In aedibus Aldi : Aldus & Co.
Abstract
“In aedibus Aldi” Aldus & Co. was the name of the press that brought substantial innovations to the nascent industry of printing at the end of the fifteenth century. Within two decades, the notion of how a publishing house and a publisher functioned became crystallized, if not in name, in practice, leading to new standards of book design, typography, authorship, redaction and publishing of texts. This study seeks to understand the actual technical, industrial and artistic transformations that were affected by Aldus and his cohorts. Further, the study seeks to frame the progress made in light of the great changes influenced by Humanism. Through his scholarship and personal rapport with collaborators such as Erasmus, the printed books of Aldus Manutius (the Latinized name of Teobaldo Mannucci) found new markets in cinquecento Italy and abroad that went beyond the traditionally closed manuscript culture from which they sprang. Indeed his books represent the revival of interest in the thought, writing and art of the ancient world. The printed books emanating from the Aldine Press in many ways are a catalogue of the accomplishments of the Renaissance as we know it.
Outline of Text
- Introduction
- Book Design
- Typography
- Editing, Authorship and Publishing
- Conclusion
- References
- Notes
Introduction
In 1469 the Venetian Senate granted a privilege to Johannes of Spires for a period of 5 years. He was wise to guard his monopoly because publishing wasn’t an easy business to start. First, texts were needed and the manuscript culture from which this early modern technology springs essentially resisted the idea of book printing. It was to them a vulgar activity that betrayed the fluid nature of the coterie society. No longer would a written work pertain to a select few, celebrate a unique occasion, or cover an esoteric sliver of science or art. Publishing contemporary authors was made difficult by this resistance so publishers had to find other markets.
The first printer publishers found that religious subjects amply justified the initial capital costs of setting of a press, buying paper, making engraved plates and marketing their wares. However, it is an order of magnitude different to consider the investment of printers who would print text for they had to manufacture their own fonts, which is an operation that only trained metallurgists could perform and which takes a long time to perfect. Those printers who didn’t make their own type had to purchase the punches used to make matrices. In any case, maintenance, repair and replacement of punches necessitated the presence of an industrial infrastructure in house.
Assuming that text could be found to publish, and the mechanical means of production were available and working, a publisher could then make books to sell. Unless of course the publisher was Aldus Manutius. For he was not content to peddle books of little consequence and spent his energy, time and fortune acquiring texts that he deemed worthy of his learned circle of Humanists. And once the acquisition was made the work turned toward redeeming the text; to cull out the inaccuracies and misspellings, to find just the right turn of phrase in translations, to refine and authenticate it to the point that its ancient author would indeed recognize his own work in spite of the centuries of copying, recopying, filtering and refiltering through a myriad of historical and cultural frames.
Book Design
The end of the fifteenth century saw many changes in the conception and implementation of book design, of which some can be traced to methods already in place. For example, the practices and esthetic of manuscript making facilitated affairs of state, commerce and art and played a large part in the social ascension of participants. This had been going on for generations. The convention allocated a layout that became the strata upon which coterie-style redaction could proceed. Glosses fueled by rhetoric and wit propelled their authors onto the conscious horizon of their peers and would be patrons. Margin and white space allowed editors and writers to intellectually joust whenever they felt the need.1
While the new medium of printing fixed thought on a page, and was therefore a departure from the revisionist culture of manuscript writers, the page layouts of the print book followed suit with its manuscript forebears. Further, there seems to have been a warm embrace of the art and science intrinsic to bookmaking, which included Renaissance reformulations of classical mathematical theories such as the notion of the Golden Section.2 We learn from Carter that Aldus and his fellow academicians once crowded into a church to hear a lecture from Pacioli on Euclidian geometry. Pacioli’s book On the Divine Proportion carried an appendix dealing specifically with Roman capitals and how, he reckoned, the ancients could form them using long- forgotten formulae. His notion of divine proportion was likewise ascribed to page layout. Soon enough, artists like Felice Feliciano set about to draw out the perfect letter. Aldus adapted the information in creating his types and page layouts. The changes to book design coming out of the Aldine press became part of the canon of book design as we know it today.
Another innovative feature of Aldus’ books was their reliance upon kerning, both vertical and horizontal, and in terms of their indentation. This new conception was a distinct break with the fortified grid seen in Gutenberg work, where towering columns of equally vertical black letter3 confronted readers. Of course the initial gothic capitals did provide some break for the reader, as did their generous margins. But their overall monolithic appearance coincided brilliantly with the monotheistic exhortations of the biblical content.
The horizontal spacing of the Aldine books feature new ways for readers to interact with the text. Their odd and often quirky layouts seem very modern, evoking a contemporary poetry journal.4 Actually, Burnhill posits that the spacings were attributable to Aldine in-house type composition system that included lateral spacing in the composing stick and lateral spaces built into the mould into which molten alloys were poured and formed individual type sorts. These methods provided flexibility to the type setter who, following direction from the designer, could impart details into the text, creating rubrification without recourse to red ink, vertical readings from capitalized initial letters, dropped initial capitals, offset symmetry and other inventions adding to the textual density of the work.
Syntax was another beneficiary of this method. We see subheads centered on one axis while other parts of the text exist on another offset axis. What is all the more remarkable here is the basic difficulty in setting centered type in the first place, which must call for an art director/grammarian to decide on word and line breaks in advance, perhaps even by ways of a sketch, which must then be proofed and scrutinized more closely than a normal line of body copy. Vertical readings in the printed form can be more nuanced over larger areas too as opposed to manuscripts which had no mechanical means of rejustification other than starting on a fresh sheet of paper.
In treatises on arithmetic, music, geometry, astrology by Giorgio Valla, the concept of page elements crystallizes. These two volumes from 1501 utilize the beautifully clear Bembo Roman to set the body copy while notes, captions, figures, diagrams, and other collateral text elements are set in the Aldine Italic. This represents a conscience break with the in-house norm of setting Greek body copy in cursive. By allotting one set of type style to act as interpreters and modifiers of the principle font he was doing something akin to what we in this age would call type hierarchy, which facilitates the cognition and tasking of the reader.
It is arguable that the Aldine concept of page layout and book design reached a zenith in the Hypnterotomachia Poliphili of 1499.5 In contrast to the Gutenberg Bible of 1455, which has a stern, somber and regimented appearance, the Poliphili is exuberant, florid and thoroughly Humanist. The story tells of a lover’s unrequited search for a distant mistress. The book samples culture, religion and languages with Humanist skepticism as its measuring guide romping through paganism and eroticism. It has been compared to James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake with its joyful modelings of bizarre and iconographic prose.
Poliphili features two hundred woodcuts arranged in unique layouts that make the most of the art director’s skill: large pictures seamlessly glide into lithe swathes of copy, many of which taper to a center point, some even borrowing odd shapes like goblets and bells. In all cases, use of white space is opulent. This edition aims at a luxury market with it large folio size and binding that was achieved in the “Greek style,” which describes signatures of folded pages sewn into to the spine of the book. Moroccan leather was garnished with gold leaf filigrees wrapping around architectural elements on the edges of the covers. This process was an innovation in 1499 and has endured due to its efficiency and beautiful esthetic.
Aldus was probably proud of the high production values of the Poliphili but he never lost sight of a market segment that could have afforded it less well. Indeed, the advent of printing neatly coincided with the coming of age of scholarly, polyglot Europeans seeking to make their way at the courts of ruling powers and municipalities. They were lawyers, scriveners, scribes, writing masters, clerks, secretaries, courtiers, engravers, gold and silversmiths, and librarians who used writing and handwriting professionally. Those who aspired to greater social attainment traded on erudition and the currency was facility with the antique literary and cursive sources popularized by Petrarch a century earlier. We learn from Lowry that the Humanist scholars were the celebrities of their day and that their printed books made them famous and well-traveled. Writing prose and poetry became a sublimated form of intellectual jousting affording the winner coveted recognition and job opportunities within the coterie of aspirants. The ability to compete was a carefully orchestrated by parents rich and not so rich. Understandably, the demand for well- educated leaders of state fueled demand for universities to be well stocked in printed books. Private schools abounded too. And personal tutors serviced the needs of rich patrons’ children.
We learn from Barolini that Aldus’ own education began in the traditional manner of a student copying the eloquent utterances of his master who was no doubt citing and commenting on the great classics. The aim was to eventually memorize by rote the important works. Each student would produce their own book, an activity that must have been fraught with writing errors, misapprehensions and outright omissions. Penmanship too was so admired that students spent much time enhancing these skills with writing masters. Perhaps the steep climb to Aldus’ own book gave him pause to sympathize with the student’s plight. It is easy to hypothesize why Aldus decided to use the small octavo size for his books, but it must be noted that he wasn’t the first to use them. The format had been used in devotional literature as well as manuscripts for poetic texts.
The coup for which Aldus is remembered is that his libri portabilis were meant to sate the hunger of students of classic literature who needed reliable and scholarly translations that could be perused without a lectern—as was the case for large-sized and heavy-weight folios—and in informal situations. These inexpensive volumes were meant widely to be widely diffused to a secular audience. Many of the texts in the octavo series have been stripped of collateral text and show therefore only the refined and authoritative version of the work itself. This wasn’t as much a dumbing down of books as an attempt to publish just the nugget that Humanists pursued.
Typography
It is fair to say that the tradition and culture of manuscript making informed Aldus’ design of typefaces. Whether it was the authoritative Greek tomes relatively new to the market or the more established Latins, Aldus was content to stay well within the norms and expectations of his clients. His attachment to pen culture is evidenced by his boast that his fonts were as good as any made by hand.
Since the 1420s a curvaceous cursive was being used by copyists and notaries. It was a relaxed letter which allowed for faster writing and which took up less room in manuscripts due to its oblique angle. One scholar/copyist in particular, Niccolò Niccoli, used squared off Romans as capitals set against sloped miniscules. His script was adopted by other scholars making sillogi, which were personal collections of ancient inscriptions. This practice in particular affected the standard writing style used by the Greek scholars everywhere, and even those who made up Aldus’ editorial staff. These editors were the experts on whom Aldus depended to validate his books. They were his touchstone. In retrospect, there was really no doubt that Aldus would use this style. The Aldine Italic, or Aldino as it was referred to by his contemporaries, was meant to remind readers of the New Learning forming their Humanist world. When it was used in conjunction with the libris portabilis, a new era of approachability to the classics was at hand. Now a reader could carry the books any where she wanted. Aldino made a five-word first cameo appearance in a woodcut illustration6 in 1500. Its first complete appearance was in the octavo Virgil of 1501.
The Aldino was a product of much labor and time. The punchcutter, Francesco Griffo, who borrowed the letters from the Niccoli cursive, would spend almost a decade working with Aldus on twelve fonts in three languages: six Romans, the Aldino Italic, four Greek cursives and one Hebrew. It was Griffo’s artistry that made Aldino type beautiful and famous. So it is understandable that the two parted ways when Aldus started his vigorous pursuit of privileges, effectively barring Griffo from obtaining further consideration for the work. Griffo was credited for his work in the title page of the Virgil in one of the few isolated references to him. Aldus petitioned the Venetian Senate for a 10-year privilege the type face on strictly its own merits—in any of the books he might print. Griffo had to cut the type for another publisher in order to secure his own desserts.
The relatively extreme oblique angle of Italics allowed for more letters in a given line, which carried the benefit of using less paper, although it isn’t clear if this fact motivated Aldus. Additionally, more than 65 ligatures contributed to the flowing grace of the type. Griffo made a set for small size and proportionately reduced the size of the roman capitals, adding to the sense of movement on the line. Carter notes that the rounded letter forms are particularly well suited to expressing poetry and eloquence.
There is a vaguely chicken or the egg rapport between italic letters and the success of Latin books in this era. Market demand created opportunities that were unmistakable to an adept such as Aldus; the Italics packaged the text in a codified version of the own hand favored by the elite Chancellery. To those who knew, this was proper. To strangers, this validated a yearning that was previously unattainable. Whatever the trigger element, the many counterfeits and imitators of Italics helped readers of the fifteenth century feel the humanist promise of a departure from the previous Dark Ages.
Aldus continued seeking protection and privilege for his italic letters procuring six more over the years. It is a ringing irony that for all the standards set for scholarship by the Aldino Italic, it was eventually and definitively replaced by the Aldine Roman, also cut by Griffo. Not one privilege for the Roman was ever sought by anyone. The same reason for Aldino’s rejection later on was the basis for its acceptance at its debut: the decorative nature of the letter was condemned as being illegible and superfluous to the serious and objective academic mission. Aldus succeeded in setting the typographic standard for his time and yet has been roundly criticized by today’s readers. One must remark that all styles have a basis in convention and culture that is timely as well. For us in the modern times, his patient and unprotected foot soldier, the Roman, took over and never looked back.
It was yet another Chancellery tradition, this time the Papal Chancellery, that was behind the emergence of the fine, rounded Aldine Roman miniscule. In their quest of lost and rare antique texts, Petrarch and his followers uncovered manuscripts with an uncial script that believed to be a lost variety of antique writing never seen before. The Carolingian script, as its name infers, did not have an antique provenance and can be traced to the 9th and 10th centuries. The script was appropriated by the scribal culture and became actually necessary in the execution of certain Papal documents. Borrowing from that tradition, the business successors to Gutenberg, Sweynheim and Pennartz, used it with their Roman capitals, which were then sampled and improved by Jenson in Venice. Aldus and Griffo combined the neo-Carolingian lower case with the square capitals of the De Aetna roman in Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499.
Carter speculates that improvements in lenses might account for improvements in type fonts in this era. What goldsmiths had been using for years to accomplish their work was now probably being used by punch cutters. Furthermore, the new geometric formulation of letterforms following Pacioli’s laws made Aldine Romans greatly enhanced over their predecessors from Nicholas Jenson. The divine proportion of 1:10 for the capitals, recommended by Pacioli collaborator Felice Feliciano, gave the font a flattened and majestic stature. Thin strokes and fine serifs all around gave the letters a more narrow weight and facilitated usage in the octavos. The font’s alleged provenance was considered the logical resurrection of an antique ideal. As discussed earlier, the Poliphili roman was used in innovative ways in a text that thoroughly represented the broad and liberal zeitgeist of the humanist world. The pairing of form and content was natural and compelling.
The full-sized folio edition of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is considered the definitive version of the Aldine Roman.
Despite the fame of the Aldine Italics and Romans a real discussion of reasons for Aldus’ success cannot be undertaken without dealing with his Greek fonts. They were the reason he got into the business in the first place. Aldus started his printing business when he was already in his 40s, an established scholar, tutor, writer, and above all, a Hellenist. Greek was the fire in his belly and the marketing tool that lead to his repute amongst contemporaries. Following the Petrarchan goal of unearthing authoritative versions of ancient texts was the first part of his plan; the second was printing them and making them available to more people.
Prior to Aldus’ time the printing of Greek text was a costly affair due to the enormously complex fonts required to render the ancient classics. One font in one style and in one size could contain up to 1400 characters. Diacriticals and breathing symbols were multifaceted and likewise required custom kerning both vertically and horizontally, necessitating extra time and handling by even experienced compositors. As will be covered in the next section, the acquisition and refining of texts was a huge undertaking. After that, type had to be set, pages printed and the same editorial team had to respond to the subtle editorial exigencies of repairing missing letters, diacriticals, etc. and retain authorial fidelity as well as editorial consistency.
The first book Aldus prints is the Greek Grammar by Constantine Lascaris and it represents a steep challenge technically. His goal was to set the Grammar in Greek and in Latin in pages side by side to the spread. Several sources point to the possibility that his press wasn’t yet fully set up and that he had sub-contracted presswork and a Roman font from Andrea Torresani, a former workman in the shop of Nicholas Jenson who had purchased the shop assets at the death of its owner. The Roman font from Jenson via Torresani would have to share type baselines, cap heights and body size with the new Greek that would be cut by Griffo. Further difficulty was that diacriticals and breathings positioned above ascenders and below descenders had to find the right kern so as to retain line for line symmetry of the two texts.
Burnhill asserts that Griffo had to create the Greek mould to the same size (body size) as the extant Roman and in so doing had to find a mathematical common denominator to underpin the logic of the new sorts. He has found that Aldus invents in-house type norms along the way that will apply to other fonts going forward. The norms posit a base unit value of 1:12 as a way to accommodate these challenges as well as other issue of spacing covered in the next section.7
Editing, Authorship and Publishing
From Tatham we learn that Erasmus would like to publish his Latin translation of the Euripides plays Hecuba and Iphiegenia in Aulis with Aldus’ help. The works had previously been printed in Paris with so many errors that Erasmus lost faith in the ability of the printer to self- correct. He was now soliciting Aldus in a letter that rhetorically points to the immortality that will be his if he is so favored as to be published by the Aldus & Co. This solicitation points to some interesting facts illustrating the esteem of the editors’ role and the publishing reach of the Aldine Press. There is much truth to the rhetoric: the press had been in business for twenty years and had experienced great success and repute from an enviable following. Type design, workmanship, and editorial prowess were regular parts of the Aldine formula. His books had become academic staples selling into Italian universities, riding the tide of the Italian Renaissance into all corners of Europe.
Erasmus understands that his project will fall into the hands of a scholar who has trained rigorously in the languages, sciences and arts of the ancient world. He mentions in his letter that he is happy to give over the editorial role to Aldus such is his trust in his capacity and, it must be noted, is his inability to travel to Venice at that time.
The press serviced a clientele base representing the richest and best-educated members of society. Following the influence of Petrarch, Aldus sought to compile, edit and publish the wisdom of the Grecian and Roman epochs. He went on many business trips in those years, researching leads and making deals for important manuscripts. His first great effort in this regard was to publish the then extent totality of Aristotle. The large folio edition took years to complete and was published serially until the entire canon was put together in 1498. It quickly became a benchmark of editorial standards requiring the assistance, redaction and proofing of Aldus’ in- house editing team.8
That the talent was there on the ground in Venice was possible due to the advance of the Ottoman Empire into Europe. Barolini writes of the sack of Constantinople in 1453 and the huge influx of Greeks who came into Italy as a consequence. Venice benefited from the presence of Greek scholars and Aldus happily brought them into his establishment to edit, set type, proof read, and even to contribute content to the enterprise. Where the humanist trend also included the proper sounding and pronunciation of classical texts, these Greek experts could instruct as well. As was the custom in those days, his editors, type compositors and other workers were all housed and fed under his roof. Erasmus was later invited to write and edit his Adagia as a sort of Artist- In-Residence. He incorporated his stay with Aldus with his travels in Italy, which were the essential part of any scholar’s education in the fifteenth century. He wrote later that staying and working at the Aldine Press left him intellectually sated but famished corporeally. Apparently, Aldus was cheap when it came to food. One such meal was vinegar soup capped by a stony cheese. Nevertheless, he reported that the place was lively and that levity, at least in the hours they weren’t working, amongst colleagues and with the Manucci children was commonplace. He describes writing his Adagia, trying to keep pace with press output of his own book, which he reported to be six folio pages a day, first proofed by Serafino, revised by himself, and then finally passing under the scrutiny of the editor/publisher himself. Aldus demurred to the notion of control over this process insisting that his final pass was part of his own education.
Erasmus became a member of the Aldine staff during his nine months stay in Venice, even earning twenty crowns for his work translating manuscripts of Plautus and Terence. His writings describe other members of the editorial/production team who were lights in their own right. Jerome Aleander, who shared a chamber with Erasmus was, at age 30, considered a great scholar, and went on to be a papal nuncio at Worms. Marcus Musurus became a professor of Greek at the University of Padua. Fra Urbano Bolzani assisted Erasmus in the preparation of his Adagia would became tutor to the children of Lorenzo de’Medici. John Lascaris had an encyclopedic knowledge of the classics and their commentators. His lectures in Venice drew crowds in later years. He became the French ambassador to the Republic of Florence. Battista Egnazio, considered a good friend by Erasmus, was sent by Venice as an ambassador to the court of Francis I.
And the manuscripts Aldus needed to seed his venture were there on the ground as well: Lowry informs us that Cardinal Bessarion donated over 800 Greek texts to the city of Venice that ended up in the Marciana Library. This trove was possibly the best source in Italy and surely was known to Aldus. Certainly Greek colleagues would have made that known to him. And the Merceria too was known to offer gems on the open market for those wily enough to avoid the tourist traps.
Such was the world that Aldus had made for himself where scholars, linguists, literary editors and typesetters toiled together in preparation, printing and proofing of books. Establishing authorial provenance and accuracy was their highest aim. The lofty aspect of his team paralleled his personal wish to make a truly Platonic Academy such that he even started referring to the press in colophons as in thermis Aldi Romani with allusions to the roman baths where scholarly discussions occurred. In these particular discussions only Greek was permitted to be spoken by the academics, with penalties paid by offenders. The Neaccademia only survived while Aldus lived, but became the model of an idealized publishing house when led by the right person.
Aldus’ love of the Greek canon started early in life where his early education afforded him the means to undertake a scholar’s life. While a student in Rome Aldus could bask in the revival of classical learning. For example, Pope Nicholas V, formerly the librarian for Cosimo de’Medici, was building up what would become the first Vatican library with thousands of antique codices in Greek and Latin. Rome in the middle of the fifteenth century enjoyed a golden age of learning as scholars flocked there to uncover the ancient glories that seemed all the more precious with the persistent existential threat of Ottoman Turks inching toward European population centers. Reading aloud and speaking Greek were habits inspired from his study of Petrarch. Likewise, rescuing ancient works in this language from the ravages of time, neglect and possibly the Turks became one of Aldus’ and Humanism’s driving motifs and deeply affected the aspirations of Aldus the student and eventually the businessman.
After Rome, he went to study in Ferrara, then a well-known as a center for learning Greek due to its deep base of Greek expatriates. He studied under Battista Guarini who also taught Isabella d’Este, daughter of Ferrara’s ruling family. By way of the Guarini connection Aldus came to be employed at the Pio Court in Carpi, a neighboring town of Ferrara where he was entrusted with the tutelage of two boys, one of whom, Alberto Pio, became his life-long friend and sometimes business associate. We learn from Barolini that Aldus spends the better part of a decade in Carpi. His relationship to his pupils and benefactors deepens to the point of exhibiting paternal feelings for his charges. He goes on to write his own grammar tailored to the instruction of children. One of the main tenants of his teaching to the boys was that instruction in Greek needed to accompany that of Latin. He notes that exemplary Romans such as Caesar and Cicero were able to quote and comment from these sources and that they provided the boys a suitable model to imitate. During his years at Carpi Aldus built up a cadre of friends, academics, fellow teachers and colleagues. He has a good life and could have remained in a comfortable position at court, had he chosen to stay.
Nevertheless, in the late 1480s, at 40 years of age, Aldus leaves the comforts of Carpi for Venice with a plan to start a printing press company. He will need time to find manuscripts to publish, presses to do the printing, types to make the pages, and above all, the funds to get the enterprise off to a start.
He would need contacts as well, and it appears in this area he is well served by his own former pupil, Alberto Pio and his family. Although the Pio’s never figure as actual profit-taking partners in the establishment of the press, their names can be found in various financial contexts through the years. Given their long personal acquaintance, and that their academic values were drawn from the same Humanist well, it is little wonder why they came to his aid in supporting the startup of his enterprise.
As mentioned before, Aldus started his venture with an initial association with Andrea Torresani, who had been established in his own in Venice since 1480, and before that as a journeyman under Nicholas Jenson. Jenson’s printing house merged with another competitor and eventually became known as “the company,” such was their clout and reputation. Torresani carried on the tradition and was particularly successful for books on the law, a tricky subset of the publishing universe that required a stable and patient capitalization only periodically rewarded by university clients. Barolini says that he was an instinctive businessman, not especially learned or cultured. Barolini goes on to suggest that Torresani’s business acumen was a good offset for Aldus’ scholarly bent. Perhaps it wasn’t until Alberto Pio underwrote the very first Greek book that Torresani saw that the Aldine quest had legs?
There was also a silent partner involved in the startup of the Aldine press whose identity is only learned through papers filed at the close of the business decades later. Davies informs us that Pierfrancesco Barbarigo, son and nephew of successive doges of Venice, put several thousand ducats into the business, sharing in due course, half the profits with Torresani and his junior partner Aldus. One can only reckon that such a partner would, in itself, advertise the legitimacy of a company and its ability to handle the interests of likewise big-time players. Further, this was a sign that scholarly publishing, like its manuscript-editing forbears, could find a foothold in the courts and courtrooms of the modern world of politics formed by the New Learning.
The business of printing of Greek in Venice lagged behind Milan and Rome before 1494. There was an opportunity to strike at the northern Italian universities and private schools that were beginning to flourish and who needed books. Another market would come from rich patrons who were exhibiting wealth through building palaces, stone bridges and other public works and who were, by now, eager to festoon their libraries with evidence of their embrace of the New Learning.
Conclusion
Aldus’ efforts to produce a perfect book never made him a rich man. But his lack of financial success never impeded him in trying over and over to get it right. At least that is the popular impression we have of him. And it is largely correct.
However, there is evidence that points to gaps of intellectual rigor in his acquisition of material. For example, Lowry floats the story of the Venetus A, a tenth century manuscript that is still our main source for the text of the Illiad. The Biblioteca Marciana housed the manuscript in Aldus’ time where one of its librarians was also one of the much esteemed editors working on his staff. How is it possible then that the version Aldus relies on came from a bookseller’s stall on the Merceria? In another instance Aldus claims authority on an autographed manuscript not sourced to the Marciana collection of three, one of which was corrected by the author.
In the realm of typography it is abundantly clear even to the untrained eye that the Aldino Italic is difficult to read over long stretches of body copy9. It was even more so when the same cursive is applied to Greek texts: wildly flowing ascenders and descenders flop across the line; other characters seep outwards horizontally; the system of breathings and diacriticals is awash in irregular placements literally numbering in the hundreds, all of which creates a visual cacophony and a fatiguing reading situation. Bean said that this lack of visual cohesion set back the appreciation of Greek text by 300 years.
Indeed humans are flawed beings and even the best exhibit lapses when scoured in fine detail. This appears to be the case with Aldus. Over twenty years his press put out about 132 editions, twenty-five of which were by living authors proving that he wasn’t solely interested in the glories of the past. The best-sellers such as Bembo’s Asolani and Erasmus’ Adagia are of this ilk. Of his beloved Greeks Aldus contributes thirty first editions. And if an actual page count is considered the Greeks far outnumber by a long shot any thing he ever printed. That his type fonts were and still are considered landmarks in the history of typography is uncontested. That his octavo format earnestly aimed to bring good works to regular people is likewise clear. That his books were thoughtfully designed and laid-out, again, reveals another truth. That he aspired to bring out intellectually honest documents, refined by the learned scholars is again worth of our praise. At the end of the day, the reason the name Aldus Manutius’ rings loud when we speak of printers is that he brought the science, literature and poetry of the ancient world forward to us more than 500 years ago in the form of a relatively untested medium. He could have stuck with law books and liturgy, but he wanted something else that corresponded to his own sensibilities. It was a master stroke then as it remains so now. The ancients did and still do have something to say to moderns despite the challenges of early modern printing and its detractors.
References
Anonymous. A New Greek Type. The Classical Review, Vol. 41, No. 1, Feb., 1927, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barolini, Helen. Aldus and his Dream Book. Ithaca, N.Y.: Ithaca Press, 1992.
Bean, Donald. Aldus Manutius and his Thesaurus Cornucopiae. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1958.
Burnhill, Peter. Type Spaces: In-house Norms in the Typography of Aldus Manutius. London: Hyphen Press, 2003.
Carter, Harry. A View of Early Typography up to About 1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Davies, Martin. Aldus Manutius : printer and publisher of Renaissance Venice. Malibu, Calif. : J. Paul Getty Museum, 1995.
Lowry, Martin. The world of Aldus Manutius : business and scholarship in Renaissance Venice. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979.
Tatham, Edward H. R. Erasmus in Italy. The English Historical Review, Vol. 10, No. 40 Oxford University Press, (Oct., 1895), pp. 642-662
Notes
1 Cicero Letters in Latin, Ferrara(?); Early 15th century
2 Divine proportions of type by Felice Feliciano
3 42-line Bible by Gutenberg
Type detail from 42-line Bible
4 Martial
5 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499
6 Epistole devotissime
7 Lascaris Grammar
Lascaris Grammar Detail @ 400% (from Burnhill)
8 Aristotle of 1498
9 Aldus’ Greek script
© 2012 Andy Hadel