Early Printed Books

by E. Gordon Duff

[17] The edition of Catullus, mentioned above, is ascribed to Andrea Belfortis, because the words ‘cui Francia nomen’ occur in the prefatory verses; and the same words occur, referring to Belfortis, in a book printed by him. But the types of the Catullus and those used by Andrea Belfortis are certainly different, while both the types of the Catullus are found in other books printed by Hahn. The Catullus has also a Registrum Chartarum, which was almost invariably put to his books by Hahn.

The latest writer [18] on the early history of printing in Venice has again revived the question as to the correctness of the date of the Decor Puellarum. Though he still clings to the possibility of the date 1461 being trustworthy, the weight of evidence, all of which is carefully stated, is decisively in favour of its being a misprint for 1471.

[18] The Venetian Printing Press. By Horatio F. Brown. London, 1891. 4to.

It would be useless to recapitulate here all the arguments in favour of Jenson having printed in 1461, when it is now generally admitted that John of Spire was the first printer at Venice, and that his first book was the Epistolæ familiares of Cicero, issued in 1469. Of this book only one hundred copies were printed. On the 18th September 1469, the Collegio of Venice granted to John of Spire a monopoly of printing in that district for five years; and this document distinctly indicates that he was the first printer at Venice. He did not, however, live to obtain the advantage of this privilege, ‘nullius est vigoris quia obiit magister et auctor,’ says a contemporary marginal note to the record, for he died in 1470. Previous to his death he printed a Pliny, the first volume of a Livy, two editions of the Epistolæ ad familiares, and part of the Augustine De civitate dei, which was finished by his brother Windelin.

‘Subita sed morte peremptus

Non potuit cœptum Venetis finire volumen.’

Windelin of Spire was a very prolific printer, and continued to issue books without intermission from the time of his brother’s death, in 1470, to his own in 1478. But among the early Venetian printers the most important was certainly Nicholas Jenson. A Frenchman by birth, he passed his apprenticeship in the Paris Mint, and became afterwards the head of the Mint at Tours. In 1458, in consequence of the stories of the invention of printing, he was sent by Charles VII. to Mainz to learn the art, and introduce it into France. Jenson returned in 1461, when Louis XI. had just been crowned; but he does not seem to have settled in France, and we first hear of him again in 1470 as a printer at Venice. From 1470 to 1480 he printed continuously, issuing, according to Sardini, at least one hundred and fifty-five editions, though this number must be considerably under the mark. His will was drawn up on the 7th September 1480, and he died in the same month. The fame of Jenson rests on the extraordinary beauty of his Roman type, of which he had but one fount, and which, though frequently copied, was never equalled. In 1474 he began to use Gothic type, owing to its great saving of space; and in 1471, in the Epistolæ familiares, he used Greek type in the quotations, the first instance of its employment in Venice. It is curious that, with its devotion to the new learning, Venice should not have been the first to issue a Greek book. Jenson had frequently to use Greek type in his books, but he never printed a complete work in that language. Milan led the way, printing the Greek Grammar of Lascaris in 1476; and it was not till 1485 that Venice issued its first Greek book, the Erotemata of Chrysoloras.

In 1470, another German, Christopher Valdarfer of Ratisbon, began to print. He left Venice in 1473, and settled at Milan, and the books which he printed at the former-place are very rare and few in number. The best known is the Decameron of 1471, the first edition of the book, familiar to all readers of Dibdin.

In 1471 was issued the De medicinis universalibus, printed by Clemens Sacerdos (Clement of Padua), the first Italian printer in Venice; and in the year following, Philippus Petri,[19] the first native Venetian printer, began to print.

[19] This printer’s name seems to have led to a certain amount of confusion. He was Filippo the son of Piero, in Latin, Philippus Petri; but after his father’s death, about the end of 1477, he calls himself Philippus quondam Petri, Filippo son of the late Piero.