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Book Markets in Mediterranean Europe
and Latin America: Institutions and

Strategies 15th-19th Centuries
Montserrat Cachero
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NEW DIRECTIONS IN BOOK HISTORY
Book Markets in
Mediterranean Europe
and Latin America
Institutions and Strategies
(15th–18th Centuries)
Edited by Montserrat Cachero
Natalia Maillard-Álvarez
New Directions in Book History
Series Editors
Shafquat Towheed
Faculty of Arts
Open University
Milton Keynes, UK
Jonathan Rose
Department of History
Drew University
Madison, NJ, USA
As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of
maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That is the
goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish mono-
graphs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new fron-
tiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars. Its
scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds and to
all historical periods from antiquity to the twenty-first century, including
studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions in Book
History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the vanguard. It will
experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unexplored archives,
debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories, study neglected
subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history to other academic
fields. Every title in this series will address the evolution of the historiog-
raphy of the book, and every one will point to new directions in book
scholarship. New Directions in Book History will be published in three
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series editors.
* * *
Editorial board:
Marcia Abreu, University of Campinas, Brazil
Cynthia Brokaw, Brown University, USA
Matt Cohen, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Archie Dick, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Martyn Lyons, University of New South Wales, Australia
Montserrat Cachero
Natalia Maillard-Álvarez
Editors
Book Markets in
Mediterranean Europe
and Latin America
Institutions and Strategies (15th–18th Centuries)
Editors
Montserrat Cachero Natalia Maillard-Álvarez
Department of Economics, Department of Geography, History
Quantitative Methods and and Philosophy
Economic History Pablo de Olavide University
Pablo de Olavide University Seville, Spain
Seville, Spain
ISSN 2634-6117 ISSN 2634-6125 (electronic)

New Directions in Book History
ISBN 978-3-031-13267-4 ISBN 978-3-031-13268-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13268-1
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Contents
1 Introduction:
The Circulation of Books During the Early
Modern Period: Contexts and Perspectives 1
Natalia Maillard-Álvarez and Montserrat Cachero
Part I Privileged Markets 19
2 Book
Privileges in the Early Modern Age: From Trade
Protection and Promotion to Content Regulation 21
Angela Nuovo
3 A
Pious Privilege: Printing for Hospitals and Orphanages
Across the Spanish Empire 35
Agnes Gehbald
4 Antonio
Sanz and the Distribution of the Festivals and
Vigils Calendar 65
Natàlia Vilà-Urriza
v
vi CONTENTS
PART II Economic Behaviour at the Market 89
5 Serving
the Church, Feeding the Academia: The Giunta
and Their Market-Oriented Approach to European
Institutions 91
Andrea Ottone
6 Global
Networks in the Atlantic Book Market
(Booksellers and Inquisitors in the Spanish Empire)119
7 A
Pluricontinental Book Market: The Role of Booksellers
in the Circulation of Knowledge Within the Portuguese
Empire (c. 1790–1820)147
Airton Ribeiro da Silva Jr.
PART III Institutions, Markets, and Incentives 171
8 Publication
and Distribution of the Pre-Tridentine
Liturgical Book in Spain Through Notarial Documentation173
Manuel José Pedraza-Gracia
9 From
Rome to Constantinople. The Greek Printers and
the Struggles for Influence Between the Roman Catholic
Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate over the
Christian Populations in the Eastern Mediterranean
(Seventeenth Century)211
Alexandra Laliberté de Gagné
10 The
Territorial Component of Inquisitorial Book Control
in the Eighteenth-Century Indias’ Trade to New Granada229
Alberto José Campillo Pardo
Name Index251
Subject Index255
Notes on Contributors
Alberto José Campillo Pardo Campillo Pardo has a Master’s degree

from the University de los Andes in Bogotá (Colombia) and holds a PhD
in History from the University of Seville. Alberto J. Campillo is the author
of the book Censura, expurgo y control en la biblioteca colonial
neogranadina.
Airton Ribeiro da Silva Jr. holds a PhD in Legal History from the
Università degli Studi di Firenze (2018). Recently, he had been postdoc
guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute für Europäische
Rechtsgeschichte (2020).
Alexandra Laliberté de Gagné holds a PhD in History (medieval and
early modern studies) from the University of Toulouse–Jean Jaurès. She
has been a lecturer at the University of Toulouse and the National Institute
Jean-François-Champollion University in Albi.
Agnes Gehbald holds a PhD from the University of Cologne with the
dissertation Popular Print Culture and Reading in Late Colonial Peru.
Manuel José Pedraza-Gracia is the Principal Investigator of several
projects devoted to book history, the director of the journal Titlivus, and
the author of, among others, El libro español del Renacimiento (2008).
Angela Nuovo is Principal Investigator of EMoBookTrade and Professor
of History of the Book at the University of Milan. She was a visiting fellow
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
at All Souls College, University of Oxford, in 2012, and recipient of an

Ahmanson Research Fellowship at the University of California Los Angeles
in 2014.
Andrea Ottone holds a PhD from the University of Naples ‘Federico II’.
He has taught at the Ohio State University and has published on topics
related to book history, readership and censorship. He is a member of the
project EMoBooktrade (Milano).
Montserrat Cachero holds a degree in Economics from the University
of Seville and a doctorate in History from the European University
Institute. She was distinguished academic visitor at Queens’ College
(University of Cambridge) in 2005 and visiting fellow at the Center for
History and Economics (Harvard University) in 2016. She has been
teaching Economic History at Pablo de Olavide University since 2004 as
part of the Economics department where she received her tenure track in
2012. She is an expert in sixteenth century Atlantic Trade and Network
Analysis. Currently she is PI of the research project Credit market and the
price revolution in Spain. A 16th century bubble? (FEDERUPO-1261964)
funded by the European Commission (EDRF) and the Junta de Andalucía.
Natalia Maillard-Álvarez holds a PhD in History from the University of
Seville. She was Marie Curie Fellow at the European University Institute
in Florence (2010-2012) and EURIAS fellow at the Collegium de Lyon
(2015–2016). Currently, she is an associate professor of Early Modern
History at the University Pablo de Olavide. She is an expert in book his-
tory of the Hispanic Monarchy during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. She is PI of the research project International Book Trade Networks
in the Hispanic Monarchy, 1501-1648 (HAR2017-82362-P) funded by
the Spanish Government.
Natàlia Vilà-Urriza holds a master’s degree from the Universidad
Complutense de Madrid. Natàlia Vilà-Urriza has been an intern at the
National Library in Madrid
List of Figures
Fig. 5.1 Average output of the Giunta of Venice between 1489 and 1601 109
Fig. 6.1 The Inquisitorial network. Elaborated by the authors using Gephi 137
Fig. 6.2 Size distribution in the communities 139
Fig. 6.3 Network at the market. Elaborated by the authors using Gephi 141
Fig. 6.4 Size distribution of communities 143
Fig. 7.1 Number of titles sent to Africa per category 163
Fig. 7.2 Number of titles sent to China (Macao) per category 165
Fig. 7.3 Number of titles sent to India (Goa) per category 167
Fig. 8.1 Guido de Monterroterio, Manipulus Curatorum, Cesaraugusta,
Mathei Fland[ri], 15 October 1475. Colophon (Consortium of
European Research Libraries. Incunabula Short Title Catalogue
(ISTC). London, 2010. https://data.cerl.org/istc/_search,
ig00569000)176
Fig. 8.2 Publishers in liturgical book contracts 191
Fig. 8.3 Print runs grouped by hundreds 200
ix
List of Tables
Table 4.1 Estimated product costs per 550 reams from the budget
prepared by Manuel Martín in 1758. Source: AHN, Consejos,
50,69072
Table 4.2 Annual remuneration of assignees for each territory 77
Table 6.1 Triads in the network 140
Table 6.2 Ranking of triads 145
Table 6.3 Comparing networks 145
Table 7.1 Number of requests per bookseller 159
Table 8.1 Contracts analysed 192
Table 8.2 Print run of the liturgical books according to the contracts
structured in hundreds of copies 199
Table 10.1 List of books 242
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Circulation of Books

During the Early Modern Period: Contexts
and Perspectives
Over the course of history, books have been considered a vehicle for the
transmission of ideas. Nevertheless, books are also commodities produced
to satisfy demand and supply markets. As Richard Kirwan pointed out,
‘early modern book markets were subject to myriad pressures, forces and
interests acting in concert or competition’.1 This book seeks to contribute
to our knowledge about Early Modern book markets in two geographical
areas: Mediterranean Europe and Latin America. Nevertheless, prior to
1
This book has been funded by the research projects International Book Trade Networks
in the Hispanic Monarchy. 1501–1648 (HAR2017-82362-P), and Credit Market and the
Price Revolution in Spain, A 16th Century Bubble? (FEDER UPO-1261964).
R. Kirman, ‘Introduction: The Risks, Rewards and Perils of Specialisation’, in Specialist
Markets in the Early Modern Book World, ed. R. Kirwan and S. Mullins (Leiden, 2015), 1.
N. Maillard-Álvarez (*) • M. Cachero

Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, Spain
e-mail: nmaialv@upo.es; mcacvin@upo.es
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
M. Cachero, N. Maillard-Álvarez (eds.), Book Markets in
Mediterranean Europe and Latin America, New Directions in Book
History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13268-1_1
2 N. MAILLARD-ÁLVAREZ AND M. CACHERO
the analysis of the particularities of these book markets, we need to under-

stand the real nature of Early Modern trade.
Since the fifteenth century, commercial exchange was characterised by
hazardous routes, long distances, difficulties in communication and, con-
sequently, asymmetries in information. These problems seemed to be
amplified when considering commercial exchange by sea through the
Mediterranean, or even worse, the Atlantic. The risk involved in these
transactions required a high degree of sophistication in the organisation of
trade in order to reduce transaction costs.2 Furthermore, the system of
fairs developed in the European continent during the Middle Ages deeply
contributed to the intensification of the commercial flow producing what
scholars have named the Commercial Revolution.3 The periodic meeting
of traders generated growth in commercial transactions and facilitated the
development of distribution networks and the popularisation of the sys-
tem of sending goods to a correspondent on consignment or creating
large companies with branches in different cities and permanent factories.4
Commercial innovations were transferred to the trade with Latin America
where permanent agents and the consignment system coexisted together
with alternative forms of organisation.5 For instance, the presence in com-
mercial transactions of non-professional merchants acting as agents
became very popular. Carters, sailors, masters, artisans, bureaucrats and
even clerics, traded as a secondary occupation to obtain extra income.
The intensification of trade required the development of credit instru-
ments and new forms of legal association. Not only the diffusion of bills of
2
As Chaudhuri states, ‛the systematic organisation of multifaceted forms of long-distance
trade was aimed at reducing transaction costs’, K. N. Chaudhuri, K. N., ‛Reflections on the
organising of pre-modern trade’ in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, ed. J. Tracy
(Cambridge, 1991), 421–442.
3
See, for instance, R. S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350
(New Jersey, 1971) or some of the works by R. de Roover in J. Kishner (ed.) Business,
Banking and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Selected Studies
of Raymond de Roover, (Chicago, 1974), and J. D. Tracy, The Rise of Merchant Empires:
Long-distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750 (Cambridge, 1993).
4
The consignment system was used most heavily in the Baltic area, where the organisation
passed through individual merchants with professional independent agents. On the contrary,
in the Mediterranean, the large company system was preferred.
5
Among these alternative organisational forms, we find the merchant coalitions studied by
Avner Greif. In Greif’s opinion, market-institutions that encourage cooperation produce
growth in investments and trade flows. The reduction of uncertainty is the consequence of
rules of behaviour observed by all members. Merchant members of these coalitions trusted
each other and thus engaged in contracting between them to preserve their reputation as
future profits depended on it. For more information, see A. Greif, Institutions and the Path
to the Modern Economy (Cambridge, 2006).
1 INTRODUCTION: THE CIRCULATION OF BOOKS DURING THE EARLY… 3
exchange but also the proliferation of all sorts of different credit contracts
and partnership agreements reduced the risk assumed by traders.6 These
instruments were constantly used by book merchants, as some of the fol-
lowing chapters will demonstrate.
Regarding distribution networks and financial instruments, books per-
formed the same as the rest of the commodities. Nevertheless, following
the invention of the printing press, a major shift took place in the European
book market during the fifteenth century. This technical innovation did
not only alter the books production process but also meant that the strate-
gies and mechanisms deployed for the trade in manuscripts became inad-
equate for distributing an increasing number of printed books.7 The
imbalance between supply and demand caused many new businesses to
fail.8 Higher investment required by the printing industry and the neces-
sity to reach customers beyond the local scope favoured the internationali-
sation of the European book market from an early stage.9 The spread of
the printing press also provoked a hierarchical organisation of the new
industry through Europe, in which a large quantity of the books con-
sumed by readers was printed in only a few centres.10 At the same time, the
integration of different book markets was facilitated by networks of print-
ers and booksellers who were responsible for connecting distant places in
Europe and beyond. In addition to this, local producers and merchants
6
These contracts could be enforced before the Court but also at the notary office. The
notarial institution was responsible for the dynamism of Early Modern trade, providing flex-
ibility and innovative solutions to commercial conflicts. This circumstance allowed merchants
to carry out multiple economic and financial transactions at the notary office. See
P. T. Hoffman, G. Postel-Vinay y J. L. Rosenthal, Dark Matter Credit: The Development of
Peer-to-Peer Lending and Banking in France (Princeton, 2019); Montserrat Cachero, ‛El
poder para cobrar en las Indias y el control remoto de los deudores’ in La Globalización
escrita: Usos hispanos en la América Colonial, ed. E. López Gómez, M. Salamanca, and
B. M. Tanodi de Chiapero (Madrid, 2015), 47–56; G. Jiménez-Montes, A Dissimulated
Trade Northern European Timber Merchants in Seville (1574–1598) (Leiden, 2022).
7
J. L. Flood, ‛Volentes sibi comparare infrascriptos libros impresos… Printed books as a
commercial commodity in the fifteenth century’, in Incunabula and their readers. Printing,
selling and using books in the fifteenth century, ed. K. Jensen (London, 2003), 139–151.
8
In those early years, as Andrew Pettegree conveyed, ‛many who put their hopes in print
found only ruin’, A. Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, 2010), 44. See also
P. Nieto, ‛Geographie des Impressions Europèennes du XVe siècle’, in Revue Française
d’histoire du livre (118–121), 2004, 125–173.
9
L. Febvre and H-J.Martin, La Aparición del Libro (Mexico City, 2005), 262–264.
10
A. Pettegree, ‛Centre and Periphery in the European Book World’, in Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series (18), 2008,101–128.
coexisted and played a significant role,11 along with the second-hand mar-
ket.12 In general terms, we can detect a higher degree of specialisation in
consolidated markets and more flexibility in emerging ones.
During this time, traders had to deal with political and religious institu-
tions. Institutions have played a central role in the explanation of eco-
nomic growth in the long run, especially since Douglass North was
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. They can be defined as the set of rules
governing transactions and consequently influencing how the economy
works.13 The relevance of institutions lies in their ability to influence
behaviour and incentives, thereby explaining failure or success.14 Efficient
institutions can decrease the costs of transacting, increasing commercial
exchange and economic growth.15
For instance, privileges are crucial institutions in understanding early
modern transactions. Privileges had their origin in Roman law; the system is
inspired by the idea of control and authority. Only the ruler had the right to
decide who could access the market of a certain commodity. We can find
examples in the exploitation of salt mines in America, and the distribution
11
B. Rial Costas (ed.), Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe. A
Contribution to the History of Printing and the Book Trade in Small European and Spanish
Cities (Leiden, 2013).
12
C. Palmiste, ‘La compra de libros usados y de bibliotecas privadas en algunas librerías
sevillanas en la primera mitad del siglo XVIII’, La Memoria de los Libros. Estudios sobre la
Historia del Escrito y de la Lectura en Europa y América, II, P. Cátedra and M.L. López-Vidriero,
eds. (Salamanca, 2004). For the case of Latin America, this topic has been addressed by
I. García Aguilar, ‘Saberes compartidos entre generaciones: Circulación de libros usados en
Nueva España durante los siglos XVII y XVIII’, in Fronteras de la Historia (24–2), 2019,
196–220.
13
North distinguishes between politically determined formal institutions and informal
institutions which emerged because of individual decisions in the market. D. C. North,
‛Institutions, Transaction Costs, and the Rise of Merchant Empires’ in The Political Economy
of Merchant Empires, ed. J. Tracy (Cambridge, 1991), 22–40.
14
D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail. The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and
Poverty (London, 2012).
15
Daaron Acemoglu affirms that efficient institutions produce economic growth since the
right institutional framework can transform individual talent into success. D. Acemoglu,
S. Johnson, and J. A. Robinson, ‛Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the
Making of the Modern World Income Distribution’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117
(4), 2002, 1231–1294. D. Acemoglu, S. Johnson, and J. A. Robinson, ‛The Rise of Europe:
Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth’, The American Economic
Review, 95 (3), 2005, 546–579.
of dye materials, spices or medicinal herbs.16 Privileges were applied for the
first time at the book market by mid-fifteenth century in Venice and Milan
limiting the print of a book for a certain period of time.17 The idea underly-
ing those privileges was to avoid falsification of books, however, very soon,
privilege holders enjoyed the advantage of supplying the market in exclusiv-
ity. The organisational model, carried out in accordance with the mercantil-
ist ideas of the time, became very popular and, not only the Italian States
but also the Portuguese monarchy or the Spanish crown applied privileges
to the production or distribution of multiple commodities.18
Alongside the different chapters of this book, economic and cultural his-
torians contributed to this volume, analysing crucial aspects related to the
production, distribution and control of books in a historical context charac-
terised by the permanent negotiation with political and religious institu-
tions.19 It is well known that books were protected and, at the same time,
were closely monitored by the authorities in Early Modern times because
they were aware of the dangers associated with their distribution and
16
The geographical dimensions of America prompted a change in the regulation of the
new territories. The direct exploitation of such a huge territory was a cost that the monarchy
could simply not afford, and this lack of economic resources forced the Spanish monarchy to
design a more complex system of economic extraction. The new system was also inspired by
the royal monopoly, but direct exploitation was put into private hands. The Crown received
benefits in the form of taxes, but the risk was assumed by economic agents. Indeed, the big-
gest journeys and expeditions—including Cortés in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru—were
financed by merchants and bankers, not by the Crown. See J. M. Oliva Melgar, El Monopolio
de Indias en el siglo XVII y la Economía Andaluza: La Oportunidad que Nunca Existió
(Huelva, 2004).
17
F. Ammannati, ‘I privilegi come strumento di politica economica nell’Italia della prima
età moderna’, in Privilegi librari nell’Italia del Rinascimento, ed. E. Squassina and A. Ottone
(Milano, 2019), 17–38.
18
For the Spanish case see F. de Los Reyes Gómez, ‘Con Privilegio: La Exclusiva de Edición
del Libro Antiguo Español’, in Revista General de Información y Documentación, 11–2
(2001), 163–200. In Portugal see A. Moreira de Sá (ed.), Indice do livros proibidos en
Portugal no século XVI (Lisboa, 1983); for trade in general C. Rei, ‛The Organization of
Merchant Empires: Portugal, England and the Netherlands’, Working Paper, Department of
Economics, Boston, 2009, Rei explains differences in trading organisation in different terms,
she affirms that ‛if the king is flush with capital, he chooses to maintain control, but if not, he
franchises out the organisation delegating control to the merchants’.
19
The collection of essays gathered here is a selection of those presented at the International
Conference Institutions and Book Markets during the Early Modern Period: Between Regulation
and Promotion, held in February 2020 at the University Pablo de Olavide. The aim of the
conference was to analyse the interaction between those who produced and commercialised
books and the authorities, national or local, civil, or religious.
consumption. Printers and booksellers lived in a politically and religiously

fragmented world where boundaries often shifted. The changing institu-
tional settings contributed towards shaping relationships in the book mar-
ket. Some agents were persecuted and punished by the authorities, while
others cooperated with them (willingly or forced by circumstances), and
quite a few moved in a grey area which allowed them to dodge danger and
thrive in business.20 Especially, the aim of this book is to shed some light on
the incentives and barriers faced by book agents to develop their activities
and expand their business networks and opportunities. To do so, we have
focused on two geographical areas that were strongly connected during the
Early Modern period, although they have been unevenly studied by schol-
ars: the European Mediterranean and Latin America.
During all the Early Modern period, and particularly during the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries, Italy played a major role in the European
book world. Its prolific printing industry, mainly located in the city of
Venice, allowed for the development of strong commercial networks that
soon connected the production centres with local and distant markets.21
The expansion of those networks was facilitated by the acceleration of
commercial exchanges, the use of financial instruments, and the new forms
of associations that we have already mentioned. For instance, we
observe the settlement of important companies for printing and selling
books that expanded their branches from Italy through different European
markets, such as the Giunti or the Portonariis.22
20
A few examples of this can be found in C. Griffin, Journeymen-Printers, Heresy, and the
Inquisition in Sixteenth Century Spain (Oxford, 2005).
21
The works on Early Modern Italian book markets are countless. Nevertheless, the
English-speaking audience might find an updated and thorough study of this topic in
A. Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden, 2013). The project Early
Modern Book Trade offers open access to database and publications regarding the economic
and juridical framework of European book markets, with a particular emphasis on Italy and
Venice (https://emobooktrade.unimi.it). For the incunabula period, we can count on the
crucial research deployed by the fifteenth-century Book Trade Project (http://15cbooktrade.
ox.ac.uk/project/).
22
The Giunti are studied in this book by Andrea Ottone. For the different branches of this
Venetian family, see the works by William Pettas, A History and Bibliography of the Giunti
(Junta) Printing Family in Spain. 1514–1628 (New Castle, 2004); The Giunti of Florence: A
Renaissance Printing and Publishing Family (New Castle, 2013). Regarding the Portonariis,
who from Trino (Piedmont) expanded their networks to Venice, Lyon, Castile, and Mexico,
see M.C. Misiti, ‘Una porta aperta sull’Europa: i de Portonariis tra Trino, Venezia e Lione.
Ricerche premiliminari per l’avvio degli annali’, Il Bibliotecario, III, 1–2 (2008), 55–91.
The early development of a consolidated book industry with an easy

access to capitals and strong merchant networks, allowed the Venetians to
play a significant role in far-away book markets. Their major markets were
in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Hungary and Poland,23 all of them Catholic ter-
ritories with feeble printing industries. As a matter of fact, from an early
stage, Iberian book markets relied on Italian printing presses to supply the
growing demand for books. Frequently, Spanish authors and authorities
trusted Venetian printers to produce their works, even assuming the incre-
ment in production cost.24 At the same time, networks expanded from
Italian production centres to the Iberian Peninsula distribution centres,
such as Medina del Campo or Seville, towards the Atlantic. The presence
of Italian printers and booksellers in Iberian and Latin American markets
would be particularly relevant during the sixteenth century.25
The decay of the Venetian printing industry, especially clear since
1620–30,26 impacted the territories under the Habsburg empire, that
would increasingly depend on Northern markets, such as Antwerp and
Amsterdam, to supply their demand during the seventeenth century.
Nevertheless, the importation of Italian books to the Iberian Peninsula
would maintain its relevance during the entire Early Modern period.27
Eastern Mediterranean territories were even more dependent on Italian,
and particularly Venetian, printing presses.28 Those territories were, dur-
ing most of the Early Modern period, under the rule of the Ottoman
sultans. On the contrary to Central and Western Mediterranean, or even
Latin America, Eastern Mediterranean combined political unity with
23
A. Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, 2011), 66–67.
24
N. Maillard-Álvarez, ‘Venecia y Holanda en los Circuitos del Comercio Español del
Libro. Siglos XVI-XVII’, Repúblicas y Republicanismo en la Europa Moderna. Siglos XVI-
XVIII (Madrid, 2017), 485–506 (490–491).
25
Besides the already mentioned Giunti and Portonariis, we find numerous Italian printers
and booksellers in Iberia and Latin America. For this second territory, we can highlight the
case of the first printer to work in Mexico City, the Italian Giovanni Paoli (known as Juan
Pablos). A. Millares Carlo and J. Calvo, Juan Pablos. Primer Impresor que a esta Tierra Vino
(Mexico City, 1953).
26
M. Infelise, ‘La Crise de la Librairie Vénetiénne. 1620–1650’, Le Livre et l’Historien:
Études Offertes en l’Honneur du Professeur Henri-Jean Martin (Geneva, 1997), 343–352.
27
P. Rueda, ‘La venta de libros italianos en Madrid en tiempos de Felipe II: el catálogo de
Simone Vassalini (1597)’, JLIS.it, 9, 2 (2018). For the eighteenth century see, P. Cátedra,
Tace il Testo, Parla il Tipografo. Tre Stvdi Bodoniani (Salamanca, 2017).
28
An analysis of the academic literature on this topic might be found in the chapter by
Alexandra Laliberté de Gagné in this book.
religious fragmentation, and the ideological division of the territory had

an impact on the book market.
While there is a long and consolidated tradition of book history studies
in Italy embracing all the different aspects of the discipline, the develop-
ment of book history in the West and Eastern European Mediterranean, as
well as in Latin America, has experienced fluctuations. In the case of the
Iberian Peninsula and Latin American countries, during the nineteenth
and the early twentieth centuries scholars focused their studies on printing
press production rather than on the circulation or consumption of books.
Works by Konrad Haebler on the first printers in Spain and Portugal,29
Joaquín García Icazbalceta on Mexico City,30 Francisco Escudero on the
printing press in Seville,31 Cristóbal Pérez Pastor about Toledo32 or Sousa
Viterbo on sixteenth-century Portuguese printers are good examples of
this.33 The cases are plentiful, such as the several monographs by the
Chilean José Toribio Medina devoted to the printing press in Latin
America,34 or the extraordinary Manual del librero hispano americano, by
the Catalan bibliographer Antonio Palau i Dulcet.35 The individual effort
of these scholars was outstanding, providing valuable information,
29
K. Haebler, Impresores primitivos de España y Portugal (Madrid, 2005). The first English
edition was published in 1897.
30
J. García Icazbalceta, Bibliografía Mexicana del Siglo XVI (Mexico City: FCE, 1981).
The work was originally published in 1886.
31
F. Escudero y Perosso, Tipografía Hispalense. Anales Bibliográficos de la Ciudad de
Sevilla (Madrid, 1894). There is a facsimile edition (Seville, 1999).
32
C. Pérez Pastor, La Imprenta en Toledo (Madrid, 1887); C. Pérez Pastor, La Imprenta
en Medina del Campo (Madrid, 1895).
33
S. Viterbo, O Movimento Tipográfico em Portugal no Século XVI: Apontamentos para a
sua história (Coimbra, 1924).
34
The relentless pursuit of documentation about colonial Latin America in different librar-
ies and archives (including the General Archive of Indies in Sevilla) was the base for the
famous works on the printing press that José Toribio Medina published in his own workshop
in Santiago de Chile: La Imprenta en la Habana. 1707–1810 (1904); La Imprenta en Lima.
1584–1824 (1904); La Imprenta en Cartagena de las Indias. 1809–1820 (1904); La Imprenta
en Manila desde sus orígenes hasta 1810 (1904); La Imprenta en Guatemala. 1660–1821
(1906); Historia de la Imprenta en los Antiguos Dominios Españoles de América y
Oceanía (1958).
35
The 35 volumes published between 1923 and 1945 offer an alphabetically ordered
account of the printed production in Spain and Spanish America during early modern and
modern times. A. Palau i Dulcet, Manual del Librero Hispano-americano: Bibliografía
General Española desde la Invención de la Imprenta hasta nuestros tiempos con el valor comer-
cial de los impresos (Barcelona, 1923–1945).
although their perspective was mainly descriptive and erudite. They were
focused on discussing the first city to host a printing press in the Iberian
Peninsula, rather than its social context. Modern digital means might have
replaced those early studies; however, despite their obvious faults and
errors, imputable to the scarcity of resources and the somehow narrow
perspective, they have been and still are useful tools for present-day book
historians.
It was not until the second half of the twentieth century, under the
influence of French historiography,36 and quite often with the lead of
French historians,37 when we witnessed a gradual renovation of book his-
tory in Iberia and Latin America, which is particularly clear since the
1980s. A new generation of scholars, working in different university
departments (bibliography, social and cultural history, literature), helped
to widen the scope of book history studies in Spanish and Portuguese.
Many new publications, especially in the 1990s and early twenty-first cen-
tury, addressed the study of literacy and readers. Countless journal articles,
book chapters and monographs about individual readers or communities
of readers were often based on the systematic analysis of inventories.38 In
these works, the local or national scope has usually prevailed, although
some studies have chosen a more comparative and qualitative
perspective.39
Likewise, the early works on the printing press gave way to more
resourceful and exhaustive studies, and usually focused on the detailed
36
As such, the influence of L’Aparition du Livre by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin
in 1958 was crucial, first translated to Spanish in 1962 in Mexico.
37
Christian Peligry, director of the Mazarine Library in Paris, studied the book market in
Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the diffusion of Spanish books in
France; François López focused his works on eighteenth-century Spanish publishing indus-
try. Although the prestigious Hispanist Bartolomé Bennassar was not a specialist in book
history, his works on readership has enlightened the discipline in the Spanish-speaking world.
More recently, Roger Chartier has also made great contributions to the advance of the disci-
pline in Spain and Latin America.
38
Good examples of this are offered by M. Peña, El Laberinto de los Libros. Historia
Cultural de la Barcelona del Quinientos (Madrid, 1997), or P. Cátedra and A. Rojo,
Bibliotecas y Lecturas de Mujeres Siglo XVI (Salamanca, 2004). For Italy, see T. Plebani, Il
Genere dei Libri. Storie e Rappresentazioni della Lettura al Femmenile e al Maschile tra
Medioevo e Età Moderna (Milan, 2001).
39
In this sense, we can highlight the work on the use of manuscripts in Spain during the
Early Modern period by F. Bouza, Corre Manuscrito. Una Historia Cultural del Siglo de Oro
(Madrid, 2001); or the studies on popular readeres, such as A. Castillo (ed.), Cultura Escrita
y Clases Subalternas: Una Mirada Española (Oiartzun, 2001).
catalogue of the printing production in one particular town or a remark-

able printer or family of printers. The book series Tipografía Española
published by Arco/Libros is a good example of this,40 but not the only
one.41 The mobility of early modern printers and the strong connections
between different markets make some of those studies quite complemen-
tary. That is the case of two recent pieces of research that addressed the
study of the printing press production in Seville and Mexico City during
the sixteenth century.42 In fact, the printing industry of these two cities
was deeply connected, as Clive Griffin proved in his already classical text
about the Cromberger family.43 In the Spanish case, book history devel-
oped remarkable production at the end of the twentieth century and the
beginning of the twenty-first, with numerous scholars, conferences, book
series and academic journals devoted to the discipline.44 To this biblio-
graphical corpus, we may add interesting prosopographical studies on
Spanish and Latin American printers.45
40
This collection includes titles focused on different Spanish cities, such as Salamanca,
Madrid, Burgos and Alcalá de Henares, and more thematic studies, including a catalogue of
incunables by Julián Martín Abad, Cum Figuris. Texto e Imagen en los Incunables Españoles.
Catálogo Bibliográfico y Descriptivo (Madrid, 2018).
41
There are countless examples, from the study of Gothic typography in Valladolid
[M. Casas del Álamo, La Imprenta en Valladolid. Repertorio Tipobibliográfico. 1501–1560
(Valladolid, 2021)] to the comprehensive catalogue of institutional religious libraries in
Portugal [L. Giurgevich and H. Leitâo, Clavis Bibliothecarum. Catálogos e Inventários de
Livrarias de Instituçôes Religiosas em Portugal até 1834 (Lisboa, 2016)].
42
A. Castillejo, La Imprenta en Sevilla en el siglo XVI. 1521–1600 (Seville, 2019), and
G. Rodríguez Domínguez, La Imprenta en México en el siglo XVI (Merida, 2018).
43
C. Griffin, The Crombergers of Seville: The History of a Printing and Merchant Dynasty
(Oxford, 1989).
44
Together with the aforementioned book series by Arco/Libro, the publishing houses
Trea or Calambur created their own collections devoted to book history and bibliography,
together with their own academic journals, Litterae (Calambur: 2001–2003), and Cultura
Escrita y Sociedad (Trea: 2005–2010), where not only Spanish, but a large number of foreign
scholars, published their works.
45
J. Delgado Casado, Diccionario de Impresores Españoles. Siglos XV-XVII (Madrid, 1996);
S. Establés Susán, Diccionario de Mujeres Impresoras y Libreras de España e Iberoamérica entre
los Siglos XV y XVIII (Zaragoza, 2018). Additionally, online catalogues offer a crucial tool
for present-day book historians. The Iberian Book Project is a research database that aims to
generate a Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Short Title Catalogue (www.iberian.ucd.
ie); The Catálogo Colectivo del Patrimonio Bibliográfico, gathers a description of books
located in Spanish libraries from the fifteenth to the twentieth century (http://catalogos.
mecd.es/CCPB/ccpbopac/).
Another field that has flourished during the last decades is the study of
the legislation, institutions and practices deployed to control the written
word. This is indeed one of the more fertile areas of study in book history
nowadays, with remarkable examples in Latin America, Portugal, Spain
and Italy, where the religious and institutional frameworks hold many
similarities, despite obvious differences. Not without conflict, all those ter-
ritories remained within the Catholic denomination throughout the early
modern period. As R. Po-Chia Hsia has rightfully pointed out, book pro-
duction and book use in Catholic countries in recent times have started to
receive the same attention that they have traditionally deserved in
Protestant areas.46 Nevertheless, if there is one field of study that has cap-
tured the attention of researchers in the Catholic world, it is that of con-
trol and censorship, and in particular the involvement of the Inquisition.
Early Modern authorities, both in Catholic and non-Catholic coun-
tries, were concerned about the increasing number of books and other
kinds of printed texts circulating in the European continent and the
Americas. Very soon they developed different forms of control and censor-
ship systems.47 Censorship had a lasting effect on European culture, as
many scholars have emphasised.48 The emergence of studies about the
Inquisition by the end of the twentieth century was responsible for increas-
ing interest in the relationship between this infamous institution and cul-
ture. This interest gave rise to classical studies by scholars such as Virgilio
Pinto, who made a detailed analysis of the procedure of book control.49
According to Pinto, inquisitorial censorship in Spain evolved during the
sixteenth century, not only to confront the growing threat posed from
46
R. Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal. 1540–1770 (Cambridge, 2005), 172.
47
An overview on the politics for banning books can be found in M. Infelise, I libri proibiti
(Roma, 1999).
48
G. Fragnito, Church, Censorship and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, 2001),
11. See also Girogio Caravale, Libri Pericolosi: Censura e Cultura Italiana in Età Moderna
(Milan, 2022).
In this context, the reader might find very interesting the considerations about the effect
of censorship over the stability of texts made by D. Montes, V. Lillo and M.J. Vega, Saberes
Inestables: Estudios sobre Expurgación y Censura en España en los Siglos XVI y XVII
(Madrid, 2018).
49
V. Pinto Crespo, Inquisición y Control Ideológico en la España del Siglo XVI (Madrid,
1983). The same topic was addressed by many others, such as M. Defourneaux, Inquisición
y Censura de Libros en la España del Siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1973); A. Alcalá, Literatura y
Ciencia ante la Inquisición Española (Madrid, 2001); or E. Gacto, Inquisición y Censura: el
Acoso a la Inteligencia en España (Madrid, 2006).
abroad by Protestantism but also to control internal intellectual produc-

tion. The result of this was the reinforcement of the Spanish Inquisition,
which since 1570 had spread its tentacles towards Latin America. Another
outstanding example of this wide bibliography is the eleven volumes with
the different indexes of forbidden books published by Jesús Martínez de
Bujanda.50 Thanks to the work of remarkable scholars, we now have a
thorough knowledge of the role played by the Inquisition in the control
of books, despite knowing that results were not always as strict as they
were meant to be. Indeed, some studies have stressed the differences
between theory and practice in the development of everyday censorship.51
Following this path, recent works have shed light on the agents of censor-
ship, sometimes unexpected,52 and have developed a comparative and
transnational approach.53
The Inquisition was not the only institution involved in book control
during the Early Modern period.54 In the case of Spain and Latin America,
we draw on the extraordinary two volumes prepared by Fermín de los
Reyes, which included the transcription and analysis of the legislation
regarding books and readership in those territories from the fifteenth to
the eighteenth centuries.55 It is difficult to find a similar work in more
50
Index des Livres Interdits (Quebec: University of Sherbrooke, 1985–2002). Bujanda also
published recently a one-volume monograph that includes a comprehensive analysis of the
history of the Spanish Inquisition’s Indexes, together with a catalogue of all the books for-
bidden or mutilated in all those Indexes. J. Martínez de Bujanda, El Índice de Libros
Prohibidos y Expurgados de la Inquisición Española. 1551–1819 (Madrid, 2016).
51
That is the case of M. Peña, Escribir y Prohibir. Inquisición y Censura en los Siglos de Oro
(Madrid, 2015).
52
M. Albisson (ed.), Los Agentes de la Censura en la España de los Siglos XVI y XVII
(Berlin, 2022). For instance, the involvement of printers and booksellers in the control sys-
tem has been well documented and studied in both Mediterranean Europe and Latin
America.
53
M. J. Vega and J. Weiss (eds.), Reading and Censorship in Early Modern Europe.
(Barcelona, 2010).
54
For Italy, a good example of this can be found in C. Lodoli, Della Censura dei Libri.
1730–1736. Edited by Mario Infelise (Venice, 2001).
55
F. de los Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América. Legislación y Censura. Siglos
XV-XVIII (Madrid, 2000). Other scholars have studied the royal policy regarding books,
such as J. García Oro and M.J. Portela, La Monarquía y los Libros en el Siglo de Oro (Alcalá,
1999); or the system for licensing books by the Spanish Crown, like in F. Bouza, Dásele
Licencia y Privilegio. Don Quijote y la Aprobación de Libros en el Siglo de Oro (Madrid, 2012).
The actual implementation of the Crown rules regarding books, at least for the case of the
sixteenth century, has been addressed by R. Pérez García, La Imprenta y la Literatura
Espiritual Castellana en la España del Renacimiento (Gijón, 2006).
politically fragmented territories, such as Italy, or in areas with a different

legislative tradition, like the Eastern Mediterranean.
The book market has also been the object of countless studies, in both
the Mediterranean and Latin America. Book historians in those areas have
profited from the great richness and diversity of archival and librarian
sources, sometimes with a common origin which facilitates comparative
studies. In Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, we find remark-
able studies on the book markets, a considerable number of them focusing
on a specific market,56 others with a more comprehensive scope.57 We also
find extensive studies on booksellers tracing the connections between dif-
ferent parts of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies and the core
centres of the European printing industry.58 For instance, the Salamanca
Booksellers Company was founded following the role of the Grand
Compagnie des Libraires in Lyon, by native and foreign booksellers, and
many of the latter came from Lyon or Venice, where they kept familiar and
commercial links.59
Nevertheless, if there is a relevant topic in book history where the inter-
national perspective has prevailed since at least the mid-twentieth century,
it is the Iberian Atlantic book market. Books arrived in the New World
with the first European ships. The rapid increment in demand from the
American markets forced the Spanish monarchs to regulate the circulation
of books in the Atlantic. The legal framework designed and implemented
by the political authorities shaped cultural exchanges between Spain and
its colonies for centuries. In this research arena, one of the pioneers was
Irving Leonard, who analysed the book trade system between Spain and
56
The cases are, again, countless. However, we can highlight studies such as P. Berger,
Libro y Lectura en la Valencia del Renacimiento (Valencia, 1987), or V. Bécares, Librerías
Salamantinas del Siglo XVI (Salamanca, 2007). For Portugal, see A. Anselmo, Estudos de
História do Livro (Lisboa, 1997).
57
Y. Clemente San Román and N. Bas Martín (eds.), Del Autor al Lector. El Comercio y
Distribución del Libro Medieval y Moderno (Zaragoza, 2017).
58
A. Cayuela: Alonso Pérez Montalbán. Un Librero en el Madrid de los Austrias (Madrid,
2005); A. González-Sánchez and N. Maillard-Álvarez, Orbe tipográfico. El Mercado del Libro
en la Sevilla de la Segunda Mitad del Siglo XVI (Gijón, 2003).
59
M. de la Mano, Mercaderes e Impresores de Libros en la Salamanca del Siglo XVI
(Salamanca, 1998); The strong connections between the Iberian book market and the Low
Countries have been studied by, among others, V. Bécares, Arias Montano y Plantino. El
Libro Flamenco en la España de Felipe II (León, 1999); and A. Sánchez del Barrio (ed.), El
Comercio del Libro entre los Países Bajos y España durante los Siglos XVI y XVII
(Valladolid, 2016).
Latin America.60 Over the past decades, some researchers with solid
knowledge of archival sources, such as Carlos A. González Sánchez and,61
especially, Pedro Rueda Ramírez, have continued to broaden our knowl-
edge on this topic,62 studying the legislation, the procedures, the agents,
and the practices on the Atlantic book trade. From the other side of the
ocean, Nora Jiménez has focused her most recent research on the expan-
sion of the distribution networks in the Viceroyalty of New Spain during
the sixteenth century, while Cristina Gomez has analysed similar issues
from the Bourbonic period.63
During the last decades, the historiographical production about book
history in Latin America has indeed increased. Consolidated scholars and a
new generation of young researchers with solid international careers have
situated this huge region on the map of Book History in its own right. In
South America, we might find studies on the role of books and readers in
the transmission of scientific knowledge during the eighteenth century,64
together with several works devoted to the development of censorship and
the Inquisition, or the printing industry in colonial Peru.65 In Brazil, differ-
ent scholars have focused their research on topics such as libraries, readers,
and book trade from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.66
60
Particularly his fascinating work, Books of the Brave. Being an Account of Books and of Men
in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World (Berkeley, 2012).
The book was first published in 1949.
61
C. A. González, New World Literacy: Writing and Culture Across the Atlantic, 1500–1700
(Lewisburg, 2011).
62
P. Rueda, Negocio e Intercambio cultural: El comercio de libros con América en la Carrera
de Indias. Siglo XVII (Seville, 2005).
63
C. Gómez Álvarez, Navegar con Libros. El comercio de libros entre España y Nueva
España. 1750–1820 (Madrid, 2011).
64
M. Labarca, ‛Los libros de Medicina en el Chile del siglo XVIII: Tipologías, Propietarios
y Dinámicas de Circulación’, in Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura (47),
2020, 345–371; and M. Labarca, ‛La biblioteca del bachiller Miguel Jordán de Ursino’, in
N. Maillard-Álvarez and Manuel F. Fernández-Chaves (eds.), Bibliotecas de la Monarquía
Hispánica en la Primera Globalización. Siglos XVI-XVIII (Zaragoza, 2021), 93–124.
65
P. Guivóbich, Censura, Libros e Inquisición en el Perú Colonial. 1570–1754 (Seville,
2003).; P. Guivóbich, Imprimir en Lima durante la Colonia. Historia y Documentos.
1584–1750 (Madrid, 2019). English-speaking readers might find also very interesting his
article ‛Books, Readers, and Reading Experiences in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru,
sixteenth to eighteenth centuries’, in Early Readers, ed. M. Hammond, (Edinburg, 2020).
66
M. Abreu, ‘La Libertad y el Error. La Acción de la Censura Luso-Brasileña (1769–1834)’,
in Cultura Escrita y Sociedad (7) 2008, 118–141; L. C. Villalta, Usos do Livro no Mundo
Luso-Brasileiro sob as Luzes: Reformas, Censura e Contestaçóes (Bello Horizonte, 2015).
Traditionally forgotten areas such as Ecuador, Colombia, Panamá and

Venezuela have recently captured the interest of researchers.67 Those ter-
ritories were integrated at the beginning of the eighteenth century in the
viceroyalty of New Granada, and since then they developed prosperous
cities, with religious and educational institutions demanding books. New
Spain is another fertile area for studies on book history, with numerous
researchers who have emphasised the role of printers and booksellers dur-
ing the colonial times and the use of American native languages in the
Mexican printing press,68 the evolution of the book market in different
moments of the colonial period,69 the cultural exchanges between the Low
Countries and New Spain,70 or the development of censorship.71 Finally,
we might highlight those works that have stressed a comparative and com-
prehensive perspective over the Latin American territory, both regarding
readers and book markets.72
67
This is the case of A. J. Campillo Pardo, Censura, Expurgo y Control en la Biblioteca
Colonial Neogranadina (Bogotá, 2016), or Cristina Soriano, who has studied readers and
book trade in eighteenth-century Caracas. C. Soriano, ‛Bibliotecas, Lectores y Saber en
Caracas durante el Siglo XVIII’, in El Libro en Circulación en la América Colonial, ed.
I. García and P. Rueda (Mexico, 2014); ‛Buscar libros en una ciudad sin imprenta. Redes de
circulación de libros en la Caracas de finales del siglo XVIII’, in El Libro en Circulación en el
Mundo Moderno en España y Latinoamérica, ed. P. Rueda (Madrid, 2012). 109–127. See
also her book Ties of Revolution: Information, Insurgencies, and the Crisis of Colonial Rule in
Venezuela (Albuquerque, 2018), where she analysed how the circulation of information in
the Caribbean area contributed to the rise of revolutionary feelings in Venezuela.
68
M. Garone, Historia de la tipografía colonial para lenguas indígenas (Mexico, 2014),
and Historia de la imprenta y la tipografía colonial en Puebla de los Ángeles (1642–1821)
(México, 2015).
69
N. Jiménez, ‘Cuentas Fallidas, Deudas Omnipresentes. Los Difíciles Comienzos del
Mercado del Libro Novohispano’, in Anuario de Estudios Americanos (71) 2014, 423–446.
70
C. Manrique, El Libro Flamenco para Lectores Novohispanos. Una historia Internacional
de Comercio y Consumo Libresco (Mexico City, 2019); Also in México, Manuel Suárez has
studied scholar readers in colonial times in De erutidione Americana: Prácticas de Lectura y
Escritura en los Ámbitos Académicos Novohispanos (Mexico City, 2019).
71
Idalia García Aguilar has an impressive record of research on the rich written patrimony
of Mexico, including studies on censorship, readership, booksellers, and the second-hand
book market. Among her recent works, see, La Vida Privada de las Bibliotecas: Rastros de
Colecciones Novohispanas. 1700–1800 (Bogotá, 2020).
72
P. Rueda and I. García Aguilar (eds.), El Libro en Circulación en la América Colonial
(Mexico City, 2014); N. Maillard-Álvarez and Manuel F. Fernández-Chaves (eds.), Bibliotecas
de la Monarquía Hispánica en la Primera Globalización. Siglos XVI-XVIII (Zaragoza,
2021); or A. Gehbald and N. Jiménez (eds.), Libros en Movimiento. Nueva España y Perú.
Siglos XVI-XVIII (Michoacán, 2021).
The next chapters depict the Early Modern book markets in different
settings, from fifteenth-century Venice to nineteenth-century Portuguese
Africa. We consider books not only as cultural objects but also as com-
modities. That is why we have chosen to focus on the legal and commer-
cial strategies that fostered and framed the circulation of books. Our
contribution seeks to challenge the national boundaries that have been
traditionally predominant in the field. In this regard, the following chap-
ters not only put emphasis on some of the main European centres of the
book (such as Venice) but also on more peripheric territories (the Iberian
Peninsula or Eastern Mediterranean), and we have especially included
contributions that put together Europe and Latin America, two circuits
totally symbiotic but that quite often have been studied separately.
The first part of the book explores the privilege markets in Europe and
the Americas. In the first chapter, Angela Nuovo focuses on the evolution
of the book privileges system in the Republic of Venice, where it was used
as a tool to avoid competition, and compares it with Rome where its pri-
mary goal was to serve religious control. Moving from Europe to the
Americas, Agnes Gehbald explores a different use of privileges: the role of
hospitals and orphanages as the beneficiaries of book privileges in the
Spanish Monarchy, specifically for the production and distribution of
primers and grammars. The printing of these highly demanded texts cre-
ated revenues for charities, but their management was not exempt from
conflicts that the author explores in places as distant as Buenos Aires and
Zaragoza. Printing privileges for calendars in the Spanish Monarchy are
analysed by Natàlia Vilà-Urriza. Like other printed ephemera, only a tiny
proportion of the thousands and thousands of almanacs printed in the
Early Modern period has survived.73 The monopoly of the privilege by the
printer Antonio Sanz for the Iberian Peninsula during the period between
1734 and 1780 allows the author to study the production process of the
calendar, the mechanism for delivering, and, more interestingly, the pos-
sibility to transfer and rent the privilege in different Spanish cities.
The second part of the book explores the economic behaviour of agents
in the book trade, focusing on three examples that show how early mod-
ern book markets could achieve truly international status. The contribu-
tion by Andrea Ottone describes the complex market strategies developed
73
D. McKitterick, ‘Bibliography, Population, and Statistics. A View from the West’, The
Book Worlds of East Asia and Europe, 1450–1850: Connections and Comparisons,
110–166 (124).
by the Giunti publishing house from the end of the fifteenth century.
Their strategy was meant to achieve two goals: firstly, positioning the
printing house on top of the European market; and, secondly, exhibiting
a high-profile reputation for Catholic and academic institutions. The effi-
cient strategy also benefitted from a diversification of production; this way,
each European branch specialised in different editions, discouraging com-
petition among branches and increasing their printing catalogue.
Natalia Maillard-Álvarez and Montserrat Cachero also explore different
strategies displayed at the market, although focusing on distribution and
sales rather than production. The authors describe the book market in
Mexico and its connections with the European production and distribu-
tion centres. Different inquiries into a procedure followed at the Mexican
Inquisitorial Court shed light on the networks developed by book mer-
chants operating in Mexico at the end of the sixteenth century. The
authors use Social Network Analysis to map and analyse the role played by
the different agents in the market, their connections with the European
continent, their business strategies and results, the negotiation with politi-
cal and religious authorities, and the trading routes.
The overseas Portuguese empire between the eighteenth and the nine-
teenth century is the framework for the study by Airton Ribeiro da Silva
Jr. The petitions made in Lisbon to send books to the Portuguese territo-
ries in Africa and Asia allow the author to reconstruct a global market,
affected both by the enlightened policy of the authorities and the agency
of booksellers, mainly from France, who connected the centres of book
production in Europe with Mozambique and Macao.
In the last part, ‘Institutions, Markets, and Incentives’, three chapters
examine the ambivalent responsibility of authorities in different territories
over the book market. First of all, Manuel José Pedraza-Gracia explores
the actions of the Spanish religious authorities as editors in the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. Based on a thorough analysis of archival and
bibliographical documentation, the author proves that the Church acted
as one of the early editors of the Spanish printing industry.
In Eastern Europe, ecclesiastical authorities also played a fundamental
role in the development of the book market, as studied by Alexandra
Laliberté de Gagné in her chapter. In this case, the feud between different
denominations (Catholic and Orthodox) was decisive in the evolution of
book markets. The Greek Orthodox Church had to face a double menace:
the lack of their own printers in the Ottoman territories where most of its
congregation lived, and the competition of Catholic missionaries who

used the Venetian presses for their proselytist activities.
Finally, in the last chapter, Alberto José Campillo Pardo offers a differ-
ent perspective of the book market in the Spanish Monarchy and the
responsibility of the Inquisition in it. By exploring the licences for books
sent to Cartagena de Indias (nowadays Colombia) in the eighteenth cen-
tury, Campillo proves how the Inquisitorial control, far from being static,
presented different strategies and practices derived from negotiations
between the Inquisition, the Crown, and merchants.
PART I
Privileged Markets
CHAPTER 2
Book Privileges in the Early Modern Age:

From Trade Protection and Promotion
to Content Regulation
Angela Nuovo
The introduction and development of the system of book privileges char-

acterise crucial aspects of book production and trade in the modern age.
Book privileges soon ceased to be exceptional measures and began to pro-
vide necessary infrastructure for the whole book market regulation. While
scholars focus thoroughly on local features of what certainly became a
European system,1 the book privilege system was initiated and took shape
on the Italian Peninsula. Beginning in the fifteenth century, a few Italian
states granted numerous book privileges, helping to establish and develop
1
Privilèges de Librairie en France et en Europe: XVIe-XVIIe Siècles, ed. E. Keller-Rahbé
(Paris: Classique Garnier, 2017); primary sources on copyright (1450–1900), ed. L. Bently
and M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org (accessed 31 March 2021). The website
offers a rich array of sources from all over Europe and the United States.
A. Nuovo (*)
University of Milan, Milan, Italy
e-mail: angela.nuovo@unimi.it

Switzerland AG 2023
22 A. NUOVO
the invention successfully in new territories.2 However, the Republic of

Venice stands out in this context for the quantity and regularity of the
privileges granted; moreover, the survival in the archives of a high number
of these concessions granted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries prob-
ably represents the most complete collection of book privileges across
Europe.3 Indeed, the precocious and growing use of legal protection of
the entrepreneurial initiative caused a series of consequences throughout
the whole sector that will be analysed in the following pages.
The aim of this chapter is, in fact, to highlight two aspects of privileges,
representing somewhat opposite trajectories of the evolving system of
privileges in sixteenth-century Italy. As a somewhat European laboratory
on legislation related to printing, Italy had two dominant states, Venice
and Rome, that experimented with the use of the same juridical institution
in different ways. Whereas the ruling elite in Venice knew very well the
means to regulate an economic sector so that it could develop and bring
wealth to the state and used privileges concessions accordingly, the popes
in Rome soon learned to deal with books less as products of an industry
(which was never fully developed in the Eternal City) and more as vehicles
for texts and ideas with potentially dangerous content which needed to be
regulated or censored from the start.
Besides the birth of pre-publication censorship, including the creation
of the Index of Prohibited Books, the dialectic established between these
two different uses of book privileges offers interesting insights into under-
standing the consequences that these concessions set in motion on the
book market.
As a legal institution, privileges originated in Roman law as a specific
development during the Imperial age when they represented the instru-
ment whereby the prince could affect complex realities and give more
appropriate responses to situations that could not be resolved by univocal
and general criteria. The lex privata, therefore, was an act with exceptional
regulatory effectiveness and the most flexible tool for adapting the law to
the changing needs of specific cases. The secular history of privilege
2
The duchy of Milan was certainly among the first states to take initiative in this field.
A. Nuovo and P. Arrigoni, ‘Privilegi librari nello Stato di Milano’, in Privilegi Librari
nell’Italia del Rinascimento, eds. E. Squassina and A. Ottone, (Milan, 2019), 67–101.
3
The ERC-funded project EMoBookTrade, which I direct, focuses among other objec-
tives on the reconstruction of the privilege system in Venice through a complete reconstruc-
tion of the related documentation. A database of Venetian privileges, created by Dr. Erika
Squassina, is freely available from http://emobooktrade.unimi.it/db/public/frontend.
2 BOOK PRIVILEGES IN THE EARLY MODERN AGE: FROM TRADE… 23
experienced an intensification and renewal in the early modern age, thanks

to its value as a direct intervention on society by the prince who could use
it to bind his subjects directly to himself. A privilege, therefore, was a spe-
cial favour, an explicit exception in the law in support of an individual or
category of individuals.
On the other hand, economic historians of the early modern period
have seen privileges as an instrument to address economic issues, a suitable
tool for expressing real public policies to encourage invention, technology
transfer and entrepreneurial and proto-industrial initiative. In Early
Modern Italy, most states encouraged innovation and thereby made room
for the effective transfer of technical knowledge. Political authorities
attempted to attract creative talent from outside their own territories and
sought to provide the support that would enable the newcomers to con-
tribute to the economic well-being of their lands or to the expansion of
their political or military power. The goal was often to ensure supply to
the internal market, freeing it from dependence on far-off producers, and
gradually extend the range of goods that could be exported.4
Governing bodies promised and guaranteed various advantages in
order to attract not only inventors but also highly skilled workers through
concessions of privileges. Fiscal exemptions, rewards that encouraged
innovation, and the concession of temporary monopolies and privileges
for those who introduced new crafts or manufactured goods were matters
of daily legislation. A privilege protected the privilege holder from compe-
tition, allowing him to use a specific innovation for his sole benefit for a
specific period of time. Exclusionary right is at the core of privilege, which
is based on the jus excludendi. Only an activity that could be proven to be
both new (in the state because the transfer of technology already in use in
other states was protected) and useful (able to bring wealth or other
advantages) deserved to be protected.
4
F. Ammannati, ‘I privilegi come strumento di politica economica nell’Italia della prima
età moderna’, in Privilegi Librari nell’Italia del Rinascimento, 17–38; C. M. Belfanti,
‘Between mercantilism and market: Privileges for invention in early modern Europe’, Journal
of Institutional Economics, II. 3 (2006), 319–339; A. Caracausi, G. Favero and P. Lanaro, ‘A
political economy? Some preliminary thoughts on economic privileges in early modern
Venice’, in Die Ökonomie des Privilegs, Westeuropa 16.-19. Jahrhundert/L’économie du priv-
ilège, Europe occidentale XVIe-XIXe siècles, ed. G. Garner (Frankfurt am Main, 2016),
365–395; L. Molà, ‘Stato e impresa: privilegi per l’introduzione di nuove arti e brevetti’, in
Il Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa, III: Produzione e tecniche, ed. P. Braunstein and L. Molà,
(Treviso, 2007), 533–572.
24 A. NUOVO
Legislation regarding privileges for inventions started in Venice (a gen-

eral law was issued in 1474), and many other European states followed.
Book privileges, therefore, were not entirely innovative. Their novelty
lay in the object to which the privilege was applied, printed books.
Especially in their earliest form, book privileges were similar to patents for
new inventions. The adaptability of this institution to the buoyant and
complex demands of the nascent publishing industry is striking. Such priv-
ileges were soon more than exceptional measures: they began to provide
necessary infrastructure for the whole system of market regulation for the
publishing sector.
The only works that could be protected by privilege were new, unpub-
lished works. The newness of the text is the basic principle of the system
that was later applied throughout Early Modern Europe. It included the
fundamental logical shift from the privilege of invention, the usual eco-
nomic tool used by the states, to the book privilege, that is, the produc-
tion of new works in the form of new editions. The reason for granting a
book privilege was basically the same as for all other privileges—the need
to protect an economic interest—and, therefore, useful to the state in
many ways.
From the start, a privilege prohibited the printing of the work by others
and the importation or sale of copies printed by someone else. It also
included notice of the duration of such prohibitions. While it was valid, a
privilege essentially gave legal backing to three fundamental elements of
book production: the printing of the text, its importation and sale. Each
stage involved a different sort of entrepreneur: the first, printers and pub-
lishers; the second, import wholesalers; and the third, booksellers in their
bookshops.
Book Privileges in Venice

The last two elements were particularly important in Venice, which was
not only the printing capital of Italy but also, in effect, a permanent book
fair. If a book could not be sold in Venice, its market would be consider-
ably diminished, and it would not be stocked by the major wholesalers,
almost all of whom had their headquarters in Venice. Thus, anyone who
obtained a privilege in the Serenissima virtually controlled the whole
Italian market. This was one of the propellants for the outstanding success
of the book trade in Venice, which was from the beginning an export
trade, and for the related development of the privilege system.5
In Venice, after a slow start—the first two privileges were separated by
17 years—the number of privileges officially conceded and registered grew
rapidly in the 1490s. They doubled, and then tripled. Here, a real system
started because privileges were so numerous as to limit competitors’ initia-
tive effectively. An exceptional law (lex privata) became a simple adminis-
trative act that everyone could obtain.
Privileges were not granted automatically as a positive right but as the
result of a specific petition presented by the individual seeking protection.
It was a pragmatic system whereby protection was given on a first come,
first served basis, rewarding not the originator of an image, text or print-
ing technique, but rather the first person to seek protection for it and able
to prove his investment in the related production. The Venetian system
did not operate to detect whether the person who first claimed protection
had a ‘just’ claim. It did not need to make category distinctions among
printers, merchants, artists and writers because it was not brought into
existence to defend the ‘rights’ of individuals but to regulate trade.
The Venetian system was conceived taking export trade into consider-
ation. Legislation was motivated by potential tax revenues rather than a
desire to regulate competition in the domestic market by controlling pro-
duction and prices. The market for local printing lay mainly beyond the
Republic of Venice, and the privilege system had no interest in limiting
supply to external markets but focused instead on expanding local produc-
tion to increase exports. The authorities in the Republic needed to prevent
publishers from producing similar and therefore competing products that
might undercut each other in both the domestic and export markets, but
at the same time, they needed to stimulate the production of new works for
export. For this reason, there was no interest in controlling prices, as these
prices were paid mainly by foreign markets. The system proved to be suc-
cessful, precisely in discouraging the production of identical or ‘competing
5
A. Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden–Boston, 2013), 195–260;
E. Squassina, ‘I privilegi librari a Venezia (1469–1545)’, in Privilegi Librari nell’Italia del
Rinascimento, 331–399. For the Venetian context in which all sorts of innovations and privi-
leges concurred in creating a true market of invention, see L. Molà, ‘Il mercato delle
innovazioni nell’Italia del Rinascimento’, in Le Technicien dans la Cité en Europe Occidentale,
1250–1650, ed. Mathieu Arnoux and Pierre Monnet, (Rome, 2004), 215–250.
26 A. NUOVO
goods’ while encouraging the production of differentiated goods.6 It seems

that this mechanism worked well, because in the first century of printing
(1470–1570), Venetian printing houses produced approximately 21,000
editions, rivalling foreign competitors in terms of quantity and quality.
A major part of the Venetian anti-monopolistic policy was embodied in
several decrees on printing from the first half of the sixteenth century that
aimed to reorient the entire publishing sector and remedy some serious
malfunctions. The first decree concerned the hoarding of privileges. Some
printers had obtained privileges without subsequently producing the edi-
tions for which they were destined, thus preventing rival firms from print-
ing the same works. Privileges were intended to promote production and
not be mere intangible assets in a publisher’s portfolio. To resolve this
situation, it was decreed that any privilege would expire in a year if the
work had not indeed been published. The novelty requirement to obtain
a privilege was reasserted and more narrowly interpreted, requiring that a
book would not be considered new only for a few amendments and cor-
rections. It is important to underline that the novelty requirement is
inherent in all European systems, but it is defined and regulated by law in
Venice for the first time.7
The law of 1545 is undoubtedly a turning point, in that it gave legal
definition to the concept of authorship for the first time. It stated that
henceforth printers were forbidden from publishing or selling any work
without written permission from the author or the author’s heirs. Printers
had to show this written permission to a commission at the University of
Padua (Riformatori dello Studio di Padova) to obtain a license to print.
Books printed without such permission were to be confiscated and burned,
and the infringing printers were to be fined a ducat and imprisoned for
one month. Such phrasing may suggest that elementary principles of the
author’s right over the reproduction of his own creation had been recog-
nised with this decree. In fact, it implied that authors have the right to
exercise a certain degree of control over the publication of their works and
that they may even choose to keep their work unpublished. However, this
acknowledgement of an author’s interest in controlling the publication of
6
J. Stapleton, Art, intellectual property & the knowledge economy (AIPKE), Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of London, 30–81. http://www.jaimestapleton.net/about.html (accessed
31 March 2021).
7
A brief overview of Venetian laws on printing is found in Nuovo, The Book Trade,
209–216.
his texts is not necessarily the same as the acknowledgement of a property.

Yet, this may be the first time that the notion of the author as an intellec-
tual entity was legally defined against the financial interests of the
publishers.8
However, it is important to realise that this gradual movement towards
the recognition of authorial identity and interests took place in the context
of the emergence of a censorial regime after decades of substantial free-
dom, after the shock of the Reformation and the acknowledgement of the
potential danger of the printing press. An interest in the quality of printed
books to secure commercially successful correct editions had already
emerged in Venice, signalling the growing concern with the intellectual
content of the works. Thus, the decree of 1545 had also been introduced,
in partial response, to growing concern about the spread of anonymously
published libellous or heretical writings. The impetus for this decree seems
to come mainly from the desire to censor authors rather than to affirm the
recognition of their knowledge and interests.
However, the Venetian system always kept at a distance an alleged recog-
nition of the author’s role as an entity more deserving of privileges than the
publisher or third parties: this would contradict the purpose of the system
created in the Republic, which was to protect and promote the industry.
In conclusion, the mechanism of book privileges in Venice worked
remarkably well thanks to four principles: the novelty requirement; the
expiration of privileges within one year from concession; limited duration;
and author’s permission. There is another very important point to add:
privileges were always clearly defined and covered only individual titles at
a time, systematically avoiding blanket privileges.
Thanks to the systematic study Erika Squassina conducted in the con-
text of the EMoBookTrade project, we can rely today on the Early Modern
Book Privileges in Venice database, the first of its kind in Europe to make
a reliable assessment possible. New data show the dimensions of a massive
phenomenon. For the first time, we can count how many privileges were
issued from 1470 to 1570 (the latest entry date in the database): 3400.9
8
E. Squassina, ‘Authors and the system of publishers’ privileges in Venice (1469–1545)’.
Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 91 (2016), 42–74; J. Kostylo, ‘Commentary on the Venetian decree of
1545 regarding author/printer relations’, In Primary Sources on Copyright (1450–1900).
www.copyrighthistory.org. (accessed 31 March 2021).
9
Previously, the number of Venetian book privileges was believed to be about 2000 for the
whole period 1469–1600. After Squassina’s work, we are expecting to exceed 5000 privi-
leges concessions.
28 A. NUOVO
Of the total number of book-trade privileges issued by Venetian authori-

ties in the period leading up to 1570, 25% were granted to authors,
whereas the remaining 75% were granted to publishers.
However, the number of authors who requested privileges is much
higher than the estimates made in the past. From 1470 to 1570, more
than 710 authors requested privileges from Venetian authorities. It is
therefore evident that authors, coming from different strata of society
from nobility to poor teachers of grammar, were able from the beginning
to decipher the privilege system and its advantages.
After the law of 1545, authors felt much more encouraged to apply.
In the decade 1545–1555, petitions increased by 60% in comparison
with the preceding decade and by seventy per cent compared to the
years 1523–1533. In practice, this law strengthened the author’s posi-
tion in his relationship with the publisher of his work and gave him the
opportunity to supervise the accuracy of the printed text. However,
even if authors felt that their role in the book market had changed, pub-
lishers’ petitions were constantly on the rise. And the interests of pub-
lishers and authors could still be at odds. In reality, a few authors, who
were not living in Venice, were easily bypassed by publishers in privilege
requests. More subtly, the system was not entirely favourable to authors
who looked for something other than protection of an economic invest-
ment. Authors needed fame and glory. Some of them were even able to
monetise this fame and use it as a threat against enemies. Pietro Aretino,
nicknamed the ‘scourge of princes’, is the best example of this. More
than one dozen unauthorised, cheap reprints of the first edition of his
book of letters, which displayed his magnificent portrait to add even
more fame, were quickly published. Although he ranted against unau-
thorised reprints, Aretino could, in fact, feel gratified by the diffusion of
his work, which had a more forceful impact from the pirated editions
than by the luxurious editio princeps, especially at the medium to low
levels of the market. Piracy perfectly matched the author’s ultimate
goal, which was actually to reach an audience as wide and varied as pos-
sible. It was his success to enhance his danger to the powerful and make
them more inclined to send him money and all kinds of gifts (among
which, the gold necklace that he wore in his portrait painted by Titian
in 1545).
Book Privileges in Rome

In Rome, the granting of book privileges was started at a later stage
than in Venice, with analogous features. Equally, it was granted to
authors, printers, publishers, or even owners of a manuscript slated for
printing, following similar legal forms in Venice. Unlike in Venice, this
policy in Rome was never framed within overall legislation, which can in
part be explained by the fact that printing in Rome had a much more
modest development and, therefore, a limited impact on the local
economy.10
Only in the 1520s did Roman privileges become less episodic. The
intercession of cardinals or other prominent persons, as recorded in docu-
ments, shows that the granting of concessions was not routine for a long
time as in Venice; rather, it had to be supported by patrons and negotiated
case by case based on investigation of particular circumstances. It was
undoubtedly Pope Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici) who inaugurated a less
sporadic policy regarding permissions, with the aim, as his papal letters
express it, ‘ut bonae artes temporibus nostris maxime floreant’, to promote
culture. In fact, the greater frequency of concessions for works in Greek or
translated from Greek stands out clearly. Predictably, Leo X granted privi-
leges favouring Tuscans. Nepotism was structural and not exceptional to
the government of the early modern Church, as shown by the case of the
dispute that arose between the Manuzio and the Giunti in Florence over
the privilege of printing in Greek and Italic type. Nevertheless, papal privi-
leges do not seem to have been tied to a discernible cultural or religious
programme, at least not before the Counter-Reformation. What we know
for sure is that a Vatican privilege had to be paid for, and the price was
not small.
There was one major discrepancy with the Venetian system: from the
beginning, papal privileges were not requested exclusively for works
printed in the Papal State. As early as the 1520s, they were found in edi-
tions printed in Savona, Cremona, Milan, Florence, and even Venice.
The main reason for these requests, in contrast to the Venetian privilege,
lies in the fact that the geographical range claimed in a papal privilege
extended beyond Rome and the Papal State (in Urbe quam in totu statu
10
For an accurate reconstruction of sixteenth-century publishing in Rome, see P. Sachet,
Publishing for the Popes: The Roman Curia and the use of Printing. 1527–1555, (Leiden-
Boston, 2020).
30 A. NUOVO
Ecclesiastico) to all of Italy and beyond (tam in Italia, quam extra

Italiam). From their first appearance, papal privileges were held to be
enforceable in all territories and regions subject to the Holy Roman
Church (Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae mediate vel immediate subiectus)
and valid throughout Christendom under penalties that were not only
temporal but also spiritual: immediate excommunication (excommunica-
tionis latae sententiae) was one frequently brandished threat. The ‘uni-
versal’ validity of papal privileges was in practice variable, depending as it
did on papal influence over a particular territory, on subjective fear of
excommunication, on possible connections between the publisher and
the curia, and finally, on an effective mobilisation of the local ecclesiasti-
cal authorities to work with the political ruling classes of the various
states. This explains why the Roman privilege exerted little power out-
side Italy.
The content of papal privileges varied. The popes granted privileges for
a specific work, following the Venetian style, but they also gave privileges
for entire categories of works as blanket privileges and even for works to
be published in the future. It soon became clear to Venetian booksellers,
who were accustomed to a much more clearly defined, restricted and anti-
monopolistic system for conceding privileges, that papal, nominally uni-
versal protection, sometimes granted for a series of editions and even for
editions to be published in an unspecified future (blanket privileges), had
huge advantages. Therefore, between the mid-1530s and the 1540s, a
remarkable number of Venetian editions were increasingly displaying a
papal privilege.
The Vatican approach to privileges can be illustrated by one example
chosen from many. Gabriele Giolito was a successful Venetian publisher
who had previously printed vernacular literature, albeit not entirely ortho-
dox sometimes, and who had later published devotional works and reli-
gious manuals. In 1574, he obtained a perpetual and general papal
privilege from Gregory XIII for all his publications, printed and still to be
printed, provided that they were reviewed and approved by the Inquisition.
This privilege, given in advance, leaned toward a completely different con-
cept in which exclusive rights were connected not to the printing of a
certain work but to the person of the privilege holder, at whose death the
rights expired, thus at an unknown date (which happened four years later
in the case of Gabriele Giolito).
A recent study by Jane Ginsburg has focused on the development of the

Roman privilege system in the Counter-Reformation.11 Vatican book priv-
ileges stand out from all other privilege systems for at least three main
reasons. Firstly, as we have seen, the scope of papal privileges was transna-
tional. This was chiefly because the granting institution had the power to
enforce legal stipulations via spiritual sanctions, namely excommunica-
tions. Papal privileges, unlike most of the secular institutions of the time
whose jurisdiction was factually limited to those territories in which they
could enforce political and military power, could therefore cross the bor-
ders of the Papal State and fall on individuals residing in any Catholic
diocese in Europe. Papal privileges had a direct consequence in Catholic
lands, but, as far as market dynamics were concerned, they also had indi-
rect consequences for publishers and sellers residing in Protestant lands. If
an edition of a certain text was found to be protected by papal privilege,
publisher-booksellers were prevented from exporting the same text to
Catholic lands.
Secondly, the history of papal privileges in the Cinquecento is tightly
linked to the history of the Counter-Reformation. The link can be found
in the duality of privileges as a juridical instrument used to promote both
commercial and censorial interests. The history of book privileges and the
history of book censorship advanced in connection with each other. This
is especially true for an institution like the Church. While in Venice privi-
leges were only used for giving commercial protection, the popes started
to combine this protection with Catholic censorship goals. Their attitude
influenced the succeeding development of the privilege system.
Thirdly, and most importantly, papal privileges display a peculiar rela-
tionship between institutions and authors. If it was true that the
Cinquecento saw a progressive increase in authors in the role of petition-
ers for book privileges (in this regard, Venice is a good example), it was
only for papal privileges that authors seemed to have gained a prime role
as both petitioners and grantees. The development of papal privileges was
certainly pushed forward from the beginning by authors because, for
them, a papal privilege had always conveyed the most authoritative
11
J. C. Ginsburg, ‘Proto-property in literary and artistic works: Sixteenth-century papal
printing privileges’, in Research Handbook on the History of Copyright Law, ed. I. Alexander
and H. T. Gomez-Arostegui, (Cheltenham, 2016), 237–267. This article has been recently
translated into Italian, which also gave the author the opportunity to update it, see J. C. Ginsburg,
‘Proto-proprietà letteraria ed artistica: i privilegi di stampa papali nel XVI secolo’, in Privilegi
Librari nell’Italia del Rinascimento, 103–287.
32 A. NUOVO
recognition possible of the orthodoxy of a text, and thus again, it con-

tained a commercial guarantee. Authors’ responsibilities, not the publish-
ers’ interests, were at the core of the Roman privilege system. Not only
were authors among the most frequent grantees, but the authors’ consent
to a given publishing endeavour was frequently mentioned in petitions
requested by publishers.
With the struggle over doctrine reaching its climax in sixteenth-century
Europe, we can say that the Church embraced somewhat of an alliance
with authors. Ultimately, the Church and authors shared equal interest in
defending books from textual corruption. From the standpoint of the
Church, textual corruption proved to be a dangerous vehicle for doctrinal
corruption. From the perspective of authors, textual corruption was the
harmful consequence of the proto-industrial production mode of printed
books. For both, universal papal privileges enforced by spiritual sanctions
were an invaluable occasion to regulate the production process of printed
books and enforce some type of textual purity. The Church was moved by
doctrinal goals, whereas authors were driven by their desire to regain con-
trol over their texts and defend them from the frequent interpolations
caused by inattentive printers. The end result, however, could satisfy the
expectations of both.
Regarding the transnational legal infrastructure provided by the papal
privilege, Jane Ginsburg argues that European authors and institutions
made their first steps towards conceptualising an embryonic form of copy-
right law to protect literary and artistic property.
We might conclude that the papal privilege was to a certain degree
truer to the original nature of the institution; it gave advantages to holders
over non-holders through a special favour granted by the one individual
who was unquestionably entitled to do so. It was, in essence, an arbitrary
decision. Only Venice, perfectly acquainted with the characteristics of
commerce, had managed to adapt the privilege into an instrument capable
of functioning as a safeguard against underhanded competition and as a
stimulus for production.
Book privileges were born in Venice as an evolution of the privileges
protecting inventions and technical innovations, and they were quickly
adopted by a few other advanced Northern Italian states, like Milan. The
system was aimed at promoting economic growth and resulted in an
approach that was basically extraneous to that adopted by the Vatican, a
state whose agenda at the time emphasised politics over economy. For the
Roman Curia, defending the interests of publishers was never a priority.
Therefore, the privilege system was developed within the usual framework
of patronage and court favours, with the goal of protecting only those
petitioners capable of finding the right connections to elicit the pope’s
attention.
It was the Counter-Reformation that gave a new coherence to the
Vatican privilege system. Only when the infrastructure that enforcing
ecclesiastic censorship came to full maturity did the concession of a privi-
lege find its logic in the general view of Rome’s role regarding the printing
press: control of ideas, social discipline and the promotion of moral stan-
dards, and religious orthodoxy.
Summing up, an embryonic idea of authors’ intellectual property over
their works seems to emerge in Venice from the mechanisms of trade regu-
lation, while in Rome it emerged as a collateral effect of censorial dynam-
ics. But nowhere in the early modern age did it emerge from the recognition
of a positive right of the creator.12
12
I wish to thank the members of the EMoBookTrade team, particularly Erika Squassina
and Andrea Ottone, for their help.
CHAPTER 3
A Pious Privilege: Printing for Hospitals

and Orphanages Across the Spanish Empire
Agnes Gehbald
According to the administrator of the orphanage in late-colonial Lima,

‘such an ancient and pious privilege’ had to be safeguarded in order to be
able to continue printing the cartilla.1 Particularly in the case of
educational genres, as with the school primers (cartillas) and the gram-
mars by Nebrija (artes), printing was a business venture that created rev-
enues. This was, however, not always an easy undertaking and early
1
‘un privilegio tan antiguo y piadoso’, ‘Expedientes e instancias de partes’, (Archivo
General de Indias, Seville (AGI). Lima, 1013, 1811–1812). Carta de Don Tomás de
Arandilla y Sotil, 09/07/1778. When applying for the privilege for the Vocabulary of
Nebrija a century before, a similar expression described the intentions of the Hospital in
Madrid for the privilege as a ‘work of utmost piety’ (‘Pribilegio, por Juro de heredad por ser
obra de tanta piedad’), cited in F. de los Reyes Gómez, ‘El privilegio de los Diccionarios de
Antonio de Nebrija (siglos XV-XVIII): otro enredijo de mil diablos’, Corpus Eve [en ligne]
La Défense de la Langue Vernaculaire en Espagne (XVe-XVIIe Siècles): paratextes et textes
(2013), 1–26, 11.
A. Gehbald (*)
University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
e-mail: agnes.gehbald@unibe.ch

Switzerland AG 2023
36 A. GEHBALD
modern printing masters and booksellers had to be trained accountants to

successfully manage their investments with the costs of material, work-
force, print runs and distribution networks. For highly solicited publica-
tions, such as the educational books, an additional printing privilege was
necessary. Revenues from such enterprises, in turn, served to support
urban welfare institutions. Following initiatives of Christian charity to pro-
vide a system of relief for the poor and sick in society, the Catholic Church
together with the Spanish Crown established institutions of social welfare,
such as hospitals for the care and healing of patients as well as orphanages
and foundling houses for abandoned and exposed children.2 The privilege
system of the Early Modern book trade has not been studied in the con-
text of poor relief.3 By readdressing the printing privileges in case studies
related to hospitals and orphanages between 1598 and 1837, decisive yet
overlooked structural forces and strategies in the book trade come to light
on the peninsula as well as in the overseas viceroyalties.4
2
For studies on poor relief and the practices of charity, see M. L. Clouse, Medicine,
Government, and Public Health in Philip II’s Spain: Shared Interests, Competing Authorities
(London / New York, 2011); Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500–1700,
ed. O. P. Grell and A. Cunningham (London, 1997); J. Barry and C. Jones, ‘Introduction’,
in Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, ed. Jonathan Barry and Colin Jones
(London/New York, 1991), 1–13; C. E. Milton, The Many Meanings of Poverty: Colonialism,
Social Compacts, and Assistance in Eighteenth-Century Ecuador (Stanford, 2007);
R. C. Huamán, ‘Orfandad, asistencialismo y caridad cristiana en Lima colonial: historia de la
Iglesia de Niños Huérfanos de Lima’, Revista del Archivo General de la Nación, 27 (2009),
143–164; R. Grafe, ‘Empires of Charity: Imperial Legitimacy and Profitable Charity in
Colonial Spanish America’, New Global Studies, 12. 2 (2018), 131–155.
3
Compare the extensive literature on the history of the book with regard to privileges, for
instance, J. García Oro, Los Reyes y los Libros: La Política Libraria de la Corona en el Siglo de
Oro, 1475–1598 (Madrid, 1995); F. de los Reyes Gómez, El Libro en España y América:
Legislación y Censura (siglos, XV–XVIII), vol. I (Madrid, 2000), 23–78, 368–407. The
scholarship on book history is very large, yet the linking to charitable institutions has scarcely
been made with the exception of Diana Thomas, who has focused in her study on the Real
Compañía de Impresores y Libreros and the relationship with the Hospital de Madrid,
D. M. Thomas, ‘Printing Privilege in Spain: Nebrija’s Latin Grammar as a Source of Income
in Eighteenth-Century Madrid’, Publishing History, 5 (1979), 105–126. While Juan Gomis
has studied the Spanish colportage trade and the role played by the blind, mainly organised
in confraternities, J. Gomis Coloma, Menudencias de Imprenta: Producción y Circulación de
la Literatura Popular, Valencia, Siglo XVIII (Valencia, 2015).
4
This is inspired by a severe critique on the fragmentation of study and a call to embed the
history of the book in a broader socio-economic conjuncture, compare, most famously,
T. R. Adams and N. Barker, ‘A New Model for the Study of the Book’, in A Potencie of Life:
Books in Society, ed. Nicolas Barker (London, 1993), 5–43.
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us. The Chief and I were at Sandhurst together, don't you know, and
he'd do anything for me. But he's a busy man, a very busy man; and
I always respect a man's business, pull myself up short, don't you
know, wouldn't waste his time or bore him, on any account."
"They haven't much time to spare in this building, sir," assented
Faunce.
"Of course not. Magnificent building—splendid institution—fine body
of men the police—but there ought to be three times as many of 'em.
Eh, Faunce, that's your opinion, ain't it?"
"No doubt, sir, there ought to be more of them, if it would run to it."
"But it won't, no, of course it won't. Another penny on the income-tax
this year! We shall see it a shilling before we've done with it."
"We should see it half a crown, sir, if everything was done as it ought
to be done."
"True, true, Faunce. A social Utopia, and the taxpayer with hardly
bread to eat. Well, I want to take you straight to my mother-in-law,
who will tell you all about her worthless son—a bad egg, Faunce, a
bitter bad egg, and not worth a ha'porth of the anxiety that poor old
lady has been feeling about him. She lives at Buckingham Gate.
Shall we walk?"
"By all means, sir. May I ask what particular circumstances have
caused this uneasiness on Mrs. Rannock's part—and from what
period her anxiety dates?"
"Well, you see, Faunce, Rannock left England in March—late in
March—to go to Klondyke—a wild-cat scheme, like most of his
schemes—and from that day to this nobody who knows him—so far
as we can discover—has received any communication from him."
"Is that so strange, sir? I shouldn't think that when a man was
digging for gold among a few thousand other adventurers, at the risk
of being frozen to death, or murdered if he was lucky, he would be
likely to trouble himself much about family correspondence?"
"Well, no doubt it's a rough-and-tumble life, but still, I'm told they do
get the mails, and do keep somehow in touch with the civilized world;
and, blackguard as Rannock is, he has been in the habit of writing to
his mother three or four times a year, and oftener. I believe there is a
soft spot in his heart for her. But you'll see the old lady, and she'll tell
you her troubles," concluded Major Towgood, "so I needn't say any
more about it."
In spite of which remark he talked without intermission all the way to
Buckingham Gate.
CHAPTER XV.
"Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall
He shall not blind his soul with clay."
The Honourable Mrs. Rannock, widow of Captain Rannock, second
son of Lord Kirkmichael, lived in a narrow-fronted Queen Anne
house facing Wellington Barracks. It was one of the smallest houses
to be found in a fashionable quarter, and the rent was the only thing
big about it; but Mrs. Rannock had lived at Court for the greater part
of her life, having begun as a maid-of-honour when she and her
Royal mistress were young, and she could hardly have existed out of
that rarefied atmosphere. Refinement and elegance were as
necessary to her as air and water are to the common herd; she
would have pined to death in a vulgar neighbourhood; her personal
wants were of the smallest, but her surroundings had to be the
surroundings of a lady.
Everything in the house was perfect of its kind. It was furnished with
family relics, Sheraton and Chippendale furniture that had been
made to order by those famous cabinet-makers for the Rannocks of
the eighteenth century, a buhl cabinet that had come straight from
the Faubourg St. Germain in the Red Terror, when Paris was running
with innocent blood, and the ci-devants were flying from ruin and
death.
The street door was painted sky-blue, the hall and staircase were
white, the rich colouring of the wall-papers made a vivid background
to the sober tones of the old furniture, and in the dainty drawing-
room, with its apple-blossom chintz and exquisite Chelsea china, the
daintiest thing was old Mrs. Rannock, with her pink-and-white
complexion, silvery hair, patrician features and bearing, tall and
slender figure, rich brocade gown, and Honiton cap with lappets that
fell almost to her waist.
She was an ideal old lady, grande dame in every detail. She had
been painted by Hayter and sketched by D'Orsay. The semi-
transparent hand, which lay on the arm of her chair, had been
modelled by sculptors of renown, had been carved in marble and in
ivory, when she was the beautiful Mary Rannock.
She was nearly eighty, and had been a widow for a quarter of a
century, drifting placidly down the river of time, with very few
pleasures and not many friends, having outlived most of them, and
with only one trouble, the wrong-doing of the son she adored.
She had hoped so much for him, had burnt with ambition for him,
had destined him for a high place in the world; and he had forfeited
every friendship, missed every chance, disappointed every hope.
And she loved him still, better than she loved her daughter and her
daughter's children; better, perhaps, because his life had been an
ignominious failure; better because of that boundless compassion
which she felt for his ill-fortune.
"My poor Dick has never had any luck," she would say excusingly.
She received Mr. Faunce with pathetic eagerness, like a drowning
man clutching at the first spar that floats within his reach.
"Pray, be seated," she said graciously. And then, turning to her son-
in-law, she said, "I should like to have my talk with Mr. Faunce quite
alone, Harry," at which Major Towgood bounded from his chair with a
snort of vexation.
"But surely, my dear mother, since I know all the circumstances of
the case, and as a man of the world, I can be of some use."
"Not while I am talking to Mr. Faunce, Harry. I want to keep my poor
old head calm and cool."
"Well, dear, you are the best judge, but really——"
"Dear Harry, it will be so kind of you to leave us alone."
"Well, mother, if that's so——" and the impetuous little Major puffed
and blew himself out of the room, and might have been heard fuming
on the landing, before he went downstairs to console himself with a
cigar in the dining-room.
"My son-in-law is an excellent creature, Mr. Faunce, but he talks too
much," said Mrs. Rannock. "No doubt he has told you something of
the circumstances in which I require your help."
"Yes, madam."
"And now ask me as many questions as you like. I will keep nothing
from you. I am too anxious about my son's fate to have any reserve."
"May I ask, madam, in the first place, what reason you have for
being anxious about Colonel Rannock?"
"His silence is a sufficient reason—his silence of nearly ten months.
My son is a very good correspondent. I don't think he has ever
before left me two months without a letter. He is a very good
correspondent," she repeated earnestly, as if she were saying, "He is
a very good son."
"But have you allowed for the rough life at Klondyke, madam, and
the disinclination that a man feels—in a scene of that kind—to sit
down and write a letter, dead beat, perhaps, after a day's toil?"
"Yes, I have allowed for that, but I cannot believe—if my son were
living"—her eyes filled with irrepressible tears in spite of her struggle
to be calm—"and in his right mind, with power to hold a pen—I
cannot believe that he would so neglect me."
"And you have written to him, I conclude, madam?"
"I have written week after week. I have sent letters to the Post Office
at San Francisco and at Dawson City, where my son told me to
address him—letter after letter."
"Have you communicated with Colonel Rannock's late body-
servant?"
"Chater? Yes, naturally. What do you know of Chater?"
"Very little, madam. I happened to hear of him from a gentleman who
had also been making inquiries about your son."
"For what reason?"
"In Lady Perivale's interest. The gentleman has since married Lady
Perivale."
"Mr. Haldane! Yes, I heard of the marriage. I was glad to hear of it.
Lady Perivale had suffered a great injustice from her likeness to that
wretched woman."
"Pardon me, madam. You know the saying—Cherchez la femme. If
you can tell me anything about that woman, and Colonel Rannock's
relations with her, it may help me in my search for him."
"Oh, it is a sad, sad story. My dear son began life so well, in his
grandfather's regiment. There had been Rannocks in the
Lanarkshire ever since Killicrankie. He was a fine soldier, and
distinguished himself in Afghanistan, and it was only after he made
that wretched woman's acquaintance that he began to go wrong—
seriously wrong. He may have been a little wild even before then, but
not more than many other young men. It was that woman and her
surroundings that ruined him."
"I take it that happened about ten years ago."
"Ten years? Yes. How did you know that?"
"I had occasion to look into Miss Delmaine's past life, madam. Pray
tell me all you can about her."
"It was an infatuation on my son's part. He saw her at the theatre,
where people made a great fuss about her on account of her beauty,
though she was no actress. She had a fine house in St. John's
Wood, at the expense of a young man of large means—whom she
ruined, and who died soon after. My son became a frequent visitor at
the house. There were Sunday dinners, and suppers after the
theatre, and my son was always there, madly in love with Miss
Delmaine. Whether she was more to him than an acquaintance in
those days I cannot say. Certainly he had no quarrel with Sir Hubert
Withernsea. But after that unhappy young man's death Kate
Delmaine's influence upon my son wrecked his career. He left the
Army when the Lanarkshire was ordered to Burmah, rather than
leave her, and not daring to take her with him. I don't know what kind
of life he lived after that, although I saw him from time to time; but I
know he was under a cloud, and there were only a few of his father's
old friends who were civil to him, and asked him to their houses."
"Did you know of Colonel Rannock's courtship of Lady Perivale,
madam?"
"Yes, indeed. It was my earnest hope that he would succeed in it."
"Did you know the lady, and know of her likeness to Miss Delmaine?"
"No. I go very little into society. I am an old woman, and only like to
see old friends. And you must understand that I never saw Miss
Delmaine."
"Do you think your son was in love with Lady Perivale?"
"Yes, I believe he was. Or it may be that he only liked her because of
her resemblance to that woman."
"And was he very angry when she refused him?"
"Yes, I know he was wounded—and even angry."
"Do you think that disappointment, and other troubles, might have
induced him to take his own life?"
"No, no, no; I couldn't believe that for one moment. My son has
faced death too often—has risked his life in a good cause, and would
never throw it away like a coward. I know how brave he is, what a
strong will he has—a will strong enough to overcome difficulties. It
was like him to think of Klondyke when he was ruined."
"Did you know that he was in Algiers with Miss Delmaine last
February?"
"Not till I read the report of Lady Perivale's libel suit. I thought he had
broken with her finally two years ago, and I believe at the time he
had. I need not tell you that I did not obtain my knowledge of that
unhappy connection from my son himself. You will understand a
mother's keen anxiety, and that I had other sources of information."
"Yes, madam, I can understand. I do not think I need give you any
further trouble to-day; but if you will oblige me with your son's
photograph—a recent likeness—it may be of use in this matter."
"Yes, I can give you his photograph, taken last year."
Mrs. Rannock opened a velvet case on the table next her chair, and
the wasted white hands trembled ever so faintly as she took out a
cabinet photograph and gave it to Faunce.
"Thank you, madam. I shall wait upon you again directly I have any
fresh information; but I must warn you that an inquiry of this kind is
apt to be very slow; and I fear you can give me no suggestion as to
where to look for Colonel Rannock in the event of his having
changed his mind and not gone to Klondyke."
"No, no; I cannot think that he would change his mind. He was with
me the day before he started, full of hope and excitement. He was
enthusiastic about the wild life in Alaska, and would not listen to my
fears and objections. Oh! Mr. Faunce, if anything evil has happened
to him, these grey hairs will go down in sorrow to the grave."
Again the uncontrollable tears welled into her eyes. She rose, and
Faunce took the movement as his dismissal.
"You may rely upon my most earnest endeavours, madam," he said,
and quietly withdrew, as she stretched a trembling hand to the bell.
"Poor soul! I'm afraid there must be sorrow for those grey hairs
before we come to the end of the story," mused Faunce, as he
walked back to his rooms.
He wrote to Chater, the valet, asking him to call in Essex Street next
morning on particular business concerning Colonel Rannock; and
the valet appeared, with exact punctuality, neatly clad, with well-
brushed hat and slim umbrella, and a little look about the clean-
shaved chin, broad chest, and close-cut hair, that told Faunce he
had once shouldered arms, and swung round to the "Right turn!" in
the white dust of a barrack-yard.
Chater was eminently a man of the world, very easy to get on with,
when he had heard Faunce's credentials, and knew what was
wanted of him, in Mrs. Rannock's interests. He had been Rannock's
soldier-servant in Afghanistan, and had lived with him between
eleven and twelve years.
"And I think you liked him," said Faunce.
"Yes, sir; I liked my master. He was a devil, but he was the kind of
devil I like."
"And I suppose you knew Miss Delmaine?"
"Couldn't help that, sir. She was a devil, and the kind of devil I don't
like. She was the ruin of my master—blue ruin, Mr. Faunce. He might
have kept inside the ropes but for her."
"Did you know anything of his courtship of Lady Perivale?"
"Of course I did, sir. I had to carry the 'cello backwards and forwards
between the Albany and Grosvenor Square."
"Do you think he cared much for Lady Perivale?"
"Well, I believe he did, in a way. He was cuts with Miss Delmaine just
then. She'd been going on a little too bad. There was a prize-fighter,
a man she'd known from her childhood, that was always after her,
and the Colonel wouldn't stand it. Mind you, I don't believe—to give
the devil his due—she ever cared for the fellow, but I think she liked
making my master jealous. She is that kind of aggravating creature
that knows her power over a man, and can't be happy until she's
made him miserable. And then there were rows, and a regular burst
up, and the Colonel swore he'd never see her again."
"And it was after the quarrel that he courted Lady Perivale?"
"Yes, it was after. He was knocked all of a heap the first time he met
her ladyship, on account of her likeness to Kate. 'She's the loveliest
woman I ever saw since Mrs. Randall was at her best,' he said, for
he was always free with me, having lived under canvas together, and
me nursing him through more than one bout of Indian fever—'and
she's an oof-bird,' he said, 'and I shall be on the pig's back if I marry
her.' And I know he meant to marry her, and tried hard—left off cards
and drink, and cut all the young fools that he used to have hanging
about him, and turned over a new leaf. I'd never known him keep
steady so long since we came from India. But when he found it was
all no go, and Lady Perivale wouldn't have him, he was furious. And
when she went off to Italy in the autumn, he took to the cards again,
and drank harder than ever, and went a mucker one way and
another, and by December he had made it up with Kate, and they
went off to Nice together the week before Christmas, with the
intention of crossing over to Ajaccio."
"Why didn't you go with your master?"
"I had business to do for him in town. He wanted to get rid of his
chambers and furniture, and I had to find a purchaser, and he
wanted it all carried through very quietly, for there was a money-
lender who thought he had a bill of sale on the goods."
"You succeeded in that?"
"Yes; I got him a fair price for his lease and furniture. I would give a
good deal to know where he is, and what became of that money."
"Was it much?"
"Six hundred and forty pounds. Three hundred for the lease, which
had only two years to run, and three hundred and forty for the
furniture, at a valuation."
"Did he take all the money with him when he started for America?"
"No; he paid me half a year's wages, on account of a year and a half
due, and he spent a little on himself, but he had five hundred and
fifty pounds in his pocket-book, in bank-notes, when he left
Waterloo."
"In bank-notes. Do you know the figures?"
"Yes; there were two hundred-pound notes, and four fifties, the rest
tens and fives. I wrote a list of the numbers at his dictation."
"Have you kept that list?"
"I believe I have a copy of it among my papers. I copied the figures,
knowing what a careless beggar the Colonel is, and that he was as
likely as not to lose his list."
"Why did he take the money in bank-notes?"
"He had been told that a cheque-book wouldn't be of much use to
him in San Francisco, and no use at all at Dawson City, where he
would have to buy most of his outfit—furs, and mining tools, and a lot
more."
"What put Klondyke into his head, do you think?"
"A pal of his, a Yankee, was going to try his luck there. My master
was always fond of adventure, and never minded roughing it; so the
scheme took his fancy."
"Chater," said Faunce, in a very earnest voice, "do you think Colonel
Rannock ever got as far as Klondyke?—as far as Dawson City?—as
far as 'Frisco?—as far as New York?"
"God knows, sir! I think the case looks—fishy."
"I have reason to know that he wasn't at 'Frisco in time to start for
Vancouver with the pal you talk of, Mr. Bamford—and that Bamford
and another friend sailed without him."
"I know that, sir. Mr. Haldane, the gentleman who came to me for
information, told me the result of his inquiry."
"And this made you rather uneasy, didn't it, Chater?"
"Well, I didn't like to hear it, Mr. Faunce. But my master is a rum sort.
He might change his mind at the last minute. He might go back to
her."
"He didn't do that, Chater. I can answer for him."
"What do you know about her?"
"A good deal. Was she at Waterloo to see your master off by the
boat-train?"
"Not she! They had one of their quarrels in Paris—and he left her
there to find her way home by herself."
"You say home? Had she any house in London?"
"No, she'd never owned a house since the Abbey Road. She was in
lodgings near Cheyne Walk before she went to Nice."
"Decent lodgings?"
"Oh yes, topping."
"And she didn't show up at the boat-train?"
"He didn't travel by the boat-train. He went the night before—by the
Bournemouth express."
"The four-fifty-five?"
"Yes."
"Was he going to stay in Southampton that night?"
"I suppose so. He didn't tell me what was up. He seemed a bit
excited and put out, and hadn't a word to throw at a dog."
"Did he promise to write to you from America?"
"Yes, he was to write to me directly he landed. He had instructions to
give me."
"Do you know of any Southampton friends of Colonel Rannock's?"
"Can't say I do. He has had yachting pals there sometimes in
summer, but there wouldn't be any of that sort in March."
"Mrs. Rannock is alarmed at being without letters from her son since
last March. Do you consider that an alarming circumstance?"
"Yes, Mr. Faunce, I do. My master was fond of his mother, in his way.
He didn't mind victimizing her to the extent of her last sovereign,
poor old lady, when he was hard pushed; but he was attached to her,
in his way. And I don't think he would have made her unhappy by not
writing to her, if it had been in his power to write. I give him that
much credit."
"Well, Chater, we shall have to set the cable at work, and find out
what we can at Dawson City. And now tell me your opinion of Mrs.
Randall, alias Delmaine. You describe her as a bit of a shrew; but do
you know if she was really attached to the Colonel?"
"I believe she worshipped him, in her way. I—well, a letter she wrote
him after their worst quarrel—the row that parted them for over two
years—forced itself on my attention—happening to take it up in a
casual way—and I must say it was a letter to melt a stone; but it
came just when the Colonel was going all he knew for Lady Perivale,
and he took no notice of it."
"And two years after he went back to her. That was weak, wasn't it?"
"I suppose it was, sir. But, after being much with a stuck-up person
like Lady Perivale, a spirited, free and easy creature like Kate
Delmaine would exercise a fascination."
"And you don't think she ever played him false? You don't think she
cared for the prize-fighter? What was his name, by-the-by; Bolisco,
wasn't it?"
"Yes, sir, Jim Bolisco. No, she never cared a straw for him—a great
ugly brute, with a cock-eye. She'd known him when she was a child
—for her people were very low—father kept a small public out
Battersea way; and it ain't easy for a woman to shake off that sort of
friend. Bolisco was took up by Sir Hubert Withernsea, and used to
dine at the Abbey Road sometimes, much to the Colonel's disgust.
No, I don't believe Kate ever had the slightest liking for that man; but
I sometimes used to fancy she was afraid of him."
CHAPTER XVI.
"Later or sooner by a minute then,
So much for the untimeliness of death,—
And as regards the manner that offends,
That rude and rough, I count the same for gain—
Be the act harsh and quick!"
His interview with Chater left John Faunce troubled in mind, and
deeply meditative. Had there been a crime, or was the
disappearance of Colonel Rannock a fact easily accounted for in the
natural course of events? The mother's conviction that some evil had
befallen him was after all founded on an inadequate reason. If he
had gone to Klondyke, as he intended, the whole fabric of his life
would have been changed, and the man who while in the civilized
world corresponded regularly with his mother, might well forget his
filial duty, in the daily toil and hourly dangers, hopes, and
disappointments of the struggle for gold. It was difficult to judge a
man so placed by previous experience or everyday rules. The most
dutiful son might well leave home letters unwritten; or a letter, trusted
to a casual hand, might easily go astray.
Then there was always the possibility that he had changed his plans;
that he had stayed in New York or in San Francisco; that he had
chosen some other portion of the wild West for his hunting ground;
that he had spent the summer fishing in Canada, or the autumn
shooting in the Alleghanies; and, again, that his letters to England
had been lost in transit.
Faunce would not have been disposed to suspect foul play on so
slight a ground as the absence of news from the wanderer, but there
had been that in Mrs. Randall's manner and countenance which had
excited his darkest suspicions, and which had been the cause of his
undiminished interest in her proceedings.
If there had been a crime she knew of it, had been in it, perhaps. He
had watched her and studied her, but he had never questioned her.
The time was not ripe for questioning. He did not want to alarm her
by the lightest hint of his suspicions. She was too important a factor
in the mystery.
He called on her on the evening after his interview with Chater, and
persuaded her to go to a theatre with him. It was the first time he had
assumed the attitude of established friendship, but although she
seemed surprised at the invitation, she accepted it.
"I shall be glad to get out of this hole for a few hours," she said, with
an impatient sigh, as she pinned on her hat before the glass over the
mantelpiece, the little fur toque in which she had charmed the jury.
Faunce took her to see a musical comedy, a roaring farce from start
to finish, in which the most popular low comedian in London gave a
free rein to his eccentricities; and he watched his companion's face
from time to time while the auditorium rocked with laughter at the
wild fun. Not a smile illumined that gloomy countenance. He could
see that she was hardly conscious of the scene, at which she stared
with fixed melancholy eyes. Once she looked round at the people
near her, with a dazed expression, as if she wondered why they
were laughing.
It is recorded of the first Napoleon that he once sat through a broad
farce with an unchanged countenance; but then his shoulders bore
the burden of empire, the lives and fortunes of myriads.
The experience of this evening went far to confirm Faunce's ideas.
He took Mrs. Randall to an oyster shop, and gave her some supper,
and then put her into a cab and sent her back to Selburne Street.
Just at the last, when he had paid the cabman and given her the
man's ticket, her face lighted up for a moment with a forced smile.
"Thank you no end for a jolly evening," she said.
"I'm afraid it hasn't been very jolly for you, Mrs. Randall. You didn't
seem amused."
"Oh, I don't think I'm up to that sort of trash now. I had too much of it
when I was on the boards. And the more comic the show is, the
more I get thinking of other things."
"You shouldn't think too much; it'll spoil your beauty."
"Oh, that's gone," she said, "or, if it ain't, I don't care. I'd as leave be
a nigger as a 'has been,' any day. Good night. Come and see me
soon; and perhaps, if you take me to a tragedy next time, I may
laugh," she added.
"There's something bitter bad behind that," mused Faunce, as he
tramped across the bridge to Waterloo Station for the last Putney
train, "but, for all that, I can't believe she's a murderess."
Faunce spent the next morning in his den in Essex Street poring
over a book to which he had frequent recourse, and of which he was
justly proud, since it was the wife of his bosom who had compiled
this register of passing events for his study and use, a labour of love
on her part, achieved with abnormal slowness, and kept closely up to
date. The book was carried home to Putney on the first of every
month, and Mrs. Faunce's careful hands added such paragraphs
bearing on the scheme of the work, as she had cut out of the
newspapers during the previous four weeks.
It had pleased this good helpmeet to think that she was assisting her
husband in his professional labours, and the gruesome nature of her
researches had never troubled her.
Mrs. Faunce's book was a large folio bound in red levant leather, and
containing newspaper cuttings, pasted in by the lady's careful hands,
and indexed and classified with neatness and intelligence.
The volume was labelled "Not accounted for," and was a record of
exceeding ghastliness.
It contained the reports of coroners' inquests upon all manner of
mysterious deaths, the unexplained cases which might have been
murder, the "found drowned," the nameless corpses discovered in
empty houses, in lodging-house garrets, on desolate heaths and
waste places; a dismal calendar of tragic destinies, the record of
hard fate or of undiscovered crime.
Steadily, carefully, John Faunce searched the spacious pages where
the scraps of newspaper type stood out against a broad margin of
white paper. He began his scrutiny at the date on which Colonel
Rannock was said to have left London, and pursued it without finding
any fact worth his attention till he came to a paragraph dated May
30, and extracted from the Hants Mercury, a popular bi-weekly
newspaper, published in Southampton.
"Strange Discovery at Redbridge.—An inquest was held
yesterday afternoon at the Royal George, Redbridge, on the body of
a man, which had been found the previous day by some workmen
engaged on the repair of the road by the river. Their attention was
attracted by the proceedings of some gulls that were hovering and
screaming over a discarded boat that lay keel upwards in the slime
and weeds of the foreshore, at a spot where the tide must have
washed over it day by day. The timbers were so rotten that they
crumbled under the men's hands as they tried to lift the boat; but
worthless as it was, they found it carefully secured with two strong
stakes which had been thrust between the timbers at stern and bow,
and driven deep into the beach below the soft ooze and shifting mud
that moved with every tide.
"The men pulled up the stakes and turned the keel over, and, almost
buried in the mud, they found the body of a man which had evidently
been lying there for a long time, and of which even the clothing was
so decomposed as to be unrecognizable. The most careful scrutiny
failed to afford any indication of identity, except the name of a well-
known West End tailor on the trousers-buttons, and the fact that the
unknown had been tall and strongly built. The doctor's evidence
showed that the back of the skull had been fractured by some blunt
instrument, and by a single blow of extraordinary violence. Death
must have been almost instantaneous. The inquiry was adjourned in
the hope of further evidence transpiring."
Other notices followed at short intervals, but no further evidence had
"transpired." A verdict of murder by some person or persons
unknown had ended the inquiry.
"Curious," mused Faunce, after reading the report a second time,
and with profound attention, and then he went on with his book till he
came to the last extract from a recent paper, another unknown victim
of an unknown murderer, pasted on to the page a week ago. And of
all those unsavoury records there was only that one of the body
hidden under the discarded boat that engaged his attention.
He knew Redbridge, a village street with its back to the water, a few
scattered houses along the shore, a homely inn, a bridge, and for the
rest a swampy waste where the reeds grew tall and rank, and the
wild duck skimmed. He knew the solitude that could be found along
that shore, not a quarter of a mile from pleasant cottage houses, and
lamplit village shops, and the gossip and movement of the inn. A
likely spot for a murderer to hide his victim; and this was clearly a
case of murder, the stealthy murderer's sudden blow, creeping
noiselessly behind the doomed man's back, with the strong arm lifted
ready to strike.
That single blow of great violence indicated the murderer's strength.
But where and how had the blow been dealt, and what connection
could there be between Colonel Rannock's supposed departure from
Southampton, and the body found on the shore at Redbridge, four
miles away?
The question was one which John Faunce told himself that he had to
answer. The answer, when arrived at, might have no bearing on the
case in hand, but it had to be found. Faunce's science was an
inductive science, and he was always asking himself apparently
futile questions and working hard at the answers.
Mr. Faunce spent the evening in his snug little sitting-room at Putney,
and his sole recreation during those domestic hours was furnished
by Mrs. Randall's discarded blotting-book, which he had not
examined since he obtained it from the little servant in Selburne
Street.
With a clear table and a strong duplex lamp in front of him, Faunce
took the leaves of blotting-paper one by one, and held them between
his eyes and the light, while Mrs. Faunce, reading a novel in her
armchair by the fire, looked up at him every now and then with an
indulgent smile.
"At your old blotting-paper work again, Faunce," she said. "I don't
fancy you'll get much information out of that ragged stuff. There's too
much ink, and too many blots and splotches."
"It's not a very good specimen, Nancy; but I suppose I shall come to
something before I've done. It's finnicking work; but it almost always
pays."
"You're so persevering; and then you love your work."
"If I didn't I should never have stuck to it, Nancy. It's rather trying
work for any man that hasn't a heart like the nether millstone; and I'm
afraid I haven't."
Faunce had been at work nearly two hours, and his wife's interest in
a transcendently lovely heroine and a repulsively plain hero was
beginning to flag, before he came upon a blurred and broken line
that rewarded his patience.
In that splotched and besmeared labyrinth of lines the detective's
trained eye had discovered—
1. A date, March 27.
2. Two words, "meet me——"
3. A line of fragmentary syllables, "Sou—ton—est—o'clock."
4. Three words, "always loved you."
5. "Your—nd——"
6. "ig——"
This much, the inky impression of a heavy hand and a broad-nibbed
pen, Faunce was able to decipher upon two sheets of blotting-paper.
That last item, the letters "ig," with a flourish under the g, was the
most significant part of his discovery.
The letter had been signed with the lady's pet name, "Pig," and
Faunce told himself that to only one man would she have so signed
herself—the lover who had called her by that name at the Mecca
Hotel, and whose playful invention was doubtless responsible for the
endearing sobriquet.
"She told me she did not know whether he sailed from Southampton
or Liverpool," mused Faunce, "yet here, under my hand, is the
evidence that she asked him to meet her at Southampton West."
He went to Southampton next day, and called at the office of the
American Line. If Colonel Rannock had carried out his intention there
must be some record of his passage to New York.
There was such a record, and a startling one, for it proved that he
had not gone to America by the ship in which he meant to sail.
After some difficulty, and being referred from one clerk to another,
Faunce found the young man who had booked Colonel Rannock's
passage in the Boston on Friday, March 29, the evening before she
sailed.
"He came after seven o'clock, when the office was shut," said the
clerk. "I was at work here, and as he made a great point of it I
booked his berth for him. He suffered for having left it till the eleventh
hour, for there were only two berths vacant—the two worst on the
ship. He grumbled a good deal, but took one of them, paid the
passage money, and left his cabin trunk to be sent on board next
morning. And from that day to this we have never heard of him. He
gave us no address, but we have his trunk, and we hold the cash to
his credit, and I suppose he'll claim it from us sooner or later."
"Was he alone?"
"He was alone when he came into the office, but there was some
one waiting for him in a cab outside, and I believe the some one was
a lady. He spoke to her as he came in at the door, and I heard her
answer him. 'Don't be all night about it, Dick,' she said."
"Thank you," said Faunce. "His friends are getting anxious about
him, but, for all that, I dare say he's safe enough, and he'll call upon
you for that passage money before long."
"If he's above ground I should think he would," answered the clerk,
"but I must say it looks rummy that he hasn't claimed the cash and
the trunk before now," and Faunce left the office more and more
concerned about that corpse under the disused boat.
The steamer Boston was to leave the docks late on Saturday
afternoon. Why did Colonel Rannock go to Southampton on Friday,
and how did he propose to spend the intervening hours? More
questions for Faunce to answer.
A woman was with him at Southampton—a woman who had not
travelled with him from Waterloo, since he was alone when Chater
saw the evening express leave the platform. Who was the woman,
and what was her business on the scene? That she had addressed
him by his Christian name showed that she was not the casual
acquaintance of an idle hour.
Faunce believed that he had found the answer to this question in
Mrs. Randall's blotting-book. If the letter that had left its fragmentary
impression on the blotting-paper had been sent to Colonel Rannock,
a letter urging him to meet her at Southampton West, it would
account for his going there the night before the steamer left. From
those scattered words, and that signature, "Your fond Pig," Faunce
concluded that Kate Delmaine had written to the man she loved,
pleading for a parting interview, and that Rannock had responded to
her appeal.
There were other questions for Faunce to answer, and it was in the
quiet pursuit of knowledge that he took himself to the hotel which he
deemed the best in Southampton, engaged a bedroom, and ordered
a dinner in the coffee-room at the old-fashioned hour of six.
Before dining he called upon the coroner, who was also a well-
known family solicitor, and heard all that gentleman could tell him
about the inquest at Redbridge, which was no more than had been
recorded in the local newspaper.
Faunce having revealed himself in his professional capacity, the
coroner expressed his own opinion freely.
"I made up my mind that it was a murder case, and a bad one," he
said; "I've got the tailor's buttons in my criminal museum. Dash,
Savile Row. That stamps the victim as a stranger. We Southampton
people don't get our clothes in Savile Row."

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Book Markets in Mediterranean Europe

and Latin America: Institutions and

ISSN 2634-6117 ISSN 2634-6125 (electronic)

ISBN 978-3-031-13267-4 ISBN 978-3-031-13268-1 (eBook)

Part I Privileged Markets 19

PART II Economic Behaviour at the Market 89

PART III Institutions, Markets, and Incentives 171

Alberto José Campillo Pardo Campillo Pardo has a Master’s degree

at All Souls College, University of Oxford, in 2012, and recipient of an

Introduction: The Circulation of Books

Natalia Maillard-Álvarez and Montserrat Cachero

N. Maillard-Álvarez (*) • M. Cachero

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

the analysis of the particularities of these book markets, we need to under-

consumption. Printers and booksellers lived in a politically and religiously

The early development of a consolidated book industry with an easy

r­eligious fragmentation, and the ideological division of the territory had

catalogue of the printing production in one particular town or a remark-

abroad by Protestantism but also to control internal intellectual produc-

politically fragmented territories, such as Italy, or in areas with a different

Traditionally forgotten areas such as Ecuador, Colombia, Panamá and

congregation lived, and the competition of Catholic missionaries who

Book Privileges in the Early Modern Age:

The introduction and development of the system of book privileges char-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

the invention successfully in new territories.2 However, the Republic of

experienced an intensification and renewal in the early modern age, thanks

Legislation regarding privileges for inventions started in Venice (a gen-

Book Privileges in Venice

goods’ while encouraging the production of differentiated goods.6 It seems

his texts is not necessarily the same as the acknowledgement of a property.

Of the total number of book-trade privileges issued by Venetian authori-

Book Privileges in Rome

Ecclesiastico) to all of Italy and beyond (tam in Italia, quam extra

A recent study by Jane Ginsburg has focused on the development of the

recognition possible of the orthodoxy of a text, and thus again, it con-

A Pious Privilege: Printing for Hospitals

According to the administrator of the orphanage in late-colonial Lima,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 35

modern printing masters and booksellers had to be trained accountants to

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Part I Privileged Markets 19

PART II Economic Behaviour at the Market 89

PART III Institutions, Markets, and Incentives 171

religious fragmentation, and the ideological division of the territory had