Here end the Decretals, most correctly printed in the bounteous city of Rome, queen of the whole world, by those excellent men Master Ulrich Han, a German, and Simon di Niccolo of Lucca: with the ordinary glosses of Bernard of Parma and his additions, which are found in few copies; both printed and corrected with the greatest diligence. Purchase these, book-buyer, with a light heart, for you will find such excellence in this volume that you will be right in easily reckoning other editions as worth no more than a straw. In the year of our Lord 1474, September 20, in the fourth year of the Pontificate of Sixtus IV, by divine providence Pope.
If Han relied on the superiority of his work to defeat his rivals, other publishers preferred to have the advantage of coming earlier to market, and we find Stephanus Corallus, at Parma, actually apologizing with a very vivid metaphor for misprints in his edition of the “Achilleis” of Statius on the ground that he had rushed it through the press to forestall rivals. Of course, the rivals were envious and malevolent,—that might be taken for granted,—but the assumption that a purchaser was to acquiesce in bad work in order that Corallus might hurry his book out quickly only for his own profit was merely impudent.
Statius. Achilleis. Parma: Steph. Corallus, 1473.
Si quas, optime lector, hoc in opere lituras inueneris nasum ponito; nam Stephanus Corallus Lugdunensis inuidorum quorundam maliuolentia lacessitus, qui idem imprimere tentarunt, citius quam asparagi coquantur id absoluit, ac summo studio emendatum literarum studiosis legendum tradidit Parme M.cccc.lxxiii. x Cal. April.
Should you find any blots in this work, excellent reader, lay scorn aside; for Stephanus Corallus of Lyons, provoked by the ill will of certain envious folk who tried to print the same book, finished it more quickly than asparagus is cooked, corrected it with the utmost zeal, and published it, for students of literature to read, at Parma, March 23, 1473.
When publishers were as ready as this to forestall each other, a cry for some kind of regulation of the industry was sure to be raised, and at Venice, the greatest book-mart in the world, regulation came in the form of the privilege and spread thence to various countries of Europe. I do not at all agree with the opinion which Mr. Gordon Duff has expressed so strongly, that the power of freely importing books given by Richard III was by any means an unmixed blessing, or that its revocation by Henry VIII fifty years later had disastrous effects on English printing. Printing started late in England and was handicapped by the impoverishment wrought by the Wars of the Roses. The facility with which all learned books were supplied from abroad quickened the growth of English learning, but restricted the English printers to printing and reprinting a few vernacular books of some literary pretensions and an endless stream of works of popular devotion and catch-penny trifles. Neither Oxford nor Cambridge could support a permanent printer, and English scholars were obliged to have their books printed abroad. Nevertheless, free trade, however hardly it might press on a backward industry, was infinitely better than the privilege system, which was altogether haphazard and liable to gross abuse. For the story of its introduction and development at Venice, the reader must be referred to Mr. Horatio Brown’s “The Venetian Printing Press” (Nimmo, 1891), a book which leaves a good deal to be desired on its purely typographical side, but which is quite admirable as regards the regulation of the industry. Our concern here is only with the privileges in so far as they make their appearance in colophons. The earliest colophon in which I have found allusion to them is six years later than the first grant which Mr. Brown records, that to Marc’ Antonio Sabellico in September, 1486, for his “Decades rerum Venetarum,” printed by Andrea de Torresani in 1487 (Hain *14053). By 1492 the system must have been in full swing, as is shown by this colophon to the “Liber Regalis” of Albohazen Haly, printed by Bernardinus Ricius:
Impressum Venetiis die 25 Septembris, 1492, opera Bernardini Ricii de Nouaria, impensa vero excellentissimi artium et medicine doctoris domini magistri Ioannis dominici de Nigro, qui obtinuit ex speciali gratia ab illustrissimo ducali dominio Venetorum Quod nemini, quicumque fuerit, liceat tam Venetiis quam in universa ditione Veneto dominio subiecta, imprimere seu imprimi facere hunc librum, aut alibi impressum in predicta ditione vendere, per X annos, sub pena immediate et irremissibilis omnium librorum, et librarum quinquaginta pro quolibet volumine. Que quidem pena applicetur recuperationi Montis Noui.
Printed at Venice on September 25, 1492, by the pains of Bernardinus Ricius of Novara, at the expense of the most excellent doctor of arts and medicine, Master Giovanni Dominico di Nigro, who obtained, by special grace, from the most illustrious dogal government of the Venetians that no one soever should be allowed, either at Venice or in the entire dominion subject to the Venetian government, himself to print this book or cause it to be printed, or to sell in the aforesaid dominion a copy printed elsewhere, for ten years, under the penalty of the immediate and irremissible forfeiture of all the books, and a fine of fifty lire for any volume, the penalty to be applied to the restoration of the Monte Novo.
The three points as to the duration of the privilege, the amount of the fine, and the charity to which it was to be applied are here stated quite plainly, but many publishers preferred to leave the amount of the penalty mysterious by substituting a reference to the grace itself, as for instance is the case in the edition of Hugo de S. Caro’s “Postilla super Psalterium,” printed by the brothers Gregorii in 1496.