Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

Lorenzo attracted to his villa the greatest scholars and most brilliant men of the time, a circle which included Poliziano, Landino, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Alberti, Pulci, and Michael Angelo. The interests of this circle, as of all similar Italian circles of the time, were largely absorbed in the philosophy and literature of Greece, and special attention was devoted to the teachings of Plato. Plato’s writings were translated into Latin by Ficino, and the translation was printed in 1482, at the cost of Filippo Valvio. Ficino was too poor himself to undertake the publication of his works, and this was the case with not a few of the distinguished authors of the age. The presentation of books to the public required at this time what might be called the endowment of literature, an endowment which was supplied by the liberality of wealthy patrons possessed of literary appreciation or public-spirited ambition, or of both. As Symonds expresses it, “Great literary undertakings involved in that century the substantial assistance of wealthy men, whose liberality was rewarded by a notice in the colophon or in the title-page.” The formal dedication was an invention of a somewhat later date.

The Ficino edition of Plotinus, printed at the expense of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and published a few weeks after his death, bears the inscription, Magnifici sumptu Laurentii patriæ servatoris. The edition of Homer of Lorenzo Alopa, issued in 1488, was printed at the expense of either Bernardo Nerli or Giovanni Acciajuoli. These examples of printed publications belong, however, to a later chapter. Ficino followed up his translation of Plato’s work with a Life of Plato, and an essay on the Platonic Doctrine of Immortality.

In 1484, appeared in the Florentine circle the beautiful and brilliant Pico della Mirandola, a man who through his exceptional gifts, his varied learning, and the charm of his personality, exercised a very wide influence over his generation, and who may possibly be accepted as at once the type and the flower of the Renaissance. Pico studied at Bologna, and later at Paris. He printed, in 1489, in defence of his philosophical theories, certain theses which were condemned as heretical by Innocent VIII. In 1493, the ban of heterodoxy was renewed by a brief of Alexander VI. Pico’s enquiring mind and scholarly ardour covered a wide range of research, including the philosophy of the Platonists, the mysteries of the Cabbala, and the system and theories of Aquinas, Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and Averrhoes, and he proposed to devote his learning and his life to the task of reconciling classical traditions with the Christian creeds. Didot quotes the following characteristic sentence from a letter written by Pico, February 11, 1491, to Aldus Manutius: “Philosophia veritatem quærit, theologia invenit, religio possidet.” (Philosophy seeks truth, theology discovers it, religion possesses it.)

Pico died at the age of thirty-one, before the book had been written in which he proposed to demonstrate these positions. He was able, however, to render a great service to Italy and to Europe in securing for his friend Aldus the aid required for the establishment of the Aldine Press in Venice. The details of the relations of the two men are given in the chapter on Aldus.

Other noteworthy members of the literary circle which surrounded Lorenzo de’ Medici, were Christoforo Landino, Leo Battista Alberti, and Angelo Poliziano. Landino edited Horace and Virgil and translated Pliny’s Natural History, and in 1481 published an edition of Dante, and Battista Alberti, (whose comedy of Philodoxius, which passed for an antique, was published by the Aldi, in 1588, as the work of Lepidus Comicus), wrote three treatises on painting, and several volumes on architecture. Alberti was more distinguished as an artist, architect, and musician, than as an author. It was characteristic, however, of the men of this group to be universal in their genius.

Symonds speaks of Poliziano as emphatically the representative of the highest achievements of the age in scholarship, and as the first Italian to combine perfect mastery over Latin and a correct sense of Greek, with splendid genius for his native literature. His published works included annotated editions of Ovid, Suetonius, Statius, Pliny, and Quintilian, translations of Epictetus, Galen, and Hippocrates, a series of Miscellanea, and most important of all, the edition, printed from the famous Amalfi manuscript, of the Pandects of Justinian.

Among the smaller cities in which the Humanistic movement influenced literature and furthered the development of learning, may be mentioned Carpi, afterwards the home of Musurus and Aldus; Mirandola, the birthplace of the brilliant Pico; Pesaro, where Alessandro and Constanzo Sforza brought together a library rivalling that of the Medici; Rimini, where Sigismondo Malatesta gathered about his fortress a circle of scholars; and Urbino, where the good Duke Frederick brought together one of the finest collections of manuscripts which Europe had known, a collection valued at over 30,000 ducats. Vespasiano, who served for some time as librarian, says that for fourteen years the Duke kept from thirty to forty copyists employed in transcribing Greek and Latin Manuscripts. The work of these copyists went on for some years after the introduction of printing into Italy, for Frederick, in common with not a few other of the scholarly nobles who were collectors of manuscripts, distrusted and looked down upon the new art, and had no interest in books which were merely mechanical reproductions.

Vespasiano da Bisticci, whose aid Frederick had secured in the preparation of his library, was noted as an author, as a scribe, and as a bookseller. Symonds speaks of the “rare merit” of the biographical work in Vespasiano’s Lives of Illustrious Men, the memoirs of which Symonds utilised largely in the preparation of his Renaissance. Vespasiano’s literary work must have been done “in the intervals of business,” for his business undertakings were important. He was the largest dealer in manuscripts of his time. His purchasing agents and correspondents were armed with instructions to secure authenticated codices wherever these were obtainable, and the monasteries not only of Italy but of Switzerland, South Germany, Hungary, Transylvania, and the East were carefully searched for possible literary treasures. He employed a large force of skilled copyists in the production of copies of famous works, which copies were distributed through correspondents and customers in the different scholarly centres of Europe. Possessing himself a wide and exact scholarship, he gave his personal attention to the selection of his texts, the training of his copyists and the supervision of their work, so that a manuscript coming from Vespasiano carried with it the prestige of accuracy and completeness.

Vespasiano’s scholarly knowledge and his special experience in palæography were utilised by such clients as Nicholas V., Cosimo de’ Medici, Frederick of Urbino, and other lovers of literature, in the formation of and development of their libraries. Vespasiano united, therefore, the functions of a scholarly editor and commentator, a collector, a book-manufacturer, a publisher and a bookseller, a series of responsibilities which called for a wide range of learning, accomplishments, and executive ability. It is evident from his career and from the testimony of his friends and clients (terms in this case practically identical) that he was devoted to literature for its own sake. He accepted the rewards secured by his skill and enterprise, and promptly expended these in fresh efforts for the development and extension of liberal scholarship. Vespasiano may be called the last, as he was probably the greatest of the book-dealers of the manuscript period. Born in 1421 and living until 1498, he witnessed the introduction of printing into Italy, and may easily have had opportunities of handling the earlier productions of the Venetian printing-press. Vespasiano was a fitting successor of Atticus and a worthy precursor of Aldus, whose work in the distribution of scholarly literature was, in fact, a direct continuation of his own.

As before mentioned, the trade in the production of manuscript copies went on for a number of years after the introduction of printing. The noblemen and wealthy scholars who had inherited, or who had themselves brought together, collections of famous works in manuscript, were for some time, not unnaturally, unwilling to believe that ordinary people could, by means of the new invention, with a comparatively trifling expenditure secure perfect and beautiful copies of the same works. Before the death of Vespasiano, in 1498, however, the work of the printing-press had come to be understood and cordially appreciated by book-buyers and students of all classes, and the trade of the copyists and of the manuscript-dealers had, excepting for newly discovered texts, practically come to an end. The career of Vespasiano belongs strictly to the chapter on the publishers of manuscripts, of whom he was the most important. The man himself, however, through his character and services, belongs essentially to the movement of the Renaissance, of which movement he was at once a product and a leader.