A Passion for Books

by Harold Rabinowitz

  Few realize how immensely popular the Italic face became in the sixteenth century. In Italy, France, and even in England this cursive design became the fashionable vernacular type, and it was used in volume after volume. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the tide again turned toward the Roman face, the Italic being used only for emphasis or for proper names.

  Eager to make the most of his monopoly in Greek publications, Aldus pushed the work forward with hectic enthusiasm, the editors and the correctors working on the copy at the same time that the earlier forms were being printed on the press. In those days, no printer had sufficient type to set up a whole volume at a time. As soon as enough type was composed to constitute a form of four or eight pages, it was run off on the hand press. Then the type was distributed, reset, and the procedure was repeated.

  “My days and nights are devoted to the preparation of material,” Aldus writes. “I can scarcely take food or strengthen my stomach owing to the multiplicity and pressure of business. With both hands occupied, and surrounded by pressmen who are clamorous for work, there is scarcely time even to blow my nose.”

  As a result of this haste many of these early volumes were set up directly from the original manuscripts. When one realizes that Homer was the only great Greek author who had been issued in printed form prior to Aldus, and recalls that Aldus gave to the world for the first time printed editions of Aristotle, Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, Herodotus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Lysias, Echines, Plutarch, and Pindar, he may appreciate the stupendous contribution made by this great printer to scholarship. And except for the effort of Petrarch in the fourteenth century, and his fellow humanists in the fifteenth, many of these manuscripts would have been irrevocably lost before Aldus had the opportunity to multiply them!

  The publications of Aldus include about one hundred titles issued during twenty years in about two hundred and fifty volumes. Taking into account the difficulties presented by the fact that the art of printing was still in its infancy; that each of these titles was produced from manuscript copy; and that from 1509 to 1511 Venice was so harassed by war that business was almost at a standstill, Aldus may be credited with the most tremendous and important accomplishment in the whole history of publishing.

  Aldus felt the lack of inspiration which would have come from intellectual contact with university surroundings, so with characteristic energy he undertook to supply this signal lack in the completeness of Venetian life. This, in 1550, took the form of the Neo-accademia Nostraan Academy, which should be to Venice what the famous institution established by the Medici had been to Florence. The special object of this organization was to assimilate the knowledge of the classical literature of Greece and to become more familiar with it. One of the basic rules of the Academy was that the members must speak nothing but Greek among themselves, or submit to a fine. When the sum thus collected was sufficient, the members indulged in a banquet. Aldus himself was the first president of the organization, and the members included readers and correctors of the Aldine Press, priests and doctors, the cultured nobility of Venice, Padua, Rome, Bologna, and Lucca, Greek scholars from Candia, and even the great Erasmus from Rotterdam.

  The Academy proved useful and stimulating to Aldus. On certain fixed days the members examined new Greek manuscripts and passed judgment on the desirability of their publication, taking as their measuring stick the service such texts might render to scholarship. In a way, this was a revival of the Academy founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus in 300 B.C., and a more recent parallel would be the functions exercised by the delegates of the Clarendon Press of Oxford, England. Aldus had hoped that the Venetian Academy would assume greater responsibilities by exercising its influence upon arts and sciences in general, and had the life of the indefatigable founder been longer spared, his ambition might have been gratified.

  A letter written by Lorenzo of Pavia in 1501 to Isabella d’Este, marchesa di Mantora, gives an interesting glance into the business of the Aldine Press at that time. The marchesa was a cultured noble-woman, who took particular interest in the work of Aldus. Seeking to secure examples of his work, she commissioned Lorenzo to secure them for her, and this letter, freely translated, is a report of his experiences in fulfilling his commission:

  You have expressed the desire, illustrious lady, to obtain large-paper copies of Virgil, Petrarch, and Ovid. At this moment the Virgil is the only one I can secure, and I send it to you. The Petrarch is not yet completed, but it will be finished in ten days. The delay is due to a lack of the fine paper—it has been with difficulty that they secured the small amount required for the Virgil. Your copy of the Petrarch will be selected sheet by sheet, so that you shall have the most beautiful of all the copies. This is the more assured because this volume is issued by Aldus in collaboration with Pietro Bembo, who is wholly devoted to Your Ladyship. It is Bembo who secured the manuscript, which Petrarch had written with his own hand, as a pattern for the types. I have actually held this manuscript in my hands! It belonged to a Paduan, who copied each letter with such care that the type exactly matches the written characters. I will send the volume to you as soon as it is printed. Aldus and Bembo wish the first copy to be yours. They say that this will be for them the best of auguries.

  Immediately after the Petrarch they will print the Dante, and after that, the Ovid, which will be begun, I think, about the end of September; but the Dante will be started within twenty days. I have been asked to look about for some good hempen paper, of high quality and pure white, not too thick in one spot and too thin in another. The difficulty is to find paper of good enough quality. They tell me that the price of the Virgil and Petrarch will be not less than five ducats each.

  Aldus considered the matter of the sale and distribution of his books his most serious business problem. Bookselling as an organized trade was unknown prior to 1550, and the printer-publisher of the fifteenth century was largely dependent upon personal correspondence with scholars who were interested to purchase his product. In those days, as now, the real business of books was hampered by casual and insincere flutterers around the flame of learning. Aldus had no patience with such as these:

  “Nearly every hour,” he writes, “comes a letter from some scholar, and if I undertook to reply to them all, I should be obliged to devote day and night to correspondence. Then, through the day, come calls from all kinds of visitors. Some wish merely to give a word of greeting; others want to know what there is that is new; while the greater number come to my office because they happen to have nothing else to do. ‘Let us look in upon Aldus,’ they say to one another. Then they loaf about and chatter to no purpose. Even these people with no business are not so bad as those who have a poem or something in prose (usually very prosy indeed) which they wish to see printed with the name of Aldus. These interruptions are now becoming too serious for me, and I must take steps to lessen them. Many letters I simply leave unanswered, while to others I send very brief replies; and as I do this not from pride or from discourtesy, but simply in order to be able to go on with my task of printing good books, it must not be taken unkindly. . . . As a warning to the heedless visitors who use up my business hours to no purpose, I have now placed a great notice on the door of my office to the following effect: ‘Whoever thou art, thou art earnestly requested by Aldus to state thy business briefly and to take thy departure promptly. In this way thou mayst be of service, even as was Hercules to the weary Atlas. For this is a place of work for all who may enter.’ ”

  There was another side to this correspondence which must have been gratifying to the busy printer. Purchasers of books looked upon Aldus as a benefactor of mankind and freely expressed their appreciation of the privilege of buying. Urbanus, for instance, a highly educated monk, wrote Aldus in 1505: “May the blessing of the Lord rest upon thee, thou illustrious man. The high regard in which you are held by our Brotherhood will be realized by you when you learn that we have ordered (through the House of Fugger in Augsburg) a group of your
valuable publications, and that it is our chief desire to be able to purchase all the others. We pray to God each day that He will in His mercy long preserve your life for the cause of good learning. Our neighbor, Mutianus Rufus, the learned Canonicus of Gotha, calls you ‘the light of our age,’ and is never weary of relating your great services to scholarship. He sends you a cordial greeting, as does also Magister Spalatinus, a man of great learning. We are sending you with this four gold ducats, and will ask you to send us (through Fugger) an Etymologicum Magnum and a Julius Pollux, and also (if there be money sufficient) the writings of Bessarion, of Xenophon, and of Hierocles, and the Letters of Merula.”

  There were other rewards that came to the overburdened Aldus. “I cannot tell you what joy I experienced,” he wrote a friend, “when I learned that in the great city of Brescia the most distinguished men were devoting themselves passionately to Greek literature. This truly surpasses all that I hoped when I undertook the publication of Greek texts. This passion has increased, day by day, while arms have contended against books, not only in Italy, but in Germany, in France, in Pannonia, in England, in Spain, and wherever the Latin tongue is known. My joy makes me forget my fatigue, and my ardor is redoubled to come more and more to the aid of all students, and especially of the youth born at this period of the renaissance of letters.”

  The reference made by Aldus of arms contending against books recalls the frequent interruptions caused by the wars of 1500, 1506, 1510, and 1511, in which Venice was directly involved. During these periods the universities north of the Alps had to discontinue their classical instruction because soldiers in the passes prevented the Aldine classical texts from being transported from Venice to their destination.

  The piratical reprints of the Aldine volumes annoyed Aldus even more than the wars. The copyrights secured from the Venetian government gave protection only within the limits of Venice itself. The printers of Paris were guilty of this piracy to some extent, but those of Lyons, particularly the famous house of Giunta, were the chief offenders. Aldus would not have minded so much the filching of the text, but when the unscrupulous printers ventured to copy his types and his original style of typography, and sold their counterfeit copies as the product of the Aldine Press, his indignation knew no bounds. “These fraudulent volumes, printed and sold under my name,” he declares, “prejudice friends of letters to my sorrow and discredit. The paper is inferior, and even has a foul odor; the type characters are defective, and the consonants do not align with the vowels. It is by their imperfections that you may distinguish them.”

  No printer’s mark is better known than the famous Anchor and Dolphin of Aldus. Its origin goes back to the medals of imperialistic Rome struck for Vespasian and for Domitian. Pietro Bembo presented one of these medals to Aldus, who adopted the device, adding the words Festina lente, which he found in Augustus. The dolphin stands for speed in execution, and the anchor for firmness in deliberation. Sir Thomas Browne translates the slogan, “Celerity contempered with cunctation.”

  The most important rival of Aldus in Venice was the establishment formed by Nicolas Blastus and Zacharias Calliergi, devoted exclusively to the production of Greek volumes. Both these men were Cretans, Blastus being a man of wealth and culture, while Calliergi was a printer. The partnership was an expression of national pride: exiled from Greece, these patriotic sons endeavored to keep alive interest in Greek literature. In spite of the rivalry, the relations between this press and Aldus were not only friendly but intimate. Aldus saw in the work of Calliergi a real contribution to Greek learning, and he welcomed the competition. Marcus Musurus, the chief associate of Aldus in the Aldine Press, was also a Cretan, and between him and Blastus existed the closest friendship. Aldus went so far as to include the Calliergi volumes in his catalogue, offering them for sale side by side with his own.

  The extent to which the Cretan national pride carried these exiles is shown by the impassioned appeal, written by Marcus Musurus, which appears at the beginning of the Etymologicum printed by Calliergi in 1499: “Let no one be astonished at the spirit of the Cretans,” he declares, “since it was Minerva herself who, at the command of Jupiter, taught the Cretans the beauties of the art of printing. It was a Cretan who cut these punches; it was a Cretan who devised the accents, and a Cretan who joined them to the letters. It was a Cretan who cast this font of letters in lead; it was a Cretan, whose name is synonymous with victory [Nicolas], who bore the expense of this volume; and he who now celebrates its glory is a Cretan.”

  Marcus Musurus and Nicolas Blastus were voluminous correspondents, and frequently the subjects discussed were of present interest. Musurus shared Aldus’s disgust of those book lovers who declined to loan him their precious manuscripts to be used as copy at the Aldine Press. In one of his letters Musurus writes:

  The lack of books, my very dear Nicolas, is a great misfortune for every one, and particularly for those who burn with a desire for self-instruction and are unable to procure books because of their lack of means. This is the fault of the manuscript collectors, who accept self-praise and glory from their possession, and keep them for themselves alone, depriving others of the fame and glory which would come through their use.

  Aldus married Maria, the daughter of an earlier Venetian printer, Andrea de Torresani, in 1498, and became the father of three sons and a daughter. Manutius, the eldest, became a priest at Arola, Antoninus was a librarian at Bologna, while Paulus entered the Aldine Press. Alda, the daughter, was educated in a convent at Carpi, and in his will her father bequeathed her 300 ducats if she remained with the Sisters and 600 ducats if she married. She chose the latter alternative and became the wife of a Mantuan named Cato.

  At the time of Aldus’s death, Paulus was too young to assume charge of the business, so Andrea de Torresani combined his own printing establishment with the Aldine Press. Previously, Andrea had purchased the type and presses which Nicolas Jenson had left, so the consolidation brought added historic luster to the already world-famous plant of Aldus. Working with Andrea were his two sons, Francesco and Federico.

  It was during this period that Jean Grolier became interested in the Aldine Press. From this association Grolier became an outstanding figure in the world of books in Italy and later in France. He succeeded his father as treasurer of the Duchy of Milan in 1510, when thirty-one years old. Having already developed a passionate and an understanding love for books, he sought out the famous establishment of Aldus and became acquainted with the great scholar-printer. Later, Grolier came to know Andrea de Torresani and formed a warm friendship with Francesco. He became the patron of the press, sending manuscripts to be printed, loaning money at eventful crises, and in general fulfilling the role of good angel. As a result, many of the Aldine publications are dedicated to Grolier, and one copy of every book was especially printed on vellum for this fastidious collector.

  In a letter Grolier wrote to Francesco, when sending him the manuscript of Budeus’s De Asse for publication, the Frenchman gives instructions which reveal his familiarity with the basic principles of good bookmaking:

  “You will care with all diligence,” he writes, “O most beloved Francesco, that this work, when it leaves your printing shop to pass into the hands of learned men, may be as correct as it is possible to render it. I heartily beg and beseech this of you. The book, too, should be decent and elegant; and to this will contribute the choice of the paper, the excellence of the type, which should have been but little used, and the width of the margins. To speak more exactly, I should wish it were set up with the same type with which you printed your Poliziano. And if this decency and elegance shall increase your expenses, I will refund you entirely. Lastly, I should wish that nothing be added to the original or taken from it.”

  Grolier is perhaps better known from his bindings than from his association with the printing of books. The famous inscription I0 GROLIERII ET AMICORUM, stamped on the covers of his volumes, expresses this book lover’s understanding of what a book should be—
not a treasure to be acquired and hoarded, but a joy to be shared with others. In his library of some eight thousand books Grolier had several copies of the same title, so that no one of his friends need be deprived of the pleasure which he himself secured. “You will owe nothing to books,” Erasmus wrote Grolier, “but in the future, books will give you an eternal glory.”

  Paulus Manutius assumed charge of the Aldine Press when he was eighteen years old, but he was unable to combine, as his father had, his undoubted scholarly attainments with the business necessities. Paulus was particularly interested in Cicero and devoted his lifetime to preparing commentaries to this author’s works, which were published after his death. Paulus was in poor health during most of the years he struggled with the problems of the Aldine Press, and later at Rome. In 1570 he writes pathetically to his son Aldus, “Scholarship and industry have never brought me rest or fortune. I pray God that you may be better favored.” But the younger Aldus had no yearning for his grandfather’s honors. Gradually the affairs of the press ran down, and it passed out of existence at the close of the sixteenth century.

  The death of the great Aldus occurred on February 6, 1515, while he was in his sixty-eighth year. Measured by human standards, in spite of the fact that he died a poor man, the sum total of his accomplishments seems incredible; yet Aldus himself considered his labors wholly incomplete. Gutenberg had conceived the idea of printing books and had proved it practical. Fust and Schoeffer, Sweynheym and Pannartz, John of Spires, Nicolas Jenson, and Erhardus Ratdolt had each in his turn contributed to what had gone before, and thus prepared the way for Aldus; but no one of these great figures had visualized the relation which the new invention bore to learning or to the civilization of the world. They were satisfied if their books compared favorably with the manuscripts they imitated and found a limited sale among the wealthy book-collectors and well-to-do students and professors. Aldus, assuming that quality was an inherent element of bookmaking, sought, in the selection of his titles, and in the low price of his volumes, to make knowledge universal. His books were but the vehicles conveying wisdom to those who craved it. To Aldus, each author remained a prisoner so long as he existed only in manuscript form, and in multiplying the classics so that all the world might read, the great printer felt himself nothing less than a liberator of faithful souls in bondage.