Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

“I am delighted to learn that so many men of distinction in the great city of Brescia are, under your guidance, devoting themselves with ardour to Greek studies. The expectations with which I undertook the publication of Greek texts are being more than realised. I am, in fact, not a little astonished to find that even in these sad times of war in which my undertakings have been begun, so many are found ready to give the same ardour to scholarly pursuits that they are giving to fighting against the infidel and to civil strife. Thus it happens that even from the midst of war arises literature, which has for so many years lain buried. And it is not only in Italy, but also in Germany, in France, in Pannonia, in Spain, and in England, and wherever the Latin language is known, that young and old are devoting themselves to the study of Greek. The joy that this brings to me causes me to forget my fatigues, and redoubles my zeal to do what is in my power for the service of scholarship, and particularly for the students who are growing up in this time of the renaissance of letters.”

During the first years of the sixteenth century, the difficulties in the transmission either of merchandise or of money were many. The packages of books which Aldus had occasion to send to Reuchlin in Stuttgart, for instance, came forward sometimes by way of Milan, Vienna, or Basel, and later through Augsburg. The Augsburg banking-house of Függer, founded about 1450, possessed in 1500 (and for half a century thereafter) connections which enabled them to take charge not only of what we should call mercantile bills and banking credits, but also of the forwarding and delivery of the goods against which the bills were drawn. They carried on what to-day would be called an express business, and in a majority of instances the instructions were evidently to make collections on delivery. During the first half of the sixteenth century, the Függers, with their branch houses in Florence, Venice, and Genoa, supplied the most valuable machinery for the transaction of business between Italy and Germany. These communications, however, were of necessity very frequently interrupted by the troubles of the times.

In 1510, Mutianus Rufus writes to Urban that “in connection with the conflicts between the French and the Venetian soldiers, the passes of the Alps have been blocked, so that literature from Venice can no longer find its way into Germany. I had hoped with the next Frankfort Fair, to be able to place in the hands of my students the beautiful Aldine editions. But my hopes were in vain. When the Fair was opened, there was not a single volume from Italy. We shall be able this spring to do nothing in our classical schools. Oh, the stupidities of war!”

In 1514, the Elector Frederic the Wise of Saxony applied to the several powers interested for a safe conduct for his librarian, Spalatin, whom he desired to send to Venice to purchase directly from Aldus the Aldine classics for the library of Wittenberg. Some difficulties intervened, however, as Spalatin appears never to have reached Venice. It was doubtless due to the long-continued wars between the Emperor and the States of Italy, that Aldus was unable, during his own lifetime, to establish direct agencies in Germany for his publications. We find record of such agencies in Frankfort, Basel, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, first in the time of his son, agencies which were extended by the grandson.

The active work of Aldus extended over a period of twenty years, from 1495 to 1515. This time included the wars of 1500, 1506, 1510, and 1511, in which Venice was directly engaged, wars which had of necessity much to do with the interference with his business, and with the difficulties, of which he makes continual complaint, in securing returns for his sales. “For seven years,” writes Aldus in 1510, “books have had to contend against arms.” There appears to have been no single year of the twenty in which he was free from pressing financial cares, while from time to time the work of the presses and in the composing room came to an actual standstill for want of funds. During these twenty years he printed not less than 126 works which previously existed only in manuscript form, and the manuscript copies of which had to be secured and carefully edited.

It is probable that Aldus, in his own enthusiasm concerning the value and importance of the re-discovered classics, had overestimated the extent of the interest that could be depended upon for these classics throughout the world. It is evident, however, that there were enough scholars in Italy, Germany, France, and the Low Countries, to assure a widespread demand for the Aldine editions, and that the larger part of the publisher’s difficulties consisted in the lack of convenient machinery for making known to these scholars the fact that such books had been prepared, for the delivery of such copies as might be ordered, and for the collection of the payments due.

Another serious difficulty with which Aldus had to contend was the competition of the piratical copies of his editions which promptly appeared in Cologne, Tübingen, Lyons, and even so close at home as Florence. The most serious interference with his undertakings appears to have come from the printers of Lyons, who in their enterprising appropriations from Paris on the one hand and from Nuremberg, Basel, and Venice on the other, speedily won for their city notoriety as the centre of piratical publishing. The Lyons printers printed editions of the Aldine Latin classics, making a very close imitation of the cursive or italic type, and issued the volumes without imprint, date, or place of publication.

The privileges secured from the government of Venice had effect, of course, only in Venetian territory. Privileges were given by the Pope for a number of the Aldine publications, and these covered, in form, at least, not only the States of the Church but the territory of all States recognising the papal authority, while the penalties for infringing such papal privileges were not infrequently made to include excommunication. There was, however, no machinery by means of which the papal authority could be brought to bear upon Catholics infringing or disregarding the privileges, and as a fact the papal privileges proved of very little service in protecting the literary property either of Aldus or of later literary workers. A further word concerning the privileges issued in Venice and in the other States of Italy will be given in a later division of this narrative.

Apart from this important work in the scholarly and editorial divisions of publishing, Aldus made several distinctive contributions to the art of book-making. He was, as before stated, the first printer who founded complete and perfect fonts of Greek type, fonts which for many years served as models for the printers of Europe. He invented the type which was first called cursive, and which is known to-day as italic, a type having the advantage of presenting the text in a very compact form. (The cursive font was said to have been modelled on the script of Petrarch.) And finally, he was the first publisher who ventured upon the experiment of replacing the costly and cumbersome folios and quartos, in which form alone all important works had heretofore been issued, with convenient crown octavo volumes, the moderate price of which brought them within the reach of scholars of all classes and helped to popularise the knowledge and the influence of classic literature. This constituted a practical revolution in publishing methods.

Aldus had possibly read the remark of Callimachus, the librarian of the Alexandrian library in 290 B.C., that “A big book is a big nuisance.” These Aldine classics, while printed in octavo (i. e., upon a sheet folded in eights), were of a size corresponding more nearly to what would to-day be known as a sixteenmo, the size of the sheet of paper being smaller than that used to-day. Aldus had no presses which would print sheets large enough to fold in sixteen or even in twelve. The price of these small octavos averaged three marcelli or two francs, say forty cents. Making allowance for the difference in the purchasing power of money between the year 1500 and the year 1895, I judge that this may represent about $2.00 of our currency.