Phidiacum hinc superat Bartholomeus ebur.
Cedite chalcographi: millesima uestra figura est,
Archetypas fingit solus at iste notas.
M.CCCC.LXXII. NICOLAO TRVNO DVCE VENETIARVM REGNANTE IMPRESSVM
FVIT HOC OPVS FOELICITER.
There is nothing very remarkable in these lines, but they are better than
most of those with which I have been wrestling, and shall be dignified,
therefore, by being rendered into prose instead of doggerel; for which
also there is another reason in the fact that the meaning, just when it
becomes interesting, is not as clear as could be wished. The best version
I can make is as follows:
While the character which you read shall remain stamped in
brass, while neither length of days nor the cruel fates destroy
it, Cremona shall not lack a continuance of glittering fame. By
this craft Bartolommeo surpasses the ivory of Pheidias. Give
place, ye writers in brass; your number is a thousand, but he
alone fashions the well-known models.
In 1472, when Nicolò Truno was ruling Doge of Venice, this book
was successfully printed.
“Chalcographi,” which I have rendered literally as “writers in brass,”
is, of course, no more than “typographers,” which means literally
“writers with type.” But what exactly were the “notas archetypas,” the
well-known models? And how did Bartolommeo of Cremona use them so as to
distinguish himself from other “chalcographi”? For a moment the obvious
answer appears to be that Bartolommeo is claiming credit for himself,
not as a printer, but as a type-founder. The explanation, however, cannot
stand in any sense which would differentiate Bartolommeo from his fellows
in the way in which a modern type-founder differs from the printers
who buy their types of him. For we know that Bartolommeo was himself
a printer; and, on the other hand, it was the rule at this period for
every printer to cast his own types, so that in doing this he would not
be accomplishing anything exceptional. If he had been a type-seller in
the modern fashion, we may be assured that he would have addressed the
chalcographers, his presumable customers, much more respectfully. I can
only imagine, therefore, that the “notas archetypas” was simply a good
font of type which Bartolommeo thought that other printers were likely to
copy.
In the editions of Virgil which he printed at Padua in 1472 (unless there
is a mistake in the date), and again in 1473, Leonardus Achates announces
himself very concisely:
Urbs Basilea mihi, nomen est Leonardus Achates:
Qui tua compressi carmina, diue Maro.
Anno Christi humanati M.CCCC.LXXII. Venet. Duce Nicol. Trono.
Basel I have for my town, for my name Leonardus Achates,
I who have printed thy lays, Virgil, thou poet divine.
In the year of Christ’s taking our manhood 1472. At Venice,
Nicolò Trono being Doge.
The verse tradition was also complied with by Jacobus de Fivizano in
a Virgil of 1472, by Jacobus Rubeus in an Ovid of 1474, and by Erhard
Ratdolt and his companions on the title-page of the Calendar of Johannes
de Monteregio in 1476. Two years later, when printing was becoming so
great an industry at Venice that such toys as colophons in verse must
have begun to appear a little undignified, an editor in the service of
John of Cologne, ordinarily a man of quite commercial colophons, burst
out into this song in his praise, at the end (of all places in the
world) of the Commentary of Bartolus de Saxoferrato on a section of the
Justinian Code:
Sacrarum occiderant immensa uolumina legum,
Proh scelus! et uanos damnabat menda labores,
Tantus in ora hominum calamosque influxerat error.
Nullus erat tantam auderet qui uincere molem,
Et dubium nullus posset qui nauibus equor
Scindere foelici cursu; nulli hec uia uiuo
Insuetumne patebat iter; mortalia nondum.
Ingenia aptarant scribendis legibus era.
Ergo noua est primus celebrandus laude Ioannes
Quem magni genuit preclara Colonia rheni:
Elysiis certe dignus post funera campis
Inuentas propter, iustus si est Iuppiter, artes.
Hic uenetis primus leges impressit in oris
Et canones, nostro grandis prouintia celo,
Quodque hominum generi cunctis uel gentibus unum
Sufficiebat opus: soli hec est palma Ioanni.
Addidit et doctis multum censoribus aurum
Solus matura ut liberarent omnia lance
Peruigiles, magnum emptori et memorabile donum.
Nam uia que erratis fuerat durissima quondam
Nunc facilem cupidis monstrat discentibus arcem.
Emptor habes careant omni qui crimine libri,
Quos securus emas procul et quibus exulat error.
Accipe et Auctori dentur sua premia laudes.
The Volumes of the Sacred Law had died,
So much were they by error damnified;
Which had so deeply steeped each mouth and pen,
To free them seemed too hard for mortal men;
Nor was there one dared hope that he might be
A happy pilot through that doubtful sea.
No feet that unaccustomed road might pass;
None yet for writing laws had moulded brass.
John of Cologne on Rhine, to him we raise,
Earnt by new merits, a new song of praise.
Yes, his invention, if Jove justice yields,
Shall win him when he’s dead Elysian Fields.
To the great profit of our realm, his hands
These laws first printed in Venetian lands;
And from that work which served for all mankind
’Tis given to John alone glory to find.
He, too, alone gave learned men much gold
That they might free each text from errors old,
And in the ready platter place such food
That the blest buyer find there nought but good.
Thus all the road, erst for men’s feet too hard,
Right to the topmost height lies now unbarred.
Buy, then, these flawless books with a light heart;
And, buying, praise the printer for his art.
With these lines, certainly more poetical than those of most verse
colophons, we may bring this chapter to a close.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
IV
PRINTERS’ COLOPHONS IN OTHER TOWNS
The examples already quoted from books printed at Mainz and Venice will
have sufficiently illustrated some of the general features which run
through early colophons—the professions of religious thankfulness and
devotion, and the desire of the printer to glorify not only the new art
but himself as its most expert practitioner. These features will recur
in other colophons we shall have occasion to quote, but there is no need
to pick out many examples from books printed in other towns specially to
illustrate them. The piety of German printers frequently prompted such
devout colophons as this which Johann Zainer at Ulm added to his edition
of the “Quodlibet” of S. Thomas Aquinas, and the one example may serve
for all:
Immensa dei clementia finitur Quodlibet liber sancti Thome
de Aquino ordinis fratrum predicatorum in eiusdem gloriam
compositus. Impressus Ulm per Iohannem czainer de Rutlingen.
Anno domini Millesimo quadringentesimo septuagesimo quinto. Pro
cuius consummatione Rex regum laudetur in secula benedictus.
Amen.
By the unbounded clemency of God there is brought to an end the
book Quodlibet of St. Thomas Aquinas, of the order of Friars
Preachers, composed for the glory of the same. Printed at
Ulm, by Johann Zainer of Reutlingen, in the year of the Lord
fourteen hundred and seventy-five. For the completion of which
may the King of kings, for ever blessed, be praised. Amen.