THE ELZEVIRS OF LEYDEN AND AMSTERDAM.
1587-1688.
THE name of Elzevir has for more than two centuries been a familiar one
to collectors of choice books. These Dutch printer-publishers of the
seventeenth century were able to associate their imprint with certain
publications of such distinctive typographical excellence as to ensure
for the editions known as “Elzevirs” a prestige that has endured to the
present day. Aldus alone among the early publishers has had a similar
fortune, and while the “Aldine” editions are, of course, in respect
to their number and to their typographical excellence, much less
important than the “Elzevirs,” it must be remembered that having been
issued more than a century earlier, their production called for a much
larger measure of originating capacity and initiative on the part of
their printer-publisher. The principal authority on the history of the
Elzevirs is a comprehensive and carefully written monograph of Alphonse
Willems, published in Brussels in 1880.
Louis Elzevir, who, as far as its publishing undertakings are
concerned, was the founder of the family, had been brought up as a
binder in the Flemish University town of Louvain. He was a Protestant,
and in 1580, when existence for Protestants had been made difficult
in the Catholic provinces of Flanders, Elzevir, in company with
hundreds of others of his faith, made his way across the border to
Holland, and settled, with his family, at Leyden. He was at this time
about forty years of age. Leyden was, in 1580, next to Amsterdam,
the most considerable and the most important city in Holland. The
heroic resistance that its citizens had made during the long siege by
the Spaniards had earned fame for the city throughout all Protestant
Europe, while the University, which had been founded by William the
Silent in commemoration of the glory of the struggle, had at once
secured for itself a prestige among the scholars of Europe, and in
making Leyden a centre for the literary activities of the Dutch
provinces, had given a great incentive to its publishing and printing
trade.
Louis Elzevir found at Leyden a considerable group of Flemish
Protestants who had, like himself, found it wise to get away from the
rule of the Spanish soldiers and of the Roman ecclesiastics who were
dominating Flanders. Among these exiles were certain men whose names
became known, later, in connection with literature or with the work
of the University, such as Vulcanius, Drusius, d’Audenard, Lipsius,
Stevin, Heinsius, Baudius, Polyander, and Silvius, the first Printer to
the University.
Elzevir began work as a book binder for the students and instructors of
the University, adding to this business, a little later, a book-selling
shop. The undertaking proved, however, unsuccessful. During the
troublous times in which the new nation was still struggling against
the power of Spain for the right to exist, the number of students in
the University was at best but limited, and in Leyden as in Heidelberg,
Erfurt, and other of the German universities of the time, the practice
of hiring or borrowing text-books, or of arranging in some manner to
make one or two volumes serve for the requirements of an entire class,
must have interfered not a little with the possibility of securing a
living from the post of University bookseller.
Louis found himself, therefore, obliged to give up his first place of
business, but he was not willing to confess himself defeated. During
his brief experience as a bookseller, he had been able to impress
himself favourably upon some of the authorities of the University, and
in his present distress he applied to them for help. The University
council, recognising the value for higher education of the service
to be rendered by a skilled and conscientious bookseller, gave him
permission to construct within the limits of the University court a
small book-shop, and authorised Elzevir to announce himself officially
as the bookseller, and, later, as the publisher, to the University.
With this fresh starting point, Louis succeeded, after some years of
persistent and painstaking labour, in creating an assured business
foundation. He had never mastered the art of printing, and the
typographical work of the publications issued with his name was done
under contract with different printers, and presented no feature of
special excellence or distinctiveness. The works selected, however,
for Elzevir’s publishing list, together with the books selected by him
through Frankfort and Paris for sale in his shop, gave evidence of a
good literary and scholarly ideal and of a continually widening range
of knowledge of existing literature.
His correspondence throughout France, Germany, and Italy brought
the name of the new University to the knowledge of many literary
circles, and established for Leyden and for the towns of Holland which
depended upon Leyden for their foreign literature, connections with
the book-producing centres of Europe, connections which were never
thereafter to be severed. Louis was, during the greater part of his
lifetime, the only publisher and bookseller of Holland having such
foreign relations. At the time when the new State was securing through
the force of arms and the skill of its ambassadors the political
recognition from the Courts of Europe upon which its continued
existence depended, its literary representative, Louis Elzevir, was, in
like manner, securing for Dutch scholarship and for Dutch publishing
enterprise an honourable recognition from the scholars and with the
book-trade of Europe.
The first work published by Louis as a venture of his own was an
edition of _Eutropius_, issued in 1592. It was, however, not until
after 1594 that his publications began to appear with any regularity.
In 1595, he first utilised as a trade-mark the design of an eagle
grasping in its claw seven darts, an emblem which was retained by the
House for nearly a third of a century.
The name of Louis Elzevir is chronicled for the first time, in 1595,
in the list of publishers offering books at the Fair in Frankfort.
From the year 1602 he appears to have made regular annual sojourns in
Paris. In the _Journal_ of Pierre de Lestoile, under date of August,
1609, is a reference to a purchase made by him from Elvisier (_sic_) of
Leyden, of a treatise (by Grotius) entitled _Mare Liberum_, together
with certain orations of Heinsius and of Baudius. Lestoile goes on to
say that the said Elvisier had described to him the bequest recently
made by Baudius to the public library of Leyden of his collection of
books, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, Persian, and
Armenian, a collection estimated by said Elvisier as worth not less
than three thousand crowns. It would appear from this reference that
the scholars and the publishers of Leyden must have had available for
their use an exceptionally comprehensive reference library.
The more distinctive work of the Elzevirs began, however, only
after the death of Louis, which occurred in 1617. He left six sons,
two of whom were carrying on book-shops in Utrecht and The Hague,
in affiliation with the present concern in Leyden. One was in the
service of the Dutch East India Company, and a fourth had adopted
the profession of an artist. The eldest and the youngest, Matthew and
Bonaventure, joined hands to carry on the business of their father, a
business which they were able very largely to extend and develop. The
form of imprint, _ex officina Elzeviriana_, dates from the year 1617,
when the two young men assumed the direction of the concern.
At the time the two young Flemings were beginning work with their
publishing operations, the independence of the Dutch Republic, though
not yet formally acknowledged by Spain, was an assured fact, and the
territory of the seven United Provinces was free alike from invaders
and from civil strife. The Thirty Years’ War was, however (in 1618),
just beginning in Germany, and until the peace of Westphalia, in 1648,
the business connections of dealers in books with the book-trade
centres in Frankfort, Leipzig, Cologne, etc., were, in common with
all trade operations on the Continent, very much interfered with. The
energy of the Dutch traders, however, repressed in one direction,
found vent in another. Dutch fleets overcame the Spanish naval forces
in the Pacific and transferred to the Dutch the control of many of
the Spanish possessions in the East, while the trade between the
Mediterranean and the North of Europe was largely transferred from
Venice and Genoa to Amsterdam and Harlem. The devastation that had been
brought upon Antwerp during the struggle with Spain, and the migration
to the provinces of the North of thousands of the Protestants who
had constituted a very important portion of the more intelligent and
enterprising of the inhabitants of Flanders and Brabant, had helped
to develop in the cities of the Dutch Republic the industries and the
commerce of which Antwerp and Bruges had so long been the centre.
While for a large part of Europe the Thirty Years’ War meant a
throttling, or at least a serious hampering, of its trade, the
commerce of the Dutch flourished behind the guns of their fighting
vessels. With the expansion of the ambition and of the material
resources of the new nation, came a rapid development of its
intellectual activities and of the productive work of its scholars and
writers.
The Elzevirs had (as would naturally be the case with men who were
exiles on the ground of their faith) associated themselves with the
stricter and more earnest of the Calvinists of their adopted country.
Bonaventure, the youngest of the sons of the first Louis, makes various
references in his correspondence to the acceptance of and his cordial
sympathy with the creed of the Calvinists as formulated by the Synod
of Dort. The first publication which bore his individual imprint was
a work of religious controversy bearing the rather ponderous title,
_Censura ne Confessionem sive Declarationem Sententiæ eorum qui in
Fœderato Belgio remonstrantes vocantur, super Præcipues Articules
Christianæ Religionis, A. SS. Theol. Professoribus Academiæ Leidensis
Instituta. 1626. Cum Privilegio._
Bonaventure married the daughter of a zealous Calvinist preacher, and
he himself remained until his death an important lay member of the
Council of the Ancients of the Walloon Church, a council which was
charged not only with the government of the Church itself, but with a
large measure of responsibility in connection with both the spiritual
and the civil administration of the community.
The intellectual ferment of which the bitter theological controversies
that raged about the name and the doctrines of Arminius were an
evidence (or a result), stimulated the production of books and
furthered the habit of reading among many classes of the people to
whom printed matter had previously been comparatively unfamiliar. The
period immediately succeeding the Synod of Dort witnessed an enormous
increase in the list of publications by Dutch writers. The views of
the Remonstrants and of their opponents the Contra-Remonstrants on
the famous five points of predestination, redemption, depravity,
conversion, and perseverance, required for their adequate setting forth
a long series both of folios and of pamphlets. On these and other
grounds, the year 1618 proved to be an exceptionally favourable period
for the beginning of a great publishing concern, and the two Elzevirs
showed themselves fully capable of taking advantage effectively of
the opportunity. The printing-office in Leyden appears to have been
completely organised early in the year 1618. Its first immediate
director was Isaac, the grandson of Louis. In 1625, he retired from the
concern, leaving both the printing and the publishing business in the
hands of his uncle Bonaventure and his brother Abraham. The year 1626
is considered by Willems to have marked the most brilliant period in
the long record of the House, although in later years a longer series
of important works was produced. The productions of the Elzevir Press
during the next two or three years were in part devoted to the theology
of the period (such as the acts of the National Synod), but were
principally represented by the great editions of the classics for which
the Elzevir imprint will always remain famous.
In 1625, the Elzevirs took over the printing-office of Erpenius, who
was at the time the only printer in the Netherlands, and one of the few
in Europe, who possessed any Oriental fonts. In 1629, they initiated
with _Horace_ and _Ovid_ the series of Latin classics in sixteenmo, a
form which followed very fairly the proportions of the famous series of
Aldus. In 1641, they began, with the issue of _The Cid_, a series of
contemporary French drama, and in 1642, with the works of Regnier, a
series of the chief monuments of French literature.
Bonaventure and Abraham died in the same year, 1652, but their sons,
John and Daniel, were already of sufficient age and of sufficient
training to assume the direction of affairs. Among the earlier of the
works issued by these two, were an edition of the _Imitation of Christ_
and one of the _Psalms_, which are described by the enthusiastic
Willems as “jewels of typography.” In 1655, Daniel transferred himself
to Amsterdam, where he was associated with his cousin Louis. John’s
death came a year or two later, leaving in Leyden no member of the
Elzevir family. John’s widow, Eva van Alphen, thereupon made herself
the head of the printing and publishing concern, and was able also to
retain control of the business of the University. The activity of the
publishing lessened during the following few years, but the excellence
of the work turned out by the printing-office seems not materially to
have suffered, and a number of the more important publications issued
with the imprint of the Elzevir firm in Amsterdam, were manufactured
in the Press of the Elzevir widow in Leyden. After the death of
Eva, in 1681, there was, however, a rapid deterioration not only in
the activity of the publishing, but in the work turned out by the
printing-office. Her son Abraham appears to have been both ignorant
and incapable. His business was before long limited to the printing of
the University theses, and there were at the time not a few complaints
from the instructors concerning the badness of the work put into these.
Abraham’s death occurred in 1712, and it seems probable that even if he
had had a longer life, the work of the printing-office would speedily
have come to a close from inanition or from lack of intelligent
direction.
The plant and material of the once famous printing-office was sold at
auction, in 1713, for the benefit of the creditors and of a daughter
left by Abraham. For nearly a century the printing of the University
had been in the hands of the Elzevir family, but after the migration
in 1665, of Louis to Amsterdam, the more important of the publishing
undertakings of the Elzevirs bear the imprint of the Amsterdam House.
The first printer to the University had been William Silvius, who had,
before coming to Leyden, held in Antwerp the title of Printer to the
King. Silvius was a scholar as well as a printer, and having given
evidence of sympathy with the Protestant group, he found it desirable
to get away from Antwerp. He held the post in Leyden for but a few
months, dying in 1580. For nearly four years, the University appears
to have dispensed with the services of a University printer and
publisher, but in 1584, the position was given to Christophe Plantin,
the famous Antwerp publisher, who was at the time, in connection with
certain difficulties, an exile from his home city. It is probable
from his acceptance of the post and from the labour given by him
to the organisation of an effective printing establishment, that
Plantin had seriously in view at the time the plan of a permanent
transfer to Leyden of his business interests. In 1585, however, his
difficulties having been adjusted, Plantin found it practicable to
return to Antwerp, but he was able, in leaving Leyden, to secure from
the University authorities the appointment as his successor of his
son-in-law Raphelengius. The latter added to his duties as a printer
the professorship of Hebrew in the University, and it is evident from
the record that he was more assiduous in his work as an instructor than
in attention to the rather complex responsibilities of the University
printing-office. On the death of Raphelengius, in 1597, the post
was given to his son Christopher, who survived his father, however,
but for four years. The successor of the younger Raphelengius was a
certain Johannes Patius (Jean Paedts). His work appears to have been
unsatisfactory, and, in 1620, Isaac Elzevir, grandson of Louis, came
into direction of the University printing.
The annual compensation given to Silvius and, later, to Plantin, was
two hundred florins. Under the agreement with Isaac Elzevir, the
money payment was fixed at fifty florins. It seems probable, however,
that during the thirty-five years that had passed since the first
establishment of the office, there had been a sufficient development
in the incidental business connected with the University printing and
publishing to render the post more valuable in 1620 with a stipend of
fifty florins, than it had been in 1585 with a payment of two hundred.
The agreement with Isaac Elzevir provided that he should hold at
the disposition of members of the University Faculty one press and
during certain seasons of the year two presses, the work of which was
apparently devoted to the _précis_ or papers of instruction recognised
for use in the class-room. The productions of more considerable
compass of which the professors were the authors, were passed upon by
the curators of the Press and by the senate of the University with
reference to their publication through the University Press and at the
charge of the University treasury. The printer was under obligations to
secure for the Press the service of correctors competent to supervise
the text of any language required. In the majority of cases there
should, of course, have been no difficulty in securing such correctors
from the membership of the University itself. Any illustrations to be
included in the University publications were to be “supplied to the
printer,” but it is not clear whether this provision implies that the
authors of books, the remaining expense of which was provided by the
University, must themselves meet the outlay for the production of the
illustrations.
One copy of every work printed by the Publisher to the University was
to be deposited in the University library. The publishing undertakings
were, in the matter of Press censorship or supervision, to be subject
to the regulations of the States-General. What censorship was put
in force appears, however, to have been exercised through certain
selected members of the Theological Faculty of the University. I find
no reference to any political questions arising in connection with
these Leyden publications, and apparently there was, outside of the
theologians, no keen interest in censorship or in Press supervision.
The privilege of occupying for the printing-office a portion of
the court or quadrangle of the University buildings, was doubtless
estimated as a portion of the compensation and must have been of
material service for the prestige of the concern, irrespective of the
detail of the saving of rent.
Reference has been made to a certain Erpenius (Th. van Erpen), whose
Oriental fonts were taken over, later, by the Elzevirs. Erpenius was
one of the more noteworthy scholars who brought prestige to the Faculty
of the University. Not content with the task of giving instruction in
the languages and literatures of the Orient, or possibly influenced
by the difficulty of carrying on such instruction without an adequate
supply of texts, Erpenius set up a printing-office in his own house and
undertook at his own cost the production of a series of the works of
representative Eastern writers. His death, at the early age of forty,
interrupted the scholarly undertaking. His widow had had in view the
sale to some printers in Paris of the costly collection of type moulds
and punches, which constituted, in fact, almost the entire property
that had been left to her. The University authorities were averse to
permitting this collection to go out of the country, but there happened
to be at the time no funds in the treasury adequate to give to the
widow the sum she had been offered from Paris. Isaac Elzevir himself
provided the amount required, and purchased the material in his own
name. It was transferred to his successors, but when the University
confirmed them as the official printers, it was made a condition that
this Oriental material should be retained in Leyden at the disposition
of the University. The annual compensation was at the same time raised
to one hundred florins. There was a further specification in the
agreement to the effect that any books required by the professors or
_notabilités académiques_, the University publisher was to procure
(from Frankfort or Paris) “at his own risk or peril,” and was to
charge for the same no higher price than was to be charged by other
booksellers. In 1631, the annual stipend was increased to three hundred
florins, “in consideration of the exceptional outlays required by the
Oriental work of the printing-office and of the cost of providing a
special corrector for the Oriental works.”
Up to the time of the death of Abraham, the last member of the Leyden
family, no further changes of importance occurred in the relations
between the University and its Press. In a number of respects the
general organisation and regulation of the Leyden University Press
appear to have been quite similar to the arrangement which was put
into force, in 1632, in Oxford at the institution of the Clarendon
Press.[133] It is, of course, probable enough that the history of the
University of Leyden was well known in Oxford and that the regulations
controlling the Leyden Press may have served, if not as a model, at
least as a general suggestion for the scheme of the organisation of the
Clarendon Press.
The number of theses printed by the University printer increased
steadily, the increase being an indication, in part, of the growth
of the University, and, in part, of the development of the literary
activities of its members. The summary of the theses is as follows:
1654, printed by John and Daniel Elzevir 2
1655-1662, printed by John 61
1662-1681, printed by the widow of John 775
1681-1712, printed by Abraham 1899
The cost of the several buildings erected for the work of the printers
was borne by the Elzevirs. These buildings all stood, however,
upon land owned by the University, and were, in fact, immediately
connected with the buildings of instruction. The printing-offices
remained, therefore, the property of the University, doubtless under
the usual conditions of a ground lease. In August, 1641, John Evelyn,
writing from Leyden, speaks of visiting the famous Heinsius, and also
of inspecting the famous book-shop and the printing-office of the
Elzevirs, “renowned throughout Europe for the importance of their
publications and for the beauty of their typography.”[134] Evelyn
goes on to speak of a statue carved in stone which stood opposite the
gateway of the printing-office enclosure, a “representation of the
fortunate monk who, as is claimed by the Hollanders, was the first
inventor of printing, an opinion combated by the Germans, who insist
that the glory of the invention belongs to Gutenberg.” It is not quite
certain that the printing-office enclosure or the University court did
include at this time a statue of Koster. There was, however, such a
statue in the city, in the _Haarlemmerstraat_, and the English tourist
may either have confused his memory as to the location of this, or
possibly have thought himself justified, for the sake of dramatic
effect, in placing the statue where, according to his judgment, it
properly belonged, in front of the headquarters of the printing
interests in Holland.
The work of the Elzevirs in Leyden had continued from 1621 to 1712,
a period of ninety-one years. The printing and publishing House
instituted by the Elzevirs in The Hague began its operations in
1590. Its first head was Louis, the second son of the founder of the
dynasty. His work was, however, limited to the business of bookselling,
his establishment containing one of the most comprehensive and best
organised collections of scholarly publications to be found in the
North of Europe. After his death, in 1621, the business was carried on
for about twenty years, first by his brother Bonaventure and, later, by
his nephews and their cousins. In 1661, the book-shop at The Hague was
finally closed, the stock being, in part, transferred to Amsterdam, and
in part, sold at auction.
The continuity of the printing and publishing work originated in
Leyden, was maintained by the branch of the Elzevir family which
settled at Amsterdam, and the Amsterdam House continued active
operations until about the close of the seventeenth century. The
book-shop in Amsterdam was instituted in 1638, by Louis, grandson of
Louis of Louvain. In 1640, Louis added to his book-shop the plant of
a printing-office, and when, in 1655, he obtained the coöperation
of his cousin Daniel from Leyden, the Amsterdam House was able to
secure for itself a foundation and a prestige which exceeded that
of the parent concern in Leyden. In fact the series of publications
issued from Amsterdam during the twenty years following 1655 was more
considerable and important than the list of the Leyden Elzevirs during
the same period. It is proper to add, however, that even for the books
of this period the experts give the palm for typographical excellence
to the volumes bearing the Leyden imprint. The most noteworthy of
the publications of the first ten years of the new partnership, from
the point of view at least of typographical excellence, were the
_Corpus Juris_, published in folio in 1663, and the French text of the
Scriptures edited by Desmarets, issued in 1669.
Louis retired in 1665, and on the death of Daniel, in 1680, there being
no sons old enough to carry on the concern and no cousins available,
the business was wound up. The last publication bearing the imprint of
Elzevir of Amsterdam was issued in 1680, by Anna, the widow of Daniel.
The emblem of the Elzevirs, which appeared on the signs of the several
buildings occupied by them in Amsterdam, was an elm. An important
feature in the rapid development of the publishing business of the
Elzevirs, a feature which may be considered partly as cause and partly
as effect, was the extensive series of foreign connections, connections
initiated by the first Louis, and maintained and extended by two
generations of his successors. The majority of the Dutch publishers of
the time were content to limit their trade connections to the towns of
their own country, with an occasional correspondent in Frankfort. But
Louis Elzevir, with a larger ambition and a more comprehensive view
of the requirements of a high-grade publishing business, decided from
the outset that the widest possible connections with the scholarly
book-buyers of Europe was essential in order to ensure adequate support
for the class of undertakings he had in view. Within fifteen years
of the death of the founder, the firm had a direct representation in
nearly every one of the book-selling centres of Europe. A number of
these agencies were placed, either temporarily or permanently, in the
charge of some member of the family, and it became the usual routine
for the younger Elzevirs to secure in turn in this manner an important
part of their education and their business training, in different
foreign cities. The fact that during nearly a century the family circle
was so large, facilitated not a little the carrying out of a general
scheme of a federation of book-selling agencies, whose special purpose
it was to make known to the reading public of Europe, and to find an
outlet for the productions of the Elzevir Presses. The first Louis
was able, notwithstanding his active labours in Leyden, to pass a
considerable portion of each year on the trade routes of Germany and
France. His youngest son, Bonaventure, had, before his twenty-third
year, sojourned in all the more important of the cities of Italy, and
the nephews and grandchildren appear to have, so to speak, parcelled
out Europe between them, carrying on literary campaigns from Naples
in the South, to Copenhagen in the North. These “campaigns” had for
their purpose not only the distribution of the Elzevir publications,
but the collection from literary centres throughout Europe of “copy,”
“texts,” and literary suggestions, to utilise for future publishing
undertakings. The travelling Elzevirs were also, of course, in a
position to secure to advantage the supplies required for their retail
concerns in Leyden, Amsterdam, and The Hague. Willems finds records of
large purchases of books made by the Elzevirs in Italy between 1606 and
1652. In 1622, there are references showing the existence in Venice of
a depot for the sale of the Elzevir publications, and it appears that
this depot was within a stone’s throw of the site of the establishment
of Aldus, closed nearly half a century earlier. It was the Aldine
classics that served as a model or at least as a suggestion for the
more beautiful and more accurate sixteenmo editions of Elzevir. There
was also an agency in Florence which, in the seventeenth century, was
more nearly than Venice the literary centre of Italy.
Even at this time, 1675-1700, there was no organised system of
transportation between Holland and Italy that could be depended upon
for regular shipments of books. There is a reference in the Elzevir
correspondence in 1675, and again in 1679, to the forwarding of bales
of books through the kindness of travellers, in the former instance
through Charles Dati,[135] and in the latter through the Abbé
Brassetti. _De exemplaren von Virgilius sign door schipper Jan Willis
op Livorno versonden ende geaddresseert aen Abbate Brassetti, soo dat
met twyffele ofte sullen wel te recht koomen._[136]
With England the Elzevirs had important relations, not only in the
matter of buying and selling books, but in connection with the
publication of a considerable number of books by English authors. Some
of these publications were undertaken either for the account of the
authors or of English publishers, who desired to secure the advantage
of the Elzevir typography, which could not at that time be equalled by
the work of any printers in England. It was the England of Charles II.,
of Pepys, Evelyn, Dryden, and Baxter, of which we are speaking.
In Frankfort the Elzevirs instituted, as early as 1595, a permanent
depot for their publications, utilising their agency also for the
collection of stock for the retail departments both of the Leyden
and of the Amsterdam House. The first general catalogue of the
books offered at the Frankfort Fair was printed in 1564, by George
Willer, a bookseller of Augsburg. After 1595, these semi-annual
Fair catalogues always contained an important representation of the
Elzevir publications. The semi-annual gatherings of the booksellers
at Frankfort were maintained, at least in form, during the stormy
period of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), although at certain of the
appointed dates the attendance was very small and the business done
but trifling. The records of the Fair give evidence, however, that
notwithstanding the serious difficulties and dangers of travel during
this period, a representative of the Elzevirs made his way from Holland
and was recorded as present at every one of the Fairs during the thirty
years. From the middle of the seventeenth century, the Frankfort Fair
decreased in importance, the centre of the book-trade of Germany
being transferred to Leipzig. For a number of years the Fair was held
in both places, but before 1700 its business was transferred entirely
to Leipzig, which became the headquarters of the book-trade in Germany,
the best organised book-trade in Europe. The change was brought about
through a variety of influences. The operations and results of the
Thirty Years’ War had doubtless something to do with the matter, but
it is possible that a large factor was the increasing intellectual
activity of the Protestant States of North Germany as compared with
that of the territory, in the main Catholic, of the South. Leipzig was
of course better situated to serve as a centre for book production and
for book distribution for these Northern States. It lacked, however,
the very important advantage which had so long furthered the trade of
Frankfort, the convenience, namely, of direct connection by water (the
river Main) with the great highway of the Continent, the Rhine. For the
traders from Holland, the Rhine was the natural means of communication
with Germany, and made easy an important portion of the route to Italy.
For this and for other reasons, the Elzevirs opposed the removal of the
Fair from Frankfort to Leipzig, and their influence was sufficiently
powerful to delay this removal for a quarter of a century.
The Elzevirs retained in their hands for many years a very large
proportion of the business of supplying Germany with foreign
publications, including more particularly those from Holland, England,
and France. The German booksellers of this period appear to have been
comparatively unenterprising in the matter of maintaining direct
foreign connections. With Paris, the energetic Louis had taken pains to
open relations almost at the outset of his business career. Reference
is made as early as 1602 to a sojourn by Louis in Paris, and to a
privilege extended to him for a term of three weeks of accepting
orders for his books from the Paris dealers. Under the regulations
which had been established for the French book-trade, regulations
emanating in part from the University that had from an early period
assumed the right to control bookselling, and in part from the
Booksellers’ Guild itself, foreign dealers could do business in Paris
only under a very narrow system of restrictions. They were forbidden
either to buy or to sell at the Fairs of St. Germain and St. Laurent;
they were forbidden to come to Paris more frequently than once a year,
or to sojourn there for a longer period than three weeks, counting
from the date of the opening of their bales; they were, further,
forbidden to accept orders from any but the booksellers of the Guild
(_les libraires jurés_). Bonaventure, the son of Louis, appears to
have made, after 1624, regular annual sojourns in Paris. In 1626, he
brought back with him to Leyden a series of unpublished letters of
the scholar Scaliger, who had died in Leyden seventeen years before.
Scaliger had held in Leyden the Chair of Belles-Lettres, and had done
much to add to the prestige of the University. Among his pupils was
Grotius. The list of the Leyden publications gives evidence that these
Paris visits were utilised for the collection of material from French
authors and editors. Against this kind of competition on the part of
foreign publishers the French book-trade was evidently unable to frame
any effective regulations.
One of the most distinctive of the Elzevir undertakings in foreign
parts was the branch House established in 1632 in Copenhagen. The
Danish community proved to be a good customer as well for the
publications from Holland as for the books which the Elzevirs were
able to supply to advantage from Germany, Italy, and France. One
evidence of the importance attached by the Elzevirs to this branch
House in Copenhagen was the printing (in 1642) of a separate catalogue
of the books there offered for sale. The first of the Elzevirs to
visit Denmark was probably Louis (the second) in 1632. There are
references to later visits by him in 1634, and in 1637. On the occasion
of his first visit, he had opened a shop and appointed a permanent
representative. The record of the town library of Copenhagen contains
an entry of the payment to Elzevir, in 1632, of two hundred and
sixty-four _rigsdaler_ for books imported, and of a further payment, in
1634, of one hundred and twenty _rigsdaler_.[137]
In 1650, it was Daniel who represented the House in the North,
sojourning in both Sweden and Denmark, and having for his travelling
companion one of his famous authors, Nicholas Heinsius. While Daniel
Elzevir was in Sweden, he received a proposition from Queen Christina
to establish a printing and publishing concern in Stockholm. Christina
of Sweden was a daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. She was at the time
but twenty-eight years of age, but she had already given evidence
of a strength of character and a brilliancy of intellect that made
her personality a very distinctive one. She was a scholar of varied
attainments and a great collector of books, and she was ambitious
to make her capital city a literary centre for the North of Europe.
Mr. Myrop speaks of the proposition made to Elzevir as being a very
flattering one, and it is easy to understand that the ambitious
Queen could hope to secure in her literary undertakings the kind of
service she required from a House like the Elzevirs, who were alike
the greatest publishers, the most distinguished printers, and the
most extensive booksellers of their time. For some reason, however,
the suggestion of a Stockholm branch did not happen to fit in with
the policy of the House, and the proposition was declined.[138] A few
years later, a printing and publishing concern was established in
Stockholm, under the protection of King Charles Gustavus, by Johann
Janssons of Amsterdam. The visit to Stockholm of Daniel Elzevir and his
negotiations with Christina preceded by but four years the abdication
of the brilliant but erratic Queen, which took place in 1654. She
became a Catholic (her intention of abandoning Protestantism was one
ground for her abdication) and made her home in Rome. She brought with
her to Rome no less than 2145 books in manuscript, and after becoming
a Roman citizen, she added to the collection several hundred valuable
works. With a few exceptions, the entire collection now rests in the
Vatican.
The most valuable of the books she had owned in Stockholm was the
famous _Codex Argenteus_, which contains a portion of the Gospels
in the Merso-Gothic version of Ulfilas. This _Codex_ the Queen had,
however, given away, before her abdication, to a certain Count Magnus
de la Gardie, and it remained in Sweden, where it is still preserved as
one of the greatest treasures of the State. Among the more important
of the literary antiquities that the Queen had taken with her to
Rome, were the codices of the _Septuagint_, written in the seventh
century, several manuscripts dating from the Carlovingian times, a
very old _Psalter_, and a copy of the Theodosian Code and the Laws of
the Visigoths, which was said to have been written in the middle of
the seventh century. There is also a fragment of the Theodosian Code,
written in the Tironian character. In addition to this great series
of manuscripts, the Queen left nearly six thousand printed books, an
enormous library for a collection made as early as the middle of the
seventeenth century. She died in 1689.[139]
The many who have admired the typographical _chefs-d’œuvre_ which
issued from the presses of the Elzevirs, neglect to give due credit
to the name of the man to whose artistic skill is to be credited
the designing and engraving of the punches from which were produced
the exquisite Elzevir fonts of type. It is the general opinion of
typographical experts that these fonts, in the beauty of their
proportion, the delicacy of their outline, and the distinctive grace
of their general effect, surpassed anything that had as yet been
produced in Europe. The discovery that the designer of these fonts
was Christophe Van Dyck is due to the researches of Willems. Van
Dyck’s work appears to have been done between the years 1630 and
1640. The name is a famous one in the annals of the Netherlands, but
there is, I understand, nothing to show that this artistic engraver
and type-founder was connected with Sir Anthony Van Dyck, the Flemish
painter. The latter was born in 1599, and died (in England) in 1641, so
that the two men were, however, contemporaries.
During the larger portion of time in which the presses of the Elzevirs
were active, the publishers had the advantage of carrying on their work
under comparatively slight restrictions in the matter of government
censorship, while to censorship on the part of the Church there are
but few references. It is probable that during the seventeenth century
the Press of the Dutch Republic was more untrammelled than that of any
State in Europe. It is true that there is record of various edicts
and regulations on the part of the States-General prohibiting the
printing of libellous material, or of works directed against princes
or governments which were allied with the Republic. There is also an
occasional edict against the circulation of publications classed as
“irreligious” or “obscene.” With the latter class of publications the
Elzevirs took no part either as printers or as booksellers. It did
occasionally happen, however, that they interested themselves in the
production and in the circulation of publications, the purpose or
influence of which might evoke criticisms or complaints from friendly
governments or from individual statesmen. For such publications they
found it wise to make use of some _nom de presse_ or to issue the same
without imprint of name or place. Such publications can be identified
as coming from the Elzevirs either by means of books of account or
through the evidence of their very distinctive fonts of type.
Among the books for the anonymous circulation of which the House was
responsible, were the _Defensio Regia_ of Saumaise, the _Defensio
Populi Anglicani_ of Milton, and the _Mare Clausum_ of Selden. The
interest of the Elzevirs in circulating the last named treatise (which
was an argument to justify certain pretensions of England) is somewhat
to be wondered at, because, only shortly before, they had published
with their imprint the famous argument of Grotius, _Mare Liberum_, in
which was upheld the Dutch contention in behalf of the freedom of the
seas.
On a number of the unavowed publications of this kind, the Elzevirs
placed the imprint _Lugduni_ (Lyons), in place of _Lugduni Batavorum_
(Leyden). This was done particularly in the case of the writings of the
French Jansenists, who would not wish to emphasise the fact that these
were printed in such an heretical headquarters as Leyden. One of the
bogus names employed quite frequently for these unavowed publications
was that of Jouxte, and another was Jean Sambix. The imprint of Nic
Schouten, Köln, was also utilised, together with a number of mythical
or manufactured names connected with actual places.
The Elzevirs, following the example set a century and a half earlier
by Aldus, but since that time very generally lost sight of by the
later publishers, initiated a number of series of books in small
and convenient forms, twelvemo and sixteenmo, which were offered to
book-buyers at prices considerably lower than those they had been in
the habit of paying for similar material printed in folio, quarto,
or octavo. For volumes of classics printed in twelvemo, such as the
_Virgil_ of 1636, the _Pliny_ of 1640, and the _Cicero_ of 1642,
volumes containing an average of five hundred pages, the catalogue
price was one florin, the equivalent in currency of about forty-three
cents. _Quintus Curtius_, published in 1633, is catalogued at sixteen
sous, the equivalent of thirty-five cents. _Sallust_, _Terence_, and
_Florus_, sold at fifteen sous; and _Livy_, in three volumes, at four
florins ten sous.
These well edited, carefully printed, and low priced editions of the
classics won for the Elzevirs the cordial appreciation of scholars
and of students throughout Europe. Matthew Berneggerus, professor of
Strasburg, in the preface to his translation of Galileo’s _System of
the Universe_, speaks of the Elzevirs as unquestionably the first
typographers of the world, _Elzevirios Leydenses typographus, artis
nobilissime facile princeps universio de studiis præclare meritos_.
The professor was writing in 1635, only six years after the appearance
of the earliest of the noteworthy specimens of the Elzevir typography,
which gives the impression that, notwithstanding all the general
obstacles and the special hindrances of war times, the diffusion of
information concerning new publications, at least in the university
centres, must have been fairly prompt. A few years later, Galileo (who
died in 1642) himself gave testimony to the excellence of the work done
by his Dutch publishers.[140] I do not find record of the arrangements
entered into by Galileo for the publication of the translation of
his treatise, but it is evident that he considered the undertaking
a desirable one. The approval on the part of the scholars of these
smaller and more economical editions of the Elzevirs was, however,
not unanimous. The scholar, De Put (Erycius Puteanus), writing to
Heinsius, in 1629, to acknowledge the receipt of the new _Horace_,
says: “The Elzevirs are certainly great typographers. I can but think,
however, that their reputation will suffer in connection with these
trifling little volumes with such slender type. An author like Horace
deserves to be produced in a dignified form, with a certain majesty
of appearance, and not to have his thoughts buried in shabby little
type like this.” It was not unnatural that the long-time association
of great authors with big volumes should have brought about the
impression, not easily to be outgrown, that the size of the book
should be in direct proportion to the literary importance of its
contents. This view of the requirements and limitations of book-making
was, however, based on the assumption that books were for the use
of the wealthier classes only, or for placing in libraries which
were accessible only to privileged bodies of scholars. The tendency
of the age was, on the other hand, towards a continually increasing
distribution of literature among impecunious scholars and with the
public at large; and the Elzevirs, while doubtless shaping their
publishing plans with a view to securing the largest business returns,
were also, in popularising the best literature, doing their part
towards the spread of the higher education of the community.
Some authors of their time were, in fact, so fully appreciative of the
service rendered to their fame by the circulation of their writings
in the attractive form given to them by the Elzevirs, that in place
of considering the appropriation of their productions as a grievance,
they were ready to express their satisfaction at the compliment thus
paid to them. In 1648, the Elzevirs printed an unauthorised edition
of _Les Lettres Choisies_ of Balzac (Jean Louis Guez), putting on the
title-page, according to their usual routine for “appropriated” books,
the words _Suivant la copie imprimée à Paris_. So far was the author
from feeling any annoyance at this proceeding, that he promptly wrote
to express his gratification, and to suggest that the Elzevirs might
also be interested in publishing in the same form an edition of his
_Œuvres Diverses_. A further correspondence followed, and finally the
Elzevirs received from Balzac (some time in 1651) a letter of which the
following is the substance:
“TO THE ELZEVIRS,
Publishers and Printers of Leyden.
_Gentlemen_:
I am under larger obligations to you than you may yourselves fully
realise. I consider the right of Roman citizenship to be a small
privilege compared with that which you have conferred upon me in
including my name in the list of your authors. This is to give me
rank with the consuls and senators of Rome; I am made an associate
of the Ciceros and the Sallusts. What glory comes to me when I
can say ‘I am a citizen of the Republic of Immortals; I have been
received into the circle of the demi-gods.’ In the literary palace
of Leyden we have in fact all been made sojourners under the same
roof. Thanks to your efforts, I find myself at one moment opposite
Pliny, at the next by the side of Seneca, or a little later placed
with Tacitus and Livy; and although I may myself occupy but an
inconsiderable place, I have at least the satisfaction of making
part of a great company, a company of which Homer himself is the
patriarch.... For them, as for myself, the repute has been extended
by the skill and judgment of the typographical artist. For some
architects reputation has come through the construction of pyramids
and colossi, while others have gained no less fame through the art
put into rings and seals.... The excellence of work depends not
upon its extent but upon its appropriateness and perfection. I am
therefore well pleased for my part that in place of putting me into
folio, you have printed my productions in these exquisite little
volumes.... I subscribe myself
Your obliged servant,
BALZAC.”[141]
The letter is worth quoting if only to indicate the different point
of view of the author of the seventeenth century and of him of the
nineteenth. The letters written, prior to the Convention of Berne, by
the Parisian authors of the present time concerning the books which the
publishers of the Low Countries had done them the honour of reprinting,
are expressed in a very different manner.
In 1663, Daniel Elzevir had consented (this is the phrase used in the
correspondence) to reprint a collection of the poetry of Ménage. The
poet was so well pleased to have secured the imprint of the great
publisher of Europe, that he took pains to insert in the volume an
introduction in Latin verse to express his gratification. The lines
begin somewhat as follows:
“Ye gods and goddesses what do I behold!
My verse presented in the type of the Elzevirs.
Oh type graceful and exquisite!
Oh volume charming and artistic!
* * * * *
But thou, Elzevir, my sweet glory,
Thou the father of this type without rival,
Tell me, honoured friend, what I can offer thee in exchange for this
honour.
May the friends of literature ever gather about thy House;
May the crowd of buyers of books ever press forwards towards thy
book-shops;
May the name of Elzevir, transmitted by the voice of his poets from
century to century, be heard through the entire earth and rise to
the heavens themselves;
May the fame of the Elzevirs eclipse that of the Turnèbes and the
Vascosans and rise superior even to the renown of the Estiennes
and of Aldus!”
At the time when Ménage was expressing in florid eloquence his
gratification at being accepted as an Elzevir author, the new
typographical form had finally established itself against all
criticism. A large proportion of the publishers, not only of the
Netherlands, but also of Paris and of Florence, had adopted the Elzevir
model, and the folios and quartos which had characterised the first
two centuries of printing were put to one side as representing the
literature of the middle ages. The earlier forms of printed volumes, at
least in the divisions of classics and theology, were preserved to a
later date in England than on the Continent.
As was necessarily the case with a firm acting as printers for the
University and whose publications included so long a list of scholarly
works, the Elzevirs had associated with their publishing office a
group of scholarly editors and press-revisers. Apart also from the men
who were directly in their employ or with whom they had arranged for
editorial service, they enjoyed the benefit of the suggestions and the
counsel of a number of scholarly friends and correspondents, without
whose aid it would in fact not have been practicable to initiate or
to carry on to a successful completion not a few of their important
undertakings. The adviser whose coöperation was most important, and
whose influence in directing the publishing policy of the House was
most considerable, was Daniel Heinsius. After the year 1630, Heinsius
acted as the chief literary adviser of the House, and to his hand can
be traced a number of the dedicatory epistles, announcements, and
introductions which (written nearly always in Latin) found place in a
large number of the Elzevir editions.
Heinsius was a native of Ghent. He studied at Leyden, where he was the
favourite pupil, and, later, the successor of the celebrated Scaliger.
He filled in succession the Chairs in the University, of Greek, of
History, and of Political Science. Later, he was placed in charge of
the library of the University, and served also as secretary of the
Academic Senate. He was so far accepted as an authority on orthodox
Calvinistic theology that he was selected to be the secretary of the
Synod of Dort. He possessed the faculty, not very common with a man of
scholarship, of writing and speaking gracefully not only in Latin, the
literary language of the time, but also in his mother tongue. The young
publisher, Louis Elzevir, while a man of ready intelligence and of
rather varied attainments, had never had the leisure or the opportunity
for scholarship. He may well, therefore, have considered himself
fortunate in being able to secure at the outset of his ambitious
publishing schemes the coöperation of a man like Heinsius, and it is
not surprising that the influence of the professor became all-important
in the direction of the publishing business. In many ways this relation
was a fortunate one, but there were some offsetting considerations. The
scholars of the time appear to have been not only a controversial but
an irritable group, and Heinsius possessed the _genus irritabile_ to an
exceptionable degree. He succeeded in embroiling the firm with a number
of its scholarly friends and correspondents whose influence and whose
coöperation it was important to retain. He was charged with having a
special prejudice against, or hate of the German scholars, even of
those who had associated themselves with Flemish or Dutch institutions.
Among the men of note in the scholarly world who brought accusations
against Heinsius for bad treatment and for malice, and who contended
that the Elzevirs were seriously interfering with their relations with
the scholarly world in retaining as their adviser so bad tempered,
so unreasonable and so malicious a person, were Gebhardt, who held in
the University of Groningen the Chair of Greek, Grotius the well-known
publicist, Vossius, and, above all, Saumaise. The controversies
between Saumaise and Heinsius, controversies carried on in part, so to
speak, over the bodies of their publishers, continued over a series of
years, and might well have formed the subject of a text in Disraeli’s
_Amenities of Literature_. Saumaise, or Salmasius, was by birth a
Frenchman, and his earlier university work was carried on in Paris. He
then became intimate with Casaubon, through whose influence he became a
Protestant. Later, he studied at Heidelberg, and the years between 1632
and 1650 he was associated with the University of Leyden. He then, at
the instance of Queen Christina, passed some years in Sweden. Famous in
various departments of learning, he was probably the chief authority
of his time on philology. At the request of Charles II., at the time
an exile in Holland, Saumaise wrote, in 1649, his _Defensio Regia pro
Carolo I._, which brought forth the more famous _Defensio pro Populo
Anglicano_ of Milton. Hallam says that “what Saumaise did not know was
considered to be beyond the bounds of knowledge.”[142] Notwithstanding
some frictions caused by the antagonism of Daniel Heinsius, Saumaise
remained a valued friend to two generations of the Elzevirs, by whom
were issued editions of most of his works. The most important of them
was _Plinianæ Exercitationes in c. j. Solini Polyhistoria_, published
(by Bonaventure) in two volumes in 1629, three years before the
author’s arrival in Leyden.
Bonaventure, whose control of the business had covered the most
noteworthy and prosperous years of the Leyden House, died, as we have
noted, in 1652. Among the undertakings which were at the time in train
and which were interrupted by his death, was a complete edition, based
upon the Vatican manuscripts, of the Greek historian Procopius; a Latin
version of the same, to be prepared by Grotius; a complete edition of
_Alemanus_, edited by Holstenius; the complete works of Galileo, in
folio; the Latin epistles of Grotius; the works of Montaigne, which
were to follow Comines in the collection of French classics; an edition
of _Tacitus_, edited by Gronovius; the Latin Dictionary of Calepino, as
a companion to the Greek Lexicon of Scapula; and, finally, a complete
and definitive edition of the _Corpus Juris_. This summary of the
undertakings that were in hand during the month of Bonaventure’s death,
gives an indication of the activity of the House at the time, and of
the direction of its enterprises. The _Corpus Juris_ was afterwards
completed by the Amsterdam firm.
The most famous of the authors whose works were associated with the
imprint of the second Louis, who was the founder of the publishing
establishment of Amsterdam, were Descartes, Velthuysen, Wittichius,
Coronius, Vossius, and Grotius. The first complete edition of the
works of Descartes was issued in 1643, with the imprint of Louis of
Amsterdam. The new philosophy became at once a cause of strife not
only with the metaphysicians but with the theologians. The partisans
of Aristotle made common cause with the ministers of the Reform Church
against the “Cartesian heresies.”
By the year 1655, the publishing undertakings of the Amsterdam House
exceeded in importance those issued from Leyden. It is with this date
that the presses of Amsterdam begin to produce the series of Latin
authors in the twelvemo form of which Leyden heretofore held the
monopoly. It is also with this date that the Amsterdam imprint finds
place upon the works of Balzac, Barclay, Charron, Du Refuye, etc. The
most considerable of the undertakings of Louis of Amsterdam, in respect
at least to the risk incurred and the investment required, was the
French Bible of Desmarets, a work that had been begun in 1664 and
that was completed, in two folio volumes, in 1669. This work was the
culmination of the publishing career of Louis, whose death occurred in
the year following its completion.
His successor in the management of the Amsterdam House, his cousin
Daniel, gave to the business a large measure of skill, experience,
judgment, and activity, which appears to have been without break.
Daniel’s first experience as sole partner came in a time of difficulty.
The disastrous war with England during the years 1665-1667 interfered
very seriously with the general prosperity of the State, and caused
special embarrassments to the book-trade and publishing interests. This
was the war which resulted in the transfer to the English flag of the
colony of New Amsterdam, thereafter to be known as New York. Daniel
succeeded in weathering the storm, and by the time of the Peace of
Breda, he had been able, with the aid of his editorial adviser Wetterus
and of the skilled typographer Wetstein, to place the business on what
seemed to be an assured foundation. One of his correspondents of the
time was the ingenious Nicholas Thoynard, author of the _Harmony of the
Gospels_. Thoynard gave special study to the possibility of improving
the methods of printing, and, as early as 1680, put before Elzevir a
scheme for placing on the presses _formes solides_, apparently the
first suggestion of the modern stereotype plates. Daniel dismissed the
scheme as impracticable. “To print two forms at one time,” he said,
“is something absolutely impossible to carry out, and it would in any
case be of no service.” Nicholas Heinsius (the son of Daniel Heinsius),
who had first been associated with Daniel in Leyden, had, when the
latter migrated to Amsterdam, transferred his own literary interests
and editorial service to the Amsterdam House. The intimacy of the two
men continued through their lives, and they died within a few months of
each other.
The work of Heinsius as adviser for and business associate with his
publishing friend was interrupted by various periods of public service,
as he served as Ambassador both in Sweden and in Russia, but on being
relieved from office, he always returned to his literary studies
and to his friend’s publishing-office. It is somewhat surprising
that the States-General should have favoured Heinsius with posts of
honour, as he appears to have been wanting in public spirit, or at
least in patriotic feeling. When, in 1674, the armies of Louis XIV.
were carrying ruin and devastation through the territory of Holland,
Heinsius, in a country retreat at Vianen (well out of the course of
the campaigning) was amusing his leisure in composing verses in honour
of the oppressor of his country, verses which he utilised later as a
dedication to his _Virgil_. “The true country of Heinsius,” says his
biographer, “was imperial Rome, and in looking upon Louis XIV. as
Augustus, he thought of himself as a Horace or a Virgil.”
The war with France, which continued for six years (1672-1678), a war
which brought with it all the horrors of occupation of the country by
invading armies, caused almost a complete cessation of all business
undertakings and of all literary enterprises. The presses stopped
work and the book-shops were closed. The whole energy of the people
(excepting only in the case of an occasional dilettante like Heinsius)
was concentrated in the defence of the country. Daniel Elzevir devoted
a part of this period of enforced idleness to the preparation of a
classified catalogue of his general stock, a catalogue more extensive
and more comprehensive than any heretofore issued. Daniel died in
1680, in the midst of a long series of unfinished undertakings and of
literary plans. Graevius, in sending the news to Heinsius, says, “This
is a great loss to letters.” The philosopher Locke writes, “The death
of Elzevir is a public misfortune.” Such indeed was the universal
feeling throughout the world of letters and the community of scholars.
With the death of Daniel, the history of the House of Elzevir comes
to a close. Some printing of college theses was, in 1680, still being
done by Abraham in Leyden, but the work of the great family, which had
for nearly a century stood at the head of the book-making and of the
bookselling business of Europe, occupying the first places alike among
typographers, publishers, and booksellers, was completed. Daniel left
no son, and the widow dying the year following, the concern was wound
up by the administrators.
The limits of this sketch will not permit even a summary of the long
list of books issued by the Elzevirs during this century in which
they were doing business as publishers. It is only practicable to
refer to the general character of these publications and to point
out that they included the most considerable and comprehensive
series of important literature that had been associated with any
imprint since the invention of printing, while it is also in order
to remember that a very large proportion of the volumes represented
the highest development of the art of typography. After two centuries
of competition, the country of Koster had, in the work of the
printing-press, unquestionably outclassed the country of Gutenberg and
the rest of the world.
The publishing career of Louis Elzevir, the founder of the House,
continued from 1583 to 1617, a period of thirty-four years. During this
term he published a hundred and one separate works. His first book, the
work which initiated the publishing undertakings of the Elzevirs, bears
the title:
“Drusii Ebraicarum quæstrinum, sive quæstrinum æ responsionum, libri
duo, videlicet secondus œ tertrus. In Academia Lugdunensi.” 8vo. 1582
The following were the more noteworthy of the later publications of
Louis:
“Chronique et Histoire Universelle,” etc., “Par Jean Carion, Ph.
Melanchthon, et Gaspar Pencer,” 2 vols., 8vo. 1596
This was the first work printed in French by the Elzevirs.
Sundry Treatises of Scaliger.
A Memoir of Scaliger by Heinsius. 1607
The first work of an author whose name was to appear in the Elzevir
lists more frequently than that of any other writer.
Certain works of Aristotle, edited by Heinsius. 1609
The complete works of Horace, edited by Heinsius. 1612
The Essays of Heinsius. 1612
The Homilies of Heinsius. 1613
The Letters of Puteanus. 1614
A History of the Frisians, by Emmius. 1616
“The Catechism of the Reformed Church.” 1617
With a few exceptions in Dutch and in French, the works of Louis were
printed in Latin.
The greater number bear on their title-page the words _cum privilegio_.
The privilege, when secured, was issued by the States-General, and the
usual term was from ten to fifteen years. I find in the catalogue of
titles no specification (such as was at this time usual in France) of
an official censorship.
The association of Matthew, Bonaventure, and Abraham Elzevir, who
succeeded to the business of their father Louis, and with whom was
associated as the printer to the concern their brother, Isaac Elzevir,
continued from 1617 to 1625. During these seven years, they published
one hundred and twenty-two separate works and editions. I specify
certain of the more important:
The works of the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, edited by
Mersius. 8vo. 1617
The Decisions of the Courts of Holland, Zealand, and West Frisia,
edited by Weytsen. 4to. 1617
The Life of Thuanus, by Heinsius. Folio. 1617
The Lectures of Mersius on Greek Literature. 4to. 1617
The “Mare Liberum” of Grotius. 8vo. 1618
The Works of Puteanus. 8vo. 1618
The writings of Julius Cæsar. 8vo. 1619
The complete works of Mersius. 2 vols. 8vo. 1619
An Analysis of the Arminian Heresy, by Peter Molinæus. 4to. 1619
The works of Terence, edited by Maretus. 8vo. 1619
The Acts of the Synod of Dort. Folio. 1620
The Orations of Heinsius, a reissue. 8vo. 1620
The Works of Aristotle, edited by Heinsius. 8vo. 1621
Paraphrase of the Psalms of David, by George Buchanan. 24mo. 1621
The Poetical works of George Buchanan. 8vo. 1621
Various Treatises of Heinsius. 4to. 1621
Essays and Addresses of Mersius. 4to. 1621
The works of Virgil, edited by Mersius. 8vo. 1622
The New Testament in Greek. 8vo. 1622
History of the Saracens, by George Elmacenus. 4to. 1625
Further Orations and Treatises of Heinsius and of Mersius. 8vo. 1625
The “Epistles” of Sir Thomas More. 8vo. 1625
The Psalms of David, printed in Syriac (from the press of Erpenius).
8vo. 1625
“Republica Anglicorum,” by Thomas Smith. 8vo. 1625
The third concern, comprising Bonaventure and Abraham, continued from
1625 to 1652, a period of twenty-seven years. Their list comprises four
hundred and sixty-one works. These included: A long series of Greek and
Latin classics, in the new twelvemo form. The texts were officially
adopted or prescribed for use by the University, and the titles bear
the words _editus in usum scholarum Hollandiæ et West Frisiæ; ex
decreto Illustriss. D. D. Ordinum ejusdem provinciæ_. There is also a
long series of theological works, an increasing proportion of which
are printed in Dutch, indicating an extending popular interest in this
class of literature.
A Series of Court Decisions and of Codes.
A new edition of the works of Scaliger.
The Oriental Series of Erpenius.
“L’Académie de l’espée,” de Girard Thibault d’Anvers. Folio, with 46
elaborate double or folding plates. 1628
This was the most sumptuous publication yet issued by the Elzevirs.
It was protected by privileges from both the King of France and
the States-General.
A Description of the West Indies, by John de Laet, in Dutch, with
maps. 4to. 1628
The Babylonian “Talmud.” Folio, with plates. 4to. 1630
The “Republica Anglicorum,” by Thos. Smith (a reissue)
The Histories of Quintus Rufus, edited by Heinsius. 12mo. 1633
The Essays of Grotius. 24mo. 1633
The Mathematical works of Simon Stevin, of Bruges. Folio. 1634
A series of Treatises on Fortification, by Fritach. Folio. 1635
The works of Galileo, translated into Latin by Berneggerus. 4to. 1635
The Natural History of Pliny. 3 vols. 12mo. 1635
The Life of Tamerlane, in Arabic. 4to. 1636
The Dissertation of Beza on the Plague. 12mo. 1636
The “Colloquies” of Erasmus. 12mo. 1636
The “Mare Clausum” of John Selden. 12mo. 1636
“Le Cid. Tragi-comédie nouvelle, par le Sieur Corneille. Jouxte,
suivant la copie imprimée à Paris.” 8vo. 1638
This volume belongs to the books (the list of which is quite
considerable) which were “appropriated” by the Elzevirs.
Their edition was issued in 1638, two years after the first
appearance of the tragedy in Paris. It was the third work of the
dramatist, and probably the first which made his name known outside
of France.
“L’Annaeus Florus,” Cl. Salmasius addidit Lucium Ampelium, etc.
12mo. 1638
This publication brought out a complaint from the learned editor,
who had evidently not been consulted concerning the reissue, and
who did not think the small form of the volume was fitting for
the dignity of either the author or the editor. He writes in May,
1683, as follows: “Je suis en cholère contre les Elzevirs, de ce
qu’ils ont mis mon nom au Florus à mon insceu et contre ma volonté.
Je suis meshui trop vieux pour rechercher de la réputation par de
si petites rubriques, oultre que de tout temps j’ai toujours esté
ennemi de la vanité. Ces gens ne sont dévoués qu’ à leur proffit,
et ne se soucient point aux despens de qui.”[143] Later, Salmasius
forgave his Dutch publishers, and came into friendly relations with
them.
A treatise by Salmasius (Saumaise) in defense of Usury. 8vo. 1638
The treatise of Comenius entitled “A golden method for the mastery
of four languages” (Latin, German, French, and Italian). 8vo. 1642
This had a great popularity.
The complete works of Grotius. 8vo. 1642
Various reissues of the different works of Heinsius. 12mo. 1642
The Greek Commentaries of Salmasius. 8vo. 1643
“L’Illustre Théâtre de Corneille.” This edition, printed in 1644,
bears the Elzevir imprint. It is probable, however, that like
the “Jouxte” issue of the “Cid,” it was unauthorised. 12mo. 1644
“De la Sagesse,” by Charron. 12mo. 1646
This had been issued in Paris in 1592. The author died in 1603.
“Lettres Choisies du Sieur de Balzac. Suivant la copie imprimée à
Paris.” 12mo. 1648
A Greek version (attributed to Hierotheus, abbot of Cephalonia) of
the Confession of faith of the Reformed Church. 4to. 1648
Further Treatises of Saumaise. 8vo. 1648
“Defensio Regio pro Carolo I.” by Saumaise. 8vo. 1649
A third edition, revised by the author, was issued in 1652, by the
Amsterdam House.
“Histoire du ministère d’Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Duc de
Richelieu,” etc. 4 vols. 12mo. 1650
“Les Oeuvres Diverses” du Sieur de Balzac. 12mo. 1651
The firm of John and Daniel Elzevir continued for three years, from
1652 to 1655, during which time it published fifty-four works. The list
includes an increasing proportion of light literature. I cite a few
titles:
“Recueil de Diverses Poésies.” 12mo. 1652
“Les Satyres” by Sieur Regnier. 12mo. 1652
A collection of Proverbs from Greek Authors, in Greek. 4to. 1653
The Poems of Nicholas Heinsius (son of Daniel). 12mo. 1653
“The Civil Polity” of Thomas Hobbes, translated by Sorbière.
12mo. 1653
Burlesque versions, in French, of Homer’s “Odyssey,” and of the
“Odes” of Horace. 12mo. 1653
These two volumes bear the bogus imprint of “John Sambix,” as if
the Elzevirs were somewhat ashamed to be associated with such
frivolities.
“The Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas à Kempis, in Latin. 12mo. 1653
The most beautiful edition that had yet been printed of the famous
Catholic Classic. The imprint is “Lugduni,” instead of “Lugduni
Batavorum,” because the publishers expected to secure for it a sale
in Catholic countries.
The “Institutes” of Calvin, in Latin. Folio. 1654
“Polyeucte martyr,” tragédie de Corneille. Chez “Jean Sambix.”
12mo. 1655
“Le Romant comique,” par Scarron. Chez “Jean Sambix.” 12mo. 1655
John Elzevir carried on the business for six years, from 1655 to 1661,
during which time he printed one hundred and twelve works.
Among these were the following:
The works of Huygens, in Latin, reissue. 1655
These had been originally printed in 1644 by Bonaventure, and it is
noted that the expense was borne by the author. We may, therefore,
conclude that the reissue was a venture of the publishers. Huygens,
who was famous as a physicist and a mathematician, lived till 1695.
“Lettres de Monsieur de Marigny.” 12mo. 1655
“A defence of the Doctrines of the Socinians,” by an unknown writer
who uses the name of Slichtingius, in Latin. 4to. 1656
A Refutation of the same, by Cocceius, in Latin. 8vo. 1656
The fact that an Elzevir was willing to issue with his own imprint
a Socinian volume, is evidence of an increasing liberality of view
either of the University or of the publishers.
“Les Comédies de Scarron.” 12mo. 1659
(The author died the year following.)
“Medical Treatises of Celsius.” 12mo. 1657
“Les Lettres de Monsieur Descartes.”
Further Treatises of Salmasius, in Latin. 8vo. 1659
The Treatises of Hippocrates, in Greek and Latin. 8vo. 1659
“Les Oeuvres du Sieur de Balzac,” reissue, after the death of the
author. 3 vols. 12mo. 1659
“Des Lettres Provinciales,” and “La Théologie Morale des Jésuites,”
etc., of Pascal. 8vo. 1659
These two volumes, issued 8vo, 1659, bear the bogus imprint, “À
Cologne, chez Nicholas Schoute.”
They had first appeared in Paris in 1656. Pascal died in 1662.
“Recueil de diverses pièces servans à l’histoire de Henry III.”
12mo. Bogus imprint, “À Cologne, chez P. du Marteau”. 1660
Treatises of Hippocrates, in Greek and Latin. 12mo. 1661
The widow of John continued the business for twenty years, from 1661 to
1681. During this period she issued or printed forty-seven works.
These included:
“The Bible,” printed in Dutch, in a handsome folio volume. 1663
“Mémoires Maréschal de Bassompierre.” 2 vols. 12mo. 1665
“À Cologne, chez Pierre du Marteau.”
“Hippocrates,” complete works, in Latin. The first edition issued
to this date. 24mo. 1666
Abraham Elzevir, with whose life was terminated the record of the
Leyden House, carried on the business for thirty-one years, from 1681
to 1712, during which time he printed but twenty-three works.
The last twenty years were devoted, as stated, entirely to the printing
of theses, the publishing business having gradually been allowed to
rust out.
His publications and printings included:
“Bibliotheca Heinsiana,” a catalogue of the collection of Nicholas
Heinsius.
Epictetus, the “Enchiridion” of, in Latin, and various Funeral
Orations and Memorial addresses on William III., of England, who
died in 1702.
Louis Elzevir, the second of the name, initiated, in 1638, the
publishing business of the Amsterdam House, which he conducted until
1655, when he was joined by his cousin Daniel, from Leyden.
During these seventeen years he published one hundred and eighty works.
His first publication belonged to a lighter class of literature than
had previously been associated with the Elzevir imprint. It bore the
title: _Dominici Baudii Amores, edente Petro Scriverio, inscripti. Th.
Graswinkelio, equiti._ 12mo. 1638. It comprised a series of letters
and views in which Baudius gives an account of his various amorous
misadventures. Willems speaks of the work as originating in Holland,
but I do not understand that it could very well have been the work of
the Baudius who held the Chair of History in Leyden up to 1613.
“Renati Descartes, Meditationes de primo-philosophia,” etc. 2 vols.
1642
On the title-page of the second volume appear the words _cum
authoris concensu._
Hooft’s “Nederlandsche Historien,” etc. Folio. 2 vols. This work
was the most important of the Dutch national histories which had
thus far appeared. Although published by Elzevir, it was printed
by Blaen, who was a connection of the author. The first volume was
issued in 1642, and the last only in 1654. The author died in 1647.
“Rerum Scoticarum historia, auctore Georgio Buchanano.” 8vo. 1643
“Renati Descartes Principia philosophiæ, cum privilegio.” 4to. 1644
” specimina philosophiæ, cum privilegio.” 4to. 1644
At the time of the publication of these first editions of
treatises which were to revolutionise the thought or at least
the metaphysical theories of Europe, Descartes was living at The
Hague. He died in Stockholm (whither he had been called by Queen
Christina) in 1650.
The works of Descartes were reprinted by the Amsterdam House no
less than six times.
“Thomæ Cartwright, S. S. Theol. in Academia Cantabrigensi quondam
professoris. Harmonia Evangelica,” etc. 4to. 1647 “Elementa
philosophica de cive, auctore Thom. Hobbes, Malmesburiensi.” 12mo.
1647
The author was at this time 59 years old. He lived to be 91, dying
in 1679.
Fr. Baconis de Verulamio “Sylva Sylvarum.” 12mo. 1648
“Les Passions de l’Ame, par René Descartes.” 8vo. 1649
“L’Alcoran de Mahomet, traduit d’arabic en françois par le Sieur du
Ryer, suivant la copie imprimée à Paris,” etc. Another issue of the
same date bears the words “Jouxte la copie,” the old indication of
an “appropriated” work.
A series of Latin and Greek classics in 12mo, in the general style
of the series issued some years earlier in Leyden, was published
between the years 1640 and 1655.
“Adagiorum Des. Erasmi Roterodami epitome.” 12mo. 1650
“Colloquia Desid. Erasmi Roterodami, nunc emendatiora,” etc. 12mo.
1650
“Hugonis Grotii, quaedam haetenus inedita aliaque ex belgice editio
latine versa,” etc. 12mo. 1652
“Francisci Baconi Scripta in naturali et universali philosophia.”
12mo. 1653
“Historia Gothorum, Vandalorum et Longobardorum, ab Hugone Grotio,”
etc. 8vo. 1655
With this important history, Louis completed the record of his
individual publications.
Louis and David Elzevir were associated from 1655 to 1664, a period of
nine years, during which time they published one hundred and forty-nine
works. These included a number of new editions of works previously
published by the House, either in Leyden or in Amsterdam.
I cite the following titles, omitting all reissues:
“Le secrétaire à la mode, par le Sieur de la Serre, contenant
l’instruction d’escrire des lettres,” etc. 12mo. 1656
“Le Pastissier François.” 12mo. 1656
Two volumes of practical household instruction, forming an
exception to the general character of the list.
“Johannis Maccovii, S. S. Theol. Doct. et Profess. Opuscula
philosophica omnia,” etc. 4to. 1660
“Histoire du Roy Henri le Grand, composé par messire Hardouin de
Perefixe, ci-devant précepteur du roi.” 12mo. 1661
Hugo Grotius, “de Veritate religionis christianæ.” 12mo. 1662
This work was later reprinted by the Elzevirs five times.
“Corpus juris civilis, Pandectis ad Florentinum archetypum
expressio,” etc. 2 volumes. Folio. This is described as the most
beautiful piece of typography produced from the Press of the
msterdam House. 1663
Four volumes of the “Comedies” of Molière, printed (in French)
“suivant la copie imprimée à Paris.”
The last of these, “L’Étourdi,” was printed the same year in which
the original appeared in Paris.
Molière’s first comedy, “Les précieuses Ridicules,” was performed
and was printed in 1659. He died in 1673.
“Les Oeuvres” de M. François Rabelais. 2 vols. 12mo. 1663
“Recueil de quelques pièces nouvelles et galantes tant en prose
qu’en vers. ‘À Cologne, chez Pierre du Marteau.’”
One of the pieces of “lighter” literature upon which the Elzevirs
did not wish to place their imprint, and they, therefore, utilise
their “John Doe,” the mythical du Marteau of Cologne.
“Dictionarium gallico-germanico-latinum. Dictionnaire
françois-allemand-latin, par Nathanael Duez, avec priviléges.” 4to.
1115 pp. 1664
The final publication of the firm was a reissue of the Heinsius
edition of Virgil, printed in 1664.
Daniel Elzevir, with whose death terminated the publishing work of the
House, carried on the business after the retirement of his cousin, from
1664 to 1680, a period of sixteen years. During this term, he published
two hundred and fifty-nine works, a very large proportion of which were
reissues, often corrected and improved, of the earlier publications of
the House.
I cite a few titles, omitting for the most part the re-issues.
The first undertaking was a third edition of the “Oeuvres diverses
du Sieur de Balzac,” which had evidently retained their popularity
for Dutch readers.
“Il Decameron di Messer Giovanni Boccacci, cittadino Fiorentino,”
etc. 12mo 1665 “Les constitutions du monastère de Port Royal du S.
Sacrement, avec privilége et approbation.” 12mo. 1665
Issued without imprint.
“Recueil des défenses de M. Fouquet.” 5 vols. 12mo. 1665
“Suite du Recueil des Défenses de M. Fouquet.” 7 vols. 12mo. 1667
“Conclusion des Défenses,” etc. 1 vol. 12mo. 1668
These volumes appeared without imprint, but were promptly
identified in Paris as coming from Elzevir.
Fouquet, who died in 1680, had been minister of Finance for Louis
XIV., and had achieved exceptional success in dissipating the
resources of the realm. His trial lasted three years, and he was
condemned to imprisonment for life.
“Le Nouveau Testament” from the Vulgate. “À Mons, chez Gaspard
Migeot.” 2 vols. 12mo. 1667
This is the first edition of this translation, known as the “New
Testament of Mons.” It was printed for Migeot by Elzevir, and was
also sold by Elzevir in the Low Countries.
“La Vie du Roy Almansor, écrite par le vertueux capitaine Aly
Abencufian, traduit de l’espagnol par le P. Fr. d. Obeilh.” 12mo.
1671
“Les Fourberies de Scapin” and the other comedies of Moliere were
printed by Elzevir promptly after their appearance in Paris.
“Augustini Confessionum Sommalii.”
This bears the imprint _Lugduni_ (Lyons), in place of _Lugduni
Batavorum_, for the purpose, as before explained, of facilitating
its sale in Catholic countries. This was one of the first editions
of the Fathers of the Church issued by the Elzevirs.
“Les Oeuvres complètes de Molière.” 5 vols. 12mo. 1675
“P. Virgilii Maronis, Opera. Nic. Heinsius recensuit.” 12mo. 1676
A famous specimen of the best of the typography of the Elzevir
Press. The long series of Latin classics previously issued by his
uncle and cousins were frequently reprinted by Daniel, indicating
that the increasing reputation secured for the series had kept them
in continued demand throughout Europe.
“Gierusalemme Liberata, poema heroico del Sig. Torquato Tasso,”
printed in the Italian, with twenty illustrations. 2 vols. 1678
Several other of Tasso’s poems were, later, issued by Elzevir.
Tasso had died in 1595.
The last work issued by Daniel Elzevir was an edition by Francis
Delebve of the “Opera medica” of Sylvius, printed in a handsome
quarto volume.
The widow of Daniel Elzevir (who survived him but a year) was able to
complete the printing of a few volumes which had been left unfinished,
but the publishing record of the House was practically closed with the
death of Daniel in 1680.
The Elzevirs had carried on business as printers, publishers, and
booksellers, in their several Houses in Leyden, Amsterdam, Utrecht, and
The Hague, from 1583 to 1681, a period covering nearly a century. Their
several catalogues give the titles of 1608 separate works or editions
issued or printed by them during this time, an average of about sixteen
each year. It was naturally the case, however, that the publications
issued annually during the later period very much exceeded those for
which the founder of the House was responsible.
A very large proportion, and, as the years went by, an increasing
proportion of the publications of each year consisted of new editions
of the earlier issues of the House, but it is to be borne in mind that
while, as a rule, these reissues did not call for further publishing
initiative or editorial labour they did require an entire resetting
of the type, and, therefore, involved a repetition (except perhaps
as to the item of illustrations) of the first publishing outlay. The
invention of stereotyping and electro-typing, by means of which the
form of type once set can be cast, and the plates preserved for use in
printing further editions, belongs to a later century. The process of
stereotyping was probably first perfected in Paris in 1795, by Firmin
Didot.
The categories and bibliographies from which I have cited the
preceding statistics include not only the books printed and published
by the Elzevirs, but the more important of the works which were
printed by them for the account of other publishers, and which were,
therefore, not issued with their publishing imprint. In the majority
of instances, however, the Elzevirs retained, in their hands as
booksellers, the agencies for the sale of these books for the Low
Countries, for Scandinavia, and frequently for Germany. The lists
cited also include the titles of certain books (the number being at
best but inconsiderable) which, while published by the Elzevirs, had
been printed for them by other printers; and, finally, they include
the titles of a number of works which, while not bearing the name of
Elzevir, and in fact usually having on their title-page a Lyons or
a Cologne imprint, have been identified, through the character of
their typography, as coming from one of the Elzevir printing-offices,
while, later, it was discovered, chiefly through the investigation of
Willems, that for certain classes of books the Elzevirs had made a
practice of utilising one of two or three bogus imprints which they had
invented for the purpose. By far the larger proportion of the Elzevir
publications, probably more than nine-tenths, were printed in Latin.
The texts in French were the next in importance, followed, in the order
named, by those in Dutch, Greek, Italian, and Arabic.
The general character of the literature in the production of which
the family had interested itself, is indicated, however roughly, by
the titles cited. The books belonged, in the main, to the class that
would to-day be described as “heavy literature.” The classics, Greek
and Latin, form the larger portion of the list, while there were
also groups of important works in Calvinistic Theology, Metaphysics,
Medicine, Natural Science, Political Science, History, and Biography.
Fiction and legend were represented not at all, and poetry to but
an inconsiderable extent. The dramatic list, while not large, was
important, including as it did the great productions of Corneille and
Molière.
The works of the Fathers of the Church, which had formed so important a
portion of the undertakings of the printer-publishers of the preceding
century, were represented on the Elzevir list only by an edition of the
_Confessions_ of S. Augustine. It is evident that the demand for these
had been naturally lessened by the influence of the Reformation. It
is rather surprising that the Elzevirs did not give a larger measure
of attention to the publication of editions of the Scriptures, as the
interest in the Bible was unquestionably very great in the communities
which had accepted the Calvinistic and Lutheran doctrines. According
to the catalogues, however, they published during the century but
one edition of the Bible in Dutch and one in French. To these should
be added several issues of the New Testament, printed in Greek, and
evidently planned to meet the University requirements. The most
noteworthy publishing undertaking, and the one which probably brought
to the name of Elzevir the largest measure of prestige throughout
Europe, and also the largest business returns, was the magnificent
series of Classics, printed in duodecimo.
While by far the larger proportion of the publications of the century
were the work of authors of a past generation, the Elzevir catalogues
included the names of a number of contemporary writers, the works of
whom have achieved an abiding fame. Without repeating the catalogue,
I will refer here only to Descartes, Galileo, Grotius, Salmasius,
Heinsius (father and son), Molière, Hobbes, etc. The historians of
the Elzevirs do not give (doubtless because they have not been able
to find) the record of the arrangements entered into between these
contemporary authors and their publishers. They can only point out
that, according to the evidence of the correspondence, the relations
between the Elzevirs and the scholars resident in the Low Countries,
whose works they printed, appear to have been very satisfactory, and
resulted in a number of cases in close personal friendship. As far
as the foreign authors were concerned, the Elzevirs appear to have
followed simply the dictates of their own convenience and advantage.
They took what material they thought they could use, without troubling
themselves to make either requests or acknowledgments. They were, in
fact, the most extensive piratical publishers that the world had as yet
seen, and may be said to have reduced piracy to a business system.
It would, however, be very absurd to pass judgment by the standard of
later times, upon the literary appropriations of the publishers of
the seventeenth century. It is not probable that either the Elzevirs
or their publishing contemporaries had any thought that in reprinting
French, English, or German books, they were causing wrong either to
the writers or to the original publishers, or that their action could
be considered as an interference with any existing rights. Using the
term in its strict legal sense, there were, of course, at this time no
“rights” in literary productions outside of the territory covered by
any particular “privilege.” The Elzevirs were accustomed to protect
their own books, both the works of contemporary authors and the
editions of old time writers, by privileges covering the territories of
the Republic, and they occasionally secured also a privilege from the
French Crown.
It does not appear that any of the foreign works reprinted by them had
been placed under the protection of a Dutch privilege, and, in fact,
I find no references in the correspondence that has been preserved
to any questions of infringement of privilege protection, with which
the Elzevirs had to do either as complainants or as defendants. It
is probable that even in the territory covered by a privilege, the
difficulty of enforcing the same under the law was considerable, and
that publishers and editors found it wise for the most part to accept
the annoyance of interference and of competition rather than to incur
the labour and expense of an appeal to the authorities. It was also
doubtless the case that the superior facilities for production and
for distribution possessed by the Elzevirs, enabled them to protect
themselves pretty effectively against any unauthorised competition, at
least in the Low Countries.
I find record of no complaints from Molière, Scarron, or Hobbes, or
from any other of the foreign authors whose works the Elzevirs printed,
and it is probable either that these authors did not think it worth
while to waste words on an evil for which there was no remedy, or that
(as was the case with the Sieur de Balzac, whose letters have been
quoted) they considered the issue of Elzevir editions of their writings
as an honour which added to their literary fame.
While many details have been preserved of the business history of
the Elzevirs, I find no reference to their books of account, and no
record of manufacturing expenditures such as has been preserved of
the Antwerp publisher, Plantin. I have, therefore, been unable to
ascertain what payments were made to the home authors like Descartes,
Grotius, Heinsius, and others, of whose works repeated editions were
issued. As these later editions were in the majority of cases revised
by the authors themselves, it is evident that they must have been
published under some satisfactory arrangement. It would also have been
interesting to ascertain what remuneration was paid for editorial
service, especially in such undertakings as the great series of
Classics, for translations, for the work of press supervision, and
for the service of literary counsel, of which the Elzevirs secured
from scholarly associates a very full measure. But the data for such
information are not available.
There is a similar lack of information concerning the success or
the lack of success of the different publishing undertakings. We
can only conclude from the fact that so large a proportion of the
books printed reached later editions, in some cases being reprinted
five or six times, that for these works, at least, a continued and a
remunerative sale was secured. The references in the correspondence
from different parts of Europe give evidence that the most important of
the undertakings of the House, the series of Latin and Greek Classics,
had won for itself a favourable reception with students and scholars in
far distant educational centres, and it is evident that the total sale
of these volumes must have been very considerable.
There is also what might be called the negative testimony to the
general success of the publishing judgment of the Elzevirs, that there
is record on their long list of no single undertaking of importance
which proved a burdensome failure, as was the case, for instance, with
the great Bible of Plantin. It was certainly the case that the thorough
organisation of the bookselling business of the House, an organisation
which included connections not only throughout the Netherlands, but
with the principal book-centres of Germany, France, Scandinavia, and
Italy, gave them in the work of finding a market for the output of
their presses, a very material advantage over the firms whose business
was limited to printing and publishing. The catalogues issued by the
several retail concerns carried on by the Elzevirs were by far the most
comprehensive, the best classified, and in every way the most complete
that had as yet been known in the book trade, and these catalogues
served as models for the trade bibliographies of the succeeding half
century.
One very material advantage which was enjoyed by the Elzevirs as
compared with other families whose names belong to the record of
publishing, was the continued vitality of the family itself, a vitality
which ensured the carrying on of the work of the House effectively
through three generations. In each one of the two generations which
succeeded that of Louis the founder, there were from two to five
representatives who had the interest and the ability to continue the
special work which had brought fame to the family. Such a persistency
of family purpose and of living representatives of the family competent
to carry out such purpose has been paralleled in but few other
instances. The publishing business of the Rivingtons of London is now
(1896) being directed by a Rivington of the fifth generation from its
foundation by Charles Rivington, in 1711, and with an existence of one
hundred and eighty-five years, has doubtless a longer career to boast
of than can be credited to any other family which has devoted itself to
publishing. The House of Murray, of London, is now in the hands of two
Murrays of the fourth generation, and can show an unbroken record of
about a century.
In certain respects, however, the Harpers, of New York, present a
closer parallel to the Elzevirs. The two English firms above referred
to, have depended for their continuation in more than one of their
generations upon a single representative. The Harpers, however, whose
business is now in the hands of a third generation assisted by active
members of a fourth, have, like the Elzevirs, found in each generation
a sturdy group of representatives, imbued with the traditions of the
House, and able and willing to devote themselves to carrying forward
its work, and the activities and prestige of the House bid fair to be
extended and expanded through the twentieth century.
Omitting the names of certain Elzevirs of the fourth and fifth
generation who, while continuing certain interests in connection
with book-selling, did not continue the business of printing or of
publishing, eleven Elzevirs were, in the three generations from the
founder, actively engaged as typographers and as publishers. Four
names are, however, to be borne more particularly in mind, of the men
who impressed their individual force and character upon the business
and to whom its creation, expansion, and direction were practically
due. Louis, the founder, had, in various respects, by far the most
difficult task of the four. The special character of his work and the
nature of the obstacles overcome by him, have already been described.
His ambition and ability passed in largest measure to his youngest
son, Bonaventure (leaving out of the count Adrian, who died young).
Bonaventure directed the fortunes of the Leyden House during the most
successful period of its existence. The grandsons of Louis, Louis the
second and Daniel, can share between them the responsibility for the
distinctive work done by the House in Amsterdam, a work which, by the
time Daniel was left in sole control, very much exceeded in importance
all that had been accomplished in Leyden.
It seems evident that, while the connection with the University had
been, as was so frequently the case with the earlier publishing
undertakings of Europe, of very material and perhaps indispensable
service in initiating the business of the House, the trade facilities
offered by a great commercial centre like Amsterdam were of still
greater value than the coöperation and material to be secured from the
University.
No one of the Elzevirs appears to have been entitled to be described as
a scholar, although Daniel, the last of the House, was evidently a man
of a wide range of cultivation and of attainments. Each one, however,
of the family who had responsibilities in the management of the
publishing interests, evidently possessed adequate judgment as to what
constituted scholarship, and they were always able to secure in the
selection of their material, in the higher class of editorial work, and
in supervising the printing of the more exacting classes of books, the
service of some of the most learned men who were at the time resident
in Holland. Not a few of these scholarly assistants and associates
became, as said, near friends of their publishers or of their chiefs.
The Elzevirs did not have upon their hands the peculiar
responsibilities that had to be met by the printer-publishers of
the preceding generations. It was not necessary for them, as it had
been for Aldus, to ransack distant convents for manuscripts, and to
do the personal work of collating and preparing these manuscripts
for the compositors. The Elzevirs were, in nearly every instance, in
a position, for their classical publications, to give to the type
dealers printed “copy,” the text of which had had the advantage of
the supervision of a long series of previous editors. It was not
necessary for the Elzevirs to create methods of organisation for a
printing-office, or themselves to invent mechanism for the production
of books. At the time their work was begun, printing was already if not
a perfected at least a well developed art, the processes of which had
been very fully worked out. They were able, after utilising to best
advantage the experience of previous generations, so far themselves
to develop and improve methods and results as to make of printing
not only an art but a fine art; and even if they had never placed a
publishing imprint upon a title-page, they would, through their service
as typographers, have earned an honourable place in the annals of
bookmaking.
In their work as publishers, they had a very great advantage in doing
business in a country in which literature was practically free from
the burdensome interference of censorship. When we recall the long
series of contests carried on by the printers of Venice and of Florence
against the ecclesiastical censorship of Rome, and the almost equally
hampering obstacles placed upon the printer-publishers of Paris, first
by the theologians of the Sorbonne, and, later, by the officials of
the Crown, we can appreciate the value of the freedom enjoyed by the
Press in Leyden and in Amsterdam, in the history of publishing in
which places, there is hardly a single reference to the burdens of
interference or censorship.
The successive generations of Elzevirs seem always to have been (as
was certainly the case with Louis the founder) consistent Calvinists,
and they were unwilling to place their imprint upon any publications
assailing the doctrines of the Reformed Church. While they certainly
rendered a very large service indeed to the development of book-making
and of book-selling in Europe, and by this means, to the extension of
the influence of literature, it would probably not be accurate to claim
that they were men of exceptionally high ideals. They were traders,
although traders on a great scale and with comprehensive and far
reaching ideas as to the possibilities of their trade. Their business
appears to have been carried on, however, with little reference to
anything except their own business advantage. It could not be said of
them, as it was of Aldus, that they were willing to risk their fortunes
for the sake of bringing new ideas to Europe; or, as was the case with
Robert Estienne, that they were prepared to sacrifice both fortune and
life, if necessary, in order to maintain the freedom of the Press and
the right of bringing the Scriptures to the people.
It was probably true that, however unconsciously, they were able to
do an important work in helping to prepare the way for interstate
copyright. They had themselves, as we have seen, no idea of the
possibility of securing the protection of the law for literary
productions beyond the territory that could be covered by a privilege
or by a series of privileges. In extending, however, the sale of their
own publications in countries far distant from the “country of origin”
and in finding sale not only in their home city, but in the cities of
Germany and Scandinavia, for the works of widely separated authors,
they helped to develop in several communities the understanding that
literary productions had nothing to do with political boundaries,
that the readers of one country were of necessity dependent upon the
literature of all countries, and that the boundaries of the world of
literature were the boundaries of civilisation.
This is the conception that forms a necessary foundation for the
idea of International Copyright. It is under such a conception that
the reader comes to feel that sense of obligation to the author,
which makes him more than ready to pay to such author a return for
the service rendered. When such a relation has once been established
between authors and their readers, it becomes practicable to secure
from communities the recognition by law of the rights of authors to
such returns. It may fairly be said, therefore, that in creating and in
developing the business of distributing literature throughout Europe,
the Elzevirs took the first step that was necessary in order to bring
about the European copyright, which was finally secured, two centuries
later, under the Convention of Berne.
[Illustration]
PART III.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PROPERTY IN LITERATURE.
[Illustration]
PART III.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PROPERTY IN LITERATURE.
CHAPTER I.
PRIVILEGES AND CENSORSHIP IN ITALY.
1498-1798.
THE legislation of the Venetian Republic in regard to privileges,
monopolies, and copyrights was more continuous and more important
than that of any Italian State. In fact, the enactments of the other
States for the supervision of printing and for the encouragement and
protection of literary productions were so far similar to those of
Venice (upon which many of them had probably been modelled) that the
series of Venetian laws can be taken as fairly representative of the
general system prevailing in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. The requirements of my subject will, therefore, be most
conveniently met by confining my record for Italy to a summary of the
copyright legislation of Venice, in place of undertaking to give the
details for each Italian city in which printing was carried on. For the
data of this record I am largely indebted to the scholarly treatise of
Horatio F. Brown, on _The Venetian Printing Press_, to which previous
reference has been made.
The action of the Government in regard to the book-trade presents
itself in two main divisions: the first including the steps taken to
protect and encourage the new art and those concerned in it; and the
second, the measures planned to protect the State from certain dangers
which it was dreaded might be brought upon it by the operations of
the Press. Under the first heading are to be classed monopolies,
copyrights, patents, and protection against foreign competition; while
under the second come the measures of censorship--religious, moral,
and political. The term “_privilegii_” was applied to all copyrights,
patents, monopolies, and special concessions having to do with books
and printing.
Between 1469 and 1517, these _privilegii_ were, as a rule, granted
by the College or Cabinet of Venice, and their record is to be found
in the Minutes of the Cabinet. Occasionally, however, the Senate
conferred the privilege, and sometimes a concession was issued under
the direction of the chiefs of the Council. While privileges appear to
have been freely granted to all _bona fide_ applicants, the Government
did not make the securing of a privilege obligatory upon the publisher.
The first kind of privilege was a simple monopoly, under which the
Government granted to the beneficiary for a term of years the sole
right to print or to sell a whole class of books. The earliest Venetian
privilege on record, which is also probably the earliest in Italy, was
that of 1469, under which a monopoly was given to John of Speyer, for a
period of five years, for the printing of books in Venice. Fortunately
for the development in this city of the art of printing and of the
business of publishing, John died shortly after securing this monopoly.
It was not continued to his heirs, and Jenson, Nicolas of Frankfort,
and their associates were left free to push their printing operations
as they saw fit.
The second class of privilege was that securing to an author the
copyright in his production. This constitutes, of course, a recognition
of the existence of literary property and of the rights of literary
producers. The earliest record of such a copyright in Venice (and
also the earliest for Italy) bears date September 1, 1486. It secures
to Mr. Antonio Sabellico, historian to the Republic, for apparently
an indefinite term, the sole right to publish, or to authorise the
publication of, his _Decades rerum Venetarium_. The penalty for
infringement was five hundred ducats. The words of the concession are
worth quoting, as, in securing for the author a literary proprietorship
in his work, it established a precedent of great importance:
_Quod opus prefatum per Marcum Antonium prefatum dari possit alicui
diligenti impressori qui opus illud imprimat suis sumptibus et edat et
nemini præter eum liceat opus illud imprimi facere._[144]
In the year 1493, a more formal and explicit recognition of literary
proprietorship was given in the privilege granted to Daniele Barbaro,
securing to him for ten years a copyright in the work of his deceased
brother Hermolao Barbaro, the _Castigationes Plinii_. In January, 1492,
a copyright for an unspecified term was granted to Peter of Ravenna for
his work _Phœnix_ or _Fœnix_. The form used is the same as that of the
privilege given to Sabellico. No one is to print the work except under
the authority of the author. Klostermann and others have referred to
this privilege for Peter’s _Phœnix_ as the earliest instance in Europe
of government recognition of an author’s copyright, but, as we have
seen, the protection given to Sabellico antedates this by nearly six
years.
The third class of privilege is that securing to an editor or
publisher a copyright for works not of his own (literary) production,
and it is of this class that the instances are the most numerous. The
earliest example of a copyright to an editor is that granted, in 1493,
to Joannes Nigro for his edition of _Haliabas_. The formula is the same
as that used in the copyrights to authors. In the same year a copyright
(also without a term limitation) was given to the printer-publisher
Bernadino de Benaliis for the work by Giustiniani, entitled _De Origine
Urbis Venetiarum_.[145]
In connection with this class of copyrights, abuses soon arose.
Copyrights were secured by a number of printers, or printer-publishers,
for works which they never issued, and which, in not a few cases, they
apparently never intended to issue. The possession of these privileges
was used to obtain from _bona fide_ publishers purchase moneys for
which no service had been rendered either to the community or to the
individuals, and when these moneys could not be afforded or were not
paid, there resulted a block in publishing undertakings.
The fourth kind of privilege conceded by the Venetian College was of
the nature of a patent rather than a copyright. It secured a protection
for improvements and developments in the art of printing, or for
specific classes of literature. In 1496, for instance, a privilege was
given to Aldus by the Venetian Government, for a term of twenty years,
for all books that he might print in Greek text. In connection with
this copyright, he secured what might be called a patent right for
his particular character of Greek type and for his special method of
printing. In his petition he represented that in the making of these
Greek fonts, he had invested a large part of his resources.
In 1501, Aldus obtained a copyright of ten years for all works printed
in the cursive or italic character, of which he claimed the invention,
and which possessed the special advantage of compactness. The Greek
type was said to have been modelled on the script of Musurus, as the
cursive was a fac-simile of the writing of Boccaccio.
In 1498, a monopoly for the term of twenty-five years was granted to
Terracina for all books printed in Arabic, Moorish, Syriac, Armenian,
Indian, and Barbary. Throughout the sixteenth century, a number of
patents were granted for improvements in the art of printing.
The four classes of privileges thus far cited were concerned with the
protection of the individual producer against competition within the
Venetian State. A fifth kind of privilege had for its purpose the
protection of Venetian printing and publishing as a whole against the
competition of foreign rivals. The Government of Venice upheld what
would now be called a protective system, and it undertook to secure its
industries against interference or competition from foreigners.
In the printing privilege granted to John of Speyer, in 1469, provision
was made to prohibit the importation of books printed elsewhere,
a provision that, if strictly enforced, must have weighed rather
heavily upon Venetian scholars and students, and in necessitating the
reprinting, for a comparatively small community, of any books required
for Venetian readers, must have tended to keep the price of those books
high.
In all the privileges subsequently granted appears a provision
prohibiting the importation of any foreign edition of the work securing
Venetian copyright. Such a prohibition, however, is of course in line
with the restrictive and protective features of modern copyright
law, and is a very different thing from the attempt made in the
edict of 1769, previously quoted, to prevent the importation into
Venetian territory of any books printed abroad. The former restriction
constitutes an essential feature of any system of copyright, while
the latter was a kind of _reductio ad absurdum_ of the theory of
“protection to home industries.” In 1519, in a copyright granted
to Manenti, physician to the Duke of Urbino, appears the condition
that the book securing Venetian copyright must be printed in Venetian
territory; and in the copyrights issued thereafter this proviso is
seldom omitted. A similar provision finds place in a number of the
copyright enactments of later times, the most recent instance being the
American law of 1891.
The applications for privileges or copyrights submitted by the
printer-publishers were quite frequently accompanied by special
reasons why in each particular case such a petition should be granted.
Sometimes it was on the ground of the general excellence of their
printing and their guaranty that the edition now proposed shall possess
special beauty and accuracy of typography; sometimes they engage to
secure the highest grade of scholarship for the text revision and for
the editorial work; again they will plead poverty or distress, or large
families to support, or special need of some kind.
In the year 1493, we have an example of an application for a privilege
being accompanied by a certificate from certain competent authorities
as to the value and the importance for the community of the work to
be published.[146] The applicant was Bernardino de Benaliis, and the
publications in question were the works of Beato Lorenzo Giustiniani
and of Tartagni da Imola. Benaliis submitted from a number of the
doctors in law at the University of Padua certificates as to the value
of the book.
Foreigners made a practice of supporting their petitions with letters
of commendation, either from the ambassadors of their own states,
or of some other of the foreign ambassadors. The applications or
petitions were not always granted, and, occasionally, conditions were
attached upon which the continued validity of the privilege was made to
depend. Such conditions fell into four general divisions, concerned
with, first, the quality of the work to be produced, secondly (though
infrequently) the speed of its production, thirdly the price at which
it was to be sold, and fourthly the rights of the producers, _i.e._,
publishers. As an example of the first kind can be noted the privilege
granted to Benaliis, already cited, under which he is bound not to
publish the works of Tartagni without those of Giustiniani, nor _vice
versa_, and he must further guarantee to print the volumes in the
finest style of typography and with the most correct text.
The privilege given in 1494 for certain books to be issued by Matteo de
Codeca, is coupled with the condition that the volumes are to be sold
at a “fair price” (_pretio honestissimo_), and a similar term is used
in the privilege given in 1496 to Landriano. In a certain number of the
privileges, principally those of earlier date, we find the condition
that the works must be published within a year from the date of the
application, or must be printed at a certain rate per week.
The College kept no register of the privileges issued by it other than
the entries in its minutes, and it happened not infrequently, as the
number of petitions increased, that exclusive privileges for the same
work were granted to different applicants. Conflicts naturally arose
between two publishers claiming control of the same work, but when any
cases of the kind were brought up for adjudication, they were decided
in favour of the privileges bearing the earliest date, providing
always that the condition of publishing within a certain term had
been complied with. As a result of these complications, however, the
practice came to be adopted of attaching to a privilege a saving clause
to the effect that it should be invalid in case any earlier privilege
should already have been issued for the same work.
Among other instances of such a proviso, Brown quotes that included
in the privilege granted, in 1493, to Calcedonio, which closes thus:
_declarato, quod hæc gratia intelligatur casu quo opera ipsa sint nova,
et aliquis alius jam non cœperit illa imprimere, vel sibi promissum
fuerit_. Another form, occurring in 1502, was _dummodo prius dicta
volumina non fuerint impressa_.[147]
The Minutes of the College were not open to the inspection of the
public, and it appears that no subject indexes were kept of the
business transacted, while, as before said, no attempts were made to
preserve any list or register of the privileges issued. The printers
and publishers had, therefore, no safe means of ascertaining whether or
not they were infringing a previous copyright.
The average term of the earlier privileges was ten years. In the
latter half of the sixteenth century, however, it became the practice
to grant longer terms. There are examples, in 1569, of privileges of
twenty years, and, in 1596, of twenty-four and twenty-five years. The
terms varied, however, very greatly, and it is difficult to trace the
grounds upon which a longer or a shorter time was decided upon. We find
instances of one year, five years, ten years, fifteen years, etc.
The copyrights run sometimes from the date of the application and
sometimes from that of the publication. After 1505, the practice
obtained of granting prolongations of privileges in cases in which
good cause had been shown for such prolongation. An instance of such
an extension is the case of Leonardo Crasso’s edition of the works of
Polifilo, for which, in 1508, a second copyright term of ten years
was granted on the ground that the wars had prevented the publisher
from getting back his investment. The principal difficulty with these
earlier privileges was the absence of any machinery to secure their
enforcement or the protection of the owners of the copyrights. Brown
says that there is no instance or record of a suit being brought by
one printer against another for infringement of copyright. Complaints
for infringement were presented from time to time to the College or
to the Council of Ten. In 1499, the Council of Ten issued an order to
publishers to respect the copyrights granted to Antonio Moretto of
Brescia.
In 1495, Biondo and Giambattista secured for ten years a privilege
in the Letters of S. Catherine of Siena. The same work was, however,
published by Aldus in 1500, five years before Biondo’s privilege had
expired. The _Letters of Phalaris_ were published in 1498 by Braccio,
and in 1499 by Aldus, and there appears to have been no determination
of the question to whom the privilege or copyright belonged. The whole
business of copyrights resting upon individual privileges fell into
confusion, and the difficulties in the way of protecting literary
property must have seriously interfered with the development of
publishing undertakings.
It must be remembered also, that these privileges, even if not
interfered with, covered the control of but a limited market, that,
namely, comprised in the territory of the Venetian Republic. In
any other States of Italy, the reprinters were, of course, free to
appropriate the results of the enterprise of the Venetian publishers
and of their expenditures for manuscripts, editorial service, etc.;
while the Venetians had, of course, the same freedom in utilising the
works initiated in Rome, Florence, Milan, or Verona. In competing for
markets outside of Italy, however, the Venetian publishers had the
advantage of the wide commercial connections possessed by their city.
With an entire absence of protection for his literary undertakings
outside of his own State, it was, of course, of first importance that,
within these limits at least, the publisher should have secured to him
the results of his planning, his labours, and his investment. Such
security was, however, given but very inadequately by the system of
privileges. The penalties attached to infringements hardly acted as
deterrents, principally because there was no effective machinery for
their enforcement. These penalties comprised the confiscation of the
contraband material, with fines varying (for each unauthorised copy
of the book) from twenty soldi to one thousand ducats. The latter
was the fine prescribed, in 1515, in the case of a piratical edition
of Ariosto. The fine, when collected, was usually divided into three
parts, one third going to the court, one third to the complainant,
and one third to some city charity. Occasionally, though very rarely,
there was added to the penalty a sentence of confinement in prison for
one or two months. There are one or two instances also of suspension
of the offender from the exercise of the art of printing. Complaints
concerning infringement could usually be brought before any magistrate
of the Republic; but in some cases it was specified in the privilege
itself that a trial for its contravention should be held before a
special court, such as that of the fiscal procurators, or of the
police magistrates. What uniformity of procedure came finally to be
established, was due, however, less to the regulations of the law than
to the precedents established by the printers and publishers.
=Censorship.=--After the earlier measures having for their purpose the
encouragement of the new art of printing, the actions of the Government
of Venice (as of the other States where the business of publishing
became of importance) were more largely concerned with the supervision
and regulation of the Press for the safety of the interests of State
and Church, than with the protection of literary property.
As in the case of the privileges, the censorship was, for something
more than half a century, that is, from 1469 to 1528, carried on
without the aid of any general law, and was based simply upon a
practice or series of precedents evolved from the individual action
taken by the Government in each instance as it arose. The granting
of privileges had, as we have seen, been the duty sometimes of the
College, sometimes of the Senate. The responsibility concerning
censorship rested naturally with the Council of Ten, which in its
capacity as a standing committee of safety, assumed a general charge of
the morals of the community.
The censorship of the Press in Venice, as elsewhere, was concerned with
three aspects of literature: the religious, the moral (which included
the political), and the purely literary. Morality was considered from
both the public and the private or personal point of view, the former
including as its chief consideration the safety of the State.
The operation of the censorship was marked by the presence of an
_imprimatur_ or record of authorisations. As has already been noted,
applications for a privilege were occasionally accompanied by a
certificate or _testamur_ from certain competent authorities, who had
examined the work in question and who were willing to certify as to its
soundness and importance.
The earliest example of an ecclesiastical _testamur_ printed in a book
published in Venice, appears at the beginning of the _Nosce Te_, issued
by Jenson in 1480. The _Nosce Te_ was a book of devotion, written
by a Carthusian monk, Giovanni di Dio, and the _testamur_ in this
case might, therefore, be interpreted simply as an approval by his
ecclesiastical superiors of the work done by him as an ecclesiastic.
There is no record that the _Nosce Te_ ever secured a privilege from
the Venetian Government, and it seems certain that at the date in
question no such _testamur_ was required under the regulations of the
secular government.
No further instance of a clerical _testamur_ occurs before 1505, when
Jacomo di Penzi, of Lecco, a printer, in applying to the Council for a
privilege for certain books he desired to print, states that he has
an _imprimatur_ from the Council of Ten, and a _testamur_ from the
Patriarch as to the merit of one of the works, the _Tre famosissime
Questioni_, by Zane, Archbishop of Spalato. In the year 1508, we have
the first example of an ecclesiastical _testamur_ being required by the
Council of Ten, as a condition for their own _imprimatur_. The work was
the _Universalis animæ traditionis liber quintus_ of Gregoriis, and the
ecclesiastical censor appointed to examine the work from a theological
point of view, reported that he found in it nothing opposed to Catholic
verity.
This is the first instance of a religious censorship exercised by the
secular government. The case may be considered as fairly indicating
the position the Venetian Government proposed to take in regard to the
supervision of books touching upon theological matters. The State had
a personal interest in protecting the Church against the attacks of
books likely to be subversive of the faith, and it was glad to secure
the opinion of the Church in regard to the character or tendency of a
doubtful work; but it intended to retain in its own hands the final
decision as to the permission to print; and it contended that the
interests of Church and State could be best protected by the State
taking action for both. The conclusion arrived at was, therefore, that
there should be religious censorship, but that the censor should act
only through powers delegated to him by the secular government.