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International Exchange in the Early Modern Book World
Library of the Written Word
VOLUME 51
Editor-in-Chief
Editorial Board
VOLUME 38
Edited by
Matthew McLean
Sara Barker
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Cosmographiae, Sebastian Münster, pp. 675–675 (Basel, Heinrich Petri, 1550). Image
courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library, Roy G96.M8B50.
Want or need Open Access? Brill Open offers you the choice to make your research freely accessible online
in exchange for a publication charge. Review your various options on brill.com/brill-open.
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issn 1874-4834
isbn 978-90-04-31644-7 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-31663-8 (e-book)
Preface ix
List of Figures and Tables xiv
Notes on Contributors xvii
PART 1
The International Book Trade: Business without Borders
PART 2
Cultural Transmissions and Political Exchange
8 The Pike and the Printing Press: Military Handbooks and the
Gentrification of the Early Modern Military Revolution 147
Mark R. Geldof
PART 3
Libraries, Collections, Ownership
PART 4
Moving Music and Translating Tongues: Literature and Music
between Countries
13 Sellers and Buyers of Italian Music around 1700: The Silvani Firm and
G.B. Bassani’s Music in Italy and Central Europe 282
Huub van der Linden
Index 375
Preface
This is a book about movement, about how printed material travelled without
respect for borders, about how commercial exchange made this possible, but
also about how other forms of exchange quickened in its consequence. The
chapters of this volume consider the ways in which books were transported
across national, confessional, linguistic and cultural boundaries: the base
physical means, the routes and partnerships which made exchange possible
between cities, markets, between buyers and sellers. They will quantify and
reflect upon different local, national and international appetites and tastes, on
what travels successfully – how and why – and what does not. They will also
discuss movement and exchange in other senses: between languages, between
cultures, between confessions and branches of scholarly and literary endeav-
our. And in considering the opportunities for international exchange exploited
by commercial operators, diplomats, translators and collectors, the impedi-
ments to movement and reciprocity will become clear; this book considers
these too. Local competition, dissonance between local sensitivities and inter-
national commercial deals, piracy of both the actual and intellectual sort could
oppose the usual dynamics of exchange. Nonetheless, the research presented
in this volume testifies to the exceptional mobility and fluidity of books, to
their movement around early modern Europe, between languages and cul-
tures, and through the hands of many people: men of commerce, of learning,
booksellers and collectors, people who kept and collected their books or sold,
gifted, or exchanged them.
The chapters which follow collect together the research presented to the
sixth St Andrews Book Conference, which was hosted by the University of
St Andrews in the summer of 2013. The conference welcomed many distin-
guished scholars, some new friends but also many who had attended previous
events: as this is an annual gathering, it was possible to reflect on connections
between this year’s papers, those offered in the previous year which discussed
specialised markets, and to anticipate some of the issues to be consider in the
following June, when lost books would be the conference theme. This, then,
was a meeting attended by scholars of different generations and who had trav-
elled, appropriately, internationally to exchange their research and ideas. St
Andrews welcomed colleagues who had journeyed from Italy and Cyprus,
North America and Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, France and Spain.
The conference was supported by the St Andrews School of History, by the
Edinburgh Italian Cultural Institute and was organised and hosted by the
research team of the Universal Short Title Catalogue.
x Preface
The chapters which follow are grouped into four sections: the first of these
addresses international exchange and the business of the book trade. Valentina
Sebastiani demonstrates that books travelled to a Europe-wide republic of let-
ters, that bestsellers had extraordinary international range and diffusion. The
works of Desiderius Erasmus were, quantifiably, bestsellers of the age, and
they deluged the European book market. This chapter also analyses how that
came to be: the practical aspects of movement, the routes, agents and media-
tors, and matters of finance and management of commercial risk. Benito Rial
Costas considers the relationship between local needs and cultural sensitivi-
ties and the internationally-minded dictates of government and trade. Plantin’s
arrangement with the Spanish crown made good commercial sense, but his
breviaries and missals were ill-received by local clergy, whose tastes and spiri-
tual needs they did not serve. Here Plantin’s sensitivity to a commercial oppor-
tunity, but insensitivity to the expectations of the final recipients of his
products, presented an opportunity to local printers who were more respon-
sive to the religion and culture of early modern Spain. Here we are shown that
the international ambitions of the Catholic Church after Trent and Plantin’s
publishing and printing operation did not always triumph over local needs.
In Aldrovandi’s Encyclopedia the relationship between local, national and
international business contexts are again explored: Caroline Duroselle-
Melish discusses this work as an ambitious intellectual endeavour which
epitomised the culture of the Renaissance, but as a consequence of transna-
tional modes of production and distribution, was subject to unsentimental
market practices – reprinting and piracy – far from Bologna’s sphere of influ-
ence. This chapter also demonstrates how, in an international book market,
centres such as Frankfurt could come to be dependent upon peripheral cit-
ies, in this case Bologna, for texts. Angela Nuovo’s chapter considers the cor-
respondence of Giovanni Bartolomeo Gabiano, and analyses the use of letters
to build networks which transcended national borders. This correspondence
shows how a family business established reciprocal partnerships, and devel-
oped a multi-centred commercial operation; they also reveal something of
their relationships with customers who were far away, but with whom they
negotiated in a personal, intimate fashion. Plantin’s complex business deal-
ings in France are the subject of a chapter in which Malcolm Walsby analyses
the opportunities and sources of investment which were available in the
French Market. Plantin’s strategies with regards to booksellers and distribu-
tors are discussed, as are his travails as a perceived outsider, however much
the fine quality of his output was respected. Plantin, we learn, adapted to
local preferences and reassured casual buyers by camouflaging his books
with a local French style.
Preface xi
The second part of the volume collects three essays which investigate books
as a means of cultural and political exchange. Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik con-
siders the bilateral cultural exchanges of the Habsburgs and the Ottoman
Empire: were books the munitions of cultural confrontation, and libraries their
warehouses? It emerges rather that books were vessels for continuous transcul-
tural exchange, intermediaries which bridged empires and cultures in a pro-
cess which was more than simple giving and receiving but a reciprocal creative
adaptation. In a chapter which analyses translations of histories of the Dutch
Revolt, Nina Lamal considers the ways in which confessionally partisan texts
were adapted in order to find a cross-confessional readership, to access attrac-
tive but inimical markets. Here we are shown translations which did more than
exchange information and ideas, but also adapted the text to different political
and religious environments. Mark Geldof’s chapter considers the role of mili-
tary textbooks not just in textualising and transmitting knowledge and prac-
tices across Europe, but also in the appropriation of the science of martial
prowess from the aristocracy to an international community of non-noble ‘gen-
try authors’. This movement of martial culture from a localised professional
discipline to a Europe-wide gentrified martial culture was accomplished by
way of legions of pamphlets and books.
The third part of this volume turns to the creations of collections and librar-
ies, to the ownership of books, and the way in which such possessions were
acquired by purchase and gift from all corners of the continent. Shanti Graheli
provides a fine example of this in her analysis of Claude Expilly’s personal
library, a collection which grew to become strikingly varied and international
in its composition, and which was built by way of a Europe-wide network of
friends, patrons and professional acquaintances. It is apparent that in this
case, a widely-sourced library followed first from personal travel and the culti-
vation of diverse intellectual interests, and later provides evidence of a ‘private’
circulation of books outside the conventional book trade. This chapter tells
some of the stories one associates with personal libraries: Expilly’s collection
evolved as his fortune changed, and individual items bear the marks of the
esteem and affection which lay behind gifts and exchanges.
A census of the book inventories of religious houses compiled at the behest
of the Congregation of the Index is the focus of Giovanna Granata’s chapter.
This hugely significant resource is revelatory about the specialised libraries of
the different Orders of the Counter Reformation, their varied needs and func-
tions, and also makes a detailed analysis of the acquisition and circulation of
books possible. These religious collections were assembled from the length
and breadth of Europe, and the different strategies of internationally-minded
publishers can be inferred from the data yielded by the inventories. A single
xii Preface
considered it their task to both modify and renovate the text. Warren Boutcher
considers Montaigne’s Essais as transnational literature in this volume’s final
chapter. The Essais were freely circulated despite national boundaries and the
cruel political conditions of their author’s time; they were traded everywhere
as a commodity, translated, and also acted as an “intellectual conveyance”
which traversed the linguistic barriers of early modern Europe and stood as a
testimony to an international noble community of the mind. This chapter con-
siders the meaning of transnational literary, linguistic and print cultures, and
how literary artefacts are ‘translated’ in space, between one language and
another, and between cultures and confessions. The Essais represent an arrest-
ing example of a vast body of transnational literature which existed in con-
stant migration, ceaseless movement.
Matthew McLean
St Andrews, 2015
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
3.1 A typical woodcut illustration with its caption in Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1522–1605,
Ornithologiae hoc est De auibus historiae libri xii… 36
3.2 Title page showing a view of Bologna and its insignia. Ulisse Aldrovandi,
1522–1605, De reliquis animalibus exanguibus libri quatuor, post mortem eius
editi: nempe de mollibus, crustaceis, testaceis, et zoophytis… 39
3.3 Engraved title page designed for the bird series also used for other volumes
published in Frankfurt. Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1522–1605, Ornithologiæ hoc est de
auibus historiæ libri xii… 46
3.4 Pages of illustration in volumes from the Frankfurt edition. Ulisse
Aldrovandi, 1522–1605, Ornithologiæ hoc est de auibus historiæ libri xii:
hoc est de auibus historiæ libri xii in quibus aues describuntur… 47
3.5 Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1522–1605, De Animalibus Insectis Libri Septem: In Quibus
Omnia Illa Animalia accuratissime describuntur… 48
3.6 Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1522–1605, Ornithologiæ hoc est de auibus historiæ libri xi: hoc
est de auibus historiæ libri xii… 49
3.7 Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1522–1605, Ornithologiae tomus tertius, ac postremus…Cum
indice copiosissimo variarum linguarum… 50
3.8 Detail showing captions in Latin (like in the Bolognese edition) and the
additional text in German. Ulisse Aldrovandi, 1522–1605, Ornithologiæ hoc est de
auibus historiæ libri xii… 53
3.9 Jan Jonston, Historiae naturalis de insectis. Libri iii. de serpentibus et draconibus,
libri ii cum aeneis figuris… 57
4.1 Vitruvius. De architectura. [Lyon]: [Guillaume Hyon for Lucimborgo da
Gabiano], 1523, 8°, p. 13 v. (e-rara.ch, Bibliothek Werner Oechslin) 67
4.2 Venice, Archivio di Stato, Miscellanea atti diversi manoscritti, b. 91-p. Letter
of Cristoforo Parona to Giovanni Bartolomeo Gabiano, February 10, 1522
(Letter 1) 70
4.3 Venice, Archivio di Stato, Miscellanea atti diversi manoscritti, b. 91-p. Letter of
Cristoforo Parona to Giovanni Bartolomeo Gabiano, July 4, 1522 (Letter 6) 76
4.4 Venice, Archivio di Stato, Miscellanea atti diversi manoscritti, b. 91-p.
Letter of Cristoforo Parona to Giovanni Bartolomeo Gabiano, August 21,
1522 (Letter 7) 78
9.1 Places of publication of the books purchased by Expilly in Lyon 184
9.2 Places of publication of the books purchased by Expilly in Paris 185
9.3 Places of publication of the books acquired by Expilly through his
network 188
List of Figures and Tables xv
Tables
Zsuzsa Barbarics-Hermanik
teaches Southeast European History (with special focus on the early modern
period) at the Institute of History, Southeast European History and Anthropology
of the University of Graz. Previously, she worked as an Assistant Professor at the
Department for Medieval and Early Modern History of the University of Pécs
(Hungary). She is the author of a number of publications on early modern media
and communication practices as well as on the images and memories of the
“Turks” in Central- and Southeast Europe. Currently, she is working on transcul-
tural exchange via manuscript and printed media between the Ottoman Empire
and the Habsburg Monarchy in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Sara Barker
is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Leeds, where she is also
on the management committee of the Centre for the Comparative History of
Print. Her first monograph Protestantism, Poetry and Protest: The Vernacular
Writings of Antoine de Chandieu (c.1534–1591) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009)
explored the different media forms used by a leading figure of the French
Reformation. She has published on early modern translation and news, includ-
ing a volume co-edited with Brenda M. Hosington, Renaissance Cultural
Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473–1640 (Leiden: Brill,
2013). Her current research focuses on the circulation of news in western
Europe in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Anston Bosman
is an associate professor of English at Amherst College. He has published arti-
cles in elh, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Theatre Journal, and chapters in The
New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010) and Twenty-First Century Approaches to Early Modern Theatricality
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). He has worked as a dramaturg for the
Commonwealth Shakespeare Company in Boston, and is currently completing
a book on transnational theatre in the early modern Germanic world.
Warren Boutcher
is Professor of Renaissance Studies in the School of English and Drama, Queen
Mary University of London. His two-volume study of The School of Montaigne in
Early Modern Europe (vol. one, The patron-author; vol. two, The reader-writer) will
be published in the spring of 2016 by Oxford University Press. He is currently
xviii Notes on Contributors
Brendan Dooley
is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College Cork. His publications
include A Mattress Maker’s Daughter, the Renaissance Romance of Don Giovanni
de’ Medici and Livia Vernazza (Cambridge ma: Harvard, 2014) and, as author and
editor, The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early
Modern Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), Renaissance Now! (Oxford: Peter Lang,
2014), and A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
Caroline Duroselle-Melish
is Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Early Modern Books and Prints at the Folger
Shakespeare Library in Washington, dc. Her publications include: “A Local-
Transnational Business: The Book Trade in Late Renaissance Bologna” in Bologna:
Cultural Crossroads from the Medieval to the Baroque. Recent Anglo-American
Scholarship, eds. Gian Mario Anselmi, Angela De Benedictis, and Nicholas
Terpstra (Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2013), pp. 27–42 and with David A.
Lines. “The Library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (†1605): Acquiring and Organizing
Books in Sixteenth-Century Bologna.” The Library, 7th series, vol. 16, no.2 (June
2015), pp. 133–161.
Mark R. Geldof
is a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, studying English elites and
their conceptions of violence in the late-medieval and early-modern period.
He has written previously on martial education in print and manuscript
sources, and the use of archaeology in the study of inter-personal violence.
Shanti Graheli
is postdoctoral researcher at the University of St Andrews. Her PhD thesis
explored the circulation and collection of Italian printed books in France in
the sixteenth century; it is now being turned into her first monograph, under
the title Italian Books and the French Renaissance. She is also the author of vari-
ous published studies of Italian and French Renaissance print culture.
Giovanna Granata
is associate professor at the University of Cagliari where she teaches
Bibliography and Library Science. She is member of the Scientific Committee
Notes on Contributors xix
Nina Lamal
is research assistant for the Universal Short Title Catalogue project at the
University of St Andrews. She obtained her PhD at University of Leuven and
University of St Andrews in 2014. Her thesis is a study of the Italian news report,
political debates as well as histories on the Revolt in the Low Countries (1566–
1648). Her research focusses on early modern book and communication his-
tory as well as on the political and cultural ties between Italian states and the
Low Countries. She is currently working on the first bibliography of Italian
newspapers entitled Late with the news. Italian engagement with serial news
publications in the seventeenth century 1639–1700, which will be published by
Brill in 2018.
Matthew Laube
is currently a Wiener-Anspach Postdoctoral Research Fellow based jointly at
the Université libre de Bruxelles and the University of Cambridge. Matthew
studied music and German in the United States before completing his PhD in
Music in 2014 at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2011/12, he held a
doctoral research fellowship at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg,
funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (daad). Before taking up
his current position, Matthew worked as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at
The British Library and was a Visiting Lecturer in Music at Royal Holloway.
Matthew McLean
teaches early modern history at the University of St Andrews. His research is
centred upon the Reformation and on learned culture and humanist networks
in the sixteenth century. He has published books on the Cosmographia of
Sebastian Münster (Ashgate, 2007), on Shaping the Bible in the Reformation
(Brill, 2012), and articles on the scholarly communities, networks and rivalries
of Reformation Basel and Zurich.
Angela Nuovo
is professor of History of the Book and Librarianship at the University of Udine,
Italy. Her main research interests are in the fields of Book History, Library
History and History of the book trade in Renaissance Italy. She has taught and
lectured extensively in Europe and in the usa. She was Visiting Fellow at All
Souls College, University of Oxford, in 2012, and Visiting Professor at eth
Zurich (Cattedra De Santis) in 2016. Among her recent publications are The
Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013; paperback
edition 2015) and with Christian Coppens, I Giolito e la stampa nell’Italia del xvi
secolo (Geneva: Droz, 2005).
Valentiana Sebastiani
earned a PhD at the European University Institute (Florence). She is currently
a Research Fellow at the History Department of the University of Basel. Her
research focuses on material, visual, and economic strategies of communica-
tion in early modern Europe for the production and dissemination of
Renaissance bestsellers. She has published extensively on the collaboration
between Erasmus of Rotterdam and the printer Johann Froben of Basel,
humanist print culture, and the social history of printers in the Upper Rhine
region.
Notes on Contributors xxi
Malcolm Walsby
is a lecturer at the University of Rennes ii and co-director of the Universal
Short Title Catalogue project. He is the author of The Counts of Laval. Culture,
Patronage and Religion in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century France (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2007) and The Printed Book in Brittany (1484–1600) (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
He has published a number of bibliographies, edited collections, and articles
on the history of the book and is currently working on a monograph on the
book trade in Renaissance France.
Part 1
The International Book Trade: Business without
Borders
∵
chapter 1
Valentina Sebastiani
Over the course of the last decade, the enthusiasm that has marked the digital
(re)cataloguing of printed works held in libraries, archives, and other institu-
tions in Europe and North America, together with the requirement that com-
puter-based systems be used for bibliographic research, has provided historians
with new possibilities for applying quantitative approaches to the study of the
history of the book and has allowed them both to widen the scope of their
enquiries and to place new questions on their agendas.1 In fact, the adoption of
analytic-synthetic and faceted-classification techniques for the organization
and retrieval of library materials from online public access library catalogues
(opacs) has enormously improved users’ ability to locate printed matter, espe-
cially those works produced during the hand-press era. Although the data that
appear in online databases are still in some ways limited, the new methodolo-
gies for searching library collections and, in particular, the ability to apply mul-
tiple filters in a metasearch, are now allowing researchers to conduct more
complete, diverse, and immediate surveys of the production and distribution
of printed books than anything that was possible in the past. Faceted browsing
offers the opportunity to restrict queries to the descriptive fields traditionally
employed in analytical bibliography and, therefore, to quickly identify, for
example, the number and kind of materials printed in a specific time period as
well as to determine which of these are linked to a particular author or were
produced by a given printing-house. Finally, quantitative data extracted from
online databases may serve as empirical bases to support not only research
aimed at a more detailed bibliological examination of individual surviving
copies – which are also increasingly digitalized – but also more broadly-based
analyses of the economic and commercial dynamics of book printing.
In keeping with these considerations, this essay is an attempt to carry out
an investigation that employs, alongside traditional bibliographic tools, new
digital technologies for the study of the history of the book. Specifically, it
explores both the economic aspects of the publication of some of the writings
of Erasmus of Rotterdam and the sales networks developed and deployed in
the service of their diffusion. Through the in-depth study of paratextual mate-
rials and a careful examination of letters and archival documents, this essay
argues that the impact of Erasmus’ works on the European book market quali-
fies them as ‘bestsellers’ of the early modern age, not solely because of the
interest they aroused among Erasmus’ contemporaries, but also because of the
diversified, efficient, and well-structured distribution and sales networks used
to market them, extending into and connecting the entire Republic of Letters.
2 The principal extant bibliographies, in fact, do not report exhaustive data. See Imgard
Bezzel, Erasmusdrucke des 16. Jahrhunderts in bayerischen Bibliotheken. Ein bibliographisches
Verzeichnis (Stuttgart, Anton Hiersemann, 1979) and Ferdinand van der Haeghen, Bibliotheca
Erasmiana. Répertoire des oeuvres d’Érasme (Nieuwkoop, The Netherlands, B. De Graaf, 1972).
3 Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts. Hg.
von der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek in München in Verbindung mit der Herzog August
Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, 25 Vols. (Stuttgart, Anton Hiersemann, 1983–2000). Internet
database: www.VD16.de (hereinafter VD16). The database describes more than 110,000 vol-
umes conserved in approximately 260 libraries within the German-speaking area and
was consulted on 20 August 2015. According to information presented on the occasion of
the official launch of the catalogue in November 2011, the Universal Short Title Catalogue
Sales Channels for Bestsellers in Sixteenth-Century Europe 5
That the great humanist scholar was a prolific writer is well known – and not
solely among specialists in Erasmus studies. His own contemporaries com-
mented with amazement upon the flood of Erasmus’ published works. “You put
out all these great tomes every day, until the supply of presses almost runs out
and the printers can hardly spare a moment for anyone but you,” wrote the
Paris-based legal scholar Guillaume Budé (1468–1540) in February 1519.4 What
is, in fact, remarkable is that works by Erasmus constitute nearly 5.4% of the
entire book production catalogued in the VD16 for the period between 1501 and
1536 and nearly 3.5% of printed works catalogued by the ustc between 1500
and 1536. The number of works whose authorship is ascribed to Erasmus is infe-
rior only to the number of works attributed to Martin Luther (1483–1546).5
By separating first editions from later reprints and revised editions, it might
then be possible to use the undifferentiated data provided by these two online
catalogues to form a clearer picture of Erasmus’ printed production and of the
diffusion of his writings.6 With regard to first editions, for example, van der
Haeghen’s Bibliotheca Erasmiana reports some 170 titles while the catalogue
compiled by Imgard Bezzel lists 145.7 In either case, the number of later reprints
and revised editions varies considerably by title. Instances exist of enormously
successful editions such as De duplici copia verborum ac rerum commentarii
which, printed for the first time in Paris in June 1512 by Josse Bade, by the end
of 1536 had already appeared in some sixty reprints and revised editions.
Similarly, the Enchiridion militis christiani, first published by Thierry Martens
(http://www.ustc. ac. uk) contains bibliographic information on some 350,000 books printed
between approximately 1450 and 1601 and held in more than 6,000 European libraries.
Ongoing updates are available at http://ustc.acuk/index.php/news/listing/tag/update. The
online catalogue was consulted on 20 August 2015. Though the first of Erasmus’ writings to
appear in print can be dated to 1495, here I consider solely the production of Erasmus’ works
beginning with the publication of the first edition of the Adagia in 1500 (Paris: J.P. Kreuznach)
until his death in 1536.
4 The Correspondence of Erasmus, Roger A.B. Myers and Peter G. Bietenholz (eds.), 15+ Vols.
(Collected Works of Erasmus) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974; hereinafter cwe):
Vol. 6, Ep. 915.
5 VD16 lists 25,441 titles between 1501 and 1536. The ustc lists 72,563 titles of which 3,672
are titles catalogued under the name of Martin Luther. Both catalogues were consulted on
20 August 2015.
6 This essay is not the place to attempt to differentiate between authorized and unauthorized
editions and reprintings of Erasmus’ works.
7 Van der Haeghen, Bibliotheca Erasmiana, pp. 1–183. Bezzel, Erasmusdrucke, pp. 31–501. The
data do not include separate or revised printings of previously published works such as,
for example, translations into German of Erasmus’ writings or distinct editions of some
proverbs.
6 Sebastiani
8 These data are taken from van der Haeghen, Bibliotheca Erasmiana, respectively pp. 65–67;
79–81; 166; 111; 137–138; 9–15; 24–27.
9 For example, Nikolaus Ellenbog (1481–1543) wrote to Erasmus from Württemberg at the
end of March 1516 to ask where he might procure copies of the Novum Instrumentum and
the Opera omnia of St. Jerome and at what price; see cwe 3, Ep. 395.
10 “Sed tamen typographi aiunt vix aliud nomen esse vendibilius”: Opus epistolarum, Percy
S. Allen et al. (eds.), 12 Vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906–1958; hereinafter Allen), Vol. 1,
Ep. 2798.
11 Paul F. Grendler, “Printing and Censorship,” in Charles B. Schmitt (ed.), Cambridge
History of Renaissance Philosophy, (Cambridge, ma: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
pp. 25–53: 29.
Sales Channels for Bestsellers in Sixteenth-Century Europe 7
(c. 1460–1527) and Jerome (1501–1563) Froben alone between 1513 and 1536,
according to the VD16.12
The clear preference that Erasmus accorded to the Frobens’ printing-house
in Basel is evident. Johann and Jerome Froben printed not only the largest
number of Erasmus’ works, but also the largest number of his first and revised
reissues.13 In 1516, for example, the Froben press printed first editions of the
Novum Instrumentum and the Opera omnia of St. Jerome; in 1517, the first edi-
tion of Querela Pacis appeared; in 1519, it was Ratio verae theologiae and a col-
lection of Erasmus’ letters (Farrago); in 1520 Antibarbarorum liber was
published for the first time; beginning in 1518, the Froben press brought out
first editions of the Paraphrases of the Gospels as well as of some of Erasmus’
minor writings, not to mention the many first editions of the writings of
Church Fathers that the Frobens printed with Erasmus’ revisions, notes, and
commentaries.
Deeper scrutiny of activity at the Froben printing-house and of the Frobens’
partnership with Erasmus between 1514 and 1536 allows us to identify the print
run of some of Erasmus’ editions. The Froben printing-house, located on an
alleyway named Tötengässlein and also known as “zum Sessel,” employed four
to six presses and operated with a staff of some thirty workers.14
Though calculations of productivity during the hand-press era have esti-
mated that a single printing press could, in some cases, produce between 1,300
12 The printers with whom Erasmus was in closest contact were: Matthias Schürer in
Strasbourg, Thierry Martens in Louvain, Josse Bade in Paris, Aldo Manuzio in Venice, and
Johann and Jerome Froben in Basel. On their collaboration with Erasmus, see Diane
S. Shaw, “A Study of the Collaboration between Erasmus of Rotterdam and His Printer
Johann Froben,” Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook, 6 (1986), pp. 31–124 and, more
recently, Alexandre Vanautgaerden, Érasme typographe. Humanisme et imprimerie au
début du XVIe siècle (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 2012). The data reported by ustc and VD16
were consulted on 20 August 2015.
13 Vanautgaerden cites eighty-one first editions printed by Froben between 1521 and 1529
(Vanautgaerden, Érasme typographe, p. 459).
14 The Froben printing-house was located at No. 171 Tötengässlein, which is today No. 3;
see Staatsarchiv Basel (hereinafter StABS), Hausurkunden (1370–1841): Historisches
Grundbuch der Stadt Basel, Todtgässlein 171, with site maps. The printing-house owned
four hand-presses at least as early as 1517 and six beginning in 1527. From 1528 onward,
Jerome Froben printed with seven. See Allen 3, Ep. 594; 7, Ep. 1910; 8, Ep. 2046; Karin
Crousaz, Érasme et le pouvoir de l’imprimerie (Lausanne, Éditions Antipodes, 2005),
pp. 60–61, Notes 140–144. Regarding the number of workers and consulting scholars
employed by the Frobens, see Anthony Grafton, The Culture of Correction in Renaissance
Europe (London: The British Library, 2011), especially pp. 1–142 passim.
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naisen, joka raskain askelin pyrki tietä eteenpäin, mutta pimeys
taajeni ja ilma tuli kolkommaksi ja kolkommaksi. Puolentoista tunnin
kuluttua tulimme Les Ifsiin, ja täällä pysähdyimme syömään vähän
illallista. Meillä oli hyvä syy onnitella itseämme sen johdosta, että
olimme saaneet ajoneuvot Beuzevillestä, sillä täällä saimme tietää,
ettei mitään junaa mennyt Etretatiin ennenkuin aamulla. Vahinkoa,
jonka myrsky oli saanut aikaan pari päivää sitten, ei ollut vielä saatu
korjatuksi, sähkölennätin oli yhä poikki, ja me varustauduimme siltä
varalta, että tie olisi paikoittain tulvaveden alla.
Etretat
Huntu kohotetaan
Nainen nyökkäsi.
Niin sanoen hän vei nuoren tytön ulos huoneesta ja alas käytävää
katsomatta ainoatakaan kertaa taaksensa. Minä katselin heidän
jälkeensä, kunnes puut varjostivat heidät, ja käännyin sitten noiden
kahden naisen puoleen.
»Se oli tuo tuolla, joka oli syynä kaikkeen», alkoi äiti, pannen
kätensä lujasti ristiin polvilleen, pysyttääkseen ne hiljaa. »Neljä
vuotta sitten hän tuli tänne Pariisista viettääkseen kesän täällä —
hän oli hyvin sairas — se oli hänen sydämensä. Me olimme eläneet
onnellisina yhdessä siihen asti, tyttäreni ja minä, lukuunottamatta
huoltamme siitä, ettei tyttäreni tulisi naiduksi. Niin hän tuli tutuksi
hänen kanssaan ja kosi häntä. Hän oli hyvin siivo — ei vaatinut
mitään myötäjäisiä, ja sitäpaitsi oli tyttäreni jo kaksikymmentäviisi
vuotta vanha — hänen ensimmäinen nuoruudenaikansa oli jo ohi.
Mutta hän piti tyttärestäni, ja he menivät naimisiin. Hän vei hänet
Pariisiin, jossa hänellä oli pieni teatteri, tanssisali ja sellaista —
mutta sitten hän tuli taas huonommaksi ja palasi tänne. Silloin hän
sai tietää, että minulla oli toinenkin tytär, joka oli annettu eräälle
rikkaalle amerikkalaiselle. Minä olin köyhä, monsieur», lisäsi hän
puolustellen itseään. »Ja mieheni oli kuollut…»
»Se oli silloin», jatkoi hänen äitinsä, »kun hän, tuo tuolla, sai erään
uuden ajatuksen. Ennen hän oli ajatellut ainoastaan — mitenkä sitä
kutsuisi? — kiristystä — muutamia tuhansia vain, ehkä eläkettä; nyt
se oli paljon enemmän — nyt hän tähtäsi korkeammalle. En tiedä,
mitä kaikkea hän suunnitteli. Silloin alettiin Célesteä epäillä isänsä
murhasta; hänet oli mihin hintaan hyvänsä saatava vapaaksi; sen
vuoksi hän kirjoitti kirjeen.»
Hän nyökäytti.
»Niin», sanoi hän; »hän siis kirjoitti kirjeen oi, teidän olisi pitänyt
nähdä hänet niinä päivinä! Hän oli kuin raivoisa villipeto. Mutta kun
Céleste oli päässyt vapaaksi, niin hän ei tullutkaan luoksemme,
kuten oli luvannut. Minä näin, että hän epäili meitä, ettei hän
halunnut olla kanssamme enää minkäänlaisessa tekemisessä, niin
että Victor käski minun kirjoittamaan hänelle uuden kirjeen ja
rukoilemaan häntä tulemaan, luvaten selittää hänelle kaikki.»
»Voi, tuntuu kauhealta, kun ajattelen sitä», jatkoi hän. »Hän tuli,
monsieur. Otimme häneltä puvun ja panimme sen Cécilen päälle.
Sen jälkeen hän ei lähtenyt huoneesta, ennenkuin vaunut tulivat ja
veivät hänet laivaan. Mitä meihin tulee, niin olimme miehen orjia —
hän määräsi kaikki mitä oli tehtävä — valmisti kaikki — suunnitteli ja
suunnitteli…»
Mutta sitä kuollutta minä eniten ajattelin ja surin, sillä hän oli ollut
toimelias ja harvinaisen miellyttävä ihminen. Huolimatta kaikesta olin
tuntenut vetovoimaa häneen.
XIX
Jutun loppu
»Vai niin!»