Venice.
—The first book printed in Venice was the famous Decor Puellarum, a treatise of instruction for young girls as to the ruling of their lives. Its date has been claimed by Venetians to be 1461, but it appears from the judgment of the best authorities that this date must have been erroneous and that the volume really appeared in 1471. The printer of the Decor Puellarum was Jenson, a Frenchman, and the contest for priority in Italian publishing has rested between him and the two Germans of Subiaco.
Another printer whose first Italian volume, Epistolæ Familiares, appeared in Venice in 1470, was also a German, John of Speyer. A fourth volume in this earlier group of publications bore the title Miracoli della Gloriosa Verzine. This was the only one of the four which was printed by an Italian, Lavagna of Milan, while it was also the only early printed book in the Italian language.
In the year 1493, the earliest official document relating to the printing-press in Venice was published by the Abbate Jacopo Morelli, prefect of the Marcian Library. That document is an order of the Collegio or cabinet of Venice, dated September 18, 1469. The order was proposed by the Doge’s councillors, and grants to John of Speyer, for a period of five years, the monopoly of printing in Venice and in the territory controlled by Venice. John did not long enjoy the advantages of this monopoly, having died in 1470, but the business was continued by his brother Windelin, to whom, apparently, was conceded the continuance of the monopoly.
John of Speyer was one of the few of the earlier printers who left information concerning the size of their editions. If he had also thought it important to specify the price at which the books were sold, we should have had data for calculations concerning the relative profit from the different works.
Of the Epistolæ Familiares, the first edition comprised but one hundred copies, but the demand must have been greater than had been calculated for, as four months later the printing of a second edition of six hundred copies was begun, which was completed (in two impressions) within the term of three months.
The printer, Nicolas Jenson, was born in the province of Champagne about 1420, and was brought up in the Paris Mint. He was sent to Mayence in 1458 by Charles VII. to learn the secrets of the new art of printing. He returned to France in 1461, shortly after the accession of Louis XI. It is not clear whether the new king was less interested than had been his predecessor in the development of French printing, or whether Jenson was afforded any opportunity for exercising his art in Paris. In 1465, however, he is heard of in Venice, and he began there, in 1470, a printing and publishing business which soon became the most important in Italy.
There were many reasons to influence Jenson in his choice of Venice as the scene of his operations. In the first place, the tide of printers was flowing steadily towards Italy. Apprentices who had acquired the new art in Germany set out to seek their fortunes by the exercise of their skill. It was natural that they should turn to Italy, where the nobles were rich, where learning had its home, where there were already many manuscripts available for the printers, and where there was a public, both lay and ecclesiastic, ready to pay for the reproductions. The Venetian Republic offered special attractions in the security afforded by its government, and in the protection and liberty she promised to all who settled in her dominions. Venice was, moreover, the best mart for the distribution of goods, and the trade in paper was facilitated by the ease and cheapness of sea-carriage.
The first rag paper was made about the year 1300, and the trade of paper-making soon became an important one in Italy. In 1373, the Venetian Senate forbade the exportation of rags from the dominions of the Republic, an act which recalls the edict of Ptolemy Philadelphus in 290 B.C., forbidding the exportation of papyrus from Alexandria.
The position of Venice secured for it exceptional facilities for becoming a literary and a publishing centre, facilities in some respects similar to those which eighteen hundred years earlier had given to Alexandria the control of the book production of its time. The Venetian Contarini, writing in 1591, speaks of “the wonderful situation of the city, which possesses so many advantages that one might think the site had been selected not by men but by the gods themselves. The city lies in a quiet inlet of the Adriatic Sea. On the side towards the sea, the waters of the lagoons are spread out like a series of lakes, while far in the distance the bow-shaped peninsula of the Lido serves as a protection against the storms from the south. On the side towards the main land, the city is, in like manner, surrounded and protected by the waters of its lagoons. Various canals serve as roadways between the different islands, and in the midst of the lakes and of these watery ways arise in stately groups the palaces and the towers of the city.”
It was by the thoroughness of the protection secured for Venice through its watery defences, no less than by its isolated position outside of, although in immediate connection with, the Italian territory, that the Republic was enabled to keep free from a large proportion of the contests petty and great that troubled or devastated Italian territory during the sixteenth century.
When it was drawn into a conflict, its fighting was done very largely by means of its fleets, operating at a distance, or with the aid of foreign troops hired for the purpose, and but rarely were the actual operations of war brought within touch of Venetian territory. Its control of the approaches by sea prevented also the connections with the outer world from being interfered with. The city could neither be blockaded nor surrounded, and in whatever warlike operations it might be engaged, its commercial undertakings went on practically undisturbed. It was under very similar conditions that Alexandria secured, in literary production and in publishing operations during the fourth and the third centuries B.C., pre-eminence over Pergamus and the other Greek cities of Asia Minor. The fact that manuscripts and printing-presses could be fairly protected against the risks of war, and that the road to the markets of the world for the productions of the presses could not easily be blocked, had an important influence during the century succeeding 1490, in attracting printers to Venice rather than to Bologna, Milan, or Florence. The Venetian government was also prompt to recognise the value of the new industry and the service and the prestige that were being conferred upon the city by the work of the printer-publishers and their scholarly editors. The Republic gave, from the outset, more care to the furthering of this work by privileges and concessions and by honourable recognition of the guild of the printers than was given in any other Italian state. To these advantages should be added the valuable relations possessed by Venice with the scholars of the Greek world, through its old-time connections with Constantinople and Asia Minor. It was through these connections that the printers of Venice secured what might be called the first pick of the manuscripts of a large number of the Greek texts that became known to Europe during the half-century succeeding 1490.
These texts were brought in part from the monasteries, which had been spared by the Turkish conquerors in the Byzantine territory and in Asia Minor, while in other cases, they came to light in various corners of Italy, where the scholars, flying from Constantinople after the great disaster of 1453, had found refuge. As it became known that in Venice there was demand for Greek manuscripts, and that Venetian printers were offering compensation to scholars for editing Greek texts for the press, scholars speedily found their way to the City of the Lagoons. To many of these scholars, who had been driven impoverished from their homes in the East, the opportunity of securing a livelihood through the sale and through the editing of their manuscripts must have opened up new and important possibilities.
In 1479, Jenson sold to Andrea Torresano of Asola, later the father-in-law of Aldus Manutius, a set of the matrices punched by his punches. These matrices were probably the beginning of the plant of the later business of Aldus. In 1479, Pope Sixtus IV. conferred upon Jenson the honourary title of Count Palatine. He was the first nobleman in the guild of publishers, and he has had but few successors. He died in 1480.
John of Windelin, John of Speyer, and Nicolas Jenson, the three earliest Venetian printers, employed three kinds of characters in their type—Roman, Gothic, and Greek. The Gothic character secured, as compared with the others, a considerable economy of space, and its use became, therefore, more general in connection with the increased demand from the reading public for less expensive editions. Before the Greek fonts had been made, it was customary to leave blanks in the text where the Greek passages occurred and to fill these in by hand.
It was the practice of the later printer-publishers to place in their books the date, place of publication, and their own names, and considering how much the editing, printing, and publication of a book involved, it was natural that those who were responsible for it should be interested in securing the full credit for its production. It is nevertheless the case that quite a number of books, of no little importance, were issued by the earlier printers without any imprint or mark of origin, an omission which, as Brown remarks, is certainly surprising in view of the high esteem in which printers were held and of the large claims made by them upon the gratitude of their own age and of future generations.
The larger proportion of the outlay required for these early books was not the expense of the manufacturing, heavy as this was, but the payments required for the purchase of manuscripts, and for their revision, collation, correction, and preparation for the type-setters.
The printer-publisher needed to possess a fair measure of scholarly knowledge in order to be able to judge rightly of the nature of the editorial work that was required before the work of the type-setters could begin. If, as in the case of Aldus, this scholarly knowledge was sufficient to enable the printer himself to act as editor, to revise the manuscripts for the press, and to write the introduction and the critical annotations, he had of course a very great advantage in the conduct of his business.
As an example of the cost of printing in Venice at this period, Brown cites an agreement entered into in 1478 between a certain Leonardus, printer, and Nicolaus, who took the risk of the undertaking, acting, therefore, as a publisher. An edition of 930 copies of the complete Bible was to be printed by Leonardus for the price of 430 ducats, the paper being furnished by Nicolaus. Twenty of the copies were to be retained by Leonardus, and the cost to Nicolaus of the 910 copies received by him would have been, exclusive of the paper, about $2150, or per copy about $2.50. The cost of the paper would have brought the amount up to about $3. The selling price of Bibles in 1492 appears to have varied from 6 ducats to 12 ducats, or from $30 to $60, but it is probable that these prices covered various styles of bindings.
The years between 1470 and 1515 witnessed a greater increase in the number of printers at work in Venice, a considerable proportion of the newcomers being Germans. With the rapid growth in the production of books, there came a material deterioration in the quality of the typography. The original models for the type-founders had been the letters of the manuscripts, and it was the boast of the earlier founders that their type was so perfect that it could not be distinguished from script. The copyists realised that their art was in danger, and, in 1474, they went so far in their opposition in Genoa as to petition the Senate for the expulsion of the printers. The application was, however, disregarded; the new art met at once with a cordial reception, and from the beginning secured the active support of the government.
The trade of the printers could, however, not rest upon a secure foundation until the taste for reading had become popularised. The wealthy classes were not sufficiently numerous to keep the printing-presses busy, while it was also the case that for a number of years after the invention of printing, a considerable proportion of the wealthier collectors of literature continued to give their preference to manuscripts as being more aristocratic and exclusive. The earlier books issued from the presses were planned to meet the requirements of these higher class collectors, whose taste had been formed from beautiful manuscripts. With the second generation of printers, however, a new market arose calling for a different class of supplies. The revival of learning brought into existence a reading public which was eager for knowledge and which was no longer fastidious as to the beauty of the form in which its literature was presented. By 1490, a demand had arisen for cheap books for popular reading, and in changing their methods to meet this demand, the printers permitted the standard of excellence of their work to suffer a material decline.
Brown gives an abstract from the day-book of a Venetian bookseller of 1484-1485, the original of which is contained in the Marcian Library. Even at that early date, we find represented in the stock of the bookseller, classics, Bibles, missals, breviaries, works on canon law, school-books, romances, and poetry.
The record shows that the purchases of the bookseller from the publisher were usually made for cash, and that for the most part he received cash from his customers. In some cases, however, these latter made their payment in kind. Thus a chronicle was exchanged for oil; Cicero’s Orations for wine; and a general assortment of books for flour; while different binders’ bills were settled, the one with the Life and Miracles of the Madonna, and the other with the series of the Hundred Novels. The proof-reader was paid for certain services with copies of a Mamotrictus, a Legendary, and a Bible, and an account from an illuminator was adjusted with an Abacus, (a multiplication table, or a condensed arithmetic).
The prices of books ruled lower than might have been expected, the cheapest being volumes of poetry and romance. For instance, Poggio’s Facetiæ sells for nine soldi, and the Inamoramento d’Orlando for one lira, while Dante’s Inferno with a commentary, brings one ducat, and Plutarch’s Lives, two ducats. A small volume of Martial brought fifteen soldi. The editions of certain printers realised higher prices than those of the same books by other printers whose imprint did not carry with it so much prestige.
It was during the last ten years of the fifteenth century that the business of printing and publishing in Venice reached its highest importance as compared with that done elsewhere. It was this decade that witnessed the founding of the Greek press by Aldus, Vlastos, and Caliergi, the first printing in Arabic and in the other Eastern languages, and the beginning of the publication of romances and novelieri.
The part taken in these new undertakings by Aldus Manutius was of distinctive importance, not only for Venice and Italy, but for the civilised world. He was a skilled printer, and an enterprising, public-spirited publisher, and he was, further, a judicious and painstaking critic and editor, and a scholar of exceptional attainments. To him more than to any other one man is due the introduction into Europe of the literature of Greece, which was in a measure rediscovered at the time, when, by the use of the printing-press, it could be placed within the reach of wide circles of impecunious students to whom the purchase of costly manuscripts would have been impossible.
In his interest in Greek literature, as well as in his scholarship and public-spirited liberality, Aldus was a worthy successor to the Roman publisher of the first century who had earned the appellation of Atticus on account of the attention given by him to the reproduction for the reading public of Italy of the great classics of Greece. Atticus was, however, a man of large means, gained chiefly through his business as a banker and a farmer of taxes, and it appears to have been to him a matter of indifference whether or not his publishing undertakings returned any profits on the moneys invested in them. Aldus began business without capital and died a poor man. Not many of his books secured for the publisher profits as well as prestige. He lived modestly and laboured continuously, but he expended in fresh scholarly publishing undertakings all the receipts that came to him from such of his ventures as proved remunerative.
As before pointed out, the payments made by Aldus for the work of editing his series of classical publications, payments which were probably the first ever made in Italy for literary work in connection with printing, were not only of material service to many of the impecunious Greek scholars, but must have served as precedents for fixing, for Italy at least, a market value for literary service. The payments to the Greek refugees included in a number of cases compensation for the use of the manuscripts they had brought with them, manuscripts which not infrequently constituted practically everything in the shape of property that they had been able to save from the grasp of the Turks. For a number of the more scholarly of these refugees, places were made in the universities, or as we should now say, Chairs were endowed, for instruction in the language and literature of Greece. Aldus himself took the initiative in inducing the Venetian Senate to institute such a professorship in Padua for his friend Musurus.
For a number of years, a larger proportion of the scholars and the manuscripts was absorbed by Venice than by any other of the Italian cities. The production of books progressed more rapidly in Venice than elsewhere, and the art of bookmaking reached a higher perfection there during the first decade of the sixteenth century than in any city in Europe. As before noted, however, Subiaco had preceded Venice in the printing of books, while the use of Greek type, in which Venice so rapidly attained pre-eminence, occurred first in Milan. The introduction of illustrations into book-printing probably originated in Rome.