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Overview
Using Venetian governmental records, papal documents in the Vatican Archive and Library, and the books themselves, Professor Grendler traces the controversies as the patriciate debated whether to enforce the Index or to support the disobedient members of the book trade. He investigates the practical consequences of the Index to printer and reader, noble and prelate.
Heretics, clergymen, smugglers, nobles, and printers recognized the importance of the press and pursued their own goals for it. The Venetian leaders carefully weighed the conflicting interests, altering their stance to accommodate constantly shifting religious, political, and economic situations. The author shows how disputes over censorship and other press matters contributed to the tension between the papacy and the Republic. He draws on Venetian governmental records, papal documents in the Vatican Library, and the books themselves.
Originally published in 1977.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691638539 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1450 |
| Pages: | 400 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d) |
Read an Excerpt
The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605
By Paul F. Grendler
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1977 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05245-8
CHAPTER 1
THE VENETIAN BOOKMEN
Those seeking to regulate the Venetian press faced a formidable task. The first Venetian printed book did not appear until about 1469, but the press grew so rapidly that it became the largest in Europe by the end of the incunabular period. The city's commercial preeminence and its distribution network (the best in the world) attracted the merchants of the new craft. In the early cinquecento Aldo Manuzio and other Venetian printers greatly aided the diffusion of humanistic learning by editing and publishing numerous editions of classical texts and modern humanist authors. After 1525 the enthusiasm for the vernacular, encouraged by such publishers as Gabriel Giolito, produced further growth. Northern rivals such as Lyons, Paris, and Basel challenged Venetian supremacy, but the Queen of the Adriatic probably still produced and sold more books than any other city at mid-century.
1. PUBLISHERS, PRINTERS, AND SELLERS
A Venetian patrician estimated in 1596 that the press employed 400 to 500 men. Publishers, printers, and booksellers, with much overlapping, comprised the book industry. The publisher, the man who placed his name on the title page, led the industry. Giolito, Giunti, and Manuzio, the most famous names in Venetian printing, published, but they also had a hand in every other phase of the trade. They printed, they marketed their product throughout Europe, and they owned retail stores in Venice and elsewhere from which they offered the public domestic and foreign imprints. The publisher might place a manuscript with a printer, one whose name appeared only on the colophon if at all. But the printer eagerly shed his anonymity when the opportunity arose to publish a profitable manuscript. The greatest exclusiveness appeared at the base of the industry; the independent bookseller probably lacked the capital to do more than sell books. Contemporaries, with some justification, used the terms libraio, stampatore, and bibliopola interchangeably.
At mid-century, 30 to 50 publishers produced at least one title in any given year. The size of the firms varied greatly, from the giants — Giolito, Giunti, and Manuzio — down to individuals who published a single edition. Gabriel Giolito published c. 900 editions (originals and reprints) from 1541 through 1578, an average of nearly 24 per year, and his heirs added another 150 through 1599. The Giunti and Aldine presses spanned the century, the former producing a few more than 1,000 editions, the latter about 950, for an average of about 10 per year.
Many other very active publishers followed the giants. The Venetian press enjoyed strength through numbers and avoided dependence on one or two great firms. Girolamo Scoto published 197 editions between 1540 and 1573, Vincenzo Valgrisi published 202 works from 1540 to 1572, Michele Tramezzino 190 from 1536 to 1574, Comin da Trino 170 from 1540 to 1573, and Francesco Ziletti 103 during the short period 1569–1587. Each of these individual publishers averaged at least 5 or 6 imprints a year. Smaller firms produced 3 to 4 titles annually: Domenico and Giovanni Battista Guerra published 160 between 1560 and 1598, Melchiorre Sessa (the Elder) 151 from 1506 to 1555, Giordano Ziletti 121 from 1549 to 1583, Damiano Zenaro 84 from 1573 to 1599, and Francesco Rampazetto 78 from 1553 to 1576. Others averaged about two editions a year: Andrea Arrivabene published 82 from 1536 to 1570, Nicolò Bevilacqua 48 from 1554 to 1572. A number of firms spanned the century or came within a few years of doing so. In addition to Manuzio and Giunti, the Scoto family published 362 works, the Sessa 298, and the Bindoni 234, in the century. Behind these well-known firms were a host of others, down to individuals who published a single title and disappeared. The names of about 500 publishers appeared on the title pages and colophons of cinquecento Venetian printings.
The majority of the bookmen located their shops in an area in the center of the city bounded by the districts of San Marco, Sant'Angelo, the Rialto bridge, Santi Apostoli, San Zanipolo (Giovanni e Paolo), and Santa Maria Formosa. The Mercerie, stretching from the Torre dell'Orologio to Campo San Bartolomeo, and the Frezzeria, from San Moisè to San Fantin, were lined with bookstores. The parishes of San Zulian (Giuliano), San Salvatore, San Bartolomeo, San Moisè, Sant'Angelo, and San Canciano contained many shops and homes of the bookmen. The church of San Zanipolo had a large warehouse used by many bookmen, and served as the meeting place of their guild. Other shops and homes were scattered across the city, as far away as the district of San Pietro in Castello. Books were also sold in outdoor stands, especially on and near the Rialto bridge, and were hawked in Piazza San Marco.
The preferred subject matter varied considerably from publisher to publisher. All published a little bit of everything, but the larger firms tended to specialize. The Giunti press printed large numbers of breviaries, missals, and other liturgical manuals, enabling the Venetian press to lead Europe in the production of canonical works. The Aldine press enjoyed wide recognition for its editions of the classics and humanist commentaries. Tramezzino specialized in vernacular chivalric romances, vernacular history, and legal texts, but he also published significant amounts of vernacular translations of the classics, religious titles, and maps. Completely absent from his list were contemporary vernacular literature and science. Marcolini promoted exactly the vernacular literature that Tramezzino avoided, specializing in such authors as Pietro Aretino and Anton Francesco Doni. Gabriel Giolito published all manner of vernacular literature — dialogues, plays, treatises, histories, sermons, devotional matter, and poetry — and avoided law, philosophy, science, mathematics, and Latin titles generally. The Gardano family, especially Antonio (active 1539–69) and Angelo (1576–99), published music almost exclusively. Smaller publishers were more eclectic; with smaller financial resources and less reputation, they probably were more willing to publish whatever came their way.
The publishers sold their books in Italy and abroad, and accumulated capital. But the book industry included many humbler members: master printers and their assistants who printed on contract; employees of the bookstores owned by the publishers, from the manager down to his youngest shop boy; couriers who regularly shepherded their cargoes to and from the book-fairs of Frankfurt and elsewhere; and the lowly tradesmen who bought and sold used books from outdoor benches at the Rialto or hawked devotional pamphlets at the doors of San Marco. Too poor to appear on tax records, most members of the book trade have disappeared without trace except when they ran afoul of the Holy Office.
2. THE SIZE OF THE PRESS
The Venetian presses published an enormous number of editions in the sixteenth century; a conservative estimate suggests from 15,000 to 17,500. The higher number is arrived at by adjusting the survey made by Ester Pastorello in the light of more recent studies. Pastorello examined the holdings of three libraries: the Marciana in Venice, the Braidense in Milan, and the University of Padua. She counted 7,000 editions carrying a publisher's name and 560 anonymous editions, excluding the output of the Aldine, Giolito, and Marcolini presses, which had already been surveyed. She did not examine the holdings of such major repositories as the National Central Library in Florence, the Vatican Library, and the British Museum. Recent studies of three presses demonstrate how incomplete her survey was. Pastorello counted 360 Giunti editions, whereas Camerini noted over 1,000. Pastorello counted 93 Venetian Tramezzino editions; Tinto noted over 200. Pastorello's figure should be doubled. If her count of 7,200 (7,560 less the 360 Giunti editions) is doubled, and the 950 Aldine, 1,050 Giolito, 1,000 Giunti, and 150 Marcolini editions are added, an estimate of about 17,500 individual editions seems reasonable.
An analysis of the imprimaturs (permissions to print) issued by the Venetian government for new or substantially revised titles supports a lower conjecture of about 15,000 titles in the century. Between 1550 and 1599 the government granted an average of 71 imprimaturs annually. For every new title, however, there were one or more reprints that did not need an imprimatur. Castiglione's Courtier and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, as well as the works of less well-known authors, were often reprinted. To cite a modest example, Francesco Sansovino's Delle cose notabili che sono in Venetia (1561), a historical guide, was reprinted 12 times in 45 years. The Giolito press published a few more than 1,000 titles, of which slightly over one-half were reprints of their own previous publications (1.09 reprints for every new title). Vernacular literary titles, devotional works, and classics in the original and in translation were reprinted more often than legal, medical, mathematical, and scientific works.
When the average annual Venetian total of 71 imprimaturs granted in the second half of the cinquecento is multiplied by 2.09, an average annual production of 148.4 new and reprinted books can be projected. This means that about 7,420 (148.4 x 50) editions were published from 1550 through 1599. Since it is likely that the presses were a little more active in the second half of the century than in the first, perhaps only c. 6,000 editions were produced between 1500 and 1550. Thus, the total editions for the century projected on the basis of known imprimaturs is c. 13,420 editions (6,000 + 7,420). But publishers did not obtain an imprimatur for every title; especially in the first two-thirds of the century, they often ignored the law. Possibly for every 10 titles for which an imprimatur was granted, one title was published in first edition and subsequent reprint without an imprimatur. If the total number of editions for the century is increased by 10% to allow for the works published without imprimaturs, the total for the century was c. 14,800 (13,420 + 1,342).
A Venetian press run varied according to the anticipated demand for the book and the size of the publisher. The normal press run of a title of ordinary or modest sales potential was about 1,000 copies; a major publisher with a title of assured high demand ordered press runs of 2,000 or 3,000 copies. Financial considerations probably dictated the average press run of 1,000 copies. In 1548 the papal nuncio, Giovanni Delia Casa, investigated the possibility of publishing an unidentified book of history. He learned that the government would not issue a privilegio (copyright) unless the Venetian press run was at least 400 copies, and that a publisher preferred for reasons of cost to print 1,000.
In 1559 the Aldine press published a number of titles for the Accademia Venetiana, a learned group subsidized by some Venetian nobles. Nine of the editions had press runs of 825 copies, another nine of 1,100 or 1,125, one of 1,250, and one of 1,700. In 1554 Plinio Pietrasanto printed Girolamo Ruscelli's Il capitolo delle lodi del fuso; according to the author, the press run was 800 to 1,000 copies. Part of the genre of poetry praising lowly subjects (a fuso is a spindle), the work was not of great significance and may not have been reprinted. In 1581 the heirs of Tramezzino contracted with Luc'Antonio Giunti and Giovanni Varisco to print a new edition of the five-volume Delle historie del mondo of Giovanni Tarcagnota, Mambrino Roseo da Fabriano, and Bartolomeo Dionigi da Fano, and specified a press run of 1,125, less those spoiled in printing. In 1590 Girolamo Polo, a small publisher, printed 1,125 copies of a new edition of the frequently published Vitae pontificum by the quattrocento author, Bartolomeo Sacchi (called il Platina). In Rome, the 1570 edition of the opera omnia of St. Thomas Aquinas had a press run of 1,000. The first volumes of Cesare Baronius's Annates Ecclesiastici, published in Rome, 1588, had press runs of 800 copies.
Indirect evidence also suggests that press runs of around 1,000 copies were common. In January 1562, Michele Tramezzino inventoried the published titles still in his possession. The remaining copies of titles recently published in single editions provide a basis for projecting the size of a Tramezzino press run. He had 900 remaining copies of a chivalric romance, 796 of an anonymous vernacular hagiography, and 720 of a Latin defense of papal authority. All three were published in 1560 or 1561. Assuming that some, but not many, copies had been sold and distributed to bookstores, press runs of about 1,000, perhaps a little higher for the romance and slightly lower for the Latin religious work, can be estimated.
Press runs of less than 1,000 also appeared. In 1554 Arrivabene published 500 copies of a book of vernacular poetry by a little-known author. In 1582 the Roman heirs of Tramezzino let a contract to print 750 copies of a vernacular devotional title. Again in Rome, a Latin work of 1592 meant for essentially private distribution had a press run of 504 copies.
The major publishers also printed larger press runs. A concordance of Boccaccio by Francesco Alunno published by the Aldine press in 1543 had a printing of more than 2,000. In 1543 Giolito published Ludovico Dolce's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoseos with a dedicatory letter of May 1. Having sold 1,800 copies in four months, Giolito hastened to issue another printing before the end of the year. In 1572 the Aldine press printed six press runs of 3,300 copies, each in various formats of a liturgical work, the Little Office of Our Lady. By comparison, the ordinary printing of the Plantin press of Antwerp in the second half of the sixteenth century was 1,250 to 1,500 copies, but it could be as high as 2,500 or as low as 800. On the basis of the number of Venetian editions and the size of their press runs, church and state faced the mountainous task of regulating an industry that printed an estimated 15–20 million books in the cinquecento.
3. PRINTING AND SELLING
The bookmen offered volumes to suit every taste and purse. For 4, 6, or 8 soldi the reader could purchase from Giolito a short vernacular comedy, a book of poetry, or a devotional treatise in 12° or 8°. For 1 lira he might buy a larger volume, such as the vernacular translation of Cicero's De Oratore (1554, 12°, 400 pp.); for 1 lira 10 soldi, he might buy Domenichi's Dialoghi (1562, 8°, 435 pp.). The large cinquecento appetite for history might be appeased for 2 lire with a popular history, such as Ludovico Dolce's Vita di Ferdinando I (1566, 4°, 278 pp.) or one of the titles in the Collana historica, the series of vernacular translations of ancient Greek histories published in the 1560s, always in 4°.
The retail price of a book varied greatly according to its size and length. Table 1 indicates the range of Giolito retail prices.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605 by Paul F. Grendler. Copyright © 1977 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- Contents, pg. vii
- List of Illustrations and Tables, pg. ix
- Acknowledgments, pg. xi
- Abbreviations, pg. xiii
- Introduction, pg. xvii
- I. The Venetian Bookmen, pg. 1
- II. The Inquisition, pg. 25
- III. The Growth Of Censorship, pg. 63
- IV. The Counter Reformation Implemented, pg. 128
- V. The Counter Reformation Enforced, pg. 162
- VI. The Clandestine Book Trade, pg. 182
- VII. Venice and Rome Part Company, pg. 201
- VIII. The Republic Protects The Press, pg. 225
- IX. The Waning of the Index, pg. 254
- X. The Impact of Index and Inquisition on Italian Intellectual Life, pg. 286
- Appendix I. Documents, pg. 295
- Appendix II. Inventories of Prohibited Titles C. 1555-1604, pg. 304
- Bibliography, pg. 325
- Index, pg. 349