It does not appear that Schöffer had enjoyed opportunities for making

himself a scholarly authority, or that he ever made claim to any

special scholarly attainments. There is no record of editorial work

done by himself in the books issued from his press, as was the case

to so exceptional a degree a few years later with the books printed

by Aldus; nor has Schöffer preserved in connection with his editions

the names of the editors who supervised their publication, as came to

be the practice later with the issues of the Aldine press, of Froben

in Basel, and of Koberger in Nuremberg. As far as I can ascertain,

however, the Schöffer texts compared favourably for accuracy and for

authority with other of the earlier printed books, and it is to be

assumed, therefore, that he had been able to organise an adequate

critical staff or to secure from time to time, as required, the

services of competent scholars.

The business founded by Gutenberg, taken possession of under mortgage

by Fust, and carried on first by Fust & Schöffer, and later by Schöffer

and other associates, lasted nearly one hundred years. The first

publication was, as noted, the big _Psalterium_, printed in 1457,

and the last, an edition of the German version of the books of Livy,

printed by Ivo Schöffer in 1557.

It seems evident that while the credit for the great invention fairly

belongs to Gutenberg, and the original planning and initiative of the

business were his, a large measure of business capacity must have

belonged to his partner Fust, who had also, to be sure, the advantage

of being a capitalist to begin with, a factor as important in the

earliest time of publishing as in the present day.

One of the most definite pieces of testimony in regard to the

connection of Gutenberg with the invention of printing, testimony which

possesses special value as coming from a person possessing first-hand

knowledge of the facts, is contained in an Epilogue written in verse

by John Schöffer (son of Peter), and printed at the end of the _Livy_

published by him in 1505. It is addressed to the Emperor Maximilian,

and reads as follows:

“May your Majesty deign to accept this book which was printed at

Mayence, the town in which the admirable art of typography was

invented, in the year 1450, by John Gutenberg, and afterwards brought

to perfection at the expense, and by the labour, of John Fust and Peter

Schöffer.”

It would not belong to the plan of this historical sketch to give in

detail a record of the successive concerns which carried on throughout

Germany, with increasing rapidity and with undertakings of ever

widening importance, the business of printing and publishing. I propose

merely to present the records of a few of the earlier concerns, and to

make such reference to typical firms of later generations as may give

an impression of the gradual development of the book-trade, and as may

serve also as examples from which to judge of the development of the

idea of the literary property in Germany, and the varying positions

taken under the enactments and other governmental measures in regard to

such property.

The books printed during the first half-century were, as we shall note,

almost exclusively reissues of ecclesiastical or pagan classics, and

apart from such original work as may have been put into introductions

or notes, did not call for the labour of contemporary authors. Among

the earlier of original German publications is to be classed a German

grammar entitled _Die Leyenschul_, printed by Peter Jordan in Mayence

in 1531. This grammar, which remained for a considerable time an

authority on its subject, does not bear the name of the author or

editor.

Another of the earlier original works for the sale of which the author

may have secured some compensation was the _Astronomie_ of Joh.

Stöffler, which was printed in Ottenheim in 1513.

One of the more important of the earlier publishing concerns of Mayence

was that of Franz Behem, who printed in the ten years succeeding 1539

an important series of theological works. With the close of Behem’s

business in 1552, Mayence appears to have lost its relative importance

in connection with the work of printing and publishing.

In Strasburg, which had contested with Mayence the prestige of being

the actual birthplace of the printing-press, important publishing

undertakings were carried on from a very early date, and for a number

of years the city of Basel alone could compete with Strasburg in the

number and importance of the books issued from its presses. The two

publishing concerns whose individual enterprises and whose rivalry

with each other did so much to bring Strasburg into importance as a

factor in the German book-trade, were those of Johann Mentel and of

Heinrich Eggestein. Mentel’s first publications were a Latin Bible in

two folio volumes, which was the first Bible printed in the smaller

Gothic type; an edition of _De Doctrina Christiana_ of S. Augustine; an

edition of the _Summa_ of Thomas Aquinas; an edition of the Bible in

German, which appeared in 1466; the _Speculum Historiale_ of Vincentius

Bellovacensis, etc. Madden finds record of twenty-one publications

which can certainly be identified as Mentel’s, and which comprise in

all forty-one volumes, of which thirty-seven are in large folio. During

the time of his business activity, (1465-1478) he appears to have

published about two volumes a year.[438]

Humphreys points out that Mentel was in advance of the other German

printers of the day in first using, in place of the confused old

Gothic black letter, the clear Roman letter which was in use in Italy.

Mentel’s most important publication, the collection of the _Specula_

of S. Vincent of Beauvais, issued in 1473, in eight volumes folio,

was printed in type of the Roman letter.[439] M. Bernard, in his

_Origines de l’Imprimerie_, is of opinion that it was in printing these

theological works which were in accord with the taste of the reading

public of his day, that Mentel realised a fortune, while many of his

competitors ruined themselves in reproducing the Latin classics, the

taste for which before the close of the fifteenth century was not

sufficiently developed to ensure a remunerative sale. He was also the

first of the German printers to print descriptive catalogues of his

books. At the head of the catalogue was a notice to the following

effect: “Those who wish to possess any of these books have only to

address themselves to the sign of----.” Here a blank was left, in order

that each retail bookseller to whom the catalogue was sent might fill

in his own name and sign. Such a detail (which is, I may mention, quite

in accord with modern publishing methods) indicates that there was as

early as 1470, a well developed bookselling machinery in western and

central Germany.

Mentel’s principal rival in Strasburg was Heinrich Eggestein.

Eggestein appears to have been a man of scholarly training, and had

received from some university the degree “Magister.” To him belongs

the credit of the issue, in 1466, of the first Bible printed in

German. Important as was this work, the printer was not interested in

associating with it his imprint, and the volumes are identified as

the work of his press only by circumstantial evidence.[440] The first

work which was edited and which bears his imprint was an edition of

the _Decretum Gratiani_, printed in a gigantic folio in 1471. Before

this date, he had issued three Bibles in Latin text. The _Decretum_

was again printed by Eggestein in 1472, although the original issue

of 1471 had been promptly pirated by the enterprising Schöffer. It is

evident that it proved possible to secure for the book an immediate and

presumably remunerative sale.

Another of Eggestein’s publications in 1472 was an edition of

_Clementinæ_. In this he gives his imprint and gives notice also that

he has already issued a long series of books treating of “divine and

human law.” The last book bearing a date, issued by Eggestein is the

_Decretals_ of Innocent IV., printed in 1478.

The third Strasburg printer was George Huszner, who was originally a

goldsmith. He married the daughter of another goldsmith, Nikolaus of

Hanau, who later worked with his son-in-law as _aurifaber et pressor

librorum_.[441] The _Speculum Judiciale_ of Bishop Wilhelm Duranti,

printed by Huszner in 1473, is described by Kapp as a master-piece of

typography. This bears the name as editor of Joh. Beckenhub, who calls

himself a cleric. Martin Flach of Strasburg, whose business activity

covered the years 1475 to 1500 published something over seventy works,

which were, with hardly an exception, devoted to theology and dogma.

In 1480, was printed a magnificent edition of the Latin Bible in

four volumes, known as _Biblia Latina cum glossa ordinaria Walafridi

Strabonis et interlineari Anselmi Laudunensis_. This was issued by

Anton Koberger of Nuremberg and it has only recently been discovered

that it was printed for him by Adolph Rusch of Strasburg. While it was

by far the most noteworthy typographical undertaking that had been

completed up to that date, the printer had not thought it important

to associate his name with the volumes. Rusch was a publisher as well

as a printer, and was also a large dealer in paper, supplying this to

printers in Strasburg, Nuremberg, Basel, and elsewhere. He further

carried on a miscellaneous business as a bookseller and in purchasing

from other publishers for his miscellaneous trade supplies of other

publications, and he was accustomed to make payment for the same in

paper. He seems altogether to have been a man of very wide activities,

whose influence must have been of considerable importance in connection

with the early organisation of the German book-trade. He had married

a daughter of the Strasburg printer, Mentel, and through his wife,

inherited an interest in Mentel’s business. Rusch purchased from the

printer Amerbach, in exchange for paper stock, a portion of the edition

of S. Augustine’s _De Civitate Dei_, which appears to have shared with

certain essays of Cicero the honour of being one of the most frequently

printed books in the early lists.

One of the earlier of the Strasburg printers who gave particular

attention to works in German was Johann Reinhart, also known (from his

birthplace) as Johann Grüninger, whose list comprised German editions

of works in theology and religion, and in poetic literature, together

with a series of folk-songs and stories for the people. While his

fellow publishers were at that time, with hardly an exception, limiting

their undertakings to works planned for scholars, such as reprints

of the classics and theological works printed in Latin, Reinhart

addressed himself at once to a popular audience, and while in so doing

he was undoubtedly of service in furthering the education of his

generation, he appears also to have secured for himself satisfactory

business results. He gave particular attention to illustrated books,

securing the service of a number of noteworthy designers and engravers,

and ornamenting his books, not only with full-page illustrations,

but with elaborate initial letters and head- and tail-pieces. He is

chronicled as being the only publisher in Strasburg who, after the

Reformation was in full development, continued to print Catholic

tracts and pamphlets. As an instance of the large distribution that it

was possible to secure at the beginning of the sixteenth century for

certain classes of books, is to be noted the sale made by Reinhart in

1502 to Schönsperger, of 1000 copies of a volume of _The Lives of the

Saints_. Reinhart was one of the printers whose presses were utilised

by the great publisher Koberger of Nuremberg. In 1525, he printed for

Koberger the translation by Pirckheimer of the great Geography of

Ptolemy. In this work the translator appears himself to have retained

an interest.

There have been preserved a number of the letters which passed between

Pirckheimer, Koberger, and Reinhart, while this work was going through

the press. It appears that, notwithstanding Reinhart’s personal

supervision of the undertaking and his interest in securing for the

pages satisfactory ornamentations, Pirckheimer had found frequent

occasion for dissatisfaction and criticisms, and in his letters

there are many expressions which might have been written by authors

of to-day who were not satisfied that the printers were following

“copy” correctly. At one point, Pirckheimer says that if he could have

foreseen all the difficulties that he was to experience in securing a

correct printing for his volume, he would have burned the manuscript

rather than have put it to press.

Reinhart points out, on his part, however, that, in the first

place, the manuscript had not been prepared in such manner that the

compositors could follow it correctly, and that, secondly, he had given

no little of his own personal attention to re-arranging and re-shaping

the “copy” in order that the text might be as correct as possible.

Pirckheimer was also unhappy in connection with certain of the designs

with which the printer had ornamented his text, and expresses the wish

that in place of using Italian designers, the printer had given the

work to good Germans.[442]

From the middle of the eleventh century, Cologne had competed with

Mayence for the distinction of being the most important trade centre of

Germany. Its favourable position made it a natural point of exchange

for business operations between the dealers of the North Sea and those

of the Mediterranean. To Cologne came from the south by way of the

passes of the Alps, the wares, not only of Italy, but those which had

been brought from the East by the vessels of Venice and of Genoa, while

from the great Russian mart of Novgorod and the enterprising Hanseatic

city Lübeck, were brought the goods of Russia and of the far North.

In Cologne were also ware-houses under the charge of trading guilds

of their several nations, whither were brought the goods of England,

France, and the Low Countries.

It was not only in mercantile undertakings, however, that the city had

secured for itself prestige. The University, founded in the early part

of the fourteenth century on the model of that of Paris, was considered

to have surpassed in the importance of its scholarly work the older

institutions of Heidelberg, Prague, and Vienna; and it remained for

many years at the head of the scholarship of Germany and a particular

exponent of the doctrinal theology of the Catholic Church. Cologne

was, therefore, recognised by the early printers as an exceptionally

favourable centre for the prosperous development of their work, and the

printing and publishing undertakings of the city assumed at an early

date very considerable importance.

The existing library of the city contains over 400 works, principally

theological, but including also volumes in jurisprudence and in higher

class instruction, which were produced by Cologne printers before the

close of the fifteenth century. At this time the University contained

no less than 4000 students, and the requirements of these students for

text-books and of their instructors for works of reference, must have

given a very decided impetus to the work of the earlier publishers,

while the trade connections possessed by Cologne with the cities of

the North and East furnished channels through which the publishers

were able to extend the demand for their books. The first introduction

of the printing-press into Cologne was due to the sacking of the

City of Mayence in 1462, when Ulrich Zell, of Hanau, who like Peter

Schöffer, called himself a _clericus moguntinensis_, and who had

been an apprentice of Gutenberg, having been driven from Mayence,

brought to Cologne the invention of his master. While it is possible

that his printing undertakings began earlier, the first dated work

issued from his press was published in 1466, and was an edition of

the _Liber Johannes Chrysostomi super Psalmo Quinquagesimo_. This was

promptly followed by a volume containing the _De Officiis_ of Cicero.

No publishing list of the period appears to have progressed very far

without including one or more of the essays of Cicero. The latest book

published by Zell was a commentary by Girard Hardervicus on the new

Logic of Albertus Magnus. The list of books known to have been produced

by Zell includes no less than 120 titles, but a large number of these

were pamphlets of moderate compass, and only eighteen were in the folio

form which was the standard of the time.

A printer whose work was in part contemporary with that of Zell, was

Johann Koelhoff, who included in his list eighty publications, of which

seven were in the German tongue. These last are spoken of by Kapp as

possessing distinctive interest for theologians, because they included

some of the earliest printed examples of the Low-German dialect.

Bartholomäus Unkel, whose list included in all twenty works, printed,

in 1480, in the Low-German dialect an edition of the _Sachsenspiegel_,

a work which found place during the following century in the lists of

very many of the German publishers.

As before mentioned, the influence of the University was given strongly

to the support of Orthodox doctrines of the Catholic Church, and

doctrinal books which did not conform to the university standard of

orthodoxy were not printed in Cologne. It is probable that in the

beginning of the publishing operations, no direct censorship was

attempted on the part of the theologians of the University, but it

seems evident that they were able notwithstanding, to discourage

publications the opinions of which they might consider pernicious.

The name of Franz Birckmann, whose printing operations began in 1507,

occupies an important place in the list of the publishers of Cologne,

and his business relations with Paris and his connections with the

book-dealers of London have brought his name into reference in much

of the correspondence of his time. Birckmann appears, at the outset

at least, not to have himself been a printer. His first book, the

_Missale Coloniense_, was printed for him in Paris. Kirchhoff speaks

of Birckmann as possessing a fine business capacity and exceptional

enterprise and creative genius, and refers to him as carrying on his

undertakings now in London and Canterbury, then in Bruges, Liége,

or Frankfort; again in Cologne, Antwerp, Tübingen, and Basel. The

list of the places visited by this enterprising publisher of the

time serves to give an indication as to the centres where literary

activities were the most important.[443] Erasmus, writing on the 21st

of December, 1520, from Canterbury, to his friend Andreas Ammonius in

Rotterdam, speaks of Birckmann as being ready himself to undertake

the introduction into England of any books that might be called for.

Birckmann appears finally to have established in London a permanent

business office, for the volume, _Graduale ad Usum Sarum_, which was

printed for him in Paris in 1528, bears as an imprint, Franz Birckmann

of St. Paul’s Church Yard.[444]

This early connection of the publishers of Cologne with London is of

special interest in connection with the record of William Caxton, the

first English printer, who was said to have learned his art in Cologne

and to have brought it thence (by way of Bruges) to London. In the same

series of letters to Ammonius, Erasmus speaks of giving to Birckmann

the manuscript of his _Proverbia_, of his _Plutarch_, and the _Lucian_,

in order that he might arrange to have the books printed in Paris, by

Jodocus Badius. For some reason, not stated, Birckmann decided not to

place these works in the hands of Badius, but took them to Froben, in

Basel, which was the means of bringing Erasmus into connection with

that publisher, with whom he had satisfactory intimate relations for so

large a portion of his life.

As has been stated in another chapter, the theologians of the Faculty

of the Sorbonne had taken a strong stand against the writings of

Erasmus, and it is very possible that Badius was unable to secure a

permit or a privilege for these volumes.

Birckmann seems, at about this time, to have secured some interest, if

not in the general business of Froben, at least in a certain number

of his publishing undertakings. In 1526, Birckmann came into trouble

with the authorities of Antwerp on account of his having sold there

an edition of the translation of S. Chrysostom, which had been made

by Ökolampadius, and which had come under the ban of the Antwerp

censorship. The publisher succeeded in freeing himself from the

penalties imposed by the Antwerp magistracy only after a long contest

and a considerable expenditure of money.[445] It is a little difficult

to understand the precise grounds of the opposition raised by the

Antwerp censors, and I have not been able to get at the details of the

case. It is of interest as one of the earliest examples of censorship

upon the press which occurred in Northern Europe. Kapp is of opinion

that the censorship exercised by the Church authorities in Cologne was

more rigorous than that instituted by the authorities in Bavaria. It

seems certain that the Catholic University of the Rhine was able to

exercise no little influence in shaping the direction of the earlier

literary undertakings of North Germany.

Caxton’s sojourn in Cologne must have been some time between the years

1471 and 1474. Further details concerning his work in Bruges and his

later publishing undertakings in London will be given in the chapter on

printing in England. During the latter part of the fifteenth century

and the earlier years of the sixteenth, Cologne printers secured for

themselves an unenviable reputation as unauthorised reprinters of

works which were the result of the scholarly labours and investment of

publishers elsewhere. They issued editions as nearly in _fac-simile_ as

might be of a number of the classics published in Venice by Aldus, and

they followed these, later, with the imitations of the scholarly texts

published by Plantin in Antwerp and by the Elzevirs in Leyden.

While it was the case that these texts, with rare exceptions, were the

work of authors dead centuries before, and that in the works themselves

the original publishers could rightfully claim no control, it is to

be borne in mind that the production of the earlier editions of such

classics had nevertheless called for a very considerable expenditure

of capital and of labour, as well in the securing of the codices

used as “copy” by the type-setters as in the revision and editing of

these codices by the scholarly commentators employed, and also in the

preparation of notes, introductions, and elucidations for the volumes.

The risk and investment incurred by Aldus in the production of his

edition of _Aristotle_, and the exceptional character of the original

labour invested by the publisher in such a work are grounds for

considering that his contention for the control of the text which came

from his printing-office, at least for a certain term of years, was as

well founded as might be a contention of to-day for a book which was in

its entirety the work of a contemporary writer.

The city whose publishing operations are next to be considered in

the chronological record is Basel. For a number of years after the

invention of printing, Basel remained one of the most important

publishing centres, not only of the German Empire (to which at this

time the city belonged), but of Europe. Its position on a direct line

of communication between Italy and Germany had given it an importance

in connection with the general trade of Europe, and the facilities

which furthered this general trade became of value also in connection

with the production of books. The University of Basel, founded in 1460,

speedily brought to the city men devoted to scholarly pursuits, many of

whom took an early interest in the work of the printing-press, and were

ready to give their co-operation to publishers like Froben, not only in

editing manuscripts for the press, but even in the routine work of the

printing-offices in the proof-reading and correcting. In 1501, at the

time Basel broke away from the imperial control, the city had already

secured for itself a cosmopolitan character, and had become a kind of

meeting place for the exchange of thought as well as for the goods of

representatives of all nations. At this time there were in the city no

less than twenty-six important publishing and printing concerns. The

earliest book bearing a date and an imprint which was issued from a

Basel printing-press was an edition of the _Gregorii Magni Moralia in

Jobum_, which appeared in 1468. But one or two copies exist, of which

the one that is in the best preservation is contained in the National

Library of Paris.

Printing was introduced into Basel by Berthold Ruppel, who, in 1455,

had been an apprentice with Fust. The first work which is identified

as Berthold’s, but which does not bear a date, is the _Repertorium

Vocabulorum Exquisitorum_ of Conrad de Mure. The difficulties which

have attended all organisations of labour appear to have begun at an

early date in Basel, as there is record of a strike of the compositors

occurring as early as 1471. This strike lasted for a number of months

and was finally adjusted by the arbitration of the authorities of the

town, certain concessions being made on the part of both the master

and the employees. The magistrate issued a decision or mandate to the

effect that on a certain date the workmen must return to their shops

and accept the authority of their masters, and this order appears to

have been accepted. It does not appear what course could have been

taken to force the men to their work in case they might still have been

recalcitrant. The fact that a difference between the printers and their

men should have been a matter of such general importance indicates that

already within twenty years of the beginning of printing in Germany,

the business in Basel had assumed large proportions.

In 1474, there was printed in Basel an edition of the _Sachsenspiegel_,

a work of popular character, which can share with the Bible and with

different essays of Cicero, the honour of being the most frequently

published book in Germany during the first quarter century of printing.

Between 1478 and 1514, Johann Amerbach, one of the most scholarly of

the early editors, printers, and publishers of Germany, made Basel his

headquarters. His work was, however, by no means limited to Basel,

as he co-operated with Koberger in Nuremberg and with other of his

contemporaries in editorial and publishing responsibilities in other

cities.

His most important publication in Basel was a series of the works of

the Church Fathers. In carrying these books through the press, he was

able to secure the co-operation of a number of the well known scholars

of the time, including Beatus Rhenanus, Dodo, Conon, Wyler, Pellikan,

and, above all, his old instructor, Heynlin.

Before beginning business in his own name in Basel, Amerbach had

co-operated with Koberger in the production of the great Bible with the

commentaries of Hugo, and he was also in active relations with Rusch

of Strasburg. The last book which was printed with his own name is an

edition of the _Decretum Gratiani_, which appeared in 1512. His edition

of the works of S. Jerome, left unfinished at the time of his death,

was completed by his pupil and successor, Johann Froben.

Froben, who was like his master, not only a printer but a scholar of

wide attainments, did more, possibly, than any printer of his time,

except Aldus of Venice, to further through his publishing undertakings

the development of scholarship and of literature. He appears to have

had a thorough knowledge, not only of Latin, which was common to all

the scholars of his time, but of Greek and Hebrew, which were rarities

even in university centres. It was the case with Froben, as with Aldus,

that he himself assumed the task of preparing for the press the texts

of a number of works issued by him, a task which included a comparison

of manuscripts, in order to secure the most correct readings, and such

thorough knowledge of the text as would make possible the correction

of errors, not only of typography, but of statement. Froben’s work and

character have been commemorated by the loving words of Erasmus, who

during the last twenty years of Froben’s life held with him the closest

relations of friendship as well as of business.

It was through Froben that the larger publishing undertakings of

Erasmus were carried on, undertakings which were later in part shared

with Aldus of Venice. Froben’s work was done exclusively for scholarly

readers. His imprint appears upon no book printed in German, while

the list of books issued by him during the thirty-six years of his

business activity includes no less than 257 works, nearly all of which

were of large compass and distinctive importance. Erasmus himself,

ranking at that time possibly as the greatest scholar of Europe, was

ready to give to Froben his assistance in supervising texts for the

compositors and in the corrections of the proofs. The details of the

business arrangements entered into by publishers like Froben with

their scholarly assistants have unfortunately not been preserved, but

it would appear as if in many cases these scholars had given their

services as a labour of love, and solely with a view to furthering the

development of scholarship and literature. Erasmus was for a number of

years an inmate of Froben’s house, and it is probable that he received

a certain annual stipend for his editorial services, in addition to

the returns paid to him from the sale of his books. The most important

of the issues from the Froben press in the matter of popular sale

and of business success were, as indicated, the writings of Erasmus.

Erasmus, in fact, was possibly the first author who was able, after

the invention of printing to secure from the sale of his books any

substantial returns. It is evident from the various references made by

Erasmus that those returns were sufficient to make him substantially

independent, notwithstanding the fact that piracy editions of his books

were printed in Paris, in Cologne, and elsewhere.

Further information concerning the publishing undertakings of Erasmus

will be found in the chapter devoted to him.

Pamphilus Gengenbach, described as the first dramatist of the sixteenth

century, and who was also a poet, undertook between the years 1509 and

1522, the business of a printer. We do not learn with what success.

A more noteworthy printer of Basel of the same period, noteworthy at

least from the point of view of commercial success, was Langendorf.

He built up his business by the publication of piracy editions of the

writings of Luther, out of which he is reported to have made large

profits.[446]

The first German printer who appears to have received honours from

royalty was a certain Heinrich Petri, who was carrying on business

between 1520 and 1579, and who in 1556, in recognition of his services

to the community, was knighted by Charles V.

As before indicated, the work of the printers and publishers of

Basel was very much furthered by the presence and by the intelligent

co-operation of the members of its University Faculty. The University

was of service not only in making a certain important market for

editions of scholarly books, but, as a more important consideration,

in giving to the publishers the aid of scholarly advisers, editors,

and proof-correctors. By the close of the fifteenth century, Basel had

secured so great a prestige for the production of accurate editions of

important texts, and for the beauty and costliness of its typography,

that commissions came to its printers from all parts of Europe.

In 1510, Sir Thomas More, desiring, as he writes, to secure a European

circulation for his books, causes the same to be printed in Basel,

while during the years between 1490 and 1520, the popes send to Basel

printing-offices the orders for their commercial printing.

The next city in chronological order to be considered as a publishing

centre is Zurich, in which printing began in 1504.

The first of the Zurich printers whose name has been preserved is

Christ Froschauer, who is known principally through his association

with Zwingli. Froschauer, who devoted himself earnestly to the cause

of the Calvinists, had a religious as well as a business interest

in securing a wide circulation for the works of Zwingli and his

associates, and together with these works, he printed editions of

the Bible, not only in German, but in French, Italian, Flemish,

and English. Froschauer’s editions were the first Bibles printed

on the Continent in the English language. For these Bibles, which

were distributed at what to-day would be called popular prices, very

considerable sales were secured, and the presses of Froschauer were

thus made an important adjunct to the work of the Reformation.

In Augsburg, the printing business of which began to assume importance

in 1468, the interests of the publishers were, on the other hand,

largely associated with the cause of the Roman Church. The first book

with an Augsburg imprint and date was issued by Zainer, and was an

edition of the _Meditationes Vitae Domini Nostri Jesu Christi_. In

1470, was published by Schüssler a Latin edition of _Josephus_, and in

1477, Sorg, who was one of the most active of the Augsburg publishers,

issued the book of the Council of Constance, which contained no less

than 1200 wood-cuts, presenting the 1156 coats-of-arms which were

represented at the Council.

The most famous of the printer-publishers of Augsburg was, according

to Kapp, Ratdolt, whose list comprised principally mathematical works

and books of religious music. His edition of _Euclid_, issued in 1482,

constituted the first European edition of the Syracusan mathematician.

The sales of the orthodox theological books, which constituted a

special interest of the Augsburg publishers, were largely checked by

the Reformation. George Willer, an enterprising Augsburg bookseller,

who sold not only his own publications but those of other German

publishers, is to be credited with the printing of the first classified

catalogue known to Germany.

Among the earlier publications of Ulm, the most important was the

geography of Ptolemy, issued by Holl in 1484, with important maps.

The eminence of the city of Nuremberg in the work of publishing is

principally due to the scholarly enterprise of one family, that of

the Kobergers, whose work began about 1470. Antonius Koberger, the

first of the line, is grouped with Froben of Basel and with Aldus of

Venice for the commercial importance of his undertakings, and above

all for the scholarly ideal of his business operations. His active

business work covered the years 1470-1503. Among his earlier important

publications was an edition of _Thomas Aquinas_, issued in 1474, and

of the _Consolations of Philosophy_ of Boëthius, printed in 1475. The

latter was the first printed edition of a book which had been for

nearly a thousand years famous among books in manuscript, and which

possibly shares with S. Augustine’s _City of God_ the reputation of

being the work most frequently found in the old monastery libraries.

By the year 1500, Koberger was utilising no less than twenty-four

presses, and undoubtedly was sending out annually more books than any

other publisher of his time. He had branches or agencies in Frankfort,

Paris, and Lyons, a business correspondence in the Netherlands,

Italy, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and England, as well as, of course,

throughout Germany. In respect to the bulk of the business done by

him and of the commercial success secured, he was a greater publisher

than either Aldus or Froben, his two most famous contemporaries. The

work of Aldus, which is considered in detail in another chapter, was,

however, distinctive on the ground of the special difficulties to be

overcome and of his enterprise and scholarly ambition in the production

of Greek literature. The interest of the work of Froben centres partly

in his close friendship and long association with Erasmus, and in the

fact that, as the publisher for Erasmus, he secured the first important

copyright returns for a contemporary author which had been known in the

record of publishing.

Koberger gave special attention to the production of Bibles and of

works in orthodox theology. The latter division of his list was largely

interfered with by the increasing influence of the Lutherans.

Koberger took the initiative in the production of books containing

expensive and elaborate illustrations, and his illustrated editions

will compare more favourably with those of Plantin and with the other

publishers of the Low Countries, than is the case with the issues of

any other German publisher. Nuremberg had always been the centre of art

interests, and there appear to have been in the town many designers

whose services could be secured for the production of wood-cuts.

The great German Bible, published by Koberger in 1483, filled with

artistic illustrations engraved on wood, compares not unfavourably with

the illustrated Bible issued by Plantin fifty years later.

The _Schedelsche Chronik_, published in 1493, contained no less than

2000 wood-cuts prepared by the Nuremberg artists, Wohlgemut and

Pleydenwurf. After the work of the Reformers became active, the presses

of Nuremberg were occupied for some years in issuing controversial

tracts and pamphlets upholding the orthodox views of the Church; while,

under an edict of the magistrates issued in 1520, the printers of

Nuremberg were forbidden to print and the dealers were forbidden to

sell the writings of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and their associates.

Notwithstanding this prohibition, however, there was enough sympathy

with the Reformation among many of the Nuremberg printers to keep

them interested in the surreptitious production (under risk of fine,

confiscation, and imprisonment) of very many of the Protestant tracts

of the times. While the Catholic tracts were, however, catalogued in

due course and openly sold, the Protestant pamphlets had to be smuggled

in and out of the city and disposed of under various covers and

precautions.

In giving chronological consideration to certain of the distinctive

publishing centres and printer-publishers of Germany, it is necessary

at this time to refer to the important undertakings of the Brothers

of Common Life, whose work in the manuscript period has already been

described.

As in the earlier manuscript publishing, the Brothers had interested

themselves particularly in reaching with their books the common people,

and had for this purpose produced their versions in the folk dialects.

When, therefore, they had replaced the _scriptoria_ of their Houses

with well organised printing-offices, they devoted their presses

mainly to the production of devotional books, and of books of general

instruction planned for the service and information of the middle and

lower classes, and printed in the vernacular.

While I have not found record of the business results secured through

these printing-offices established by the Brothers, it seems probable,

in view of the excellent distributing machinery they possessed for

their output, and from the fact that they were almost the first among

printers to prepare publications expressly for the use of the lower

and middle classes, that they secured from the sales of their books

satisfactory business returns, so that the profits produced by their

presses may easily have formed an important part of the resources and

the income of the Order. Their first printing-presses were established

in Marienthal in 1468, in Brussels and in Rostock in 1476, and in

Nuremberg in 1479. In 1490, there were no less than sixty different

printing establishments carried on under the supervision of the

Brothers. I am not sufficiently familiar with the various phases of

the complex history of the Reformation to be able to speak definitely

concerning the influence exercised upon the controversies and the

contest of the time by the publications of the Brothers. It is my

impression that these publications remained on the whole orthodox, but

that they represented the more liberal wing of Catholic Orthodoxy.

The city of Leipzig, which a century after the invention of printing

became the centre of the book-trade of Germany, and the most important

book-producing city in the world, began its printing somewhat later

than the other German cities whose work has already been referred to.

The earliest printing-press set up in Leipzig was that of an anonymous

printer who issued, in 1481, an edition of the essay of the Dominican

Annius von Viterbo, entitled _Glosa Super Apocalipsim_. The second

Leipzig publication, also issued without imprint, was an edition of the

fifteen astrological propositions of Martin Polich. The first Leipzig

publisher whose name is recorded is Markus Brandis, who issued, in

1484, a volume entitled _Regimen Sanitatis_, which was the work of

Archbishop Albicius of Prague, who had died in 1427. It is not easy

to decide on what basis these first three publications of the future

publishing mart were selected, and it is difficult to understand how

a remunerative sale could have been depended upon for any one of the

three.

By the year 1513, the production of Breviaries had become an important

interest with the Leipzig presses. A printer named Lotter secured

a reputation in the earlier years of the sixteenth century for the

excellence of his typography, and was employed by the Archbishop of

Heller in printing the Breviaries and the Missals of the Dioceses

of Brandenburg. In 1492, a certain Gregor Werman printed _Sacrarum

Historiarum Opus_. The name of the author does not appear in connection

with the work. In 1497, Bötticher issued an edition of Virgil’s

_Bucolics_, the first classic which bears a Leipzig imprint.

By the year 1495, the book-trade of Leipzig had assumed very

considerable proportions, not only in connection with printing and

publishing, but in the organisation of machinery for collecting and

distributing the publications of other cities. In this branch of the

book business, Leipzig was already beginning to rival Frankfort. The

booksellers’ association, organised in 1525, is, at the present time,

370 years later, the most effective and intelligently managed trade

organisation that the world has known. Leipzig publishers gave from an

early period special attention to the printing of the controversial

literature of the Reformation, and, as was natural from their close

relations with Wittenberg, the sympathies of the larger proportion of

the printers were in accord with the Lutherans.

Under the trade restrictions established by Duke George of Saxony, who

was a Catholic, and whose reign covered the period between 1524 and

1533, the work of the Protestant printers was very seriously hampered,

and the whole book-trade of Leipzig was affected. The writings of the

Reformers were repressed as far as practicable by rigorous censorship,

while those of the Romanists found few buyers. Lotter, the son of the

first printer of that name, removed his printing-office to Wittenberg,

where he continued, though still under the difficulties of a rigorous

supervision, to distribute the writings of the Reformers. The

magistracy of Leipzig, appreciating the importance of the book-trade,

attempted in the first place to secure for its operations the necessary

protection. Later, however, it was compelled, under pressure from the

Duke, to put into effect the ducal regulations for supervision and

censorship, and two ecclesiastical censors, appointed under the ducal

authority, secured the aid of the city officials in making examination

of the books printed, and in confiscating or cancelling all heretical

works found in the book-shops of either Leipzig or Dresden.

Under the edict issued in 1528, all books printed by Vogel, Goltz, and

Schramm of Wittenberg, were forbidden to be offered for sale in Leipzig

or Dresden, and were forbidden transportation to the Frankfort Fair.

The immediate result of these anti-reform operations of the Church and

of the Duke was the practical destruction for the time being of the

book-trade of Leipzig.

In 1539, a printer of Leipzig, named Michel Wohlrabe, secured for

himself notoriety through the extent of his piracy publications. He

issued editions of the Lutheran Bible and of other writings of the

Reformers, in the face, not only of the claims of these writers to

control their own publications, but of the prohibition of Duke George

against the production of any Lutheran literature whatever. After

the death of George, however, there came a change in regard to the

influence of the ducal government, and at the request of the Elector

John Frederic, an edict was issued forbidding the further printing in

Leipzig of any anti-Lutheran literature. This removed one difficulty in

the way of Wohlrabe’s operations, and Luther and his friends found that

they were helpless, in the conditions which then obtained in the law

and in the book-trade, to prevent the circulation of these unauthorised

editions.

Luther’s complaints, referred to further on, were principally directed,

as it must be remembered, not against the loss of profits to himself,

but to the injury to the community and the grievance to the writers in

having books circulated in an unrevised and incorrect text.

[Illustration]

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.