Aldus Manutius

Before Manutius, there were fewer than ten Greek titles in print, most of which had to be imported from the Accursius Press of Milan.[22] Only four Italian towns were authorized to produce Greek publications: Milan, Venice, Vicenza, and Florence, and they only published works by Theocritus, Isocrates, and Homer.[4] Venice printer John Speyer produced Greek passages but required the minimal Greek letters to be left blank and later filled in by hand.[23]

Manutius desired to "inspire and refine his readers by inundating them with Greek."[24] He originally came to Venice because of its many Greek resources; Venice held Greek manuscripts from the time of Constantinople and was home to a large cluster of Greek scholars who travelled there from Crete. Venice was also where Cardinal Bessarion, in 1468, donated his large Greek manuscript collection.[25] To preserve ancient Greek literature, the Aldine Press commissioned a typeface based on classical Greek manuscripts so that readers could experience the original Greek text more authentically.[26]

While publishing Greek manuscripts, Manutius founded the New Academy, a group of Hellenist scholars, in 1502 to promote Greek studies. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition writes that the New Academy's "rules were written in Greek, its members spoke Greek, their names were Hellenized, and their official titles were Greek."[21] Members of the New Academy included Desiderius Erasmus, Pietro Bembo, and Scipio Fortiguerra. M.J.C. Lowry, a lecturer in history at the University of Warwick, has a different view, regarding the New Academy as a hopeful dream rather than an organized institute.[27]

Manutius spoke Greek in his household and employed thirty Greek speakers at the Aldine Press. Greek speakers from Crete prepared and proofed manuscripts and their calligraphy was a model for the casts used for Greek type. Instructions for typesetters and binders were written in Greek, and the prefaces to Manutius's editions were also in Greek. Manutius printed editions of Hero and Leander by Musaeus Grammaticus, the Galeomyomachia, and the Greek Psalter. He called these "Precursors of the Greek Library" because they served as guides to the Greek language.[4] Under Manutius's supervision, the Aldine Press published 75 texts by Classical Greek and Byzantine authors.[18]

Along with Greek classics, the Aldine Press published Latin and Italian authors.[4] Manutius launched Pietro Bembo's career as a writer by publishing De Aetna in 1496,[28] which was the Aldine Press's first Latin publication by a contemporary author.[29] The Bembo family hired the Aldine Press to produce accurate texts of Dante and Petrarch using Bernardo Bembo's personal manuscript collection. Pietro Bembo worked with Manutius from 1501 to 1502 to provide an accurate edition of Dante and Petrarch and also introduced punctuation.[28] Bembo later made a diagram of sins to illustrate the 1515 Aldine edition of Dante.[30]

Manutius did not hold the same power of innovation over Latin classics as with Greek classics because the publication of these works started 30 years before his time. To promote the Aldine editions in Latin, Manutius promoted the quality of his publications through his prefaces.[31] Manutius was on the lookout for rare manuscripts, but often found instead missing parts of previously published works. Cuspinianus let Manutius publish the missing parts of Valerius Maximus's work, which Cuspinianus "had found in a manuscript in Vienna."[31] Francesco Negri let Manutius publish the missing text of Julius Firmicus, which Negri found in Romania, and "a manuscript from Britain made an improved edition of Prudentius possible."[31]

The press printed first editions of Poliziano's collected works, Pietro Bembo's Asolani, Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and Dante's Divine Comedy. The 1501 publication of Virgil introduced the use of italic print and was produced in higher-than-normal print runs (1,000 rather than the usual 200 to 500 copies).[32][33]

Imprint of Aldus Manutius, in Bembo, Gli Asolani

Manutius adopted the image of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor as his publisher's device in June 1502.[34] The dolphin-and-anchor symbol is associated with the phrase festina lente, meaning "make haste slowly," indicating quickness combined with firmness in the execution of a great scheme. The symbol and phrase were taken from a Roman coin minted during Emperor Vespasian's reign that was given to Manutius by Pietro Bembo.[35]

Manutius's editions of the classics were so highly respected that the dolphin-and-anchor device was almost immediately pirated by French and Italian publishers. Many modern organizations use the image of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor.[36] The device has been used by the nineteenth-century London firm of William Pickering, and by Doubleday. The international honour society for library and information science, Beta Phi Mu, uses the dolphin and anchor as its insignia.[37]

Manutius described his new format of books as "libelli portatiles in formam enchiridii" ("portable small books in the form of a manual").[38] Enchiridion, described in A Legacy More Lasting than Bronze, also refers to a handheld weapon, a hint that Aldus intended the books in his Portable Library to be the weapons of scholars.[38][39] It was for these pocket-sized classics Aldus designed the italic font.[40]

Manutius converted to the smaller format in 1501 with the publication of Virgil.[41] As time went on, Manutius self-advertised his portable format through the dedication pages he published.[42]

Many scholars consider the development of the portable book as Manutius's most celebrated contribution to printing and publishing. These mobile books were the first known appearance of an editio minor, a straightforward text.[43] During the 15th century, books were often chained to a reading platform to protect valuable property, requiring the reader to stay stationary.[44] Publishers often added commentary to their published classics. Thus, pages became overloaded with scholarship and serious material which produced a large book that was difficult to transport. The Aldine Press removed these inconveniences; Manutius's books were "published without commentary and in smaller sizes, usually octavos of five by eight or four by six inches."[42] His famous octavo editions are often regarded as the first prototype of the mass-market paperback.[45]

The octavos were moderately priced considering the known average salaries of the time, but they were not cheap. Manutius priced his Latin octavos at 30 soldi, which was a fourth of a ducat. His Greek octavos were double the price at 60 soldi. For context, a master mason would earn about 50 soldi a day to make between 50 and 100 ducats a year.[46]

A page from Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, an illustrated book printed by Aldus Manutius

The John Rylands Library copy of the Aldine Vergil of 1501, printed on vellum and hand-coloured

Everyday handwriting in Venice was in cursive, but at the time, printed works imitated formal manuscript hands, either blackletter or the humanistic littera antica. Manutius commissioned typefaces designed to look like the handwriting of humanists both in Latin and Greek in order to uphold the manuscript tradition.[47][48] In the New Aldine Studies, Harry George Fletcher III, Pierpont Morgan Library's curator for printed books and bindings, writes that Manutius intended "to make available in type a face comfortable for its readers" with the cursive typeface.[49]

Manutius commissioned the punchcutter Francesco Griffo of Bologna to create the new typeface. The handwriting reproduced for the many Aldine Press typefaces is a topic of conflicting opinions by scholars; Symonds (1911) suggests Petrarch's handwriting,[4] while the New Aldine Studies presumes the handwriting of scribes Pomponio Leto and Bartolomeo Sanvito was the inspiration for the typeface.[50] Other scholars believe the first Greek typeface was derived from the handwriting of Immanuel Rhusotas, another scribe during the time of Manutius.[51] The Aldine Press commissioned the first Greek script designed "with accents and letters cast separately and combined by the compositor."[51] The typeface was first used in publishing Erotemata by Constantine Lascaris in 1495. The Roman typeface was finished later the same year and Pietro Bembo's De Aetna was the first book published in the new Roman script.[52]

Manutius and Griffo's original typeface is the first known model of italic type and was used by Manutius until 1501.[53] Five italic words were printed in St. Catherine of Siena in 1500 and in 1501 an Opera by Virgil was the first completed book in italic type.[54] [55] A falling out between Manutius and Griffo brought Griffo to leave and supply other publishers with the italic type originally commissioned by the Aldine Press. Griffo only made one set of punches for the Aldine Press, which were used until 1559. Griffo's original italic type did not include capital letters, so many of the Aldine Press publications forwent capital letters.[56]

The 1502 publication of the Metamorphoses included Manutius's privilege from the Doge of Venice indicating that any use or imitation of Manutius's Greek and Italic typefaces was forbidden.[57] Despite trying to have the typeface protected legally, Manutius could not stop printers outside of Venice from using his work, which led to the typeface's popularity outside of Italy.[58]

As the Aldine Press grew in popularity, Aldine counterfeits also increased. Manutius acquired privileges for his printing press from the Venetian Senate, specifically, for "his types, his pioneering octavo format, and even individual texts."[59] Pope Alexander VI in 1502 and Pope Julius II in 1514 granted Manutius printing privileges from the papacy.[60] This did not stop Aldine Press counterfeits, as there was little penalty for piracy at the time.[61]

Manutius attempted to discourage piracy with blunt warnings at the end of his publications, as in Sylvarum libri quinque, by Publius Papinius Statius, where he warned "no one is allowed to print this without penalty."[62] In the Bibliothèque du Roi on 16 March 1503, Manutius tried to warn off those who plagiarized his content, "it happens that in the city of Lyon our books appeared under my name, but full of errors... and deceived unwary buyers due to the similarity of typography and format....Furthermore, the paper is of poor quality and has a heavy odour, and the typography, if you examine it closely, exudes a sort of (as one might phrase it) 'Frenchiness'." He described the counterfeit's typographical errors in detail so that readers might distinguish a real Aldine from a fake. In spite of his efforts, the Lyonese printers were quick to use Manutius's critique to improve their counterfeits.[61]

Before the printing press and during the Italian Renaissance, illuminated manuscripts were individually created by a credited artist. When print publishing became popular, woodcuts were used to mass-illuminate works. The woodcuts were often reused in several editions, thereby decreasing their value. These woodcuts soon came to Venice and were viewed as part of the "new humanist manuscript."[63] The woodcut images "included aspects of both continuity and discontinuity that involved the activity of Manutius, who was called upon to wholly explicate the new potential of the printed book and deal with the crisis of the illumination."[64] Many of the Aldine Press's publications contained illumination, but Manutius let patrons decide the illumination details while he worked to translate and publish.[65]

Prefatory letters, popular in first editions of Latin works years before, were also common for Aldine editions.[66] Manutius used the Aldine editions to ask scholarly questions and provide information for his readers. In the preface of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1502), he argues that Heroides 17, 19, and 21 (the letters of Helen, Hero, and Cudippe, respectively) were the work of the poet Sabinus, whom Ovid refers to as Amores. In another preface Manutius explains how a sundial works.[67]

The Aldine Press produced more than 100 editions from 1495 to 1505. The majority were Greek classics, but many notable Latin and Italian works were published as well.[77]

Erasmus was impressed by Manutius; "in a long passage he extols the 'tireless efforts' of Manutius in restoring ancient learning, truly 'a Herculean task,' and he announces that 'Aldus is building up a library which has no other limits than the world itself'."[15]

The Palazzo dei Pio chapel in Carpi has a painted mural that includes Aldus Manutius along with Alberto and Leonello Pio.[78] In Bassiano, Manutius's birthplace, a monument was erected to commemorate the 450th year since Manutius's death. The inscription is Manutius's own words: "for the abundance of good books which, we hope, will finally put to flight all ignorance."[79]

The quality and popularity of Manutius's work made it more expensive in the 20th century than others published around the same time. In 1991, Martin Lowry found that an auction in New York took place where "initial prices of $6,000 – $8,000 and $8,000 – $12,000 were quotes on copies of Decor Puellarum and Aulus Gellius in Jenson's editions: Aldus' Hypnerotomachia Polifili started at $25,000 – $30,000."[80]

• Manutius's name is the inspiration for Progetto Manuzio, an Italian free text project similar to Project Gutenberg.[81]
• A typeface created by Hermann Zapf was named after Aldus Manutius and dedicated to his memory.[82]
• The novel Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan features a fictionalized version of Aldus Manutius, as well as a fictional secret society devoted to him. One of the novel's characters, Griffo Gerritszoon, designs a fictitious font called "Gerritszoon" that is preinstalled on every Mac, in allusion to Manutius's associate Francesco Griffo, the designer of italic type. The Aldine Press' motto festina lente is used as the name of the fictional corporation that owns and markets the "Gerritszoon" font.[83]
• The Aldus Corporation, a software company founded in Seattle in 1985 known for PageMaker and FreeHand, was named after Manutius and used his profile as part of their company logo. Aldus was purchased by Adobe Systems in 1994.[84]
• The Aldus Journal of Translation, a publication from Brown University, is named after Aldus Manutius.[85]
• The book John Henry Nash: The Aldus of San Francisco relates John Nash to Aldus Manutius and San Francisco to Venice.[86]
• "Manuzio" ("Manutius" in the English translation) is the name of a vanity publisher in Umberto Eco's 1988 novel Foucault's Pendulum.[87]

Greek editions published during Manutius's lifetime:[88]

Partial list of Latin editions published during his lifetime:[89]

Partial list of Humanist authors translated and published by the Aldine Press under Manutius's supervision:[89]

For substantial collections of Aldus Manutius's publications, see Aldine Press Collections.