Aldus Manutius.
—It seems to me in order, for the purpose of my narrative, to present in some detail the record of the life and work of Aldus. The history of any representative printer-publisher whose career belonged to the earlier stages of the business of making and selling books, would have value in throwing light on the extent of the difficulties and obstacles to be overcome and on the nature of the methods adopted; the career of Aldus possesses, however, not merely such typical value but a distinctive and individual interest, as well because of the personality of the man as on the ground of the exceptional importance, for his own community and for future generations, of the service rendered by him.
Aldus Manutius was born at Bassiano in the Romagna, in 1450, the year in which Gutenberg completed his printing-press. He studied in Rome and in Ferrara, and after having mastered Latin, he devoted himself, under the tutorship of Guarini of Verona, to the study of Greek. Later, he delivered lectures on the Latin and Greek classics. One of his fellow students in Ferrara was the precocious young scholar Pico della Mirandola, whose friendship was afterwards of material service. In 1482, when Ferrara was being besieged by the Venetians and scholarly pursuits were interrupted, Aldus was the guest of Pico at Mirandola, where he met Emanuel Adramyttenos, one of the many Greek scholars who, when driven out of Constantinople, had found refuge in the Courts of Italian princes. Aldus spent two years at Mirandola, and under the influence and guidance of Adramyttenos, he largely increased his knowledge of the language and literature of Greece. His friend had brought from the East a number of manuscripts, many of which found their way into the library of Pico.
In 1482, Aldus took charge of the education of the sons of the Princess of Carpi, a sister of Pico, and the zeal and scholarly capacity which he devoted to his task won for him the life-long friendship of both mother and sons. It was in Carpi that Aldus developed the scheme of utilising his scholarly knowledge and connections for the printing of Latin and Greek classics. The plan was a bold one for a young scholar without capital. Printing and publishing constituted a practically untried field of business, not merely for Aldus but for Italy. Everything had to be created or developed; knowledge of the art of printing and of all the technicalities of book-manufacturing; fonts of type, Roman and Greek; a force of type-setters and pressmen and a staff of skilled revisers and proof-readers; a collection of trustworthy texts to serve as “copy” for the compositors; and last, but by no means least, a book-buying public and a book-selling machinery by which such public could be reached.
It was the aim of Aldus, as he himself expressed it, to rescue from oblivion the words of the classic writers, the monuments of human intellect. He writes in 1490: “I have resolved to devote my life to the cause of scholarship. I have chosen in place of a life of ease and freedom, an anxious and toilsome career. A man has higher responsibilities than the seeking of his own enjoyment; he should devote himself to honourable labour. Living that is a mere existence can be left to men who are content to be animals. Cato compared human existence to iron. When nothing is done with it, it rusts; it is only through constant activity that polish or brilliancy is secured.” The world has probably never produced a publisher who united with these high ideals and exceptional scholarly attainments, so much practical business ability and persistent pluck.
The funds required for the undertaking were furnished by the Princess of Carpi and her sons, probably with some co-operation from Pico, and in 1494, Aldus organised his printing-office in Venice. His first publication, issued in 1495, was the Greek and Latin Grammar of Laskaris, a suitable forerunner for his great classical series. The second issue from his Press was an edition of the Works of Aristotle, the first volume of which was also completed in 1495. This was followed in 1496 by the Greek Grammar of Gaza, and in 1497 by a Greek-Latin Dictionary compiled by Aldus himself.
The business cares of these first years of his printing business were not allowed to prevent him from going on with his personal studies. In 1502, he published, in a handsome quarto volume, a comprehensive grammar under the title of Rudimenta Grammatices Linguæ Latinæ, etc. cum Introductione ad Hebraicam Linguam, to the preparation of which he had devoted years of arduous labour. Piratical editions were promptly issued in Florence, Lyons, and Paris. He also wrote the Grammaticæ Institutiones Græcæ (a labour of some years), which was not published until 1515, after the death of the author.
It will be noted that nearly all the undertakings to which he gave, both as editor and as publisher, his earliest attention, were the necessary first steps in the great scheme of the reproduction of the complete series of the Greek classics. Before editors or proof-readers could go on with the work of preparing the Greek texts for the press, dictionaries and grammars had to be created. Laskaris, whose Grammar initiated the series, was a refugee from the East, and at the time of the publication of his work, was an instructor in Messina. No record has been preserved of the arrangement made with him by his Venetian publisher, a deficiency that is the more to be regretted as his Grammar was probably the very first work by a living author, printed in Italy. Gaza was a native of Greece, and was for a time associated with the Aldine Press as a Greek editor.
In 1500, Aldus married the daughter of the printer Andrea Torresano of Asola, previously referred to as the successor of the Frenchman Jenson and the purchaser of Jenson’s matrices. In 1507, the two printing concerns were united, and the savings of Torresano were utilised to strengthen the resources of Aldus, which had become impaired, probably through his too great optimism and publishing enterprise.
During the disastrous years of 1509-1511, in which Venice was harassed by the wars resulting from the League of Cambray, the business came to a stand-still, partly because the channels of distribution for the books were practically blocked, but partly also on account of the exhaustion of the available funds. Friends again brought to the publisher the aid to which, on the ground of his public-spirited undertakings, he was so well entitled, and he was enabled, after the peace of 1511, to proceed with the completion of his Greek classics. Before his death in 1515, Aldus had issued in this series the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer, Pindar, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Lysias, Æschines, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, and others, in addition to a companion series of the works of the chief Latin writers. The list of publications included in all some 100 different works, comprised (in their several editions) in about 250 volumes. Considering the special difficulties of the times and the exceptional character of the original and creative labour that was required to secure the texts, to prepare them for the press, to print them correctly, and to bring them to the attention of possible buyers, this list of undertakings is, in my judgment, by far the greatest and the most honourable in the whole history of publishing.
It was a disadvantage for carrying on scholarly publishing undertakings in Venice, that the city possessed no university, a disadvantage that was only partly offset by the proximity of Padua, which early in the fifteenth century had come under Venetian rule. A university would of course have been of service to a publisher like Aldus, not only in supplying a home market for his books, but in placing at his disposal scholarly assistants whose services could be utilised in editing the texts and in supervising their type-setting. The correspondence of members of a university with the scholars of other centres of learning, could be made valuable also in securing information as to available manuscripts and concerning scholarly undertakings generally. In the absence of a university circle, Aldus was obliged to depend upon his personal efforts to bring him into relations, through correspondence, with men of learning throughout Europe, and to gather about the Aldine Press a group of scholarly associates and collaborators.
The chief corrector or proof-reader for Greek work of the Press was John Gregoropoulos, of Candia. Some editorial service was rendered by Theodore Gaza, of Athens, who took part, for instance, in the work on the set of Aristotle. The most important, however, of the Greek associates of Aldus was Marcus Musurus, of Crete, whose name appears as the editor of the Aristophanes, Athenæus, Plato, and a number of other of the Greek authors in the Aldine series, and also of the important collection of Epistolæ Græcarum.
Musurus was an early friend of Pico, and later of his nephew, Alberto Pio, and it was at Carpi that he had first met Aldus, with whom he ever afterwards maintained a close intimacy. In 1502, probably at the instance of Aldus, Musurus was called by the Venetian Senate to occupy the Chair of belles-lettres at Padua, and he appears to have given his lectures not only in the University, but also in Venice. Aldus writes: “Scholars hasten to Venice, the Athens of our day, to listen to the teachings of Musurus, the greatest scholar of the age.”
In 1503, the Senate charged Musurus with the task of exercising a censorship over all Greek books printed in Venice, with reference particularly to the suppression of anything inimical to the Roman Church. This seems to have been the earliest attempt in Italy to supervise the work of the printing-press. It is natural enough that the ecclesiastics should have dreaded the influence of the introduction of the doctrines of the Greek Church, while it is certainly probable that many of the refugees from Constantinople brought with them no very cordial feeling towards Rome. The belief was very general that if the Papacy had not felt a greater enmity against the Greek Church than against the Turk, the Catholic states of Europe would have saved Constantinople. The sacking of Constantinople by the Christian armies of the Fourth Crusade was still remembered by the Christians of the East as a crime of the Western Church. There were, therefore, reasons enough why the authorities of Rome should think it necessary to keep a close watch over the new literature coming in from the East, and should do what was practicable to exclude all doctrinal writings, and the censorship instituted in 1502 was the beginning of a long series of rigorous enactments which proved, however, much less practicable to carry out in Venice than elsewhere in Italy.
Other literary advisers and associates of Aldus were Hieronymus Alexander (later Cardinal), Pietro Bembo, Scipio Carteromachus, Demetrius Doucas, Johann Reuchlin, and, above all, Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose learning rivalled that of Musurus, and who, outside of Italy, was far more widely known than the Greek scholar.
It was in the year 1500 that the scheme took shape in the mind of Aldus of an academy which should take the place in Venice that in Florence was occupied by the academy instituted by the Medici. The special aim of the Aldine Academy, to which Aldus gave the name Ne-accademia Nostra, was the furthering of the interest in, and knowledge of, the literature of classic Greece. Aldus himself was the first president of the Academy, and while the majority of the members were residents either of Venice or of Padua, the original list included scholars of Rome, of Bologna, and of Lucca, Greeks of Candia, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and others from distant places.
Aldus applied to the Emperor Maximilian for a diploma giving imperial sanction to the organisation of his Academy, but the Emperor, although, as is shown in other correspondence, friendly in his disposition to the printer, was from some cause unwilling to give an official recognition to the Academy. The constitution of the Academy was printed in Greek, and certain days were fixed on which the members gave their personal consideration to the examination of Greek texts, the publication of which was judged likely to be of service to scholarship.
With the editorial aid of certain members of the Academy, Aldus arranged to print each month, in an edition of one thousand copies, some work selected by the Council. This Council, therefore, took upon itself in the matter of the selection of Greek classics for presentation, a function similar to that exercised 300 B.C. by the scholars appointed for the purpose in the Academy of Ptolemy Philadelphus, while some of its functions might be paralleled by those exercised to-day by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press of Oxford. It was the hope of Aldus that this Venetian Academy would take upon itself larger responsibilities in connection not only with Greek literature but with arts and sciences generally. When, however, with the death of its president, the Academy lost the service of his energetic initiative, its work soon came to a close.
For the sale of his publications, Aldus was in the main dependent upon direct correspondence with scholars. In Italy prior to 1550, bookselling hardly existed as an organised trade, and while in Germany there was a larger number of dealers in books, and the book-trade had by 1510 already organised its Fair at Frankfort, the communications between Italy and Germany were still too difficult to enable a publisher in Venice to keep in regular relations with the dealers north of the Alps. Paris was probably easier to reach than Frankfort, but the sales in Paris were not a little interfered with by the Lyons piracy editions before referred to, and even by piracies of the Paris publishers themselves. Aldus succeeded, however, before his death in securing agents who were prepared to take orders for the Aldine classics, not only in Paris, but in Vienna, Basel, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. With Frankfort he appears to have had no direct dealings, as his name does not appear in the list of contributors to the recently instituted Book-Fair.
As an example of a business letter of the time, the following lines from a bookseller in Treviso, who wanted to buy books on credit, are worth quoting:
Alde, libros quos venales bene credere possis
Hic pollet multa bibliopola fide.
Fortunis pollet quantum illa negotia possunt;
Hoc me, Manuti, credere teste potes!
Ignoras qui sim, nec adhuc sine pignore credis;
Te meus erga ingens sit tibi pignus amor.
(You have books for sale, Aldus, which you are able to entrust to me, if as a dealer, you have sufficient faith. This confidence would secure for you as much business advantage as is possible in such transactions. You can accept in this matter my personal word. You do not know who I am, and do not make a practice of giving credit. My great regard for you should, however, serve as a sufficient pledge.)[448]
The business of the time was done very largely by personal correspondence, and as the knowledge of his editions of the Greek classics came to be spread abroad, Aldus found himself overburdened with enquiries calling for personal replies. In order to save time in replying to such enquiries, Aldus printed on a folio sheet the descriptive titles of his publications with the prices at which they were offered. This sheet, printed in 1498, was the first priced catalogue ever issued by a publisher.
The orders that came to Aldus for his books differed in one important respect from those received by a publisher or bookseller to-day. The buyers did not write as a matter of ordinary business routine, or as if they were conferring any favour upon the publisher in taking his goods, but with a very cordial sense of the personal obligation that the publisher was, through his undertakings, conferring upon them and upon all scholarly persons. As an example of many such letters, I will quote from one written in 1505, from a Cistercian monastery in the Thuringian Forest, by a scholarly monk named Urbanus:
“May the blessing of the Lord rest upon thee, thou illustrious man. The high reward in which you are held by our Brotherhood will be realised by you when you learn that we have ordered (through the house of Függer in Augsburg) a group of your valuable publications, and that it is our chief desire to be able to purchase all the others. We pray to God each day that He will in His mercy, long preserve you for the cause of good learning. Our neighbour, Mutianus Rufus, the learned Canonicus of Gotha, calls you ‘the light of our age,’ and is never weary of relating your great services to scholarship. He sends you a cordial greeting, as does also Magister Spalatinus, a man of great learning. We are sending you with this four gold ducats, and will ask you to send us (through Függer) an Etymologicum Magnum and a Julius Pollux, and also (if there be money sufficient) the writings of Bessarion, of Xenophon, and of Hierocles, and the Letters of Merula.”[449]
Troublesome as Aldus found his correspondence, letters of this kind must have been peculiarly gratifying as evidence that his labours were not in vain.
He had similar correspondence with the well-known scholar, Reuchlin, an appreciative friend and a grateful customer, who in 1501, at the time of the first letters, was resident in Heidelberg, and also with Longinus and the poet Conrad Celtes in Vienna. The latter was later of service to Aldus in securing for his Press valuable manuscripts from Bohemia, and from certain monasteries in Transylvania. The name of Celtes is further of note in the literary history of Germany because to him was issued the earliest German privilege of which there is record. It bears date 1501, and protected the publication of an edition by Celtes of the writings of the Benedictine nun Hroswitha (Helena von Rossow), who had been dead for 600 years.
The most famous of the transalpine scholars with whom Aldus came into relations was, however, Desiderius Erasmus, of Rotterdam, or to speak with more precision, of Europe. Erasmus has many titles to fame, but for the purposes of this treatise his career is noteworthy more particularly because he was one of the first authors who was able to secure his living, or the more important portion of this, from the proceeds of his writings. The career of Erasmus belongs properly to the chapter on Germany, as it was in Basel, at that time a city of the Empire, that he made his longest sojourn, in close association with his life-long friend Froben, the scholarly publisher whom Erasmus called the “Aldus of Germany.”
In 1506, Erasmus, who had been in England for a second visit, came to Italy, where he lectured in the Universities of Bologna and Padua, and from Padua he was induced by Aldus to transfer himself to Venice. There he remained during the year 1508, making his home with the publisher, and rendering important service as a literary adviser and in editorial work. There is no record of any formal or continued business arrangement between the scholar and the publisher, and it is very possible that no such arrangement took shape.
Erasmus took charge of the preparation for the press, among other works, of the Aldine editions of Terence, Seneca, Plutarch’s Morals, and Plautus. For his work on the Plautus he tells us that he received twenty pieces of gold (i. e., ducats). Later, however, he denied with some indignation, in writing to Scaliger, that he had worked as a “corrector” or proof-reader for Aldus. It should be borne in mind that in connection with the many difficulties in securing from more or less doubtful manuscripts trustworthy texts, and in educating compositors to put such texts correctly into type, the work of reviser, press-corrector, or proof-reader, in the earlier days of printing, demanded a very high standard of scholarship and a wide range of knowledge. There was, therefore, no reason why Erasmus should have been ashamed to admit that he had done work of this kind. Some years later he gave to his friend Froben, the great publisher of Basel, similar service and co-operation. The intimate relations of Erasmus with Aldus and Froben, by far the greatest publishers of the time, had no little influence in furthering the world-wide circulation secured for his works.
While in Venice, Erasmus also supervised the printing of a revised edition of his Adagia (Proverbs) which appeared in 1508. For this work, Aldus obtained a privilege both in Venice and in Rome, and there were printed in Venice alone eight editions. When, however, in 1520, Paul Manutius undertook again to reprint the Adagia, he found that he had to contend with an increasing hostility on the part of the Church against anything bearing the name of Erasmus. The book was finally issued anonymously, and it was described in the catalogue as the work of “Batavus quidam homo” (a certain Hollander).
In 1512, Aldus printed, under the instructions of Erasmus, (who was, however, at that time no longer in Italy) the Colloquies and the Praise of Folly. There is unfortunately no record of the publishing arrangement arrived at for these, but as Erasmus complained bitterly of the loss and injury caused to the author through the wide sale of the piracy issues, it is fair to assume that he had reserved an interest in the authorised editions. In the introduction to his Adagia, Erasmus writes as follows: “Formerly there was devoted to the correctness of a literary manuscript as much care and attention as to the writing of a notarial instrument. Such care and precision were held to be a sacred duty. Later, the copying of manuscripts was entrusted to ignorant monks and even to women. But how much more serious is the evil that can be brought about by a careless printer, and yet to this matter the law gives no heed. A dealer who sells English stuffs under the guise of Venetian is punished, but the printer who in place of correct texts, misleads and abuses the reader with pages the contents of which are an actual trial and torment, escapes unharmed. It is for this reason that Germany is plagued with so many books that are deformed (i. e., untrustworthy). The authorities will supervise with arbitrary regulations the proper methods for the baking of bread, but concern themselves not at all as to the correctness of the work of the printers, although the influence of bad typography is far more injurious than that of bad bread.”
The relations of Aldus with Johann Reuchlin were longer and more intimate than with Erasmus. It was natural enough that the scholar who may properly be called the founder of Greek studies in Germany, should have come into close relations with the publisher who had undertaken to produce Greek texts for Europe and who had founded a Greek academy in Venice. In 1498, Aldus printed the Latin oration which Reuchlin had addressed to Pope Alexander VI., in behalf of the Prince Palatine Philip, and from that date the two men remained in regular correspondence with each other. In 1502, Aldus, writing to Reuchlin (who was at that time in Pforzheim), gives, as to a trusted friend upon whose sympathy and intelligent interest he could depend, the details of his publishing undertakings and of his plans and hopes for the future, and asks for counsel on various points. A few months later, in another letter, Aldus writes:
“I am hardly able to express my gratification at your friendly words concerning the importance and the value of my publishing undertakings. It is no light thing to secure the commendation of one of the greatest scholars of his time. If my life is spared to me, I hope more fully to deserve the praise that you give to me for service rendered to the scholarship and enlightenment of the age.”
Reuchlin was not only a friendly counsellor of the Venetian publisher, but a valuable customer also for his books. In addition to purchasing for his own library a full series of the Aldine editions, Reuchlin appears to have interested himself keenly in commending these to his scholarly acquaintances, not only, as he states, in order to encourage a great undertaking, but for the purpose of doing service to German students. In 1509, Reuchlin was appointed by the Duke of Bavaria, Professor of Greek and Hebrew in the University of Ingolstadt, the first professorship of Greek instituted in Germany. Reuchlin said more than once that the work of his Chair had been made possible only through the service rendered by Aldus in providing the Greek texts.
The influence of Aldus not only on the publishing standards but on the scholarly and literary conditions of Germany, was in fact widespread and important. Kapp, the historian of the German book-trade, speaks of it as more important than that of all the German publishers of his generation. This influence was due not only to the publishing undertakings of the Aldine Press, but to the intimate relations maintained by its founder with many of the German scholars, relations which helped to establish a community of interests between the literary centres of Italy and Germany and to direct German scholarship into new paths. The separation of political boundaries had no significance for a man with the humanitarian ideals of Aldus, while the fact that Latin was the universal language of scholarship and of literature, helped not a little to bring about that community of feeling among scholars which was the special aim of the Venetian publisher. In 1502, Aldus writes to John Taberio, in Brescia:
“I am delighted to learn that so many men of distinction in the great city of Brescia are, under your guidance, devoting themselves with ardour to Greek studies. The expectations with which I undertook the publication of Greek texts are being more than realised. I am, in fact, not a little astonished to find that even in these sad times of war in which my undertakings have been begun, so many are found ready to give the same ardour to scholarly pursuits that they are giving to fighting against the infidel and to civil strife. Thus it happens that even from the midst of war arises literature, which has for so many years lain buried. And it is not only in Italy, but also in Germany, in France, in Pannonia, in Spain, and in England, and wherever the Latin language is known, that young and old are devoting themselves to the study of Greek. The joy that this brings to me causes me to forget my fatigues, and redoubles my zeal to do what is in my power for the service of scholarship, and particularly for the students who are growing up in this time of the renaissance of letters.”
During the first years of the sixteenth century, the difficulties in the transmission either of merchandise or of money were many. The packages of books which Aldus had occasion to send to Reuchlin in Stuttgart, for instance, came forward sometimes by way of Milan, Vienna, or Basel, and later through Augsburg. The Augsburg banking-house of Függer, founded about 1450, possessed in 1500 (and for half a century thereafter) connections which enabled them to take charge not only of what we should call mercantile bills and banking credits, but also of the forwarding and delivery of the goods against which the bills were drawn. They carried on what to-day would be called an express business, and in a majority of instances the instructions were evidently to make collections on delivery. During the first half of the sixteenth century, the Függers, with their branch houses in Florence, Venice, and Genoa, supplied the most valuable machinery for the transaction of business between Italy and Germany. These communications, however, were of necessity very frequently interrupted by the troubles of the times.
In 1510, Mutianus Rufus writes to Urban that “in connection with the conflicts between the French and the Venetian soldiers, the passes of the Alps have been blocked, so that literature from Venice can no longer find its way into Germany. I had hoped with the next Frankfort Fair, to be able to place in the hands of my students the beautiful Aldine editions. But my hopes were in vain. When the Fair was opened, there was not a single volume from Italy. We shall be able this spring to do nothing in our classical schools. Oh, the stupidities of war!”
In 1514, the Elector Frederic the Wise of Saxony applied to the several powers interested for a safe conduct for his librarian, Spalatin, whom he desired to send to Venice to purchase directly from Aldus the Aldine classics for the library of Wittenberg. Some difficulties intervened, however, as Spalatin appears never to have reached Venice. It was doubtless due to the long-continued wars between the Emperor and the States of Italy, that Aldus was unable, during his own lifetime, to establish direct agencies in Germany for his publications. We find record of such agencies in Frankfort, Basel, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, first in the time of his son, agencies which were extended by the grandson.
The active work of Aldus extended over a period of twenty years, from 1495 to 1515. This time included the wars of 1500, 1506, 1510, and 1511, in which Venice was directly engaged, wars which had of necessity much to do with the interference with his business, and with the difficulties, of which he makes continual complaint, in securing returns for his sales. “For seven years,” writes Aldus in 1510, “books have had to contend against arms.” There appears to have been no single year of the twenty in which he was free from pressing financial cares, while from time to time the work of the presses and in the composing room came to an actual standstill for want of funds. During these twenty years he printed not less than 126 works which previously existed only in manuscript form, and the manuscript copies of which had to be secured and carefully edited.
It is probable that Aldus, in his own enthusiasm concerning the value and importance of the re-discovered classics, had overestimated the extent of the interest that could be depended upon for these classics throughout the world. It is evident, however, that there were enough scholars in Italy, Germany, France, and the Low Countries, to assure a widespread demand for the Aldine editions, and that the larger part of the publisher’s difficulties consisted in the lack of convenient machinery for making known to these scholars the fact that such books had been prepared, for the delivery of such copies as might be ordered, and for the collection of the payments due.
Another serious difficulty with which Aldus had to contend was the competition of the piratical copies of his editions which promptly appeared in Cologne, Tübingen, Lyons, and even so close at home as Florence. The most serious interference with his undertakings appears to have come from the printers of Lyons, who in their enterprising appropriations from Paris on the one hand and from Nuremberg, Basel, and Venice on the other, speedily won for their city notoriety as the centre of piratical publishing. The Lyons printers printed editions of the Aldine Latin classics, making a very close imitation of the cursive or italic type, and issued the volumes without imprint, date, or place of publication.
The privileges secured from the government of Venice had effect, of course, only in Venetian territory. Privileges were given by the Pope for a number of the Aldine publications, and these covered, in form, at least, not only the States of the Church but the territory of all States recognising the papal authority, while the penalties for infringing such papal privileges were not infrequently made to include excommunication. There was, however, no machinery by means of which the papal authority could be brought to bear upon Catholics infringing or disregarding the privileges, and as a fact the papal privileges proved of very little service in protecting the literary property either of Aldus or of later literary workers. A further word concerning the privileges issued in Venice and in the other States of Italy will be given in a later division of this narrative.
Apart from this important work in the scholarly and editorial divisions of publishing, Aldus made several distinctive contributions to the art of book-making. He was, as before stated, the first printer who founded complete and perfect fonts of Greek type, fonts which for many years served as models for the printers of Europe. He invented the type which was first called cursive, and which is known to-day as italic, a type having the advantage of presenting the text in a very compact form. (The cursive font was said to have been modelled on the script of Petrarch.) And finally, he was the first publisher who ventured upon the experiment of replacing the costly and cumbersome folios and quartos, in which form alone all important works had heretofore been issued, with convenient crown octavo volumes, the moderate price of which brought them within the reach of scholars of all classes and helped to popularise the knowledge and the influence of classic literature. This constituted a practical revolution in publishing methods.
Aldus had possibly read the remark of Callimachus, the librarian of the Alexandrian library in 290 B.C., that “A big book is a big nuisance.” These Aldine classics, while printed in octavo (i. e., upon a sheet folded in eights), were of a size corresponding more nearly to what would to-day be known as a sixteenmo, the size of the sheet of paper being smaller than that used to-day. Aldus had no presses which would print sheets large enough to fold in sixteen or even in twelve. The price of these small octavos averaged three marcelli or two francs, say forty cents. Making allowance for the difference in the purchasing power of money between the year 1500 and the year 1895, I judge that this may represent about $2.00 of our currency.
For centuries the Aldine editions served as the authoritative texts for the authors presented, and even to-day they stand as a wonderful monument of the imagination, the learning, the courage, and the persistency of their publisher. Good Italian though he were, Aldus was by some of his countrymen charged with want of patriotism on the ground that if he helped to make the study of the classics easy for the Barbarians of the outer world, they would no longer need to come for their learning to Italy, heretofore the centre and source of all scholarly enlightenment. To this effect writes Beatus Rhenanus in his introduction to the Works of Erasmus:
Quidam Venetiis olim Aldo Manutio commentarios Græcos in Euripidem et Sophoclem edere paranti dixit: Cave, cave hoc facias, ne barbari istis adjuti domi maneant et pauciores in Italiam ventilent.
Kapp is of opinion that the dread was well founded and that the distribution throughout Germany and France of popular editions of the classics, did have the result of keeping at home many students who would otherwise have crossed the Alps. That they were now able to secure, at moderate cost and in their own homes, learning for which heretofore they had been obliged to make long and costly journeys, was due to the unselfish and public-spirited labours of Aldus. It was, therefore, with good reason that he was held in high regard by the Humanists of Germany. They sought his friendship and nearly overwhelmed him with correspondence. In 1498, Conrad Celtes and Vincenzo Longinus commemorated his service in verse. Aldus thanked them for their courtesy, and in sending them as an acknowledgment copies of his Horace and Virgil, he asked them to bring him into communication with any scholarly Germans who were interested in the classics. Aldus did not, however, consider it wise to print the ode of eulogy that Celtes had written upon the Emperor Maximilian, because he was afraid of causing offence to the Bohemians and Hungarians through whose scholars he had secured not a few rare manuscripts.
Throughout Germany the productions of the Aldine presses were received with enthusiasm. Mutianus Rufus speaks of himself as weeping with joy when there came to him from a friend the precious gift of the editions of Cicero, Lucretius, and other classics. He and his friends Urban and Spalatin deprived themselves almost of the necessaries of life, in order to save moneys with which to bring across the Alps the other volumes of the series. Pirckheimer and Reuchlin were among the first of the German buyers of the Aldine classics. Hummelsburger writes in 1512 to Anselm in Tübingen, “I shall buy my Hebrew books in Italy, where Aldus has printed them in beautiful texts.... Germany no less than Latium owes a great debt to Aldus.”
The political status of Italy and its division into a number of states or principalities which carried on independent policies and which were frequently in active warfare with each other, entailed serious difficulties upon the new business of publishing, difficulties which, while troublesome enough for Aldus in Venice, were still more serious for his competitors in Florence and Milan. A privilege secured for Venice was not binding even in times of peace outside of Venetian territory, while in the frequently recurring times of war, any privileges which a Venetian or a Milanese publisher had been fortunate enough to secure in the Italian States were abrogated in fact if not in form. In this respect, the early publishers of Paris, whose privileges covered (nominally at least) the territory of the kingdom, had a decided advantage over their rivals in the much divided territory of Italy or of Germany.
Aldus had the feeling, for which in his case there appears to have been sufficient ground, that his business undertakings, with which were connected far-reaching plans for furthering scholarly knowledge, were absolutely dependent upon his own continued and persistent personal attention. While he had succeeded in securing the services of scholarly associates to share with himself the editorial responsibilities of his work, he does not appear to have been able, with the material at his command, to train up any assistants competent to take any important share in the business management. One of his many complaints concerning the repeated interruptions which interfere with his important daily labours, might have been uttered by many a publisher of later times. He writes in 1514 (the year before his death) to his friend Navagerus:
“I am hampered in my work by a thousand interruptions.... Nearly every hour comes a letter from some scholar, and if I undertook to reply to them all, I should be obliged to devote day and night to scribbling. Then, through the day come calls from all kinds of visitors. Some desire merely to give a word of greeting, others want to know what there is new, while the greater number come to my office because they happen to have nothing else to do. ‘Let us look in upon Aldus,’ they say to each other. Then they loaf in and sit and chatter to no purpose. Even these people with no business are not so bad as those who have a poem to offer or something in prose (usually very prosy indeed) which they wish to see printed with the name of Aldus. These interruptions are now becoming too serious for me, and I must take steps to lessen them. Many letters I simply leave unanswered, while to others I send very brief replies; and as I do this not from pride or from discourtesy, but simply in order to be able to go on with my task of printing good books, it must not be taken hardly.... As a warning to the heedless visitors who use up my office hours to no purpose, I have now put up a big notice on the door of my office to the following effect: ‘Whoever thou art, thou art earnestly requested by Aldus, to state thy business briefly and to take thy departure promptly. In this way thou mayst be of service even as was Hercules to the weary Atlas. For this is a place of work for all who may enter.’”
Aldus Manutius died January 25, 1515, (Venetian style, corresponding to February 6, 1515, modern style) aged sixty-five years. Until 1529, the business was carried on for the heirs by his father-in-law, Torresano, and in that year was taken over by Paul Manutius, the son of Aldus. In 1540, Paul took into partnership his son, Aldus the younger, and the firm took the title of Aldi Filii. With the death of Aldus the grandson, in 1597, the family, in its main line, became extinct, and the work of the Aldine Press, which had continued for a little more than a century, came to a close. To his children, Aldus was able to bequeath little besides his fame and the value of his name. The moneys that had been earned during his work of twenty-five years from the successful undertakings had been for the most part absorbed in other ventures which were either unremunerative, or from which the returns came but slowly. The carrying out of such great publishing plans required, in fact, business connections and methods which did not yet exist, and was dependent also upon the continuance of peace in Europe for a quarter of a century, an impossible condition for the beginning of the sixteenth century.
In entering upon business ventures under such difficult circumstances, Aldus was doubtless, from a business point of view, unwisely optimistic; but it is difficult not to admire the public spirit and the pluck with which, in the face of all difficulties, he persisted till the day of his death in the great schemes he had marked out for himself.
While his work had brought no wealth, his life had been rich in the accomplishment of great things and in the appreciation given to his labours. It was also his fortune to gather about him and to come into relations with many noteworthy men, who as friends and co-workers shared his enthusiasm, and who gave with him unselfish labour for a scholarly ideal. Partly because the editors and the publishers were working for results other than profits, partly because the books published were (with a few noteworthy exceptions, like the writings of Erasmus) not original works, but editions of old classics, and partly because the whole business of publishing was still in its infancy, the history of the Aldine Press does not present any important precedents as to the compensation earned by authors for their productions, or as to the protection of the author’s property rights in these productions. The relations of Aldus with all the authors, editors, and scholars with whom he had to do were however more than satisfactory; they were cordial, resting in a number of cases on a close personal friendship. The scholars regarded the publisher as one of themselves, and, in fact, accepted him as a leader.
It is evident that Erasmus, whose writings formed an important property, was satisfied with the returns secured for him by Aldus. He speaks with cordial appreciation of the services rendered by his “authorised publishers,” Aldus of Venice, and Froben of Basel, and speaks further of the losses caused to himself by the competition of the piracy reprints of Lyons and Paris. It appears, therefore, that he retained a continued interest in the sale of his authorised editions, but unfortunately no details of his publishing arrangements have been preserved.
The history of the publishing work of Aldus, while not presenting precedents for royalty or copyright arrangements, constitutes nevertheless a very important chapter in the history of property in literature. Aldus was able, by combining skilled editorial labour with selected classics, to create a great literary property, which needed only distributing machinery and a peaceable Europe to become commercially valuable. He set the example also, for Italy at least, of securing privileges in each of the Italian States possessing any literary centres, and although he was not always able to prevent piratical reprinting on the part of his competitors in Florence, or even always to keep out of other cities in Italy the piracy editions from Lyons, he accomplished something towards the ideal of a copyright that should hold good for Italian territory. He even had hopes of securing, through the authority of the Pope, a system of copyright that should prove effective in all Catholic States, and it was not until long after Aldus’s death that the attempts to establish a Catholic copyright system were given up by publishers as practically futile.
His latest biographer, Didot, himself both a fine scholar and a great publisher, contends that Aldus accomplished more than the greatest scholars of his time for the spread of learning and the development of literature; and the testimony of the three great scholars who were contemporaries and near personal friends of the Venetian publisher, Musurus, Reuchlin, and Erasmus, fully bears out M. Didot’s opinion. It was the exceptional combination of a creative imagination and scholarly knowledge with practical business ability and unfailing pluck and persistency, that enabled the young tutor to create the Aldine Press, the work of which will cause to be held in continued honour, in the history alike of scholarship and of publishing, the memory of Aldus Manutius.