Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

Sed ex tua ista taberna libraria nullus unquam prodit codex, nisi cum quæstu.[355] (No book ever leaves your book-shop, except at a profit to you.)

The publishing undertakings of Aurispa were devoted almost entirely to works of classical literature. Among the authors whose names appear either in the lists of books offered by him or in the correspondence of his friends and clients, are as follows:

Philo Judæus, Strabo, Theophrastus, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Proculus, Homer, Aristarchus, Athenæus, Sophocles, Æschylus, Pindar, Oppian, Proclus, Eusebius, Gregory, Aristotle, Plutarch, Plotinus, Lucian, Dio Cassio, Diodorus, and other Greek authors. The Latin writers included Cicero (of necessity), Virgil, Pliny, Quintilian, Macrobius, Apicius, and Antonius.

Aurispa seems to have enjoyed the confidence and friendship of all the noted Italian scholars of his time, and the letters of his correspondents speak with very cordial appreciation as well of the importance of his services to literature, as of the extent of the accuracy of his own scholarship. The only correspondent with whom he appears to have had any trouble was Filelfi, but if Filelfi had not managed to have friction with Aurispa, the bookseller would have been an exception among the contemporaries of this irritable and self-sufficient scholar.

In 1450, being then well advanced in years, Aurispa gave up his business undertakings, took priestly orders, and lived thereafter as a scriba apostolicus, dividing his time between Ferrara and Rome. He declined tempting offers, made through his friend Panormita, to join the literary circle of King Alphonso which had been brought together about the Court in Naples.

After Aurispa’s death, Filelfo gave to his son-in-law, Sabbatinus, a very cordial word of appreciation of the services and of the character of the publisher. A portion of the manuscripts belonging to Aurispa’s collection was purchased in 1461 by Duke Borso of Ferrara for two hundred ducats.

A large collection of manuscripts was, however, in Aurispa’s possession at the time of his death, and these were taken charge of by Bartholomæus Facius, and, after various vicissitudes, many of them have since found place in existing collections of Florence, Venice, Vienna, Paris, and London. A selection of the letters between Aurispa and his near friend Camaldulensis has also been preserved.

Books in Spain.

—At the time when the great manuscript-dealers of Venice and Florence were carrying on business with the literary centres of France, Germany, and England, they had some dealings also with Spain; but their correspondence was practically limited to the University of Salamanca, which had been founded about 1220. The literary activities of Spain during the fifteenth century were certainly much less important than those of either Italy or France. They were of necessity seriously hampered by the long series of wars with the Moors, while the final overthrow in 1492 of the Moorish kingdom of Granada doubtless had, as one of many results, a decidedly unfavourable influence upon the intellectual development and the literary possibilities of the Peninsula. For two centuries or more the scholars of the Moorish kingdom had busied themselves in making collections of Arabic literature, while of not a few of the more noteworthy works they caused to be prepared versions in Latin, by means of which the books were made available for the use of instructors and students in Salerno, Bologna, Padua, and Paris. It was the case also that the first knowledge of certain Greek authors came to the scholars of Europe through the Latin translations which were produced in Cordova from the Arabic versions. The Moorish scholars thus became a connecting link for the transmission to the Western world of the philosophy and learning of the East. Until its conquest and practical destruction by the Spaniards in 1236, Cordova had been not only the political capital but the centre of the intellectual life of the Moorish kingdom, so that it was spoken of as the Athens of the West. At the close of the tenth century it is said to have contained nearly one million inhabitants. In connection with the work of its university and of the great library, a large body of skilled scribes were busied with the manifolding of manuscripts, and there appears to have been a regular exchange of manuscripts between Cordova and Baghdad.

In the year 995, Thafar Al-baghdádé, the chief of the scribes of his time, came from Baghdad and settled in Cordova. The Khalif Al-hakem took him into his service and employed him in transcribing books. The Khalif surpassed every one of his predecessors in the love of literature and of the sciences, which he himself cultivated with success and fostered in his dominions. Through his influence, Andalusia became a great market to which the literary productions of every clime were immediately brought for sale. He employed merchants and agents to collect books for him in distant countries, remitting for the purpose large sums of money from the treasury, until, says the chronicler, “the number of books in Andalusia exceeded all calculation.” The Khalif sent presents of money to celebrated authors in the East with a view to encourage the publication of works or to secure the first copies of these. Hearing, for instance, that Abú-l-faraj of Ispahán had written a book entitled Kitábu-l-aghani (The Book of Songs), he sent him a thousand dinars of pure gold, in consideration of which he received a copy of the work before it had been published in Persia. He did the same thing with Abú Bekr Al-abhari, who had published a commentary on the Mokhtassar.