Virtual issue for 2020

Guest Editor: Cristina Dondi

Venice was the largest printing and exporting place in fifteenth-century Europe, with over 200 printing shops ranging from small to very large, some still anonymous. (The best survey is Paul Needham, ‘Venetian Printers and Publishers in the Fifteenth Century’, La Bibliofilia, 100 (1998), 157–74). The magnitude and diversity of the enterprise have probably somewhat inhibited modern scholarship, which has tended to focus on individual actors, most notably the humanist publisher Aldus Manutius (1449–1515). We owe to Victor Scholderer’s seminal article in The Library [No. 1] the overview of the first ten years and the focus on the shift in production which did take place around the beginning of the 1480s, from foreign printers to Italian ones. (His data are confirmed by my ‘Printers and Guilds in Fifteenth-Century Venice’, La Bibliofilia, 106 (2005 for 2004), 229–65, published eighty years later with evidence that the two groups of printers were associated with two specific confraternities in the city, the early foreigners with that of San Girolamo, and the Italians, who continued to lead in the later decades, with that of San Rocco.)

Scholderer’s examination of the wonderful collection of the British Museum, immortalized in the publication of BMC V – Venice, which happened to be published in the same year, 1924, as this first article in our list, gave rise to further essays, such as his two on Gerardus de Lisa of 1929 and 1930 [Nos. 2, 3]. His was a lesson in methodology: the importance of documentary sources, in this case unearthed by Italian scholars in the Treviso archives, was the crucial supplement to the observations drawn from the books themselves. Such evidence allowed scholars to outline Gerardus’ career as a schoolmaster, printer, bookseller, choirmaster, debt-collector, and the precentor of the cathedral of Aquileia from 1496 to his death in 1499. In Scholderer’s words, ‘one of the chief difficulties met with in the history of prototypography is adequately to account for the time of the men who produced the books, an end towards which the colophons, separated as they are by the most disconcerting gaps and blanks, usually carry us but halfway [. . .] the fact that the only available evidence about them derives from their bookwork has disturbed our perspective’.

Some of the other articles I have selected are relevant, and of interest to us today, not just for the topic they focus on but for the context they provide and the reference to their time, and for the collateral information which can turn out to be vital for us today, for advancing our investigations into the reception, later circulation, and survival of Venetian books.

Duff [No. 4] captures one of the specialities of Venetian printers, liturgical commissions for a wide range of places in Europe, England included. Following Egmondt’s career in the sixteenth century as a bookbinder, Duff asked why bibliographers did not pay enough attention to this source of historical evidence, ‘a new field of enquiry altogether’, quoting Bradshaw. Much since has been done in this field. He closes with another memorable quotation by ‘our greatest bibliographer’ (i.e. Bradshaw): ‘what is wanted for the solution of a bibliographical problem is not ingenuity of speculation, but simply honest and patient observation of facts allowed to speak for themselves’.

Pollard’s article of 1902 [No. 5] puts us at the heart of a period in which incunabula were being discovered and were changing hands, generally from Italy outwards. Two unknown copies of a 1493 edition of the Bible in Italian (ISTC ib00646000) had been discovered in 1900, one by Mr Voynich, and both quickly migrated to Berlin (Kupferstich Kabinett) and to the private collection of Prince d’Essling (today in Venice, Cini). In the meantime, a third copy was being acquired by the British Museum, and it is this copy which Pollard compares with a previous 1490 Giunta edition (ISTC ib00644000). He offers plenty of valuable information on the more recent and often elusive history of these specimens. His attention is focused on a comparison of the illustrations in the two editions, an exercise which in more recent years has been much advanced through the scholarship of Lilian Armstrong and the development of the 15cILLUSTRATION digital resource. But even more important are Pollard’s general considerations as to the existence of so many editions of the Bible in the vernacular, which have been completely overlooked by ‘Protestant controversialists’. He continues:

vernacular translations enjoyed a practically unimpeded circulation long before the leaders of the Reformation made free access to the Scriptures one of their main demands. It is remarkable, indeed, that during the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Inquisition was tightening its hold on Venice, and the Index librorum prohibitorum had come into being, the Italian Bibles printed there increased notably. The British Museum possesses five editions of Malermi’s version published in the twenty-two years 1546–1567, six of Brucioli’s published in the twenty years 1532–1551, two of Santi Marmochino’s, printed respectively in 1538 and 1545, a total of thirteen editions published within thirty-six years, now on the shelves of a single library [. . .] In the face of what she considered heretical interpretations, the Church of Rome would no longer trust her people with vernacular Bibles; but it is one of the small services which Bibliography can render to History to note that this had not been her policy so long as the Scriptures were desired for edification and not for controversy, and the popularity of the Malermi Bible is so decisive a proof of this that it would be unfair to leave it unmentioned.

Needless to add, this aspect, of considerable historical significance, so pointedly raised by Pollard, is still waiting to be tackled.

The article on the Giolito press that Arthur John Butler, Professor of Italian Language at University College London, wrote in 1909 [No. 6], includes high appreciation of contemporary Italian scholarship and publishing, the chief source of his essay being Salvatore Bongi’s Annals of Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari (published in 1890–99), some amusing criticism of the state of British publications compared to the Italian ones, and even a suggestion that the then current prime minister of Italy, Giovanni Giolitti from Mondovì, must have been of the same stock as the printing family. There is also mention of his own collection of thirty or so of Gabriele Giolito’s editions—did we know? A check in the database Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) tells us that four editions of Dante from his collection are now in Cambridge University Library, presented by his widow in 1910. He concluded his lecture to the Bibliographical Society with directions for further scholarship, still unfulfilled today, over a century later:

I think I have said as much about the Gioliti as you will have cared to hear; and enough to show that the history of Venetian printing does not end with Aldus Manutius. Indeed, I wonder that no one has undertaken a history of it after he had left the scene. There are Sessa, Valgrisi, Bindoni, Pasini, Nicolo da Sabbio, Nicolo d’Aristotele, called the cripple, Griffio (also of Lyons) and a host of others, whose imprese alone form a most interesting study. Will not our Society think of it?

Despite the movement of sixteenth-century printing towards the Atlantic, and the growing importance of places such as Paris and Antwerp, Venice did continue to produce vast quantities of books. A comprehensive assessment of this production in relation to the rest of production in Europe, and most importantly of its recipients, is the challenge for twenty-first-century scholars: at least some essential tools are today in place (e.g. EDIT16).

Gordon [No. 7] offered a straightforward survey of the most important works about accountancy printed to 1600, beginning with the 1494 Venice edition of Luca Pacioli. The article is chosen for its reminder of the essential economic component in the study of Venetian printing. Wickham Legg [No. 8] discussed the rise and fall, and rise again, of the Quignon Breviary and the documents relating to the publication of the second recension, in 1536, between the Giunta of Venice and the Blado of Rome, a document received from Mons. Mercati of the Vatican Library. It is followed by an handlist of the editions published between 1535 to 1566, over a hundred, and the location of at least one copy, work which he had circulated among the members of the Henry Bradshaw Society in 1908 but not published. Noticeable are the copies owned by Wickham Legg himself and other private owners.

Bühler in 1944 [No. 9] went through the published diaries of Marin Sanudo (1879–1903) in search of relevant information on printing history, and plenty emerged, in particular documents relating to the period of 1517 to 1529. There is reference, in his footnotes, to the splendid collection of Aldines belonging to Dr Arthur E. Neergaard of New York; seven Aldine incunabula at least are now in Yale and described in MEI.

Neil Ker’s article of 1975 [No. 10] on the books of Robert Elyot, vice-provost of Eton until his death in 1499, is relevant for underlining the interdisciplinary work which characterizes incunabula studies. Aware of the loss of a great quantity of incunabula throughout the 500-year period since their printing, we know that we have to track the evidence of what existed and influenced society in the past, documentary evidence in the form of library catalogues, post-mortem inventories, and such like. Elyot’s books included five manuscripts and five printed books, two printed in Venice. Ker’s exemplary investigation is a reminder of the essential role that palaeography plays in incunabula studies. Ker’s ability to detect Elyot’s hand in manuscripts and printed books, based on scholarship far above the amateur level often thought to be sufficient by historians today, is of the kind that allows us to progress in our pursuit of history and knowledge using printed books, and manuscripts, as historical evidence.

Dreyfuss [No. 11] offers a fascinating investigation of the sources relating to the origin and development of spectacles, confirming an origin in Venice around 1300 before spreading to other areas of Europe and being imported in bulk into London in the fourteenth century. He moves on to prod the claims of the connexion between printing and the use of spectacles, but very wisely warns against generalizations of the kind that histories of early printing sadly make all too familiar, namely: ‘tempting as it is to accept the views of Corson and others, more evidence is needed before we can safely accept generalizations about mass production, distribution methods, and falling prices’. He does, however, concede that it is highly probable that the increasing use made of leather for frames after the invention of printing was an important factor in reducing costs.

The translation of Nuovo’s article in 1990 [No. 12] announced to the Anglophone readership the discovery of an amazing product of Venetian ingenuity, the attempt to print the Koran in Arabic in 1537/8. The final item in our baker’s dozen is an article on the Manutius network published after the commemorative year of 2015, which has been chosen as a document of the scholarly world’s bringing together in one place a record of all that was done, in many venues and forms, to commemorate the great Venetian publisher.

Contents

  1. ‘Printing at Venice to the end of 1481‘,
    Victor Scholderer,
    The Library, iv, 5 (1924), 129–52
  2.  ‘A Fleming in Venetia: Gerardus De Lisa, Printer, Bookseller, Schoolmaster, and Musician‘,
    Victor Scholderer,
    The Library, iv, 10 (1929), 253–73
  3. ‘Gerardus de Lisa: Further Notes‘,
    Victor Scholderer,
    The Library, iv, 11 (1930), 160–61
  4. ‘Frederick Egmondt, an English Fifteenth Century Stationer‘,
    E. Gordon Duff,
    The Library, i, 2 (1890), 210–16
  5. ‘Two Illustrated Italian Bibles‘,
    Alfred W. Pollard,
    The Library, ii, 3 (1902), 227–42
  6. ‘The Gioliti and their Press at Venice‘,
    A. J. Butler,
    Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 10 (1909), 83–107
  7.  ‘Books on Accountancy, 1494–1600‘,
    Cosmo Gordon,
    Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 13 (1913), 145–70
  8. ‘An Agreement in 1536 between certain Booksellers of Rome and Venice to bring out the Second Text of the Reformed Breviary of Cardinal Quignon, with Introduction, List of Editions, and Bibliographical Notes‘,
    J. Wickham Legg,
    Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 13 (1913), 323–48
  9. ‘Some Documents concerning the Torresani and the Aldine Press‘,
    Curt F. Bühler,
    The Library, iv, 25 (1944), 111–21
  10. ‘Robert Elyot’s Books and Annotations‘,
    Neil Ker,
    The Library, v, 30 (1975), 233–37
  11. ‘The Invention of Spectacles and the Advent of Printing: A Revised Version of a Paper given to the Bibliographical Society 20 January 1987‘,
    John Dreyfus,
    The Library, vi, 10 (1988), 93–106
  12. ‘A Lost Arabic Koran Rediscovered‘,
    Angela Nuovo,
    The Library, vi, 12 (1990), 273–92
  13. ‘The Manutius Network 2015‘,
    Paolo Sachet,
    The Library, vii, 17 (2016), 336–40