(1) To the Reader. At Florence, on November 7, 1471, Bernardo Cennini, by universal allowance a most excellent goldsmith, and Domenico his son, a youth of remarkable ability, having first modelled the stamps with compasses, and afterward moulded the letters, printed this first volume. Pietro Cennini, son of the aforesaid Bernardo, has corrected it, as you see, with all the care and diligence he could. To Florentine wits nothing is difficult.
(2) To the Reader. Bernardino Cennini, by universal allowance a most excellent goldsmith, and Domenico his son, a youth of very good ability, have been the printers. Pietro, son of the aforesaid Bernardo, has acted as corrector and has made a collation with many very ancient copies. His first anxiety was that nothing by another hand should be ascribed to Servius, that nothing which very old copies showed to be the work of Honoratus should be cut down or omitted. Since it pleases many readers to insert Greek words with their own hand and in their own fashion, and these in ancient codices are very few, and the accents are very difficult to mark in printing, he determined that spaces should be left for the purpose. But since nothing of man’s making is perfect, it must needs be accounted enough if these books (as we earnestly hope) are found exceptionally correct. The work was finished at Florence on October 5, 1472.
The references to the leaving of blank spaces for the Greek quotations (a common practice of the earliest printers in Italy) and to the trouble caused by the accents are particularly interesting, and by ill luck were not noticed by Mr. Proctor, who would have been delighted to quote them in his admirable monograph on “The Printing of Greek.”
Difficulties were natural in the early days of the art, and must often have beset the path of the wandering printers who passed from town to town, or from monastery to monastery, printing one or two books at each. As late as 1493 one such printer, not yet identified, who started his press at Acqui, though he was engaged on only a humble school-book, the “Doctrinale” of Alexander Gallus, found himself in sore straits owing to the plague raging in the neighboring towns.
Alexandri de villa Dei Doctrinale (Deo laudes) feliciter explicit. Impressum sat incommode, cum aliquarum rerum, quae ad hanc artem pertinent, impressori copia fieri non potuerit in huius artis initio: peste Genuae, Ast, alibique militante. Emendauit autem hoc ipsum opus Venturinus prior, Grammaticus eximius, ita diligenter, ut cum antea Doctrinale parum emendatum in plerisque locis librariorum vitio esse videretur, nunc illius cura et diligentia adhibita in manus hominum quam emendatissimum veniat. Imprimentur autem posthac libri alterius generis litteris, et eleganter arbitror. Nam et fabri et aliarum rerum, quarum hactenus promptor indigus fuit, illi nunc Dei munere copia est, qui cuncta disponit pro sue voluntatis arbitrio. Amen.
The Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu (God be praised!) comes to a happy end. It has been printed amid enough inconveniences, since of several things which belong to this art the printer, in making a beginning with it, could obtain no proper supply, owing to the plague raging at Genoa, Asti, and elsewhere. Now this same work has been corrected by the prior Venturinus, a distinguished grammarian, and that so diligently that whereas previously the Doctrinale in many places seemed by the fault of booksellers too little corrected, now by the application of his care and diligence it will reach men’s hands in the most correct form possible. After this date books will be printed in type of another kind, and elegantly, I think; for both artificers and a sufficiency of other things of which hitherto the putter forth has been in need he now possesses by the gift of God, who disposes all things according to the judgment of his will. Amen.
All these promises may have been carried out, but we know of no other book from this press, and it is more than likely that no other was issued. Nor was this the only press which was inconvenienced by the plague, since two years later the disease interrupted Conrad Kachelofen in the pious task of printing a missal at Leipzig, and caused him to become the first exponent of the art at Freiberg, as we duly learn from the colophon:
Meissen Missal. Freiberg: Conrad Kachelofen, 1495. (Reduced.)