The sixth and last book of Laurentius Valla, a man of the greatest learning and a most distinguished orator, on the Elegance of the Latin Tongue, after diligent correction, has been completed in the year from the Lord’s incarnation 1475, on July 2d, in the fourth year of the papacy of Sixtus IV. Now these books were printed by a distinguished and most diligent craftsman, Arnold Pannartz, a German, in the house of the noble Pietro dei Massimi, a Roman citizen. You who desire to speak Latin buy yourself these books, for in reading them, if you bring care and zeal to the task, in a short time you will understand that you have made no small progress.
Perhaps the eulogies of their own wares by publishers reaches its climax in the praises by Paulus Johannis de Puzbach of his edition of the “Expositio Problematum Aristotelis,” of which it is said that it will be useful to every creature in the universal world, though with the wise proviso that the said creature must use great diligence in its study (cuius utilitas erit omni creature in universo orbe que apponet huic operi studium summa cum diligentia).
Publishers who offered their readers a chance of buying books like these naturally posed as public benefactors, and in the colophon to a collection of the works of various illustrious men (Diui Athanasii contra Arium, etc.) printed at Paris in 1500 the reader is informed categorically that he owes four several debts of gratitude which apparently no such trifling consideration as the price demanded for the book could affect.
Finis. Habes, lector candidissime, sex opuscula, etc. Reliquum est igitur vt iis qui hec peperere grati animi significationem feceritis. Atque adeo in primis prestantissimo viro domino Simoni Radin, qui hec situ victa in lucem edenda curauit. Deinde F. Cypriano Beneti: qui castigatrices manus apposuit. Tum iohanni paruo bibliopolarum optimo qui suo ere imprimenda tradidit. Nec minus M. Andree Bocard calcographo solertissimo qui tam terse atque ad amussim castigata compressit: Ad quartum Calendas Iulias. Anno Millesimoquingentesimo. Deo sit laus et gloria.
Here you have, most honest reader, six works, etc. It remains, therefore, for you to make grateful acknowledgment to those who have produced them: in the first place to that eminent man Master Simon Radin, who saw to their being brought to light from the obscurity in which they were buried; next to F. Cyprian Beneti for his editorial care; then to Jean Petit, best of booksellers, who caused them to be printed at his expense; nor less than these to Andrieu Bocard, the skilful chalcographer, who printed them so elegantly and with scrupulous correctness, June 28, 1500. Praise and glory to God.
In this book, printed at the very end of the century in Paris, where the book trade had for centuries been highly organized, it is natural to find printer and publisher clearly separated, both being tradesmen working for gain. The lines for such a distinction already existed in the days of manuscripts, the scribes and the stationers belonging to quite separate classes, though they might assume each other’s functions. In the earliest days of printing the craftsmen were, as a rule, their own publishers; but the system of patronage and the desire of well-to-do persons in various ranks of society to get special books printed led to divers bargains and agreements. We find the Earl of Arundel encouraging Caxton to proceed with his translation of the “Golden Legend,” not only by the promise of a buck in summer and a doe in winter by way of yearly fee, but by agreeing to take “a reasonable quantity” of copies when the work was finished. The “Mirrour of the World” was paid for by Hugh Brice, afterward Lord Mayor of London. Whether William Pratt, who on his death-bed bade Caxton publish the “Book of Good Manners,” or William Daubeney, Treasurer of the King’s Jewels, who urged him to issue the “Charles the Great,” offered any money help, we are not told. Caxton was probably a man of some wealth when he began printing, and could doubtless afford to take his own risks; but other printers were less fortunate, and references in colophons to patrons, and to men of various ranks who gave commissions for books, are sufficiently numerous. Thus at Pescia we find two brothers, Sebastian and Raphael dei Orlandi, who subsidized works printed at two, if not three or even four, different presses. Most of the books they helped to finance were legal treatises, as for instance the Commentaries of Accoltus on Acquiring Possession, printed by Franciscus and Laurentius de Cennis, 1486.
Finiunt Commentaria singularia et admiranda super titulo de acquirenda possessione, quem titulum mirabiliter prefatus dominus Franciscus novissime commentatus est in studio Pisano, Anno Redentionis domini nostri Iesu cristi, M.cccc Lxxx. ultima Iulii. Impressa vero Piscie et ex proprio auctoris exemplari sumpta Anno M.cccc Lxxxvi. die Iovis. IIII. ianuarii. Impensis nobilium iuvenum Bastiani et Raphaelis fratres [sic] filiorum Ser Iacobi Gerardi de Orlandis de Piscia. Opera venerabilis religiosi Presbiteri Laurentii et Francisci Fratrum et filiorum Cennis Florentinorum ad gloriam omnipotentis Dei.
Here end the singular and wonderful Commentaries on the title Of Acquiring Possession, which title the aforesaid Master Franciscus lately lectured on marvellously in the University of Pisa, in the year of the Redemption of our Lord Jesus Christ 1480, on the last day of July. Printed at Pescia and taken from the author’s own copy, Thursday, January 4, 1486, at the charges of the noble youths the brothers Bastian and Raphael, sons of Ser Jacopo Gerardo dei Orlandi of Pescia, with the help of the venerable religious priest Lorenzo de Cennis and Francis his brother, Florentines, to the glory of Almighty God.
Another law-book was printed for them by the same firm also in 1486, and three others in that year and in 1489 by firms not yet identified. But their interests though mainly were not entirely legal, and in 1488, from the press of Sigismund Rodt, there appeared an edition of Vegetius, in the colophon to which their views on the physical degeneration question of the day were very vigorously set forth.