{"data":{"allMarkdownRemark":{"edges":[{"node":{"html":"

I have been navigating the Humanism For Sale website for about a week. It took me a little while to get used to the format, but now I really like the way it works. It's a very different experience than reading a book. I find it easier to get an idea of the content as a whole, most likely because it's so easy to go between chapters, much easier than flipping pages.

","excerpt":"I have been navigating the Humanism For Sale website for about a week. It took me a little while to get used to the format, but now I really like the way it works. It's a very different experience than reading a book. I find it easier to get an idea…","frontmatter":{"id":7,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"barrym","date":"2008-12-08 13:41:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Substantial portions of this chapter are now to be found in print, in Italian, in Bibliologia 3 (2008): 35-53.

","excerpt":"Substantial portions of this chapter are now to be found in print, in Italian, in Bibliologia 3 (2008): 35-53.","frontmatter":{"id":9,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":244,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2008-12-08 17:01:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An important new contribution to the evidence available is Annemarieke Willemsen, Back to the Schoolyard, Brepols, 2008, which presents a broad range of physical evidence (archaeological to artistic) for the architecture, implements, and practice of medieval and early Renaissance classrooms. It is lavishly illustrated.

","excerpt":"An important new contribution to the evidence available is Annemarieke Willemsen, Back to the Schoolyard, Brepols, 2008, which presents a broad range of physical evidence (archaeological to artistic) for the architecture, implements, and practice of…","frontmatter":{"id":11,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2008-12-09 08:20:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As the complicated note 2 below suggests, the question of reading first in Latin or in the vernacular is still debated by scholars. I would be interested in the opinions of readers of Humanism For Sale on the topic.

","excerpt":"As the complicated note 2 below suggests, the question of reading first in Latin or in the vernacular is still debated by scholars. I would be interested in the opinions of readers of Humanism For Sale on the topic.","frontmatter":{"id":12,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":138,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2008-12-09 08:27:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A good example for this on the field of poetry is Iacobus Piso, Schedia, no. 1. De suo libello.

\n

\\t\\tSi quis habet nostrum cerdo caupoue libellum,

\n

\\t\\t\\tSic vendat patiar, ut neget esse meum.

\n

\\t\\tIrritare tamen si vult emptoris alutam,

\n

\\t\\t\\tNequicias satis est dicere vendo novas.

\n

Analecta nova ad historiam renascentium in Hungaria litterarum spectantia, iusu Academiae Scientiae Hungaricae ex scriptis ab Eugenio ABEL relictis cum commentariis edidit partimque auxit Stephanus HEGEDÜS, Budapestini, Hornyánszky, 1903, 408.

","excerpt":"A good example for this on the field of poetry is Iacobus Piso, Schedia, no. 1. De suo libello. \\t\\tSi quis habet nostrum cerdo caupoue libellum, \\t\\t\\tSic vendat patiar, ut neget esse meum. \\t\\tIrritare tamen si vult emptoris alutam, \\t\\t\\tNequicias…","frontmatter":{"id":13,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"Laszlo","date":"2008-12-15 15:29:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

While looking at the emblems on the footnoted website did not add much to my understanding of emblem 126 (lioness/boar/vulture), emblem 6 (whore of Babylon), or emblem 110 (wingless Cupid), seeing emblem 16 (floating hand) did make a difference. The description alone did not work by itself to explain how the strange quality of the picture served as a memory device.

","excerpt":"While looking at the emblems on the footnoted website did not add much to my understanding of emblem 126 (lioness/boar/vulture), emblem 6 (whore of Babylon), or emblem 110 (wingless Cupid), seeing emblem 16 (floating hand) did make a difference. The…","frontmatter":{"id":14,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"barrym","date":"2008-12-29 15:52:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

very touching and beautiful piece of work

","excerpt":"very touching and beautiful piece of work","frontmatter":{"id":16,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-01-17 14:19:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I would much rather have the title of works given also in the original language.

","excerpt":"I would much rather have the title of works given also in the original language.","frontmatter":{"id":18,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":35,"author":"David Lines","date":"2009-01-24 09:46:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The book's discussion of textbooks might benefit, at some point, from the essays in the volume Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe (Droz, 2008).

","excerpt":"The book's discussion of textbooks might benefit, at some point, from the essays in the volume Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe (Droz, 2008).","frontmatter":{"id":19,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":41,"author":"David Lines","date":"2009-01-24 09:55:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, David. The present practice is a relict of the paper manuscript, in which you would have easily been able to flip back to the bibliography for the original titles. Right now you need to consult the on-line bibliography at: www.humanismforsale.org/bibliography.pdf

\n

If this proves too cumbersome for many readers, we may have to provide hot links.

","excerpt":"Thanks, David. The present practice is a relict of the paper manuscript, in which you would have easily been able to flip back to the bibliography for the original titles. Right now you need to consult the on-line bibliography at: www.humanismforsale…","frontmatter":{"id":20,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":35,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-01-24 15:07:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I find the breaking up of the chapters into small bubbles serves to fragment the concepts. I find myself constantly stopping to scroll back up to begin the next section when I want simply to read on, to move from section to section.In this way I lose the flow and continuity of the chapter. Why all these short sections? These would be perfect for museum wall texts moving us nicely from exhibit to exhibit. But for the continuous narrative or exposition of a book the sections interrupt and irk, I find.

","excerpt":"I find the breaking up of the chapters into small bubbles serves to fragment the concepts. I find myself constantly stopping to scroll back up to begin the next section when I want simply to read on, to move from section to section.In this way I lose…","frontmatter":{"id":21,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-02-02 04:56:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

These printed commentary pages are very beautiful. Dense and full and provoking to my eye.

","excerpt":"These printed commentary pages are very beautiful. Dense and full and provoking to my eye.","frontmatter":{"id":22,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":94,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-02-09 15:27:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Again this is provocative and exceptionally intriguing. The little worms at the gutter edge on the verso and the fore edge on the recto are wonderful. On previous illustration, the worms are similarly delicious. The ones on this page stand out more vividly.

","excerpt":"Again this is provocative and exceptionally intriguing. The little worms at the gutter edge on the verso and the fore edge on the recto are wonderful. On previous illustration, the worms are similarly delicious. The ones on this page stand out more…","frontmatter":{"id":23,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":94,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-02-09 15:30:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, the Devil are is the generalizations!

","excerpt":"Yes, the Devil are is the generalizations!","frontmatter":{"id":24,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-02-09 15:32:29"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Need lots of pictures of such errors.

\n

The Devil at work, alive and well.

","excerpt":"Need lots of pictures of such errors. The Devil at work, alive and well.","frontmatter":{"id":25,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":207,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-02-09 15:35:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Amen.

","excerpt":"Amen.","frontmatter":{"id":26,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":394,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-02-09 15:50:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

And want more pictures. Especially the printers' errors.

","excerpt":"And want more pictures. Especially the printers' errors.","frontmatter":{"id":27,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":394,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-02-09 15:51:42"}}},{"node":{"html":"

latinitas should be translated \"latinity\"

\n

or \"a pure Latin style\" (Lewis and

\n

Short).

","excerpt":"latinitas should be translated \"latinity\" or \"a pure Latin style\" (Lewis and Short).","frontmatter":{"id":28,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-02-12 12:19:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi Paul,

\n

Just to add to your argument about the popularity of Bossi's grammar in Milan. I've recently located a stationer's shop from that city (ASM, notarile, 4 March 1613, f. 24498) in which the presence of Bossi is particularly striking. The inventory lists 70 dozen (840 copies) \"regole Bosso\" with a wholesale price of just under 2 soldi/copy. Alvares' grammar (\"emanuel\") appears on the list too, but only in 12 copies, each listed at 16 soldi/copy.

\n

Also recorded in quantity and variety are donati (\"al sena\"; \"al vocaboli\") and the regola of Guarino (in one case combined with the donato). Like Bossi's work, these are described as being sold in bundles of 12 (dozzina)** and priced as such. Wholesale prices fall in a narrow range, from 1 soldo for the cheapest donato (printed on 4 1/2 sheets) to just under 3 soldi for a text combining the regola and donato.

\n

All of this is strong evidence to support your claim of the continuing market for very conservative grammars well into the seventeenth century.

\n

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post_28_comment_129.md post_28_comment_130.md post_28_comment_570.md post_28_comment_647.md post_28_comment_90.md post_290_comment_533.md post_292_comment_538.md post_292_comment_576.md post_294_comment_288.md post_294_comment_642.md post_296_comment_247.md post_296_comment_500.md post_296_comment_503.md post_296_comment_534.md post_298_comment_578.md post_302_comment_278.md post_302_comment_313.md post_302_comment_314.md post_302_comment_336.md post_302_comment_340.md post_311_comment_29.md post_31_comment_362.md post_31_comment_366.md post_31_comment_375.md post_31_comment_476.md post_31_comment_478.md post_31_comment_91.md I would like to know why such grammars (as well as thin devotionals and slight works of hagiography) were sold and priced by the dozen. Anyone have any ideas about this?

","excerpt":"Hi Paul, Just to add to your argument about the popularity of Bossi's grammar in Milan. I've recently located a stationer's shop from that city (ASM, notarile, 4 March 1613, f. 24498) in which the presence of Bossi is particularly striking. The…","frontmatter":{"id":29,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":311,"author":"kevin stevens","date":"2009-02-12 15:46:07"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Fascinating. On-demand custom printing was not invented in the 1990s. In fact, there will be a curve away from customizability as industrialization increases: the page makeup processes get more specialized, presses become larger and faster, and the distance from man to work increases. Now we have a curve back toward the personalization. But the system is so complex now that teachers still can't customize very well. What most teachers do for customization is photocopying.

","excerpt":"Fascinating. On-demand custom printing was not invented in the 1990s. In fact, there will be a curve away from customizability as industrialization increases: the page makeup processes get more specialized, presses become larger and faster, and the…","frontmatter":{"id":30,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"pzelchenko","date":"2009-02-13 23:28:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Paul, I've been trying to sort out my frustrations about CommentPress. (There's also a competing product called Diigo that I was comparing a couple of months ago.) I think the problem lies not necessarily in the products themselves, but possibly in the fact that works like yours are really already so practically comprehensive and complete that it seems almost a little late for individuals to interact with them.

\n

If I were to get into this book (actually, I can't wait to delve into the stuff on Erasmus!), I would need to set aside a significant amount of time -- at my desktop computer. But the product is so well constructed already that it actually merits being locked up and printed so that I can read it in a comfortable chair! I also find myself looking for structure, illustrations, and so on, and being disappointed.

\n

I don't know if it's my old-fashioned \"book\" mind that craves the staticity and controlled nature of a printed and bound product (would a younger, more postmodern reader prefer this format?) or if there is something objectively qualitative about a \"ludic reading\" experience (cf. Sven Birkerts) that calls for being away from the depths of the machine and precludes too much interaction.

\n

Every discussion like this first calls to mind talmudist concentric marginalia and then the joyous \"conversation\" of scribbling notes in the margins of our own books. Maybe I just need to find more quiet time and space to be able to read these works carefully. I just went through the Rime of the Ancient Mariner online and I was fidgeting for half of it!

","excerpt":"Paul, I've been trying to sort out my frustrations about CommentPress. (There's also a competing product called Diigo that I was comparing a couple of months ago.) I think the problem lies not necessarily in the products themselves, but possibly in…","frontmatter":{"id":31,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"pzelchenko","date":"2009-02-14 21:42:42"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks to both of you for your comments on usability. I think there is a problem for some readers when a long text with an extended argument is broken up into short bits. (See Diana Robin's comment on the next section --took her just two posts to get frustrated). I hope better indexing will help this in future.

","excerpt":"Thanks to both of you for your comments on usability. I think there is a problem for some readers when a long text with an extended argument is broken up into short bits. (See Diana Robin's comment on the next section --took her just two posts to get…","frontmatter":{"id":32,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-02-16 06:48:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The best single source on Mancinelli is now Lazzari 2005, which I have only recently seen. A good list of works and editions is to be found on pp. 63-70.

","excerpt":"The best single source on Mancinelli is now Lazzari 2005, which I have only recently seen. A good list of works and editions is to be found on pp. 63-70.","frontmatter":{"id":34,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":201,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-02-24 14:27:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Mancinelli's prefaces and dedications, see now the essay in Lazzari 2005, 107-112.

","excerpt":"On Mancinelli's prefaces and dedications, see now the essay in Lazzari 2005, 107-112.","frontmatter":{"id":35,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-02-24 14:30:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Reading this chapter again, I am struck by the breadth of the vernacular reading curriculum. You do a great job of highlighting the considerable variety of texts (commercial/arithmetic, musical, how-to, religious, etc.) available to readers. I am thinking you could (should!) add a section here, something like \"Sanctity in the Classroom.\" Religious educators such as Carlo Borromeo and Silvio Antoniano (in Milan) considered saint's lives to be important aids in moral instruction in both the catechism and vernacular schools. (see Turchini, 1996). Numerous examples of such inexpensive texts (octavos, 8-32 pp.) survive in Italian libraries. A sustained and extensive study of these booklets could yield interesting information about ownership, usage, and reading habits. Great job, Paul.

","excerpt":"Reading this chapter again, I am struck by the breadth of the vernacular reading curriculum. You do a great job of highlighting the considerable variety of texts (commercial/arithmetic, musical, how-to, religious, etc.) available to readers. I am…","frontmatter":{"id":36,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":343,"author":"kevin stevens","date":"2009-03-09 11:07:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for this note, Kev. There is certainly more work to do on \"santini\" and other pious booklets in the classroom. They straddle the boundary between what is usually thought of as \"just\" popular reading and instructional materials properly speaking (i.e. without entertainment or private reading value.) As you say, it would require examination of many copies to find those that clearly were used in schools.

","excerpt":"Thanks for this note, Kev. There is certainly more work to do on \"santini\" and other pious booklets in the classroom. They straddle the boundary between what is usually thought of as \"just\" popular reading and instructional materials properly…","frontmatter":{"id":37,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":343,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-03-10 13:22:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The idea of \"retailing commonplace thoughts\" gives a whole new slant to the notion of \"intellectual property,\" since things bought and sold (even ineffable things) do amount to property. (Indeed, when such things go into print, they cease being ineffable.) What's interesting in this Renaissance context, though, is that private ownership of the property is not prized. Commonplaces are \"common\" property whose value lies precisely in their commonness, and the student/teacher/orator establishes his (or her) worth by demonstrating command of the common stock of wisdom (which might be \"ownership\" of a different sort). This whole attitude toward a commonly-held \"intellectual property\" obviously speaks to a different conception of selfhood in the Renaissance, to different conceptions of ownership (one wonders how this might be reflected in legal documents), and (obviously) to different conceptions of the author/artist. I think the whole notion of the wholesaling/retailing of classical culture is very fruitful and provocative.

","excerpt":"The idea of \"retailing commonplace thoughts\" gives a whole new slant to the notion of \"intellectual property,\" since things bought and sold (even ineffable things) do amount to property. (Indeed, when such things go into print, they cease being…","frontmatter":{"id":38,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":396,"author":"zsschiff","date":"2009-03-13 08:19:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"Harder to imagine that so ancient

\n

and minor a text [as Terence] would

\n

provide useful specimens...\" \"Minor\"?

\n

No text could be more thoroughly

\n

canonical and major-league among

\n

classical texts than Terence.

","excerpt":"\"Harder to imagine that so ancient and minor a text [as Terence] would provide useful specimens...\" \"Minor\"? No text could be more thoroughly canonical and major-league among classical texts than Terence.","frontmatter":{"id":39,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":84,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-15 14:49:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I don't see that these textbooks --

\n

Latin grammars for school boys --

\n

can be classified as philology, the

\n

advanced study of all aspects of

\n

a language or languages. What

\n

you are talking about selling is

\n

something much more mechanical

\n

and elementary.

","excerpt":"I don't see that these textbooks -- Latin grammars for school boys -- can be classified as philology, the advanced study of all aspects of a language or languages. What you are talking about selling is something much more mechanical and elementary.","frontmatter":{"id":40,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":104,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-15 15:04:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Suddenly we reading about geography

\n

books. I missed the connection to

\n

Latin grammar texts. Did you prepare

\n

us for this transition earlier? Could you

\n

give us perhaps in the introduction to

\n

the book a sense of why you

\n

planned to include geography other

\n

than that such books were also

\n

published in Latin?

","excerpt":"Suddenly we reading about geography books. I missed the connection to Latin grammar texts. Did you prepare us for this transition earlier? Could you give us perhaps in the introduction to the book a sense of why you planned to include geography other…","frontmatter":{"id":41,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":270,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-15 15:12:46"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Same comment I made about the

\n

sudden discussion of geography

\n

text books. Are we prepared for your

\n

discussion of arithmetic, music and

\n

other \"skills\"? Vernacular literacy?

\n

Textbooks that teach double-entry

\n

accounting in a book titled

\n

\"Selling Humanism\" seems

\n

incongruous. I'm waiting for you to establish the connection between \"humanism\"

\n

and vernacular school subjects.

\n

(I think the term \"humanism\" should

\n

be defined in your Introduction to the

\n

book.)

\n

\"How To Do Stuff\" I would drop from

\n

the chapter title.

","excerpt":"Same comment I made about the sudden discussion of geography text books. Are we prepared for your discussion of arithmetic, music and other \"skills\"? Vernacular literacy? Textbooks that teach double-entry accounting in a book titled \"Selling Humanism…","frontmatter":{"id":42,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":319,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-15 15:24:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I very much like your conclusion to this

\n

chapter. It pulls everything together

\n

so well. In fact the books --

\n

textbooks for a number of different

\n

disciplines -- you've been talking

\n

about do evince a new mentalite:

\n

an interest, as you say, in self-help

\n

or how-to manuals and a new valuing

\n

of the quantitative arts and sciences.

\n

The trend, as you note, is toward the

\n

conquering nature and the

\n

privileging of quantification. Have you

\n

included these important conclusions

\n

in the Intro to the book?

","excerpt":"I very much like your conclusion to this chapter. It pulls everything together so well. In fact the books -- textbooks for a number of different disciplines -- you've been talking about do evince a new mentalite: an interest, as you say, in self-help…","frontmatter":{"id":43,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":359,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-15 15:39:42"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This chapter is my favorite. I will return

\n

later with comments.

","excerpt":"This chapter is my favorite. I will return later with comments.","frontmatter":{"id":45,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":361,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-15 15:57:00"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, Susan. Since your comment above we have added four pics to this section. Hope they clarify the devil's work.

","excerpt":"Thanks, Susan. Since your comment above we have added four pics to this section. Hope they clarify the devil's work.","frontmatter":{"id":46,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":207,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-03-16 16:08:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This my favorite chapter. I learned so

\n

much about the culture of

\n

sixteenth-century printing and, above

\n

all, about the role analogy plays in

\n

pedagogical theory and practice.

","excerpt":"This my favorite chapter. I learned so much about the culture of sixteenth-century printing and, above all, about the role analogy plays in pedagogical theory and practice.","frontmatter":{"id":47,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":363,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 03:59:04"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You also make it clear that emblems

\n

were an important tool in the cultivation

\n

of philosophical thinking.

","excerpt":"You also make it clear that emblems were an important tool in the cultivation of philosophical thinking.","frontmatter":{"id":48,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":363,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:03:07"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Here you invite your reader to enter

\n

into the process of emblem reading

\n

and 16th-century puzzle solving.

\n

Wonderful!

","excerpt":"Here you invite your reader to enter into the process of emblem reading and 16th-century puzzle solving. Wonderful!","frontmatter":{"id":49,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:06:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The images of emblems are

\n

beautiful and evocative encouraging

\n

your present-day readers to

\n

participate in the interpretive process

\n

and to become active readers of

\n

your text.

","excerpt":"The images of emblems are beautiful and evocative encouraging your present-day readers to participate in the interpretive process and to become active readers of your text.","frontmatter":{"id":50,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":369,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:09:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The connection between Latin

\n

pedagogy and emblem reading

\n

as playful puzzle solving is

\n

fascinating.

","excerpt":"The connection between Latin pedagogy and emblem reading as playful puzzle solving is fascinating.","frontmatter":{"id":51,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:12:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Again, Paul, you've packed so much

\n

information into your discussion here

\n

that you've opened up a whole new line

\n

of inquiry for me not only about

\n

humanist pedagogy but about

\n

humanist reading.

","excerpt":"Again, Paul, you've packed so much information into your discussion here that you've opened up a whole new line of inquiry for me not only about humanist pedagogy but about humanist reading.","frontmatter":{"id":52,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:18:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

So emblems were also important

\n

tools for communicating across

\n

borders in Europe. Emblems served

\n

as connectors among, say, French,

\n

British, and Italian readers -- and

\n

printers (who as you point out had

\n

the final say on which emblems were

\n

to be used in the production of a text.)

","excerpt":"So emblems were also important tools for communicating across borders in Europe. Emblems served as connectors among, say, French, British, and Italian readers -- and printers (who as you point out had the final say on which emblems were to be used in…","frontmatter":{"id":53,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:25:07"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is very interesting: emblems used

\n

as hallmarks of quality, but ones that

\n

had to be evaluated by the early

\n

modern reader and not taken for

\n

granted as such. This seems very modern

\n

as you say.

","excerpt":"This is very interesting: emblems used as hallmarks of quality, but ones that had to be evaluated by the early modern reader and not taken for granted as such. This seems very modern as you say.","frontmatter":{"id":54,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":377,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:30:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Excellent chapter, every paragraph

\n

of it. And all of this chapter raises

\n

so many questions about the way

\n

modern publishing works for us

\n

readers - for us students!

","excerpt":"Excellent chapter, every paragraph of it. And all of this chapter raises so many questions about the way modern publishing works for us readers - for us students!","frontmatter":{"id":55,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":392,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:33:46"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Re .03. I think it is much too sweeping a generalization to say that a hallmark of

\n

humanist thought was the use of

\n

commonplaces. A hallmark of

\n

humanist pedagogy yes. But of

\n

humanist thought, no. To say this

\n

would be to suggest that humanism

\n

(the rediscovery, cultivation, and

\n

preservation of the once lost thought

\n

and literature of Greece and Rome)

\n

itself consisted in, or could be

\n

boiled down into, slogans.

","excerpt":"Re .03. I think it is much too sweeping a generalization to say that a hallmark of humanist thought was the use of commonplaces. A hallmark of humanist pedagogy yes. But of humanist thought, no. To say this would be to suggest that humanism (the…","frontmatter":{"id":56,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":396,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 04:44:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Re.03. The identification of humanism

\n

and the humanist movement in early

\n

modern Europe with elementary

\n

Latin pedagogy in its commercial

\n

forms trivializes humanism. Yes, there

\n

is always a connection between

\n

education and its commercial uses

\n

and value. But, again, a distinction

\n

needs to be made between the

\n

philosophy of humanism as a world

\n

view, on the one hand, and one of its

\n

most rudimentary components:

\n

i.e. the teaching of Latin grammar

\n

and its transmission via little sayings supposely culled from Latin authors.

\n

Yes, elementary Latin grammar was

\n

sold -- and sold successfully -- as

\n

you have shown. But I find

\n

it confusing and reductive to identify

\n

humanism with the teaching of the

\n

mechanics of one language.

","excerpt":"Re.03. The identification of humanism and the humanist movement in early modern Europe with elementary Latin pedagogy in its commercial forms trivializes humanism. Yes, there is always a connection between education and its commercial uses and value…","frontmatter":{"id":57,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":396,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 05:13:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good conclusion. I like the disavowals

\n

and qualifications in this concluding

\n

section. These modify some of the

\n

sweeping statements

\n

you make earlier which sometimes

\n

appear to equate textbook

\n

pedagogy and the teaching of

\n

elementary Latin with Renaissance

\n

humanism. Should you make the

\n

distinction clearer in your introduction to the book? Just a question.

","excerpt":"Good conclusion. I like the disavowals and qualifications in this concluding section. These modify some of the sweeping statements you make earlier which sometimes appear to equate textbook pedagogy and the teaching of elementary Latin with…","frontmatter":{"id":58,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":402,"author":"dianarobin","date":"2009-03-17 05:30:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

magnifico libro! un libro che mancava sulla storia delle grammatiche come prodotti tipografici. Mi sembra che nessun aspetto dei libri per la scuola nell'eta' della 'print culture' sia stato trascurato... spero pero' di poterlo leggere su carta, perche' la lettura su blog mi risulta troppo frammentaria (e non lo posso portare in treno...)

","excerpt":"magnifico libro! un libro che mancava sulla storia delle grammatiche come prodotti tipografici. Mi sembra che nessun aspetto dei libri per la scuola nell'eta' della 'print culture' sia stato trascurato... spero pero' di poterlo leggere su carta…","frontmatter":{"id":59,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":394,"author":"AngelaNuovo","date":"2009-03-20 03:35:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Additional support for teaching by personal demonstration can be found in a 16th-century Italian calligraphic diary in the Houghton. The author mentions Arrighi's writing school in Rome. I can hunt down the call number if you like.

","excerpt":"Additional support for teaching by personal demonstration can be found in a 16th-century Italian calligraphic diary in the Houghton. The author mentions Arrighi's writing school in Rome. I can hunt down the call number if you like.","frontmatter":{"id":60,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-26 11:26:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Arrighi mentions in his introduction that he couldn't provide enough manuscript examples to satisfy demand. Perhaps a marketing ploy, but I suspect just as the 20th century produced printed writing manuals by calligraphers to satisfy a desire, so also did 16th century authors.

","excerpt":"Arrighi mentions in his introduction that he couldn't provide enough manuscript examples to satisfy demand. Perhaps a marketing ploy, but I suspect just as the 20th century produced printed writing manuals by calligraphers to satisfy a desire, so…","frontmatter":{"id":61,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-26 11:29:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The earliest manuscript I know of on learning to write cancellaresca was made around 1465-77 by a monk, Johannes Franciscus Preottonus of Pavia (Library of Congress, Music Division ML171.J6, fols. 129\"“130). In it, he gives step-by-step instructions on making minuscule \"cazelarescha\" (not the 16th-century style). These instructions appear in a collection on music theory, and may have been copied from another source.

","excerpt":"The earliest manuscript I know of on learning to write cancellaresca was made around 1465-77 by a monk, Johannes Franciscus Preottonus of Pavia (Library of Congress, Music Division ML171.J6, fols. 129\"“130). In it, he gives step-by-step instructions…","frontmatter":{"id":62,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-26 11:39:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It would be interesting to know when \"teach yourself to play an instrument/sing\" manuals came on the scene. They, too, seemed to be marketed to a general public.

","excerpt":"It would be interesting to know when \"teach yourself to play an instrument/sing\" manuals came on the scene. They, too, seemed to be marketed to a general public.","frontmatter":{"id":63,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":337,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-26 11:53:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The 90-degree rotation of the format of writing books is most interesting from a graphic standpoint. Of course they made it easier to place the book above a blank sheet on which exercises were to be copied, but they also physically set writing books at odds with the usual vertical format of all other types of books (except, perhaps, music books) literally making them stand out.

","excerpt":"The 90-degree rotation of the format of writing books is most interesting from a graphic standpoint. Of course they made it easier to place the book above a blank sheet on which exercises were to be copied, but they also physically set writing books…","frontmatter":{"id":64,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":337,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-26 11:58:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, Bob. It would be useful to readers at this point to have the Houghton number here.

","excerpt":"Thanks, Bob. It would be useful to readers at this point to have the Houghton number here.","frontmatter":{"id":65,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-03-26 12:18:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is discussed briefly in section 6.19.

","excerpt":"This is discussed briefly in section 6.19.","frontmatter":{"id":66,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":337,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-03-26 12:22:48"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Is hanging the character names another Aldine innovation? Graphically, it makes it easier to follow the \"actors\" lines.

","excerpt":"Is hanging the character names another Aldine innovation? Graphically, it makes it easier to follow the \"actors\" lines.","frontmatter":{"id":67,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":100,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-26 12:36:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The 1539 manuscript autobiography is by Bernardino Spina, Houghton f MS Typ. 167. Journal publications on it:

\n

J. Wardrop in Harvard Library Bulletin 7 (1953): 224-5.

\n

Illuminated and calligraphic manuscripts (1955), no. 123.

","excerpt":"The 1539 manuscript autobiography is by Bernardino Spina, Houghton f MS Typ. 167. Journal publications on it: J. Wardrop in Harvard Library Bulletin 7 (1953): 224-5. Illuminated and calligraphic manuscripts (1955), no. 123.","frontmatter":{"id":68,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-26 13:28:11"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Perhaps this has been changed since Diana Robin's comment, but there is a \"Next\" link at the bottom of each section. Scrolling to the bottom of the page leads to \"Next: 0.02 Regionalism\" allowing for the sort of linear continuity Diana seems to be seeking. Perhaps this is slightly less intuitive since it appears after the footnotes (if one skips the footnotes this feature may be missed).

\n

Along a similar line, I think it would be useful to link the footnotes in the text to the footnotes on the bottom of the page. The hyperlinking of footnotes from citation to entry seems to be a fairly accepted convention at this point in electronic scholarly publishing. This works best when one can return to the original place in the text by hitting the browser's back button (i.e. rather than having this return to the top of the page and having to work your way down again). A pop-up window for footnotes is another potential solution. In this scenario the reader can simply exit out of the pop-up and continue reading.

","excerpt":"Perhaps this has been changed since Diana Robin's comment, but there is a \"Next\" link at the bottom of each section. Scrolling to the bottom of the page leads to \"Next: 0.02 Regionalism\" allowing for the sort of linear continuity Diana seems to be…","frontmatter":{"id":69,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"John Vincler","date":"2009-03-28 12:21:31"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Your discussion of emblems is fascinating. You introduce, elucidate, and contextualize the genre (and its evolution) wonderfully; I've never read anything like it before.

\n

I have been fascinated by the evolution of the title page, especially those that take the form of imaginary architectural spaces or cabinets of wonders that graphically attempting to represent or summarize a book's contents. I find what you have here immensely helpful. I'm thinking of Hobbes's Leviathan (http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/libraries/rare/modernityimages_full/hobbes2-1.jpg) or of Tycho Brahe's Mural Quadrant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauerquadrant.jpg).

\n

It seems increasingly clear to me, that these two works referenced above from the 17th and late 16th centuries represent a further evolution of the same sort of verbal / visual interplay you describe here, whereas the designers attempt to render the whole of the text into the title page's picture plane.

\n

This leads me back to an earlier thought about this section on emblems. Initially, I wasn't convinced that your earlier description of \"Emblem as Machine\" (7.03) analogy made sense or, more likely, I felt I was missing something. As I got to thinking about the title page of Hobbes, I recollected that Hobbes begins his Leviathan with a series of interrelated metaphors linking together God and nature; man, machines (\"engines\"/\"automata\" in his words) and the higher form, (as he sees it) art. This leading to the visual metaphor depicted on his title page, whereas the Monarch is the brain (or reason) operating the cyborg \"this artificial man\" (part man / part machine in Hobbes's complex metaphor) whose body is composed of the Monarch's subjects but described with mechanical language (rather than biological, for example).

\n

Hobbes's nested and mixed metaphors are followed by a discussion of reading books vs. reading men vs. \"reading thyself\". He then returns to his earlier cyborg Monarch metaphor. When the Monarch is reading himself, he reads all of mankind.

\n

Hobbes creates a riddle-like metaphor-laden passage, which seems like an attempt to summarize the entirety of his book, very much like the model you describe here of emblems with their accompanying poem. With all of his mixed and/or nested metaphors it seems possible that his use of mechanical language also makes a connection between the play between emblem and text. Or, stated more simply, he seems to suggest that the text animates the emblem (this being the age of print, this animation plays out in our minds). The accompanying text provides the necessary code for how the emblem is to function (a code that wouldn't make sense on its own, or would at least remain incomplete, without the presence of the emblem itself).

\n

You discuss the role of medieval mnemonics as providing a model for the visual spaces of printed texts. Even in the Hobbes's (or Brahe's) texts we can see the spatial or room metaphor of the classic medieval mnemonics continue (whereas related information is stored spatially in particular rooms). The emblem seems to take this mnemonic out of the imagination onto the page, where it evolves overtime, still serving its mnemonic function but put to ever expanding uses.

\n

I apologize for this overlong (rambling) comment, but I am still left wondering about your use of the term \"machine.\" By my count (and electronic texts make this easy!) you only use the phrase machine twice, once in the section \"Emblem as Machine\" (7.03) (and only in the very beginning of this section) and then again once more in section 7.15.

\n

In what sense are emblems machines? Perhaps this could use some more explaining. I think you are onto something but your use of the phrase still isn't clear too me. I think part of the difficulty maybe that it is a means of explaining the almost entirely unexplainable functioning across images and texts in a dynamic way. (This seems to be the reason Hobbes utilizes the language of machines.)

\n

These two OED definitions seem to be approaching what you mean:

\n

\"A material structure designed for a specific purpose, and related uses\" (def. II, first used in late 16th century) and \"An apparatus constructed to perform a task or for some other purpose\" (def. IV, first used in mid-17th century).

\n

I get why Hobbes, in his time, would look to the machine as a metaphor for animating his image via his text. This is of his time. Your discussing works predating Hobbes, and I'm not sure if this \"animating\" concept I described above is what you are getting at. It is a metaphor, but I still feel like I'm missing something with how it is used here. (And this could just be me, because I haven't had time to deeply read what you have here--which is one of the clearest and best discussions of emblems I've seen.)

","excerpt":"Your discussion of emblems is fascinating. You introduce, elucidate, and contextualize the genre (and its evolution) wonderfully; I've never read anything like it before. I have been fascinated by the evolution of the title page, especially those…","frontmatter":{"id":73,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"John Vincler","date":"2009-03-28 17:37:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This section is excellent. Superb writing - informative and compelling. (Erasmus is better than fiction.) This also makes explicit the connection between philology and the content of school books.

","excerpt":"This section is excellent. Superb writing - informative and compelling. (Erasmus is better than fiction.) This also makes explicit the connection between philology and the content of school books.","frontmatter":{"id":74,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":189,"author":"John Vincler","date":"2009-03-28 21:45:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

My experience of reading this work is very hypertextual. I find myself bouncing from section to section, revisiting and comparing sections, or even doing searches within the text on phrases I recall or subjects about which I'd like to find more information. Sometimes questions that are raised at one point in the text seem to be answered later. I wonder if some additional intertextual footnotes could be added, creating bridges across the text. While I too was unclear about the use of the term philology here (or was it that I just read the comment and this informed my reading?), this intersection of serious philological concerns and the component parts of basic grammars becomes crystal with the example given in the Erasmus section (2.18, I believe).

","excerpt":"My experience of reading this work is very hypertextual. I find myself bouncing from section to section, revisiting and comparing sections, or even doing searches within the text on phrases I recall or subjects about which I'd like to find more…","frontmatter":{"id":75,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":104,"author":"John Vincler","date":"2009-03-28 22:05:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Ah, here you utilize the language of machines (\"encoding,\" \"unlocking,\" \"decoding\") making the \"machine\" metaphor from 7.03 more explicit. However, it seems like the comparison to a puzzle is more sustained throughout than the comparison to a machine.

","excerpt":"Ah, here you utilize the language of machines (\"encoding,\" \"unlocking,\" \"decoding\") making the \"machine\" metaphor from 7.03 more explicit. However, it seems like the comparison to a puzzle is more sustained throughout than the comparison to a machine…","frontmatter":{"id":76,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"John Vincler","date":"2009-03-28 22:14:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

These images are so intriguing -- it might be helpful to give author, title, publishing date as the label for each image, rather than waiting for the reader find the same info in the text. I think this would allow for easier visual comparison.

","excerpt":"These images are so intriguing -- it might be helpful to give author, title, publishing date as the label for each image, rather than waiting for the reader find the same info in the text. I think this would allow for easier visual comparison.","frontmatter":{"id":77,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"sgaylard","date":"2009-03-29 11:52:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This approach almost seems a commonplace in printed instruction books of the 16th century: \"brief & easy,\" and \"most useful and necessary\" pop up again and again in writing manual titles.

","excerpt":"This approach almost seems a commonplace in printed instruction books of the 16th century: \"brief & easy,\" and \"most useful and necessary\" pop up again and again in writing manual titles.","frontmatter":{"id":78,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":357,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-29 12:24:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

With handwriting, vernacular seems to have been the norm from the very beginning. I know of only one writing manual in the 16th century with instructions in Latin: Mercator's \"Literarum latinarum\" of 1541, although many writing manuals & copybooks included passages in Latin. This was due to a convention of writing certain languages in certain hands which, in turn probably produced more work for writing teachers.

","excerpt":"With handwriting, vernacular seems to have been the norm from the very beginning. I know of only one writing manual in the 16th century with instructions in Latin: Mercator's \"Literarum latinarum\" of 1541, although many writing manuals & copybooks…","frontmatter":{"id":79,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":359,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-29 12:36:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You might want to add Giovambattista Palatino's \"Libro nuove d'imparare a scrivere tute sorte lettere\" (Rome, 1540) to this category. In it, Palatino includes both an author's portrait on the title page and an emblem on the last page. The emblem of a moth in a candle flame with a motto taken from Petrarch: \"Et so ben ch'io vo dietro a quel che m'arde\" does not seem to relate to the book but perhaps the author's personality.

","excerpt":"You might want to add Giovambattista Palatino's \"Libro nuove d'imparare a scrivere tute sorte lettere\" (Rome, 1540) to this category. In it, Palatino includes both an author's portrait on the title page and an emblem on the last page. The emblem of a…","frontmatter":{"id":80,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":381,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-03-29 13:29:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Although the material covered in this paragraph is not integral to the overall argument here, it probably needs to be reexamined nevertheless. I do not know the work of Baldsuhn (whose name seems to be misspelled in note 91), but most scholars understand Avianus to have been part of the Sex Auctores, the curricular compilation popular in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Auctores octo, mentioned here, largely displaced the Sex Auctores in the thriteenth century and remained popular for centuries, appearing in at least 50 printings in five countries before 1500; its fable collection is the one commonly attributed to Gualterus Anglicus, whose introductory epistle, written in the voice of the emperor Romulus, credits the fables to Aesop, not Avianus. I have seen many, many printed versions of the Auctores octo, and they all include this collection, not the one attributed to Avianus. See Ronald E. Pepin's translation of the Auctores octo for further information.

","excerpt":"Although the material covered in this paragraph is not integral to the overall argument here, it probably needs to be reexamined nevertheless. I do not know the work of Baldsuhn (whose name seems to be misspelled in note 91), but most scholars…","frontmatter":{"id":81,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":176,"author":"EWheatley","date":"2009-03-30 15:32:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for the clarification on Avianus, Edward, which matter I will recheck. Baldzuhn is the correct spelling.

","excerpt":"Thanks for the clarification on Avianus, Edward, which matter I will recheck. Baldzuhn is the correct spelling.","frontmatter":{"id":82,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":176,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-03-30 15:40:38"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Alas, I'm also a bit of an old-fashioned book fiend, although the idea of a book on a blog -- a scholarly work that truly invites conversation -- is marvellous. While I agree that it's quite hard to read a scholarly text like this on a computer screen generally (eye strain, internet issues, clunky computer, etc), I think the text might be easier to read if it were possible to spread it out across the screen in two broad columns (like the \"book\" reading function in MS Word), rather than having all of the text squashed to one side while the comments and the contents fields occupy two-thirds of the screen. I'm not suggesting that comments and contents fields disappear -- it's lovely to be able to see them alongside the text -- but perhaps the contents at least could be arranged horizontally at the top of the screen? Just an idea. I was also wondering if there's a way to flag or annotate pieces of text for my own personal use to come back to next time I log in to carry on reading -- ? Ironically enough, I do feel strangely \"lost\" in the text -- despite the helpfully descriptive contents, I really miss being able to flip through the pages to get a better idea. Perhaps it just takes a little more getting used to (I've only been navigating the site for about a week).

","excerpt":"Alas, I'm also a bit of an old-fashioned book fiend, although the idea of a book on a blog -- a scholarly work that truly invites conversation -- is marvellous. While I agree that it's quite hard to read a scholarly text like this on a computer…","frontmatter":{"id":83,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"sgaylard","date":"2009-03-31 22:22:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I couldn't agree more about the footnotes -- it's hard to chase them by scrolling up and down, so would be great to be able to find the right footnote directly from the text. I also agree with Diana Robin, though -- I find the footnotes and \"Next section\" links are placed so as to interrupt the flow of the chapter from section to section.

","excerpt":"I couldn't agree more about the footnotes -- it's hard to chase them by scrolling up and down, so would be great to be able to find the right footnote directly from the text. I also agree with Diana Robin, though -- I find the footnotes and \"Next…","frontmatter":{"id":84,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"sgaylard","date":"2009-03-31 22:51:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Can't argue with Lewis and Short, but in my reading of the larger debate, the term has a strongly linguistic dimension colored by the humanists' emphasis on the recovery of ancient usages. Although the humanists as rhetoricians were always trying to achieve a \"pure ... style,\" that translation doesn't quite get at the pervasiveness of the linguistic urge.

","excerpt":"Can't argue with Lewis and Short, but in my reading of the larger debate, the term has a strongly linguistic dimension colored by the humanists' emphasis on the recovery of ancient usages. Although the humanists as rhetoricians were always trying to…","frontmatter":{"id":85,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-02 08:33:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I really enjoyed this book! Many things I didn't know, several good leads for furthering my research, and it's always fascinating to see that textbook companies and the individuals that run them are following centuries-old patterns. In my field (visual arts) there has often been criticism of government censorship of the arts. At least as heavy a censorship, although much more subtly imposed, has been the bottom line of textbook publishing-- what plates cost, which images are already licensed to profitable companies-- all of this has much to do with what is easy or difficult to teach, and therefore what is taught. The internet is changing this somewhat, as it now is for book publishing in general. Go Gehl!

","excerpt":"I really enjoyed this book! Many things I didn't know, several good leads for furthering my research, and it's always fascinating to see that textbook companies and the individuals that run them are following centuries-old patterns. In my field…","frontmatter":{"id":86,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 13:49:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for this source.

","excerpt":"Thanks for this source.","frontmatter":{"id":87,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 13:51:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Two further general comments:

\n

1- Perhaps this has already been addressed by others, but the illustrations seem to have morphed over the course of the chapters from the somewhat less desirable (in my opinion) enlargements which occasionally make the original image smaller as they show it in its context (I think I had noted this at 1.07 par 2) to later images that I could see in detail (such as 6.03). I can see where others might prefer the whole book view however. Can you provide both?

\n

2-I enjoyed the tone of the book, especially where the inevitable wrangling among scholars had broken out.

","excerpt":"Two further general comments: 1- Perhaps this has already been addressed by others, but the illustrations seem to have morphed over the course of the chapters from the somewhat less desirable (in my opinion) enlargements which occasionally make the…","frontmatter":{"id":89,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:08:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

interesting-- the more popular the more proper

","excerpt":"interesting-- the more popular the more proper","frontmatter":{"id":90,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":28,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:10:15"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Ah the joys of the visual cortex.

","excerpt":"Ah the joys of the visual cortex.","frontmatter":{"id":91,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":31,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:11:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"...alternating humanist commonplaces of humility, altruism, and disdain for adversaries with specific marketing claims\"

\n

-- this insouciant mix makes them so delightful (at least in small bursts)

","excerpt":"\"...alternating humanist commonplaces of humility, altruism, and disdain for adversaries with specific marketing claims\" -- this insouciant mix makes them so delightful (at least in small bursts)","frontmatter":{"id":92,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":35,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:17:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Are they also like movie trailers?

","excerpt":"Are they also like movie trailers?","frontmatter":{"id":93,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":96,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:19:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I wouldn't have understood the irony. Thanks for this. One of several examples which prompted my general comment (#2) at 0.00.

","excerpt":"I wouldn't have understood the irony. Thanks for this. One of several examples which prompted my general comment (#2) at 0.00.","frontmatter":{"id":94,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":189,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:22:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I found the geography section very interesting. Thanks for several good sources 4.14-4.17.

","excerpt":"I found the geography section very interesting. Thanks for several good sources 4.14-4.17.","frontmatter":{"id":95,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":270,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:26:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I suppose by \"astrology\" he means the common understanding of astronomy-astrology. I need to read this to see how broadly he sets the context. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

","excerpt":"I suppose by \"astrology\" he means the common understanding of astronomy-astrology. I need to read this to see how broadly he sets the context. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.","frontmatter":{"id":96,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":272,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:29:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Just curious- do these follow Pomponius Mela, Albert the Great, or are they original?

","excerpt":"Just curious- do these follow Pomponius Mela, Albert the Great, or are they original?","frontmatter":{"id":97,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":274,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:32:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Personal taste but I didn't like the word polymathy.

","excerpt":"Personal taste but I didn't like the word polymathy.","frontmatter":{"id":98,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:35:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

While these two areas, as Diana Robin says, are a bit jarring, I'm really glad you included them. Do the math books pledge allegiance to Plato in intro remarks?

","excerpt":"While these two areas, as Diana Robin says, are a bit jarring, I'm really glad you included them. Do the math books pledge allegiance to Plato in intro remarks?","frontmatter":{"id":100,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":319,"author":"MQuinlan","date":"2009-04-05 14:41:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Not really, since I do not read them as teasing the reader to look for the fun in the plays. They seem more mnemonic in function. The scenes chosen seem to represent those in which there is a significant change in the number of characters on stage, or entrances of new characters.

","excerpt":"Not really, since I do not read them as teasing the reader to look for the fun in the plays. They seem more mnemonic in function. The scenes chosen seem to represent those in which there is a significant change in the number of characters on stage…","frontmatter":{"id":104,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":96,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-06 05:56:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I don't remember seeing any citations from Albert the Great, but all the humanist toponymic treatises are omnivorous --they take their information from whatever sources they think are credible. Lilio is careful to say he is excluding recent sources he thinks are unreliable in favor of impeccably classical ones, and this can be taken to refer to the fifteenth-century explorers as well as to medieval learned work.

","excerpt":"I don't remember seeing any citations from Albert the Great, but all the humanist toponymic treatises are omnivorous --they take their information from whatever sources they think are credible. Lilio is careful to say he is excluding recent sources…","frontmatter":{"id":105,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":274,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-06 06:02:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I hope you will find time to read it, Mary, and that we can discuss it sometime. It is a very curious ranking and definition of the disciplines, in which Astrology becomes an umbrella for all the earth and sky-related sciences. Perhaps you can identify a source for this strange umbrella!

","excerpt":"I hope you will find time to read it, Mary, and that we can discuss it sometime. It is a very curious ranking and definition of the disciplines, in which Astrology becomes an umbrella for all the earth and sky-related sciences. Perhaps you can…","frontmatter":{"id":106,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":272,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-06 06:47:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I am going to ask for help on this apparent change of aspect in the pictures, which was not intentional.

","excerpt":"I am going to ask for help on this apparent change of aspect in the pictures, which was not intentional.","frontmatter":{"id":107,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-06 06:49:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

People love these marked-up pages for their apparently careless informality, but of course the texts they hold can be read as well. This one has a series of pen trials (where the student practices his own name or that of the book) and several short texts that refer to the passion of Christ. On the left hand page (the back cover of the book), the student has scribbled the mocking phrase \"Hail, King of the Jews\" (from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 19). On the front cover at the upper right the same student hand has written a prayer that would translate: \"Hail, O blood of the living God. May you, who, condemned by the Jews, showed mercy to the thief, have mercy on me, a sinner. Amen.\"

","excerpt":"People love these marked-up pages for their apparently careless informality, but of course the texts they hold can be read as well. This one has a series of pen trials (where the student practices his own name or that of the book) and several short…","frontmatter":{"id":108,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":166,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-10 09:13:35"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Looking closer, it seems that this change really is more apparent than real. At some places in the text (as here) we have chosen to use partial, detail images in text and a full-page shot in the pop-up. Elsewhere the pop-up is merely and enlargement. In any case you should always be able to zoom in further on the pop-up by merely clicking on the portion fo the image that interests you.

","excerpt":"Looking closer, it seems that this change really is more apparent than real. At some places in the text (as here) we have chosen to use partial, detail images in text and a full-page shot in the pop-up. Elsewhere the pop-up is merely and enlargement…","frontmatter":{"id":109,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-14 12:48:35"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As always, the anthropomorphic figures are harder to \"read.\" In this case they seem to be playful caricatures, equally unrelated to the scribbled texts and to the printed book.

","excerpt":"As always, the anthropomorphic figures are harder to \"read.\" In this case they seem to be playful caricatures, equally unrelated to the scribbled texts and to the printed book.","frontmatter":{"id":110,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":166,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-14 12:51:06"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Re: 2.11 visual example & 0.08 visual example:

\n

New images at 2.11 seem but typical little boy pictures with totally innocent yet the typical delusions of grandeur. There is not much more than that. The availability of the writing surface seemed to be irresistible to the youngster for his own purposes and there are not enough meaningful scribbles for my taste.

\n

Contrast 2.11 with the magnificent singleton 0.08, which seems somehow much more deliberate and from a more earnest or studious school boy. A creation. The boxes and lists of numbers/letters decry (or disguise) the one/two innocent little boy scribbles of dangling paraphernalia. An entire blank stimulated a real image to my eye and I find it much more interesting.

\n

Just think when we were in school and caught writing in our books!! Off with our heads! Oh my fur and whiskers!!

","excerpt":"Re: 2.11 visual example & 0.08 visual example: New images at 2.11 seem but typical little boy pictures with totally innocent yet the typical delusions of grandeur. There is not much more than that. The availability of the writing surface seemed to be…","frontmatter":{"id":111,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":166,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-04-19 17:01:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

PS to previous message. In the text there are several references to teaching a foreign language: that the children must be able to comprehend the meaning somehow right off - by similarities with their mother-tongue.

\n

Very good observation. It's not too different with adults learning a foreign language! Too bad the US is not smaller, which would require us to become devoted to the learning of a foreign language or two or three -- out of economic necessity.

","excerpt":"PS to previous message. In the text there are several references to teaching a foreign language: that the children must be able to comprehend the meaning somehow right off - by similarities with their mother-tongue. Very good observation. It's not…","frontmatter":{"id":112,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":166,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-04-19 17:05:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Moral: The Devil is in the Generalizations

","excerpt":"Moral: The Devil is in the Generalizations","frontmatter":{"id":113,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-04-19 17:24:04"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for this comparison to the page at 0.08, Susan. They do represent two kinds of final effect, in that this one is partial and largely done by a single reader, while the page at 0.08 is completely covered by marks made by at least three childish readers across a period of time we cannot determine. I will add a few notes there, just to make that point clearer to other readers.

","excerpt":"Thanks for this comparison to the page at 0.08, Susan. They do represent two kinds of final effect, in that this one is partial and largely done by a single reader, while the page at 0.08 is completely covered by marks made by at least three childish…","frontmatter":{"id":114,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":166,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-19 18:33:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Susan: Your notes at 2.11 suggest that you are loving this piece as a composition by a single child reader covering a temptingly empty page. In fact there are at least three hands here, probably more. What shows up as a sort of smudge toward the top is probably the earliest mark, an ownership mark by a youth named Liberio. Most if not all the boxes contain an anagram poem, probably repeated by the same reader over and over. I would guess he is also responsible for the two roughly drawn penises, because the ink is very similar. The long, loose lines in greyish ink quoting a bit of doggerel in Italian, \"Chi vuol saver...\" are by yet another reader. And the marks in reddish brown ink --including a comic profile head-- are surely yet another young owner. The all-over effect is, therefore, the result of accumulation, not the work of a single scribbler.

","excerpt":"Susan: Your notes at 2.11 suggest that you are loving this piece as a composition by a single child reader covering a temptingly empty page. In fact there are at least three hands here, probably more. What shows up as a sort of smudge toward the top…","frontmatter":{"id":115,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-19 18:42:44"}}},{"node":{"html":"

To SGaylard's list I would also add page height & width.

","excerpt":"To SGaylard's list I would also add page height & width.","frontmatter":{"id":116,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-04-21 09:30:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

One example of a souvenir calligraphic manuscript copybook produced for the tourist trade is the Bernardino Cataneo Manuscript (Houghton MS Typ 246) acquired from the scribe by \"Signor Odoardo Ralyg Gentilhuomo Inglese\" in 1545. Cataneo, who did not publish any known writing book, was a maestro di scrivere at the University at Siena. For further info, see \"An Italic Copybook: The Cataneo Manuscript\" by Stephen Harvard (N.Y.: Taplinger, 1981)

","excerpt":"One example of a souvenir calligraphic manuscript copybook produced for the tourist trade is the Bernardino Cataneo Manuscript (Houghton MS Typ 246) acquired from the scribe by \"Signor Odoardo Ralyg Gentilhuomo Inglese\" in 1545. Cataneo, who did not…","frontmatter":{"id":117,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":339,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2009-04-21 10:16:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on Honter, see now: Urs. B. Leu, \"The Teaching of Geography in 16th Century Zurich,\" in Scholarly Knowledge (Geneva, 2008), esp. pp. 240-245.

","excerpt":"Further on Honter, see now: Urs. B. Leu, \"The Teaching of Geography in 16th Century Zurich,\" in Scholarly Knowledge (Geneva, 2008), esp. pp. 240-245.","frontmatter":{"id":118,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-21 15:05:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

With regard to the identification of the Cato of the Disticha Catonis, we are told in the tradition of the Accessus ad auctores that, \"œDuo Catones erant Romae, Censorinus Cato et Uticensis Cato,\" that is, Marcus Porcius Cato (the Elder), whom you cite, and Marcus Porcius Cato \"œUticensis\" (the Younger) (d. 46 BCE). Perhaps you should mention both and possible conflations? The attributions may be incorrect, but the fact that most people believed in the authorship is important when it comes to studying the reception of the text in the Middle Ages and beyond.

","excerpt":"With regard to the identification of the Cato of the Disticha Catonis, we are told in the tradition of the Accessus ad auctores that, \"œDuo Catones erant Romae, Censorinus Cato et Uticensis Cato,\" that is, Marcus Porcius Cato (the Elder), whom you…","frontmatter":{"id":119,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":142,"author":"Hannah_Zdansky","date":"2009-04-22 19:25:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good point. In fact confidence in the attribution was the single largest factor in the centuries-long prestige of this text. Below we will see several humanists who argued, even when they recognized it could not have been authored by an historical Cato, that the work was wise enough to merit his name. This kind of word-playful manner of writing is one of the lessons the text had for new readers. Every Latin text, the teachers were saying, even the most elementary, should engender literary wit along with the wisdom.

","excerpt":"Good point. In fact confidence in the attribution was the single largest factor in the centuries-long prestige of this text. Below we will see several humanists who argued, even when they recognized it could not have been authored by an historical…","frontmatter":{"id":120,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":142,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-23 06:43:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I have done some re-checking of my sources here and find that Edward's correction is accurate as far as the Auctores octo goes. Baldzuhn as cited remarks some 60 (mostly Northern European) manuscripts that combined Avianus with the Distichs of Cato. But the print collection, Auctores octo, always includes the Aesopian fables in the verse translation of Walter the Englishman, not Avianus.

","excerpt":"I have done some re-checking of my sources here and find that Edward's correction is accurate as far as the Auctores octo goes. Baldzuhn as cited remarks some 60 (mostly Northern European) manuscripts that combined Avianus with the Distichs of Cato…","frontmatter":{"id":121,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":176,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-04-30 10:43:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, Latin was the international language of humanism, but also the international language of ecclesiastics and of the professions, whether they fit into the humanist paradigm or not. Knowledge of Latin was required for any upward mobility.

","excerpt":"Yes, Latin was the international language of humanism, but also the international language of ecclesiastics and of the professions, whether they fit into the humanist paradigm or not. Knowledge of Latin was required for any upward mobility.","frontmatter":{"id":125,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":28,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:06:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, popularizations, but also propagation of humanist culture. There was a struggle at every level between humanism and what one might call traditional scholasticism (not limiting the term to philosophy/theology but to the whole cursus of late medieval education). Humanistic Latin, bonae litterae, and new or revived pedagogies were at once the emblems and the cultural capital of the humanists.

","excerpt":"Yes, popularizations, but also propagation of humanist culture. There was a struggle at every level between humanism and what one might call traditional scholasticism (not limiting the term to philosophy/theology but to the whole cursus of late…","frontmatter":{"id":126,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":28,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:07:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A good argument could be made, I think, that the mores taught elementary & intermediate education, although often a matter of morality (in the modern sense), was as much or even more a matter of manners (> motto attributed to William of Wyckham (d1404): \"œManners maketh man.\"), and was not so much an education in moral decision making (an expression suggestive of casuistry), as an education in proper behavior. This education in proper behavior had, to be sure, a moral component, but it was very much concerned with correct behaviors and the astute management of social, political, and business relationships.

","excerpt":"A good argument could be made, I think, that the mores taught elementary & intermediate education, although often a matter of morality (in the modern sense), was as much or even more a matter of manners (> motto attributed to William of Wyckham (d…","frontmatter":{"id":127,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":28,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:10:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Not just the good citizen, but the good Christian, or so the exponents of these various disciplines would have claimed. In addition, although a providential origin might be claimed for these skills, they were, in fact, morally neutral, as also was, e.g., rhetoric. Schoolmasters had the dual and sometimes contradictory tasks of equipping their students with the instruments of agression, defense, and manipulation, the tools of power, and of inhibiting or, at least, channeling agression and imbuing the tools they provided with a moral aspect (rather like business colleges teaching \"œbusiness ethics\").

","excerpt":"Not just the good citizen, but the good Christian, or so the exponents of these various disciplines would have claimed. In addition, although a providential origin might be claimed for these skills, they were, in fact, morally neutral, as also was, e…","frontmatter":{"id":129,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":28,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:11:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

political classes] Maybe \"œclerico-political classes\"; in sXV-XVin \"œpolitical\" would extend to both secular and ecclesiastical politics for they were at once two distinct politico-legal spheres, but very often inextricably intermingled.

","excerpt":"political classes] Maybe \"œclerico-political classes\"; in sXV-XVin \"œpolitical\" would extend to both secular and ecclesiastical politics for they were at once two distinct politico-legal spheres, but very often inextricably intermingled.","frontmatter":{"id":130,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":28,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:12:07"}}},{"node":{"html":"

critique of their language and style] This was both a component of establishing historical context (usually to distinguish genuine from spurious), and an evaluation of the appropriateness of authors for imitation.

","excerpt":"critique of their language and style] This was both a component of establishing historical context (usually to distinguish genuine from spurious), and an evaluation of the appropriateness of authors for imitation.","frontmatter":{"id":131,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":88,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:12:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It would be good to give the neo-Terentian comedies greater prominence, perhaps addressing the question of whether they were imitations intended to supplement Terence or alternatives intended to supplant Terence for moral reasons.

","excerpt":"It would be good to give the neo-Terentian comedies greater prominence, perhaps addressing the question of whether they were imitations intended to supplement Terence or alternatives intended to supplant Terence for moral reasons.","frontmatter":{"id":132,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":88,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:13:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

lyric poetry] Nor did Ovid write lyric poetry, strictly speaking.

","excerpt":"lyric poetry] Nor did Ovid write lyric poetry, strictly speaking.","frontmatter":{"id":133,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":90,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:14:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"œoccasionally read\" has to be weighed against the many medieval and late medieval commentaries on Ovid, more and more of which are finding their way into print.

","excerpt":"\"œoccasionally read\" has to be weighed against the many medieval and late medieval commentaries on Ovid, more and more of which are finding their way into print.","frontmatter":{"id":134,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":90,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:14:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

effectively settled] Why was Terence eventually displaced by Caesar in the school curriculum??

","excerpt":"effectively settled] Why was Terence eventually displaced by Caesar in the school curriculum??","frontmatter":{"id":135,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":126,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:20:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

only formal education] perhaps only formal education at the elementary and intermediate levels

","excerpt":"only formal education] perhaps only formal education at the elementary and intermediate levels","frontmatter":{"id":136,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":134,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:21:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

more difficult starting point] Yes, but we must approach these books as we might a Latin for Dummies that would provide all needed instruction for someone starting from zero. A part of analysis/evaluation of these books must be a reconstruction of the oral/aural instruction that preceded and accompanied their use.

","excerpt":"more difficult starting point] Yes, but we must approach these books as we might a Latin for Dummies that would provide all needed instruction for someone starting from zero. A part of analysis/evaluation of these books must be a reconstruction of…","frontmatter":{"id":137,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":144,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:22:34"}}},{"node":{"html":"

medievalizing package] Yes, from our perspective \"“ in its time the book would have been \"œtraditionalizing\" in its content and appearance, yet it contains additional texts, advertised and not, which would make it \"œnew and improved\"

","excerpt":"medievalizing package] Yes, from our perspective \"“ in its time the book would have been \"œtraditionalizing\" in its content and appearance, yet it contains additional texts, advertised and not, which would make it \"œnew and improved\"","frontmatter":{"id":138,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":153,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:23:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Interest might be heightened by some reference to the printing history of the Doctrinale and commentaries thereon. The humanists did not have it all their way, not at first, anyway, for there was a struggle between advocates of humanist culture in which choice Latinity was of central importance and retailers of the traditional scholastic culture in which Latin was essential, to be sure, but a Latin taught with less emphasis on style and a Latin that produced and tolerated the languages-for-special-purposes of all disciplines and trades.

","excerpt":"Interest might be heightened by some reference to the printing history of the Doctrinale and commentaries thereon. The humanists did not have it all their way, not at first, anyway, for there was a struggle between advocates of humanist culture in…","frontmatter":{"id":139,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":153,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:24:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

More than \"œlip service\" perhaps \"“ an empirical approach to the usage of the \"œbest\" authors almost amounts to a quest for new \"œrules\" that one could present in a grammar of the best authors. While someone like Valla provides description, it is presented in such a way as to amount to prescription.

","excerpt":"More than \"œlip service\" perhaps \"“ an empirical approach to the usage of the \"œbest\" authors almost amounts to a quest for new \"œrules\" that one could present in a grammar of the best authors. While someone like Valla provides description, it is…","frontmatter":{"id":140,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":160,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:26:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

valued in the work] Yes, but more precisely what Perotti & Co. supposed they would value in the work \"“ the two no doubt coincide, hence the success of Perotti & Co. in \"œpositioning their product.\"

\n

overdensity] I do not thing opuscula doctrinae crassioris means \"œover-dense grammars,\" but \"œthick-headed grammars\" or grammars for thick-headed students, or, at best, \"œmore basic\". Nor it is quaedam insulsa rudimenta vel opuscula doctrinae crassioris but quaedam insulsa rudimenta & opuscula doctrinae crassioris; see Erasmus, Adagia I i 37: Crassa Minerva; Pinqui Minerva; Crassiore Musa.

","excerpt":"valued in the work] Yes, but more precisely what Perotti & Co. supposed they would value in the work \"“ the two no doubt coincide, hence the success of Perotti & Co. in \"œpositioning their product.\" overdensity] I do not thing opuscula doctrinae…","frontmatter":{"id":141,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":163,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:27:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

notable for its indexes] These indexes and the copious character of the book extends its usefulness bey0nd schooling and makes it a personal reference work for the mature writer/speaker of Latin.

","excerpt":"notable for its indexes] These indexes and the copious character of the book extends its usefulness bey0nd schooling and makes it a personal reference work for the mature writer/speaker of Latin.","frontmatter":{"id":142,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":169,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:28:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

anthology] The Disticha Catonis is not an anthology, i.e., a selection of fine passages from a longer work or works, but a self-contained work.

","excerpt":"anthology] The Disticha Catonis is not an anthology, i.e., a selection of fine passages from a longer work or works, but a self-contained work.","frontmatter":{"id":143,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":173,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:29:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"œI make exception as well for the little book which is entitled Cato. Valla says that its author is the most latinate among the minor authors and that no one in a thousand years has written a more elegant poem. ... And yet perhaps this little book is called Cato from seriousness of behavior and integrity of life, features for which the Catos were very greatly renowned.\"

\n

I believe the Catones refers not to books, but to the the Elder and Younger Cato; cp. Juvenal 2.40: \"œtertius a caelo cecidit Cato ....\"

","excerpt":"\"œI make exception as well for the little book which is entitled Cato. Valla says that its author is the most latinate among the minor authors and that no one in a thousand years has written a more elegant poem. ... And yet perhaps this little book…","frontmatter":{"id":144,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":173,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:30:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

utriusque virtutis] We need more context to figure out to what utriusque virtutis, \"œof each virtue/of both virtues,\" refers.

","excerpt":"utriusque virtutis] We need more context to figure out to what utriusque virtutis, \"œof each virtue/of both virtues,\" refers.","frontmatter":{"id":145,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":173,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:30:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

see also Erasmo de Rotterdam, Los Disticos de Caton comentados: Ed., trans., and notes by Antonio Garcia Masegosa (Vigo: Universidade de Vigo, Servicio de Publicacións, 1997).

","excerpt":"see also Erasmo de Rotterdam, Los Disticos de Caton comentados: Ed., trans., and notes by Antonio Garcia Masegosa (Vigo: Universidade de Vigo, Servicio de Publicacións, 1997).","frontmatter":{"id":146,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:31:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

commenting proverbs] insert on; one can, I think, make a distinction between adagia and proverbs, adagia being, as indicated, \"œsayings\" or \"œvivid expressions\" which may have a moral component, but usually do not (e.g., ouden pros epos [Erasmus, Adagia I v 45: Nihil ad versum] quoted in his dedicatory letter to his ed. of the Disticha, n107), whereas proverbs of the type in Disticha Catonis usually convey an injunction or some advice about good behavior.

","excerpt":"commenting proverbs] insert on; one can, I think, make a distinction between adagia and proverbs, adagia being, as indicated, \"œsayings\" or \"œvivid expressions\" which may have a moral component, but usually do not (e.g., ouden pros epos [Erasmus…","frontmatter":{"id":147,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:31:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

sententiam saepenumero non assequitur] assequitur should be translated \"œattain to,\" \"œgrasp,\" or \"œget\"

\n

more idiotic] better \"œmore wanting in eloquence than speechlessness itself\"

\n

rhetoricatur] perhaps \"œplays the rhetor\"; the reference here is surely to Robertus de Evremond who indicates in his dedicatory letter that it is in part a response to a request for instruction in rhetoric.

\n

more idiotic] perhaps something like \"œless articulate than inarticulateness itself\"

\n

philosophizes ineptly] \"œquite ineptly\" or \"œquite inapproriately\"; this is more likely a reference to the anonymous commentary \"œSummi deus largitor praemii\" than to Philippus de Bergamo's Speculum regiminis. The anonymus begins with an invocation of protreptic to wisdom and philosophy and soon discusses the in terms of their causa materialis, causa finalis, causa efficiens, and causa formalis; the commentary of Philippus de Bergamo, his Speculum Regiminis, begins, after a dedicatory epistle, with an elaborate inventorium.

","excerpt":"sententiam saepenumero non assequitur] assequitur should be translated \"œattain to,\" \"œgrasp,\" or \"œget\" more idiotic] better \"œmore wanting in eloquence than speechlessness itself\" rhetoricatur] perhaps \"œplays the rhetor\"; the reference here…","frontmatter":{"id":148,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:31:55"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Fililippo] The Filippo da Bergamo in this case is Philippus de Bergamo, OSB, prior of Sta. Maria in Vanzo in Padua. His Speculum regiminis, a speculum principis built around the scaffold of the Disticha Catonis, is found with alternative dedicatory prefaces, one to Gian Galeazzo Visconti and the second to Francesco Novello of Padua. Gian Galeazzo had to yield Padua to Francesco Novello in 1390, so Speculum regiminis was probably completed some years before that date.

","excerpt":"Fililippo] The Filippo da Bergamo in this case is Philippus de Bergamo, OSB, prior of Sta. Maria in Vanzo in Padua. His Speculum regiminis, a speculum principis built around the scaffold of the Disticha Catonis, is found with alternative dedicatory…","frontmatter":{"id":149,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":189,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:32:38"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"œWhy do you ...\"] perhaps \"œ'Hah! That a theologian involves himself in such worthless trifles!' First, I consider that nothing should be an object of disdain that belogs to good letters, much less these verses with such elegance of Latin style and so formative of good character. But why should I be ashamed to invest just a few hours on this kind of literature to which many Greek writers devoted themselves and won considerable praise.\"

\n

nuggets] nugae is commonly used to mean \"œtrifles,\" \"œidle business\"; in literary contexts it is often used in humility conceits (the locus classicus is Catullus 1.4) whereby one refers to one's own works as nugae.

","excerpt":"\"œWhy do you ...\"] perhaps \"œ'Hah! That a theologian involves himself in such worthless trifles!' First, I consider that nothing should be an object of disdain that belogs to good letters, much less these verses with such elegance of Latin style and…","frontmatter":{"id":150,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":189,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:33:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

which I have had printed at this request] No. \"œwhich I have had printed unwillingly, ...\"

\n

For when that] \"œFor when he, contrary to the fathers' decree and Christian prescription, had already seen to the printing of two virtually defamatory pamphlets, ...\"

","excerpt":"which I have had printed at this request] No. \"œwhich I have had printed unwillingly, ...\" For when that] \"œFor when he, contrary to the fathers' decree and Christian prescription, had already seen to the printing of two virtually defamatory…","frontmatter":{"id":151,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":258,"author":"Dan Sheerin","date":"2009-05-08 19:34:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, Dan, here as elsewhere for your elegant re-translation. I see how the Catones can be read of the two admirable individuals. As Hannah Zdansky noted in her remark at 2.02 above, medieval and humanist authors knew both figures and had a good sense of the reputation of the clan. But as you will have noticed throughout my writing, I am fascinated by the way these personal names are transferred to the books themselves. Do you think Bebel might have intended a double meaning, so that these \"Catones\" are books, constructed in parallel to \"the book called Cato\" as well as contrasted with the two human Catos? Perhaps he would have used \"a quibus\" instead of \"in quibus\" if he meant it to be read the way I translated it?

","excerpt":"Thanks, Dan, here as elsewhere for your elegant re-translation. I see how the Catones can be read of the two admirable individuals. As Hannah Zdansky noted in her remark at 2.02 above, medieval and humanist authors knew both figures and had a good…","frontmatter":{"id":153,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":173,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-05-08 21:51:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for this correction to information that occurs in all the incunable records I have seen on line--most of them based on older bibliographies. Have you published the correct information somewhere, Dan, or has someone else? Needless to say, it requires noting that though the commentary of Filippo was known in Erasmus's day, it was not by a contemporary of his.

","excerpt":"Thanks for this correction to information that occurs in all the incunable records I have seen on line--most of them based on older bibliographies. Have you published the correct information somewhere, Dan, or has someone else? Needless to say, it…","frontmatter":{"id":156,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":189,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-05-09 07:34:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This comment is misplaced, it refers to paragraph 6, note 95 in the next section, where I will reply.

","excerpt":"This comment is misplaced, it refers to paragraph 6, note 95 in the next section, where I will reply.","frontmatter":{"id":157,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":173,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-05-09 07:44:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Traditionalizing, certainly. And your point is well taken that we need always to be careful about anachronisms. But in this case I really think the package is, especially from a design point of view, medievalizing. Nowhere in Italy at this date would this degree and type of ornament have been used for anything but a prettified children's book. I wish I had photos to insert here, but the 1597 and 1611 editions are hard to find. I consulted a copies of both at the Brera --perhaps I can get images eventually.

","excerpt":"Traditionalizing, certainly. And your point is well taken that we need always to be careful about anachronisms. But in this case I really think the package is, especially from a design point of view, medievalizing. Nowhere in Italy at this date would…","frontmatter":{"id":158,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":153,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-05-09 07:55:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Dan Sheerin, in a note that appears by mistake on the previous section, remarks of this translation, \"utriusque virtutis] We need more context to figure out to what utriusque virtutis, \"œof each virtue/of both virtues,\" refers.

\n

Unfortunately, as often happens in early modern books, such phrases appear pretty much without context. The Latin in note 95 is the entire text of the rubric which precedes the Cato in this edition of the Donat and which separates the Pseudo-Donatus rules from the precepts of Pseudo Cato. The sense might be understood as instruction in liberal arts and also every appropriate virtue. The rubricator seems to be struggling to get both grammatical and moral instruction into his brief advertisement for the book.

","excerpt":"Dan Sheerin, in a note that appears by mistake on the previous section, remarks of this translation, \"utriusque virtutis] We need more context to figure out to what utriusque virtutis, \"œof each virtue/of both virtues,\" refers. Unfortunately, as…","frontmatter":{"id":159,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":176,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-05-12 09:29:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As elsewhere, Dan Sheerin here improves immensely on my translation.

","excerpt":"As elsewhere, Dan Sheerin here improves immensely on my translation.","frontmatter":{"id":160,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":189,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-05-14 10:03:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for these many, useful clarifications!

","excerpt":"Thanks for these many, useful clarifications!","frontmatter":{"id":161,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-05-14 10:33:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, Dan.

\n

I have incorporated these corrections into the text.

","excerpt":"Thanks, Dan. I have incorporated these corrections into the text.","frontmatter":{"id":162,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":258,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-05-14 10:41:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Is there a bibliography where the citations in the notes are expanded?

","excerpt":"Is there a bibliography where the citations in the notes are expanded?","frontmatter":{"id":163,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Ray Clemens","date":"2009-06-01 11:24:29"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes. You must go to the associated web site:\nwww.humanismforsale.org\nThere is a link for the full bibliography, in pdf form.

","excerpt":"Yes. You must go to the associated web site:\nwww.humanismforsale.org\nThere is a link for the full bibliography, in pdf form.","frontmatter":{"id":164,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"admin","date":"2009-06-01 11:27:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is a great work. I appreciate the broad inquiry on a main field, not so well known. It is important for Italian history of learning, schooling, literature, piety. The format is perect, althought I hope it will became a book soon. Erminia Ardissino

","excerpt":"This is a great work. I appreciate the broad inquiry on a main field, not so well known. It is important for Italian history of learning, schooling, literature, piety. The format is perect, althought I hope it will became a book soon. Erminia…","frontmatter":{"id":165,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"eardissi","date":"2009-06-07 08:39:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It may well have been an Aldine invention -- I cannot remember seeing it in earlier editions. Clearly it was intended to help the reader, but of course many speeches begin in the middle of a poetic line too, for example, toward the end of the second line on the right-hand page in this illustration. Some sixteeenth-century editions use all-caps abbreviations for the characters, which make the reading even easier.

","excerpt":"It may well have been an Aldine invention -- I cannot remember seeing it in earlier editions. Clearly it was intended to help the reader, but of course many speeches begin in the middle of a poetic line too, for example, toward the end of the second…","frontmatter":{"id":166,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":100,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-06-20 16:56:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You two have put your finger(s) on one of the things on our to-do list. We are developing a database of images in Humanism For Sale (and other pages from the books illustrated here) that will have details about the editions and the copies photographed. Our plan is to make it possible for you to link directly from the images here to the database, which will also include notes on design and marketing features of the books in question. All pending time and funding, naturally.

","excerpt":"You two have put your finger(s) on one of the things on our to-do list. We are developing a database of images in Humanism For Sale (and other pages from the books illustrated here) that will have details about the editions and the copies…","frontmatter":{"id":167,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-06-20 16:59:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Our plan is --eventually-- to have live links to some of the bibliographical information. Meanwhile, you have to use this cumbersone work-around. Sorry.

","excerpt":"Our plan is --eventually-- to have live links to some of the bibliographical information. Meanwhile, you have to use this cumbersone work-around. Sorry.","frontmatter":{"id":168,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-06-20 17:02:35"}}},{"node":{"html":"

When DID pedagogues begin to challenge the moral content of early education? In other words, to what cultural developments may we tie such challenges, assuming they have really ever taken shape?

","excerpt":"When DID pedagogues begin to challenge the moral content of early education? In other words, to what cultural developments may we tie such challenges, assuming they have really ever taken shape?","frontmatter":{"id":169,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":363,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-16 11:08:04"}}},{"node":{"html":"

How could Alciati not have visuals in his first emblems, if an emblem is, by definition, a \"picture puzzle\"?

","excerpt":"How could Alciati not have visuals in his first emblems, if an emblem is, by definition, a \"picture puzzle\"?","frontmatter":{"id":170,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-16 11:18:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Do you reckon this emblem has any relation to the ancient Eye of Providence, which I recall being associated with the Trinity (usually inside a triangle), once it was used in the Middle Ages?

","excerpt":"Do you reckon this emblem has any relation to the ancient Eye of Providence, which I recall being associated with the Trinity (usually inside a triangle), once it was used in the Middle Ages?","frontmatter":{"id":171,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-16 11:24:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Alciati imagined the form as a brief poem with motto that assumed a mental picture created in the first instance by the author and re-created for the sake of the puzzle by the reader. All part of the erudite game. Within just a few years, however, publishers got hold of the form and printed pictures, thereafter altering the dynamic. Scholarly authors continued to compose emblems without pictures, but the standard form from the 1530s onward is the one we recognize today, the picture puzzle.

","excerpt":"Alciati imagined the form as a brief poem with motto that assumed a mental picture created in the first instance by the author and re-created for the sake of the puzzle by the reader. All part of the erudite game. Within just a few years, however…","frontmatter":{"id":172,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-16 18:41:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

When Max Barry read this chapter, the pictures were not yet all in place. Readers are still welcome to say if there are parts of the exposition that would be helped by an additional image.

","excerpt":"When Max Barry read this chapter, the pictures were not yet all in place. Readers are still welcome to say if there are parts of the exposition that would be helped by an additional image.","frontmatter":{"id":173,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-16 18:43:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I don't know for sure, Rick, but I don't see any direct parallel in the texts that accompany the image. Alciati references Epicharnus of Kos for the moral advice --a quotation he may have gotten from any number of sources, perhaps most likely Diogenes Laertes-- and the Heraclitus story, both of which seem to fit better into a personal-moral than a mystical framework.

","excerpt":"I don't know for sure, Rick, but I don't see any direct parallel in the texts that accompany the image. Alciati references Epicharnus of Kos for the moral advice --a quotation he may have gotten from any number of sources, perhaps most likely…","frontmatter":{"id":174,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-16 20:53:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I can easily look this up, I suppose, but I am curious about the date of the founding of the Medici Oriental Press -- since this date has soem bearing on your claim about emblems and merchandising.

","excerpt":"I can easily look this up, I suppose, but I am curious about the date of the founding of the Medici Oriental Press -- since this date has soem bearing on your claim about emblems and merchandising.","frontmatter":{"id":175,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":369,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-17 06:17:34"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Have I missed this, or do you find the Horatian formula \"et pictura poesis\" relevant here? More to the point, did the emblem-makers?

","excerpt":"Have I missed this, or do you find the Horatian formula \"et pictura poesis\" relevant here? More to the point, did the emblem-makers?","frontmatter":{"id":176,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-17 06:22:46"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Applications of mental skill to problem solving: and thus perfect for schoolboys. But quite different from opportunities for meditation, as averred earlier. I see they can overlap, though.

","excerpt":"Applications of mental skill to problem solving: and thus perfect for schoolboys. But quite different from opportunities for meditation, as averred earlier. I see they can overlap, though.","frontmatter":{"id":177,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-17 06:31:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

And so here we see the merging of a traditional patronage system with the newer concerns of commerce, do we not? And the snake emblem is the product of this shotgun marriage.

","excerpt":"And so here we see the merging of a traditional patronage system with the newer concerns of commerce, do we not? And the snake emblem is the product of this shotgun marriage.","frontmatter":{"id":178,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-17 06:42:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, the two applications are different but overlapping. The emblem form stimulated several different uses beyond Alciati's original one of learned entertainment, but the puzzle is at the core of all of them. The reader may enjoy solving the puzzle, may learn skills from the process in or outside a classroom, or may use the emblem for private meditation. Some collections had one or the other of these for a starting point, but most emblems are suitable for all three uses.

","excerpt":"Yes, the two applications are different but overlapping. The emblem form stimulated several different uses beyond Alciati's original one of learned entertainment, but the puzzle is at the core of all of them. The reader may enjoy solving the puzzle…","frontmatter":{"id":179,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-17 06:44:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Any known connection of Hunger to the Jesuits?

","excerpt":"Any known connection of Hunger to the Jesuits?","frontmatter":{"id":180,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":383,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-17 06:48:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I'm a bit unclear how to reconcile the phrase \"vehicle of meditative poetics and a machine for contemplation of the divine\" with the commonplace ethical truisms the emblems so frequently illustrate or embody.

","excerpt":"I'm a bit unclear how to reconcile the phrase \"vehicle of meditative poetics and a machine for contemplation of the divine\" with the commonplace ethical truisms the emblems so frequently illustrate or embody.","frontmatter":{"id":181,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":390,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-17 07:01:11"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This seems most convincing: \"creating collegiality among an elite group of students.\" A lot of education does this, as we all know. The emblems then become part of a socio-economic project to reinforce useful class distinctions.

","excerpt":"This seems most convincing: \"creating collegiality among an elite group of students.\" A lot of education does this, as we all know. The emblems then become part of a socio-economic project to reinforce useful class distinctions.","frontmatter":{"id":182,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":390,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-17 07:05:06"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The emblem makes a particularly good opportunity to cross over between commercial and non-commercial culture, insofar as it allows businessmen to display their intellectual bona fides. In this particular case, Bernardo Giunta never received court subsidies in the measure he hoped for, but he did get a noble title out of the deal.

","excerpt":"The emblem makes a particularly good opportunity to cross over between commercial and non-commercial culture, insofar as it allows businessmen to display their intellectual bona fides. In this particular case, Bernardo Giunta never received court…","frontmatter":{"id":183,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-17 07:06:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It would have to have been post hoc factum, since Hunger died before the founding of any Jesuit colleges.

","excerpt":"It would have to have been post hoc factum, since Hunger died before the founding of any Jesuit colleges.","frontmatter":{"id":184,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":383,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-17 07:10:26"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Then I must have misunderstood. Hunger died in 1555. The first Jesuit college, you say, was at Messina in 1548.

","excerpt":"Then I must have misunderstood. Hunger died in 1555. The first Jesuit college, you say, was at Messina in 1548.","frontmatter":{"id":185,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":383,"author":"Richard Mallette","date":"2009-07-18 04:39:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Sorry, you are right. I was misremembering both dates. I'll have to revisit the literature on Hunger (Koehler is pretty much all there is on his emblematics) to see if there is any Jesuit link.

","excerpt":"Sorry, you are right. I was misremembering both dates. I'll have to revisit the literature on Hunger (Koehler is pretty much all there is on his emblematics) to see if there is any Jesuit link.","frontmatter":{"id":186,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":383,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-18 07:04:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Right. In fact, Italian academic emblems are usually of the non-commonplace sort. They strive for as little-obvious a referential frame as possible. In this way, they attempt to create or sustain elite, exclusive communities --by contrast to most school-oriented or public-consumption emblems which aimed to create broader communities of readers who bought into humanist political commonplaces.

","excerpt":"Right. In fact, Italian academic emblems are usually of the non-commonplace sort. They strive for as little-obvious a referential frame as possible. In this way, they attempt to create or sustain elite, exclusive communities --by contrast to most…","frontmatter":{"id":187,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":390,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-20 07:50:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I went back this morning to the most recent work I know on Hunger, just a few pages really in Koehler. He gives a brief bio of Hunger, who matriculated at Ingolstadt and taught there later in life after a peripatetic youth. It seems unlikely that he knew nothing at all of the early Jesuits, but there is also no indication that he was influenced by them. If anything, the influence would have been in the other direction, since our best guess as to the origin of Jesuit emblem-making (which flourished mostly after 1580) is that it started in Germany under the influence of German humanist schools like those Hunger envisions.

","excerpt":"I went back this morning to the most recent work I know on Hunger, just a few pages really in Koehler. He gives a brief bio of Hunger, who matriculated at Ingolstadt and taught there later in life after a peripatetic youth. It seems unlikely that he…","frontmatter":{"id":188,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":383,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-20 08:45:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Regarding the chapter title, \"How To\" seems fine; \"Stuff\" may be too cute (and imprecise).

","excerpt":"Regarding the chapter title, \"How To\" seems fine; \"Stuff\" may be too cute (and imprecise).","frontmatter":{"id":189,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":319,"author":"Carla Zecher","date":"2009-07-21 09:26:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The objects depicted in the image's frame appear to be random and purely decorative, but I notice that panpipes are included. They typically stand for the seven Liberal Arts, and the pipes (assuming they form a major scale) represent an application of Pythagoras's ratios.

","excerpt":"The objects depicted in the image's frame appear to be random and purely decorative, but I notice that panpipes are included. They typically stand for the seven Liberal Arts, and the pipes (assuming they form a major scale) represent an application…","frontmatter":{"id":190,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":327,"author":"Carla Zecher","date":"2009-07-21 10:49:15"}}},{"node":{"html":"

If music books were used in classrooms, then the same would be true for musical notation (although not in partbooks).

","excerpt":"If music books were used in classrooms, then the same would be true for musical notation (although not in partbooks).","frontmatter":{"id":191,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":327,"author":"Carla Zecher","date":"2009-07-21 11:01:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In all probability, the woodcut frame here is a separate woodblock from the cut of the teacher; and the caption above the cut is set in type, so it too is a separate item supplied by the printer. Given the generally high degree of pretension of this book, we may assume the elements were chosen to be reasonably coherent and pertinent to the text, but it is worth remembering that they are also stock cuts.

","excerpt":"In all probability, the woodcut frame here is a separate woodblock from the cut of the teacher; and the caption above the cut is set in type, so it too is a separate item supplied by the printer. Given the generally high degree of pretension of this…","frontmatter":{"id":192,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":327,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-21 11:27:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, this is why I want to sit down with Roger Grant while he is here and find out when and why notation like bar lines comes into textbooks (as well as performance books).

","excerpt":"Yes, this is why I want to sit down with Roger Grant while he is here and find out when and why notation like bar lines comes into textbooks (as well as performance books).","frontmatter":{"id":193,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":327,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-21 11:29:15"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I understand what you mean by, \"the scribe is no longer to be compared to a barber or a musician,\" but \"musician\" may not be the best word to use. A distinction between \"minstrels\" and \"musicians\" was coming into being in this period, and depending on the context and the language in which the term appears, the latter group could include renowned composers of polyphony.

","excerpt":"I understand what you mean by, \"the scribe is no longer to be compared to a barber or a musician,\" but \"musician\" may not be the best word to use. A distinction between \"minstrels\" and \"musicians\" was coming into being in this period, and depending…","frontmatter":{"id":194,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":337,"author":"Carla Zecher","date":"2009-07-23 08:32:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In our NEH seminar on music books we have been thinking about the kinds of social interaction that developed around the practice of singing and playing from partbooks (or other kinds of music books). Your observation about \"parlor amusements\" makes me wonder if any kinds of group social activities -- outside of the educational context -- developed around books on writing.

","excerpt":"In our NEH seminar on music books we have been thinking about the kinds of social interaction that developed around the practice of singing and playing from partbooks (or other kinds of music books). Your observation about \"parlor amusements\" makes…","frontmatter":{"id":195,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":339,"author":"Carla Zecher","date":"2009-07-23 08:42:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

What's represented in the woodcut at the top left of the image? Does it have a relationship to the text?

","excerpt":"What's represented in the woodcut at the top left of the image? Does it have a relationship to the text?","frontmatter":{"id":196,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":351,"author":"Carla Zecher","date":"2009-07-23 09:41:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I wonder if one could learn even more about intended audiences by placing each manual in the context of a given printer's entire output of music books. Were books of notation being printed more or less in tandem with the instruction books, aimed at the same categories of buyers?

","excerpt":"I wonder if one could learn even more about intended audiences by placing each manual in the context of a given printer's entire output of music books. Were books of notation being printed more or less in tandem with the instruction books, aimed at…","frontmatter":{"id":197,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":357,"author":"Carla Zecher","date":"2009-07-23 10:07:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good point. The first comparison, to a barber, has to be referring to a professional, though not one of high social status. But I suppose an amateur might be understood in Arrighi's case, since the context is learning to play an instrument. On the other hand, the writing masters are clearly claiming professionalism and progressively claiming higher degrees of professional status.

","excerpt":"Good point. The first comparison, to a barber, has to be referring to a professional, though not one of high social status. But I suppose an amateur might be understood in Arrighi's case, since the context is learning to play an instrument. On the…","frontmatter":{"id":198,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":337,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-23 13:12:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This kind of research is easier to do now than even 5 years ago, at least for the 16th century, because we can get a good sense of the titles issued by any given press from the on-line union catalog of 16th century books, EDIT-16. Most of the printers have not been studied individually.

","excerpt":"This kind of research is easier to do now than even 5 years ago, at least for the 16th century, because we can get a good sense of the titles issued by any given press from the on-line union catalog of 16th century books, EDIT-16. Most of the…","frontmatter":{"id":199,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":357,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-23 14:30:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes. The \"Secreti et modi bellissimi\" has jokes and riddles, and it demonstrates various methods of invisible handwriting and codes. Other surviving books have fortune-telling games, role-playing games, and the like.

","excerpt":"Yes. The \"Secreti et modi bellissimi\" has jokes and riddles, and it demonstrates various methods of invisible handwriting and codes. Other surviving books have fortune-telling games, role-playing games, and the like.","frontmatter":{"id":200,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":339,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-24 06:39:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good question! I don't know. Often such woodcut initials have a subject that has a name starting with the initial in question. But I do not know an historical or mythical figure that fits this picture of a man gripping an animal. In any case, it is likely a stock cut, not one made to go with this humble guide to singing chant.

","excerpt":"Good question! I don't know. Often such woodcut initials have a subject that has a name starting with the initial in question. But I do not know an historical or mythical figure that fits this picture of a man gripping an animal. In any case, it is…","frontmatter":{"id":202,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":351,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-07-26 09:56:34"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On the matter of availability, just today a the Newberry I ran across a 1604 catalogue of the Florence bookshop of the Giunta brothers that lists no fewer than 15 different editions of Terence in formats ranging from 16mo to folio and from printers in Venice, Paris, Lyon, and Antwerp!

","excerpt":"On the matter of availability, just today a the Newberry I ran across a 1604 catalogue of the Florence bookshop of the Giunta brothers that lists no fewer than 15 different editions of Terence in formats ranging from 16mo to folio and from printers…","frontmatter":{"id":203,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":126,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-08-05 09:54:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You point to an interesting question, Dan, one that scholars are still writing about. \"Effectively settled\" was an overstatement on my part, since in fact the morality of the plays and the ethics of using them continued to be debated until recent times. There is a new article in the March 2008 issue of The International Journal of the Classical Tradition by Peter McG. Brown, that discusses censored versions right up to the 1970s. (See: \"The Eunuch Castrated,\" cit. 16-28.) Caesar, of course, has not of the same moral problems, but little of the lively language either.

","excerpt":"You point to an interesting question, Dan, one that scholars are still writing about. \"Effectively settled\" was an overstatement on my part, since in fact the morality of the plays and the ethics of using them continued to be debated until recent…","frontmatter":{"id":204,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":126,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-08-05 10:16:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In addition to the sources cited in note 61, there is now a new essay on Petrarch's Itinerarium by Theodore J. Cachey, in Petrarch, A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 229-241. Cachey makes the important point that for Petrarch, the imaginary, uneven, and highly episodic journey of the Itinerarium was a reflection of the author's literary wanderings. At exactly a period of relative stability in his domestic life, Petrarch restlessly travelled back and forth from one work-in-progress to another.

","excerpt":"In addition to the sources cited in note 61, there is now a new essay on Petrarch's Itinerarium by Theodore J. Cachey, in Petrarch, A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 229-241. Cachey makes the important point…","frontmatter":{"id":205,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":270,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-08-06 20:27:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

There is something wonderful about this image embedded as it is on this page. The detail photo given here (in section 1.08) of the comic strip-like illustration at first obscures the text embedded in commentary to which you refer earlier in this section. (The detail image of the \"œcomic\" shows the verso only; you must click on this to reveal the whole spread including the recto with the text and commentary.) This immediately calls to mind (for this reader) the meta-critical nature of the text you as author have created: that is a text that opens itself up for comment and critique. While your 21st century text is a dynamic, digitally morphing (not to say living and breathing) thing, the text you refer to is also an example of an earlier interactive project, evidencing a history of interpretation that required thoughtful planning and design to make sense of the polyphony of voices both authorial and critical/interpretive.

\n

So much has changed and yet so much stays the same. This brings into sharper focus the messy business of \"œprint culture.\" We see the text embedded in commentary (e.g. the recto page of the photo illustration), we can think of the convention of the scholarly footnote, and then we can see CommentPress providing a newer digital model at work here in your text. (The \"œcomic strip\" provided in this same illustration, sets up another very different but parallel example.) This reminds me once again that \"œprint culture\" is never fully coherent, it can only point us towards the profound role technology plays in the process of interpreting old texts by adapting old or inventing new strategies for creating new texts. This process is never as neat and as linear as it may at first seem. And certainly not every innovation offers an improvement.

\n

At this moment of profound change in scholarly publishing and experiences of reading, it is particularly useful to be jolted a bit out of the conventions of the book, so that we just might be better able (or at least differently able) to reflect upon the book in its various and sometimes wonderfully deviant forms. I know I've read someone else expressing this same sentiment (I think it was Roger Chartier):

\n

Perhaps the computer can provide a site for scholars to better and more clearly examine the nature of the book...

","excerpt":"There is something wonderful about this image embedded as it is on this page. The detail photo given here (in section 1.08) of the comic strip-like illustration at first obscures the text embedded in commentary to which you refer earlier in this…","frontmatter":{"id":206,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"John Vincler","date":"2009-09-05 23:56:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

There is something wonderful about this image embedded as it is on this page. The detail here of the comic strip-like illustration at first obscures the text embedded in commentary to which you refer earlier in this section. (The detail image of the \"œcomic\" shows the verso only; you must click on this to reveal the whole spread including the recto with the text and commentary.) This immediately calls to mind (for this reader) the meta-critical nature of the text you as author have created: that is a text that opens itself up for comment and critique. While your 21st century text is a dynamic, digitally morphing (not to say living and breathing) thing, the text you refer to is also an example of an earlier interactive project, evidencing a history of interpretation that required thoughtful planning and design to make sense of the polyphony of voices both authorial and critical/interpretive.

\n

So much has changed and yet so much stays the same. This brings into sharper focus the messy business of \"œprint culture.\" We see the text embedded in commentary (e.g. the recto page of the photo illustration), we can think of the convention of the scholarly footnote, and then we can see CommentPress providing a newer digital model at work here in your text. (The \"œcomic strip\" provided in this same illustration, sets up another very different but parallel example.) This reminds me once again that \"œprint culture\" is never fully coherent, it can only point us towards the profound role technology plays in the process of interpreting old texts by adapting old or inventing new strategies for creating new texts. This process is never as neat and as linear as it may at first seem. And certainly not every innovation offers an improvement.

\n

At this moment of profound change in scholarly publishing and experiences of reading, it is particularly useful to be jolted a bit out of the conventions of the book, so that we just might be better able (or at least differently able) to reflect upon the book in its various and sometimes wonderfully deviant forms. I know I've read someone else expressing this same sentiment (I think it was Roger Chartier):

\n

Perhaps the computer can provide a site for scholars to better and more clearly examine the nature of the book...

","excerpt":"There is something wonderful about this image embedded as it is on this page. The detail here of the comic strip-like illustration at first obscures the text embedded in commentary to which you refer earlier in this section. (The detail image of…","frontmatter":{"id":207,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":98,"author":"John Vincler","date":"2009-09-05 23:59:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, John, for drawing the analogy between the Renaissance commented page and the kind of dialogue we are attempting here at Humanism For Sale. In fact, the interplay of base text, commentary by several critics across nine or ten centuries, and illustrations in the new technology of print is exactly the kind of cumulative, collaborative scholarship we are hoping to promote. It already exists informally within circles of colleagues and friends, but putting it online changes the dynamic for the better and offers a (perhaps utopian) opportunity to enlarge the conversation still further.

\n

I do think, however, that it is worth trying to figure out what is NOT staying the same. For me, the highly structured Renaissance page offers a hierarchy of authority that is not congenial today. Exactly because there are specialists out there who know more about a specific text than I do, my research report is open to question and correction. And because a number of artists and designers have made notes too, I have acquired new eyes for the beauty or interest of things that looked ordinary or even banal before.

\n

Again, these comment fields let me add notes on things I am observing anew. For example, in this page the type in this detail from a title page seems to sag. This irregular effect sometimes actually occurs in early printing, but here it is an illusion caused by the way the photo was cropped to show just the text. In the fuller image given at 0.07, you can make out clearly that it is caused by the fact that the page would not lay flat for the photographer. For both conservation and aesthetic reasons, I prefer to have the bowing of the page shown, but just here it may cause some viewers to judge the facts of the printing wrongly.

","excerpt":"Thanks, John, for drawing the analogy between the Renaissance commented page and the kind of dialogue we are attempting here at Humanism For Sale. In fact, the interplay of base text, commentary by several critics across nine or ten centuries, and…","frontmatter":{"id":208,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-13 03:28:00"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Well, it does work as a single piece now, but it was clearly done by the different students who handled the book.

","excerpt":"Well, it does work as a single piece now, but it was clearly done by the different students who handled the book.","frontmatter":{"id":209,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-09-17 19:55:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Why can't I see these added pictures? My clicker is not working?

","excerpt":"Why can't I see these added pictures? My clicker is not working?","frontmatter":{"id":210,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":207,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-09-17 20:02:00"}}},{"node":{"html":"

There should be four pics in this section, one each in paragraphs 2, 4, 5 and 6!

","excerpt":"There should be four pics in this section, one each in paragraphs 2, 4, 5 and 6!","frontmatter":{"id":211,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":207,"author":"admin","date":"2009-09-17 20:13:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is a provocative image! The way the scroll depicted might be rolled in either direction is an idea I can file for possible use for a scroll with no beginning and end.

","excerpt":"This is a provocative image! The way the scroll depicted might be rolled in either direction is an idea I can file for possible use for a scroll with no beginning and end.","frontmatter":{"id":212,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":106,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-09-17 20:16:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The book used here is extraordinary.

\n

Words are quite superfluous.

","excerpt":"The book used here is extraordinary. Words are quite superfluous.","frontmatter":{"id":213,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":106,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2009-09-17 20:18:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You quote Tagliente as saying \"poor boys\" would receive the same opportunities as \"rich one[s].\" Is this equivocal to what you term \"working class men\" at the end of the paragraph? I'm not sure I understand the usage of the term \"working class\" as it applies to Renaissance Italy; does it have the same Marxist connotation as in twentieth-century historiography?

","excerpt":"You quote Tagliente as saying \"poor boys\" would receive the same opportunities as \"rich one[s].\" Is this equivocal to what you term \"working class men\" at the end of the paragraph? I'm not sure I understand the usage of the term \"working class\" as it…","frontmatter":{"id":215,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":321,"author":"Eric M. Sacco","date":"2009-09-20 22:53:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"Working class\" is --both for Grendler and to me-- a modern term of analysis (inevitably understood in Marxist or post-Marxist terms, though neither of us is a Marxist). It does not have an exact equivalent in the sixteenth century, but it helps us understand the elitism of the Latin school curriculum. Italians of the period had a clear sense that the full-dress Latin course was most appropriate for boys of the political classes. Correspondingly, they knew that most boys and women did not have access to this course except through the charity or good will of some educators. The interesting thing about the prefaces to the self-study books that appear in the 1520s is that their authors both recognize this opportunity gap and set out to remedy it by selling their new books to this under-served group. This kind of sales pitch is perennial for self-help books --look at Amazon any day!-- but it is still a novelty at this period.

\n

Your reference to Marxism, Eric, raises a slightly different question too, namely, does the awareness of class differences necessarily imply tension or conflict between the two groups? Although many of the voices we can hear in the period deny such tension --they tend to see class differences as inevitable and to respond in terms of the obligation to Christian charity-- there is also plenty of explicit evidence that the rulers felt there was social tension and that a degree of social mobility through education was one way of relieving it.

","excerpt":"\"Working class\" is --both for Grendler and to me-- a modern term of analysis (inevitably understood in Marxist or post-Marxist terms, though neither of us is a Marxist). It does not have an exact equivalent in the sixteenth century, but it helps us…","frontmatter":{"id":216,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":321,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-21 08:45:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

So as I understand this, Grasso and Giraldi were conversing in print in the vernacular Italian, which supposes a broad audience. Yet their subject was a series of works written in Latin, and the appropriateness of those works in the curricula of contemporary schools, which would have had a much narrower audience. At first, this makes little sense, for why would you write to a broader audience that may not care about the issue at hand. But if the focus of Grasso (and Giraldi) was not the content of the argument, but the debate itself, this use of the vernacular discussing Terence is understandable.

","excerpt":"So as I understand this, Grasso and Giraldi were conversing in print in the vernacular Italian, which supposes a broad audience. Yet their subject was a series of works written in Latin, and the appropriateness of those works in the curricula of…","frontmatter":{"id":217,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":124,"author":"MRenihan","date":"2009-09-21 10:43:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes. You are right to point to the oddity (from our point of view) in attacking or defending Terence, studied always in Latin, in the vernacular. Keep in mind, however, that this was part of a much larger debate, in which the Giraldi family as a whole was deeply involved, over the nature of poetry. This debate went on largely in Italian, but necessarily involved the value of classical poetic models, Terence being a standard author. So, in a sense, Terence is not the real subject, though we risk anachronism if we discount how passionate sixteenth-century readers could get about beloved classical authors.

","excerpt":"Yes. You are right to point to the oddity (from our point of view) in attacking or defending Terence, studied always in Latin, in the vernacular. Keep in mind, however, that this was part of a much larger debate, in which the Giraldi family as a…","frontmatter":{"id":218,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":124,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-21 10:53:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"The preface goes on to claim preeminence in commerce for Florence...\"

\n

Was this practice of linking the authority/desirability of the text to a particular city, Florence in this case, a common selling point for math textbooks? If so, did the 'origin' of the text become more important than its author, in terms of marketing strategy?

","excerpt":"\"The preface goes on to claim preeminence in commerce for Florence...\" Was this practice of linking the authority/desirability of the text to a particular city, Florence in this case, a common selling point for math textbooks? If so, did the 'origin…","frontmatter":{"id":219,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":327,"author":"dbench","date":"2009-09-21 16:23:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It's not quite common, but not entirely unique to this book either. Most ambitious printers were looking for audiences beyond their own cities, and in the case of school books in Latin even international audiences. There were local and regional markets, however, which are described in summary fashion in section 0.02, and some teachers seem to have published primarily for their own students. One example is described in section 7.10.

","excerpt":"It's not quite common, but not entirely unique to this book either. Most ambitious printers were looking for audiences beyond their own cities, and in the case of school books in Latin even international audiences. There were local and regional…","frontmatter":{"id":220,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":327,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-21 16:30:29"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Christopher S. Celenza's 2004 work \"The Lost Italian Renaissance\" urges scholars to study the Latin writings of Renaissance Italians for a fuller understanding of the contested subject. He also stresses the dire need, especially in the United States, for more translations of Latin Renaissance texts. \"Humanism For Sale\" seems to fit in quite nicely with what Celenza wants, and where he thinks the interdisciplinary field of \"Renaissance Studies\" should go in the new millenium. How do you, as the scholar, feel about this assessment?

","excerpt":"Christopher S. Celenza's 2004 work \"The Lost Italian Renaissance\" urges scholars to study the Latin writings of Renaissance Italians for a fuller understanding of the contested subject. He also stresses the dire need, especially in the United States…","frontmatter":{"id":221,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":398,"author":"mikegoddard","date":"2009-09-21 16:55:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I tried posting this comment in the body of the text, but it was not working. This is probably a mistake on my end. What strikes me about \"Humanism For Sale\" is that the scholarship seems to speak to the concerns of Christopher S. Celenza. His 2004 work \"The Lost Italian Renaissance\" expresses the dire need for scholars to study the Latin texts of Renaissance authors for a broader understanding of the time period. He also urges researchers to take the time for the thankless duty of translating these texts to encourage further graduate study, especially in the United States. \"Humanism For Sale,\" though focusing on a specific set of writings, is a step in the direction Celenza envisions for Renaissance Studies. Is this a fair assessment?

","excerpt":"I tried posting this comment in the body of the text, but it was not working. This is probably a mistake on my end. What strikes me about \"Humanism For Sale\" is that the scholarship seems to speak to the concerns of Christopher S. Celenza. His 200…","frontmatter":{"id":223,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"mikegoddard","date":"2009-09-21 17:23:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You got caught in the Chicago rush hour, Mike. When you put in a comment for the very first time, the system puts you on hold until I or another administrator can approve you, i.e. you personally. This is just so we don't get the comment fields filled up by spambots (lots of them in Russia it seems). I was on the bus in heavy downtown traffic when you put in your first note, and just got home. From now on your comments should show up automatically. Let me know if they do not. I will reply to your note about Celenza's book in text --at section 8.02.

","excerpt":"You got caught in the Chicago rush hour, Mike. When you put in a comment for the very first time, the system puts you on hold until I or another administrator can approve you, i.e. you personally. This is just so we don't get the comment fields…","frontmatter":{"id":224,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-21 17:55:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Is there a significant presence of the Blessed Virgin in these emblems? Your title suggests so, but the section focuses on several examples of the children of the first part and merely mentions the BVM as the patron of Jesuit academies. I'd be curious to know if there was some sort of tradition of Marian depictions, as with your discussion of children.

","excerpt":"Is there a significant presence of the Blessed Virgin in these emblems? Your title suggests so, but the section focuses on several examples of the children of the first part and merely mentions the BVM as the patron of Jesuit academies. I'd be…","frontmatter":{"id":225,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":388,"author":"Maureen Maselko","date":"2009-09-21 19:25:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"general tendency throughout our period to see careful record keeping (and good, clear handwriting too) as part of honest commercial practice\"

\n

It's intriguing that the emphasis in the sixteenth century was on legible handwriting, whereas today we identify some prestigious occupations by the very opposite. The illegibility of doctors' hands are certainly a commonplace in the modern world, and yet doctors are not thereby considered dishonest. An interesting transition...

","excerpt":"\"general tendency throughout our period to see careful record keeping (and good, clear handwriting too) as part of honest commercial practice\" It's intriguing that the emphasis in the sixteenth century was on legible handwriting, whereas today we…","frontmatter":{"id":226,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":333,"author":"Maureen Maselko","date":"2009-09-21 19:40:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The interesting thing about the passage you cite in Celenza's book (which I think overall is brilliant, by the way) is that he seems to have decided there is no chance we can train American scholars to read Latin well. So Americans need translations, while we can assume the philological training in Italy and Germany will continue to flourish, and those scholarly publics will not need translations. No doubt this opinion of Celenza's derives from the practical experience of his own teaching. I guess, since I live in a research library world, I am more optimistic about Americans reading Latin. Still, these Latin works (not necessarily the schoolbooks I spend time with, but certainly the dialogues and poetry and treatises that constitute the original works of humanists) deserve to be better known. Fortunately, we have good translations (with Latin on facing pages) coming out regularly now from the Harvard I Tatti series, one of the most exciting initiatives or recent years\nTo punt the question back to you, Mike: Do you think we need more and better Latin training, or more and better translations? You (not I) are the future of Renaissance studies, so it is really the students in your class who must answer this question.

","excerpt":"The interesting thing about the passage you cite in Celenza's book (which I think overall is brilliant, by the way) is that he seems to have decided there is no chance we can train American scholars to read Latin well. So Americans need translations…","frontmatter":{"id":227,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":398,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-21 20:03:03"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good question, Maureen. Maybe my section title is a little misleading. In fact many Jesuit emblems are about devotion to the Blessed Virgin, but do not include images of the Virgin herself. This is part of the general strategy of emblematics, to create puzzle-pictures, in which the subject is referred to only indirectly.

\n

Alas, the Partenoapean emblem book is very rare and we do not have a copy at the Newberry from which I could give you a concrete example of how the emblems really look. I have used it only on microfilm, and that on loan from a scholar here in Chicago.

","excerpt":"Good question, Maureen. Maybe my section title is a little misleading. In fact many Jesuit emblems are about devotion to the Blessed Virgin, but do not include images of the Virgin herself. This is part of the general strategy of emblematics, to…","frontmatter":{"id":228,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":388,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-21 20:09:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It would seem to me that prior to the invention of mechanical printing presses the distribution of texts would vary from one another greatly, which would influence the overall learning of material in the texts by students. The ability to mechanically print texts led to standardized testing and teaching to the masses, removing the regionalizing. I think your point that \"the classroom affords us a window on groups of readers\" is still true and although the delivery of texts have become more standardized and consistent the view is still not clear. You state that as students grow intellectually as readers they \"employ these skills with increasing degrees of individualism\", Educators are faced with a decreased level of overall understanding and comprehension of material in and out of the classrooms by the students who stuggle to grow individually in the face of standardized testing and mass production of classroom textbooks. I wonder if it was more beneficial to have students learn from regional texts created by their teachers.

","excerpt":"It would seem to me that prior to the invention of mechanical printing presses the distribution of texts would vary from one another greatly, which would influence the overall learning of material in the texts by students. The ability to mechanically…","frontmatter":{"id":229,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"laur_bee77","date":"2009-09-21 22:05:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I tried to respond to this paragraph and after hitting \"add comment\" it disappeared so I will attempt again. I wonder if it was more beneficial to students in the Renaissance to recieve their education from teachers and regionalized texts rather than from mass printed materials. I agree that the classroom \"affords us a window on groups of readers, but does not always give us a clear view.\" This statement could not be truer as we face standardized testing efforts based on mass produced generalized text books which are used in classrooms. Students struggle to comprehend material and 'keep up' yet don't actually learn and it is evident on their tests and in their interactions with one another in and out of the classroom. It does not really surprise me that students do not choose to expand their horizons by exploring older considerably more difficult texts of old.

","excerpt":"I tried to respond to this paragraph and after hitting \"add comment\" it disappeared so I will attempt again. I wonder if it was more beneficial to students in the Renaissance to recieve their education from teachers and regionalized texts rather than…","frontmatter":{"id":230,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"laur_bee77","date":"2009-09-21 22:18:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\". . . introduced himself as a Sienese schoolmaster who had taught arithmetic all over Italy and Sicily . . .\"

\n

I find the differing marketing strategies between Latin grammars, which were based largely on the legitimacy of the authors, and these math and other 'self-help' texts fascinating. In the previous section I wondered if particular cities could be the basis for legitimacy. Here I see that Sfortunati cast himself as an experienced teacher and a native speaker of Tuscan, highlighting the importance of vernacular. I get the sense that there is much less argument between competitors over content in the case of math than over method--whereas content was a major concern for those marketing/selling Latin grammar (even as method was also a key issue).

","excerpt":"\". . . introduced himself as a Sienese schoolmaster who had taught arithmetic all over Italy and Sicily . . .\" I find the differing marketing strategies between Latin grammars, which were based largely on the legitimacy of the authors, and these math…","frontmatter":{"id":231,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":329,"author":"dbench","date":"2009-09-22 09:30:35"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are certainly right that there was relatively little to differentiate basic math content from one book to another. But the teachers did find themselves involved with the different commercial traditions of towns where they taught. Venice and Florence were great rivals, but every small town had its own set of weights and measures, its own currency, etc. So there is plenty of room to sell different styles and methods of teaching.

","excerpt":"You are certainly right that there was relatively little to differentiate basic math content from one book to another. But the teachers did find themselves involved with the different commercial traditions of towns where they taught. Venice and…","frontmatter":{"id":232,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":329,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-22 09:41:35"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Well, I'm all for studying historical texts. But one of the basic principles is to look at them carefully on their own terms and avoid anachronisms at all cost. Generalizing is always a peril, and anachonism is among the problems we risk when we generalize. With reference to your specific observation, the peril is in overstating the identity of printed books. Standardization as we know it is hard to impose on early printed books. Certainly they are more standardized than manuscripts, but by our measures they vary immensely from copy to copy both in production terms and in patterns of use.

","excerpt":"Well, I'm all for studying historical texts. But one of the basic principles is to look at them carefully on their own terms and avoid anachronisms at all cost. Generalizing is always a peril, and anachonism is among the problems we risk when we…","frontmatter":{"id":233,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-22 09:57:44"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In Chapter 5, you discuss conservativism with regard to Jesuit education. You say \"œ Educational conservatism sometimes consists of such inertia. Teachers and (just as often) parents want the children of today to learn the same lessons in the same ways that their elders had. Attachments to textbooks, especially books that were widely memorized, often took this form -- affection reinforced by inertia.\"(5.07). This, and the sections that followed raised some questions for me. Is there any indication that parents challenged the centralization of Education that was part of the Jesuit program? The chapter emphasizes this combination of issues: localism, conservativism and education, which is interesting because my immediate assumption is that they indicate a demand for cultural autonomy (rather than just the cultural sensitivity that was the cause of localized printing). Would you say that people in general were reacting to the centralization of education in a way that advocated local control?

","excerpt":"In Chapter 5, you discuss conservativism with regard to Jesuit education. You say \"œ Educational conservatism sometimes consists of such inertia. Teachers and (just as often) parents want the children of today to learn the same lessons in the same…","frontmatter":{"id":234,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":317,"author":"sarah","date":"2009-09-22 11:45:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In Chapter 5, you discuss conservativism with regard to Jesuit education. You say \"œ Educational conservatism sometimes consists of such inertia. Teachers and (just as often) parents want the children of today to learn the same lessons in the same ways that their elders had. Attachments to textbooks, especially books that were widely memorized, often took this form -- affection reinforced by inertia.\"(5.07). This, and the sections that followed raised some questions for me. Is there any indication that parents challenged the centralization of Education that was part of the Jesuit program? The chapter emphasizes this combination of issues: localism, conservativism and education, which is interesting because my immediate assumption is that they indicate a demand for cultural autonomy (rather than just the cultural sensitivity that was the cause of localized printing). Would you say that people in general were reacting to the centralization of education in a way that advocated local control?

","excerpt":"In Chapter 5, you discuss conservativism with regard to Jesuit education. You say \"œ Educational conservatism sometimes consists of such inertia. Teachers and (just as often) parents want the children of today to learn the same lessons in the same…","frontmatter":{"id":235,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"sarah","date":"2009-09-22 11:48:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It would be great to be able to draw this broad a conclusion, but I don't think we have the evidence to support it one way or the other. Parents' voices are hard to find in the surviving sources; they tended to vote their preferences merely by sending their children to one school or another. In section 5.13-16, I try to explicate what little evidence the textbooks themselves offer --merely to the point that there was some demand for alternative schools. Sales records and shop inventories offer a few more clues.

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There is one other potential source. To some degree, we can imagine that the laymen in city councils, who felt that they should be overseeing education in their towns, spoke for the parents. So, when there are recorded city council debates, that is a potential source. A good study of one such town is by Christopher Carlsmith on Bergamo, forthcoming from University of Toronto press.

","excerpt":"It would be great to be able to draw this broad a conclusion, but I don't think we have the evidence to support it one way or the other. Parents' voices are hard to find in the surviving sources; they tended to vote their preferences merely by…","frontmatter":{"id":236,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":317,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-22 12:28:00"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Sarah: Thanks for this comment. See my reply at the other spot where you you posted it, section 5.17.

","excerpt":"Sarah: Thanks for this comment. See my reply at the other spot where you you posted it, section 5.17.","frontmatter":{"id":237,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-22 12:30:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"...it will be a useful moral reference life-long, both because it will be memorized in part and again because it would become a pocket book for future consultation.\"

\n

Would writers of this time have written for their contemporaries only, or would they have expected their work to be consulted by many future generations as well?

","excerpt":"\"...it will be a useful moral reference life-long, both because it will be memorized in part and again because it would become a pocket book for future consultation.\" Would writers of this time have written for their contemporaries only, or would…","frontmatter":{"id":239,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"ChristinaL","date":"2009-09-22 12:46:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I find it quite fascinating that textbook markets were generally local and regional in early modern Italy, perhaps because I'm used to thinking of textbooks being standardized and marketed nationally. Are there any examples, though, of a regional market being influenced by an international one, or vice versa? I have the publishing market connections between Venice and London in mind, so I'm curious about the ways, if any, local textbooks markets may have been influenced by international ones for other types of books.

","excerpt":"I find it quite fascinating that textbook markets were generally local and regional in early modern Italy, perhaps because I'm used to thinking of textbooks being standardized and marketed nationally. Are there any examples, though, of a regional…","frontmatter":{"id":240,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Lauren Madak","date":"2009-09-23 12:10:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

[...] chapter on emblems in the online book Humanism For Sale: Making and Marketing Schoolbooks in Italy, 1450-1650, by Paul [...]

","excerpt":"[...] chapter on emblems in the online book Humanism For Sale: Making and Marketing Schoolbooks in Italy, 1450-1650, by Paul [...]","frontmatter":{"id":241,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":361,"author":"What are emblems? « English 430: Literature & the Visual Arts","date":"2009-09-23 14:12:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is an interesting question, Lauren: one that has not been written about very much. One place you might look for hints is Kristian Jensen's 1998 article on the fortuna of Aldus's grammar--it is cited in the bibliography at humanismforsale.org. There is also some literature on Venetian publishing for markets in Hungary and the Balkans. Specifically on English customers for Italian books there is some literature too. I will have to look for it and give you furhter cites in a later post.

","excerpt":"This is an interesting question, Lauren: one that has not been written about very much. One place you might look for hints is Kristian Jensen's 1998 article on the fortuna of Aldus's grammar--it is cited in the bibliography at humanismforsale.org…","frontmatter":{"id":242,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-23 16:43:55"}}},{"node":{"html":"

No question about it, Erasmus was writing for the ages!

","excerpt":"No question about it, Erasmus was writing for the ages!","frontmatter":{"id":243,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-23 16:45:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This sounds like a useful and diverting phrase book, perhaps in content somewhere between Giuseppe Fumagalli's Ape Latina and Georg Capellanus's Facetiae Latinae. Any idea if it's available on microfilm, etc.?

","excerpt":"This sounds like a useful and diverting phrase book, perhaps in content somewhere between Giuseppe Fumagalli's Ape Latina and Georg Capellanus's Facetiae Latinae. Any idea if it's available on microfilm, etc.?","frontmatter":{"id":244,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":229,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-26 08:04:38"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I too missed the transition here upon first reading. Perhaps put justification for the chapter up front (i.e., at the start of 4.14)?

","excerpt":"I too missed the transition here upon first reading. Perhaps put justification for the chapter up front (i.e., at the start of 4.14)?","frontmatter":{"id":245,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":270,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-26 09:04:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is fascinating, but by the end of the chapter I found myself in full agreement with Diana's comment at its beginning. Does this chapter really belong here? Perhaps better to suppress most of it to an appendix (and, in time, publish it in expanded form as a separate article)?

","excerpt":"This is fascinating, but by the end of the chapter I found myself in full agreement with Diana's comment at its beginning. Does this chapter really belong here? Perhaps better to suppress most of it to an appendix (and, in time, publish it in…","frontmatter":{"id":246,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":272,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-26 09:11:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Of all the chapter titles in \"Humanism For Sale,\" this one strikes me as the most clever.

","excerpt":"Of all the chapter titles in \"Humanism For Sale,\" this one strikes me as the most clever.","frontmatter":{"id":247,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":296,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-26 10:12:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Interesting. This may be a good example of how writing for the screen needs to be radically different from writing for the page. It is true that the last portion of this chapter once stood elsewhere in the planned monograph and that this is a stitched-in transition, but --as one might expect in a print monograph-- the presence of this section here is anticipated already in sections 4.00 and 4.01. Still, in an electronic book, you cannot easily, and do not expect to be able to, flip quickly back and forth through a chapter to pick up a lost thread. And so the transition may need more prepping here, especially when I have two of my most sophisticated readers telling me the same thing!

","excerpt":"Interesting. This may be a good example of how writing for the screen needs to be radically different from writing for the page. It is true that the last portion of this chapter once stood elsewhere in the planned monograph and that this is a…","frontmatter":{"id":248,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":270,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-26 16:01:07"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, Ken. See my note to your comment and Diana's at 4.14. It was once part of chapter 6, and maybe it really belongs there still.

","excerpt":"Thanks, Ken. See my note to your comment and Diana's at 4.14. It was once part of chapter 6, and maybe it really belongs there still.","frontmatter":{"id":249,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":272,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-26 16:03:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It may be included in the ISTC CDs coming out from the British Library, but hey, there is a copy for sale right now from a Florence bookseller for just 750 Euros!

","excerpt":"It may be included in the ISTC CDs coming out from the British Library, but hey, there is a copy for sale right now from a Florence bookseller for just 750 Euros!","frontmatter":{"id":250,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":229,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-26 16:06:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I'm struck by how both math books and handwriting books seem to come of age during the pontificate of Clement VII. Presumably this is just a coincidence. In any case, one has to feel for anyone who hoped that the disastrous papal jubilee of 1525 would be key to his publishing success.

","excerpt":"I'm struck by how both math books and handwriting books seem to come of age during the pontificate of Clement VII. Presumably this is just a coincidence. In any case, one has to feel for anyone who hoped that the disastrous papal jubilee of 152…","frontmatter":{"id":251,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-26 17:04:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It may well be a coincidence, but there is one concrete link. Clement was well known as a patron of the arts, and Arrighi, then in Rome and in the papal service, specifically compares the skills of a calligrapher to those of a musician. I am reasonably sure he had the numerous musicians of the papal chapel, and papal patronage for new music, in mind when he decided to go to press.

","excerpt":"It may well be a coincidence, but there is one concrete link. Clement was well known as a patron of the arts, and Arrighi, then in Rome and in the papal service, specifically compares the skills of a calligrapher to those of a musician. I am…","frontmatter":{"id":252,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-26 17:13:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The \"long sixteenth century\" is mentioned a number of times in this book (including here). Do you mean that to refer to the entire two-century period 1450-1650? Or, are you following another scholar's lead in defining a shorter period? If there's a gloss someplace for your use of the term and its justification, I missed it.

","excerpt":"The \"long sixteenth century\" is mentioned a number of times in this book (including here). Do you mean that to refer to the entire two-century period 1450-1650? Or, are you following another scholar's lead in defining a shorter period? If there's a…","frontmatter":{"id":253,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":392,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-27 09:33:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are right to note that I use it fairly loosely and inclusively. In general I take the whole range from 1450 to 1650, as noted at the very start (section 0.01, with specific reference in footnote 2 to John Marino's and Chris Celenza's discussions of periodization). This makes sense in publishing terms since it includes everyone in print from Gutenberg forward, and the fuzzy upward border allows us to include many highly conservative publications that appeared well into the seventeenth century but embodying much earlier educational practice.

","excerpt":"You are right to note that I use it fairly loosely and inclusively. In general I take the whole range from 1450 to 1650, as noted at the very start (section 0.01, with specific reference in footnote 2 to John Marino's and Chris Celenza's discussions…","frontmatter":{"id":254,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":392,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-27 10:43:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The issue of teachers publishing their own books certainly has resonance today. Some scholars are pilloried (in my view, rightly so) for requiring students to purchase privately published course readers at exorbitant prices. On the other hand, I myself did a primary source reader for Italian Renaissance courses (Blackwell, 2004) because I got so frustrated with finding one that suited my own teaching needs. I have made precious little money off it, but that was not the reason I published it.

\n

\"Humanism For Sale\" is surely parallel to numerous other self-published (non-text-) books, some of which have had impressive circulation over time. Having just taught it to a class of ten graduate students, I can say that it provoked lively discussion on numerous levels, including of course the contrast between printed texts and online texts. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, I was struck by how easy it was for the students to gain access to this text: whereas several other excellent monographs from the past decade now cost well over $100 and, if not purchased, must be obtained via interlibrary loan, \"Humanism For Sale\" popped right up on students' computer screens. Perhaps, as \"Google Books\" becomes more comprehensive (see Tony Grafton's recent essay on the subject, online in the New Yorker, I believe), the contrast in access will be less stark; but for now, surely, it is highly significant. This mode of publication fills a need that I suspect is rapidly increasing.

","excerpt":"The issue of teachers publishing their own books certainly has resonance today. Some scholars are pilloried (in my view, rightly so) for requiring students to purchase privately published course readers at exorbitant prices. On the other hand, I…","frontmatter":{"id":255,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":396,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-27 12:43:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This book is wonderfully rich throughout. I like having the images right with the text, and in such high quality that one can see a lot by enlarging them. How many printed books have plates that are remotely this informative or beautiful?

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Sometimes I lost the thread from section to section when reading chapters on-screen. When I printed out some chapters in toto and read them the old-fashioned way, on paper, the problem vanished. Perhaps I'm just not a good reader of computer screens (are our students better at it, I wonder?).

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Is there any way to make the footnote markers \"live\" so that one can click on them to gain access and return to the same place in the text? I ended up consulting far fewer of them as I read than I normally would do. Also, since the citations in the notes are overwhelmingly in short form, a live link to the bibliography would help immensely. Eventually I figured out I just needed to download the .pdf of the bibliography and keep it open on the side of the screen.

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Thanks, Paul, for putting your book online! This is a great resource to which I'll return again and again.

","excerpt":"This book is wonderfully rich throughout. I like having the images right with the text, and in such high quality that one can see a lot by enlarging them. How many printed books have plates that are remotely this informative or beautiful? Sometimes I…","frontmatter":{"id":256,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-28 10:19:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This was my favorite chapter as well, especially for its deft attention to cognitive aspects of the use of emblems. This could juxtapose interestingly with the work of William B. Ashworth, Jr., e.g., \"Natural history and the emblematic world view,\" in David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (eds.), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 303\"“32.

","excerpt":"This was my favorite chapter as well, especially for its deft attention to cognitive aspects of the use of emblems. This could juxtapose interestingly with the work of William B. Ashworth, Jr., e.g., \"Natural history and the emblematic world view…","frontmatter":{"id":257,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":361,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-28 10:34:46"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In this chapter, it might be useful to consider also Louise Rice's recent essay, \"POMIS SUA NOMINA SERVANT: Emblematic Thesis Prints from the Roman Seminary,\" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 70 (2008).

","excerpt":"In this chapter, it might be useful to consider also Louise Rice's recent essay, \"POMIS SUA NOMINA SERVANT: Emblematic Thesis Prints from the Roman Seminary,\" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 70 (2008).","frontmatter":{"id":258,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":387,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-28 10:37:35"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A new and highly useful resource on Leto and his students is the website http://www.repertoriumpomponianum.it

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The group that runs the site has a conference scheduled for 2010 on \"Percorsi di cultura libraria fra Quattro- e Cinquecento.\" Proceedings from the last conference will soon appear in print: Pomponio Leto tra identita' locale e cultura internazionale. Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Teggiano 3-5 ottobre 2008 (Roma: Roma nel Rinascimento / Teggiano: Parco Letterario \"Pomponio Leto\", forthcoming [2009]).

","excerpt":"A new and highly useful resource on Leto and his students is the website http://www.repertoriumpomponianum.it The group that runs the site has a conference scheduled for 2010 on \"Percorsi di cultura libraria fra Quattro- e Cinquecento.\" Proceedings…","frontmatter":{"id":259,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-28 10:49:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The Giunta Press motto \"Nil Candidius\" reminds me of Giulio de' Medici's \"Candor Illaesus.\" given that Bernardo spent time in Florence while Giulio was running the place (from Rome, via Cardinal Passerini et al.), might this be an intentional connection?

","excerpt":"The Giunta Press motto \"Nil Candidius\" reminds me of Giulio de' Medici's \"Candor Illaesus.\" given that Bernardo spent time in Florence while Giulio was running the place (from Rome, via Cardinal Passerini et al.), might this be an intentional…","frontmatter":{"id":260,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-28 11:01:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The link might well be there, but I don't know of any documentary evidence for it, merely the temporal coincidence you mention. I would have to look at the Giunta books in the period very closely to say exactly when the \"Nil candidius\" was added to their long-standing lily motif. I may just ask Bill Pettas (who published on the Spanish Giunta a few years back and is working on the Italian branches of the family now) to weigh in on this one.

","excerpt":"The link might well be there, but I don't know of any documentary evidence for it, merely the temporal coincidence you mention. I would have to look at the Giunta books in the period very closely to say exactly when the \"Nil candidius\" was added to…","frontmatter":{"id":261,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-28 13:53:06"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The first Giunti device (70 x 28 mm), two putti holding cornucopias in one hand and with the other hand holding the fleur-de-lis above, appears in the 1512/13 edition of the Opera of Lucius Apuleius. It then appeared often and was the only device by the press used until 1517. It contains no motto.

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Zappella, fig. 645; Kristeller, Early Florentine Woodcuts, 1897, fig. 43 and Roberts, Printers' marks (London, 1893), p. 224.

\n

The second device has two putti standing on a chest, each holding a cornucopia and together supporting overhead an elaborate fleur-de-lis. On the front of the chest are the initials \"˜F.G.' The whole enclosed in a folded ribbon border (135 x 94 mm). The same border appears also in the 1506 Giunti edition of Dante. This, the second Giunti device, first appears in the 1517 Orationes of Aristides, the Vitae parallelae of Plutarch and the Icones of Philostratus. Davies says that Kristeller shows three devices with a similar border: nos. 21, 77, 182. This is the largest and most important of the early Giunti devices (Kristeller 46) and was last used in the 1527 Xenophon. Davies, Devices of the early printers, 1457-1560, pp. 312-313, fig. 66 and Zappella, Le marche dei tipografi e degli editori italiani del Cinquecento fig. 646.

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The third and fourth devices, both appear in the 1517 Valerius Maximus, one on the title page, the other at the colophon. These are the only two devices, of the more than 40 used by the Giunti in Florence up to 1625, to use the motto in question. Zappella, figs. 649 and 647. Fig. 649 last appeared in 1588 in Dottrina Christiana breve per insegnare in pochi giorni by Diego de Ledesma which is the second part of the work Della scelta d'orazioni divotissime by.Girolamo (in religion Silvano) Razzi; Fig. 647 made its final appearance in 1617 at the end of the text of Achilles Tatius' Dell'amore di Clitofonte, e Leucippe. I find it remarkable how long some of the devices were used--or revived after several decades. I have not used a loupe on the later appearances, but to the naked eye they seem to be identical.

\n

As to your correct remark about the fleur-de-lis and its relation to the Giunti and the city, I might add one little-known note. The lily is still visible, carved on the stone lintel of their onetime store in the via Proconsolo, opposite the Badia in Florence. It is now a store selling briefcases and suitcases and the sweet people running the store knew their place had a long history but were unaware that it was for a century the bookstore of Florence's most famous publishers. Sadly, even the city of Florence has done nothing, not even a plaque, to record the fact. I believe it was Douglas McMurtrie who pointed out that the first printer's devices were closely related to the signs over their shops. And one small correction--Bernardo was the second generation printer, not third. I am still puzzled by the remark made a century ago by Fumagalli to the effect that Bernardo was made a \"comte palatin.\" I know of no archival evidence for this, and Fumagalli cited none. On the face of it, it seems highly unlikely.

","excerpt":"The first Giunti device (70 x 28 mm), two putti holding cornucopias in one hand and with the other hand holding the fleur-de-lis above, appears in the 1512/13 edition of the Opera of Lucius Apuleius. It then appeared often and was the only device by…","frontmatter":{"id":262,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"William Pettas","date":"2009-09-28 16:31:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, Bill. You are the man with the answers as usual!

\n

So, Ken, this means that the \"Nil candidius\" motto was devised in 1517, at a moment when Bernardo was still newly in charge of the Giunta house in Florence and when he/they experimented with the mark. The theme of fame is certainly appropriate to Valerius Maximus, where it first appears, but I leave it to you to tell us if Cardinal Giulio is likely to have had any direct influence. Giulio would have been firmly in the saddle as archbishop of Florence, right? And Bernardo would have had every good reason to want to curry favor.

","excerpt":"Thanks, Bill. You are the man with the answers as usual! So, Ken, this means that the \"Nil candidius\" motto was devised in 1517, at a moment when Bernardo was still newly in charge of the Giunta house in Florence and when he/they experimented with…","frontmatter":{"id":264,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-29 04:37:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As Bill Pettas remarks above in his note to paragraph 5, the notion that Bernardo was rewarded by a noble title is probably a myth.

","excerpt":"As Bill Pettas remarks above in his note to paragraph 5, the notion that Bernardo was rewarded by a noble title is probably a myth.","frontmatter":{"id":265,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-09-29 04:40:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

If \"Adagia\" as defined usually do not have much of a moral component (as one sees in, e.g., Erasmus's blushing gloss of \"Tussus pro crepitu,\" Adagia I vi 63), it may be worth emphasizing that addenda to successive editions of the collection often included moralizing that could be quite heavy-handed.

\n

A fine essay (not mentioned in the bibliography, so far as I can see) that bears directly upon the thinking about ethics that could be inspired by reading the \"Adagia\" is: Peter Mack, \"Rhetoric, ethics and reading in the Renaissance,\" Renaissance Studies 19 (2005): 1\"“21. See esp. pp. 9\"“11.

","excerpt":"If \"Adagia\" as defined usually do not have much of a moral component (as one sees in, e.g., Erasmus's blushing gloss of \"Tussus pro crepitu,\" Adagia I vi 63), it may be worth emphasizing that addenda to successive editions of the collection often…","frontmatter":{"id":266,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-09-30 12:40:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

p.s. -- above should of course read \"tussis,\" not \"tussus\"; sorry for the typo.

","excerpt":"p.s. -- above should of course read \"tussis,\" not \"tussus\"; sorry for the typo.","frontmatter":{"id":267,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Ken Gouwens","date":"2009-10-01 07:04:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This paragraph is the best expression of the inherent frustration of being an historian! And yet having the patience to sift through what is there does pay off, as it did here.

","excerpt":"This paragraph is the best expression of the inherent frustration of being an historian! And yet having the patience to sift through what is there does pay off, as it did here.","frontmatter":{"id":268,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":33,"author":"Jane Wickersham","date":"2009-10-04 18:28:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As insufferably elitist as Erasmus could be, did he not have the skills to back it up? Most humanists probably were not quite up to his standard of textual criticism (if I understand Jardine and Rummel correctly). But, as Paul points out, that did put Erasmus in an inherently ironic, and somewhat hilarious, position; selling his skills to those who he might not have considered worthy of them in order to make a living.

","excerpt":"As insufferably elitist as Erasmus could be, did he not have the skills to back it up? Most humanists probably were not quite up to his standard of textual criticism (if I understand Jardine and Rummel correctly). But, as Paul points out, that did…","frontmatter":{"id":269,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Jane Wickersham","date":"2009-10-04 18:34:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Just out of curiosity, are these simple pamphlets illustrated? In classes of basic Christian instruction, are there any signs in the pamphlets that there may have been both literate and illiterate pupils sitting side by side?

","excerpt":"Just out of curiosity, are these simple pamphlets illustrated? In classes of basic Christian instruction, are there any signs in the pamphlets that there may have been both literate and illiterate pupils sitting side by side?","frontmatter":{"id":270,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":343,"author":"Jane Wickersham","date":"2009-10-04 18:41:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Were ricettari ever censored locally because of quasi-magical content, or were they just too small, cheap, and insignificant to attract notice?

","excerpt":"Were ricettari ever censored locally because of quasi-magical content, or were they just too small, cheap, and insignificant to attract notice?","frontmatter":{"id":271,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":347,"author":"Jane Wickersham","date":"2009-10-04 18:44:42"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You put your finger on the exact point of my \"ad man\" metaphor, Jane, and its limitations too. Although advertising strategies are clear in the rhetoric of this and many other Erasmian prefaces, it is not always entirely clear whom he was addressing. Certainly he wrote to and for his own circle of humanist friends, but that was preaching to the choir. Effective advertising must also reach a wider audience of book buyers. In this case we have mostly the success of the edition itself (and its frequent reprinting with this exact same preface) as evidence for the wider audience of the advert.

","excerpt":"You put your finger on the exact point of my \"ad man\" metaphor, Jane, and its limitations too. Although advertising strategies are clear in the rhetoric of this and many other Erasmian prefaces, it is not always entirely clear whom he was addressing…","frontmatter":{"id":272,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-10-12 05:43:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes. They often have simple pious woodcuts or (less frequently) classroom scenes. They are frightfully rare, however, and I do not have an example I can show you in a photo. Some sense of the genre may be had by looking at the cuts reproduced in Malaguzzi, cited below.

","excerpt":"Yes. They often have simple pious woodcuts or (less frequently) classroom scenes. They are frightfully rare, however, and I do not have an example I can show you in a photo. Some sense of the genre may be had by looking at the cuts reproduced in…","frontmatter":{"id":273,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":343,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-10-12 05:45:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I don't know the answer to this one, Jane. I have never heard seen reference to a case, but I am not up on all the (considerable) literature about prosecutions for magic. It might be something you could keep an eye out for in the kinds of inquisitorial court documents you see in our own research.(I am always surprised where everyday things like textbooks turn up in documents.) But your suggestion that these were slight and unimportant books is also to the point. The sixteenth-century ones are not as concerned with magic as the medieval ones, and the superstitious elements are relatively trivial.

","excerpt":"I don't know the answer to this one, Jane. I have never heard seen reference to a case, but I am not up on all the (considerable) literature about prosecutions for magic. It might be something you could keep an eye out for in the kinds of…","frontmatter":{"id":274,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":347,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-10-12 06:02:11"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It should be noted that the tradition of illustrating the classics, both in original-lanugage editions and in translation, remained much stronger in Northern Europe than in Italy through most of the early modern period. Italian humanists in this regard were more conservative and text-oriented than comparable humanists north of the Alps. A good example of Northern humanist love of illustration is Sebastian Brant (1457-1521), on whose career in print, see especially the contributions of Vera Sack in *Sebastien Brant, 500e anniversaire de La Nef des Folz, 1494-1994, Das Narren Schyff... *(Basel, Christian Merian, 1994), esp. pp. 82-108,

","excerpt":"It should be noted that the tradition of illustrating the classics, both in original-lanugage editions and in translation, remained much stronger in Northern Europe than in Italy through most of the early modern period. Italian humanists in this…","frontmatter":{"id":275,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":96,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-10-28 07:36:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

[...] about this section on emblems. Initially, I wasn't convinced that your earlier description of \"œEmblem as Machine\" (7.03) analogy made sense or, more likely, I felt I was missing something. As I got to thinking about the [...]

","excerpt":"[...] about this section on emblems. Initially, I wasn't convinced that your earlier description of \"œEmblem as Machine\" (7.03) analogy made sense or, more likely, I felt I was missing something. As I got to thinking about the [...]","frontmatter":{"id":276,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Leviathan « Deviant Forms","date":"2009-11-16 20:21:07"}}},{"node":{"html":"

For those unfamiliar with blogging, this comment is a link to John Vincler's thoughtful and provocative blog about art and books, \"Deviant Forms.\" In addition to some notes on emblems, with specific reference to the title page of Leviathan, at this link, you can find John's musing about a variety of contemporary and historical artistic books.

","excerpt":"For those unfamiliar with blogging, this comment is a link to John Vincler's thoughtful and provocative blog about art and books, \"Deviant Forms.\" In addition to some notes on emblems, with specific reference to the title page of Leviathan, at this…","frontmatter":{"id":277,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-11-17 10:36:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A good brief overview in English of the reception accorded the Jesuits, especially in university towns, is now available in the introduction to Paul F. Grendler's The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, Baltimore, Hopkins, 2009, 16-23.

","excerpt":"A good brief overview in English of the reception accorded the Jesuits, especially in university towns, is now available in the introduction to Paul F. Grendler's The University of Mantua, the Gonzaga, and the Jesuits, Baltimore, Hopkins, 2009, 16-2…","frontmatter":{"id":278,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":302,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-12-11 09:57:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The brief discussion of annotation in this section is not intended to minimize the importance of such evidence for many kinds of book history, merely to suggest that there are particular cautions to be observed in the case of textbooks. The best synthetic study of marks in books, confined to English examples but useful methodologically for all, is William Sherman's Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

","excerpt":"The brief discussion of annotation in this section is not intended to minimize the importance of such evidence for many kinds of book history, merely to suggest that there are particular cautions to be observed in the case of textbooks. The best…","frontmatter":{"id":279,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2009-12-27 10:12:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I like \"How To Do Stuff\" -- it seems to express just what you are getting at. I also like this picture of the sad monk (possibly trying to learn how to do stuff?).

","excerpt":"I like \"How To Do Stuff\" -- it seems to express just what you are getting at. I also like this picture of the sad monk (possibly trying to learn how to do stuff?).","frontmatter":{"id":280,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":319,"author":"radkeh","date":"2010-01-26 12:21:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Unknown to me at the time of writing, there is also another small Verini booklet (not reported in my bibliography yet because I have not seen it). This appears to be a commercial arithmetic, though with a typical-for-Verini ambiguous, jocose title: Specchio del mercantante: libro de abaco et gioco di memoria. The unique recorded copy (EDIT16:CNCE58079) is at the Trivulziana library in Milan.

","excerpt":"Unknown to me at the time of writing, there is also another small Verini booklet (not reported in my bibliography yet because I have not seen it). This appears to be a commercial arithmetic, though with a typical-for-Verini ambiguous, jocose title…","frontmatter":{"id":281,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":339,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-02-28 07:16:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

To the literature on the Brescian case cited in note 16, see now: Simone Signaroli, Maestri e tipografi a Brescia (1471-1519), Travagliato-Brescia, 2009, 35-37.

","excerpt":"To the literature on the Brescian case cited in note 16, see now: Simone Signaroli, Maestri e tipografi a Brescia (1471-1519), Travagliato-Brescia, 2009, 35-37.","frontmatter":{"id":282,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-03-28 07:42:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

To note 33, there is a good summary of Pilade's career in Simone Signaroli's Maestri e tipografi a Brescia, Brescia, 2009, 64-73, which explicates the extensive network of patronage behind this humanist's participation in controversies over philology.

","excerpt":"To note 33, there is a good summary of Pilade's career in Simone Signaroli's Maestri e tipografi a Brescia, Brescia, 2009, 64-73, which explicates the extensive network of patronage behind this humanist's participation in controversies over philology…","frontmatter":{"id":283,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":155,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-04-04 15:34:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Giovanni Britannico, see now the important study by Simone Signaroli, Maestri e tipografi a Brescia, Brescia, 2009. On pp. 183-189 he edits two of Britannico's early prefaces.

","excerpt":"On Giovanni Britannico, see now the important study by Simone Signaroli, Maestri e tipografi a Brescia, Brescia, 2009. On pp. 183-189 he edits two of Britannico's early prefaces.","frontmatter":{"id":284,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":92,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-04-04 15:39:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Like many useful grammars, the Donatus melior did get occasional printings long after it would seem to have been outdated. Guglielmo Facciotti printed it as late as 1628 in Rome along with a matching edition of the Regulae constructionis. See Massimo Ceresa, Una stamperia nella Roma del primo Seicento : annali tipografici di Guglielmo Facciotti ed eredi, 1592-1640, Rome, Bulzoni, 2000, p. 220 for a description of the copies at the Vallicelliana library in Rome.

","excerpt":"Like many useful grammars, the Donatus melior did get occasional printings long after it would seem to have been outdated. Guglielmo Facciotti printed it as late as 1628 in Rome along with a matching edition of the Regulae constructionis. See Massimo…","frontmatter":{"id":287,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":146,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-05-06 14:51:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Facciotti's relationship with the Collegio Romano may have been complicated by his quarrel with a bookseller who held a privilege for a version of Alvares published in 1596, a controversy that ended up in court in 1597. See Massimo Ceresa, Una stamperia nella Roma del primo Seicento, Rome, Bulzoni, 2000, p. 19.

","excerpt":"Facciotti's relationship with the Collegio Romano may have been complicated by his quarrel with a bookseller who held a privilege for a version of Alvares published in 1596, a controversy that ended up in court in 1597. See Massimo Ceresa, Una…","frontmatter":{"id":288,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":294,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-05-06 15:04:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on the publishing tradition of Ovid, see S.K. Heninger, \"Early Book Illustration and Narrative Closure, the Case of Ovid's Metamorphoses,\" in Cultural Exchange between European Nations during the Renaissance (Uppsala, 1994), 41-68.

","excerpt":"Further on the publishing tradition of Ovid, see S.K. Heninger, \"Early Book Illustration and Narrative Closure, the Case of Ovid's Metamorphoses,\" in Cultural Exchange between European Nations during the Renaissance (Uppsala, 1994), 41-68.","frontmatter":{"id":289,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":90,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-05-22 20:37:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on this style of select-moment illustrations, See S.K. Heninger 1994 (full citation at section 1.04 para 4), 44-46.

","excerpt":"Further on this style of select-moment illustrations, See S.K. Heninger 1994 (full citation at section 1.04 para 4), 44-46.","frontmatter":{"id":290,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":96,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-05-22 20:43:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"Humanism for sale\" is a wonderful new way to make a scholarly contribution in such an important field of Renaissance studies. I look forward to finish reading the book.

","excerpt":"\"Humanism for sale\" is a wonderful new way to make a scholarly contribution in such an important field of Renaissance studies. I look forward to finish reading the book.","frontmatter":{"id":291,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"dyocum","date":"2010-05-24 14:33:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An important new study of editorial paratexts is Marco Paoli, La dedica, storia di una strategia editoriale, Lucca, Maria Pacini Fazzi, 2009.

","excerpt":"An important new study of editorial paratexts is Marco Paoli, La dedica, storia di una strategia editoriale, Lucca, Maria Pacini Fazzi, 2009.","frontmatter":{"id":292,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":33,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-06-18 10:43:48"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This image shows one of the internal title pages to the Opera omnia of Mancinelli published at Venice in 1518. Each fascicle contained one or two short works and they could be purchased separately, so a title page like this was an advertisement for the work in this pamphlet. The first paragraph here dedicates the work to a prominent citizen of Mancinelli's home town, and to his son, one of Mancinelli's students. The six-line poem that follows is addressed to the student and tells him what this textbook will help him learn.

","excerpt":"This image shows one of the internal title pages to the Opera omnia of Mancinelli published at Venice in 1518. Each fascicle contained one or two short works and they could be purchased separately, so a title page like this was an advertisement for…","frontmatter":{"id":293,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":33,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-06-18 10:49:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Some useful observations on the nature of the typically highly diffuse, repetitive, and extensive humanist commentaries are to be found in Manlio Pastore Stocchi, \"Sull'utilita` attuale dei commenti umanistici ai classici,\" in Intorno al testo. Tipologie del corredo esegetico e soluzioni editoriali (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2003), pp. 173-193, esp. 178-180.

","excerpt":"Some useful observations on the nature of the typically highly diffuse, repetitive, and extensive humanist commentaries are to be found in Manlio Pastore Stocchi, \"Sull'utilita` attuale dei commenti umanistici ai classici,\" in Intorno al testo…","frontmatter":{"id":294,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":217,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-06-29 10:22:30"}}},{"node":{"html":"

See now also Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci, Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2008, who gives a very thorough account of the Latin Donatus. On the Ianua, see especially pp. 20-46.

","excerpt":"See now also Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci, Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2008, who gives a very thorough account of the Latin Donatus. On the Ianua, see especially pp. 20-46.","frontmatter":{"id":295,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":144,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-07-22 09:46:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

See now also Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci, Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2008, 47-54.

","excerpt":"See now also Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci, Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2008, 47-54.","frontmatter":{"id":296,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":146,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-07-22 09:48:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On the linking of Cato and Donat, see now also Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci, Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2008, 52-54.

","excerpt":"On the linking of Cato and Donat, see now also Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci, Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2008, 52-54.","frontmatter":{"id":297,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":176,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-07-22 09:55:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Also useful, the several essays in a section on 'Teaching of Emblematics' in: The Jesuits and the Emblem Tradition, Turnhout, Brepols, 1999. None of these essays concern Italian schools.

","excerpt":"Also useful, the several essays in a section on 'Teaching of Emblematics' in: The Jesuits and the Emblem Tradition, Turnhout, Brepols, 1999. None of these essays concern Italian schools.","frontmatter":{"id":298,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":387,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-07-27 16:21:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on the epigrams, see now the facsimile of the first edition with introduction and translation by Franco Lazzari and Mario Lozzi, Gli epigrammi di Antonio Mancinelli, Velletri, Centro Studi 'Antonio Mancinelli', 2009. The authors argue convincingly (pp. 26-29) that Mancinelli's preferment at Orvieto in 1495 and his subsequent return to teaching at Rome resulted from his successful cultivation of Cesare Borgia.

","excerpt":"Further on the epigrams, see now the facsimile of the first edition with introduction and translation by Franco Lazzari and Mario Lozzi, Gli epigrammi di Antonio Mancinelli, Velletri, Centro Studi 'Antonio Mancinelli', 2009. The authors argue…","frontmatter":{"id":299,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":229,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-11-29 10:34:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

See F. Lazzari and M. Lozzi, Gli epigrammi di Antonio Mancinelli, Velletri, 2009, 27-31 and passim, who explicate the patrons of Mancinelli, especially at Rome, in some detail, based on a close reading of the epigrams published in 1503.

","excerpt":"See F. Lazzari and M. Lozzi, Gli epigrammi di Antonio Mancinelli, Velletri, 2009, 27-31 and passim, who explicate the patrons of Mancinelli, especially at Rome, in some detail, based on a close reading of the epigrams published in 1503.","frontmatter":{"id":300,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":215,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-11-29 15:42:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An important new collection of essays on music teaching is Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Russell E. Murray, Susan F. Weiss, and Cynthia J. Cyrus, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2010.

","excerpt":"An important new collection of essays on music teaching is Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. by Russell E. Murray, Susan F. Weiss, and Cynthia J. Cyrus, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 2010.","frontmatter":{"id":301,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":351,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-12-01 15:26:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A summary of the contents of Bonaventura's book is given by James Haar in Music Education 2010, 6-9, cited in a comment to a the previous section.

","excerpt":"A summary of the contents of Bonaventura's book is given by James Haar in Music Education 2010, 6-9, cited in a comment to a the previous section.","frontmatter":{"id":302,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":353,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-12-01 15:29:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

When this paragraph was written (in 2008), the Donatus diligenter recognitus that Briana probably used in this school was known in a single edition. As of this writing (December 2010), EDIT16 shows four separate editions all known in single copies. By 1570s it was styled et nuperrime auctus and remained in print in the shop of Briani's publishers until after 1590.

","excerpt":"When this paragraph was written (in 2008), the Donatus diligenter recognitus that Briana probably used in this school was known in a single edition. As of this writing (December 2010), EDIT16 shows four separate editions all known in single copies…","frontmatter":{"id":303,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-12-12 09:11:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An example of how Mancinelli's Horace commentary was already employed by a professor at the University of Leipzig within Mancinelli's lifetime is given by Kristian Jensen, \"Exporting and Importing Italian Humanism,\" *Italia medioevale e umanistica *45 (2004), 437-497, at 471ff.

","excerpt":"An example of how Mancinelli's Horace commentary was already employed by a professor at the University of Leipzig within Mancinelli's lifetime is given by Kristian Jensen, \"Exporting and Importing Italian Humanism,\" *Italia medioevale e umanistica…","frontmatter":{"id":304,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":217,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-12-14 12:42:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

EDIT16, CNCE34403 describes an ideal copy of the Tacuino Opera omnia of 1507 as consisting of eight fascicles dated variously from February 1507 to June 1508. Many surviving copies, however, have other groupings of variously dated fascicles.

","excerpt":"EDIT16, CNCE34403 describes an ideal copy of the Tacuino Opera omnia of 1507 as consisting of eight fascicles dated variously from February 1507 to June 1508. Many surviving copies, however, have other groupings of variously dated fascicles.","frontmatter":{"id":305,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":231,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2010-12-19 19:45:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On books for learning instrumental music, see now: John Griffiths, \"Juan Bermudo, , Self-Instruction, and the Amateur Instrumentalist,\" in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 126-137.

","excerpt":"On books for learning instrumental music, see now: John Griffiths, \"Juan Bermudo, , Self-Instruction, and the Amateur Instrumentalist,\" in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 126-137.","frontmatter":{"id":306,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":357,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-01-04 10:27:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

For the importance of illustration in music textbooks, see now: Susan Forscher Weiss,\"Vandals, Students, or Scholars? Handwritten Clues in Renaissance Music Textbooks,\" in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Indiana University Press, 2010, pp.207-246, esp. 208-214.

","excerpt":"For the importance of illustration in music textbooks, see now: Susan Forscher Weiss,\"Vandals, Students, or Scholars? Handwritten Clues in Renaissance Music Textbooks,\" in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Indiana University…","frontmatter":{"id":307,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":351,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-01-04 10:35:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Some important observations on annotation in school books may be found in Susan Forscher Weiss, \"Vandals, Students, or Scholars? Handwritten Clues in Renaissance Music Textbooks,\" in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Indiana University Press, 2010, pp.207-246, esp.213-236.

","excerpt":"Some important observations on annotation in school books may be found in Susan Forscher Weiss, \"Vandals, Students, or Scholars? Handwritten Clues in Renaissance Music Textbooks,\" in Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Indiana…","frontmatter":{"id":308,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-01-04 10:59:38"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A good, microscopic look at a geography textbook market outside Italy in our period is Urs B. Leu, \"œTextbooks and Their Uses, an Insight into the Teaching of Geography in 16th Century Zurich,\" in Scholarly Knowledge. Textbooks in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Emidio Campi et al., Geneva, Librairie Droz, 2008, 229-248

","excerpt":"A good, microscopic look at a geography textbook market outside Italy in our period is Urs B. Leu, \"œTextbooks and Their Uses, an Insight into the Teaching of Geography in 16th Century Zurich,\" in Scholarly Knowledge. Textbooks in Early Modern…","frontmatter":{"id":309,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-01-04 11:25:06"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on Maturanzio, see now the contribution of Erminia Irace and Maria Alessandra Panzanelli Fratoni in Maestri, insegnanti e libri a Perugia, Milano, Skira, 2009, pp. 138-143, including illustrations of books with his notes an commentaries.

","excerpt":"Further on Maturanzio, see now the contribution of Erminia Irace and Maria Alessandra Panzanelli Fratoni in Maestri, insegnanti e libri a Perugia, Milano, Skira, 2009, pp. 138-143, including illustrations of books with his notes an commentaries.","frontmatter":{"id":310,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-01-24 14:44:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It is interesting to note that with the advent of music printing in the early 16th century, many of what we can call \"interpretive actions\" (embellishments, diminutions or divisions, and so forth), which were frequently dependent on a direct contact between musicians (including teacher and pupil), could now be mastered also by those who had little contact with the performing scene. Just like with the invention of musical notation, the distance between composer and performer/interpreter received another push.

","excerpt":"It is interesting to note that with the advent of music printing in the early 16th century, many of what we can call \"interpretive actions\" (embellishments, diminutions or divisions, and so forth), which were frequently dependent on a direct contact…","frontmatter":{"id":311,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":357,"author":"yossimaurey","date":"2011-02-10 09:13:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Another significant use for Latin vocabulary studies was for Italian composition, since it was widely held that imitation of the classics would enrich the potential of Italian to achieve its full literary potential. A good example of a small manual with this aim is Girolamo Labella's *Regola della lingua tosca dell'ortographia volgare et Latina *(Venice, Rampazotto, 1570) which claims to be based on the personal teachings of grammarian Girolamo Cafaro. My thanks to Giles Mandlebrote for examining a copy of this rare work for me at Kings College, London.

","excerpt":"Another significant use for Latin vocabulary studies was for Italian composition, since it was widely held that imitation of the classics would enrich the potential of Italian to achieve its full literary potential. A good example of a small manual…","frontmatter":{"id":312,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":115,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-02-15 09:36:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Pescetti also authored a small Latin textbook, which I have never seen: *Tabulae ad grammaticam celeriter et feliciter perdiscendum utilissimae, in quibus uno velut intuiti, quicquid ad hanc artem pertinet, inspicere licet *(Verona, Tamo, 1600). This title implies that it took the form of a summary aimed at beginners. At this date it was clearly intended as part of Pescetti's campaign against the Alvares grammar.

","excerpt":"Pescetti also authored a small Latin textbook, which I have never seen: *Tabulae ad grammaticam celeriter et feliciter perdiscendum utilissimae, in quibus uno velut intuiti, quicquid ad hanc artem pertinet, inspicere licet *(Verona, Tamo, 1600). This…","frontmatter":{"id":313,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":302,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-02-15 09:47:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In addition to the small grammar mentioned in the comment on paragraph 2 above, Pescetti also penned a full-length Latin grammar which I have not been able to examine. As of this writing it is recorded in a single copy at the Biblioteca Civica di Verona: *Grammaticae insitutiones magna exemplorum copia instructae *(Verona, Merlo, 1618), reported by Federica Formiga, I Merlo tipografi veronesi fra Sei e Settecento (Florence, Olschki, 2009), p. 139. If this is a first edition, it postdates the entire Jesuit controversy and may have been intended as a reply to the counterattack of the Jesuits (the last word as far as we knew it when Humanism For Sale was published now two years ago) described in sections 5.11 and 5.12 below.

","excerpt":"In addition to the small grammar mentioned in the comment on paragraph 2 above, Pescetti also penned a full-length Latin grammar which I have not been able to examine. As of this writing it is recorded in a single copy at the Biblioteca Civica di…","frontmatter":{"id":314,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":302,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-02-18 21:00:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I have just recently discovered Humanism For Sale. Thank you very much indeed for your generosity, in making such a high-quality work of scholarship so freely available online. Chapter 5 in particular is a find beyond my wildest hopes, and is of great assistance with a current research and review project relating to the fascinating Alvares Grammar. IMO your final conclusions regarding the work are particularly telling. I look forward to reading other sections online \"“ sincere thanks again.

","excerpt":"I have just recently discovered Humanism For Sale. Thank you very much indeed for your generosity, in making such a high-quality work of scholarship so freely available online. Chapter 5 in particular is a find beyond my wildest hopes, and is of…","frontmatter":{"id":316,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":282,"author":"Myddvai","date":"2011-03-01 22:48:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

To note 90: see also Michael Baldzuhn, Schulbuecherr im Trivium des Mittelalters und der Fruehen Neuzeit, Berlin & New York, Walter De Gruyter, 2009, esp. pp. 90-105.

","excerpt":"To note 90: see also Michael Baldzuhn, Schulbuecherr im Trivium des Mittelalters und der Fruehen Neuzeit, Berlin & New York, Walter De Gruyter, 2009, esp. pp. 90-105.","frontmatter":{"id":317,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":176,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-05-09 08:39:34"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On the general issue of how pedagogy changed in response to printing, see Baldzuhn 2009 (cited in comment to para 12 below), 115-134.

","excerpt":"On the general issue of how pedagogy changed in response to printing, see Baldzuhn 2009 (cited in comment to para 12 below), 115-134.","frontmatter":{"id":318,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":176,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-05-09 08:55:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I'd like to understand 'instrumentalizing' a bit better, here in this final paragraph. Could you give a short explanation? Thanks in advance!

","excerpt":"I'd like to understand 'instrumentalizing' a bit better, here in this final paragraph. Could you give a short explanation? Thanks in advance!","frontmatter":{"id":319,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":313,"author":"Myddvai","date":"2011-05-22 06:54:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"...the Italian Donat was originally a drilling book that went into considerable detail for students coming to the language for the first time.\" In a practical sense would these students still have been Latin beginners, by the time they started the Italian Donat? Or would they have had some immersion in spoken Latin in the school, during the couple of years of preliminary training mentioned in the first paragraph of Section 2.01?

","excerpt":"\"...the Italian Donat was originally a drilling book that went into considerable detail for students coming to the language for the first time.\" In a practical sense would these students still have been Latin beginners, by the time they started the…","frontmatter":{"id":320,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":142,"author":"Myddvai","date":"2011-05-22 07:32:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"œ...the Italian Donat was originally a drilling book that went into considerable detail for students coming to the language for the first time.\" In a practical sense would these students still have been Latin beginners, by the time they started the Italian Donat? Or would they have had some immersion in spoken Latin in the school, during the couple of years of preliminary training mentioned in the first paragraph of Section 2.01?

","excerpt":"\"œ...the Italian Donat was originally a drilling book that went into considerable detail for students coming to the language for the first time.\" In a practical sense would these students still have been Latin beginners, by the time they started the…","frontmatter":{"id":321,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":144,"author":"Myddvai","date":"2011-05-23 03:37:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I'm sorry, I meant to post the comment above at section 2.03, paragraph 3. I've copied it there now.

","excerpt":"I'm sorry, I meant to post the comment above at section 2.03, paragraph 3. I've copied it there now.","frontmatter":{"id":322,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":142,"author":"Myddvai","date":"2011-05-23 03:39:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

There is some disagreement among scholars about when and how the Donat was used. My own thinking is as remarked in 2.01, that some time was first spent in learning the alphabet and a few prayers, memorizing first and then \"reading\" in the sense of recognizing texts already familiar. A sharp student could get through this quickly, but some took a fair amount of time at it. When ready they would be set to memorizing the Donat, but all the discursive sources agree that these donatistae were still rank beginners.

","excerpt":"There is some disagreement among scholars about when and how the Donat was used. My own thinking is as remarked in 2.01, that some time was first spent in learning the alphabet and a few prayers, memorizing first and then \"reading\" in the sense of…","frontmatter":{"id":324,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":144,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-06-05 08:50:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This condemnation of Erasmus' Cato took place in Lucca in the context of the struggle of the city fathers there to avoid the imposition of a local tribunal of the Roman Inquisition. In addition to the article by Adorni-Braccesi cited in note 6 below, see also her more recent book-length study of Erasmanism, Calvinism, and the Inquisition at Lucca: Simonetta Adorni-Braccesi, Una citta` infetta, Florence: Olschki, 1994, especially pp. 218-219 on this incident.

","excerpt":"This condemnation of Erasmus' Cato took place in Lucca in the context of the struggle of the city fathers there to avoid the imposition of a local tribunal of the Roman Inquisition. In addition to the article by Adorni-Braccesi cited in note 6 below…","frontmatter":{"id":325,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":246,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-07-17 10:17:35"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on Paleario as an educational reformer, see Simonetta Adorni-Braccesi, Una citta` infetta, Florence: Olschki, 1994, pp. 190-209.

","excerpt":"Further on Paleario as an educational reformer, see Simonetta Adorni-Braccesi, Una citta` infetta, Florence: Olschki, 1994, pp. 190-209.","frontmatter":{"id":326,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":313,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-07-17 10:21:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

By \"instrumentalizing\" here I mean the (relatively modern) notion that language study is primarily an auxiliary or prerequisite to the serious study of other, more substantial disciplines, not a normalizing or moralizing discipline in itself. The Jesuits were pioneers in this view of language study. For a broad view of the history of Latin study, see especially Francois Waquet's Latin or the Empire of the Sign.

","excerpt":"By \"instrumentalizing\" here I mean the (relatively modern) notion that language study is primarily an auxiliary or prerequisite to the serious study of other, more substantial disciplines, not a normalizing or moralizing discipline in itself. The…","frontmatter":{"id":327,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":313,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-07-17 10:27:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Dear Paul,

\n

Is this excellent site still active? I was hoping to use a chapter (the one on emblems) in a MA-level course on Medieval and Baroque Literature this fall, having the students engage with the text and maybe post comments and questions. This would not be until November. Thanks for a very inspiring and informative project!

\n

Sean Franzel

\n

Assistant Professor of German

\n

University of Missouri, Columbia

","excerpt":"Dear Paul, Is this excellent site still active? I was hoping to use a chapter (the one on emblems) in a MA-level course on Medieval and Baroque Literature this fall, having the students engage with the text and maybe post comments and questions. This…","frontmatter":{"id":329,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Sean Franzel","date":"2011-08-15 10:54:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I did not say anything about the colored border in the text here, but I should perhaps remark that it is not part of Soardi's original design. This copy at the Newberry Library has touches of green on many of the borders, probably added by an early reader --maybe even a bookseller--who wanted to add to the charm of Soardi's original.

","excerpt":"I did not say anything about the colored border in the text here, but I should perhaps remark that it is not part of Soardi's original design. This copy at the Newberry Library has touches of green on many of the borders, probably added by an early…","frontmatter":{"id":330,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":106,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-09-02 09:46:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The wording and the persistence of these claims suggest strongly that Fabrini himself composed these title page statements. As he added to the apparatus in subsequent editions, each new 'feature' was described in an additional title page blurb.

","excerpt":"The wording and the persistence of these claims suggest strongly that Fabrini himself composed these title page statements. As he added to the apparatus in subsequent editions, each new 'feature' was described in an additional title page blurb.","frontmatter":{"id":331,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":117,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-05 06:50:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Scholars attribute the first edition to Vincenzo Valgrisi, a Venetian printer responsible for several later editions with Fabrini's revisions. Note, however, that the title page shown here does not name a printer. None is named elsewhere in the book either, suggesting that this first edition was subsidized by the author or his friends and patrons and was not a commercial product. Compare this purely typographic title page, which though wordy is relatively uncluttered, with that of the 1558 Valgrisi edition below where the same advertising prose must be compacted to make way for the prominent commercial printer's mark of Valgrisi.

","excerpt":"Scholars attribute the first edition to Vincenzo Valgrisi, a Venetian printer responsible for several later editions with Fabrini's revisions. Note, however, that the title page shown here does not name a printer. None is named elsewhere in the book…","frontmatter":{"id":332,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":117,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-05 06:57:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This detail shows the passage quoted in the next paragraph. If you click on it, you will see the entire title page of this edition by the highly successful Sessa-family publishing firm at Venice. (In this case the imprint is \"heirs of Marchio Sessa.\") As in the Valgrisi title page above, the advertising prose is kept in tiny type so as to provide room for the firm's trademark. When rival firm's took on Fabrini's text, they typically varied the wording and order of the advertising prose but reproduced the list of features on offer to prove that their edition was just as good as others on the market.

","excerpt":"This detail shows the passage quoted in the next paragraph. If you click on it, you will see the entire title page of this edition by the highly successful Sessa-family publishing firm at Venice. (In this case the imprint is \"heirs of Marchio Sessa…","frontmatter":{"id":333,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":117,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-05 07:04:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further to Liburnio (note 73), see Alessandro Giacomello, \"Per una storia del libro di larga diffusione nel Friuli del Cinquecento,\" in Societa e cultura del Cinquecento nel Friuli occidentale. Studi, Pordenone, 1984, pp. 355-373, at 368.

","excerpt":"Further to Liburnio (note 73), see Alessandro Giacomello, \"Per una storia del libro di larga diffusione nel Friuli del Cinquecento,\" in Societa e cultura del Cinquecento nel Friuli occidentale. Studi, Pordenone, 1984, pp. 355-373, at 368.","frontmatter":{"id":334,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":115,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-14 06:00:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Along with Verini, discussed in this page, another important but little-studied writing master who worked in a popularizing form was Eustachio Celebrino, author of the only book to treat the mercantesca hand systematically. On Celebrino and his circle see: Alessandro Giacomello, \"Per una storia del libro di larga diffusione nel Friuli del Cinquecento,\" in Societa e cultura del Cinquecento nel Friuli occidentale. Studi, Pordenone, 1984, pp. 355-373, esp. 359-362, 366-367.

","excerpt":"Along with Verini, discussed in this page, another important but little-studied writing master who worked in a popularizing form was Eustachio Celebrino, author of the only book to treat the mercantesca hand systematically. On Celebrino and his…","frontmatter":{"id":335,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":339,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-14 06:05:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Pescetti's attacks, however petty and quixotic, against the educational presence of the Jesuits in Verona and his alternative suggestions for an ambitious program of compulsory and universal schooling organized by the city fathers highlight an important area of tension that I'm surprised did not surface more frequently and virulently in counter-reformation Italy. Even given the relative stalling of the process of state consolidation in the peninsula during this time, why did municipal and territorial rulers not try to establish a monopoly on education over competing claims of religious entities more frequently? In the German states, the unequivocal settlement of the Peace of Augsburg did not stop wrangling over education between state entities and competing claims even when everyone was in the same confessional camp. Were these battles less relevant in Italy because schooling remained comparatively more limited to upper social strata rather than becoming a tool for religious mobilization?

","excerpt":"Pescetti's attacks, however petty and quixotic, against the educational presence of the Jesuits in Verona and his alternative suggestions for an ambitious program of compulsory and universal schooling organized by the city fathers highlight an…","frontmatter":{"id":336,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":302,"author":"vhorw","date":"2011-09-19 22:42:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I can understand why teachers would want editions of Terence with several commentaries and an extensive critical apparatus. But would young students also own copies of Terence with at least some apparatus, or would they use copies without much/any apparatus and make annotations themselves? In reading about all these editions, I keep comparing them to the appearance of the chaste manuscript version of chapter 1.05. But even in manuscript, you mentioned that there were plenty of commentaries and annotations. Do we find manuscript copies of Terence where the commentaries crowd out the text, or were they normally copied separately, and perhaps bound together? You also mentioned that the de Gouveia commentary was printed separately- how frequently were commentaries printed separately (and perhaps bound with another copy of Terence)? Do you think that teachers became increasingly reliant on commentaries in their teaching, compared with the 15th century, or did they just have more choices? Thanks!

","excerpt":"I can understand why teachers would want editions of Terence with several commentaries and an extensive critical apparatus. But would young students also own copies of Terence with at least some apparatus, or would they use copies without much/any…","frontmatter":{"id":337,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":110,"author":"Janice Gunther","date":"2011-09-20 08:10:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Italians may have been isolated from New World discoveries, although given that Italian navigators and innovations were vital to the initial imperial adventures of those other states, I wonder if there was an initial interest that died off once Spain, et al., developed independence from that Italian aid. But at the same time, Italy was where refugees from Byzantium traveled, and had more direct contact with the Arab and Turkish worlds - through the attempted Ottoman invasions, trade contacts, and as a site to prepare for Christian counter-attacks on the Muslim world - than many of those same imperial powers who were focused on the New World. So I wonder, is there any evidence that while Spanish, Dutch., etc., humanists were more receptive to the geographic and naturalistic discoveries of the New World, Italian humanists may have still been receptive to discoveries and contact in the other direction, ie, with the Eastern world? Or by the 15th/16th centuries, had the knowledge of the Muslim world been largely diffused throughout Christendom already?

","excerpt":"Italians may have been isolated from New World discoveries, although given that Italian navigators and innovations were vital to the initial imperial adventures of those other states, I wonder if there was an initial interest that died off once Spain…","frontmatter":{"id":338,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"eddie.guimont","date":"2011-09-20 12:39:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I tried posting this before, but my comment got eaten, so let's try this again...

\n

I wonder if the fact that the earliest voyages to the New World, if not done by Italian states still were done with Italian navigators and innovations, allowed for an early interest in the New World discoveries by Italian humanists, only dying out after the imperial powers developed independence from Italian aid. Also, Italy was the place of refuge for those escaping the fall of Byzantium, as well as a main center of contact \"“ through attempted invasions, trade, and attempts at counter-attack \"“ with the Arab/Ottoman world, having much closer contact than the imperial powers like Spain, Portugal, etc., did. Did this result in Italian humanists drawing more inspiration on the geographic/naturalistic discoveries of the East, even if they ignored the discoveries coming in from the other direction? Or was the knowledge of the Muslim/Eastern world so diffused through Europe at this time that it would have had little impact on Italian humanists specifically?

","excerpt":"I tried posting this before, but my comment got eaten, so let's try this again... I wonder if the fact that the earliest voyages to the New World, if not done by Italian states still were done with Italian navigators and innovations, allowed for an…","frontmatter":{"id":339,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"eddie.guimont","date":"2011-09-20 12:51:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I think you have put our finger on one of the important factors that limited state intervention in Italy. Throughout the period, there was a great deal of debate as to whether it was a positive social good to educate non-elite citizens, and there was a strong party of opinion against it. Local churches in Italy came down strongly in favor of catechism education (Doctrina Christiana --see below, sections 6.11 and 6.12), involving reading and sometimes writing, but there was no impulse comparable to that in N. Europe to go much beyond the elementary skills needed for devotion.

","excerpt":"I think you have put our finger on one of the important factors that limited state intervention in Italy. Throughout the period, there was a great deal of debate as to whether it was a positive social good to educate non-elite citizens, and there was…","frontmatter":{"id":340,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":302,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-20 16:14:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi, Janice. The hyper-extended commentaries we see in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are definitely a creation of the market for print. Some heavily commented texts existed in the Middle Ages, but they were reference copies owned by teachers, scholars, or libraries and usually confected exclusively for local use. Students most often took down the text and whatever notes they needed by dictation. The separate commentaries by humanists were intended for advanced study; I have never seen one bound with a base text, but that may just be because I have not been looking for them. As to the degree of dependence on commentaries, that is hard to say. Certainly there were more choices, and I suspect teachers by the early sixteenth century would not have been comfortable teaching without a commentary to hand. But what we know of teaching in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance suggests that was always true.

","excerpt":"Hi, Janice. The hyper-extended commentaries we see in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are definitely a creation of the market for print. Some heavily commented texts existed in the Middle Ages, but they were reference copies owned by teachers…","frontmatter":{"id":341,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":110,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-20 16:23:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"We have already observed Mancinelli's growing preoccupation with correction and enlargement, which he seemed to feel was a normal process of reprinting.\" It seems unusual to me to have such a need for correction in reprinted texts. Presumably, Mancinelli felt this to be normal because of his experiences correcting manuscripts, and in his own role as editor and commentator on the works of other, especially ancient, authors. However, I begin to wonder about the need for what seems to me to be an excessive amount of corrections and commentaries by publishers in the printed works of Mancinelli. Is this attitude towards printed grammar books and their constant need for correction an offshoot of manuscript culture, where corrections were commonplace and, presumably, more needed? Or were these corrections and comments simply a way of advertising reprinted editions of the texts in order to make more money?

","excerpt":"\"We have already observed Mancinelli's growing preoccupation with correction and enlargement, which he seemed to feel was a normal process of reprinting.\" It seems unusual to me to have such a need for correction in reprinted texts. Presumably…","frontmatter":{"id":342,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":235,"author":"howardsend","date":"2011-09-20 16:23:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I might send your question on to Ted Cachey, Eddie --with your permission. He is the great expert on this subject. My immediate sense is that Italians in general were deeply interested in the discoveries themselves, and in all the issues around them, but that the humanists in particular did not feel that it was a field of study they owned.

","excerpt":"I might send your question on to Ted Cachey, Eddie --with your permission. He is the great expert on this subject. My immediate sense is that Italians in general were deeply interested in the discoveries themselves, and in all the issues around them…","frontmatter":{"id":343,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-20 16:27:48"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Sorry for the delay, Eddie. For a first comment you need to wait for approval. From now on you personally are approved to comment and new comments should show up immediately when you post them.

","excerpt":"Sorry for the delay, Eddie. For a first comment you need to wait for approval. From now on you personally are approved to comment and new comments should show up immediately when you post them.","frontmatter":{"id":344,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-20 16:33:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I am intrigued by Soardi's logo on these pages, as it appears to be the same logo as Leo. S. Olschki Editore. Do you have any sense of why there might be this commonality (according to the Olschki website they were only established in 1886)? Is this a common logo (with varying letters, perhaps), that Olschki may have just taken up?

","excerpt":"I am intrigued by Soardi's logo on these pages, as it appears to be the same logo as Leo. S. Olschki Editore. Do you have any sense of why there might be this commonality (according to the Olschki website they were only established in 1886)? Is this…","frontmatter":{"id":345,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":106,"author":"jstrom","date":"2011-09-20 16:48:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I tried posting this once, but it does not seem to be here, so here it is again...

\n

I am intrigued by Soardi's logo on these pages, as it appears to be the same logo as Leo. S. Olschki Editore. Do you have any sense of why there might be this commonality (according to the Olschki website they were only established in 1886)? Is this a common logo (with varying letters, perhaps), that Olschki may have just taken up?

","excerpt":"I tried posting this once, but it does not seem to be here, so here it is again... I am intrigued by Soardi's logo on these pages, as it appears to be the same logo as Leo. S. Olschki Editore. Do you have any sense of why there might be this…","frontmatter":{"id":346,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":106,"author":"jstrom","date":"2011-09-20 16:58:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Sorry about that - that sprung to mind as the reason immediately after I re-sent my post...But thanks for the quick reply, and I certainly give permission for my question to be passed along to any and everyone!

","excerpt":"Sorry about that - that sprung to mind as the reason immediately after I re-sent my post...But thanks for the quick reply, and I certainly give permission for my question to be passed along to any and everyone!","frontmatter":{"id":347,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"eddie.guimont","date":"2011-09-20 17:11:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You guessed it! The orb surmounted by a single or double cross is a commonplace mark in Italian presses of the first century and it often bears the initials of the printer or publisher. Olschki imitated the style and since they have the same initials as Soardi, the resemblance is striking. I don't remember exactly what the O stands in Soardi's mark, but you can look it up in G. Zappella's guide to Italian printer's marks, published in 1986 --but not by Olschki.

","excerpt":"You guessed it! The orb surmounted by a single or double cross is a commonplace mark in Italian presses of the first century and it often bears the initials of the printer or publisher. Olschki imitated the style and since they have the same initials…","frontmatter":{"id":348,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":106,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-09-20 17:41:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Was the study of Hebrew common, or would its inclusion in the Mercurius quadrilinguis have been surprising?

","excerpt":"Was the study of Hebrew common, or would its inclusion in the Mercurius quadrilinguis have been surprising?","frontmatter":{"id":349,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":194,"author":"jstrom","date":"2011-09-21 07:54:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"This larger work appeared in 1613 in Spanish, a significant choice, for it must have been aimed in the first instance at the largely Spanish-speaking public of monks and nuns in aristocratic religious houses at Naples. Eventually it would be read widely in Spain and even in New Spain.\" Have you come across cheaper music books that were also specifically designed for the Spanish market, or ones in Latin exported to the Spanish world? Thanks!

","excerpt":"\"This larger work appeared in 1613 in Spanish, a significant choice, for it must have been aimed in the first instance at the largely Spanish-speaking public of monks and nuns in aristocratic religious houses at Naples. Eventually it would be read…","frontmatter":{"id":350,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":357,"author":"Janice Gunther","date":"2011-09-21 16:33:15"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I have not, but that does not in itself exclude the possibility that there were such things. I will have to look around.

","excerpt":"I have not, but that does not in itself exclude the possibility that there were such things. I will have to look around.","frontmatter":{"id":351,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":357,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-21 21:27:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It is rather surprising for exactly the reason you hint at. Hebrew, although a prestigious form of erudition, was only very rarely studied and it would be very odd indeed to try to learn it from self-help books like the Mercuries (at least that is what they purport to be). In the context of either Latin or Italian studies, the educational orthodoxies of the day suggested that the two languages could be used to improve facility and promote elegance of expression. I strongly suspect that Schoppe is making a show of his own learning in the quadrilingual books, and that the \"utility\" of the Greek and Hebrew was to the same purpose, to allow readers to stud their compositions with short phrases or proverbial sayings in those languages without really mastering them.

","excerpt":"It is rather surprising for exactly the reason you hint at. Hebrew, although a prestigious form of erudition, was only very rarely studied and it would be very odd indeed to try to learn it from self-help books like the Mercuries (at least that is…","frontmatter":{"id":352,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":194,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-22 17:51:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I am interested in your statement \"One thing humanists all over Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth century shared was a pugnacious willingness to argue that derived from scholastic models. Petrarch made many innovations in humanist thought, among them introducing a sustained polemic against the scholastics. In so doing he also imported into humanism the quarrelsomeness of the universities, where disputation pro and contra was a permanent fixture.\" I had not before connected scholastic disputation with the development of humanist dialogues and invective, and you note that the latter was based on classical models. Could you provide more detail about how you see the relationship between scholastic disputation and the development of humanist dialogue and invective?

","excerpt":"I am interested in your statement \"One thing humanists all over Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth century shared was a pugnacious willingness to argue that derived from scholastic models. Petrarch made many innovations in humanist thought, among…","frontmatter":{"id":353,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":250,"author":"Janice Gunther","date":"2011-09-23 16:00:44"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Kristeller's 1974 essays and Rummel's study, cited in the notes, are still the best treatments I know on this subject. It's not one that I can claim to have done original research on. Rereading my own prose at this point, I can see that I may seem to have intended to suggest a direct, derivative relationship of genre between humanist invective and scholastic disputation. I really meant to say instead that the habit of antagonism typical of scholastic debate was still so much a part of scholarly life in the early Renaissance that it fed naturally into humanist forms. When dealing as I do in this book with the prefaces and other paratexts of published textbooks, it is striking how frequently authors refer to polemical attacks -- often ones that do not survive or cannot easily be found in the record-- that were violent and personal enough to merit replies in print. In the case of famous figures like Erasmus, we have a record of a great deal of the back and forth. For textbook authors (like Mancinelli to whom I refer here) we will probably never know who or how influential his critics were. We know only that he felt it necessary to take them on in second and subsequent editions of his textbooks, in letters that became a permanent part of these textbooks as they were printed and reprinted for fifty years and more.

","excerpt":"Kristeller's 1974 essays and Rummel's study, cited in the notes, are still the best treatments I know on this subject. It's not one that I can claim to have done original research on. Rereading my own prose at this point, I can see that I may seem to…","frontmatter":{"id":354,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":250,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-09-23 20:32:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Very interesting! It seems like aspects of this continue today. In the trend of making texts that were in much older styles, was the content modernized, or was it too put into the context of older traditions?

","excerpt":"Very interesting! It seems like aspects of this continue today. In the trend of making texts that were in much older styles, was the content modernized, or was it too put into the context of older traditions?","frontmatter":{"id":355,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Abby Jordan","date":"2011-10-06 22:26:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It's intriguing to think that a whole slew of textbooks could have existed that we simply don't know about. It's interesting to wonder where all these resources could have gone, since they no longer exist, while it seems as if something that was used in such a wide area should have had a better survival rate.

","excerpt":"It's intriguing to think that a whole slew of textbooks could have existed that we simply don't know about. It's interesting to wonder where all these resources could have gone, since they no longer exist, while it seems as if something that was used…","frontmatter":{"id":356,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Abby Jordan","date":"2011-10-06 22:33:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As I go on to describe below, especially in chapter 5, both the content and the style of presentation were sometimes deliberately archaic. It is not exactly like buying antiques today, however, since the products were intended for immediate practical use. Not even like a modern printer opting for old-fashioned wooden type --that is practical, but not offered as the ideal model for modern printing.

","excerpt":"As I go on to describe below, especially in chapter 5, both the content and the style of presentation were sometimes deliberately archaic. It is not exactly like buying antiques today, however, since the products were intended for immediate practical…","frontmatter":{"id":357,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-10-07 09:25:30"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are pointing to a commonplace in textbook history, that these books were literally used to pieces. But I also think we overstress this point too much. We still have a chance to find more examples. Just in the last ten years or so, copies of editions we did not know about (or did not know survived) have turned up, because librarians are cataloging online and their records show up internationally to be recognized by scholars. And we are far from having full cataloging still for many European libraries, especially those in small towns or private institutions.

","excerpt":"You are pointing to a commonplace in textbook history, that these books were literally used to pieces. But I also think we overstress this point too much. We still have a chance to find more examples. Just in the last ten years or so, copies of…","frontmatter":{"id":358,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-10-07 09:30:30"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It's interesting that spreading the word about different school books played such a big role in this history. How did one advertise to large groups of teachers and students in the middle ages? I suppose that's where the \"celebrity\" teachers come in; if they advocate for a certain author or book, then that book or person's reputation would leap upwards. Does there still exist records or stories of how a particular book became so well known and widely used? Or do we only know which books were used based on what still exists today?

","excerpt":"It's interesting that spreading the word about different school books played such a big role in this history. How did one advertise to large groups of teachers and students in the middle ages? I suppose that's where the \"celebrity\" teachers come in…","frontmatter":{"id":359,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"siribeckett","date":"2011-10-07 19:10:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Our evidence is almost entirely the surviving schoolbooks, which is why it is important to interpret the title pages, prefaces, and other introductory material so carefully. We do have documents to evidence the lives of some of the teachers, but for their actual teaching, the textbooks are our best source.

","excerpt":"Our evidence is almost entirely the surviving schoolbooks, which is why it is important to interpret the title pages, prefaces, and other introductory material so carefully. We do have documents to evidence the lives of some of the teachers, but for…","frontmatter":{"id":360,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-10-09 08:14:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It's certainly very interesting to learn about the art of memory in this indirect mannor. From the beginning of the chapter I was wondering when the use of emblems would tie in with one's memory. Also, it's interesting to learn that the use of bizzare images did not entirely disappear once the Christian moral way of life took over.

","excerpt":"It's certainly very interesting to learn about the art of memory in this indirect mannor. From the beginning of the chapter I was wondering when the use of emblems would tie in with one's memory. Also, it's interesting to learn that the use of…","frontmatter":{"id":361,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"siribeckett","date":"2011-10-10 14:57:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The comment that early modern cultural had a strong sense of the visual is very interesting--I feel that we usually hear (with regards to stories at least, but learning too) that society was more verbal based, as with stories passed down by word of mouth etc. But this actually makes much more sense to me!

","excerpt":"The comment that early modern cultural had a strong sense of the visual is very interesting--I feel that we usually hear (with regards to stories at least, but learning too) that society was more verbal based, as with stories passed down by word of…","frontmatter":{"id":362,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":31,"author":"Alexandra","date":"2011-10-11 01:37:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

So interesting to see how images were integrated into books at this time (and how they confused the meaning of the text--I've definitely seen examples of that!)

","excerpt":"So interesting to see how images were integrated into books at this time (and how they confused the meaning of the text--I've definitely seen examples of that!)","frontmatter":{"id":363,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":369,"author":"Alexandra","date":"2011-10-11 01:48:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The particular thing about emblems, of course, is that they were deliberately devised as puzzles, so the reader was made to work and there was always room for multiple interpretations. Many other books of the period had a kind of illustrative scheme that we would recognize more easily, with key scenes or characters presented by way of helping the reader visualize the narrative.

","excerpt":"The particular thing about emblems, of course, is that they were deliberately devised as puzzles, so the reader was made to work and there was always room for multiple interpretations. Many other books of the period had a kind of illustrative scheme…","frontmatter":{"id":364,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":369,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-10-11 10:20:31"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The idea of paraphrasing struck me in this paragraph. While these readers would rewrite texts repeatedly,one of the ways students in the ancient times would memorise texts was by reading over and over again. However, paraphrase usually means a rewording of the text, so did these readers copy texts word for word or did they rewrite using their own words? What would happen to these copies too once they were written? Did they give them away?

","excerpt":"The idea of paraphrasing struck me in this paragraph. While these readers would rewrite texts repeatedly,one of the ways students in the ancient times would memorise texts was by reading over and over again. However, paraphrase usually means a…","frontmatter":{"id":365,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"indradjojo","date":"2011-10-11 10:52:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I was wondering too about the literacy rates. Roughly how many readers would be in these classrooms? Also, I know that in medieval manuscripts, the monks who wrote the texts did not usually illustrate the texts. Is this the same in printing? Would artists be commissioned to incorporate images to the texts?

","excerpt":"I was wondering too about the literacy rates. Roughly how many readers would be in these classrooms? Also, I know that in medieval manuscripts, the monks who wrote the texts did not usually illustrate the texts. Is this the same in printing? Would…","frontmatter":{"id":366,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":31,"author":"indradjojo","date":"2011-10-11 11:09:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The growth in interest in publishing classics for universities and private gain must have brought about a discussion of copyright issues and infringement. When did our modern notion of copyright come about? Did it have its roots in this era?

","excerpt":"The growth in interest in publishing classics for universities and private gain must have brought about a discussion of copyright issues and infringement. When did our modern notion of copyright come about? Did it have its roots in this era?","frontmatter":{"id":367,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":39,"author":"milestbird","date":"2011-10-11 11:59:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

During the growth in demand for classical texts to be used for educational purposes, a discussion of how to best copyright materials most likely arose as well - did our modern copyright laws originate during this time period? How grammar masters and teachers insure that their teaching would not be stolen?

","excerpt":"During the growth in demand for classical texts to be used for educational purposes, a discussion of how to best copyright materials most likely arose as well - did our modern copyright laws originate during this time period? How grammar masters and…","frontmatter":{"id":368,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":39,"author":"milestbird","date":"2011-10-11 12:01:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

How much of the modern day textbook is carried over from its original forefather in the 15th century? Did these texts have practice questions, highlighted passages, summaries? What tools for memorization and/or learning were specifically contained within the textbook

","excerpt":"How much of the modern day textbook is carried over from its original forefather in the 15th century? Did these texts have practice questions, highlighted passages, summaries? What tools for memorization and/or learning were specifically contained…","frontmatter":{"id":369,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"milestbird","date":"2011-10-11 12:10:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I really liked this section! It is also fascinating to think about emblems as tools for remembering as well as interpreting, coming out of the classical tradition of the art of memory as described by Francis Yates in The Art of Memory.

","excerpt":"I really liked this section! It is also fascinating to think about emblems as tools for remembering as well as interpreting, coming out of the classical tradition of the art of memory as described by Francis Yates in The Art of Memory.","frontmatter":{"id":370,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"liam db","date":"2011-10-11 13:31:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Do you really think that these ideas \"displaced\" aspects of Christianity, or were they reinterpreted and adapted to serve a purpose within Christian society?

","excerpt":"Do you really think that these ideas \"displaced\" aspects of Christianity, or were they reinterpreted and adapted to serve a purpose within Christian society?","frontmatter":{"id":371,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":398,"author":"liam db","date":"2011-10-11 13:39:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I imagine that familiarity with emblems from childhood might provide background in adulthood for understanding common religious symbols in art.

","excerpt":"I imagine that familiarity with emblems from childhood might provide background in adulthood for understanding common religious symbols in art.","frontmatter":{"id":372,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":385,"author":"tessa","date":"2011-10-11 19:23:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I think the use of printer's marks is a fascinating way to identify one's work in the absence of any sort of verification system. Also, the economic concerns in general regarding emblems and title pages are interesting to think of in combination with moral/educational goals.

","excerpt":"I think the use of printer's marks is a fascinating way to identify one's work in the absence of any sort of verification system. Also, the economic concerns in general regarding emblems and title pages are interesting to think of in combination with…","frontmatter":{"id":373,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"tessa","date":"2011-10-11 19:33:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good point, Liam. What I wanted to convey here is that what we now think of as mainstream Christianity is a highly rhetorical, language-centered faith, but that medieval Christianity --in the absence of widespread literacy, remember-- was strongly visual and oral. One of the lasting effects of humanism was to reclaim the rhetorical tradition of classical culture and make it over into a central fact of Christianity. This could only happen because humanist rhetorical ideas were adopted and made universal through wider literacy and through the medium of commercial print.

","excerpt":"Good point, Liam. What I wanted to convey here is that what we now think of as mainstream Christianity is a highly rhetorical, language-centered faith, but that medieval Christianity --in the absence of widespread literacy, remember-- was strongly…","frontmatter":{"id":374,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":398,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-10-11 19:43:06"}}},{"node":{"html":"

There is an enormous literature and much debate on this question of how illustration was done. In textbooks specifically (and this cannot be generalized to all fields), the tendency is for the author of the text to specify the diagrams and illustrations required to the printer and the printer would then hire an artist to realize them. For manuscripts these artists were often part of a workshop team that confected the books to order. For printed books, the tendency was for a wood engraver to work from a pattern provided either by the author or by an artist. But typically in print there is an attempt to keep the illustrations closely related to the texts.

","excerpt":"There is an enormous literature and much debate on this question of how illustration was done. In textbooks specifically (and this cannot be generalized to all fields), the tendency is for the author of the text to specify the diagrams and…","frontmatter":{"id":375,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":31,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-10-11 19:50:03"}}},{"node":{"html":"

We really don't have too many clear, direct sources to tell us how the compositions of students were done, but sometimes notes of the sort survive as scrap paper. Well into the 17th century, however, people used wax tablets for various kinds of note taking, and that is probably how these exercises were most often performed. Paraphrase as a formal exercise always means rewording; it is a way to imagine ideas anew and to learn what kinds of expression work best.

","excerpt":"We really don't have too many clear, direct sources to tell us how the compositions of students were done, but sometimes notes of the sort survive as scrap paper. Well into the 17th century, however, people used wax tablets for various kinds of note…","frontmatter":{"id":376,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-10-11 19:53:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

All of the typographical and layout devices you mention, Miles, originated in the manuscript period, but of course, in single manuscripts reproduced individually. They became much more common in the first age of print both because there were many more copies mad at once, but also because printers copied (and teachers began more and more often to demand) things like this that made it easier to use the textbooks.

","excerpt":"All of the typographical and layout devices you mention, Miles, originated in the manuscript period, but of course, in single manuscripts reproduced individually. They became much more common in the first age of print both because there were many…","frontmatter":{"id":377,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-10-11 19:59:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Copyright as we know it, to protect the author, is really an 18th-century development. Before that there were various kinds of registrations and privileges that protected the publishers, who were assumed to have made an investment worth protecting commercially. A good intro to the whole issue is Elizabeth Armstrong's book, Before Copyright (Cambridge U. Press, 1990).

","excerpt":"Copyright as we know it, to protect the author, is really an 18th-century development. Before that there were various kinds of registrations and privileges that protected the publishers, who were assumed to have made an investment worth protecting…","frontmatter":{"id":378,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":39,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-10-11 20:05:31"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, but I think it worked the other way around even more often. Children were presented with religious symbols at a very early age and that made the kinds of symbols in formal emblems easier for them to understand when they encountered them in the classroom.

","excerpt":"Yes, but I think it worked the other way around even more often. Children were presented with religious symbols at a very early age and that made the kinds of symbols in formal emblems easier for them to understand when they encountered them in the…","frontmatter":{"id":379,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":385,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-10-11 20:07:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Right! It is always a little hard for us to place a price on morality, but printing made the whole issue more acute. That the economics of publishing end up influencing what ideas got out there and which ones became influential. Publishing on line eliminates one part of the economic equation, but it leaves another important question on the table. How do you get attention for your ideas in the babble of the internet?

","excerpt":"Right! It is always a little hard for us to place a price on morality, but printing made the whole issue more acute. That the economics of publishing end up influencing what ideas got out there and which ones became influential. Publishing on line…","frontmatter":{"id":380,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-10-11 20:13:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks to John Ptak for drawing my attention to this, I've worked out the method.

\n

See my weblog post Tagliente's multiplication by columns: http://jsbookreader.blogspot.com/2011/11/taglientes-multiplication-by-columns.html

\n

The chalice example isn't great, as there are numerical errors in the sub-results; and all the woodcuts for this method fail to show the correct column positions that are crucial to the method.

","excerpt":"Thanks to John Ptak for drawing my attention to this, I've worked out the method. See my weblog post Tagliente's multiplication by columns: http://jsbookreader.blogspot.com/2011/11/taglientes-multiplication-by-columns.html The chalice example isn't…","frontmatter":{"id":383,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":325,"author":"raygirvan","date":"2011-11-10 21:23:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This modeling of emblems on printer's marks seems like a fascinating media-historical phenomenon- new medial practices/conventions leading directly to new literary/pictorial forms, and referencing the actual technological practices that make these forms possible at that! I wonder the extent to which similar innovations might have resulted from conventions of manuscript production in earlier centuries or in later developments in the history of print and other media (contests for animated web-content based around the Google name)?

","excerpt":"This modeling of emblems on printer's marks seems like a fascinating media-historical phenomenon- new medial practices/conventions leading directly to new literary/pictorial forms, and referencing the actual technological practices that make these…","frontmatter":{"id":384,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Sean Franzel","date":"2011-11-16 16:02:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for this thought, Sean. It has the possibility of contextualizing the emblem in a different way. This could be a good \"how many can you name?\" challenge for readers. The contemporary example that comes immediately to mind is the East Asian cell phone novel, but I am sure younger and better-wired people than I could think of other electronic examples. An earlier example might be the epistolary novel, but that is more your period of specialty study than mine. My understanding is that the genre resulted from the possibility of print reproducing a series of supposed manuscript documents of a sort and in a way that actual manuscript exchange would not likely have been assembled.

","excerpt":"Thanks for this thought, Sean. It has the possibility of contextualizing the emblem in a different way. This could be a good \"how many can you name?\" challenge for readers. The contemporary example that comes immediately to mind is the East Asian…","frontmatter":{"id":386,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-24 22:01:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I find your notion of the emblem as a machine for activist kinds of reading really helpful and interesting. I assume that this encouragement of activist interpretive practices is-- to greater and lesser extents, depending on their ideological functions-- at work in other aesthetic forms (signs, paintings, decorative arts, etc) that likewise play on the kind of analogical thinking you describe as characteristic of the period... Is it that emblematics deepen, expand upon a mode of allegorical/analogical hermeneutics, or that the convergence of print, popularization and new pedagogies change the playing field somehow?

","excerpt":"I find your notion of the emblem as a machine for activist kinds of reading really helpful and interesting. I assume that this encouragement of activist interpretive practices is-- to greater and lesser extents, depending on their ideological…","frontmatter":{"id":387,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Sean Franzel","date":"2011-11-26 11:10:03"}}},{"node":{"html":"

actually, your discussion in the next section basically answers my question...

","excerpt":"actually, your discussion in the next section basically answers my question...","frontmatter":{"id":388,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Sean Franzel","date":"2011-11-26 11:13:30"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Very suggestive formulation: emblem \"participating in retrospective or reflexive design process;\" again, as a non-specialist, I find myself thinking about what this might mean in different medial contexts. In a sense, it seems that these early print forms might help readers appreciate or model new design ideas in ways that are closer to the technologies of the print shop than today (we don't think about writing code when we change our facebook status- are we more alienated from the means of medial production? if we are, should we even care?). On the other hand, participating in a medial environment always seems to involve a certain potential for rethinking, reworking, \"redesigning\" that environment. Your discussion of the emblem makes this very clear.

","excerpt":"Very suggestive formulation: emblem \"participating in retrospective or reflexive design process;\" again, as a non-specialist, I find myself thinking about what this might mean in different medial contexts. In a sense, it seems that these early print…","frontmatter":{"id":390,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"Sean Franzel","date":"2011-11-26 11:36:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hello, Mr. Gehl,

\n

I am aware that, during the Middle Ages and a good part of the Renaissance, the Virgin Mary was presented as the ideal woman in Christian parts of the world. Women who did not live up to such a standard of purity, submissiveness, and gentleness were often looked upon as deviants, whores, or worse. How have you seen this dichotomy played out in the emblems, woodcuts, and engravings of the period? What effects do you think these representations of women had in the lives of the men and few women who were able to access books?

\n

What Thomas Laquer has called \"œthe One-Sex Model\" was still being taught during this period. I have seen several illustrations of this model in medical textbooks from the time, and I am curious to know if you have seen examples in non-medical books for students of other disciplines, and also in books of literature and/or poetry. I agree that people of lower classes and women in general would have been ignorant of how their bodies and their genders were being defined, but how aware of the One-Sex construction of the human body were people who could access education? Is there any evidence to suggest that anyone was aware or suspected that sex and thus gender were/are social constructions, and that these constructions serve not only to materialize the body, but also to form our conceptions of \"œnature\" itself, as Judith Butler has argued?

","excerpt":"Hello, Mr. Gehl, I am aware that, during the Middle Ages and a good part of the Renaissance, the Virgin Mary was presented as the ideal woman in Christian parts of the world. Women who did not live up to such a standard of purity, submissiveness, and…","frontmatter":{"id":392,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Greta Westerwald","date":"2011-11-26 11:47:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I also find your discussion of the emblem creating an active reader to be quite interesting, especially in relation to the concerns described in 7.01, that many educators feared mass-printed books would cause \"permanent harm in a more natural oral / aural classroom.\" It appears, then, that emblems perhaps encouraged more discussion, due to their often ambiguous meaning. This idea of activist reading ties in nicely with the image of the emblem as a bridge \"between textbook making and teaching.\"

","excerpt":"I also find your discussion of the emblem creating an active reader to be quite interesting, especially in relation to the concerns described in 7.01, that many educators feared mass-printed books would cause \"permanent harm in a more natural oral…","frontmatter":{"id":393,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Lauren Bartshe","date":"2011-11-26 12:23:44"}}},{"node":{"html":"

i agree with Diana Robin's comment- excellent chapter, and very suggestive for thinking about our own practices as teachers and students!

","excerpt":"i agree with Diana Robin's comment- excellent chapter, and very suggestive for thinking about our own practices as teachers and students!","frontmatter":{"id":394,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":392,"author":"Sean Franzel","date":"2011-11-26 12:36:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Is it known to what extent emblems were used as communication tools to/for the uneducated and/or illiterate?

","excerpt":"Is it known to what extent emblems were used as communication tools to/for the uneducated and/or illiterate?","frontmatter":{"id":396,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Lauren Bartshe","date":"2011-11-26 12:50:11"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Interesting. This mostly answers my previous question.

","excerpt":"Interesting. This mostly answers my previous question.","frontmatter":{"id":397,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":390,"author":"Lauren Bartshe","date":"2011-11-26 13:41:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I like this (imperfect) analogy to Facebook, Sean! It points to the way the tools are handed to us and we make of them what we will, largely unfettered by the intentions of the toolmakers. The makers of emblems seem (after Alciati's apparent initial shock at the way the form got away from him) to have accepted the notion of readers inventing new puzzles on the basis of the published emblems. Unlike printed emblems, of course, the Facebook page owner actually can change what is published, what the public encounters, while the user of an emblem had to be in a position to publish a new book in order to do that. The issue of who cares about how tools are used is perennial, however. Just to take the Facebook analogy one step further, recall how incensed people got a few weeks ago when Facebook changed some parameters --and indeed how annoying it is when any software update takes away familiar patterns of use.

","excerpt":"I like this (imperfect) analogy to Facebook, Sean! It points to the way the tools are handed to us and we make of them what we will, largely unfettered by the intentions of the toolmakers. The makers of emblems seem (after Alciati's apparent initial…","frontmatter":{"id":398,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-26 17:21:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi, Greta: Your note raises an interesting question, but I don't have an easy answer. I certainly have not come across this image myself. The sources for most emblems are literary (usually but not always classical (and do not come directly from medical writings. The Blessed Virgin and writings about her, however, are sources for a few emblem books created in Italy, as discussed in section 7.14, where I think you originally posted this comment.

","excerpt":"Hi, Greta: Your note raises an interesting question, but I don't have an easy answer. I certainly have not come across this image myself. The sources for most emblems are literary (usually but not always classical (and do not come directly from…","frontmatter":{"id":399,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-26 17:31:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Lauren: Both you and Sean are here pointing to a kind of reading that was applied to texts as well as pictorial works during the Middle Ages. In that period the number of readers was small and they concentrated in communities that could easily be policed. The issue for the authorities in the first age of print was exactly the one that moralizing (or politically controlling) public figures today use to suggest we should censor the internet --that people cannot be trusted to use the media.

","excerpt":"Lauren: Both you and Sean are here pointing to a kind of reading that was applied to texts as well as pictorial works during the Middle Ages. In that period the number of readers was small and they concentrated in communities that could easily be…","frontmatter":{"id":400,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-26 18:05:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, but see my note there (section 7.06).

","excerpt":"Yes, but see my note there (section 7.06).","frontmatter":{"id":401,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":390,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-26 18:07:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As you noted later (on section 7.15), Lauren, this clearly did become a conscious strategy on the part of educators and public officials. However, there is very little scholarly literature that evaluates the extent or effectiveness of this kind of poster, just because what we can find easily is the printed works themselves and not discursive evidence (diaries,letters, other descriptions of the material). The paradox is that this poster survives because it was never posted --it was saved. We assume it was actually used, but there are no sources to tell us for sure that it was. If one could find good sources of this latter kind, it could make fine dissertation.

","excerpt":"As you noted later (on section 7.15), Lauren, this clearly did become a conscious strategy on the part of educators and public officials. However, there is very little scholarly literature that evaluates the extent or effectiveness of this kind of…","frontmatter":{"id":402,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-26 18:14:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

We discussed these \"several layers of meaning\" in the emblem at the beginning of Simplicissimus Teutsch.

","excerpt":"We discussed these \"several layers of meaning\" in the emblem at the beginning of Simplicissimus Teutsch.","frontmatter":{"id":403,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":363,"author":"Hana Katsenes","date":"2011-11-27 12:41:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You commented earlier that the boar / lioness / vulture motto and poem existed first without the picture. Did this picture, too, get added later to the emblem? If so, how could the artist possibly have known exactly what Alciati wanted depicted?

","excerpt":"You commented earlier that the boar / lioness / vulture motto and poem existed first without the picture. Did this picture, too, get added later to the emblem? If so, how could the artist possibly have known exactly what Alciati wanted depicted?","frontmatter":{"id":404,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Hana Katsenes","date":"2011-11-27 13:27:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Forgive my ignorance, but what are \"the ubiquitous personal devices of aristocrats\" in the 16th century?

","excerpt":"Forgive my ignorance, but what are \"the ubiquitous personal devices of aristocrats\" in the 16th century?","frontmatter":{"id":405,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Hana Katsenes","date":"2011-11-27 14:18:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As a music student, I'm always interested in crossovers into that area. I'm curious if there were posters announcing concerts or events at aristocratic courts of say, Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo (premiered in 1608) where we could find similar emblems.

","excerpt":"As a music student, I'm always interested in crossovers into that area. I'm curious if there were posters announcing concerts or events at aristocratic courts of say, Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo (premiered in 1608) where we could find similar emblems.","frontmatter":{"id":406,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Hana Katsenes","date":"2011-11-27 14:39:25"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I find it fascinating that educated readers were trained to look for multiple meanings in this time. We should train ourselves to do the same, not to simply accept images and texts at face value when we're presented with art and literature, but to analyze and search for deeper meanings.

","excerpt":"I find it fascinating that educated readers were trained to look for multiple meanings in this time. We should train ourselves to do the same, not to simply accept images and texts at face value when we're presented with art and literature, but to…","frontmatter":{"id":407,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"Hana Katsenes","date":"2011-11-27 15:01:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Ack, pardon the mistake. Monteverdi's L'Orfeo premiered in 1607.

","excerpt":"Ack, pardon the mistake. Monteverdi's L'Orfeo premiered in 1607.","frontmatter":{"id":408,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Hana Katsenes","date":"2011-11-27 15:37:06"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Partly as a result of the new fashion for the study of ancient iconography, hieroglyphics, and hermetic symbolism in fifteenth-century Italy, aristocrats began to take on personal symbols in addition to their family coats of arms. Some of these in turn became family symbols or devices. Several generations of the Medici, for example, used the device of a diamond ring.

","excerpt":"Partly as a result of the new fashion for the study of ancient iconography, hieroglyphics, and hermetic symbolism in fifteenth-century Italy, aristocrats began to take on personal symbols in addition to their family coats of arms. Some of these in…","frontmatter":{"id":409,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-27 18:18:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are pointing here, Hana, to an essential skill for scholars in all fields concerned with the past. The context for most literary creations and most artistic ones before the nineteenth-century spread of popular literacy was exactly this kind of multi-level reading.

","excerpt":"You are pointing here, Hana, to an essential skill for scholars in all fields concerned with the past. The context for most literary creations and most artistic ones before the nineteenth-century spread of popular literacy was exactly this kind of…","frontmatter":{"id":410,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-27 18:21:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is very far from my proper field of study, but my impression is that the Monteverdi operas were staged for events at court and would not have been advertised to a wide public.

","excerpt":"This is very far from my proper field of study, but my impression is that the Monteverdi operas were staged for events at court and would not have been advertised to a wide public.","frontmatter":{"id":411,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-27 18:23:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

All of Alciati's original emblems were composed without pictures. He invented the form as a literary one where the picture was supposed to be imagined by the reader of the poem. Once the reader had imagined the image, then he would re-read and understand the poem more fully. These original emblems were designed for manuscript circulation. The new emblems Alciati added for this later, larger collection, however, were composed after the first set had been published with images made up for the printed book by artists not working directly with Alciati; so we must imagine that he has already re-conceptualized the literary form he invented only a few years earlier and was now probably working with an artist to create emblems with both pictures and poems. This is an unusual moment in literary and media history. We can not only witness the invention of a new genre, but also watch how it was appropriated by new writers, and then watch the inventor respond to the changes wrought by others on his invention. We see this happening online everyday but it was also an exciting event for sixteenth-century people, to watch the media change before their very eyes.

","excerpt":"All of Alciati's original emblems were composed without pictures. He invented the form as a literary one where the picture was supposed to be imagined by the reader of the poem. Once the reader had imagined the image, then he would re-read and…","frontmatter":{"id":412,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-27 18:32:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The notion of \"emblematic thinking\" is intriguing, in so far as how it is related to metaphor and analogy (or allegory/parable), which definitely serve to teach or communicate messages more effectively and, perhaps, affectingly as well. I am curious as to the extent of the \"universalness\" of this type of thinking, and specifically of its application. Were there many amateurs creating their own emblems? How many children learning this thinking and \"devising\" of emblems apply their knowledge and in how many related ways outside of merely creating more emblem books, and were they exposed at higher levels of education as well or only as a member of the general public? Also, how cooperative versus authoritative was the writer-artist production of emblems, and out of curiosity were any writers also artists?

","excerpt":"The notion of \"emblematic thinking\" is intriguing, in so far as how it is related to metaphor and analogy (or allegory/parable), which definitely serve to teach or communicate messages more effectively and, perhaps, affectingly as well. I am curious…","frontmatter":{"id":413,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"nicholastotten","date":"2011-11-27 23:11:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The pedagogical use of emblems for women and children is interesting. Were these emblems ever disseminated (or re-purposed) with vernacular mottos/poems in woodcuts catering to a more rural audience? Or did these remain more or less exclusive to the urban bourgeoisie and landed aristocrats?

","excerpt":"The pedagogical use of emblems for women and children is interesting. Were these emblems ever disseminated (or re-purposed) with vernacular mottos/poems in woodcuts catering to a more rural audience? Or did these remain more or less exclusive to the…","frontmatter":{"id":414,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"kkessler","date":"2011-11-27 23:22:00"}}},{"node":{"html":"

After not only encouraging \"activist\" thinking but also translating to regional vernaculars, to what extent did these expand the open-mind syndrome of readers experiencing the importance of personal opinion, interpretation, and perhaps then critical analysis of systems beyond that of the emblem? Or is it just that the emblems really were providing affective lessons of newly revisited morals that effectively left the reader with a new sense of reverence for the system as it was? Mostly, I am curious as to whether there were any popular exceptions?

","excerpt":"After not only encouraging \"activist\" thinking but also translating to regional vernaculars, to what extent did these expand the open-mind syndrome of readers experiencing the importance of personal opinion, interpretation, and perhaps then critical…","frontmatter":{"id":415,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"nicholastotten","date":"2011-11-27 23:26:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I think the emblem book is very interesting. But I'm not quite sure what it is exactly, is it a book full of emblems? Or is it a book with one emblem on the front page?

","excerpt":"I think the emblem book is very interesting. But I'm not quite sure what it is exactly, is it a book full of emblems? Or is it a book with one emblem on the front page?","frontmatter":{"id":417,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Chen Chen","date":"2011-11-27 23:39:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Out of curiosity, was the printer's mark ever manipulated by publishers publishing soon-to-be censored or censored material in any unorthodox or politically/religiously taboo fashion (i.e. did publishers ever craft an ironic printer's mark which mocked a particular group, such as Protestants or Catholics?)? As seen in the \"Simplicissimus Teutsch\" title page, emblems and title pages can be intentionally misleading. Were printer's marks, too, capable of this degree of creative freedom when publishing more socially/politically objectionable material?

","excerpt":"Out of curiosity, was the printer's mark ever manipulated by publishers publishing soon-to-be censored or censored material in any unorthodox or politically/religiously taboo fashion (i.e. did publishers ever craft an ironic printer's mark which…","frontmatter":{"id":418,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":392,"author":"Ky Kessler","date":"2011-11-27 23:39:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I think the emblem book is very interesting. But I'm not quite sure what it is exactly, is it a book full of emblems? Or is it a book with one emblem on the front page ?

","excerpt":"I think the emblem book is very interesting. But I'm not quite sure what it is exactly, is it a book full of emblems? Or is it a book with one emblem on the front page ?","frontmatter":{"id":419,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Chen Chen","date":"2011-11-27 23:46:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

\"They were moral acts...\": At what point might we see that \"puzzling something out\" gains a high degree of social status, especially in terms of morals? Business-folk, in one line of rhetoric, are seen, for example, today as being de facto morally superior, one could argue (as George Lakoff has), because they have figured out some special problems that others simply haven't. It seems clearly implied, at least, that the mere publishing of such texts containing moral lessons and then spurring on the \"puzzling out\" of such and maybe other lessons for the readership would be in itself a very moral act. Did technical problem solving ever see its day in those earlier centuries as a moral venture?

","excerpt":"\"They were moral acts...\": At what point might we see that \"puzzling something out\" gains a high degree of social status, especially in terms of morals? Business-folk, in one line of rhetoric, are seen, for example, today as being de facto morally…","frontmatter":{"id":420,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"nicholastotten","date":"2011-11-27 23:46:48"}}},{"node":{"html":"

By chance, could one already see (and is there any evidence in their notes or lectures or pedagogical outlines or sermons for) teachers themselves or preachers limiting the more open-ended emblematic puzzles in ways supportive of social conformity? Again, were there any exceptions we know of?

","excerpt":"By chance, could one already see (and is there any evidence in their notes or lectures or pedagogical outlines or sermons for) teachers themselves or preachers limiting the more open-ended emblematic puzzles in ways supportive of social conformity…","frontmatter":{"id":421,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":385,"author":"nicholastotten","date":"2011-11-28 00:13:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This section answers my question on 7.02. And I think the idea Emblem books is very interesting. And I agree that it requires \"an activist kind of reading that engaged the mind in problem solving\". I remember, in class when we read the book \"Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch\", we had lots of discussion about the emblem on the front page. It's really requires an active learning. We tried to figure out what the pictures represented and there was no clear answer.

","excerpt":"This section answers my question on 7.02. And I think the idea Emblem books is very interesting. And I agree that it requires \"an activist kind of reading that engaged the mind in problem solving\". I remember, in class when we read the book \"Der…","frontmatter":{"id":422,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Chen Chen","date":"2011-11-28 00:17:46"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Helping with my previous question, it does make sense that the school's curriculum would be tightly controlled and that the emblems, even if allowed to be freely interpreted, would all lead to fairly similar conclusions. \"Inventing\" subversive interpretations might prove difficult even if one really tried.

","excerpt":"Helping with my previous question, it does make sense that the school's curriculum would be tightly controlled and that the emblems, even if allowed to be freely interpreted, would all lead to fairly similar conclusions. \"Inventing\" subversive…","frontmatter":{"id":423,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":387,"author":"nicholastotten","date":"2011-11-28 00:20:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Does this mean, we are also reading emblems every day? Are the coins such as cent, dime and quarter also emblems?

","excerpt":"Does this mean, we are also reading emblems every day? Are the coins such as cent, dime and quarter also emblems?","frontmatter":{"id":424,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Chen Chen","date":"2011-11-28 00:22:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This section is my favorite. The printer and the authors or a third party are fighting over the rights of emblems on title pages. Is there only one title page? Is that possible that they have several title pages, so every party can show their own emblems.

","excerpt":"This section is my favorite. The printer and the authors or a third party are fighting over the rights of emblems on title pages. Is there only one title page? Is that possible that they have several title pages, so every party can show their own…","frontmatter":{"id":425,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":381,"author":"Chen Chen","date":"2011-11-28 00:31:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You're the second person to refer to the Simplicissimus Teutsch, Ky. I will have to find some time today to look at it myself. In general, there is plenty of irony in printer's marks as in emblems more generally (and it is rife in Renaissance literary culture as a whole), but I cannot offhand think of an example that deliberately mocks a denominational group. False marks --or none at all-- were, however, sometimes used on heterodox publications. As such they could be considered another kind of false imprint statement.

","excerpt":"You're the second person to refer to the Simplicissimus Teutsch, Ky. I will have to find some time today to look at it myself. In general, there is plenty of irony in printer's marks as in emblems more generally (and it is rife in Renaissance…","frontmatter":{"id":426,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":392,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-28 07:06:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good question, Ky, in the sense that the existing literature does not address these issues at all well. Wooden printing blocks are very durable and many got re-purposed in later centuries, in general for less and less pretentious kinds of book, eventually finding their way into chapbooks of the most popular sort. Bbut I know of no study that tries to trace this reuse systematically, and my impression is that emblem blocks were not resused this way very often.

","excerpt":"Good question, Ky, in the sense that the existing literature does not address these issues at all well. Wooden printing blocks are very durable and many got re-purposed in later centuries, in general for less and less pretentious kinds of book…","frontmatter":{"id":427,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-28 07:11:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Since our principal evidence for emblems is the printed books, we don't have a very clear sense of how widely the making of emblems was practiced by amateurs. School emblems (see below, sections 7.11 and 7.15) often had student input, but getting them into print obviously required participation from adults in school and printshop. The one area where we can see lots of amateur emblems is in the surviving manuscripts. There is a good 1997 bibliography of these by Sandra Sider (available on Google Books if your library doesn't have it), but it needs updating already.

","excerpt":"Since our principal evidence for emblems is the printed books, we don't have a very clear sense of how widely the making of emblems was practiced by amateurs. School emblems (see below, sections 7.11 and 7.15) often had student input, but getting…","frontmatter":{"id":428,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-28 07:20:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are right, Chen, that many commonplace things (among them coins, paper money, and all kinds of flags) are or were originally designed to be emblematic. We are not systematically taught to read them, however, so we often just don't see that dimension of them. These commonplace images frequently get parodies (think of all the dollar bill take-offs) and that makes us at least look a little more closely.

","excerpt":"You are right, Chen, that many commonplace things (among them coins, paper money, and all kinds of flags) are or were originally designed to be emblematic. We are not systematically taught to read them, however, so we often just don't see that…","frontmatter":{"id":429,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-28 07:24:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The conventions of publishing in this period are pretty fixed --only one title page, which is why it becomes a contested field. The solution when there was more than one party was often for the printer to put his mark at the end of the book, ceding the title page to the more prestigious author, academy, or public institution. Toward the very end of the sixteenth century you have the phenomenon of the second title page --usually an elaborate, engraved plate that was a good place for really extended emblem-making. This would be followed by a typographic title page with just the discursive information.

","excerpt":"The conventions of publishing in this period are pretty fixed --only one title page, which is why it becomes a contested field. The solution when there was more than one party was often for the printer to put his mark at the end of the book, ceding…","frontmatter":{"id":430,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":381,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-11-28 07:54:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Did the authors of a emblem ever provide a sort of \"key interpretation\" of their emblem?

","excerpt":"Did the authors of a emblem ever provide a sort of \"key interpretation\" of their emblem?","frontmatter":{"id":431,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":369,"author":"Hela","date":"2011-11-28 09:43:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The essence of the emblem is that it is a puzzle, so in the first instance there is rarely a key or solution. Alciati originally didn't even give a picture, just the poerm. As the genre evolved, however, some of the more popular collections were issued in annotated editions where there would be a commentary on each emblem that would solve the puzzle or at least explicate the several dimensions of it.

","excerpt":"The essence of the emblem is that it is a puzzle, so in the first instance there is rarely a key or solution. Alciati originally didn't even give a picture, just the poerm. As the genre evolved, however, some of the more popular collections were…","frontmatter":{"id":433,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":369,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-11-28 11:13:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In chapter 16 (16.18 and 16.19), some title pages of the music textbooks look similar to an emblem consisting of three parts. I am wondering whether the emblem is inspired by the format of those title pages, or vice versa?

","excerpt":"In chapter 16 (16.18 and 16.19), some title pages of the music textbooks look similar to an emblem consisting of three parts. I am wondering whether the emblem is inspired by the format of those title pages, or vice versa?","frontmatter":{"id":434,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Chen JS","date":"2011-11-28 14:12:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Just saw the answer in the next paragraph.

","excerpt":"Just saw the answer in the next paragraph.","frontmatter":{"id":435,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Chen JS","date":"2011-11-28 14:26:30"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, as you note, devices on title pages preceded the formal emblem. However, the two title pages you point to in the last chapter are different from each other, and might be worth looking back at, since they may explicate the form. The title page in 6.18 has a true emblem (pictorial object with motto --actually two mottoes-- that complement the picture without solving the puzzle). The title page in 6.19, by contrast, is a narrative scene, the Annunciation to the Virgin, without motto or any particular puzzle dimension.

","excerpt":"Yes, as you note, devices on title pages preceded the formal emblem. However, the two title pages you point to in the last chapter are different from each other, and might be worth looking back at, since they may explicate the form. The title page in…","frontmatter":{"id":436,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-11-28 17:09:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I found it really interesting to read about how an imprint can actually be self-explaining, when we know the meaning and quality of it.

\n

It is also interesting how printers' marks are later being used as reputations or symbols and basically sell the book, because the symbol is right on the front on the title page.

\n

I feel like the reader has to sort out, whether the book is a shoddy book or a good book, or rely on other opinions, this is how culture changes.

","excerpt":"I found it really interesting to read about how an imprint can actually be self-explaining, when we know the meaning and quality of it. It is also interesting how printers' marks are later being used as reputations or symbols and basically sell the…","frontmatter":{"id":437,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":377,"author":"annirdmn","date":"2011-11-29 11:30:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are certainly right to point to the fact that this is a continuing issue, both in print and in the new media environment. Every time we encounter something without a trademark or brand name we recognize, we have to evaluate it for ourselves. The task is even trickier online, where branding is particularly weak and where content creators do not always cite their sources.

","excerpt":"You are certainly right to point to the fact that this is a continuing issue, both in print and in the new media environment. Every time we encounter something without a trademark or brand name we recognize, we have to evaluate it for ourselves. The…","frontmatter":{"id":438,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":377,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2011-11-29 14:32:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This Lyon tradition of publishing Mancinelli continued. Google Books recently put up on line a copy of a Lyon, 1511 edition (with the printer's mark of Jean Huguetan) that is now in the Bavarian State Library. This copy has the intriguing note that it was acquired in 1516 for the monastery of Tegernsee, showing how international the market for such grammar books could be.

","excerpt":"This Lyon tradition of publishing Mancinelli continued. Google Books recently put up on line a copy of a Lyon, 1511 edition (with the printer's mark of Jean Huguetan) that is now in the Bavarian State Library. This copy has the intriguing note that…","frontmatter":{"id":440,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":231,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-12-25 08:34:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In her new book, Women, Language and Grammar in Italy 1500-1900 (British Academy, 2011), p. 46, n. 59, Helena Sanson says that there were over thirty five editions of the Libro maistrevole. I have not been able to verify this point, but if true, it would of course alter my statement here about Tagliente's reading of his audience.

","excerpt":"In her new book, Women, Language and Grammar in Italy 1500-1900 (British Academy, 2011), p. 46, n. 59, Helena Sanson says that there were over thirty five editions of the Libro maistrevole. I have not been able to verify this point, but if true, it…","frontmatter":{"id":441,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":341,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2011-12-25 08:41:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on Boccardo, usually called by his self-assigned Greek name Pilade or Pylades, see now Simone Signaroli, \"Plauto nel cimento della filologia umanistica,\" in Viaggi di testi e di libri, ed. by Valentina Grobhovaz, Udine, Forum, 2011, pp. 95-100.

","excerpt":"Further on Boccardo, usually called by his self-assigned Greek name Pilade or Pylades, see now Simone Signaroli, \"Plauto nel cimento della filologia umanistica,\" in Viaggi di testi e di libri, ed. by Valentina Grobhovaz, Udine, Forum, 2011, pp. 9…","frontmatter":{"id":443,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":153,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2012-05-31 14:31:48"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on Ciceronianism: \"Massimo Miglio, La diffusione della cultura umanistica negli incunaboli: Roma,\" Accademe e biblioteche d'Italia 65, 15-32, esp. 26-28.

","excerpt":"Further on Ciceronianism: \"Massimo Miglio, La diffusione della cultura umanistica negli incunaboli: Roma,\" Accademe e biblioteche d'Italia 65, 15-32, esp. 26-28.","frontmatter":{"id":444,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":250,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2012-06-17 07:02:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In a recent discussion with Maurizio Campanelli, he pointed out that when in 1561 Giovanni Maria Bonelli dropped the wording about incorporating emendations from the Aldine and Gryphius texts, he may have been trying to steer clear of the new privilege granted to the Aldine edition of 1555. My thanks to Maurizio for this suggestion.

","excerpt":"In a recent discussion with Maurizio Campanelli, he pointed out that when in 1561 Giovanni Maria Bonelli dropped the wording about incorporating emendations from the Aldine and Gryphius texts, he may have been trying to steer clear of the new…","frontmatter":{"id":446,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":110,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2012-07-22 15:27:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

My friend of many years, Father Conrad Borntrager, O.S.M., has just called my attention to a book on censorship at Lucca, which I am anxious to see for what light it might shed on the case of Aonio Paleario. It is Flavia Bruni, \"Erano di molti libri proibiti\": Frate Lorenzo Lucchesi e la censura libraria a Lucca alla fine del Cinquecento, Roma: Edizioni Marianum, 2009.

","excerpt":"My friend of many years, Father Conrad Borntrager, O.S.M., has just called my attention to a book on censorship at Lucca, which I am anxious to see for what light it might shed on the case of Aonio Paleario. It is Flavia Bruni, \"Erano di molti libri…","frontmatter":{"id":447,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":313,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2012-08-10 20:10:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

There is not much literature on Negro, but there is a brief account of his use of the vernacular in Brian Richardson, \"Latin and Italian in Contact in Some Renaissance Grammars,\" in Rethinking Languages in Contact, the Case of Italian (London, Legenda, 2006), 28-42, at 30-31. Richardson also cites an article unknown to me at the time of this writing by Giovanni Mercati, \"Pescennio Francesco Negro Veneto,\" in Ultimi contributi alla stora degli umanisti (Vatican City, 1939).

","excerpt":"There is not much literature on Negro, but there is a brief account of his use of the vernacular in Brian Richardson, \"Latin and Italian in Contact in Some Renaissance Grammars,\" in Rethinking Languages in Contact, the Case of Italian (London…","frontmatter":{"id":449,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":35,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2012-11-26 16:04:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Never get tired of looking at the folio Terence with commentary format. The several pages here are terrific looking, as opposed to the \"illustrations\" which are boring to my eye. Surely they were something when they were done, but does not keep my eye/head engaged as the texts do.

","excerpt":"Never get tired of looking at the folio Terence with commentary format. The several pages here are terrific looking, as opposed to the \"illustrations\" which are boring to my eye. Surely they were something when they were done, but does not keep my…","frontmatter":{"id":450,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":94,"author":"Susan Barron","date":"2012-11-30 18:06:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Dear Paul Gehl, I have a couple of questions: In this paragraph it is written that Tagliente's manual appeared in 1524, ... , within a year of one authored by Ludovico Arrighi (d. 1527). 1527 is three years later. I also have images of La Operina, by Ludovico Arrighi, dated 1522. Was Arrighi the first to publish a writing manual? Note 53, in chapter 6.09, does say that Arrighi's first book appeared before Tagliente's, was that book La Operina? Thank you

","excerpt":"Dear Paul Gehl, I have a couple of questions: In this paragraph it is written that Tagliente's manual appeared in 1524, ... , within a year of one authored by Ludovico Arrighi (d. 1527). 1527 is three years later. I also have images of La Operina, by…","frontmatter":{"id":451,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Monica Dengo","date":"2012-12-03 03:56:42"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for your note, Monica! Although many of the early writing books are dated, there is some dispute as to their actual dates of publication. I based this very summary sentence and much of the rest of my account on A.S. Olsey's Scribes and Sources, which suggests that the 1522 Operina of Arricghi was rushed into print in order to anticipate Tagliente's known plan to publish, and that the actual date of its appearance was 1523, not 1522. That would put it very close in date to Tagliente's 1524 book. It is certainly clear from the date on the 1522 Operina that Arrighi wanted us to believe that his book was first.

","excerpt":"Thanks for your note, Monica! Although many of the early writing books are dated, there is some dispute as to their actual dates of publication. I based this very summary sentence and much of the rest of my account on A.S. Olsey's Scribes and Sources…","frontmatter":{"id":452,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2012-12-03 06:56:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This certainly highlights the difficulty of the perpetual problem of dating printed writing books. I think that the 1522 date in \"La Operina\" refers to when Arrighi originally prepared his manuscript. Not only does Osley date it later but so does Stanley Morison. In his \"Early Italian Writing-Books,\" edited by Nicolas Barker (1990), chapter 3 focuses on the publication date of \"La Operina.\" Morison/Barker suggest it was probably printed in the first half of 1524. As you know, in 1525 the book's engraver, Ugo da Carpi, sued for the right to publish his edition. Morison/Barker raise the obvious question: if the book was published in 1522 why did Da Carpi wait 3 years to sue? They offer other substantial evidence as well.

","excerpt":"This certainly highlights the difficulty of the perpetual problem of dating printed writing books. I think that the 1522 date in \"La Operina\" refers to when Arrighi originally prepared his manuscript. Not only does Osley date it later but so does…","frontmatter":{"id":453,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Robert Williams","date":"2012-12-07 10:20:03"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An interesting example of Italian use of illustrations for Terence is documented by G. Petrella, \"Niccolò Gorgonzola e i plagi ai danni dei da Legnano: un Terenzio del Gorgonzola finora sconosciuto,\" La bibliofilía 108, 159-177.

","excerpt":"An interesting example of Italian use of illustrations for Terence is documented by G. Petrella, \"Niccolò Gorgonzola e i plagi ai danni dei da Legnano: un Terenzio del Gorgonzola finora sconosciuto,\" La bibliofilía 108, 159-177.","frontmatter":{"id":454,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":96,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2012-12-09 10:32:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thank you Paul and Bob!

\n

The brief historical note is now in the web site www.scritturacorsiva.it . For the moment it is in Italian, hopefully we'll translate it soon in English as well.

","excerpt":"Thank you Paul and Bob! The brief historical note is now in the web site www.scritturacorsiva.it . For the moment it is in Italian, hopefully we'll translate it soon in English as well.","frontmatter":{"id":455,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":335,"author":"Monica Dengo","date":"2012-12-22 12:46:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Another interesting document for the wide distribution of Terence is an inventory of a 1595 book 'caravan' published recently by Anastasio Rojo Vegas. Among the books sent from Valladolid (a major book entrepot) to Santiago (in much more provincial Galicia), there are six entries for Terence, including at least one used copy, two copies of a Spanish translation, and eight new copies of Latin editions in quarto and sextodecimo. See: Rojo Vegas, \"From Europe to Finisterre: A Caravan of Books to Galicia (1595),\" in Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Benito Rial Costas (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 381-401, at 391.

","excerpt":"Another interesting document for the wide distribution of Terence is an inventory of a 1595 book 'caravan' published recently by Anastasio Rojo Vegas. Among the books sent from Valladolid (a major book entrepot) to Santiago (in much more provincial…","frontmatter":{"id":458,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":126,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-01-03 03:32:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on the distribution of Mancinelli's textbooks, see now my \"Advertising or Fama? Local Markets for Schoolbooks in Sixteenth-century Italy,\" in Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Benito Rial Costas (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 69-99, esp. 82-89.

","excerpt":"Further on the distribution of Mancinelli's textbooks, see now my \"Advertising or Fama? Local Markets for Schoolbooks in Sixteenth-century Italy,\" in Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Benito Rial Costas (Leiden: Brill, 201…","frontmatter":{"id":459,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":221,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-01-03 03:38:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Considering the active, involved, and creative nature of deciphering emblems, is there evidence of owners marking up their emblem books with notes? It would be a way of making a personal mark like an author's title page emblem, but also a memory technique\"”a handwritten note beside an emblem might represent a larger idea or conclusion. This practice is so common in the present, I can hardly imagine reading a textbook without highlighting or writing questions and ideas in the margin. Were these books too valuable to be scribbled in? Or did the advent of printing and resulting ease of text production render them less precious? Or was the idea of writing in a book not so problematic in the first place\"”I remember learning that many surviving medieval personal books of devotion, painstakingly composed by scribes, are rife with the handwritten notes of their various owners. I'm curious how ideas of ownership and personalization played out in this new type of text.

","excerpt":"Considering the active, involved, and creative nature of deciphering emblems, is there evidence of owners marking up their emblem books with notes? It would be a way of making a personal mark like an author's title page emblem, but also a memory…","frontmatter":{"id":461,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Emma Tolkin","date":"2013-03-10 23:21:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Was this \"œleisurely, Latinate sort of reading and study\" viewed with more respect by scholars than quick reference books? If so, did this have to do with new conceptions about time, or has the value of lengthy study been around since antiquity?

","excerpt":"Was this \"œleisurely, Latinate sort of reading and study\" viewed with more respect by scholars than quick reference books? If so, did this have to do with new conceptions about time, or has the value of lengthy study been around since antiquity?","frontmatter":{"id":463,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Emma Tolkin","date":"2013-03-10 23:37:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It's so interesting to see that there were doodles like this! You make a great point in the following paragraph about not knowing what hand written notes were truly about or who actually wrote them... but I guess it's your job to try to figure that out!

","excerpt":"It's so interesting to see that there were doodles like this! You make a great point in the following paragraph about not knowing what hand written notes were truly about or who actually wrote them... but I guess it's your job to try to figure that…","frontmatter":{"id":464,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"gscarano","date":"2013-03-11 01:18:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good question, Emma. In fact the meditative style of reading was inherited from the ancient world, and was probably applied to works of art as well as texts. It certainly applied to texts that described works of art (the way emblems do). A good book on the subject is Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory.

","excerpt":"Good question, Emma. In fact the meditative style of reading was inherited from the ancient world, and was probably applied to works of art as well as texts. It certainly applied to texts that described works of art (the way emblems do). A good book…","frontmatter":{"id":465,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 10:44:29"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Marginalia are common in medieval books and in printed books from the start. The notion that you should NOT write in a book is relatively modern. Interestingly, however, relatively few emblem books that I have seen get annotations--perhaps because they tend to be smallish volumes with fairly crowded pages already, and maybe because the beauty of the design discouraged people.

","excerpt":"Marginalia are common in medieval books and in printed books from the start. The notion that you should NOT write in a book is relatively modern. Interestingly, however, relatively few emblem books that I have seen get annotations--perhaps because…","frontmatter":{"id":466,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 10:47:55"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Well, yes, it is \"my job\" I suppose, but at a certain point you have to admit that you don't have enough evidence to give a solid answer and then give it up! Or else you speculate -- and label it as such.

","excerpt":"Well, yes, it is \"my job\" I suppose, but at a certain point you have to admit that you don't have enough evidence to give a solid answer and then give it up! Or else you speculate -- and label it as such.","frontmatter":{"id":467,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 10:52:04"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I am surprised to learn that even in the very beginning of the history of books the owners would mark them and draw in them. I am surprised because I would assume that people of this era would be more respectful towards this new technology, and want to preserve their new purchase. Perhaps doodling has always been and always will be a common pastime of the student in class.

","excerpt":"I am surprised to learn that even in the very beginning of the history of books the owners would mark them and draw in them. I am surprised because I would assume that people of this era would be more respectful towards this new technology, and want…","frontmatter":{"id":468,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Esme Faneuff","date":"2013-03-11 13:33:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Technically speaking, how would the printer put emblems into books? Were the emblems hand drawn each time? Or was there a way to make an identical image each time with a stamp or block print? What kind of technologies developed to make emblem usage easier and faster?

","excerpt":"Technically speaking, how would the printer put emblems into books? Were the emblems hand drawn each time? Or was there a way to make an identical image each time with a stamp or block print? What kind of technologies developed to make emblem usage…","frontmatter":{"id":469,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Esme Faneuff","date":"2013-03-11 14:14:55"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Although there was no uniform vocabulary to describe textbooks, were there some areas that attempted standardization of textbook vocabulary?

","excerpt":"Although there was no uniform vocabulary to describe textbooks, were there some areas that attempted standardization of textbook vocabulary?","frontmatter":{"id":470,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"katiegirvan","date":"2013-03-11 14:16:26"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It's interesting to see here an appreciation for conformity, especially from teachers, when in the context of standard textbook (and, more broadly, humanism) it was individuality that they were embracing. I imagine this speaks to the unique usage of emblem books?

","excerpt":"It's interesting to see here an appreciation for conformity, especially from teachers, when in the context of standard textbook (and, more broadly, humanism) it was individuality that they were embracing. I imagine this speaks to the unique usage of…","frontmatter":{"id":471,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Courtney K.","date":"2013-03-11 14:32:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Typically the emblems are woodcut in the earliest examples and engraved in later ones. Woodcuts are printed in the same form as type; engravings have to be printed separately, usually before the text, on a different type or press.

","excerpt":"Typically the emblems are woodcut in the earliest examples and engraved in later ones. Woodcuts are printed in the same form as type; engravings have to be printed separately, usually before the text, on a different type or press.","frontmatter":{"id":472,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 14:34:04"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As is discussed in the chapter \"œHumanities in Crisis\" It is interesting that humanists' own critical intellectual nature led to the demise of their monopoly on learning, do you know of any educators who began as humanists and changed the type of teaching format they used because their critical education made them question some fundamental aspect of humanism?

\n

In the section on Terrence Calliopious' manuscripts it is discussed that the task of sorting out manuscripts was a lengthy process, and required \"œa century or more.\" Since most of those interests in his manuscripts were educators I wonder who would actually undertake this task? Would it be educators themselves, or would humanists collaborate with monks or another group in order to sort out the manuscripts?

","excerpt":"As is discussed in the chapter \"œHumanities in Crisis\" It is interesting that humanists' own critical intellectual nature led to the demise of their monopoly on learning, do you know of any educators who began as humanists and changed the type of…","frontmatter":{"id":473,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Mary9010","date":"2013-03-11 14:35:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

For Latin schoolbooks, which is my primary subject in this section, there are several terms (like \"rudimenta,\" which I mention here, or \"manuale\") that should indicate elementary texts, but they simply aren't used regularly, especially early on. This specific kind of description of intended audience is usually included later on in the title or in a preface or introduction where it will specify \"for boys\" or \"for young people.\" I discuss this further in chapter six, at 6.07 and 6.19

","excerpt":"For Latin schoolbooks, which is my primary subject in this section, there are several terms (like \"rudimenta,\" which I mention here, or \"manuale\") that should indicate elementary texts, but they simply aren't used regularly, especially early on. This…","frontmatter":{"id":474,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 14:40:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Actually, early modern people saw books as instruments or tools and that meant they felt very free to mark them up --both for their personal use and for the use of other people who would use them. One by-product of the relative scarcity of books was that many individuals would often use a single book, either together or across time. My personal favorites are brothers and sisters, parents and children who put their names in a single books, sometimes across several generations.

","excerpt":"Actually, early modern people saw books as instruments or tools and that meant they felt very free to mark them up --both for their personal use and for the use of other people who would use them. One by-product of the relative scarcity of books was…","frontmatter":{"id":475,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 14:44:03"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Interesting! I bet the the utilization of visual models in textbooks made them much easier to understand and aided many students who performed better with visual representations rather than just text.

","excerpt":"Interesting! I bet the the utilization of visual models in textbooks made them much easier to understand and aided many students who performed better with visual representations rather than just text.","frontmatter":{"id":476,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":31,"author":"katiegirvan","date":"2013-03-11 14:48:03"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Well, in general before the twentieth century, students were invited to conform to communitarian ideals, just because notions of individual freedom were not so well developed then. But I bet if you look at your textbooks today --think back to high school-- you would find that you were more often being encouraged to \"be good\" than to do wholly original thinking.

","excerpt":"Well, in general before the twentieth century, students were invited to conform to communitarian ideals, just because notions of individual freedom were not so well developed then. But I bet if you look at your textbooks today --think back to high…","frontmatter":{"id":477,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":371,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 14:48:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are pointing to something that educational reformers were campaigning for in exactly this period, but it took a long time for visual learning to become a really widespread ideal. The popularity of emblems --which were not originally intended for young people-- probably helped promote this kind of thinking among educators.

","excerpt":"You are pointing to something that educational reformers were campaigning for in exactly this period, but it took a long time for visual learning to become a really widespread ideal. The popularity of emblems --which were not originally intended for…","frontmatter":{"id":478,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":31,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 14:51:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It seems as though the printer's emblem was a way in which to locate the work within geographical space. This makes me wonder, how popular was it for printers to also reference their works temporally by also including a date of publication?

","excerpt":"It seems as though the printer's emblem was a way in which to locate the work within geographical space. This makes me wonder, how popular was it for printers to also reference their works temporally by also including a date of publication?","frontmatter":{"id":479,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Courtney K.","date":"2013-03-11 18:01:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Interesting that you make this geographical leap, Courtney. The printer's mark certainly identified his firm, and usually printers had only one location, but most of the marks do not have geographical references. They tend to be based on literary sources, just as other emblems do. And some of them were deliberately international -- firms like the Giunta had branches in several cities in Italy, Spain, and France but they always used some form of a lily mark. As for dates, they are rare in very early printed books but become pretty much universal by the end of the fifteenth century --except in exactly the case where the mark might be omitted, when the printer did not want his work to be easily identified or traced.

","excerpt":"Interesting that you make this geographical leap, Courtney. The printer's mark certainly identified his firm, and usually printers had only one location, but most of the marks do not have geographical references. They tend to be based on literary…","frontmatter":{"id":480,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":379,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-03-11 19:43:36"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I am curious as to how the interpretation of emblems could be conceptually and morally restricted yet still imaginative. Could you clarify what this would mean? If the author inserts a text that already clearly delineates a certain moral significance to the emblem, what kind of latitude does the reader still have in the interpretative process? If a specific meaning is intended, what kind of variations in interpretation would have been \"œacceptable?\"

","excerpt":"I am curious as to how the interpretation of emblems could be conceptually and morally restricted yet still imaginative. Could you clarify what this would mean? If the author inserts a text that already clearly delineates a certain moral significance…","frontmatter":{"id":481,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":385,"author":"Vivian C.","date":"2013-03-14 18:27:30"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Good question, Vivian. I am generalizing here, so it may not be clear what the process of limiting meanings was. To understand how it happens, you have to remember that the emblem is structured from the start as a puzzle. The texts do not explain the meaning(s) outright, they only comment on the image and give clues to meaning(s), which are always potentially personal as well as comunitarian. That is, the reader always has the ability to create her own meaning for the image or to suggest alternatives that may or may not have been in the mind of the author. The more text the author adds, however, the more clues the reader gets to move in one direction or another. To cite a trivial example, say, if the author intimates that eagle in the image represents dominance, then it can only represent themes consistent with that, not those that have to do with flight away from power. There is still room for interpretation by the reader, but she is directed toward certain themes and not others.

","excerpt":"Good question, Vivian. I am generalizing here, so it may not be clear what the process of limiting meanings was. To understand how it happens, you have to remember that the emblem is structured from the start as a puzzle. The texts do not explain the…","frontmatter":{"id":482,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":385,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-03-14 19:55:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It's interesting to see during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was widespread practice to use images to add more layers of complexity, even in every day settings. I was wondering, how much difference in terms of obscurity/complexity would there be in an image that would be found in a textbook, as compared to an image on a poster or storefront? Would a book image necessarily be much more intellectually demanding in nature? And how long did this practice of using \"œinventional\" images in daily settings persist \"“ is this practice considered to still be around in the same form today?

","excerpt":"It's interesting to see during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was widespread practice to use images to add more layers of complexity, even in every day settings. I was wondering, how much difference in terms of obscurity/complexity would…","frontmatter":{"id":483,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Vivian C.","date":"2013-03-15 15:02:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In very general terms, basic textbooks are popularizations, so the emblems there(like other things--tables, charts, etc.) tend to function like posters or other public art --explaining complex ideas in a simple way, or at least at several levels, one of which can be understood quickly and without reflection. Once emblems are compiled into books, however, they can afford to be more complex because the book form invites slower,more thoughtful reading. As for today, we have lost the emblem theory, but designers of many things try to include several levels of meaning. The most obvious example is trademarks or logos --just think of the red-white-and-blue theme of many corporations. The name or image may not evoke patriotism but the designers try to stimulate it or just refer to it with that color scheme.

","excerpt":"In very general terms, basic textbooks are popularizations, so the emblems there(like other things--tables, charts, etc.) tend to function like posters or other public art --explaining complex ideas in a simple way, or at least at several levels, one…","frontmatter":{"id":484,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":373,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-03-16 08:19:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An excellent and highly original new account of the Italian impresa tradition and the ways in which it developed independently of the larger European emblem is provided by Susan Gaylard in Hollow Men: Writing, Objects, and Public Image in Renaissance Italy, New York, Fordham U. Press, 2013, chapter five. She also discusses academy emblems at length.

","excerpt":"An excellent and highly original new account of the Italian impresa tradition and the ways in which it developed independently of the larger European emblem is provided by Susan Gaylard in Hollow Men: Writing, Objects, and Public Image in Renaissance…","frontmatter":{"id":486,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":390,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-04-10 09:44:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This was interesting to learn about. I love seeing the red and black print in the old books, and thought it was always decoration. So, it is good to know that the red and black printing technique was used productively, as well as for decoration.

","excerpt":"This was interesting to learn about. I love seeing the red and black print in the old books, and thought it was always decoration. So, it is good to know that the red and black printing technique was used productively, as well as for decoration.","frontmatter":{"id":488,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":149,"author":"christinaroberts","date":"2013-04-26 23:35:25"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Right, Christina. We typically think of it as a usage in prayer books and liturgical books where it helps fairly sophisticated readers maneuver around complex texts. In schoolbooks it does that on a simpler level, and also serves to make the book more attractive to new, presumably inexpert readers.

","excerpt":"Right, Christina. We typically think of it as a usage in prayer books and liturgical books where it helps fairly sophisticated readers maneuver around complex texts. In schoolbooks it does that on a simpler level, and also serves to make the book…","frontmatter":{"id":489,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":149,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-04-27 09:34:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Would you expand on Aldo Manuzio's pedagogical motives regarding the graphics and design of his textbooks? Did he commission fonts designed to enhance readability and therefore marketability?

","excerpt":"Would you expand on Aldo Manuzio's pedagogical motives regarding the graphics and design of his textbooks? Did he commission fonts designed to enhance readability and therefore marketability?","frontmatter":{"id":490,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Nancy OConnell","date":"2013-04-29 12:21:07"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I expand on Aldo as teacher in section 2.05, paragraph 4 below, where I give the specific example of how he used red and black to aid students in comprehension. Your question is a little broader than that, Nancy, in that you ask about type faces. In fact Aldo did commission several types for his press, and it is usually said that the famous Aldine italic (there are examples in section 1.09 below) was invented for the sake of economy and legibility. But none of Aldus's faces was designed specifically for textbooks. The significance of his teaching career really lies in the fact that he could control the entire process --from authorship, through design and printing, to marketing.

","excerpt":"I expand on Aldo as teacher in section 2.05, paragraph 4 below, where I give the specific example of how he used red and black to aid students in comprehension. Your question is a little broader than that, Nancy, in that you ask about type faces. In…","frontmatter":{"id":492,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":37,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-05-01 02:05:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

If I understand this correctly, the emblem book was supplementary by default, but it was also part of a dialogue between children's education and formalized education - which would seem to suggest that the material in each emblem book (varying, as you say, by region) would have a specific perspective or slant, focusing on different aspects of education in a way that fit the expectations of education in that region? Or is that saying too much?

","excerpt":"If I understand this correctly, the emblem book was supplementary by default, but it was also part of a dialogue between children's education and formalized education - which would seem to suggest that the material in each emblem book (varying, as…","frontmatter":{"id":493,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"David Harrell","date":"2013-05-13 09:53:00"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Yes, that's true. But the regional variations were even wider than just education. Keep in mind that most emblem books at most periods and in most places were not tied closely either to formal education or to schools. They were intended for personal reading, meditation, and enjoyment. They were most often connected to schools in Northern Europe, especially in the Low Countries and Germany, and the Jesuits (see section 13 below) particularly used them.

","excerpt":"Yes, that's true. But the regional variations were even wider than just education. Keep in mind that most emblem books at most periods and in most places were not tied closely either to formal education or to schools. They were intended for personal…","frontmatter":{"id":494,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":365,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-05-13 10:16:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I find it surprising that Alvares' grammar was sent out for international review and it changes my perspective on the Jesuit schools. I always knew the Jesuits were influential and international, but I had not thought much about the economic and educational enterprise behind their endeavors (social and religious enterprise for sure). When I think about sending books out for feedback, collecting and analyzing that feedback, and making decisions with that information, I see that they are more than a collection of schools, but a school system\"” perhaps not too unlike what we see today.

","excerpt":"I find it surprising that Alvares' grammar was sent out for international review and it changes my perspective on the Jesuit schools. I always knew the Jesuits were influential and international, but I had not thought much about the economic and…","frontmatter":{"id":500,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":296,"author":"Peter K","date":"2013-06-19 21:10:26"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It surprises me that the grammar books prior to Alvares were not more successful (Codret, des Fruex, de Ledesma) or long-lived. Regardless its flaws, I would think almost any book with the full weight of the Jesuit order behind it could have had at least modest international success. I hate most Microsoft products, but I still buy and use them.

","excerpt":"It surprises me that the grammar books prior to Alvares were not more successful (Codret, des Fruex, de Ledesma) or long-lived. Regardless its flaws, I would think almost any book with the full weight of the Jesuit order behind it could have had at…","frontmatter":{"id":501,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":286,"author":"Peter K","date":"2013-06-19 21:28:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Right, Peter. We have this rather exaggerated opinion of the power and conformity of the Jesuit order that derives in part from the realities of Jesuit life codified in the seventeenth century and in part from a long Anglo-American political and historiographical tradition of distrust for the order. In the 1550s, however, the order was still new; it was composed of many dedicated and often brilliant men who knew St. Ignatius personally, and who were quickly scattered to many parts of Europe. The later centralization was not yet in place. What fascinates me most about the Alvares grammar is that it was one of the first products in publishing history to gain anything like the popularity and widespread influence that even a routine Microsoft release gets today.

","excerpt":"Right, Peter. We have this rather exaggerated opinion of the power and conformity of the Jesuit order that derives in part from the realities of Jesuit life codified in the seventeenth century and in part from a long Anglo-American political and…","frontmatter":{"id":502,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":286,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-06-20 07:20:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I like this idea of a 'school system' as an analogy for what the Jesuits were doing. They certainly set out in the Ratio Studiorum to create a system --one could correctly translate 'ratio' as 'system.' The source documents about the creation of the Ratio have all been published, and they make for fascinating reading. I think the reports of the various committees, quickly summarized in the next paragraph, evidence a process that was for the period genuinely open. Above all the teachers seemed to feel that they needed some freedom to use whatever texts they had, adapting them as necessary to the particular needs of their students locally.

","excerpt":"I like this idea of a 'school system' as an analogy for what the Jesuits were doing. They certainly set out in the Ratio Studiorum to create a system --one could correctly translate 'ratio' as 'system.' The source documents about the creation of the…","frontmatter":{"id":503,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":296,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-06-20 07:27:19"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Looking at the title pages of the earlier works (Syntaxis, De constructione octo partium orationis), the typographical hierarchy gives precedence to title. Later works (De institutione grammatica libri tres), reverse the design and give precedence to Avares' name as though it were the title. I imagine this was a deliberate marketing decision to lead with the author's name. It makes me think of those paperback novels you might see in line at the grocery store, where the biggest type on the cover is the name of the author (e.g. Danielle Steel). You have to look closely to see the actual title. In cases like Steel, no matter the title, it's the author's name that sells. In the case of Alvares, it is interesting to see that the book began to be called \"Grammatica Emmanuelis,\" and was even titled as such in later editions.

\n

Before reading these chapters, I had always guessed that Avlares was your typical author-celebrity type\"” wanting to see his name in lights, so to speak. However, the descriptions of him wanting to pass a quiet career as a schoolteacher, his admonitions about boastfulness, and his modesty, make me think it was the Jesuit publishing enterprise that thought to build the Alvares brand the way it did.

","excerpt":"Looking at the title pages of the earlier works (Syntaxis, De constructione octo partium orationis), the typographical hierarchy gives precedence to title. Later works (De institutione grammatica libri tres), reverse the design and give precedence to…","frontmatter":{"id":504,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":288,"author":"Peter K","date":"2013-06-23 18:44:11"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Bingo! You are absolutely right, Peter, about the Jesuit marketing effort and branding --they phrased it in more traditional terms, promoting the use of a book by \"one of our own\"-- but it is clearly an effort to create a book with a Jesuit identity. In later years it was used sometimes outside the Jesuit schools, but even then it was identified with them and their particular theories of language education. The evolution of the \"Grammatica Emmanuelis\" label is a bit of a puzzle to me, though it follows a pattern typical in the book trade. I suspect it started largely as a typographical convention, that is, if you are going to specify the author with both his name and surname, \"Emmanuelis\" is going to take up nearly a line anyway, so it becomes prominent visually more or less by default. When booksellers and buyers looked at the title page and compared it to others, the most prominent word was the easiest shortcut with which to refer to to book, and gradually this became the commonplace way to refer to it in a crowded market for Latin grammars.

","excerpt":"Bingo! You are absolutely right, Peter, about the Jesuit marketing effort and branding --they phrased it in more traditional terms, promoting the use of a book by \"one of our own\"-- but it is clearly an effort to create a book with a Jesuit identity…","frontmatter":{"id":505,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":288,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-06-23 18:56:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I imagine many examples of these texts also remain hidden in private collections or the uncataloged (or non-public) inventories of booksellers. Some records of these books do see the light of day briefly when they are recorded for sale online. Unfortunately, many of the records do not persist on the internet like those of the libraries. I think it would be valuable to collect, store, and share these often fleeting descriptions (as imperfect as some may be) for the use of scholars and collectors alike. Oceans of potentially valuable information on books are appearing and disappearing on the internet every day.

","excerpt":"I imagine many examples of these texts also remain hidden in private collections or the uncataloged (or non-public) inventories of booksellers. Some records of these books do see the light of day briefly when they are recorded for sale online…","frontmatter":{"id":506,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Peter K","date":"2013-06-30 17:22:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is true, Peter, though not entirely a new problem. Dealers' printed catalogs always included useful information (my files are filled with tear sheets or photocopies). Some libraries created indexes to this material, and digitization has allowed for more and more of it to be stored and used. But you are really pointing to a different problem entirely, the fragility of records that are created only on line. Capturing that information would alleviate one other problem, the cases of very rare survivals that emerge on the market for a moment and then disappear back into private collections where they may remain hidden to interested scholars for a generation or longer.

","excerpt":"This is true, Peter, though not entirely a new problem. Dealers' printed catalogs always included useful information (my files are filled with tear sheets or photocopies). Some libraries created indexes to this material, and digitization has allowed…","frontmatter":{"id":507,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-07-01 08:01:44"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Glarean, see now: Heinrich Glarean's Books: The Intellectual World of a Sixteenth-Century Musical Humanist, ed. Iain Fenlon and Inga Mai Groote, Cambridge University Press, 2013.

","excerpt":"On Glarean, see now: Heinrich Glarean's Books: The Intellectual World of a Sixteenth-Century Musical Humanist, ed. Iain Fenlon and Inga Mai Groote, Cambridge University Press, 2013.","frontmatter":{"id":515,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":355,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2013-09-26 14:01:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An excellent account of the way an author could use a personal device and combine or confuse it with that of a publisher or publishers is now available in the essay of Giorgio Masi, \"Simboli e vicende tipografiche doniaine (1546-1549),\" in Dissonanze concordi, temi, questioni e personaggi intorno ad Anton Francesco Doni, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2013, pp. 71-98.

","excerpt":"An excellent account of the way an author could use a personal device and combine or confuse it with that of a publisher or publishers is now available in the essay of Giorgio Masi, \"Simboli e vicende tipografiche doniaine (1546-1549),\" in Dissonanze…","frontmatter":{"id":516,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":381,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-11-01 07:24:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In the same volume, there is an essay by Jane E. Everson about the role of the academies in promoting what we would nowadays call self-publishing or vanity publishing.

","excerpt":"In the same volume, there is an essay by Jane E. Everson about the role of the academies in promoting what we would nowadays call self-publishing or vanity publishing.","frontmatter":{"id":517,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":381,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-11-02 06:53:31"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I am also searching for the Spechio del mercatate and have not had luck locating a copy yet. In the 3 years since your note have you located one?

","excerpt":"I am also searching for the Spechio del mercatate and have not had luck locating a copy yet. In the 3 years since your note have you located one?","frontmatter":{"id":518,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":339,"author":"W. Kalush","date":"2013-11-16 14:30:06"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Dear Paul,

\n

I just wanted to let you know I had a nice time using this chapter in my MA level grad course on the Medieval and Early Modern periods. The students responded quite positively to your book and had a lot of interesting things to say in regards to the issues you raise. Like last time, I am using your text to help prepare students for a session in our rare books library with a variety of emblem books from the 16th and 17th centuries.

\n

Thanks again for this excellent resource!

\n

Best, Sean Franzel

\n

University of Missouri

","excerpt":"Dear Paul, I just wanted to let you know I had a nice time using this chapter in my MA level grad course on the Medieval and Early Modern periods. The students responded quite positively to your book and had a lot of interesting things to say in…","frontmatter":{"id":519,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":361,"author":"Sean Franzel","date":"2013-11-18 20:19:26"}}},{"node":{"html":"

No. The only reported copy is the one in Milan, and I have not had occasion to see it there.

","excerpt":"No. The only reported copy is the one in Milan, and I have not had occasion to see it there.","frontmatter":{"id":520,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":339,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-11-18 20:38:55"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Glad to hear it, Sean. Please encourage the students to use the comment fields to add their own notes or ask questions.

","excerpt":"Glad to hear it, Sean. Please encourage the students to use the comment fields to add their own notes or ask questions.","frontmatter":{"id":521,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":361,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2013-11-18 20:40:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Note that it would really be more appropriate here to say that there was a long tradition of academic study of music theory (not university study), since, although music was traditionally associated with mathematics as a discipline of the Quadrivium, there is little evidence that it was offered in separate courses in universities.

","excerpt":"Note that it would really be more appropriate here to say that there was a long tradition of academic study of music theory (not university study), since, although music was traditionally associated with mathematics as a discipline of the Quadrivium…","frontmatter":{"id":522,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":351,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-02-02 17:04:48"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on the Candelaio, see now: Hilary Gatti, \"Giordano Bruno's Candelaio and Possible Echoes in Shakespeare and Ben Jonson,\" in Viator 43, no. 2 (2012): 356-375, esp. 359-362.

","excerpt":"Further on the Candelaio, see now: Hilary Gatti, \"Giordano Bruno's Candelaio and Possible Echoes in Shakespeare and Ben Jonson,\" in Viator 43, no. 2 (2012): 356-375, esp. 359-362.","frontmatter":{"id":523,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2014-02-26 14:41:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

To note 34: Angela Nuovo's 2003 work, Il commercio librario, has now been superseded by her fully revised, enlarged, and updated The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2013.The discussion cited here appears in the English version of her book at pp. 101-105 and 332-335.

","excerpt":"To note 34: Angela Nuovo's 2003 work, Il commercio librario, has now been superseded by her fully revised, enlarged, and updated The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2013.The discussion cited here appears in the English version…","frontmatter":{"id":526,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":155,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-05-17 20:45:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Nuovo's 2003 work has now been supersede by her The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2013.

","excerpt":"Nuovo's 2003 work has now been supersede by her The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, Leiden, Brill, 2013.","frontmatter":{"id":527,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-05-17 20:47:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Maturanzio's international influence is also documented by Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 200-205

","excerpt":"Maturanzio's international influence is also documented by Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 200-205","frontmatter":{"id":528,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2014-06-12 08:33:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Composition as an essential part of the humanist project is treated at length in Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 60-86.

","excerpt":"Composition as an essential part of the humanist project is treated at length in Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 60-86.","frontmatter":{"id":529,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":115,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2014-06-12 08:43:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Scoppa's anthologies (note 69) are treated by Ann Moss (citation in note to paragraph 3 above).

","excerpt":"Scoppa's anthologies (note 69) are treated by Ann Moss (citation in note to paragraph 3 above).","frontmatter":{"id":530,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":115,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-06-17 17:00:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An excellent recent survey of the issues in language study in Renaissance Italy is Maurizio Campanelli, \"Languages,\" in The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance, ed. Michael Wyatt, Cambridge University Press, 2014, 138-163. For Ciceronianisms, see esp. 149-152.

","excerpt":"An excellent recent survey of the issues in language study in Renaissance Italy is Maurizio Campanelli, \"Languages,\" in The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance, ed. Michael Wyatt, Cambridge University Press, 2014, 138-163. For…","frontmatter":{"id":532,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":250,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-09-06 06:54:57"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Nouvo 2013 addresses the matter of the commercial value of privileges extensively (in a form that is easier to use for native English-readers than her 2002 treatment cited below). She also discusses the career of Michele Tramezzino there.

","excerpt":"Nouvo 2013 addresses the matter of the commercial value of privileges extensively (in a form that is easier to use for native English-readers than her 2002 treatment cited below). She also discusses the career of Michele Tramezzino there.","frontmatter":{"id":533,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":290,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-10-29 06:16:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The vicissitudes of the grammar of Alvarez in Spain are now recounted in important detail by Rolf Kemmler (2012, art. cit. at section 5.00), 155-174. I am grateful to Dr. Kemmler for communicating his research results to me.

","excerpt":"The vicissitudes of the grammar of Alvarez in Spain are now recounted in important detail by Rolf Kemmler (2012, art. cit. at section 5.00), 155-174. I am grateful to Dr. Kemmler for communicating his research results to me.","frontmatter":{"id":534,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":296,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2014-10-30 11:00:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Dr. Rolf Kemmler recently called my attention to a considerable literature on Alvares published in Portugal and Spain in the first decade of the millenium. I am immensely grateful to Dr. Kemmler for these references in particular:J.M. Gómez Gómez, \"Aproximación a los comentarios de crítica textual en los gramáticas Latinas del Renacimiento,\" Congresso internacional Damião de Góis na Europa do Renacimento. Braga, 2003., pp. 171-182; R. Ponce de León Romeo, \"Notas sobre la tradición textual del De constructione octo partium orationis (Venecia, 1570) de Manuel Álvares, S.I. en Italia y en Castilla durante el siglo XVII,\" Revista da Facultade de Letras da Universidade do Porto. Série Línguas e Literaturas 21 (2004), pp. 269-285; idem, \"Textos grammaticales jesuíticos para la enseñanza del latin en Portugal: el * De constructione octo partium orationis *(Coimbra, 1555), Cuadernos de Fillologia Classica Estudios Latinos 22 (2002), 211-235.

","excerpt":"Dr. Rolf Kemmler recently called my attention to a considerable literature on Alvares published in Portugal and Spain in the first decade of the millenium. I am immensely grateful to Dr. Kemmler for these references in particular:J.M. Gómez Gómez…","frontmatter":{"id":535,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":282,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-11-08 08:01:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The recent literature is cited extensively in Dr. Kemmler's own article \"O gramático Manuel Álvares e o percurso editorial dos De institutione grammatica libris tres em Espanha,\" Revista Portuguesa de Humanidade, Estudios Linguisticos 16 (2012), 155-174.

","excerpt":"The recent literature is cited extensively in Dr. Kemmler's own article \"O gramático Manuel Álvares e o percurso editorial dos De institutione grammatica libris tres em Espanha,\" Revista Portuguesa de Humanidade, Estudios Linguisticos 16 (201…","frontmatter":{"id":536,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":282,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-11-11 09:40:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A curious document of the market for the grammar of Manuel Álvares is explicated by Rolf Kemmler (art. cit. above at section 5.00). An autograph of Álvares assigns the rights to publish his grammar in Spain to the Jesuit order in that country. It is unclear why the order would need such an explicit grant.

","excerpt":"A curious document of the market for the grammar of Manuel Álvares is explicated by Rolf Kemmler (art. cit. above at section 5.00). An autograph of Álvares assigns the rights to publish his grammar in Spain to the Jesuit order in that country. It…","frontmatter":{"id":537,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":402,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-11-11 09:45:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On these prefaces, see now Rolf Kemmler 2012 (art. cit at section 5.00 above), 164-165.

","excerpt":"On these prefaces, see now Rolf Kemmler 2012 (art. cit at section 5.00 above), 164-165.","frontmatter":{"id":538,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":292,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-11-11 09:51:56"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The case of Portugal in the mid-16th century is treated by R. Ponce de Leon Romeo 2002, art cit above at section 5.00.

","excerpt":"The case of Portugal in the mid-16th century is treated by R. Ponce de Leon Romeo 2002, art cit above at section 5.00.","frontmatter":{"id":539,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":284,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-11-11 10:20:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On the grammar of Nebrija, see R. Ponce de Leon Romeo 2004 (art. cit. above at section 5.00), 269-270.

","excerpt":"On the grammar of Nebrija, see R. Ponce de Leon Romeo 2004 (art. cit. above at section 5.00), 269-270.","frontmatter":{"id":540,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":286,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2014-11-11 10:37:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A similar set of arguments was rehearsed a year later (1560) by the Salamanca printer/publisher Juan Bautista de Terranova in his edition of Terence. His preface (fols. a2r-v) is notable for stressing the importance of reading pleasure as a stimulus towards mastering Latin through the study of Terence and other enjoyable classical authors.

","excerpt":"A similar set of arguments was rehearsed a year later (1560) by the Salamanca printer/publisher Juan Bautista de Terranova in his edition of Terence. His preface (fols. a2r-v) is notable for stressing the importance of reading pleasure as a stimulus…","frontmatter":{"id":544,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":122,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-02-01 18:14:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I have a guess as to Dr. Zecher's question about the woodcut initial Q. The treatise was printed by Giovanni Battista Sessa, whose devices later in his career typically included a similarly scruffy cat. My guess is that the initial is indeed a stock cut with some element of personal branding. Later members of the Sessa dynasty adopted the cat more prominently. See, for example, the 1539 edition of Pietro Aaron's \"Toscanello in musica\" (Venice: Melchiorre Sessa; Newberry shelfmark Case folio V 5 .012), which includes the Sessa cat on its title page.

","excerpt":"I have a guess as to Dr. Zecher's question about the woodcut initial Q. The treatise was printed by Giovanni Battista Sessa, whose devices later in his career typically included a similarly scruffy cat. My guess is that the initial is indeed a stock…","frontmatter":{"id":546,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":351,"author":"Samuel Brannon","date":"2015-03-14 14:19:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is a good suggestion, Mr. Brannon. Usually the Sessa cat appears with its victimized mouse, but not always. There are some good bibliographies on the Sessa firm, but not, as far as I know, a systematic study of the woodcut material they used. Since it was a long-lived and important publishing house, that would make for an interesting study.

","excerpt":"This is a good suggestion, Mr. Brannon. Usually the Sessa cat appears with its victimized mouse, but not always. There are some good bibliographies on the Sessa firm, but not, as far as I know, a systematic study of the woodcut material they used…","frontmatter":{"id":547,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":351,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-03-14 19:04:13"}}},{"node":{"html":"

For a fine, highly accessible introduction to Renaissance music in relation to humanist thought, see now Giuseppe Gerbino, \"Music,\" in The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance, ed. by Michael Wyatt, Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 224-238.

","excerpt":"For a fine, highly accessible introduction to Renaissance music in relation to humanist thought, see now Giuseppe Gerbino, \"Music,\" in The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Renaissance, ed. by Michael Wyatt, Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 22…","frontmatter":{"id":548,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":351,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-03-29 09:21:06"}}},{"node":{"html":"

For a good, brief overview of the career of Bordone, a humanist-trained miniaturist, woodcut artist, and cosmographer, see now, Benedetto Bordon, a Life in the World of Books, the catalogue to an exhibition \"In Praise of Aldus Manutius (ca. 1452-1515)\" (New York: PrPh Books, 2015). This handsome small volume cites much of the recent literature which ascribes a remarkable variety of works to Bordone.

","excerpt":"For a good, brief overview of the career of Bordone, a humanist-trained miniaturist, woodcut artist, and cosmographer, see now, Benedetto Bordon, a Life in the World of Books, the catalogue to an exhibition \"In Praise of Aldus Manutius (ca. 1452-151…","frontmatter":{"id":549,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":272,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-04-25 16:37:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As the citations in note 2 here indicate, there has been a considerable amount of scholarship about the elementary curriculum since Lucchi called attention to new sources in his important 1978 article. Most of the work has concentrated on the Trecento and early Quattrocento --the classic period for studies of humanism-- and there is as yet no consensus about the tranformations of the curriculum wrought by printing. A good basic summary of the results of this research appears in an essay by Robert Black in the Short Oxford History of Italy volume entitled Italy in the Age of the Renaissance 1300-1550, ed. John M. Najemy (Oxford University Press, 2004). For that same (pre-print), Latin educational world, see also the monographic issue of the University of Rome's \"Studi (e testi) italiani\" edited in 2006 by Emilio Russo and entitled, Testimoni del vero. Su alcuni libri in biblioteche d'autore. Of particular interest is the essay by Giuseppina Brunetti and Sonia Gentili, \"Una biblioteca nella Firenze di Dante,\" op. cit. pp. 21-55.

","excerpt":"As the citations in note 2 here indicate, there has been a considerable amount of scholarship about the elementary curriculum since Lucchi called attention to new sources in his important 1978 article. Most of the work has concentrated on the…","frontmatter":{"id":550,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":138,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-05-03 09:01:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A new exploration of the relationship of Mancinelli's pedagogy to print is Dugald McLellan, \"Spreading the Word: Antonio Mancinelli, the Printing Press, and the Teaching of the Studia humanitatis,\" in The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom, ed. by Juanita Feros Ruys et al. (Turnhout, Brepols, 2013), 287-308.

","excerpt":"A new exploration of the relationship of Mancinelli's pedagogy to print is Dugald McLellan, \"Spreading the Word: Antonio Mancinelli, the Printing Press, and the Teaching of the Studia humanitatis,\" in The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance…","frontmatter":{"id":551,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":201,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-05-11 15:57:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Robert Black has returned to this theme in \"Teaching Techniques, the Evidence of Manuscript Schoolbooks Produced in Tuscany,\" in The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom, ed. by Juanita Feros Ruys et al. (Turnhout, Brepols, 2013), 245-265.

","excerpt":"Robert Black has returned to this theme in \"Teaching Techniques, the Evidence of Manuscript Schoolbooks Produced in Tuscany,\" in The Classics in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom, ed. by Juanita Feros Ruys et al. (Turnhout, Brepols, 2013), 24…","frontmatter":{"id":552,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":138,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-05-11 16:02:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

To note (1) here, add now Robert Black, \"Teaching Techniques,\" cit. at section 2.01 above, pp. 257-263, who shows evidence of the gradual displacement of medieval examples by classical ones in grammars produced in Tuscany.

","excerpt":"To note (1) here, add now Robert Black, \"Teaching Techniques,\" cit. at section 2.01 above, pp. 257-263, who shows evidence of the gradual displacement of medieval examples by classical ones in grammars produced in Tuscany.","frontmatter":{"id":553,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":284,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-05-11 16:38:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Mancinelli's dedications in this period, see now McLellan, \"Spreading the Word,\" cit at section 3.01/para 9, p. 300.

","excerpt":"On Mancinelli's dedications in this period, see now McLellan, \"Spreading the Word,\" cit at section 3.01/para 9, p. 300.","frontmatter":{"id":554,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":229,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-05-11 16:45:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Rossi and Mancinelli's other Venetian patrons, see McLellan, \"Spreading the Word,\" cit. at section 3.01 above, p. 298.

","excerpt":"On Rossi and Mancinelli's other Venetian patrons, see McLellan, \"Spreading the Word,\" cit. at section 3.01 above, p. 298.","frontmatter":{"id":555,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":227,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-05-11 16:49:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Mancinelli's self-advertisements and his forthright rhetoric in addressing his public, see McLellan, \"Spreading the Word,\" cit. at section 3.01/para. 9, p. 295.

","excerpt":"On Mancinelli's self-advertisements and his forthright rhetoric in addressing his public, see McLellan, \"Spreading the Word,\" cit. at section 3.01/para. 9, p. 295.","frontmatter":{"id":556,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":204,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-05-11 16:55:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Distinctions of this sort occur in many kinds of literature that tried to bring the fruits of Latin learning to readers who had no facility in reading Latin. An interesting example, the Psalm translations of Lodovico Pittorio, apparently composed in 1522 and printed many times, are explicated by Èlise Boilet, \"La fortune du Psalterio Davitico de Lodovico Pittorio en Italie au XVIe siècle,\" La Bibliofilía 115 (2013), 621-628. The first edition is addressed to \"persone divote & del latino ignare,\" ibid., p. 623n10.

","excerpt":"Distinctions of this sort occur in many kinds of literature that tried to bring the fruits of Latin learning to readers who had no facility in reading Latin. An interesting example, the Psalm translations of Lodovico Pittorio, apparently composed in…","frontmatter":{"id":557,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":321,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-05-23 09:25:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It's interesting how you have put the non-Latin reader in the context of marketing books. As accessible as a vernacular textbook was, do you think there were still major economic hurdles that might have inhibited their commercial success? I can imagine large institutional buyers (or influencers) and the educated elite shunning the vernacular texts. I recently came across Edmund Reeve's \"An Introduction into the Greeke Tongue\" (London: NP, 1650), a early Greek grammar in English. The title page reads \"Composed for their sakes which understand not Latine; and yet are desirous to have some competent knowledge in the originall sacred scripture.\" One would think that a basic Greek grammar in English might have a ready audience, yet the book does not appear to have had much life beyond the first edition (a second issue including an an errata leaf was printed in 1657).

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Another work that comes to mind is Elizabeth Elstob's \"œRudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue\" (London: Printed by W. Bowyer, 1715). The book is the first Anglo-Saxon grammar in English, and Elstob's preface speaks to why she wrote it: \"Considering the pleasure I myself had reaped from the knowledge I have gained from the original of our mother tongue, and that others of my own sex, might be capable of the same satisfaction: I resolv'd to give them the rudiments of that language in English dress.\" This beautifully printed book, with new Anglo-Saxon types created for the project, was a commercial flop. It was ignored in favor of other works (in Latin) in use at the time. Like Reeve's grammar, Elstob's book ended with the first edition.

","excerpt":"It's interesting how you have put the non-Latin reader in the context of marketing books. As accessible as a vernacular textbook was, do you think there were still major economic hurdles that might have inhibited their commercial success? I can…","frontmatter":{"id":558,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":321,"author":"Peter K","date":"2015-05-25 19:52:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for these two examples, Peter. I think they start to give an answer in their own words. Both of them offer personal histories--apparently pretty singular if not in fact entirely original-- for how difficult it was for the non-Latin literate to study ancient languages. Although both Reeve and Elstob saw immediately how it would help others to have an introductory text in English, they did not recognize that their own experiences were so nearly unique that there was no built-in audience for their books. It is easy for us to underestimate the conservatism of educators in the early modern period. The institutional buyers all wanted textbooks that would fit the existing curriculum, not entirely new ones.

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Still, your initial question about marketing rhetoric merits some further thought, for at least Reeve and Elstob specifically devised addresses to non-Latin reading potential users. This practice of imagining a not-very-educated reader/user goes back at least to Tagliente, and there are other examples later in this chapter too --see 6.17 on \"poor churchfolk.\"

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I'll hope to come back to this theme with further examples, and maybe some more solutions too.

","excerpt":"Thanks for these two examples, Peter. I think they start to give an answer in their own words. Both of them offer personal histories--apparently pretty singular if not in fact entirely original-- for how difficult it was for the non-Latin literate to…","frontmatter":{"id":559,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":321,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-05-26 06:28:15"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Peter's 17th and 18th-century examples, above, make me think that a real desideratum would be to trace the trope of the non-Latin reader through book history over the long haul. Before printing (and therefore before the marketing impulse was strong), there is a regular distinction between those who read (Latin) and those who are illiterate. It appears especially in prefaces to translations of Latin works into vernaculars in the manuscript period, where the reader is addressed sometimes fairly personally. It seems to me to take on new meaning in the \"how-to\" period we encounter several times in Humanism For Sale, e.g. at 4.14 and 4.18 above, and below at 6.11, where it is clearly a marketing tool. The key period for this is the 1520s.

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Perhaps putting a lot of examples like Peter's from a single large discipline or genre (his are language study works --grammars) would be an instructive data set.

","excerpt":"Peter's 17th and 18th-century examples, above, make me think that a real desideratum would be to trace the trope of the non-Latin reader through book history over the long haul. Before printing (and therefore before the marketing impulse was strong…","frontmatter":{"id":560,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":321,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-05-27 06:10:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Just arrived on my desk and destined to give us a better, more comprehensive view of Mancinelli's career is this book:

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Dugald McLellan, Antonio Mancinelli ad Orvieto, maestro comunale, pubblico intellettuale e interprete delle Muse, Velletri, Centro Studi \"Antonio Mancinelli\" and Tivoli, Edizioni TORED, 2014.

","excerpt":"Just arrived on my desk and destined to give us a better, more comprehensive view of Mancinelli's career is this book: Dugald McLellan, Antonio Mancinelli ad Orvieto, maestro comunale, pubblico intellettuale e interprete delle Muse, Velletri, Centro…","frontmatter":{"id":561,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":201,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-06-01 13:26:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

We know a great deal more about the circumstances of Mancinelli's teaching, especially late in his career, since Dugald McLellan has located and published a very rich series of documents concerning Mancinelli's stint in Orvieto. See his Antonio Mancinelli ad Orvieto (2014), cit. above at section 3.0 par. 1.

","excerpt":"We know a great deal more about the circumstances of Mancinelli's teaching, especially late in his career, since Dugald McLellan has located and published a very rich series of documents concerning Mancinelli's stint in Orvieto. See his Antonio…","frontmatter":{"id":562,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":209,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-06-03 04:49:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Dugald McLellan, Antonio Mancinelli ad Orvieto cit. at section 3.01, pp. 63-64, assumes correctly that Mancinelli's textbooks would have been available for use in his own classrooms in this period. Alas, we do not have direct evidence of their presence in the trade or any way of knowing which editions were available in which of the towns where he taught.

","excerpt":"Dugald McLellan, Antonio Mancinelli ad Orvieto cit. at section 3.01, pp. 63-64, assumes correctly that Mancinelli's textbooks would have been available for use in his own classrooms in this period. Alas, we do not have direct evidence of their…","frontmatter":{"id":563,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":219,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-06-14 10:07:11"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A very well nuanced description of the kinds of patronage available to Mancinelli is given in Dugald McLellan's Antonio Mancinelli ad Orvieto, cit. at section 3.01, especially pp. 57-61 and 71-72.

","excerpt":"A very well nuanced description of the kinds of patronage available to Mancinelli is given in Dugald McLellan's Antonio Mancinelli ad Orvieto, cit. at section 3.01, especially pp. 57-61 and 71-72.","frontmatter":{"id":564,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-06-14 10:11:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

All the images in this section are from the Newberry Library copy of Mancinelli 1498c.

","excerpt":"All the images in this section are from the Newberry Library copy of Mancinelli 1498c.","frontmatter":{"id":565,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":207,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-06-14 11:08:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In saying that I have not seen annotated copies, I was thinking of the kind of annotations that students make in textbooks. However, a number of surviving copies of Alciati were used as autograph albums (the period term for such a book is album amicorum) by university students, meaning that during their studies and travels, they would solicit inscriptions from friends. Most often these are entered into special copies of the emblem book bound with extra leaves intended for the additions.

","excerpt":"In saying that I have not seen annotated copies, I was thinking of the kind of annotations that students make in textbooks. However, a number of surviving copies of Alciati were used as autograph albums (the period term for such a book is album…","frontmatter":{"id":566,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":383,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-06-28 09:34:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

By contrast to this Italian reader's interest in philological errors (especially those of his countrymen), the reader (probably German) of a copy of the Art of Verse (Spauter 1512) now at the Newberry Library has marked up the preface with notes that mostly display interest in Spauter's rhetorical ability to skewer his adversaries with pointed insults. Treatises on verse were often marked up with indexes that helped their owners use vocabulary correctly and effectively in their own verse; this reader was clearly interested in prose rhetoric as well.

","excerpt":"By contrast to this Italian reader's interest in philological errors (especially those of his countrymen), the reader (probably German) of a copy of the Art of Verse (Spauter 1512) now at the Newberry Library has marked up the preface with notes that…","frontmatter":{"id":568,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":258,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-09-11 15:01:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Lazzari and Lozzi's argument offers a good example of the risks we run if we consider short literary forms like epigrams trivial, occasional, or frivolous works without useful value as historical evidence. True, they are minor forms, but especially in sizable collections like Mancinelli's they offer valuable biographical data and cultural context.

","excerpt":"Lazzari and Lozzi's argument offers a good example of the risks we run if we consider short literary forms like epigrams trivial, occasional, or frivolous works without useful value as historical evidence. True, they are minor forms, but especially…","frontmatter":{"id":569,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":229,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-09-22 19:51:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I don't know why it occurs to me to reply only now (five years after Dan's thoughtful comment) -- maybe I am just being deliberate, as admonished by the source texts here. I think he is right in pointing to manners as the immediate dimension of morality that classroom subjects address. But I think that ancient, medieval, and Renaissance thinkers generally saw morality as a continuum that ran uninterruptedly from table manners to moral decision making. Moreover, this continuum or spectrum of behaviors crossed through language learning, thus the power of Latin study to inculcate good habits along the way and the importance of good manners of all sorts to the orderly learning of language.

","excerpt":"I don't know why it occurs to me to reply only now (five years after Dan's thoughtful comment) -- maybe I am just being deliberate, as admonished by the source texts here. I think he is right in pointing to manners as the immediate dimension of…","frontmatter":{"id":570,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":28,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2015-09-23 14:35:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks, Diana. The only true wisdom resides in careful generalization. I tried to set the scene for this in the introduction (especially sections 0.3 to 0.6). To your specific point here, however --yes, it is important to stress both that textbooks offer only a limited view of pedagogy and that pedagogy is not the whole of humanism. I do belong to the school that sees humanism as first and foremost an educational reform movement and only secondarily a literary and philosophical one. But even beyond that difference of starting point, I hope that Humanism For Sale has shown that one of the most important loci for understanding humanism and the humanists is in the defense of their educational program that printed textbooks embody.

","excerpt":"Thanks, Diana. The only true wisdom resides in careful generalization. I tried to set the scene for this in the introduction (especially sections 0.3 to 0.6). To your specific point here, however --yes, it is important to stress both that textbooks…","frontmatter":{"id":571,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":402,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-10-25 15:49:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A new reading of Aldo's humanism, emphasizing his early career as a grammar master and its effect on his later work as a printer, is Brian Richardson, \"'Optimo humanista e greco': Aldus Manutius' Career in Venice in the Eyes of Marin Sanudo,\" Erasmus Studies 35 (2015), 181-209.

","excerpt":"A new reading of Aldo's humanism, emphasizing his early career as a grammar master and its effect on his later work as a printer, is Brian Richardson, \"'Optimo humanista e greco': Aldus Manutius' Career in Venice in the Eyes of Marin Sanudo,\" Erasmus…","frontmatter":{"id":572,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":169,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-11-28 06:12:48"}}},{"node":{"html":"

For Aldo's dedication to correctness, see now Brian Richardson, \"Optimo humanista,\" cit. above at section 2.14, para 4, p. 196-198.

","excerpt":"For Aldo's dedication to correctness, see now Brian Richardson, \"Optimo humanista,\" cit. above at section 2.14, para 4, p. 196-198.","frontmatter":{"id":573,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":201,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-11-28 08:01:31"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The importance of prefaces in humanist printing is underlined by Brian Richardson, \"Optimo humanista,\" cit. above at section 2.12, pp. 197-198.

","excerpt":"The importance of prefaces in humanist printing is underlined by Brian Richardson, \"Optimo humanista,\" cit. above at section 2.12, pp. 197-198.","frontmatter":{"id":574,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":217,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-11-28 08:05:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A good summary of the literature on Regio's text critical work is given by Richardson, \"Optimo humanista,\" cit. above section 2.12, para. 4, p. 200, note 77.

","excerpt":"A good summary of the literature on Regio's text critical work is given by Richardson, \"Optimo humanista,\" cit. above section 2.12, para. 4, p. 200, note 77.","frontmatter":{"id":575,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":92,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-11-28 10:14:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

These poems are now available in an edition with translation into modern Portuguese, in Manuel Álvares, Obra literária completa (Lisbon, Esfera do Caos Editora, 2014), pp. 17-18.

","excerpt":"These poems are now available in an edition with translation into modern Portuguese, in Manuel Álvares, Obra literária completa (Lisbon, Esfera do Caos Editora, 2014), pp. 17-18.","frontmatter":{"id":576,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":292,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-12-29 18:13:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The role of commentary in the school market for Terence is explored in greater depth in my new essay, \"Selling Terence in Renaissance Italy: The Marketing Power of Commentary,\" which appears in Classical Commentaries: Explorations in a Scholarly Genre (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015), 254-274.

","excerpt":"The role of commentary in the school market for Terence is explored in greater depth in my new essay, \"Selling Terence in Renaissance Italy: The Marketing Power of Commentary,\" which appears in Classical Commentaries: Explorations in a Scholarly…","frontmatter":{"id":577,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":94,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2015-12-29 18:21:44"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Alvares' Ciceronianism was not merely a matter of extracting good examples for grammar students. He was a skilled orator himself, and composed a panegyric in praise of King João III of Portugal in which he repeatedly addresses Cicero personally, inviting him to behold how the cultural patronage and political virtues of João compared with the best rulers of antiquity. See Alvares, Obra literária completa, cit. above at section 5.05, pp. 55-71.

","excerpt":"Alvares' Ciceronianism was not merely a matter of extracting good examples for grammar students. He was a skilled orator himself, and composed a panegyric in praise of King João III of Portugal in which he repeatedly addresses Cicero personally…","frontmatter":{"id":578,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":298,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-01-04 18:10:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Tortelli, see now Gemma Donati, L'Orthographia di Giovanni Tortelli, Messina, Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Umanistici, 2006. Donati describes this edition at p. 251, but does not remark the anomaly.

","excerpt":"On Tortelli, see now Gemma Donati, L'Orthographia di Giovanni Tortelli, Messina, Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Umanistici, 2006. Donati describes this edition at p. 251, but does not remark the anomaly.","frontmatter":{"id":579,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":221,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-01-14 13:48:15"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I find this statement about the availability of tutoring positions and Mancinelli's apparent refusal to accept them telling about the philosophy of a humanist at the time, especially since tutoring jobs were \"highly desired well into the sixteenth century.\" Knowing what we know about humanism during the Renaissance, there could be several reasons why he would refuse such a position. One could be that Mancinelli was solely interested in educating as many students as possible, even if that meant refusing the benefits that came with \"personal, noble patronage.\" Similarly, it seems to me that humanists would advocate a sort of \"mass education\" or public education that did not rely on social class (perhaps with the exception of Montaigne). Mancinelli's decision may very well have been working toward this ideal of education for all, which had now been made possible by the advent of printing.

","excerpt":"I find this statement about the availability of tutoring positions and Mancinelli's apparent refusal to accept them telling about the philosophy of a humanist at the time, especially since tutoring jobs were \"highly desired well into the sixteenth…","frontmatter":{"id":580,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"cmoghadam","date":"2016-02-03 16:13:31"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I believe Mancinelli's willingness to continually correct and make changes to his printed texts shows his humanistic mindset that his personal experiences can change they way he learns and educates, and what he knows to be true. He was not content with the knowledge that he knew to be true in the past and he continually wanted to improve his texts for himself and his students. On the other hand, even if the mistakes in his texts really were the printer's errors, it still shows the idea that education is always changing and can be improved. The invention of the printing press was revolutionary in more ways than one-- it allowed for a continual conversation between scholars. Mancinelli also proves his humanistic educational style by urging other scholars, most likely other grammar scholars, to inspect his work and provide commentary. This shows the he valued the importance of community and understanding others' opinions. I also think he embodies another human characteristic of diversity by teaching in several different cities; however, I do not see this sense of diversity in his general teaching since he mainly teaches about grammar and its related subjects.

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It is obvious that Mancinelli was a competitive writer and educator throughout his entire life, which I think is extremely important to learning. However, is this necessarily a humanistic characteristic in education/ in general?

","excerpt":"I believe Mancinelli's willingness to continually correct and make changes to his printed texts shows his humanistic mindset that his personal experiences can change they way he learns and educates, and what he knows to be true. He was not content…","frontmatter":{"id":581,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":237,"author":"Alissa","date":"2016-02-03 17:14:37"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi, CM! It is always difficult to speculate about motives absent specific evidence, but in Mancinelli's case we have a rich body of prefaces and personal and business letters that address many of the points you raise. You are correct to see Mancinelli's motives in the context of public education (though at the period we have to remember that that left out most working class people and almost all women). I think the key to his attitude is in his small-town origins, where a cadre of local notables wanted to improve education locally. It's unlikely than any of them could see to see the results we do as a result of printing --really widespread literacy. But Mancinelli did recognize printing immediately as a tool for making his job easier and making his students' work easier too.

","excerpt":"Hi, CM! It is always difficult to speculate about motives absent specific evidence, but in Mancinelli's case we have a rich body of prefaces and personal and business letters that address many of the points you raise. You are correct to see…","frontmatter":{"id":582,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-03 17:17:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I feel as though this paragraph really captures the essence of Humanism. The two purposes of the work that Mancinelli mentions to his son are morals and Latin. This is a representation of the Humanist era because it was a movement from medieval times that began to focus more on the goodness of man. The teaching of Latin during this time was important as well since the Renaissance, and the Humanism movement in particular, stressed the newfound importance of language. Mentioning the different meanings of words between Humanism and feudal times is another representation of the movement away from medieval society and towards a new appreciation of Greek and Roman thought and of language.

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However, I thought it was interesting that he made a mention to the Pope since Humanism started the movement away from the church and towards the importance of man's own thought. Does this reference show the importance of the balance of discovery and spirituality during this period?

","excerpt":"I feel as though this paragraph really captures the essence of Humanism. The two purposes of the work that Mancinelli mentions to his son are morals and Latin. This is a representation of the Humanist era because it was a movement from medieval times…","frontmatter":{"id":583,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":229,"author":"paigeanderson","date":"2016-02-03 18:15:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

While reading this paragraph I was reminded of the fourth paragraph of chapter 3.02, \"œAdvertising Oneself.\" There the text says that Pellisson's embarrassment of his work suggests a difference between renown and worth of a publication. Then the following paragraph in 3.02 (paragraph five) contrasts Pellisson's reaction to the flaws in his text with Mancinelli's response to the flaws in his own work. Despite the different reactions, the idea of a difference between acclaim and quality seem to resonate with this section (3.09). Since Mancinelli eventually decided to reprint his texts, he was able to increase the quality of his work so that its worth could be closer to the acclaim that it received. In this way, the ability to reprint sounds like an important triumph for education. Additionally, I wonder how much more accessible it made educational materials to the masses. I was wondering if the prices of Mancinelli's books would have been more competitive too-- making the older editions more accessible to those without the means for a high quality education. From what I know about education during the Renaissance, some scholars (such as Montaigne) were mostly concerned with educating the nobles. Did Mancinelli's production of textbooks-- especially as he competed with himself-- contribute to a more universal education?

","excerpt":"While reading this paragraph I was reminded of the fourth paragraph of chapter 3.02, \"œAdvertising Oneself.\" There the text says that Pellisson's embarrassment of his work suggests a difference between renown and worth of a publication. Then the…","frontmatter":{"id":584,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":219,"author":"Elizabeth","date":"2016-02-03 18:59:34"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You raise several points here, Alissa, all of which point to the last part of your comment, the matter of competitiveness. This was certainly not new to humanist learning; indeed, one of the things the early humanists most disliked about medieval scholasticism was the pettiness of the arguments back and forth. The humanist ideal was one of rhetorical truth achieved by argument, to be sure, but typically within a context of collaboration. Mancinelli's many scholarly commentaries were largely aimed at making the base text available to the broad public that printing made possible.

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I'd have to think a little more about the ideal of diversity. Certainly what we mean by that would not fit the situation in Renaissance Italy. Mancinelli's moving around from city to city probably had more to do with careerism than a love of being in different places.

","excerpt":"You raise several points here, Alissa, all of which point to the last part of your comment, the matter of competitiveness. This was certainly not new to humanist learning; indeed, one of the things the early humanists most disliked about medieval…","frontmatter":{"id":586,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":237,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-03 19:23:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

To take your last point first, Elizabeth, we do not have any good price data on Mancinelli's books (or indeed on most printing of the 15th century). It is clear, however, that the small textbook-type booklets he wrote for students were relatively cheap. As one of your colleagues remarked at section 3.05, however, this meant that he was aiming for a market of citizen schools, not at the education of aristocrats.

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As for the urge to correct, this is common to most scholars, but it was given new possibilities with the invention of printing. Printing meant that many more copies of an erroneous text could circulate, but reprinting meant that there was a new opportunity --fueled by market competition-- to make the texts better in later editions.

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Your point about acclaim vs. quailty is something I have thought a lot about. Printing made the manufacture of fame possible in a new way, one that scholars of the period have discussed but not come to final conclusions about.

","excerpt":"To take your last point first, Elizabeth, we do not have any good price data on Mancinelli's books (or indeed on most printing of the 15th century). It is clear, however, that the small textbook-type booklets he wrote for students were relatively…","frontmatter":{"id":587,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":219,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-03 19:33:11"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi, Paige. Your question is one of the big issues in the scholarship on the Renaissance. The relationship of humanism to the church is not an easy one to describe, because there were so many different solutions, almost as many as there were serious thinkers in the period. Mancinelli is writing on the eve of the Reformation, when many intellectuals were dissatisfied with the corruption of the church and their relative inability to effect reforms. Manicnelli,however, seems to have been a pretty conformist type. He is very devoutly religious and does not seem to have felt there was any real or necessary break between classical scholarship and Christian orthodoxy. I suspect this was a common stance among humanists, especially those of the second rank. It is worth remembering in this regard that, although I have devoted an entire chapter to him, Mancinelli was not one of the great thinkers of the period. He was a famous teacher (and most teachers are good but not necessarily great thinkers).

","excerpt":"Hi, Paige. Your question is one of the big issues in the scholarship on the Renaissance. The relationship of humanism to the church is not an easy one to describe, because there were so many different solutions, almost as many as there were serious…","frontmatter":{"id":588,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":229,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-03 19:41:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Does \"largely an autobiography\" here refers to the fact that his own teaching techniques are the ones he shares with his peers? In other words, is it his personal experience that gives him clues about \"teaching with print?\" Also, by the moment he started considering sharing with others how to use print while teaching, can you please elaborate further if it was common for someone like Mancinelli to take into consideration what general opinion thought about print? I will probably find the answers to my questions later in the chapter, but I wanted to ask it just in case. Thanks

","excerpt":"Does \"largely an autobiography\" here refers to the fact that his own teaching techniques are the ones he shares with his peers? In other words, is it his personal experience that gives him clues about \"teaching with print?\" Also, by the moment he…","frontmatter":{"id":589,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":209,"author":"falone","date":"2016-02-03 22:02:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I found this part very important because it shows that the mass production of print textbooks allowed a large population of learners to access some material and information more proficiently than with manuscripts. Also, the fact that the it promotes \"standardized curricula\" is appealing because by that, we can see the movement of one or two individuals leads towards the goal of a global movement, with some elaborated rules and principles. I would like to know hat kind of difficulties such a movement could have faced to finally be efficient because, as we know there is no (r)evolution without possible deadlock.

","excerpt":"I found this part very important because it shows that the mass production of print textbooks allowed a large population of learners to access some material and information more proficiently than with manuscripts. Also, the fact that the it promotes…","frontmatter":{"id":590,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"falone","date":"2016-02-03 22:24:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Does the end of this paragraph meant that with manuscripts students were more into the repetitive aspect (copy of the originals, imitation) of learning rather than the creative one? Knowing that the print is one of the best revolution that happened during the renaissance, we tend to ignore the fact that before that,some traditional methods and methodologies of knowledge transfers seemed to be efficient and effective. Should we forget the manuscripts and oral ages to only focus on the invention of the printing press? Should the old teaching and learning style absolutely lose their appeal to allow the to shine? I am just wondering because I am particularly interested in the relationship between past and new techniques in sciences since I know that the debate between old and new generation of scientists always exist.

","excerpt":"Does the end of this paragraph meant that with manuscripts students were more into the repetitive aspect (copy of the originals, imitation) of learning rather than the creative one? Knowing that the print is one of the best revolution that happened…","frontmatter":{"id":591,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"falone","date":"2016-02-03 22:51:25"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Mancineli was considered one of the most humanist in his generation . I knew that he was a grammarian and he taught in several cities such as Rome and Venice. He print his works and his poetry to do the best in his classroom and develop his students. He connected the teaching with the humanism.

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What is his point in this relationship between these both?

","excerpt":"Mancineli was considered one of the most humanist in his generation . I knew that he was a grammarian and he taught in several cities such as Rome and Venice. He print his works and his poetry to do the best in his classroom and develop his students…","frontmatter":{"id":592,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":237,"author":"atheerr","date":"2016-02-03 23:08:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Mancineli was considered as one of the humanist in his generation. I knew that he was a grammarian and he taught in several cities such as; Rome, Venice. He used to print his poetry and his essays to help, improve and do the best for his students. He said that he has seen a significant impact on his students after the printed books.. I think that mancineli connected the humanism with the teaching.. So, what is his point in this relationship between both?

","excerpt":"Mancineli was considered as one of the humanist in his generation. I knew that he was a grammarian and he taught in several cities such as; Rome, Venice. He used to print his poetry and his essays to help, improve and do the best for his students. He…","frontmatter":{"id":593,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":201,"author":"atheerr","date":"2016-02-03 23:23:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Most teachers had had some education to humanist ideals and the theories of the humanism were universally accepted in the sixteen-century. Printing, and then the business of publishing came along as a way of popularizing and commercializing education. Even though education was strongly influenced by the Jesuit model and conservatism, this paragraph explained how great deal the widespread diffusion of textbooks had brought some advantages in the traditional way of teaching basic grammar rules to students. The paragraph also emphasizes the issues of incorrectness in the textbooks by limiting the mistakes populated by the manuscripts copies. It also provides students with meaningful older pedagogical principles. It depicts the quickness of the instruction and the curriculum. Most of all, Mancinelli put a stress on how well the publishing opportunity protect the integrity of Latin. My immediate assumption is this idea of the professionalization of teaching and a kind of mercantilism in the humanist way.

","excerpt":"Most teachers had had some education to humanist ideals and the theories of the humanism were universally accepted in the sixteen-century. Printing, and then the business of publishing came along as a way of popularizing and commercializing education…","frontmatter":{"id":594,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Abdoul Seth Compaore","date":"2016-02-04 01:08:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are right, I hope, that you will find most of the answers to these questions in the rest of the chapter. But I should perhaps explain \"largely autobiography.\" Mancinelli was well known in his day a s a teacher and editor, but that was really not what we think of as celebrity. No one much wrote about Mancinelli except himself, so, although we can piece together many details of his life, they all come from his own writings.

","excerpt":"You are right, I hope, that you will find most of the answers to these questions in the rest of the chapter. But I should perhaps explain \"largely autobiography.\" Mancinelli was well known in his day a s a teacher and editor, but that was really not…","frontmatter":{"id":595,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":209,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 04:49:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The most important thing to keep in mind here is that the \"printing revolution\" was not like a political upheaval. We think of it as revolutionary because it did in fact change the world; but it happened slowly everywhere and at different speeds in different places. Gutenberg first printed around 1450; Italians only got the technology in the late 1460s, and it did not really transform classrooms for another generation after that. Mancinelli offers a good study because he was an early adopter. And because he is attested as such. Many teachers probably experimented with print in a similar way, but their little textbooks do not survive to tell us about it.

","excerpt":"The most important thing to keep in mind here is that the \"printing revolution\" was not like a political upheaval. We think of it as revolutionary because it did in fact change the world; but it happened slowly everywhere and at different speeds in…","frontmatter":{"id":596,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 04:55:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You ask some big questions here, and they are ones that the advent of printing threw into high relief. The new, cheap, and standardized textbooks made many classroom tasks easier and they made it easier for students to take work home; but they did not immediately cause a revolution in teaching methods, mostly because teachers and schools were very conservative. Rather more than nowadays, educators valued traditional methods.

","excerpt":"You ask some big questions here, and they are ones that the advent of printing threw into high relief. The new, cheap, and standardized textbooks made many classroom tasks easier and they made it easier for students to take work home; but they did…","frontmatter":{"id":597,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 05:03:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I'm not sure what you are getting at here, Abdoul, but you are certainly right that printing allowed the creation of textbooks as market objects in competition with each other for use in the schools. I don't think this resulted in making humanists into merchants or humanism into a commercial enterprise, but it did mean that one part of the humanist achievement, went on the market in a way that was not true before printing. This is the import of my title Humanism For Sale.

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The Jesuits are the subject of a later chapter, and you can actually read their educational work as an attempt to corner the market.

","excerpt":"I'm not sure what you are getting at here, Abdoul, but you are certainly right that printing allowed the creation of textbooks as market objects in competition with each other for use in the schools. I don't think this resulted in making humanists…","frontmatter":{"id":598,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 05:10:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I'm not sure what you are asking here, Atheerr.

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For Mancinelli, as for most humanists, thiers was an integrative movement, which sought to bring all the arts and sciences to bear on an analysis of (and improvement of) the human condition. I think he would have resisted thinking of grammar as separate, even though that was his specialty.

","excerpt":"I'm not sure what you are asking here, Atheerr. For Mancinelli, as for most humanists, thiers was an integrative movement, which sought to bring all the arts and sciences to bear on an analysis of (and improvement of) the human condition. I think he…","frontmatter":{"id":599,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":237,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 05:17:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

When discussing \"a private tutor's classroom,\" are you also discussing the more elite class? If so, does class play a role in how and why these textbooks were used? For example, Montaigne pushed for a distancing from typical copying of manuscripts and instead encouraged exploration and deep reflection. In this case, would upper-class education add to the growing need for textbooks for exploratory purposes, or perhaps avoid textbook copies altogether?

","excerpt":"When discussing \"a private tutor's classroom,\" are you also discussing the more elite class? If so, does class play a role in how and why these textbooks were used? For example, Montaigne pushed for a distancing from typical copying of manuscripts…","frontmatter":{"id":600,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Emily","date":"2016-02-04 10:12:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi, Emily. I don't think there is an either-or here. Good teachers adopt the best textbooks, and though there are many other things that go into marketing textbooks, class is not very overtly one of them. Certainly, private tuition was restricted to the wealthy --either aristocrats or well-to-do merchant families-- but the teacher will use the texts that best fits his/her students' needs. What differs is that a private tutor can use pretty much any text, manuscript or printed, and tailor the curriculum closely to one or two students, while a schoolmaster is going to find distinct advantages in using printed texts that are designed for use by many students in a single classroom.

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To your other point, Montaigne-style reflective reading and meditation, this was an ideal for most humanists, but it is largely a goal for intermediate and advanced students, not for grammar school kids.

","excerpt":"Hi, Emily. I don't think there is an either-or here. Good teachers adopt the best textbooks, and though there are many other things that go into marketing textbooks, class is not very overtly one of them. Certainly, private tuition was restricted to…","frontmatter":{"id":601,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 11:23:29"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I find this to be an interesting addition to the history and story of Mancinelli. In his recreation of literature, we see the evolution of the thoughts, the structure, and the language. We now can also see that there is discrepancies between scholars of the same time period. The fact that he so painstakingly created these margin notes and commentary to only have them thrown out and disregarded is something that perhaps is more common place than not.

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Should we believe that perhaps other scholars provided better recreations of the classics? For example, Erasmus or Montaigne, both scholars of Humanism. The idea that these scholars profited off of their rendition of the literature is something else that is intriguing. Selling not only the original, but your own original thoughts as well.

","excerpt":"I find this to be an interesting addition to the history and story of Mancinelli. In his recreation of literature, we see the evolution of the thoughts, the structure, and the language. We now can also see that there is discrepancies between scholars…","frontmatter":{"id":602,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":223,"author":"Hannah.M.Adair","date":"2016-02-04 11:24:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I find that you bring up an interesting point here about the credibility of literature recreation, but also the individualism that is present within the recreations themselves. You bring into question the reliability of Mancinelli. If we compare his works to others like Erasmus or Montaigne, do we see that there is discrepancies among all of them?

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In addition, there is an interesting point brought up about the comments and references made in the margins. The idea that you not only buy the literature for the content of the creator, but for the content provided to you by the scholar. It is truly the 15th century version of \"peer-reviewed\" in a sense. Also, that those comments could be lost in \"translation\" and recreation during printing we bring into question the importance of content versus the method used to diffuse the content. Was printing a clean version more important than the content provided in the first?

","excerpt":"I find that you bring up an interesting point here about the credibility of literature recreation, but also the individualism that is present within the recreations themselves. You bring into question the reliability of Mancinelli. If we compare his…","frontmatter":{"id":603,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":223,"author":"Hannah.M.Adair","date":"2016-02-04 12:05:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

From what I gathered in this chapter, Mancinelli was truly a humanist writer and publisher. He fostered the importance of education, but also stressed the need for correction. He contested the works of major authors and didn't take any of his own knowledge for granted. Mancinelli encouraged students to diversify their knowledge and opinions by looking at different interpretations of certain subjects.

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I see many similarities between Mancinelli and Montaigne, a humanist in Renaissance France. They both draw upon the ideas of contesting ancient works that were never before doubted, discovering new knowledge at every point in life, and being open to different opinions.

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However, in Chapter 25 \"Sur l'education des enfants\" in Book One of \"Essais,\" Montaigne draws upon the importance of conversation between students and teachers. He says that is essential for students to question the teachings they are being taught in class. This can come from having discussions with the teacher or opening their mind to new worldly experiences.

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From what I gathered, Mancinelli mainly focuses on the discussion between teachers to figure out the best methods to teach students. He does not seem to mention much about the discussions in the classroom. Did Mancinelli see any good coming from conversation within in the classroom or was he more concerned with he discussions between editors, publishers, and teachers outside of the lesson plan?

","excerpt":"From what I gathered in this chapter, Mancinelli was truly a humanist writer and publisher. He fostered the importance of education, but also stressed the need for correction. He contested the works of major authors and didn't take any of his own…","frontmatter":{"id":604,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":237,"author":"Lily","date":"2016-02-04 12:16:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You are pointing to a crucial matter of the new economy of print, Hannah, in that a second or subsequent edition of a base text that has been reworked by a new editor or commentator is offering what we would call \"added value\" on the marketplace. This is new to printing, made possible by the way in which books in sizable editions compete for customers. Just in this case, of scholarly work on Valla, authors like Erasmus and Mancinelli were attempting to profit (whether materially or just in prestige) from a humanist text that had already become a classic.

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Several of your classmates have pointed to the matter of scholarly controversy and argumentation. This is another case where printing really made a difference, since a given argument could get a very wide audience through print.

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As for \"clean\" texts, that is important only if the text is authoritative in some way, so the editions of classics got reworked over and over in the search for a better understanding of the original author's language and intent.

","excerpt":"You are pointing to a crucial matter of the new economy of print, Hannah, in that a second or subsequent edition of a base text that has been reworked by a new editor or commentator is offering what we would call \"added value\" on the marketplace…","frontmatter":{"id":605,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":223,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 12:33:34"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The visual cues applied to the texts-the use of red and black and then the transition to full black-might one argue that such a ploy was a marketing device? Could you make the argument that such a maneuver was designed to entice the student to continue, and to aspire to the \"grown up\" level of their Latin education? Is this conclusion possible, given the focus they had on retaining the student as a customer (the prevalence of texts aimed at long-term students as well as those intended to be distributed in intervals)?

","excerpt":"The visual cues applied to the texts-the use of red and black and then the transition to full black-might one argue that such a ploy was a marketing device? Could you make the argument that such a maneuver was designed to entice the student to…","frontmatter":{"id":607,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":149,"author":"dhiggin2","date":"2016-02-04 12:43:26"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I think you are right that this typographic style is a marketing device, and that it probably has to do with a sense of the psychology of the young student, who needs to be enticed into working hard at difficult subject like Latin. It is important to remember, however, that then as now, students didn't choose their own textbooks, so the marketing was by publishers (and sometimes textbook authors) to teachers who adopted the texts.

","excerpt":"I think you are right that this typographic style is a marketing device, and that it probably has to do with a sense of the psychology of the young student, who needs to be enticed into working hard at difficult subject like Latin. It is important to…","frontmatter":{"id":608,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":149,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 13:25:15"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Your point about the relation between text, the author, and moral character is intriguing and essential to the study of humanism. This triadic relation shows to what extent humanists tried to produce perfected works. This idealistic view places a lot of pressure on the humanist individual. It seems somewhat ironic because literature at this time was supposed to be a source of free thinking and an outlet for thinkers to come and express views that were opposing the Church. Relating Christian moral values to such works seems contrary to the goal of humanism: to focus on how aspects such as intelligence and nature influences the individual as opposed to how God influences the individual.

","excerpt":"Your point about the relation between text, the author, and moral character is intriguing and essential to the study of humanism. This triadic relation shows to what extent humanists tried to produce perfected works. This idealistic view places a lot…","frontmatter":{"id":609,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":204,"author":"Stephanie","date":"2016-02-04 13:30:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You draw a useful comparison with Montaigne, Lily. An important thing to remember, however, is that Montaigne was born thirty years after Mancinelli's death, and the first edition of his Essays came out only in 1580, fully a hundred years after Mancinelli's first publications. Montaigne represents a highly developed version of humanism, strongly secularizing and literary, and aimed at adult readers. Mancinelli was a teacher, devout and religiously conformist, with rather more limited goals for his readers, who were after all mostly students.

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There isn't much evidence that Mancinelli encouraged conversation of the reforming sort that Montaigne presented as an ideal. Mancinelli clearly thought he was teaching ethics along with grammar, but he was doing so --expressly-- by making his students master the content of salutary texts.

","excerpt":"You draw a useful comparison with Montaigne, Lily. An important thing to remember, however, is that Montaigne was born thirty years after Mancinelli's death, and the first edition of his Essays came out only in 1580, fully a hundred years after…","frontmatter":{"id":610,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":237,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 13:34:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This is an interesting anecdote. It is important to acknowledge life before the printing press and the true impact it had on people. It's interesting that Jean Pellisson did not realize the grand implications of allowing his work to be published. The fact that he regretted that decision because he felt insecure about his content now that a larger population would be reading his work is significant. Are there many other sources/anecdotes of writers during this time who felt similarly? Did other writers feel more insecure about their area of expertise now that more of the world would be reading if their works was to be published?

","excerpt":"This is an interesting anecdote. It is important to acknowledge life before the printing press and the true impact it had on people. It's interesting that Jean Pellisson did not realize the grand implications of allowing his work to be published. The…","frontmatter":{"id":611,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":204,"author":"juliaschaller44","date":"2016-02-04 13:38:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The opposition was never quite as sharp as this, Stephanie. Historical scholarship on the importance of the religious dimension of Renaissance humanism has varied a lot over the years, but in recent decades we have come to realize that many humanists were pretty content with traditional religious values and even strictures. I think the essential novelty of humanism was not to judge truth or human value solely on religious grounds, but to admit to other sources of truth and to argue for a kind of natural morality that does not depend on religion for validation or even guidance. This is not to say there were no more radical and even anti-religious humanists, merely that there were many who did not see much conflict at all between humanist and religious morality. Mancinelli clearly stands at this, more conservative end of the spectrum.

","excerpt":"The opposition was never quite as sharp as this, Stephanie. Historical scholarship on the importance of the religious dimension of Renaissance humanism has varied a lot over the years, but in recent decades we have come to realize that many humanists…","frontmatter":{"id":612,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":204,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 13:42:48"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I think it is interesting too, Julia, not only because it does reflect fairly widespread complaints about printers and publishers who hijack an author's intent or misrepresnt his text, but also in this case because Pellisson is writing in the 1520s, when the benefits and dangers of going to press should have been obvious to most authors. It is speculation on my part, but I suspect that in this case Pellisson (still in his 20s) was flattered that a printer would want to publsih his text and let it go to press without careful supervision.

","excerpt":"I think it is interesting too, Julia, not only because it does reflect fairly widespread complaints about printers and publishers who hijack an author's intent or misrepresnt his text, but also in this case because Pellisson is writing in the 1520s…","frontmatter":{"id":613,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":204,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 13:50:40"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Reading this initially lead me to focus on the concept of creation. Creating an idea is a difficult task because the creator is using his/her own innate imagination to bring something new into existence. Now, this is the entire premise of the Renaissance, to create new ideas and new values for life with inspiration from the past, in the midst of technological inventions that aided in the transmission of the later. My mind then drifted to the concept of \"œreproduction\". In this context, \"œreproduction\" is unoriginal and, in a sense, unfortunate. It pulls the readers attention away from the beauty of the creation process and the authenticity of the authors own language, due to the many errors Mancinelli mentioned occurred as a result of mass printing. Why did you choose to use these words to describe printers? I ask this question because the printing press was a novelty that opened the doors for knowledge to be transmitted literally across cultures and across nations. I see this as an asset, not a draw back. This phrase is essentially putting the creator (humans) against machine (printing press). Remember the creator was the one who brought the machine into existence. I feel I am pushing the boarders to the philosophical level, which many humanists would be proud of. I cannot even begin to imagine our generation surviving without the basic necessity of print. There are pros and cons to the argument. Mancinelli praises the product of the printing press, that is the mass transmission of knowledge, but critics its frequent errors and the constant need to update the text. He enjoys the many benefits the printing press has allowed for in the realm of teaching and education, but discusses that it also \"œgave some fairly ordinary teachers in Mancinelli's generation (and ever since) the opportunity for a permanent, or at least long-term literary reputation specifically as textbook writers.\"

","excerpt":"Reading this initially lead me to focus on the concept of creation. Creating an idea is a difficult task because the creator is using his/her own innate imagination to bring something new into existence. Now, this is the entire premise of the…","frontmatter":{"id":614,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":201,"author":"Elizabeth Okafor","date":"2016-02-04 15:30:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi, Elizabeth. You see the tension correctly , I think, but there is another dimension too that is harder for us to recreate because it does not count for as much in our world as in Mancinelli's. In his day, the intellectual would have automatically distinguished himself from a manual worker. Printing was hard, dirty work that merely reproduced on paper the difficult, creative and largely mental labor of the scholar.

","excerpt":"Hi, Elizabeth. You see the tension correctly , I think, but there is another dimension too that is harder for us to recreate because it does not count for as much in our world as in Mancinelli's. In his day, the intellectual would have automatically…","frontmatter":{"id":615,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":201,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-04 15:38:25"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Mosley's articles on \"dabbbing,\" the process of reproducing woodcuts in metal have appeared more recently on his blog and in a newly revised form in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, n..s. no. 23 (2015), 73-75.

","excerpt":"Mosley's articles on \"dabbbing,\" the process of reproducing woodcuts in metal have appeared more recently on his blog and in a newly revised form in the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, n..s. no. 23 (2015), 73-75.","frontmatter":{"id":616,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":112,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-08 15:43:07"}}},{"node":{"html":"

You mentioned earlier that humanism and humanistic teachings experienced a rather quick decline in popularity, and I was wondering if you agree that technological innovation was a main contributing factor in this abrupt decline. In my opinion, there must be an equilibrium of sort between education and innovation, especially from a humanistic perspective. While bulk printing allowed more students access to education, it also forced students to learn in a specified way that seems to contradict many humanist teachings. You touch on this with your comment that \"speedy learning of this sort is most beneficial to the student who is a quick study\". While Mancinelli claims to be a humanist, it appears that as he becomes more invested in himself and innovating the \"humanist classroom\", he loses sight of the ideals that shape humanistic education.

","excerpt":"You mentioned earlier that humanism and humanistic teachings experienced a rather quick decline in popularity, and I was wondering if you agree that technological innovation was a main contributing factor in this abrupt decline. In my opinion, there…","frontmatter":{"id":617,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Lkaxw6","date":"2016-02-08 19:55:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Innovation is never quite this radical in the fifteenth century and even less so in conservative areas like language teaching. While it is true that printing had the potential to standardize instruction across schools and whole regions, that happened only slowly and certainly did not come to fruition in Mancinelli's lifetime. Moreover, Mancinelli never abandoned his humanist ideals. He was happy to adopt the new technology, but I think it was pretty much impossible for someone in his generation to make a radical break with the ideals he inherited from earlier humanists.

","excerpt":"Innovation is never quite this radical in the fifteenth century and even less so in conservative areas like language teaching. While it is true that printing had the potential to standardize instruction across schools and whole regions, that happened…","frontmatter":{"id":618,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-02-09 13:21:51"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi Dr. Gehl,

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I may have missed it in another section, but I was wondering if there were any institutions or bodies that regulated what was printed/diffused? Of course there are examples such as that of Martin Luther who used the written word to express discontent with the censorship of the established church, but were there any measures in place to ensure that what was printed was not used to deceive the masses? The advent of technology that rapidly diffuses information seems to me as a double edged sword, with those whose agenda includes actually spreading useful knowledge with others whose agenda includes falsification of major historical events, revisions to fit a prescribed world view, etc. It seems as though with the cost of owning or running a printing machine, only the elite had the opportunity to spread knowledge, possibly to the detriment of others. As always with technology there is this potential for benefit or hinderance, and I'm wondering what other downsides, if any, there were to the introduction of print? (other than printing errors) I'm mostly thinking along the lines of how rewriting information by hand and story telling are two very effective ways to memorize information rather than simply reading printed words on a page and memorizing, which may lead to pacification in smaller tutoring style settings

","excerpt":"Hi Dr. Gehl, I may have missed it in another section, but I was wondering if there were any institutions or bodies that regulated what was printed/diffused? Of course there are examples such as that of Martin Luther who used the written word to…","frontmatter":{"id":619,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"KhalildRahman","date":"2016-02-11 11:55:01"}}},{"node":{"html":"

To start with your last remark first, Khalil: Some commentators at the time insisted that having print copies so easily available would make memorizing less necessary and they worried about its effects. The ancient Greeks had the same worry, or claimed to, about writing itself. And of course, educational alarmists now claim that digital media are ruining the abilities of young people to think and read reflectively. The difference is that now we have neurological instruments that let us measure such things. We will know (to some degree) about how present day young people differ from their elders and even more about the next generation; what we do not know is how the earlier technologies changed ancient or early modern brains.

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Regulation in the Renaissance was --to our eyes-- unimaginably inefficient. Local governments could keep surveillance on and regulate local trade, but there were no systems to extend that control very far. Printing eventually spawned many attempts at press regulation and censorship, but, as Luther's case demonstrates, it was not at all effective in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century; and even later, you just had to go to the next town with a willing printer to get something into print. Control of the market for school books was more effective in the sense that teachers had to approve what was used, but there was a lot of competition. The only case of a textbook that was really widely imposed is described in Chapter 5 below, for the Jesuit schools, and even there some teachers did not conform entirely.

","excerpt":"To start with your last remark first, Khalil: Some commentators at the time insisted that having print copies so easily available would make memorizing less necessary and they worried about its effects. The ancient Greeks had the same worry, or…","frontmatter":{"id":620,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":211,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-02-11 15:31:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As the images in this section clearly show, the window-in-frame layouts often resolved into multiple windows -- like rafts that seem to float on a sea of commentary. This created a lot of work for the typesetters; but it was actually valued as a design element by scholars who used the differing arrangements of the double-page spread mnemonically, to help them find passages they had seen before. The multiplication of index notes in the outer margins served something of the same function. This should remind us that reading and information-retrieval in the early years of printing did not depend so much on careful pagination and indexing as on the visual memory of expert readers.

","excerpt":"As the images in this section clearly show, the window-in-frame layouts often resolved into multiple windows -- like rafts that seem to float on a sea of commentary. This created a lot of work for the typesetters; but it was actually valued as a…","frontmatter":{"id":622,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":94,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-04-12 14:56:38"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hello Mr. Paul Gehl,

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I am taking professor Stevens' History of Book class and we were instructed to contact you with comments and/or constructive criticism.

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The first constructive criticism I would like to make is on your website layout. It is an unresponsive layout rather than responsive. Meaning no matter the size of the browser window the content remains the same. This is somewhat of a problem as on my laptop screen the content is to the left takes up only 2/3 of the page, leaving the last right side 1/3 a gray area. This causes the actual page to look odd.

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There are also two \"Table of Content\" sections on the homepage which is unnecessary.

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The website is also not mobile-friendly which makes it difficult for mobile readers. This is a shame because one of the plus-sides of e-books are there portability.

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Lastly, the e-book is also not accessibility-friendly. This website:

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http://wave.webaim.org

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is a useful tool showing what improvements can be made to make websites accessibility friendly.

","excerpt":"Hello Mr. Paul Gehl, I am taking professor Stevens' History of Book class and we were instructed to contact you with comments and/or constructive criticism. The first constructive criticism I would like to make is on your website layout. It is an…","frontmatter":{"id":623,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"JemyrMae","date":"2016-05-01 21:20:22"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi, Jemy. Your notes are good ones, all things we need to put on a list for an eventual revision of the site. Humanism For Sale was published in 2008 with off-the-shelf software dating from 2006 or so, and so it is way out of date nowadays. The hand-held devices we use so much today didn't exist then, so it is no surprise the site does not work well in those formats.

","excerpt":"Hi, Jemy. Your notes are good ones, all things we need to put on a list for an eventual revision of the site. Humanism For Sale was published in 2008 with off-the-shelf software dating from 2006 or so, and so it is way out of date nowadays. The hand…","frontmatter":{"id":624,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-05-02 08:42:15"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Interesting to see the polarity of different printers in different markets. Protectionism is an ageless idea.

","excerpt":"Interesting to see the polarity of different printers in different markets. Protectionism is an ageless idea.","frontmatter":{"id":625,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"ddreezee","date":"2016-05-02 12:24:00"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Is there a reason they didn't show themselves as often in Italy?

","excerpt":"Is there a reason they didn't show themselves as often in Italy?","frontmatter":{"id":626,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":98,"author":"ddreezee","date":"2016-05-02 12:28:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I've seen a couple of Aldus' books before, his mark is so unique it creates a genius marketing scheme for little effort.

","excerpt":"I've seen a couple of Aldus' books before, his mark is so unique it creates a genius marketing scheme for little effort.","frontmatter":{"id":627,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":108,"author":"ddreezee","date":"2016-05-02 13:12:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I'm reading this as a participant in a history course taught by Dr. Stevens at UNR. Just wanted to second the sentiment in the comment above. It might be interesting to see the hermeneutic circle mapped.

","excerpt":"I'm reading this as a participant in a history course taught by Dr. Stevens at UNR. Just wanted to second the sentiment in the comment above. It might be interesting to see the hermeneutic circle mapped.","frontmatter":{"id":628,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":104,"author":"dk","date":"2016-05-02 14:02:42"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Glad to hear it! This started out to be a traditional scholarly monograph, but when we set it up for online reading, we tried to make it possible for readers to mover around.

","excerpt":"Glad to hear it! This started out to be a traditional scholarly monograph, but when we set it up for online reading, we tried to make it possible for readers to mover around.","frontmatter":{"id":629,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":104,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-05-02 15:52:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Partly I think it was just a matter of national traditions in publishing, some of which were derived from manuscript usage --this was certainly the case with the Italian folios, a humanistic form. North of the Alps it was more common to see all kinds of schoolbooks in smaller formats.

","excerpt":"Partly I think it was just a matter of national traditions in publishing, some of which were derived from manuscript usage --this was certainly the case with the Italian folios, a humanistic form. North of the Alps it was more common to see all kinds…","frontmatter":{"id":630,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":98,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-05-02 15:56:00"}}},{"node":{"html":"

There is a whole section on this below: see section 7:07

","excerpt":"There is a whole section on this below: see section 7:07","frontmatter":{"id":631,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":108,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-05-02 15:57:41"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Perhaps because it was a university town, Perugia had a livelier printing scene than one might expect from a small and provincial city. Dennis Rhodes points out (La Bibliofilia 117 (2015), pp. 231-234) that at least two grammar books published there now survive in single copies. That one grammar by the internationally known Giovanni Battista Cantalicio (d. 1515) and another by the obscure Angelo Fino (dates unknown) survive in this way suggests that the city had a micro-market for single editions of such works, presumably created at mid 16th century for a local school. Cantalicio is in fact another example of a Perugian master (he taught grammar there ca. 1488) whose textbooks achieved international status because they were publsihed in Siena, Rome, Venice and elsewhere. The Perugian edition mentioned by Rhodes is the only one known to have been printed there, and it dates from some years after the author's death.

","excerpt":"Perhaps because it was a university town, Perugia had a livelier printing scene than one might expect from a small and provincial city. Dennis Rhodes points out (La Bibliofilia 117 (2015), pp. 231-234) that at least two grammar books published there…","frontmatter":{"id":633,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-07-01 06:11:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

It will be clear from this section that my approach to humanism in this book is largely commercial. As comments here and again at the end of the book (in chapter 8) reveal, however, this is only a partial view, and many scholars take exception to my emphases. The recent republication of Maury Feld's several essays on early printing remind me that he presented a richly nuanced view of the commercial dimensions of humanism (very limited in his view) in a series of essays that appeared in the Harvard Library Bulletin. See now, however, M.D. Feld, Printing and Humanism in Renaissance Italy: Essays in the Revival of the Pagan Gods (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2015), especially pp. 176-181, i.e. the section of chapter 6 headed, \"Cottage Enterprise -- Court Enterprise.\"

","excerpt":"It will be clear from this section that my approach to humanism in this book is largely commercial. As comments here and again at the end of the book (in chapter 8) reveal, however, this is only a partial view, and many scholars take exception to my…","frontmatter":{"id":634,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-07-12 14:17:03"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Somehow I missed this string back in 2009 - 2010. I hope that, as readers went along beyond this admittedly rather artificial transition, they discovered the link with humanism, namely that all these popularizing books derived more or less directly from humanist textbooks (yes, even for elementary maths), and that the translation of such elitist knowledge into the public sphere through print was in fact a critical problem faced by humanist educators.

","excerpt":"Somehow I missed this string back in 2009 - 2010. I hope that, as readers went along beyond this admittedly rather artificial transition, they discovered the link with humanism, namely that all these popularizing books derived more or less directly…","frontmatter":{"id":635,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":319,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-07-26 09:46:24"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The persistence of this kind of pedagogical thinking is no longer in question. Indeed scholars are more than ever alive and attentive to the existence of the kinds of popular literature and elementary texts that were produced right into the 19th century. A fine example is Alexander Ames's study of Pennsylvania German Vorschriften, \"Quill and Graver Bound,\" in Winterthur Portfolio 50 (2016), 1-83

","excerpt":"The persistence of this kind of pedagogical thinking is no longer in question. Indeed scholars are more than ever alive and attentive to the existence of the kinds of popular literature and elementary texts that were produced right into the 19th…","frontmatter":{"id":636,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":363,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-07-26 10:19:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Dan's note above makes an important distinction, one that is clearly highlighted in the humanist critiques of Alexander. Further on the matter, see Silvia Rizzo, \"Il Valla e il progetto di un nuovo Doctrinale,\" Filologia umanistica per Gianvito Resta (Padova, Antenore, 1997), vol. 3, 1583-1612.

","excerpt":"Dan's note above makes an important distinction, one that is clearly highlighted in the humanist critiques of Alexander. Further on the matter, see Silvia Rizzo, \"Il Valla e il progetto di un nuovo Doctrinale,\" Filologia umanistica per Gianvito Resta…","frontmatter":{"id":637,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":153,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-09-01 08:24:29"}}},{"node":{"html":"

One, explicit chapter in this controversy is described and documented by John Monfasani, \"Erasmus, the Roman Academy, and Ciceronianism,\" in Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 17 (1997), 19-54.

","excerpt":"One, explicit chapter in this controversy is described and documented by John Monfasani, \"Erasmus, the Roman Academy, and Ciceronianism,\" in Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 17 (1997), 19-54.","frontmatter":{"id":638,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":250,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-09-03 17:17:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This wonderful portrait has been attributed to the engraver Giovanni Breit who worked closely with Titian. Since Titian is mentioned in the preface to the book, scholars Giorgio Padoan and Terisio Pignatti argue that the original of the woodcut must have been a drawing or painting by Titian himself. See:Tiziano e Venezia (Vicenza, N. Pozza, 1980), pp 357-369 and figs. 223-226.

","excerpt":"This wonderful portrait has been attributed to the engraver Giovanni Breit who worked closely with Titian. Since Titian is mentioned in the preface to the book, scholars Giorgio Padoan and Terisio Pignatti argue that the original of the woodcut must…","frontmatter":{"id":639,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":381,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-09-22 09:13:20"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further to Cantalicio (note 76), see: Benedetto Croce, Uomini e cose della vecchia Italia, Serie prima, 2nd ed., Bari, Laterza, 1943, 46-58; Cantalicio's poems describing classroom life and his students were edited by Croce, \"Sulla vita e le opera di Cantalicio, Appunti ed estratti,\" Archvio Storico per le Province Napoletane, n.s. 10 (1924), 155-191, esp. 167-173.

","excerpt":"Further to Cantalicio (note 76), see: Benedetto Croce, Uomini e cose della vecchia Italia, Serie prima, 2nd ed., Bari, Laterza, 1943, 46-58; Cantalicio's poems describing classroom life and his students were edited by Croce, \"Sulla vita e le opera di…","frontmatter":{"id":640,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":169,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-09-22 09:17:58"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Correction: As EDIT16 (the online bibliography of sixteenth-century Italian imprints) progresses, we now know of three other editions of Cantalicio's textbook printed in Perugia. One of these editions is represented in a single surviving copy and the others have two and four known copies each (that is, known to date, of course). This argues further for a local tradition of a schoolmaster or masters in the 1570s and 80s who adopted this textbook, either for its intrinsic value or because of the tradition that Cantalicio had taught at Perugia. Another locality where the text got editions quite late is Florence. Then too, three of the rare surviving copies of the late Perugian editions survive in libraries at Assisi (which is just a few miles from Perugia), suggesting that there may have been a school there which adopted Cantalicio's textbook some 70 years after his death.

","excerpt":"Correction: As EDIT16 (the online bibliography of sixteenth-century Italian imprints) progresses, we now know of three other editions of Cantalicio's textbook printed in Perugia. One of these editions is represented in a single surviving copy and the…","frontmatter":{"id":641,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-09-27 08:25:32"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Ceresa documents three editions of Alvares by Facciotti, ibid., pp. 68, 75, and 90, the latest being the 1598 edition from which I quote here. Ceresa also prints an inventory of the Faccioti estate made in 1634 after the death of Faccioti's widow, Maria Zanetti, in which are recorded 244 Grammatiche Emanuelle that \"ha fatto stampare la Signora Maria\" in the months after Facciotti's death in late 1632. It does not appear as of this writing in the Italian national union catalog (SBN). The Mazarine Library in Paris, however, does record a 1631 edition printed by Facciotti, so there may be other seventeenth-century editions by him as yet unrecorded. Certainly it would make sense for him to have kept it in print and for his widow to anticipate an ongoing market.

","excerpt":"Ceresa documents three editions of Alvares by Facciotti, ibid., pp. 68, 75, and 90, the latest being the 1598 edition from which I quote here. Ceresa also prints an inventory of the Faccioti estate made in 1634 after the death of Faccioti's widow…","frontmatter":{"id":642,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":294,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-09-30 09:57:30"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This emblem is further explicated by Anna Maranini in her article, \"'Col senno e con la mano': Eyes, Reason and Hand in Symbolic Transmission,\" Glasgow Emblem Studies 12, 115-156, esp. 145-153.

","excerpt":"This emblem is further explicated by Anna Maranini in her article, \"'Col senno e con la mano': Eyes, Reason and Hand in Symbolic Transmission,\" Glasgow Emblem Studies 12, 115-156, esp. 145-153.","frontmatter":{"id":643,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-11-08 11:24:16"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Anna Maranini (cited to para 4) does not adduce the eye of Providence either, but she located the origin of the literary commonplace of the manus occulata in Plautus; p. 146-47.

","excerpt":"Anna Maranini (cited to para 4) does not adduce the eye of Providence either, but she located the origin of the literary commonplace of the manus occulata in Plautus; p. 146-47.","frontmatter":{"id":644,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":367,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-11-08 11:29:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on Leto's relations with the Venetian press and the commercial motives of Roman humanists in publishing in Venice, see: Piero Scapecchi, \"Scrivere a mano, leggere a stampa,\" in Pomponio Leto e la prima Accademia Romana, ed. by Chiara Cassiani and Myriam Chiabò, Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2007, pp. 41-46.

","excerpt":"Further on Leto's relations with the Venetian press and the commercial motives of Roman humanists in publishing in Venice, see: Piero Scapecchi, \"Scrivere a mano, leggere a stampa,\" in Pomponio Leto e la prima Accademia Romana, ed. by Chiara Cassiani…","frontmatter":{"id":645,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":219,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-11-12 16:07:47"}}},{"node":{"html":"

P. Casciano et al., \"Materiali e ipotesi per la stampa a Roma,\" in Scrittura, biblioteche e stampa a Roma nel Quattrocento (Vatican City: Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia, Dipolmatica e Archivistica, 1980), p. 238-240 point to a change in focus at Rome from classical publishing to smaller, occasional poetry and grammar booklets, starting about 1490.

","excerpt":"P. Casciano et al., \"Materiali e ipotesi per la stampa a Roma,\" in Scrittura, biblioteche e stampa a Roma nel Quattrocento (Vatican City: Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia, Dipolmatica e Archivistica, 1980), p. 238-240 point to a change in focus at Rome…","frontmatter":{"id":646,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":219,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2016-11-18 09:08:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

As Dan Sheerin points out above, the establishment (as we would say today) was both clerical and lay and so deeply intertwined that we may rightly consider them one ruling class. Both groups found challenges as well as opportunities in the arrival of printing and its popularizing force. The extensive recent literature on these themes is expounded in detail in Rosa Salzberg, *Ephemeral City, Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice *(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014); see especially pp. 32-38.

","excerpt":"As Dan Sheerin points out above, the establishment (as we would say today) was both clerical and lay and so deeply intertwined that we may rightly consider them one ruling class. Both groups found challenges as well as opportunities in the arrival of…","frontmatter":{"id":647,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":28,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-11-21 05:55:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On the competitive nature of grammar teaching, see Wouter Brucke, \"'Contentiosa disputatio magnopere ingenium exacuit',\" in Roma e lo Studium Urbis, spazio urbano e cultura dal Quattro al Seicento, ed.Paolo Cherubini (Rome: Quasar, 1989), 156-168.

","excerpt":"On the competitive nature of grammar teaching, see Wouter Brucke, \"'Contentiosa disputatio magnopere ingenium exacuit',\" in Roma e lo Studium Urbis, spazio urbano e cultura dal Quattro al Seicento, ed.Paolo Cherubini (Rome: Quasar, 1989), 156-168.","frontmatter":{"id":648,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":35,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-11-30 06:57:25"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The intellectual life of humanists in Rome in the 1480s centered around the University and the \"academy\" led by Pomponio Leto. For grammar at the University see Wouter Brucke, cit. section 0.07 para 7 above, and other essays in the same volume (Roma e lo Studium...). For an intreee to the extensive literature on Leto, see the online Repertorium Pomponianum (http://www.repertoriumpomponianum.it/).

","excerpt":"The intellectual life of humanists in Rome in the 1480s centered around the University and the \"academy\" led by Pomponio Leto. For grammar at the University see Wouter Brucke, cit. section 0.07 para 7 above, and other essays in the same volume (Roma…","frontmatter":{"id":649,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":215,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-11-30 10:09:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Leto, see: Keith Percival, \"Pomponio Leto's Grammatical Writings,\" Repertorium Pomponianum, (www.repertoriumpomponianum.it/themata/ grammatical_writings.htm)

","excerpt":"On Leto, see: Keith Percival, \"Pomponio Leto's Grammatical Writings,\" Repertorium Pomponianum, (www.repertoriumpomponianum.it/themata/ grammatical_writings.htm)","frontmatter":{"id":650,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":169,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-11-30 10:14:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Since the publication of Humanism For Sale in 2008/2009, I have been revisiting the matter of Cantalicio's grammar, helped along by the fact that digital versions of several early editions have become available in the meantime. It is now clear to me that the earliest editions supervised directly by Cantalicio bear both the title Summa perutilis... (on a title or cover page) and Canones grammatices (in the caption tile to the preface supplied by Cantalicio). The usage of canones is interesting, since this word is used in the titles of books in many disciplines (law, canon law and medicine most prominently), but I have not found any other writer on grammar who employs this rather elevated term to describe grammatical rules.

","excerpt":"Since the publication of Humanism For Sale in 2008/2009, I have been revisiting the matter of Cantalicio's grammar, helped along by the fact that digital versions of several early editions have become available in the meantime. It is now clear to me…","frontmatter":{"id":651,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":169,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-11-30 10:21:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on Cantalicio, see my notes on para 19 below.

","excerpt":"Further on Cantalicio, see my notes on para 19 below.","frontmatter":{"id":652,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":169,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-11-30 10:24:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This practice of avoiding citations of contentious contemporary grammarians' opinions was taken up again by the Jesuit grammarian Manuel Alvares, on whom see chapter 5 below, esp. sections 5.01 to 5.05.

","excerpt":"This practice of avoiding citations of contentious contemporary grammarians' opinions was taken up again by the Jesuit grammarian Manuel Alvares, on whom see chapter 5 below, esp. sections 5.01 to 5.05.","frontmatter":{"id":653,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":169,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2016-11-30 10:29:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The classic reading of the early humanists' transition to validating the use of Italian vernaculars is still Hans Baron's, best consulted in his Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 2nd ed (1966), 338-351.

","excerpt":"The classic reading of the early humanists' transition to validating the use of Italian vernaculars is still Hans Baron's, best consulted in his Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 2nd ed (1966), 338-351.","frontmatter":{"id":654,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":321,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-01-03 06:44:02"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Since Humanism For Sale was originally published (2008), the field of Jesuit emblem studies has flourished. A particularly useful volume of essays that addresses both the Jesuits' theories about emblems and a variety of examples of emblem making is Wietse de Boer, Karl A.E. Enenkel and Walter S. Melion (eds.), Jesuit Emblem Theory, Leiden, Brill, 2016.

","excerpt":"Since Humanism For Sale was originally published (2008), the field of Jesuit emblem studies has flourished. A particularly useful volume of essays that addresses both the Jesuits' theories about emblems and a variety of examples of emblem making is…","frontmatter":{"id":655,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":387,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-02-08 11:50:10"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further on this theme, several essays in Roma di fronte all'Europa al tempo di Alessandro VI (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2001), e.g. Piero Scapecchi, \"Savonarola e la stampa,\" ibid., 399-406, esp. 399-401; and Paola Farenga, \"Le edizioni di Eucario Silber,\" ibid., 409-439.

","excerpt":"Further on this theme, several essays in Roma di fronte all'Europa al tempo di Alessandro VI (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 2001), e.g. Piero Scapecchi, \"Savonarola e la stampa,\" ibid., 399-406, esp. 399-401; and Paola Farenga, \"Le edizioni di Eucario…","frontmatter":{"id":656,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":219,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-03-27 10:37:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Paola Farenga, cit. in comment to section 3.09, para 3 above, p. 415-416, notes that On the Care of Parents bears an epilogue in praise of Pietro Della Torre, a bookseller at Rome, who apparently subsidized the publication of the work with the education of his own three sons in mind. To my knowledge this is the only occasion on which Mancinelli remarks direct financial support for his publications from an individual. Della Torre, of course, was in a position to market the new book immediately and directly.

","excerpt":"Paola Farenga, cit. in comment to section 3.09, para 3 above, p. 415-416, notes that On the Care of Parents bears an epilogue in praise of Pietro Della Torre, a bookseller at Rome, who apparently subsidized the publication of the work with the…","frontmatter":{"id":657,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":229,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-03-28 14:26:42"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Farenga, cit. in previous comment, 424-428, contextualizes Mancinelli's Roman period publications among those of other grammarians published by Eucario Silber, then the leading printer in Rome. She also discusses, 435-439, the larger trends in publishing during the 1490s in the Eternal City, which was, more than was true in Venice, adversely affected by the Italian wars. As she notes, Rome never had as international a market as Venice; it was a smaller publishing world altogether.

","excerpt":"Farenga, cit. in previous comment, 424-428, contextualizes Mancinelli's Roman period publications among those of other grammarians published by Eucario Silber, then the leading printer in Rome. She also discusses, 435-439, the larger trends in…","frontmatter":{"id":658,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":219,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-04-03 11:27:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Also on this theme, Paola Farenga, cit. in comment to section 3.09, para 3, p. 426-428

","excerpt":"Also on this theme, Paola Farenga, cit. in comment to section 3.09, para 3, p. 426-428","frontmatter":{"id":659,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":215,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-04-03 11:35:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

This project is remarked by Paola Farenga (cit. in comment to section 3.09, para 3 above, p. 427-428), who assumes that publishing such lists of works was a response to 'pirated' or unauthorized editions. In my reading, however, the early lists are straightforward advertising, while the later ones signal a shift by Mancinelli or his publishers to creating unified sets of his works for the more sophisticated, international market for which Venetians printed. It is really not necessary to see this as a response to unauthorized printings.

","excerpt":"This project is remarked by Paola Farenga (cit. in comment to section 3.09, para 3 above, p. 427-428), who assumes that publishing such lists of works was a response to 'pirated' or unauthorized editions. In my reading, however, the early lists are…","frontmatter":{"id":660,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":231,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-04-03 11:41:59"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The realm of non-Latin, non-elite printing extended to an enormous variety of print products in the vernacular. One important account is that of Rita Salzberg, Ephemeral City, Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice, Manchester University Press, 2014. There are also some remarks on the retailing of such material in an article I co-authored: Gehl and Kevin M. Stevens, \"œCheap Print: A Look Inside the Lucini/Sirtori Stationery Shop at Milan (1597-1613), La Bibliofilía 112 (2010), 281-327.

","excerpt":"The realm of non-Latin, non-elite printing extended to an enormous variety of print products in the vernacular. One important account is that of Rita Salzberg, Ephemeral City, Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice, Manchester University…","frontmatter":{"id":661,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":345,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-04-14 06:03:46"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On this genre in the 16th-century market at Venice, see Salzberg, Ephemeral City, cit. at section 6.13 above, pp. 110-112.

","excerpt":"On this genre in the 16th-century market at Venice, see Salzberg, Ephemeral City, cit. at section 6.13 above, pp. 110-112.","frontmatter":{"id":662,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":347,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-04-14 06:08:18"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I enlarged considerably on the theme of this section in Gehl, \"œAdvertising or Fama? Local Markets for Schoolbooks in Sixteenth-Century Italy.\" In Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the History of Printing in Small European and Spanish Cities, edited by Benito Rial-Costas, Leiden, Brill, 2013, pp. 69-99.

","excerpt":"I enlarged considerably on the theme of this section in Gehl, \"œAdvertising or Fama? Local Markets for Schoolbooks in Sixteenth-Century Italy.\" In Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the History of Printing in…","frontmatter":{"id":663,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":204,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-04-14 06:23:17"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A very few commentators have taken the position that all printed books functioned in an essentially commercial way. See most recently Alberto Cevolini, \"Complessita` e tecnologizzazione del sapere,\" La Bibliofilia 118 (2016), 283-313, esp. 286-288. For Cevolini, the actual marketing and commercial exchanges around the buying and selling of books are secondary to market of ideas created by printing itself.

","excerpt":"A very few commentators have taken the position that all printed books functioned in an essentially commercial way. See most recently Alberto Cevolini, \"Complessita` e tecnologizzazione del sapere,\" La Bibliofilia 118 (2016), 283-313, esp. 286-28…","frontmatter":{"id":664,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":18,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-04-26 16:02:29"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I suggest here that such genres are not print-dependent inventions but matured only in the age of printing. In a thoughtful and important essay, Alberto Cevolini (cit. in comments to section 0.01 above, esp. pp. 289-90) describes this process of maturation, with specific reference to commonplace books, as a fundamental change in the technology of reading and study. His larger essay paints much the same picture for dictionaries and encyclopedias; and he includes a wide range of indexing and cataloging tools in the same transformation of learning.

","excerpt":"I suggest here that such genres are not print-dependent inventions but matured only in the age of printing. In a thoughtful and important essay, Alberto Cevolini (cit. in comments to section 0.01 above, esp. pp. 289-90) describes this process of…","frontmatter":{"id":665,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":115,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-04-26 16:16:11"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An interesting critique both of the Donat and Doctrinale and of the early humanist attempts (like Guarino's) to replace them was penned in the 1470s by Tommaso Ferrando, a printer and grammarian at Brescia who claimed to have devised an entirely new method of teaching grammar but never published his invention. See Alessandro Tedesco, \"Le racolte epistolografiche del tipografo Tommaso Ferrando,\" in La lettura e i libri tra chiostro, scuola e biblioteca, Udine, Forum, 2017, 77-130, esp.103-108 and 123-125.

","excerpt":"An interesting critique both of the Donat and Doctrinale and of the early humanist attempts (like Guarino's) to replace them was penned in the 1470s by Tommaso Ferrando, a printer and grammarian at Brescia who claimed to have devised an entirely new…","frontmatter":{"id":666,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":155,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-06-01 20:11:43"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further to the matter of regional print markets for grammars, see Kristian Jensen, \"Elementary Latin Grammars Printed in the Fifteenth Century: Patterns of Continuity and Change,\" in Von Eleganz und Barbarei. Lateinsche Grammatick und Stilistik in Renaissance und Barock, Wiesbaden, Harrassowiz, 2001 (Wolfenbutteler Forschungen, 95), 103-123,esp. 113-115.

","excerpt":"Further to the matter of regional print markets for grammars, see Kristian Jensen, \"Elementary Latin Grammars Printed in the Fifteenth Century: Patterns of Continuity and Change,\" in Von Eleganz und Barbarei. Lateinsche Grammatick und Stilistik in…","frontmatter":{"id":667,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":24,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-06-23 09:48:45"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for this great info, Kev. My guess is that the logic of selling by the dozen is that teachers (in the case of grammars) and priests or confraternities (in the case of devotional works) were distributing these slight pieces to groups of potential readers. In the case of the grammars, this would ensure that the students in a given class would all have the same text in front of them and would relieve the parents of finding the item in a shop.

","excerpt":"Thanks for this great info, Kev. My guess is that the logic of selling by the dozen is that teachers (in the case of grammars) and priests or confraternities (in the case of devotional works) were distributing these slight pieces to groups of…","frontmatter":{"id":668,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":311,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-07-13 09:26:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Another small grammar textbook by Moirani survives in a 1590 Cremona edition of another highly traditional text, the Carmen Scholasticum of Giovanni Francesco Boccardo (P9lade Brixiano). See EDIT16, CNCE 006477,

","excerpt":"Another small grammar textbook by Moirani survives in a 1590 Cremona edition of another highly traditional text, the Carmen Scholasticum of Giovanni Francesco Boccardo (P9lade Brixiano). See EDIT16, CNCE 006477,","frontmatter":{"id":669,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":311,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-07-13 09:28:54"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A particularly good introduction to the kinds of sources for textbook history is provided for the specific case of sixteenth-century Zurich by Urs B. Leu, \"Textbooks and their Uses --An Insight into the Teaching of Geography in 16th century Zurich,\" in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe, Geneva, Droz, 2008, pp. 229-248, esp. 229-237.

","excerpt":"A particularly good introduction to the kinds of sources for textbook history is provided for the specific case of sixteenth-century Zurich by Urs B. Leu, \"Textbooks and their Uses --An Insight into the Teaching of Geography in 16th century Zurich…","frontmatter":{"id":670,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":26,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-08-21 12:17:27"}}},{"node":{"html":"

For a good discussion of geography in the mature humanist classroom (in Protestant Switzerland), see Urs B. Leu, \"œTextbooks and their Uses \"“An Insight into the Teaching of Geography in 16th century Zurich,\" in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe, Geneva, Droz, 2008, pp. 229-248.

","excerpt":"For a good discussion of geography in the mature humanist classroom (in Protestant Switzerland), see Urs B. Leu, \"œTextbooks and their Uses \"“An Insight into the Teaching of Geography in 16th century Zurich,\" in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in…","frontmatter":{"id":671,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":276,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-08-21 12:21:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

A brief but careful description of the controversy between Grasso and Giraldi is to be found in Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1961, pp. 177-179 and 287-289.

","excerpt":"A brief but careful description of the controversy between Grasso and Giraldi is to be found in Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1961, pp. 177-179 and 287-289.","frontmatter":{"id":672,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":122,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-11-25 10:05:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Further to Bade's involvement with school texts, see Paul White, Jodocus Badius Ascensius. Commentary, Commerce and Print in the Renaissance, Oxford, British Academy, 2013, esp. pp. 260-263.

","excerpt":"Further to Bade's involvement with school texts, see Paul White, Jodocus Badius Ascensius. Commentary, Commerce and Print in the Renaissance, Oxford, British Academy, 2013, esp. pp. 260-263.","frontmatter":{"id":673,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":256,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-12-12 13:37:53"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Bade's classical editions, especially those he undertook in collaboration with the circle of Erasmus, see Alexandre Vanautgaerden, Erasme typographe. Humanisme et imprimerie au debut du XVIe siecle, Geneva, Droz, 2012, 69-88.

","excerpt":"On Bade's classical editions, especially those he undertook in collaboration with the circle of Erasmus, see Alexandre Vanautgaerden, Erasme typographe. Humanisme et imprimerie au debut du XVIe siecle, Geneva, Droz, 2012, 69-88.","frontmatter":{"id":674,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":256,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2017-12-13 13:29:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An interesting and near-contemporary example of using bold type for mnemonic purposes is that of Johannes Aventinus's 1512 elementary grammar. See Paul F. Gehl, \"œTeaching With Type: Design for the Renaissance Grammar Classroom,\" La Bibliofilía 119 \\t(2017), 349-365.

","excerpt":"An interesting and near-contemporary example of using bold type for mnemonic purposes is that of Johannes Aventinus's 1512 elementary grammar. See Paul F. Gehl, \"œTeaching With Type: Design for the Renaissance Grammar Classroom,\" La Bibliofilía 11…","frontmatter":{"id":675,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":252,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2017-12-20 06:52:28"}}},{"node":{"html":"

For the rhetoric of print, prefaces are among the most important sources, and the prefaces of Aldo Manuzio are among the most persuasive and elegant in enunciating a humanist publishing program. The entire corpus was published in 1975 by Carlo Dionisotti, Aldo Manuzio editore (Milan, Il Polifilo), but there is now a highly accessible and usable edition of selected prefaces in Italian translation: Mario Infelise and Tiziana Plebani (eds.), Aldo Manuzio , la voce dell'editore (Venice, Marsilio, 2015).

","excerpt":"For the rhetoric of print, prefaces are among the most important sources, and the prefaces of Aldo Manuzio are among the most persuasive and elegant in enunciating a humanist publishing program. The entire corpus was published in 1975 by Carlo…","frontmatter":{"id":676,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":398,"author":"Paul F. Gehl","date":"2018-02-07 09:29:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

There has been considerable new scholarship on proverbs and proverb collections in recent years. Lorenzo M. Ciolfi summarizes his own contributions and those of others in \"'Quia nihil aliud cupio quam prodesse vobis, studiosi,' il contributo di Aldo Manuzio alla paremiologia,\" in Aldo Manuzio. La costruzione del mito, ed. by Mario Infelise, Venice, Marsilio, 2016, pp. 142-159.

","excerpt":"There has been considerable new scholarship on proverbs and proverb collections in recent years. Lorenzo M. Ciolfi summarizes his own contributions and those of others in \"'Quia nihil aliud cupio quam prodesse vobis, studiosi,' il contributo di Aldo…","frontmatter":{"id":677,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":180,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-02-16 10:48:31"}}},{"node":{"html":"

In an important new article, Robert Black has analyzed the amount of material Aldo Manuzio took over from earlier grammarians for his highly respected introductory Latin grammar: \"Aldo Manuzio Grammarian,\" in Collectanea manuziana. Studi critici su Aldo Manuzio, ed. by P.D. Accendere and S.U. Baldassari (Florence: Le Lettere, 2017), pp. 65-92.

","excerpt":"In an important new article, Robert Black has analyzed the amount of material Aldo Manuzio took over from earlier grammarians for his highly respected introductory Latin grammar: \"Aldo Manuzio Grammarian,\" in Collectanea manuziana. Studi critici su…","frontmatter":{"id":678,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":237,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-03-18 05:14:09"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On Guarino's influence on the Latin grammar of Aldo Manuzio, see Robert Black, \"Aldo Manuzio Grammarian,\" in Collectanea manuziana, ed. by P.D. Accendere and S. U. Baldassarri (Florence: Le Lettere, 2017), pp. 65-92, esp. 84-85.

","excerpt":"On Guarino's influence on the Latin grammar of Aldo Manuzio, see Robert Black, \"Aldo Manuzio Grammarian,\" in Collectanea manuziana, ed. by P.D. Accendere and S. U. Baldassarri (Florence: Le Lettere, 2017), pp. 65-92, esp. 84-85.","frontmatter":{"id":679,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":155,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-03-18 05:26:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An important new collection of essays on printer's marks is: Anja Wolkenhauer, and Bernhard F. Scholtz, eds. Typographorum Emblemata. The Printer's Mark in the Context of Early Modern Culture, Berlin and Boston, Walter de Gruyter, 2018. I will cite this volume repeatedly in the comments that follow in this chapter, using the shorthand Typographorum Emblemata and page numbers.

","excerpt":"An important new collection of essays on printer's marks is: Anja Wolkenhauer, and Bernhard F. Scholtz, eds. Typographorum Emblemata. The Printer's Mark in the Context of Early Modern Culture, Berlin and Boston, Walter de Gruyter, 2018. I will cite…","frontmatter":{"id":681,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":375,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-06-25 06:08:39"}}},{"node":{"html":"

An important additional study is a critical edition of Alvares' De institutione grammatica libri tres with extensive introduction, the doctoral dissertaion (Madrid, 2002) of Rogelio Ponce de Leon Romeo, Aproximación a la obra de Manuel Alvares. I will cite this further in comments as Ponce de León, Aproximación.

","excerpt":"An important additional study is a critical edition of Alvares' De institutione grammatica libri tres with extensive introduction, the doctoral dissertaion (Madrid, 2002) of Rogelio Ponce de Leon Romeo, Aproximación a la obra de Manuel Alvares. I…","frontmatter":{"id":682,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":282,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-07-05 17:36:23"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Ponce de León, Aproximación, xxxix-xlii explicates the fact that in Alvares' classroom and in the Portuguese editions of his grammars, extensive use was made of explanatory notes comparing Portuguese to Latin usage. These notes do not appear in the Italian editions, but Romeo concludes that they were an essential part of Alvares' teaching method.

","excerpt":"Ponce de León, Aproximación, xxxix-xlii explicates the fact that in Alvares' classroom and in the Portuguese editions of his grammars, extensive use was made of explanatory notes comparing Portuguese to Latin usage. These notes do not appear in the…","frontmatter":{"id":683,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":288,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-07-06 06:59:05"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On this last point, see Ponce de León, Aproximación, clxxvii.

","excerpt":"On this last point, see Ponce de León, Aproximación, clxxvii.","frontmatter":{"id":684,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":288,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-07-06 07:09:46"}}},{"node":{"html":"

On the Italian editions, see now: Rogelio Ponce de León Romeo, \"Notas sobre la tradición textual del De constructione octo partium orationis (Venecia, 1570) de Manual Álvares, S.I. en Italia y en Castilla durante el siglo XVI,\" Revista da Faculdade de Letras -- Linguas e Literaturas (Porto), ser, 2, vol. 21 (2004), 269-285.

","excerpt":"On the Italian editions, see now: Rogelio Ponce de León Romeo, \"Notas sobre la tradición textual del De constructione octo partium orationis (Venecia, 1570) de Manual Álvares, S.I. en Italia y en Castilla durante el siglo XVI,\" Revista da…","frontmatter":{"id":685,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":288,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-07-06 07:36:38"}}},{"node":{"html":"

The format of this book has some spectacular advantages. The ability to move between sections easily is really helpful for referencing material in other parts of the book. Also, the integration of images with zoom-in capability allows the reader to better understand each textual example. I really like that other scholars and readers can comment on specific sets of information, ideally to enhance the book by bringing in new insights. The organization into chapter sub-divisions does pose some issues for me because the chapters seem overly-fragmented and disconnected. The comment section on each page also seems a bit too large, pushing the text too far to one side. I do think this original type of format has the potential to spread, especially with the ability to jump between various sections and images. The vast majority of e-books do not have such accessible images. The book, however, could benefit from less sub-divisions and more prominent text. I understand this is a difficult balance to achieve.

","excerpt":"The format of this book has some spectacular advantages. The ability to move between sections easily is really helpful for referencing material in other parts of the book. Also, the integration of images with zoom-in capability allows the reader to…","frontmatter":{"id":686,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"akinskey","date":"2018-10-10 16:47:14"}}},{"node":{"html":"

After reading this chapter I can say that I enjoyed using this e-book. It was simple to navigate, and it felt like anyone could use this book. I enjoyed the insertion of art, and real life versions of the texts being talked about. Being able to see and read from the actual texts, instead of reading stand alone quotations really kept me engaged throughout the chapter. I also quite enjoyed the link to the bibliography at the end of every page. Making that information more readily available made for a smooth read. The website itself looks dated and having the contents on the open side seems like a good idea, but it tends to drag pages on longer then they should creating a lot of empty space. Having a contents tab that could be opened at any time rather than having it always on the screen would certainly help alleviate some of the issues. Overall though I think the simple and smooth format that attempts to make as much information as possible immediately available to its reader is well done, and shows off what an e-book can be when it is not trying to stretch itself beyond its limits in attempting to improve upon the book.

","excerpt":"After reading this chapter I can say that I enjoyed using this e-book. It was simple to navigate, and it felt like anyone could use this book. I enjoyed the insertion of art, and real life versions of the texts being talked about. Being able to see…","frontmatter":{"id":687,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":319,"author":"knewman","date":"2018-10-10 21:50:50"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for these notes, Mr. Newman. The software was off the shelf, so we didn't have too much opportunity to customize it, but your notes on the format are useful as we look towards a re-thinking of the site next year. The long contents column seemed like a neat idea when we mounted the site (ten years ago, so it's really ancient in software terms), but a contents tab is built into the new versions of this software, and will certainly be part of any new format.

","excerpt":"Thanks for these notes, Mr. Newman. The software was off the shelf, so we didn't have too much opportunity to customize it, but your notes on the format are useful as we look towards a re-thinking of the site next year. The long contents column…","frontmatter":{"id":688,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":319,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-10-11 11:25:49"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for your input, Mr. Kinsky. Newer versions of the software move the comments and the contents to separate screens, which is a more contemporary (and now more familiar) way of navigating linked info of the sort. But when we tried to move the content to the new software earlier this year, we lost all the comments, so we have gone back to what we had, at least for the moment. Your endorsement of the robust comment feature in general is important to our thinking going forward, since most of the software out there now assumes readers will make pretty brief (and perhaps emotional) notes rather than thoughtful comments, additions of information, or questions posed to the author/editors.

","excerpt":"Thanks for your input, Mr. Kinsky. Newer versions of the software move the comments and the contents to separate screens, which is a more contemporary (and now more familiar) way of navigating linked info of the sort. But when we tried to move the…","frontmatter":{"id":689,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":6,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-10-11 11:33:08"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I am intrigued by the implied potential that digital books such as this one might be able to condense the lag between cutting-edge theory and on-the-ground pedagogy. The ability to modify the text to reflect new developments ensures at the very least the gap will not widen. Comments also offer the possibility of an always-updating paratext that can incorporate realtime debates in the field. However, this assumes sustained reader engagement with the text. It seems to me that one of the big requirements for the success of the interactive ebook model is vibrant audience participation. What tools do we have open to us to ensure this participation? How do we advertise these resources to the audience that will most benefit from them? It seems like Humanism For Sale has been very successful in drawing in an active body of interlocutors. How was this accomplished?

","excerpt":"I am intrigued by the implied potential that digital books such as this one might be able to condense the lag between cutting-edge theory and on-the-ground pedagogy. The ability to modify the text to reflect new developments ensures at the very least…","frontmatter":{"id":690,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":43,"author":"amain270","date":"2018-10-11 13:28:12"}}},{"node":{"html":"

I love the interactivity of this project, but find it visually a bit overwhelming. I wonder how the parallel columns affect accessibility, for example via screen-reader technology.

","excerpt":"I love the interactivity of this project, but find it visually a bit overwhelming. I wonder how the parallel columns affect accessibility, for example via screen-reader technology.","frontmatter":{"id":691,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"Anna Grau","date":"2018-10-11 13:35:21"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hi, Anna. You have put a finger on a real problem. This software was developed for reading on a screen and it does not read well on either tablets or smart phones. We have found this a major problem with undergrads, who want to be able to do their class assignments on their phones.

","excerpt":"Hi, Anna. You have put a finger on a real problem. This software was developed for reading on a screen and it does not read well on either tablets or smart phones. We have found this a major problem with undergrads, who want to be able to do their…","frontmatter":{"id":692,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":1,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-10-11 15:31:33"}}},{"node":{"html":"

Thanks for this perceptive comment, Ms. Main. You are right to point to the limited interactivity of Humanism For Sale, not so much because of the software but simply because we do not normally interact repeatedly with scholarly monographs. Typically such works get reviews (traditionally in print) and then accumulate a citation history in the relevant scholarly literature. But even scholars in the filed who might comment once on first reading will not comment on later readings, merely cite and go on to something else. By contrast to some e-fiction and music which is intended to grow via additions from an audience, the audience for a monograph is mostly static. Indeed if you quickly scan the HFS comments, only a few have multiple replies. The greatest number of comments, moreover, are my own, intended to bring the discussion up to date with citations of new literature.

","excerpt":"Thanks for this perceptive comment, Ms. Main. You are right to point to the limited interactivity of Humanism For Sale, not so much because of the software but simply because we do not normally interact repeatedly with scholarly monographs. Typically…","frontmatter":{"id":693,"slug":null,"title":"","post_id":43,"author":"Paul Gehl","date":"2018-10-11 16:25:52"}}},{"node":{"html":"

During the fifteenth century, Europeans witnessed the triumph of the cultural movement we call humanism. Very soon thereafter, however, the educational program of the humanists began to decline in status from a cultural near-monopoly into a strongly held but increasingly minority point of view. These events transpired almost entirely in print; they represent a struggle that played out in publishing houses and bookstores as well as in classrooms. This book relates a small but important part of the humanist adventure, the story of how the humanists sold their program to the public through educational publishing in Italy across the long sixteenth century (ca.1450 to ca.1650).

\n

Since publishers and booksellers had so much to do with the success of the humanist educational program in schools and in cultural life more generally, I call my study Humanism For Sale. I realize that this title directly challenges one of the most cherished and persistent of humanist commonplaces, that learning cannot be bought and sold. Still, it seems a particularly appropriate way to describe the market for Latin textbooks. Throughout late-Renaissance Europe, largely similar products packaged for use in highly standardized curricula jostled for sales by advertising connections, real or imagined, with the greatest humanist celebrities. My title also points in the direction of the future of educational publishing. Latin-trained intellectuals constantly had to resell the elitist ideals of humanism to a broad public of politicians, churchmen, and businessmen. Marketing was increasingly a key to literary success.

\n

The book proceeds topically, discussing a few textbooks and writers in some depth and treating many others briefly because they were typical of certain kinds of pedagogical needs and market considerations. An introduction describes the methodological issues and exemplifies the kinds of voices that offer evidence for textbook making and use. Chapters one and two exemplify the fate of classical and medieval school authors as they evolved into print textbooks. Chapter three follows the career of a single humanist teacher and author of textbooks. There follow two chapters devoted to specific portions of the market for textbooks by non-Italian authors. They tell the complex story of a generalized resistance in the Italian market to Northern authors even as Italian publishers took advantage of the fame of these same humanists to advertise Italian textbooks. The two final chapters concern the future of textbook publishing in the sixteenth century. They treat the growth of vernacular teaching texts and the new genre of the emblem book. Books of these sorts took their start from the moral and intellectual ideals of humanism but quickly evolved into harbingers of a European culture that was nationalistic, expansionistic, and less elitist than Latin education had ever been. (A detailed table of contents with section heads appears on every screen of the on-line text.)

\n

As a whole then, Humanism For Sale moves from the \"translation\" of traditional manuscript schoolbooks into print toward their replacement in some fields by books with other goals and concerned with subjects the humanists did not stress. I have confined my study to educational publishing and so have not written a history either of publishing or of education. But the field in which these two histories intesect has broad implications for our understanding of the Renaissance -- not in its origins, but in its future, that is, in the way it evolved into a European cultural norm.

","excerpt":"During the fifteenth century, Europeans witnessed the triumph of the cultural movement we call humanism. Very soon thereafter, however, the educational program of the humanists began to decline in status from a cultural near-monopoly into a strongly…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/abs","title":"Abstract","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Humanism For Sale online is a project of the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies; I owe profound thanks to its staff both present and past. The Newberry's IT and Photoduplication departments have also been essential to its success. Actually getting the book up online was the labor of Rob Carlson, until recently the Web Development Manager of the American Library Association. ALA granted Rob a sabbatical in fall of 2008 to undertake this and other volunteer projects. I am deeply grateful to Rob's colleagues there and to the broadly enlightened policies of that important professional association.

\n

The research for this project began with a fellowship from Harvard University's Center for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti, for which I am also very grateful.\nThanks are also due to many other individuals who have helped with this project. I think of my gratitude in large and overlapping categories, as below. Individuals appear here in only one category, but I trust that many will know they have helped in more than one way. No such list can ever be exhaustive. There are just too many people out there who help without even knowing it.

\n

Research help, both specific and general: Luigi Balsamo, Piero Bellettini, Christian Coppens, Mark Crane, Susan Fagan, Alison Knowles Frazier, Juri Meda, Paola Monacchi, Angela Nuovo, Patricia Osmond, Maria Grazia Nico Ottaviani, Daria Perocco, Silvia Rizzo, Ennio Sandal, Joel Sartorius, Elissa Weaver, Michael Wyatt. Many, many other librarians and archivists along the way.

\n

Material and technical assistance, and fruitful exchanges of ideas: Susan Barron, Max Barry, David Becker, Dakota Brown, Lydia Cochrane, Patricia Crain, Matthew Doherty, William Drendel, Gökhan Ersan, Stephen Farrell, Michelle Frisque, Jill Gage, Catherine Gass, Alan Grieco, James Grossman, Drin Gyuk, Wendy Husser, Robert Karrow, Doug Knox, Alan Leopold, Heather Malec, Sara Matthews, Yossi Maurey, Leo Minnito, Megan Moore, Matteo Motolese, Franca Petrucci Nardelli, Carol Neel, Armando Petrucci, Mary Quinlan-McGrath, Massimo Rossi, Emilio Russo, Paul Saenger, Bart Smith, Andrew Steadham, Justin Steinberg, Italo Vacca, Demetrio Yocum, Gabriella Zarri, Carla Zecher, Robin Zurawski.

\n

All of the above: Paul Kobasa, Diana Robin, Kevin M. Stevens, Robert Williams

\n

Above all: Rob Carlson

","excerpt":"Humanism For Sale online is a project of the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies; I owe profound thanks to its staff both present and past. The Newberry's IT and Photoduplication departments have also been essential to its success…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/ack","title":"Acknowledgements","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

If you are a teacher interested in the history of education, there is a great deal of material about the early years of textbook publishing (1450-1650) in Humanism For Sale.\r\nAt this point, you can find plenty of examples here, but if you want to go further you need to use the Table of Contents, look at my discussion, and then follow the links to the footnotes and bibliography. (323 KB PDF file) It is like working through a scholarly monograph in print.

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Way too cumbersome! So I want to do better for you.

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Eventually, I will offer a History of Education Contents, with links to translated documents and case studies. If you have specific suggestions for what should be included, I would be happy to hear from you. Some themes I am already considering:

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Substituting print for manuscript books was the very first step in educational publishing.

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Designing mnemonics (memory devices) into schoolbooks became common early on.

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Printers started using type to clarify intended teaching methods.

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The earliest teacher's editions with paired student editions appear in the mid-16th century.

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How-to books become common about 1530, in many different fields.

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Geography and Music have distinct trajectories for the development of textbooks.

","excerpt":"If you are a teacher interested in the history of education, there is a great deal of material about the early years of textbook publishing (1450-1650) in Humanism For Sale.\r\nAt this point, you can find plenty of examples here, but if you want to go…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/ed","title":"For Educators","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Humanism For Sale was an experiment in online publishing that launched in 2008. We used the Word Press blog platform and a then-new Comment Press theme to begin a dialog based on a new scholarly monograph about the creation and sale of school books in Europe between 1450 and 1650. In that version, which remained live for over a decade, it was possible for readers to comment on any portion of Humanism For Sale in comment fields that ran parallel to the text. Over the years, some two hundred readers made over a thousand comments in this way. The result was a dialogue between author and readers that proved particularly useful for students in college and graduate level courses in history, literature, and media studies.

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Software security concerns meant that it was necessary to disable the comment function in 2019. What you see now is essentially an artifact of the original site. The entire monograph is here with the illustrations, and almost all of the comments are accessible by clicking on the comment icon (\r\n \r\n\"Comment\r\n\"Comment\r\n) for each numbered section. Footnotes appear at the bottom of each section, with short citations of books, articles, and online sources for which full citations appear in the Bibliography.

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Humanism For Sale is a project of the Newberry Library Center For Renaissance Studies. Although the site is no longer interactive, its author welcomes inquiries. He is Paul F. Gehl, an historian of printing now Curator Emeritus at the Newberry Library, Chicago: gehlp@newberry.org. A personal statement that Gehl wrote at the time the site launched in 2008 may be found here. His CV is available here.

","excerpt":"Humanism For Sale was an experiment in online publishing that launched in 2008. We used the Word Press blog platform and a then-new Comment Press theme to begin a dialog based on a new scholarly monograph about the creation and sale of school books…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/abt","title":"About","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Readers are invited to quote and cite the text freely under the terms of its Creative Commons copyright statement. We recommend citing the text by section number, thus: Paul F. Gehl, Humanism For Sale, [url], [section number]

","excerpt":"Readers are invited to quote and cite the text freely under the terms of its Creative Commons copyright statement. We recommend citing the text by section number, thus: Paul F. Gehl, Humanism For Sale, [url], [section number]","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/ct","title":"Citing Humanism For Sale","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

I hope that Designers will find much of interest in my online book.\r\nEventually, this section will contain a Design Contents list, so that those who are interested primarily in the visual elements of early printed books can go directly to the documents and commentary in Humanism For Sale without worrying too much about the scholarly trappings of the monograph. It's an experiment. At this point, you can find plenty of examples here, but if you want to get deeply into individual subjects, you need to use the Table of Contents, look at my discussion, and then follow the links to the footnotes and bibliography. (323KB PDF file)

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Way too cumbersome! So I want to do better for you -- sooner or later.

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Below is a list of the issues I think might interest designers. I also hope to create a separate Design Bibliography. Meanwhile, I definitely welcome suggestions about how to make the site and this section more useful.

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Type issues\r\nBlackletter vs. Roman. This issue was debated largely on philosophical grounds.\r\nSingle type size. The earliest printers had only one size to work with. Boy did they work at it!\r\nDisplay types were invented only gradually and used sparingly.\r\nUse of italics. Invented around 1500, italics quickly became a tool for clarifying content.

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Layout

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Title pages\r\nOrigin of the title page. Title pages derived from the needs of booksellers.\r\nLayout of title pages evolved slowy as display types became available.

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Illustration, Ornament and Diagrams\r\nTrue illustration was a fairly rare device in schoolbooks. Music and geography books offer some exceptions.\r\nDiagrams also turn up in math books and other technical textbooks.\r\nWhat we think of as ornament often had important philosophical import for early textbook publishers.\r\nThe emblem book was an entirely new form of the 16th century that combined picture and text for recreational, philosophical and educational purposes.

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Design for Marketing\r\nTitle pages were the principal site for marketing books, using advertising blurbs.\r\nIndexes were frequently touted as selling points.\r\nPrinter's prefaces and afterwards offer explanations of what innovations were on offer.\r\nPrinter's marks were important for marketing and for communication between printers and readers.

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Design Players\r\nAuthors sometimes exerted control, but there is relatively little evidence.\r\nPrinters were usually their own desingers, responsible for the look of the book.\r\nPublishers assumed this role increasingly as the 16th century progressed.

","excerpt":"I hope that Designers will find much of interest in my online book.\r\nEventually, this section will contain a Design Contents list, so that those who are interested primarily in the visual elements of early printed books can go directly to the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/fd","title":"For Designers","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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PROFESSIONAL:

\n\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\n
2016-\t\tCurator Emeritus, The Newberry Library
2013-2016\tGeorge Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books, The Newberry Library
1987-2016\tCustodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing, The Newberry Library
1984-87\tAssociate Director of Research and Education, The Newberry Library
1981-84\tAssistant Director of Research and Education, The Newberry Library
1979-81\tVisiting Lecturer in Christianity, Dept. of the History and Literature of Religions, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
1978-81\tAssistant Director, Religion and Ethics Institute, Inc., Evanston, Illinois
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EDUCATION:

\n\n\r\n\r\n\n
1976\t\tPh.D. (History), University of Chicago
1972\t\tM.A. (History), University of Chicago
1971\t\tA.B. Classics (History major), John Carroll University
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BOOKS:

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ONLINE BOOK:

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SCHOLARLY ARTICLES:

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PUBLISHED ESSAYS, TRANSLATIONS, EDITING PROJECTS:

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NON-PRINT/BORN-DIGITAL:

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LIBRARY EXHIBITS & CATALOGS (at the Newberry unless otherwise indicated):

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FELLOWSHIPS:

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JURYING AND JUDGING for design and book-arts competitions of the Association of American University Presses, Chicago Book Clinic, Chicago Calligraphy Collective, Chicago Hand Bookbinders, Chicago Public Library, Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, Guild of Bookworkers, Minnesota Center for the Book Arts.

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BOOK REVIEWS have appeared in Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography, La Bibliofilía, Bulletin du Bibliophile, The CODEX Papers, The Decadent Review, Historiographia Linguistica, History of Education Quarterly, Italica, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Modern Language Review, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Parenthesis, Printing History, Publishing Research Quarterly, Religious Studies Review, Renaissance Quarterly, Sixteenth-Century Studies, Speculum, etc.

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PERSONAL:

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Born: \tSeptember 24, 1949 at West Bend, Wisconsin
Citizenship: \tU.S.A. (fifth-generation German-American)
Service:\tCurrent or past service on boards or committees of the American Printing History Association, Bibliotheca Wittockiana, Caxton Club, Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum, Press at Colorado College, Religion and Ethics Institute, Seminary Co-op Bookstores, La Bibliofilía, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, Litterae Caelestes, rarebooksinfo.com.
Contact:\tgehlp@newberry.org\t312-255-3657
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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t4/22\n
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","excerpt":"PROFESSIONAL: EDUCATION: BOOKS: Chicago Modernism & the Ludlow Typograph: Douglas C. McMurtrie and Robert Hunter Middleton at Work. Newtown (NSW, Australia): Opifex, 2020. A Meditation in Rome. New York: Russell Maret, 2012. A Moral Art: Grammar…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/cv","title":"PAUL F. GEHL: Curriculum Vitae","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Generalist readers and scholars in other fields who want to know more about the Renaissance and the way people were educated then, how they read, and what publishing and marketing was like can find interesting material here.

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You may wish to start with the Abstract or Table of Contents and click through to other parts of the text using the links there. You can also browse a list of Major Authors treated at length.

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But this is way too cumbersome! I want to do better and invite your input on how to do so. I provide a Quick Summary with a list of major themes and links.

","excerpt":"Generalist readers and scholars in other fields who want to know more about the Renaissance and the way people were educated then, how they read, and what publishing and marketing was like can find interesting material here. You may wish to start…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/fg","title":"For Generalists","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Humanism For Sale:

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Making and Marketing Schoolbooks in Italy, 1450-1650 by Paul F. Gehl

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Welcome to Humanism For Sale, which concerns the ways books were written, designed, printed, and marketed for schools in Renaissance Italy.

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Mounted in 2008 by the Center For Renaissance Studies of the Newberry Library, Humanism For Sale was intended as an experiment in interactive scholarly publishing. It is a richly illustrated monograph on the design and marketing of schoolbooks that explores the activities of humanist teachers in the increasingly commercialized book markets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

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When first published, Humanism For Sale employed blogging software to allow readers to interact with its author, book historian and Newberry curator Paul F. Gehl, via comments or questions about general themes or specific arguments. In that format it was used in a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses in history, literature, and media studies across more than a decade. Scholarly readers and students offered many comments, which are preserved in the present version. Closed to further comment in early 2019, it remains the most comprehensive treatment of its subject currently available. It is also an artifact of scholarly publishing of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

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The text you see here is essentially a scholarly monograph in seven chapters:

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Each chapter is subdivided into sections and the footnotes and comments to each section can be viewed in the same panel. Full bibliographical references are provided in a separate Bibliography that can be accessed from any page.

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For further information about the monograph and its author, click on About the Book.

","excerpt":"Humanism For Sale: Making and Marketing Schoolbooks in Italy, 1450-1650 by Paul F. Gehl Welcome to Humanism For Sale, which concerns the ways books were written, designed, printed, and marketed for schools in Renaissance Italy. Mounted in 2008 by the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/","title":"","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The authors below are discussed at some length in Humanism For Sale. For other authors, use the search function. Eventually I hope to provide a full index.\nLatin authors:

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Italian authors:

\n","excerpt":"The authors below are discussed at some length in Humanism For Sale. For other authors, use the search function. Eventually I hope to provide a full index.\nLatin authors: Terence (Publius Terentius Afer) Donatus (Aelius Donatus, 4th century A.D…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/mja","title":"Major Authors","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

If you are interested in the history of marketing, there is a great deal of material about the early years of print culture (1450-1650) in Humanism For Sale.\nAt this point, you can find plenty of examples here, but you will need to use the Table of Contents, look at my discussion, and then follow the links to the footnotes and bibliography (330 KB pdf).

\n

Way too cumbersome! So I want to do better for you.

\n

Eventually, I will offer a table of Marketing Contents, with links to translated documents and case studies. Meanwhile, if you have specific suggestions for what should be included, I would be happy to hear from you. Some things I already have in mind to discuss:

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Title pages were the principal site for marketing books, using advertising blurbs.

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Indexes -- still rare at the beginning of the period -- were frequently touted as selling points.

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Printer's prefaces and afterwords offer explanations of what innovations were on offer.

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Printer's marks were important for marketing and for communication between printers and readers.

","excerpt":"If you are interested in the history of marketing, there is a great deal of material about the early years of print culture (1450-1650) in Humanism For Sale.\nAt this point, you can find plenty of examples here, but you will need to use the Table of…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/mp","title":"For Marketing Professionals","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Humanism For Sale was originally written as a specialized scholarly book, but I decided to present it to a broader audience in the form of a website plus blog. It retains its original structure in traditional chapters, listed in the Table of Contents. You can also link to a variety of special themes. Here are the major ones:\nHumanism developed as an educational program for the Italian elites. It was based on the revival of good Latin grammar, style, and literature. Soon after printing was invented (around 1450), humanists adopted the new technology as the best way to teach, to present scholarly research, and to publicize their program. It is hard to hear the voices of students in the surviving textbooks (some are very rare) and archival sources, but we can hear the teachers speak at length and sometimes movingly about their work.

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Humanists and their publishers took all kinds of earlier book forms, experimented with how to use them in the classroom, and eventually created the modern textbook. They tried various innovations with the design of the page, with types, and with color. They also experimented with different kinds of print marketing, finding readers for their new textbooks and competing with each other for an international market. For this they worked on title page layout and advertising prose, on prefaces, and on other kinds of teaching aids.

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Educational conservatism was strong, however, and many medieval school texts continued to be used, especially with younger students. Traditional texts like these were often presented by printers in very traditional designs that mimicked medieval school books. Conservatism also meant that many textbook markets remained local or regional, with opportunities for a prominent teacher to author and sell books to several generations of his own students. Starting in the 1570s, the Jesuits reformed education at all levels and created their own textbooks for use in schools throughout Europe and even in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. These were the first truly international textbooks.

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As humanism declined across the following centuries, it became a minority point of view, but other thinkers and educators used the design and marketing innovations of Latin school teachers. Schoolbooks in the vernacular languages became common only in the 1530s, at a time when many skills once reserved to the Latin-educated were popularized for others. Elementary math books were the earliest to appear in Italian, already before 1500. Reading and writing books appeared first in the 1510s and 1520s. How-to books and emblem books also became popular in the early sixteenth century. Music and geography had specialized textbooks and separate markets.

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Before long, I hope to link to other general-interest subjects, listed below. Keep in mind they will usually be discussed in the context of a detailed research study, but you may find useful hints for further reading in the footnotes and bibliography.

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Literacy\nCelebrity authors\nManuscript Books\nMoral Education

","excerpt":"Humanism For Sale was originally written as a specialized scholarly book, but I decided to present it to a broader audience in the form of a website plus blog. It retains its original structure in traditional chapters, listed in the Table of Contents…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/qs","title":"Quick Summary","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

For Scholarly Specialists

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Scholarly specialists in printing history and history of education - those who would \"read\" this \"book\" if it came out from a university press -- can use it like any scholarly book. There are only a few hundred readers of this sort out there, and many of you will get an e-mail from me announcing its \"publication.\" My hope is that you will use the Comment Press feature to enter into a discussion of the interpretive issues with me.

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You will probably want to start with the standard (abs)[Abstract] or Table of Contents. You can browse a list of Major Authors treated at length. Eventually I hope to provide alphabetical indexes; in the meantime specialists can also use a general search function.

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There is a double (Bibliography) (323KB PDF file) of primary and secondary sources, and the usual footnotes, which also contain texts in Italian or Latin that appear in translation in the narrative.

","excerpt":"For Scholarly Specialists Scholarly specialists in printing history and history of education - those who would \"read\" this \"book\" if it came out from a university press -- can use it like any scholarly book. There are only a few hundred readers of…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/spc","title":"For Specialists","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Francesco Negro on a 1508 title page
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At this point in each chapter, I give a quick summary of its contents. The blog format is aimed at inviting discussion. This spot right here is a good place for readers to offer comments on the overall structure of the book, the formatting of the blog, and generally how the whole thing functions.

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This Introduction describes the sources and methodological issues involved in studying the textbook history of the Renaissance. It also outlines some themes of the remainder of the book: moral instruction as part of elementary education, student-teacher relations, successful marketing strategies, and the growth of textbooks for vernacular language instruction.

","excerpt":"At this point in each chapter, I give a quick summary of its contents. The blog format is aimed at inviting discussion. This spot right here is a good place for readers to offer comments on the overall structure of the book, the formatting of the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/000","title":"0.00 INTRODUCTION: The Problem of School Books","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In his first published work, the surreal comedy Il Candelaio (1582), Giordano Bruno introduced the pedant Manfurio to personify all that was wrong with Latin learning. Manfurio does not speak in the literary Italian of his day, nor even in the colorful Neapolitan of some other characters in the play. His every sentence is a macaronic mix of Latin and vernacular, indulging in philological niggling and meaningless etymological digression. In a single brief speech, he can display slavish imitation of classical authors, apply a textbook commonplace badly, and claim a false intellectual pedigree:

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MANFURIO: Oh! Eliminate that nequam, for although the word is used in Scripture, it is in no way Ciceronian. \"Living well, follow only the most learned men,\" says the Ninevite Giovanni Despauterio, followed in this by my praeceptor Aloisio Antonio Sidicino Sarmento Salano, successor to Lucio Giovanni Scoppa.\"

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This kind of meaningless bluster, according to Bruno, was a common result of the standard humanist education of his day. Latinitas (Latin-ness) had been a cherished ideal of humanists for two centuries. But for Bruno it was no longer a goal; it was a fussy pretense. Humanism was all puffery and salesmanship. (1)

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During the fifteenth century, Europeans witnessed the triumph of the studia humanitatis, the cultural program we call humanism. Soon thereafter, however, they saw this same educational philosophy decline in status from a cultural near-monopoly into a powerful but increasingly minority point of view, easily satirized by Bruno and many others. Humanism's slow rise took place in a manuscript world, but its rapid triumph and decline transpired almost entirely through the new medium of print. In this online book I relate a small but important part of the Italian adventure in humanism, the story of how humanists sold their program to the public through educational publishing across the long sixteenth century (that is, the period from about 1450 to 1650 or so). My subject is school books, or, to use a modern term that describes the end result of these two centuries of publishing history, textbooks. My study, however, is neither a history of education in the period nor properly a history of printing and bookselling. Both printing and pedagogy have their own extensive histories. (2) Instead, I have chosen to plough a sizeable but I hope manageable field in which these two vast and varied landscapes intersect, namely the specific methods and problems of textbook publishing in the first two centuries of printing. The project is important if only because schoolboys and their teachers were so important a segment of the book market in the first years of printing. (3)

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From 1450 to 1650, the open intellectual inquiry that humanists promoted slowly led to the demise of their monopoly on learning. The period witnessed both the invention of new kinds of school books and the decline of the educational system that produced them. The protagonists of this history are teachers, printers, publishers, and booksellers. Students will appear as well, but their voices are relatively little attested. Textbook publishing worked from the top down, in hierarchical terms that seemed natural to educators of the period. Renaissance teachers, like their medieval predecessors, did most of the talking.

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There were also many forces at work in the sixteenth-century classroom that came from outside the schools. The mass production of printed textbooks and the increasingly creative role of publishers and booksellers in marketing them introduced tensions into the supposedly \"natural\" relationship between master and student. These middlemen had a voice that was increasingly urgent. Often they insisted that authors speak in terms that advertised their books, for publishers could now measure the success of a given textbook baldly in sales figures. Marketing, then, is a major part of the history recounted here.

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The teachers we can hear are largely humanists, men who taught in the Latin schools, though in chapters six and seven we will meet some others. At the start of our period in Italy, most teachers, certainly most of the authors of new textbooks, had had some education to humanist ideals. By the end, the educational theories of the humanists were almost universally accepted. But many medieval texts were in use in Italian schools in 1450. The force of tradition meant that some of these, especially at the most elementary level of Latin instruction, would remain in the hands of students right through the seventeenth century. It will be necessary, then, to consider both the conservative force of educational tradition and the ways in which authorship and pedagogy changed under market pressures. For the latter part of the period in question, we must also consider the effect of the Reformation on publishing and education alike. In this same period, general economic conditions -- both a long-term and large-scale decline in economic activity in Italy and short-term disruptions caused by political unrest, natural disaster, and war -- had negative effects on competition. Under these conditions, a few large firms flourished and dominated important sectors of the book market. But textbook publishing remained an exception in this regard; many small publishers jostled on the market with unoriginal and even shoddy products. (4)

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Since bookselling had so much to do with the success of the humanist educational program, in schools as in cultural life more generally, I call my study Humanism For Sale. I realize that this title directly challenges one of the most cherished and persistent of humanist commonplaces, that learning cannot be bought and sold. Even today, as Robert Lopez put it in a classic essay, \"The dirty boots of the economist are notoriously unwelcome on the polished floors of humanistic mansions.\" (5) In the sixteenth century, similar, commonplace prejudices were in effect. A highly-developed sense of honor led many humanists to insist on subsidizing their own books to keep them from becoming merely venal. The practice was so widespread as to distort markets entirely in some places. (6) Still, Humanism For Sale seems a particularly appropriate way to describe the market for Latin textbooks. Throughout late-Renaissance Europe, largely similar products packaged for use in highly standardized curricula competed for sales by advertising connections with humanist celebrities. Even conservatively chosen and framed works inherited from the Middle Ages and repackaged for sixteenth-century schools relied on associations with well-known educators. Classicizing fama increasingly turned into market-driven celebrity. (7)

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My title also points toward the future of educational publishing. While humanist philology emphasized slow, critical work on ancient and traditional texts, the educational market (and other forms of popularization) pulled authors in the opposite direction, toward confecting entirely new texts that could be quickly delivered and frequently reprinted. (8) Latin-trained intellectuals constantly had to resell the elitist ideals of humanism to a public of politicians, churchmen, and influential businessmen. This was as true at the beginning of our period, when humanism was still a relatively new movement, as at the end, when Latin, even in its seeming moment of triumph, was beginning to lose ground, eventually to become the shibboleth of a superseded cultural ideal. (9) Marketing was increasingly a key to literary success in early modern Europe, and humanism was only as successful as its market was broad and deep.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In his first published work, the surreal comedy Il Candelaio (1582), Giordano Bruno introduced the pedant Manfurio to personify all that was wrong with Latin learning. Manfurio does not speak in the literary Italian of his day, nor even in the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/001","title":"0.01 Humanism in Crisis","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The narrative in this online book proceeds episodically and topically rather than in chronological order for one reason. There was no single history of educational publishing in Italy at the period. Textbook authors and publishers often had large ambitions, but textbook markets were largely local and regional. (10) Every city and town had teachers with needs the new technology of printing could address. Even the publishing histories of some highly popular textbooks break up, after a first or second edition, into separate histories of their exploitation in different local or regional markets. Chapter five will explore one international publishing success; but we will find that even the highly centralized Jesuit order had difficulty unifying the curriculum in its Italian schools.

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We may recognize four aspects to this Italian textbook regionalism. First, printers respected and continued certain practices of manuscript production for the schools. In traditional pedagogy, every teacher was to some degree an author of the texts he used. Even texts in longstanding use were modified at almost every copying for the specific needs of a given classroom. (11) Teachers in the first age of print were unwilling to relinquish this sovereign power to customize texts, even though the easy availability of printed textbooks encouraged the opposite behavior, standardization. Teachers could at every period create local, miniature markets. Perhaps the most extreme case in sixteenth-century Italy was that of Evenzio Pico, a grammar master who spent his career teaching in Ancona and published one textbook in a single edition directed entirely at a market of his own students. (12)

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Secondly, the humanist pedagogy in its ascendancy just as print came along emphasized the use of classroom texts as sources of imitative composition. An essential tool of such pedagogy was paraphrase, a classroom practice that promoted the instability of texts by encouraging readers at all levels to rewrite texts repeatedly, often phrase by phrase. Erasmus (ca. 1466-1536) was an influential exponent of this sort of mimetic paraphrase, but he did not invent it. It was a commonplace of humanist pedagogy and it contributed to the fragmentation of markets for textbooks. (13) We will discover a revolt against this practice in the mid-sixteenth century, but one that emphasizes how commonly teachers expected to rewrite textbooks for local use, even those that represented editions of classic texts.

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Thirdly, educational conservatism, a constant in every period, meant that even the most obvious and salutary reforms of textbooks were adopted only slowly. New titles relied on the marketing power of their authors, and old ones continued in use in some schools long after they had gone out of general use. Even before 1400, humanist writers started to complain about the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villa Dei (1175-1240); but it was the best selling intermediate grammar of the fifteenth century and was still in use in some schools in the early seventeenth century. In other markets, as we will see, self-consciously archaic textbooks -- medievalizing in content and design -- were offered as alternatives to what some teachers and parents saw as over-modern methods.(14)

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Lastly, marketers often chose to publish local authors as such, either because they had some local reputation as fine teachers, or because there was some advertising value in their status as local celebrities. Perugia had a particularly strong market of this sort. The city's most famous humanist was Francesco Maturanzio (1443-1518), whose works were published Europe-wide, but who also had a local reputation that ensured he would be reprinted at Perugia into the seventeenth century. A century later, Marcantonio Bonciari (1555-1616) had a similar if smaller publishing fame, centered in Perugia but extending to Rome and Venice. A different fate awaited Maturanzio's student Cristoforo Sassi (1499-1574), who was professor of rhetoric at Perugia. His grammatical textbook got at least twelve editions in the latter half of the sixteenth century, but it could not really be considered influential since the book did not succeed in Venice or Rome. (15) Sassi was published mostly at Florence, where he could be considered a Tuscan celebrity.

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Modena, by contrast to Perugia, had no very lively publishing tradition. A grammarian there like Giovanni Briani (active 1570-1600) could not hope for even the regional reputation of Sassi. Briani's entire output was printed at Modena. Neither his original Latin grammar nor a primer he edited ever got a second printing. Books like Briani's were probably not true market products at all; they aimed at use in a single school. In economic terms they were subsidized, non-competitive products like many other humanist publications. In some cities, moreover, the progress of the Counter-Reformation worked to encourage the purchase of local (and locally censored) books in preference to those imported from outside Italy or even from suspiciously heterodox Venice. (16)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The narrative in this online book proceeds episodically and topically rather than in chronological order for one reason. There was no single history of educational publishing in Italy at the period. Textbook authors and publishers often had large…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/002","title":"0.02 Regionalisms","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In recent years, it has become clear in the larger field of book history that readership studies, or more generally the history of the reception and use of printed books, resists generalization. Every early modern reader brought unique experiences to the individual copy he or she picked up. The reading each individual gave a book can sometimes be studied, but it can rarely be pronounced typical. This degree of variation obtained in the manuscript age and remained the case in the age of printing. The mass production of books does not mean that we have to do with a different kind of reading history. The invention of printing merely changed the history of some singular readings into a history of many, many singular readings, complicating the problem of generalization. (17) Educational publishing in the sixteenth century, then, must be understood to embrace numerous exceptions to the few apparent rules. Even in so narrowly defined a field, publishing ideals and practices varied greatly and progressed unevenly. From most modern points of view early modern publishers acted inconsistently, even erratically. Then too, some one hundred fifty different texts in well over two thousand different editions were produced in Italy during this period specifically for the use of teachers and students in the single area of Latin grammar. I cannot claim to have read all these texts or even to have seen them all, far less to have examined all the editions, sometimes many dozens, of individual texts. (18) Trying to account for every text or even most of them would give a picture so blurred as to be unreadable.

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Still, some sorts of reading are easier to study than others and educational reading is one of them. (19) We can evaluate the meanings individual textbooks had when there were many editions in large print runs and when there are sources that allow us to describe the classrooms in which these books were used. Classroom use is by its nature less singular than private reading because it is the moment when groups of students are learning how to read, a skill they will employ life-long. As they grow intellectually readers employ these skills with increasing degrees of individualism. In the classroom they are more likely to act like each other. Thus, the classroom affords us a window on groups of readers, but it does not always give us a clear view. Textbook history is always limited because the evidence, overwhelmingly the textbooks themselves, cannot unambiguously reveal how those books were used. At best, Renaissance textbooks offer a limited view of how they were probably intended to be used.

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Another tricky problem concerns what evidence has come down to us and what is simply lost. Elementary textbooks, especially grammars and arithmetics, have a very low rate of survival. (20) A few telling examples will serve to measure the problem. We know that the most widely used basic Latin textbook in Renaissance Italy, the Donat (erroneously ascribed to the late ancient author Aelius Donatus), had many printings. Some thirty separate editions are known from fifteenth-century Italy, but only a few of these editions survive in more than a single copy. A similar rate of survival characterizes editions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the added problem that catalogs and bibliographies for the later period are much less complete than for the fifteenth century. The rare survivors, our only evidence for the publishing history of this important and common text, are scattered in libraries across Europe and the Americas, and we will never know how many editions were made that do not come down to us at all.

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By way of corollary, one innovative elementary textbook of the fifteenth century, a reworking of the Donat, purportedly by the Roman humanist Pomponio Leto (1428-1498), is known in a single copy of an edition apparently printed after the author's death. Leto's achievement remains a footnote in the history of humanist education because it had no practical effect on other writers or teachers. His little reform grammar was published, but it had no publishing history. (21) Another great humanist of Leto's time, Giorgio Valla (1447-1500), also wrote a Latin grammar, in this case a lengthy, systematic treatment which appeared in his posthumously published encyclopedia entitled A Work on Things to be Pursued and Those to be Avoided (1501). In 1514, the three books on grammar were excerpted from the larger work and published as a separate volume, ostensibly offered for school use. But there is no evidence it ever reached the hands of students. The book is very rare and we have no way of knowing why. Most likely it was printed speculatively in a small run and did not find enough of an audience to merit a reprint.

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Still another methodological problem concerns terminology. Teachers and publishers in the long sixteenth century possessed no standard or uniform vocabulary with which to describe textbooks, a fact aggravated further by the humanist habit of looking for original, striking, or elegant expressions. Their titles could be grand or humble, largely without reference to the audience the author had in mind or the physical size or shape of the book. Even terms that would seem to indicate a specific kind of treatment or level of instruction can be deceiving. As a result it is often possible to judge the level of a given text and its intended audience only after a physical examination of multiple editions. (22)

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Venturini's Rudiments - really for beginners? (click to enlarge - 752 KB JPEG file)
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For example, the Latin term rudimenta ought by every possible logic refer to a work for beginners. But the Rudimenta grammatices of Francesco Venturini (dates unknown) is a handsome, imposing folio of almost four hundred spaciously arranged pages. It was published only once, at Florence in 1482, and it is hard to understand how it was used without examining many copies for annotations and other signs of ownership and use.

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Grammatical basics in small format.
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A comparable title might seem to be the De Fundamentis grammatices methodus of Pietro Cittadella (dates unknown), and it too was published only once, at Venice in 1535. But Cittadella's book runs to only forty pages in small octavo. It is so rare there is no real hope of comparing copies. There is almost no evidence of how it was used except the author's preface, which simply says it is an introductory work that will be followed by a longer and more detailed one, apparently never published. (23)

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Another small-format elementary grammar, 1536 (click to enlarge - 651 KB jpeg file)
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Again, the Rudimenta grammatices of Johannes De Spauter (ca. 1460-1520) is more like Cittadella's book than Venturini's, or so it would seem on first glance. It was usually presented in a single quarto-sized gathering of ten or twelve leaves, crowded with type in several sizes employed to specifications by De Spauter himself. It got many dozens of printings in this format between the first edition of 1514 and the end of the sixteenth century. Often it stood as the first work among several at the same basic level in collections. De Spauter was the most talked-about textbook author of his day, so we know a great deal about how the Rudimenta was used. But in 1537, Robert Estienne at Paris included the Rudimenta in a folio collected works of enormous dimensions for a textbook (nearly 33 cm.). The types are among the largest and most handsome of the French Renaissance. At that size and splendor it can only have been intended for a learned audience, or perhaps for a prosperous teacher with some ready cash. (24) This habit of dressing the same text in radically different forms persisted across our period.

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One text in many formats (click to enlarge - 477 KB jpeg file)
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Another Rudimenta grammatices, that of Niccolo Perotti (1430-1480), started its long textbook life as a generous folio. Within a few decades it also got treatments in large and small quarto. Much later it appeared in octavo as well. Before it got its own octavo editions, however, Perotti's grammar was excerpted by a Florentine grammar master, Benedetto Ricardini (active around 1500). Ricardini's Erudimenta grammatices was one of the earliest grammars to appear in octavo. On its face, it appears to be a highly original basic grammar book advertised with Perotti's name. It turns out, on close examination, to be a pastiche of advice on Latin composition drawn from a dozen or more authors. (25) Obviously, it is necessary to see texts like Perotti's in a full variety of formats before generalizing about how they were used.

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Another edition of Perotti (click to enlarge - 359 KB jpeg file)
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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In recent years, it has become clear in the larger field of book history that readership studies, or more generally the history of the reception and use of printed books, resists generalization. Every early modern reader brought unique experiences to…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/003","title":"0.03 Some Perils of Generalization","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Textbook history privileges the visual aspects of pedagogy over the oral/aural ones. Only rarely, mostly in drilling books, can we actually hear teachers lecture or students recite. Moreover, if there is a single, general movement across the chapters below, it is from the textual toward the visual both in pedagogical terms and in design and printing technique. This movement mirrors a development towards the increasing visualization of information in European culture more generally and the tendency to entrust information ever more to printing and design professionals. (32) However, early modern teachers did not attempt to separate textual from visual literacy. On the contrary, much that is interesting about the schoolbooks of the day derives from their insistence upon the visual nature of all learning and on visualization as a universal intellectual technique. Renaissance schoolmasters inherited the rhetorical, psychological, and pedagogical models for this insistence from medieval memory theorists and practitioners. (33) Printing intensified this aspect of education, because it allowed teachers to put carefully designed visual models into the hands of every school child and many adults, who thereafter owned those images personally in the form of books they would keep life long.

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Printing also allowed for the display of texts in visually compelling packages. One example is Erasmus's On Eloquence (De Copia), a compilation of commonplace phrases for composition. Erasmus's book was transformed several times by teachers and printers who wandered far from the author's original intent. First it was enlarged and redesigned, then abbreviated, and still later put into tabular form. (34) Similarly, editorializing and typography altered some popular Latin grammars well beyond anything their ostensible authors could have recognized. In the case of emblems and almost contemporaneously in handwriting instruction manuals, printing as a design technology made possible entirely new genres of book. Like many other things in the history of the book, the design changes wrought by printing were immense in quantitative terms but developed qualitatively only gradually, sometimes through collaborations by authors and printers and sometimes independently of the efforts (and wishes) of teachers. Tracing design changes in some detail, therefore, has been a primary concern of mine.

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Throughout this online book, I have also been concerned with marketing issues, because these are genuinely new considerations in the age of print. This bias again reflects my sense that early modern culture was profoundly visual. The invention of printing multiplied the number of books and prints in the world and thereby altered irrevocably the market for ideas. It created mass-produced printed objects for every phase of life, every social class, every age group. One of the more immediate results of the printing revolution was the appearance in multiples and ubiquitously of the word on public display, not just in churches, schools, and libraries where medieval people encountered public words, but also in homes, shops, taverns, theaters, city streets and squares, even at rural roadsides.

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Images, of course, had always been labeled and often incorporated words in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. In learned circles the ekphrastic evocation of a work of art was a recognized literary genre. But the medieval public for images was immensely larger than the public for written words. Literacy rates were just too low for images to function widely with written accompaniment. Printing, it seems, not only made for increases in literacy (erratically, it is true, but inevitably); it also made it useful to pair almost every image with words -- words that explained or labeled objects, words that teased or intrigued viewers, and words that sold the ideas and images to which they were attached. (35) Textbook publishing could not but be directly involved in this change and was perhaps more susceptible to it than other fields of printing. For textbooks were the tools with which both elite and common folk learned to decipher the abundance of new words and images around them.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Textbook history privileges the visual aspects of pedagogy over the oral/aural ones. Only rarely, mostly in drilling books, can we actually hear teachers lecture or students recite. Moreover, if there is a single, general movement across the chapters…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/005","title":"0.05 Seen and Not Heard","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

My overall approach has been to choose a very few texts and authors to explore in some depth and a few others to set the broader context. Typically the textbooks treated at length merit inclusion either because they are telling in pedagogical terms (they were widely used, or somehow innovative, or else highly traditional), or because their publishing history exemplifies some particular problem of production or marketing. The comedies of Terence, the Donat, and the proverbs of Pseudo-Cato (treated in chapters one and two), for example, were traditional school texts with particularly long publication histories. Inherited from the pagan past, they had been moralized across centuries of classroom use in the Christian Middle Ages. These texts show how medieval manuscript models were transformed, sometimes slowly and at other times in rapid spurts, before the invention of print, by print technology, and again by changes in pedagogical fashion.

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By contrast, most Latin grammars, whether innovative or conservative, were modern print products that had short and local histories. Twenty years was a long life for such a text, fifty or more a rare feat. (Chapters three and four offer examples.) Only a few grammars remained in use for centuries (examples are discussed in chapters four and five). Alternatives to the most popular texts were offered at several periods during the course of the long sixteenth century. I have tried to include works, then, with both long and short, wide-spread and local use.

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Most of what I have included concerns the Latin schools and the Latin curriculum. Latin was the international language of humanism, and Latin schools offered the most prestigious, sophisticated, and internationalizing kind of education. They promoted the creation of schoolbooks to match in both prestige and ambition. Latin books, even elementary ones, had an international market, so the study of those printed in Italy (especially Venice) has particular importance for the wider history of educational publishing. Textbooks imported into Italy offer still other insights on marketing.

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However, humanism created a philological world in which serious study of the vernaculars could also be undertaken, and so in the final two chapters I have also tried to survey other kinds of textbooks on the Italian market and beyond Italy. Those for commercial education, mathematics, and music represent the future of European textbook publishing. (They are treated in chapter six.) As a coda (chapter seven), I address the history of a new form, the emblem book, which was invented by humanists in the sixteenth century and sometimes used in schools. All these books may be seen as popularizations of Latin high culture, and early on they typically had this function whatever else their authors may have been attempting. As the sixteenth century progressed, however, these vernacular forms also developed a logic -- or more exactly, a series of logics -- of their own. Considering them mere popularizations would distort the meanings they had even in the earliest years of printing in Italy. (26) Specifically, the authors and publishers of vernacular textbooks seem to have felt a particular need to moralize loftily in traditional Christian terms. This tendency derived in part from worries about popularizing. Popularizers knew that they were offering tools once restricted to elites to a broader audience and they worked hard to teach the proper, moral applications of technique. (27)

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Traditional Latin pedagogy communicated many lessons to the new vernacular teaching, most importantly the notion that all learning should be an education to virtue. This stance was reflected directly in schoolbooks on both sides of the linguistic divide. Modern scholars differ in their evaluations of the effectiveness of the humanist program as an education to moral decision making, but they tend to agree that Latin educators consistently claimed to be teaching morals as well as literary or scientific subjects. (28) Vernacular teachers did the same. The publisher of one arithmetic put it thus:

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This book is offered to those thoughtful and modest youths, whom it will please to study it with diligence (all agitation put aside). Finding it corrected in many places and with several pertinent additions, and taking pleasure in its convenient usefulness, they will take care to give thanks to Jesus Christ, who has granted that they be able to work for the common benefit of good folk. (29)

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This kind of introduction was not at all unusual. The sentiments are repeated over and over with increasing urgency as the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter Reform progressed. (30)

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Whether the subject was language, handwriting, mathematics, geography or music, humanist teachers took their cue from Plato, more or less Christianized as needed. Teachers merely tailored the notion of educating the good citizen in moral behaviors to the subject at hand and to the level of discourse they chose for it. This was the strategy of music teacher Franchino Gaffurio, writing in the 1490s:

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Socrates and Plato and also the Pythagoreans, attributing a moral resource to music, ordered by a common law that adolescents and youth, and young women too, be educated in music, not for inciting to desire, through which this discipline becomes cheapened, but for moderating the movements of the soul through rule and reason. . . . Now, since the nature of boys is restless and desirous of amusements all the time and on that account does not tolerate severe discipline, Plato himself orders that boys be educated to honest music, the pleasure of which most commonly offers the pathways of virtue. On the other hand it is occasionally also to be assigned to older men as an honest amusement for the consolation of a laborious life. (31)

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Gaffurio here echoed several sentiments that derived from his classical sources and that were commonplaces of humanist pedagogy. Learning is life-long; it is best achieved when discipline can be combined with pleasure; it conduces to the common good.

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In the ancient world, and in most Latin-school contexts of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, these generalizations were intended for the political classes. Only boys of respectable birth would need to master the commonplaces. Starting in the early years of the sixteenth century, publishers of vernacular textbooks faced a new need, to expand such classicizing ideals to apply in the market for mass-produced and relatively cheap books aimed at a new public. They were helped along by expertise they had gained in the marketplace for Latin textbooks in the first fifty years of printing and by an advertising rhetoric they had also developed in that period.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"My overall approach has been to choose a very few texts and authors to explore in some depth and a few others to set the broader context. Typically the textbooks treated at length merit inclusion either because they are telling in pedagogical terms…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/004","title":"0.04 Moralizing Pedagogy","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The sources for this study are varied. Where possible I have consulted the archives of printers, booksellers, and teachers. But for the history of schoolbooks proper, I have privileged above all the title pages, prefaces, and appendixes of printed textbooks and works on pedagogical theory. These undoubtedly offer the most authoritative information about the intentions of authors and publishers. Sometimes they tell us all we can know about a given author or teacher. Always they tell us what the editors and authors wanted us to know, even though it is often maddeningly unlike what we really want to figure out.

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Advertisements on the title page, 1519 (click to enlarge - 454 KB jpeg image)
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As the fifteenth century turned to the sixteenth, it became more and more common to festoon new texts and new editions of ancient texts with commendatory letters and poetry, that is, with endorsements. Schoolbooks, naturally, were usually endorsed by teachers. Lisa Jardine has shown how these commendations evidence networks of patronage and circles of intellectual acquaintance. As such they point up how textbooks could be more than popularizations for students. They were also important loci of intellectual debate among humanists. Prefatory texts must be read as self-conscious advertising prose; but they sometimes also offer more candid remarks. There are moments when teachers, authors, editors, printers, or publishers speak directly about two subjects that concern this book deeply -- how teachers got new schoolbooks into print, and how students used them. (36)

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NOTE

\n","excerpt":"The sources for this study are varied. Where possible I have consulted the archives of printers, booksellers, and teachers. But for the history of schoolbooks proper, I have privileged above all the title pages, prefaces, and appendixes of printed…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/006","title":"0.06 Voices Nonetheless","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The potential of such sources to give us useful clues may be clearer if we listen briefly to the authorial, editorial, and pedagogical voices present in one modestly successful Latin grammar, that of Pescennio Francesco Negro (1452 - ca. 1523). Negro was an influential author. His Forms of Letter-Writing was published repeatedly in Italy and in Germany, France, the Low Countries, and Spain. His more basic schoolbook, Ten Chapters On Grammar, had more modest success both North and South of the Alps. (37)

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A handsome 1508 title page
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There is rarely anything really new in grammar, obviously, but teachers did make use of print to embody their own teaching methods, and their promoters almost always claimed innovations even when there were none. (38) The marketers of a 1508 Milan edition of Negro's grammar included a successful commercial printer, Gottardo da Ponte, and a printer/publisher, Leonardo Vegio, whose name appears on many humanist textbooks. Vegio gave his public an unusual amount of specific, flattering information about Negro in the conventional humanist form of a letter to the young son of a wealthy and powerful patron. Vegio started by naming the present Milanese printer, a locally recognized figure:

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Since Gottardo da Ponte, citizen of Milan, well knows that among all those who have written on Latin grammar in our day none is more renowned than Francesco Negro, he [Da Ponte] has again contracted to us for printing the highly useful Grammatical Precepts at a distance of twenty-eight years from its first careful edition. ... This book leads a boy from the very cradle of letters all the way to poetic mastery and to the high point of oratory. If you study it well and work hard at it ... you will have progressed as it were in both virtue and letters, which is true nobility. (39)

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Despite the humanist veneer, this is pure advertising. It was no small claim to say that Negro was the most famous grammarian of his age, especially since his reputation was in fact waning by 1508. Moreover, the exaggerated commonplaces commending the book also contain specific claims that it contains a comprehensive course. The detail that it was printed twenty-eight years back might seem to imply that it has been out of print for all the intervening years, but in fact there were at least four editions outside of Italy between the first printing of 1480 and this one, and it had appeared at Milan just a year earlier from Vegio's own press with a preface closely similar to this one. Vegio was making a different, and perhaps riskier claim, that he was setting out to remedy the book's relative absence from the market despite its author's fame.

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The preface indulged another humanist motif we will see repeatedly, that the book was being produced in the present moment for the use of a single, well-born student. This commonplace evoked the ideal that humanists worked as private tutors to great aristocratic families and composed their textbooks for a few beloved students. But Vegio's preface also made the more printerly claim that this textbook can accompany any student from his first study of letters to finished eloquence in poetry and prose. The publisher seems to vacillate between saying that the book was a good old-fashioned one, thus admitting that it might be a bit passé, and claiming that it merited a large market for its broad scope and erudition.

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So much for the publisher's foreword. The book is also dressed up with a fulsome preface and an equally wordy afterword by the author. By contrast to his unapologetic promoters, Negro himself affected the affable humility and patience of a good Christian humanist. He also assumed that the field of grammar was nastily competitive. These themes, which follow ancient and medieval models, would remain characteristic of printed grammars. (40) The 1508 author's preface was lifted from the first edition of 1480, so it is a print product; but it was in the form of a pre-publication letter to a noble patron, a Milanese ambassador to Venice. The voice was presented as somehow timeless, and yet it addresses very present-day issues of marketing:

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Therefore I decided to send to you, excellent man, a brief work of grammar which I recently wrote but which has not yet been disseminated widely. And this is the reason I took up this work: not because I imagined that it would be praised as superior to what has already been written in this field of study by the ancients, or so that I would be compared to them, and even less that anyone should say that I have added anything. For I do not have such temerity or boldness. Rather it was for love of you ... to whom I am indebted. For I recalled to myself how much boys worry their studies at this age. (41)

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To this oft-repeated theme of the teacher's compassion for students who had difficulty learning Latin, Negro added an equally conventional concern for the next generation, in this case for his addressee's sons.

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Tropes of parental piety and of the teacher acting in loco parentis were more or less obligatory in humanist pedagogical prefaces. Negro went on, however, to anticipate criticism for his ambition and for the success of his work on the market:

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I have collected into a single brief work all the flowers of the humanities, and I have mapped out a very short road by which a man may easily acquire them, so that he can become learned. But there will be some, perhaps, who will try to denigrate our work, especially since we have stirred up old detractors before its publication and will have acquired new ones as well, all of them, we judge, acting like a swarm of midges who think they can bite an elephant. Let those who would pester our writings be exhorted, however, to read first and attack later. For although there may not be learning enough in me, nor yet a complete understanding of the material (which is perhaps necessary), still that sentiment may apply to me which we read of Apelles in respect to Alexander and of Phidias in respect to Olympian Jove, namely we find that greater praise resulted the greater were those whose models they imitated. (42)

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An avuncular ideal
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Prefaces at the turn of the sixteenth century often read this way, alternating humanist commonplaces of humility, altruism, and disdain for adversaries with specific marketing claims. Prefatory letters were intended as examples of classicizing prose; but we must also remember to read them as advertisements for printed products. The authors feigned respect for certain conventions of the manuscript age, but they were equally aware of the public for printed works. (43) Among teachers in particular it was important to sound learned and avuncular even as claims were made for exciting new classroom techniques or for the best old-fashioned ones.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The potential of such sources to give us useful clues may be clearer if we listen briefly to the authorial, editorial, and pedagogical voices present in one modestly successful Latin grammar, that of Pescennio Francesco Negro (1452 - ca. 1523). Negro…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/007","title":"0.07 The Case of Francesco Negro","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Beyond such advertising prose, it is important to look for other evidence in surviving textbooks -- layout and design, paper and type choices, ownership marks and annotations. While the basic teaching texts in these books are sources for the history of pedagogy, the front matter, apparatus, and design elements are primary documents for marketing strategy. This is an area where examining as many books, as many editions, and as many copies as possible is a distinct asset. The ways in which a given text is arranged and printed during the lifetime of an author may tell us about his intentions for the text, especially if the resulting layout is unusual or innovative and we can also surmise that the work was done under his supervision. If a text of the sort changes after the apparent involvement of its author ends, we can be even more certain of his involvement in the original case. (44) I have included some clear examples of both these phenomena (Pomponio Leto and Giovanni Cantalicio in chapter two; Antonio Mancinelli in chapter three; Josse Bade and Jan de Spauter in chapter four). In other cases, it seems equally clear that design and marketing innovations were the work of printers or publishers, not of the authors (Tacuino, Rusconi, and Vegio in chapter three; the publishers of Gian Alberto Bossi in chapters two and five). The unique case of Aldo Manuzio (1449 or 50-1515) who was both author and publisher of textbooks, turns out to be less informative than most, since it is not possible to separate his pedagogical and printerly motives. (45)

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Annotations in surviving textbooks offer a particular set of interpretive problems, but they can be as valuable for understanding textbooks as for other kinds of authorship and readership. (46) I have employed them sparingly in this book, primarily to explicate how the marketing of some books seems to have been reflected in actual classroom usage. In other words, the annotations of students and teachers can be a test of the effectiveness of the often extravagant claims made on title pages or in prefaces. As Kristian Jensen has noted, most annotated schoolbooks that survive bear marks made by teachers not students, no doubt because teachers and institutions were more likely than individual pupils to reuse books from year to year, to have them bound, and to save them. Annotated schoolbooks, then, tend to witness the opinions and practices of a professional class of humanists struggling to make do with the textbooks they found on the market. (47)

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Boys will be boys
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The biggest problem with notes in schoolbooks, however, is that they can be about anything. A student's textbooks became reference books in the years after formal schooling ended. It often happened that a book acquired many layers of notes that do not tell us much about its classroom use. (48) Again, a single example will stand for the problems of the class. A copy of Niccolò Perotti's highly successful Rudimenta grammatices printed at Venice in 1478 and now at the Newberry Library is not particularly heavily annotated, but the contemporary and near-contemporary notes it does bear are of the most varied sort. Alas, they do not add up to anything much. The back cover of the book has many childish scribbles of a grammar-school sort, but they could as easily be pen trials by adult readers.

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Conventional marginalia
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On early leaves, an attentive student or teacher has added notes that index some of the subjects treated. The same hand made some underlining and other conventional pointers that confirm something we know from many other copies, that Perotti's work was mined for vocabulary study. A similar hand, though probably not the same person, gave a very few Italian equivalents for some of the less familiar entries in Perotti's long word lists.

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The scholar's hand (click to enlarge - 550 KB jpeg file)
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A distinctive formal hand, probably of the early sixteenth century, added a single long note in the margin to Perotti's discussion of comparatives and superlatives. As this annotator indicated punctiliously, he copied here a passage on the superlative taken not from another grammarian but from a standard university-level philosophy text, a commentary on Duns Scotus' Quaestiones super universae Porphyrii.

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Ownership mark (click to enlarge - 156 KB jpeg file)
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On the last page of text, there is a note by a different sort of reader altogether. It is the scribbled ownership mark of \"Maestro Barnaba son of Maestro Fabiano, barber,\" who notes that the book was acquired in exchange for a bushel of beans (or perhaps as security for a loan in the form of beans). These various notes take us from the grammar school classroom to a private study, then to a university setting, and on to a tradesman's shop. They offer a lot of information about places where the book was to be found, but they do not reveal much about how this copy of Perotti was used in the classroom. (49)

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In the productive hands of teachers and editors, however, schoolbook annotations could be more pregnant, leading to entirely new textbooks. Schoolmasters frequently decided to publish their own classroom materials, often, it would seem, with little ambition beyond the guaranteed local market of their own students. These strictly local products embody the same tricks of the teacher's trade that we find repeatedly in the margins of widely used books. They are evidence for the reading and teaching habits of their authors, and also for their dissatisfaction with received textbooks. As the sixteenth century progressed, moreover, a whole new genre of Latin textbook came into existence based on the kind of annotations we find in schoolbooks. This was the vocabulary drill book based on a specific classical author whose works were used in intermediate grammar school courses. Cicero was the author most often treated in this way. Apparently these drill books were intended in part to relieve the basic grammar course of the elaborate vocabulary study that had come to burden it in the late fifteenth century. Teachers could defer study of specialized vocabulary until the intermediate course when students would encounter these words while reading the standard authors.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Beyond such advertising prose, it is important to look for other evidence in surviving textbooks -- layout and design, paper and type choices, ownership marks and annotations. While the basic teaching texts in these books are sources for the history…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/008","title":"0.08 Graphics Too","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

A great deal has been learned in recent years about the economics of publishing in general, and it is possible therefore to document the financial circumstances under which many individual textbooks were produced. As with other kinds of books, we see a movement away from the subsidized production that characterized the earliest printing ventures and towards genuine market products in the sense of books produced on speculation. Increasingly publishers were betting on a large existing demand, on a ready market for new textbooks, or on their ability to create demand through advertising. (50)

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In some ways, textbooks, particularly the perennial favorites inherited from the Middle Ages, were ahead of the market in this regard because at every period some of them could be produced cheaply for students every printer knew were out there. Even in the early years of printing, when teachers did not expect every student to have a textbook in hand, they could see the value of doing so if the text was an old standard and the booklet in question was cheap enough. As we will see in the chapters to follow, some of these smaller textbooks were bread-and-butter work for printers who could produce them quickly in the down time between larger and riskier projects.

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Large texts and suites of textbooks designed to fit a particular teacher's course were among the earliest examples we know of collaborative publishing with shared risk among investors. The risks could be minimized by having a successful teacher as collaborator, since he could guarantee that his present and future students would buy the books. Sometimes these teachers also provided part of the cash needed to capitalize the venture, while in other cases, printers or their backers undertook all the financial risk on speculation that the reputation of a well-known teacher would create a market. This latter case was particularly likely for university-level textbooks, where the investment was large but the authors were genuine celebrities. Local grammar masters in the fifteenth century had less fame, so they often had to participate financially themselves if they wished to publish new and untried works. In the sixteenth century it was rarer for teachers to invest, but there are probable cases as late as the fifteen forties. (51)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"A great deal has been learned in recent years about the economics of publishing in general, and it is possible therefore to document the financial circumstances under which many individual textbooks were produced. As with other kinds of books, we see…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/009","title":"0.09 Economics","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

As David Hamilton points out, textbooks both \"mediate the structure of knowledge on the one hand, and the performance of teaching on the other.\" They assemble knowledge and also organize it for educational purposes. In the humanities, textbook authors recapitulated that portion of \"yesterday's learning that was to be learned by tomorrow's male adults.\" (52) Thus, insofar as this online book is a study of how textbooks were used, it falls into the category of what Roger Chartier, writing of popular culture, calls \"appropriation studies\" -- a history of \"the concrete conditions and processes that construct meaning\" in the marketplace for books. This approach involves its own set of methodological cautions, especially the need to resist seeing a small number of surviving cases as typical of whole classes of readers. (53) Here too, however, the educational setting provides us with a control of sorts on the quality of our generalizations. Classrooms, especially elementary ones, were settings for highly deliberate popularizations of learned culture. The strategies teachers incorporated into the textbooks they authored were exactly the ones they expected their students to employ in appropriating learned culture for their personal use later in life. They represent, if you will, the teachers' imagination of the students' appropriational acts. The design elements of such books often reflect these appropriational acts directly. Both students' and teachers' annotations in turn represent direct reactions to the expectations built into textbooks. A thoughtfully annotated textbook or a group of them can offer subtle and complex evidence for a whole range of authorial, editorial, marketing, and readerly appropriations.

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Latin grammar, although it belonged to an international publishing world, was too hidebound and traditional a field to give us a full picture of the dynamics of educational publishing, even in the early sixteenth century. For one thing, the future of textbook publishing lay (as we now recognize) in the creation of national, not international markets. Again, the most innovative textbook printing of the period happened in fields where authors wanted to present entirely new knowledge or highly practical skills to young readers. Geography and astronomy were fields where new advances were made almost yearly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century and where there was a constant tension between a respect for classical learning and Christian tradition on the one hand, and, on the other, the realization that the ancients had gotten many things seriously wrong. Vernacular literacy also allowed for new kinds of textbooks and new publics for these old subjects. Mathematics and music are telling in this regard, moving as they did from highly theoretical presentations to more practical ones across our period. Handwriting books, by contrast, grew across the sixteenth century from simple models of calligraphy with a few instructions into elaborate self-help books and even systematic treatises aimed at the professional education of scribes or secretaries. We will have repeated recourse to the evidence of books in these fields and will discuss them as a group in chapter six.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"As David Hamilton points out, textbooks both \"mediate the structure of knowledge on the one hand, and the performance of teaching on the other.\" They assemble knowledge and also organize it for educational purposes. In the humanities, textbook…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/010","title":"0.10 Cultural Appropriations","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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A bilingual Terence (click to enlarge - 689 KB jpeg file)
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This chapter describes the fate of one classroom standby, the plays of the Roman comedian Terence (2nd century B.C.E.), across the period from 1400 to 1650. A standard textbook for boys from ancient times forward, Terence achieved new popularity and new printed formats in the Renaissance, but eventually became the subject of debate among teachers because of its moral ambiguity. Printed Terences also offered many challenges to the designer, which are explored here.

","excerpt":"This chapter describes the fate of one classroom standby, the plays of the Roman comedian Terence (2nd century B.C.E.), across the period from 1400 to 1650. A standard textbook for boys from ancient times forward, Terence achieved new popularity and…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/100","title":"1.00 CHAPTER ONE: From School Author to School Book: Terence in Manuscript and Print","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Vernacular textbooks often seem less problematic on first examination than Latin schoolbooks because the non-Latin books were in fact prototypes for the textbooks that we are still using in the age of electronic literacy. But even in vernacular fields, textbooks tended (and still tend) to lag somewhat behind substantive advances in theory and practice. I hope that my study of the increasing divide between Latin and non-Latin books in the sixteenth century will offer useful parallels to the problems of textbook production in our own twenty-first century.

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Textbooks (then as now) were tools, so it should come as no surprise that the history I have attempted in this online book is a pragmatic one, concerned with the field where the practices of teachers and those of printers intersected. It will offer little beyond raw data to those interested primarily in literary theory or philosophy, and still less for intellectual history in the old fashioned sense of great ideas embodied in great books. Nonetheless, I hope this volume will offer a useful collection of case studies for scholars interested in the histories of printing, education, psychology, and language. And of course, advertising and selling books.

","excerpt":"Vernacular textbooks often seem less problematic on first examination than Latin schoolbooks because the non-Latin books were in fact prototypes for the textbooks that we are still using in the age of electronic literacy. But even in vernacular…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/011","title":"0.11 Past and Future Histories","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In 1949 the Newberry Library of Chicago commissioned a study of its printing collection from two distinguished European typographers, Konrad Bauer (1903-1970) and Stanley Morison (1889-1967). The Newberry's John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing had been abuilding for some thirty years. The library's officers wanted to know how it measured up to comparable collections and what should be their next step in developing it. Among general observations about the existing collection and the market for antiquarian books that would likely feed its expansion, Bauer made several concrete recommendations, among them this one:

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...a collection destined to illustrate the history and development of the printing craft cannot be governed from an exclusively aesthetic point of view. A collection like Wing should be able to exemplify the real output of the printing press [and] the changing conditions and achievements of the trade in the course of time and in various countries.... In this line ... a collection showing the various perceptions of one dramatic work could be imagined. Terence would probably be the most convenient topic. (1)

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This opinion was seconded by Stanley Morison. Now, more than fifty years on, it is hard to imagine a world in which the second-century B.C.E. Roman comedian Terence had been printed so frequently and in so many formats as to be representative of \"the real output of the printing press\" over the long term, and harder still to imagine that Morison, Bauer, and the Newberry librarians could believe that so ancient and minor a text would provide useful specimens of everyday printing into the distant future. But the grip of Latin language and culture was still powerful in those immediate postwar years, and indeed the destruction of libraries in the second World War had led to a strong conservationist mentality in the Anglo-American book world. The great Latin authors seemed to be among the eternal verities worth saving for the future. (2)

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However eternal these authors seemed in 1949, they had not always been so. Some esteemed authors had not survived the decline of the Athenian Academy, the fall of the Roman Empire, or the destruction of the great library at Alexandria. Others gained in stature or lost it during the Middle Ages. In the late fifteenth century, it was not at all clear which of the authors of the past were worth saving in the new medium of print. Terence's importance had waxed and waned through the Middle Ages. He did, however, survive the transition to print as well as changes in pedagogy that were in progress in the fifteenth century. Indeed, he was among that century's best sellers. (3) In this chapter we will see how his plays became a staple of educational printing in the Renaissance.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In 1949 the Newberry Library of Chicago commissioned a study of its printing collection from two distinguished European typographers, Konrad Bauer (1903-1970) and Stanley Morison (1889-1967). The Newberry's John M. Wing Foundation on the History of…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/101","title":"1.01 Why Terence?","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Certainly Terence was on the minds of the earliest printers in Italy, if only because the classroom use of the sometimes bawdy Terence had been a subject of debate among early humanists in the century preceding. His language had long been held to be the best model for spoken Latin. (4) But the favorite subjects of Terence -- including foolish old men, philandering youths, prostitution, transvestitism, and other forms of trickery -- posed problems for straight laced readers in every age. Most of the humanist opinions that survive are positive, but the context in which we find them suggests that some strongly negative arguments were being made at the same time. In thinking about these Renaissance evaluations of Terence, it is important to distinguish between the relatively radical literary theories of the major humanist thinkers of the first period, writers like Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) in his On Avarice and Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444) in Concerning the Study of Literature, on the one hand, and the opinions of humanist pedagogues, from Gasparino Barzizza (ca. 1360-1431) and Guarino Guarini (1374-1460) forward, on the other. Two distinct lines of thought developed about pagan authors; and the two groups of writers rarely took real account of each other. While the more philosophical writers proposed essentially aesthetic criteria for studying classical authors, the teachers stuck to pragmatic, classroom needs and frequently cited traditional medieval notions of the teaching value of authors under discussion. For the pedagogues, poetry was an aesthetic experience, to be sure, but it was also a branch of moral philosophy. Comedy could be studied to learn grammar and style, but even more importantly, it exemplified the virtues and vices in order to demonstrate how best to imitate one and avoid the other. (5)

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We know these issues were debated early in the humanist movement with specific reference to Terence. Several extended defenses of Terence survive from the period 1430-1460 that implicitly cite the opinions of earlier generations. (6) For example, Guiniforte Barzizza (1406-1463), teaching at Novara in the fourteen thirties, may be assumed to have been repeating the opinions of his famous father Gasparino (ca. 1360-1431) when he rendered a complex and nuanced opinion of the value of studying Terence. Guinoforte asserted first that it would be philological negligence to ignore the grammatical and stylistic lessons to be found there. But he added that these lessons cannot be separated from the moral ones:

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For those who study [Terence's comedies] carefully to imitate his divine elegance in speaking will also subtly discover the many natures of man, the seriousness of old age with its thrift and severity, the wantonness of youth with its prodigality and unchasteness, the lies of servants, the cunning and deceits of pimps, the arts of prostitutes, and numberless other kinds of behavior. Knowing about these things, they will be able to follow an upright manner of life and will regularly overcome the obstacles they face. (7)

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Similarly, Antonio Beccaria (ca. 1405-1474) defended poetry in general and Terence in particular in similar terms before an audience assembled by Ermolao Barbaro (1410-1471), bishop of Verona. Beccaria was a student of Vittorino da Feltre (1397-1446) and it is clear that he had he had acquired both his esteem for Terence and also the highly unoriginal themes of his defense in Vittorino's school at Mantua. (8) The life of Terence by Pietro Crinito (1465-ca. 1504), first published in 1505, treated the controversy as essentially settled. Crinito dismissed the detractors of Terence in a single sentence:

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The great Terence seems to have confirmed this, for this passage in the Adelphi is payback to calumniators who most incite to hate, where the Prologue character says, \"The very thing they esteem a hateful curse, he takes as high praise.\" (9)

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Such a dismissal begged all substantive questions, of course, but the passage offers a typically humanist witticism by turning an ancient author's own words about his contemporaries upon his modern detractors. To see how the humanists had come to this rather complacent view of Terence, we must retrace our steps and examine the medieval tradition of using the Roman comedian.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Certainly Terence was on the minds of the earliest printers in Italy, if only because the classroom use of the sometimes bawdy Terence had been a subject of debate among early humanists in the century preceding. His language had long been held to be…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/102","title":"1.02 Terence in Mind","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In medieval usage, the fundamental texts of any discipline were its auctores, literally \"authors,\" though at all periods this Latin term auctor had the meaning \"founder\" or \"author of first principles\" and therefore much of the modern sense of \"an inventor,\" or \"an authority.\" The scholastics divorced the word from an original notion of personality or personal authorship and attached it to the authoritative text itself. Any anthology of texts or collection of laws could be an auctor, whether or not the collection to hand was the work of a single author or even of an identifiable one. The scholastic compendium of canon law that achieved universal acceptance as a textbook was indifferently called by its title, Decretum, or by its editor, Gratian, almost from the beginning. It was rarely called and even more rarely cited as \"the Decretum of Gratian\" or by its more descriptive subtitle, Concordance of Discordant Canons. The comparable study-text for theology was the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Although Peter authored other works, this one became so standard that it was cited everywhere as \"the Lombard,\" as if he were the only scholar from that region to write on theology, and as if the historical Peter had made only this one work. Even a highly literary textbook like the fables of Aesop had an author whose name became the title of the book, in large part because he was not in fact the author (in any modern sense) of the text in question but rather its inspiration.(10)

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This habit of mind was universal, and must be kept in mind as we navigate the labyrinth of textbook history. \"Donatus,\" we will discover in a later chapter, was a book more often than an author, and in Italy at least, a book containing texts not authored by the historical grammarian Aelius Donatus. Terence, widely used as a reading text for intermediate students of Latin, was similarly both author and book. The modern question of historical authorship did not apply in this case. Only six plays from the pen of Publius Terentius Afer (d. 159 B.C.E.) survive. They usually circulated as an anthology, and so the textbook Terence was typically the real Terence, or rather, the surviving Terence. Which is not to say that students mastered Terence. In many schools not all six plays were read, or they were not read equally thoroughly. From the twelfth century onward many pseudo-Terentian plays circulated too, taught instead of or alongside the real plays. These were patent imitations and only rarely mistaken for genuine, but they were so widely known that they were Terentian auctores in their own right. They were usually called by their main characters, Pamphilus or Geta, for example. (11)

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The early humanists successfully challenged the mythic world of medieval auctores by distinguishing historical contexts for individual works, by rejecting some sources entirely, and by subjecting all of them to a critique of their language and style. Their work uncoupled textual and literary authority from doctrinal orthodoxy, even from Christian morality. (12) In so doing, they created opportunities for re-thinking the place of certain authors in the elementary and intermediate school curricula. Gradually medieval school auctores became textbook authors in our modern sense of the word. This transformation was wrought over and over in the course of the long sixteenth century, laboriously achieved anew in the case of each ancient or medieval text.

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In this chapter, Terence will serve as a case study for the way Renaissance teachers and publishers transformed school texts from medieval auctores into modern textbooks. These modernized authors were responsible for (but separable from) their textual productions, and the textbook editors were sometimes more important on the market than the authors. Printing, of course, contributed to this phenomenon. The singular manuscript copy of Terence had a weighty authority that hundreds of near-identical Terences would not. The many competing editions that eventually flooded the market created a crisis of authority. But printing was only one dimension of the larger story of recovering the historical authors of antiquity. For our purposes it is more appropriate in any case to speak of the market for print rather than of printing itself, since marketing (more than technology) made the textbook author.

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Terence is a useful case study because the comedies were so widely read, or, more precisely, because teachers so generally claimed to teach them. The textbook Terence, however, has a more complex history than these near-universal claims imply. In some parts of Northern Europe it was to be found in classrooms more or less continuously from the central Middle Ages into the fifteenth century, while in Italy it had gone into eclipse and was re-introduced into the curriculum by the early humanists. By the time printing arrived in Italy, Terence had a regular place in the schools. Its place was sanctioned by the antiquity of the text and the quality of its language, but not by continuous use across many centuries. By contrast to some other reading texts, Terence was a new arrival, a humanist fashion.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In medieval usage, the fundamental texts of any discipline were its auctores, literally \"authors,\" though at all periods this Latin term auctor had the meaning \"founder\" or \"author of first principles\" and therefore much of the modern sense of \"an…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/103","title":"1.03 School Authors","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

We may gauge the way in which printing was only a secondary factor in the history of this ancient author by comparing the pedagogical and editorial history of Terence to that of Ovid. Both poets were regularly praised by medieval and Renaissance teachers for the quality of their verse. Both were models for learners from linguistic and literary points of view. But Ovid at most periods was considered a marginal or optional author in schools because of the frankly sexual content of his poems. In medieval schools, the Remedia amoris -- because it was read as a caution against sex -- was more likely to be read with students than even the Metamorphoses with its wealth of useful stories. (13) In Italy there is good evidence that Ovid was studied throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance; but the Heroides, not the other works, particularly appealed to Italian teachers. In the fifteenth century, the less amorous works of Ovid continued to appear in schools, but they were to some degree displaced by revived interest in other poets like Persius and Juvenal. (14)

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Terence, like Ovid, dealt with secular life and sexual innuendo but did not suffer quite the stigma that the frank and explicit Ovid did. Since he wrote verse plays and not lyric poetry, Terence was not a direct rival to Ovid in instructional terms. In Italian schools there is some evidence that Terence was used regularly until the late twelfth century but then fell out of favor. He was read and studied by scholars and used by writers from the time of Dante to the end of the fourteenth century; but the plays were apparently not much used for nearly two hundred years. Regional traditions of advanced study and detailed commentary grew up around important teachers, but there was no commonly used text or commentary throughout Italy. (15)

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Around 1400 and in a sustained fashion through the rest of the fifteenth century, all this changed. Terence became one of the most frequently used school authors. This revival must be attributed to the humanist interest in dramatic texts generally and in the long critical tradition that treated Terence as the greatest master of Latin comedy. Humanists praised the varied vocabulary of Terence, his wit, and his supposed appeal to students for well-drawn characters and amusing plots. He was regularly linked in humanist literary opinion to Virgil, apparently in imitation of the judgement expressed in the commentary of Aelius Donatus that these two represent the greatest Latin poetry. Donatus had even opined that Terence was the better and more persuasive writer. Above all, the humanists proposed Terence as the best possible text for students who wished to acquire Latinitas, by which they meant authentic Latin speech patterns. (16) Given the relative frequency with which Terence and Ovid were used in the schools and the humanists' strong teaching interest in Terence, we might expect to find that Terence was the more quickly and widely printed of the two. This was in fact the case, but not by as much as the earlier manuscript tradition might have suggested; and after the very first years of printing the two poets had very different fates, Ovid being the more popular. Furthermore, Ovid was the subject of intense editorial work from the start; while Terence was printed and reprinted in texts so bad that they provoked protest from prominent humanists against printing itself. (17)

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The earliest printing in Italy was dominated by the patronage and interests of humanist-trained churchmen. It was not driven by the needs of school masters. In the very first years (up to 1470), most of the texts published in Italy were religious; the only classical author to be printed immediately was Cicero. The elite humanist groups, however, were involved in a virtual frenzy of Ovidianism by the time printing technology became common around 1470. From a school author occasionally read, Ovid was being transformed into the subject of intense scholarly and literary study. Professional humanists mined the Metamorphoses especially for vocabulary and for mythological references. Writers of all sorts sought out Ovid as a model of refined style both in Latin and Italian, and his mythological characters became principals in the dramatic plots of vernacular plays. (18) Terence by contrast was kid's stuff, literally -- an accepted part of the curriculum for schoolboys but not much imitated by literary writers until the very end of the century.

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It is perhaps no surprise then that in the first full decade of printing in Italy (1470-1479) Ovid received no fewer than eighteen editions with texts curated by humanists of great distinction. There seems to have been a race of sorts in Italy to bring a good, critical Opera omnia into print. In the single year 1471 two rival editions appeared; we do not even now know which was the real first. (19) Moreover, Ovid appeared with increasing frequency in Italy in all sorts of formats as the century went on. In the fourteen eighties twenty-four editions of various works appeared, and in the nineties an astounding thirty eight, so that fully eighty editions appeared before 1500. (20) Contrast this with the French case, where no edition of any Ovidian work appeared until 1495. (21) Clearly, the interest in Ovid was an Italian fashion that created a new market for poetry. The public was hungry.

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Meanwhile, Terence got a broader immediate reception in print, but a slower critical start and less sustained interest, no doubt because the market was largely educational. The first printed editions (we do not know which was first since they are undated) were made at Strasbourg and Venice about 1470. Other editions followed quickly at Venice, Naples, and Rome. The real burst of activity was in this first decade, when thirty editions appeared in Italy. Already by 1480, a shop in Padua could offer three different Venetian editions, one with commentary labeled \"of the first printing,\" a less expensive one \"of the latest printing,\" and a third, apparently without commentary but \"well printed\" and cheaper still. (22) Later, the pace of reprinting slowed, perhaps because the school market became saturated. There were twenty-two new editions in the fourteen eighties and eighteen in the nineties. (23) As in the case of Ovid, this trend contrasts with that in Northern Europe, where Terence was only rarely printed in the early years of printing but gained in momentum from about 1485 onward. In Italy, while editions with commentaries (and the commentaries themselves) multiplied through the first thirty years, the text of Terence had to wait until the very end of the century for substantial revision.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"We may gauge the way in which printing was only a secondary factor in the history of this ancient author by comparing the pedagogical and editorial history of Terence to that of Ovid. Both poets were regularly praised by medieval and Renaissance…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/104","title":"1.04 Printing and the Canon","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Terence was kid's stuff, to be sure. But another reason for the critical neglect of Terence was the difficulty of emending a text that was already widely available in manuscript. Over seven hundred manuscripts of the comedies survive, by far the largest number dating from the first half of the fifteenth century. The textual tradition was complex, further muddied by the way manuscripts were used in the schools. The plays had long since acquired many notes that derived from local traditions of teaching. As Claudia Villa has described it, Terence was not a stable or simple text, not even a single one, but rather a teaching anthology. She calls this living tradition the lectura Terentii, in which the six plays with their ancient headings and notes were further elaborated by various modern readings. (24) The manuscript tradition of Terence is complicated even more because one version of the text was illustrated, deriving it would seem, from a manuscript assembled in Italy in the fourth or fifth century by one Calliopius. The illustrations display a real or imagined stage production and were known in Northern Europe from Carolingian times onward. (25) The pictures do not appear in most Italian manuscripts and so will concern us only later, when they are reintroduced into Italy in printed form.

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A manuscript Terence, ca. 1420
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The mysterious Calliopius, however, was an important part of the textual tradition (and the teaching tradition as well), since he probably acted as editor for the plays in the form they had in the Middle Ages. The functioning of the teaching tradition (Villa's lectura Terentii) may be seen in capsule in the way Calliopius was treated. For most medieval commentators, Calliopius was a famous actor of Terence's time, among those responsible for the production of the plays. This error was a misreading of performance rubrics that accompany the text in Calliopius's redaction; it was repeated from classroom to classroom for centuries. Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) seems to have been the first to recognize and correct the error, referring to Calliopius as revisor (he meant editor) rather than repetitor (actor). In this small matter as in many others of greater import, humanist scholars inherited a weighty mass of traditional lore about Terence from the medieval schools. (26)

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No wonder, then, that that typical Italian manuscript of Terence is an annotated one. The notes and other apparatus may be elementary and sparse or elaborate and extensive. The text may be presented as prose or verse. The voices of the individual characters may be emphasized by the layout or obscured by it. But it is rare to find a Terence entirely without introduction and annotation. (27) It is fair to say, then, that the Renaissance inherited many Terences and not one, and that the text was hardly ever seen without apparatus that derived from the medieval classroom. The task of sorting out the manuscripts and recovering a single, widely acceptable text was the work of a century and more. Moreover, scholarly work on the text actually ran counter to the much more frequent use of Terence, as a textbook for intermediate study of Latin. The classroom text resisted innovation. Like any textbook, teachers favored the version they already knew. (28)

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The usual manuscript Terence of the Renaissance was a slender but largish paper book in folio form and, from the fourteen thirties onward, in humanist script. The scribe would arrange the text in a single column and leave broad margins to allow for the expected annotations. Since these books were most often teachers' copies, they were relatively unadorned. Their simplicity, however, does not mean that these were graphically unsophisticated manuscripts. In fact they were functional in the extreme. Running heads differentiated the individual plays. The speakers of each part were indicated with sigla in the margin or in red ink within the lines. When the text was presented as verse, it was carefully arranged in typical humanist form with a capital letter at the beginning of each line set out into the left margin. This form was classic for poetry in the humanist classroom, and it presented a fairly stable text of Terence, certainly one that was resistant to extensive change. On the other hand, it was not a form sanctioned by ancient usage. As a widespread model, it only dated from1430 or so when humanist script definitively took over. It conditioned how Terence would continue to look in Italy because this was the fashion of Italian humanism, but it had only limited impact on manuscripts or early printed versions elsewhere.

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The most important Terence manuscript to survive from the ancient world was discovered only in the late fifteenth century. This was the so-called Codex Bembinus of the fifth century, presently Vat. lat. 3226. It is unrelated textually to all the other witnesses, which derive from the recension of Calliopius. The Bembinus takes its name from Bernardo Bembo (d.1519) who acquired it about 1454 from the minor poet Giannantonio de' Pandoni (1405-1485). It does not seem to have gotten much critical use until Agnolo Poliziano (1454-1495) collated it in 1491 with the help of Bernardo's son Pietro Bembo (1470-1547). The younger Bembo later became both a great humanist philologist and a powerful Roman cardinal, patron of other humanists. Poliziano used this source to create a more accurate division of the text into verses and into scenes, clarifying the dramatic structure of the plays. (29)

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The chronology of critical studies on Terence is important for understanding his fortune in print. Many early editions claimed the participation of a humanist editor but it is rarely possible to observe any significant work beyond correcting typographical and other obvious errors. The most specific claims to editorial work were those of Raffaele Regio (1450-1520) for a 1474 edition and Giovanni Britannico of Brescia (1462-1518) in 1485. Their prefaces are those of young humanists who had been offered the chance to exercise their conjectural powers (and make careers) upon Terence. Britannico said that he had made over a thousand changes, a vague and surely exaggerated claim. (30) Only with the work of Poliziano, some thirty years after the first Italian editions, did the humanists begin significant critical editing of the text. By this time scholars already owned a vulgate Terence of sorts, printed and reprinted in dozens of textbook editions. When Poliziano undertook his transcription, he used a printed copy as the base for his collation, one of the many editions in folio that were a staple of the humanist classroom at the period. Other humanists did the same. (31)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Terence was kid's stuff, to be sure. But another reason for the critical neglect of Terence was the difficulty of emending a text that was already widely available in manuscript. Over seven hundred manuscripts of the comedies survive, by far the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/105","title":"1.05 Terence in Manuscript","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The earliest Italian editions of Terence were handsome, straightforward and relatively unadorned folios (or more rarely, large quartos). These mimicked the folio manuscripts in humanist script that had already set the format for this text in Italy. Teachers and printers seem to have agreed that this essential school book deserved a handsome dress worthy of a classical author, but they were equally of one mind that it should not be ornamented overmuch. The six canonical plays run to about 6,200 lines of verse, fewer than 100 leaves when set in largish type (typically equivalent to14 point or slightly larger) generously leaded and with wide margins. The commentaries widely available in manuscript (and therefore to the first printers) bulked up the text considerably; but still the usual folio Terence with the late ancient commentary of Aelius Donatus in smaller type surrounding the text (called Terentius cum Donato) was a fairly slender volume of about 120 leaves. Such books were edited in the manner of scholastic texts of the Middle Ages; they represented manuals for teachers and introduced advanced students to the forms of text usual in university-level study.

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Because the plays were so often recommended for school use, however, they also attracted new humanist commentaries, which appealed to printers as added value in a competitive market. Indeed, we may well call the first thirty years of Terence in print the age of commentary. So we find such titles as Terentius cum duobus commentis or Terentius cum quattuor commentis. By the end of the century Venetian printers could offer Terentius cum quinque commentis, a standard collection with the commentaries of Donatus and Servius from the ancient world, and those of humanists Giovanni Calfurnio (d. 1503), Guy Jouenneaux (d. 1507), and Josse Bade Ascensius (1462 \"“ 1535). (32) This collection reflected the internationalism of the school use of Terence, for only one of the humanist commentators was Italian. The others were Northerners first published in France and imported by Venetian printers in the fourteen nineties to enhance the competitiveness of their books. Needless to say, five commentaries printed in parallel alongside the base text vastly enlarged the book. The late-century folios of this type often run to 250 or even 300 leaves with printed matter crowding out to the limits of the margin. Editions of the text without commentary virtually disappeared, though some printers at the end of the century continued to offer the slimmer format of Terence with a single commentary, usually that of Donatus.

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Terence with three commentaries (click to enlarge - 458 KB jpeg file)
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Terence with five commentaries (click to enlarge - 452 KB jpeg file)
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Commentaries were increasingly part of the marketing strategy of printers. As early as 1474, a Neapolitan publisher also decided to highlight the humanist editor's work in his title: \"Terentius Afer of Carthage revised from other editions and corrected by comparison with several ancient manuscripts by praiseworthy poet Angelo Sabino.\" (33) The publisher vaunted the work of Sabino (ca. 1450-1510) as that of a humanist with access to ancient manuscripts. This glorification of editors and commentators eventually found expression in the handsome title pages and frontispieces that appear in editions late in the fifteenth century. They show Terence lecturing from his professorial cathedra surrounded by admiring disciples making notes at desks, each labeled with the name of one of the commentary authors. The humanists presented themselves in these images in scholarly conversation with an ancient author. (34)

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Terence surrounded by his commentators (click to enlarge - 543 KB jpeg file)
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In the first half of the sixteenth century the number of available commentaries expanded again. To the names we have already mentioned must be added brief or thorough notes by Pietro Marso (1442-1512), Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), Bartholomaeus Latomus (1485?-1570), Adriaan van Baarland (1486-1538), Heinrich Glareanus (1488-1563), Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), Johann Rivius (1500-1553), Antònio Gouveia (1504-1565), Etienne Dolet (1506-1546), Georg Fabricius (1516-1571), and Theodor Poelmann (1510-1607?). Like earlier commentators, most of these writers were teachers and they came from all over Europe. (35) In order to reflect all this additional apparatus, page layouts became more intricate and title pages got increasingly detailed in their marketing claims. Glareanus, writing in 1540, expressed no small exasperation at the state of Terence in print:

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Concerning [Terence] today, there are so many commentaries recently printed, so many annotations, such a patched-together mosaic-work that it could appear singularly shameless to compose more. And yet...very little [of what is in print] will prove to be of any moment, while much of it instead is inept and falsely published. (36)

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Glareanus had the exaggerated claims of publishers in mind as well as the work of the annotators and editors.

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Text with commentary (click to enlarge - 673 KB jpeg file)
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Through most of the incunable period, Italian printers favored setting Terence in the usual medieval and early humanist form of text-with-commentary. They would lay out each double page spread with the base text occupying a window at the inside center, one column on each side of the inner margin or gutter. On each page the window was surrounded on three sides by commentary and the overall effect of the double-page spread was that of a framed picture or a carpet with a central medallion.

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The page dissolves (click to enlarge - 859 KB jpeg file)
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When the commentary was long, the corresponding text was fairly short so the commentary filled the page; the double-page spread appeared to have a single small window and a broad frame. In cases with less commentary, the inner window of text could be enlarged relative to the frame. And when the base text was particularly long in relation to the commentary, the format dissolved into a four-column layout with the commentary occupying the outside columns on each spread and the base text in long columns at the center.

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An alternate layout (click to enlarge - 900 KB jpeg file)
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Starting about 1495, especially in editions with four or five commentaries, some printers of Terence favored an alternate layout, also based on manuscript models, with a window centered on each page and commentary on all four sides of the window. In such a format, the double-page spread appears to have two windows within the commentary frame. Since the text of Terence also breaks into acts and scenes, this layout not rarely produced double-page spreads that have three or even four distinct windows floating like islands in the commentary. Eventually, printers would abandon the medievalizing windows entirely and resort to a simple two-column-per-page format, alternating text and commentary in each successive column. In all these formats, the base text was set in larger type than the commentary and leaded more generously, so that the two hierarchically related blocks of text were sharply distinct.

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A third possible layout (click to enlarge - 668 KB jpeg file)
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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The earliest Italian editions of Terence were handsome, straightforward and relatively unadorned folios (or more rarely, large quartos). These mimicked the folio manuscripts in humanist script that had already set the format for this text in Italy…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/106","title":"1.06 The Folio Terence","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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1493 Illustrations for a play of Terence (click to enlarge - 962 KB JPEG image)
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Beginning in the fourteen nineties, it became common to ornament the more ambitious Italian editions of Terence with small woodcuts at the start of each scene showing the characters on a stage that more or less accurately imagined the interior of a classical Roman theater. These illustrations were based on those in medieval codices discovered and studied by humanists in the fifteenth century. The first illustrated edition was that published by Jean Trechsel at Lyon in 1493. The program of its illustrations is to be attributed to Josse Bade (1462-1535), a Flemish schoolmaster working for Trechsel in the period. Bade also edited the text, as he did for many other schoolbooks, and he provided a preface suggesting the pictures were added for the edification of those illiterate in Latin (presumably those who might hear the plays read aloud from this edition without themselves being able to read Latin with facility). The book was immediately imitated throughout Europe. The first illustrated Italian edition dates from later in the same year, 1493, supervised by Milan printer/publisher Lazzaro Soardi, who reprinted Bade's text and commentary as well as the illustrations. Soardi applied for several privileges from the Venetian authorities to protect his investment in the text, commentaries, and woodcuts. He reprinted the book with additional commentaries into the first decade of the sixteenth century. (37)

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Schematic illustrations (click to enlarge - 705 KB jpeg image)
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Since the illustrative scheme was complex, only a few sets of woodcuts for the six plays of Terence were ever made. These were used and reused by printers across the half-century in which this style of illustration was popular. Typically they consist of one cut per scene with many repeats, to a total of about 150 cuts for the 300-odd scenes in the six plays, plus an author portrait which typically stood at the head of the prologue to each play. Almost all the sequences that survive are close copies of the Trechsel/Bade cuts. (38) Giorgio Rusconi made an attempt to simplify the Trechsel illustrations in 1518. Rusconi created blocks to represent each single character, arranged against a uniform background of drapery. These were assembled in various combinations to represent the persona in each scene. (39)

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"Comic Strip" Illustrations (click to enlarge - 433 KB jpeg image)
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Only one alternative sequence of illustrations is known, also derived from the Trechsel cuts, but vastly simplified. This was made for an edition published by Giovanni Tacuino of Venice in 1522. In this scheme, each of the six plays was given a comic-strip style series of scenes arranged in two strips of four scenes. There are always just eight cells irrespective of the actual number of scenes in the play. As in the Trechsel scenes, the characters are labeled with abbreviated forms (Pan for Pamphilus, Da for Davus and the like) that anticipate the order of arrival of the characters in the plays. Such scenes in comic-strip form, however, cannot in fact be read as representing the full dramatic action. Indeed it is hard to imagine how they were read at all. At best they functioned as an aide-memoire for a reader who already knew the plot, characters, and major turns of events. This reader could only have been a teacher familiar with the plays, and even he could only use them to help students in the classroom imagine a theater. The Tacuino blocks were used in later editions by Guglielmo de Fontaneta and Venturino Ruffinelli and they were copied at least once in smaller format for a 1526 quarto edition by Alessandro Paganino. (40)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Beginning in the fourteen nineties, it became common to ornament the more ambitious Italian editions of Terence with small woodcuts at the start of each scene showing the characters on a stage that more or less accurately imagined the interior of a…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/107","title":"1.07 Illustrating Terence","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Terence in folio was so standardized a format that we can discern a single design tradition in Italy across the entire period from the invention of printing to the middle of the seventeenth century. Small-format Terences varied much more. The Aldine press set a pattern for printing classical poets in octavo without commentary. But while some publishers mimicked the Aldines slavishly, others felt free to offer small volumes on other models.

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Terence 1511, a typical French quarto edition (click to enlarge - 827 KB JPEG image)
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Quarto Terences were common in France and England and normal in Spain and the Netherlands but never became usual in Italy. (41) The rare examples tend to be fat volumes that include the six plays with some or all of the commentaries usual in folio editions. As such, they were offered for the teacher's market or for advanced student use, and so they competed directly with the more common folio Terences. Given the limited margins of the usual Italian small quarto, however, the form would have proved less useful for a reader who wanted to annotate the plays, a factor that no doubt induced printers to continue to favor folio formats for Terence.

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We may discern three distinct periods at which Italian printers experimented with presenting Terence in quarto. In the early fourteen seventies, a few large quartos were offered, especially at Rome, as an alternative to the folios without commentary. Alessandro Paganino produced an experimental quarto Terence in 1526 as part of a textbook series. And in the fifteen forties and fifties, a few further experiments in quarto were attempted at Venice. The only one of these latter to be reprinted was the bilingual Terence of Giovanni Fabrini, which will concern us later as an experiment in editing and translation. The fifteenth century quartos were made on very large paper so they differed little in final size from the usual small folios of the period. The form probably died out after only a few experiments because it did not offer any design advantage over the folios and because the paper it required was not significantly cheaper. (42)

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Paganino title page, 1526 (click to enlarge - 659 KB jpeg file)
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The 1526 Terence printed by Alessandro Paganino at Toscolano, exemplifies the design problems a printer faced in offering Terence with commentary in smaller quarto form. It is an ambitious volume, if somewhat backward-looking. (43) It opens promisingly enough with a typographically sophisticated title page. The handsome roman title is surrounded by a broad white-on-gray interlace border of a sort that was used repeatedly by Paganino for quarto textbooks in Latin. There are almost 300 folios numbered in roman numerals and the layout of the whole follows the folio Terences of the time in displaying the base text in a window on each page, so the double-page spread has two small windows entirely surrounded by commentary. Marginal index notes are an aid to reading, but they are squeezed rather tightly into the small space available. There are five commentaries, so Paganino was marketing to the humanist schoolmasters of Italy and their most advanced students.

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Comic strip illustrations (click to enlarge - 606 KB jpeg file)
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Paganino made one other innovation in his 1526 quarto, commissioning new copies of the Tacuino comic-strip illustrations in a form appropriate for a quarto volume. Tacuino had arranged the scenes four across in two rows at the top of the page that opened each play. Paganino had the very same eight scenes per play copied onto a full-page woodcut with two frames in each of four rows. This scheme created a handsome page to act as a frontispiece for each of the plays. Like the Tacuino strips, Paganino's were more decorative than useful, but they did fit the quarto format nicely and relieved the overall effect of the crowded text pages.

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There were hundreds of octavo editions of Terence in the sixteenth century. The recorded quartos, however, are few, and all are Venetian imprints. After Paganino in 1526, only Girolomo Scotto in 1549, Giovanni Andrea Valvassore in 1550, and Vincenzo Valgrisi in 1558 experimented with the quarto format for the standard Terence with commentaries. We might well ask why Terence was never published in Italy after 1480 in a spacious quarto without commentary. This form was normal for all kinds of classical and contemporary poetry before Aldo Manuzio offered his popular octavos, and it continued to be used for many kinds of poetry well into the sixteenth century. The simplest answer is probably that the Aldine octavo swept competitors for this kind of book from the market for classical poetry. In the case of Terence, the strong tradition of folio Terences with and without commentary no doubt also contributed to the limited demand for other formats. (44)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Terence in folio was so standardized a format that we can discern a single design tradition in Italy across the entire period from the invention of printing to the middle of the seventeenth century. Small-format Terences varied much more. The Aldine…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/108","title":"1.08 Less Than Folio","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Still, the fact of these rare quarto experiments calls into question the commonplace of bibliographical history that the Aldine octavo was the inevitable \"œbest\" format for poetry. It is true that the largest number of editions of the text without commentary were octavos and that Aldo pioneered that format. But if we look more closely at small-format Terences, we can see that even when other printers imitated Aldo's achievement they often chafed at the limits of the Aldine format. This was especially true in the case of complex dramatic texts like Terence where the frequent scene changes and indications of character made for complicated layouts. Terence in fact was a latecomer to the Aldine list. Aldo himself had planned a small-format Terence but the first Aldine octavo edition appeared only after his death. Not entirely independent of Aldo's experiments on the octavo, then, but essentially different in meaning and expectations were a number of attempts to present Terence without commentary in extra-small formats -- 12mo, 16mo, and 24mo.

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The Aldine page (click to enlarge - 522 KB jpeg file)
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In a classic Aldine format, the text of Terence appeared in long columns on the abnormally tall and narrow Aldine octavo page. Aldo and his heirs tolerated no marginalia, and the severity of such a scheme created problems for dramatic texts. In the Aldines, only the indications of scene change (centered in all caps) and the names of the speakers (abbreviated and hung into the left margin) were permitted to violate the strict march of the poetic lines. Indeed, the tightness and austerity of the format was emphasized by hanging the character indications exactly two letters' width into the left margin.

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Aldine italic typography (click to enlarge - 349 KB jpeg file)
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Aldine Terence, 1555 (click to enlarge - 219 KB jpeg file)
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Whenever possible the names were abbreviated to two characters. When it was absolutely necessary to have three or four letters to differentiate characters, the line beginning is indented so that the name will not extend further into the margin. This basic page layout was retained by the Aldine press into the fifteen eighties. The 1517 first Aldine edition presented a text which had been worked up by Aldo himself and was finalized for the press in the year after Aldo's death by Gian Francesco Torresani Asolano (1498-1557?). (45) Many competitors of the Aldine press adopted this text wholesale and later editors adopted it as a starting point. It remained the basic text for Aldine editions until that of 1553, when Paolo Manuzio corrected it for a new edition. This must have seemed too little change in a market crowded with more recent scholarly editions, for Manuzio turned to Marc Antoine Muret (1526-1585) to edit an entirely new Terence only two years later. But the formatting remained largely the same through these changes of editor and through many subsequent, corrected editions of Muret's text. (46)

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A Giunta title page - more "Aldine" than Aldo! (click to enlarge - 439 KB JPEG image)
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The power of the Aldine model may be observed not only in that press's own publications but also in the usage of its imitators. The Giunta press at Florence began to print Terence in octavo in 1505 and presented the text in an Aldine style. (47) This was a patent attempt to beat the Aldine press to the school market with a small-format Terence. The page size was a more normal octavo shape than Aldo's, but the typography is Aldine in the extreme. Especially notable is the Giunta title page, on which Filippo Giunta ignored all other typographical standards and gave the author's name in a severe all-caps triangle that reflects the earliest Aldines. [TERENTIVS IN SVA ME / TRA RETITTV / TVS / [two dots] / [one dot]] The colophon is equally austere and the book attests the degree of admiration the earliest Aldine octavos evoked. The Giunta press abandoned the Aldine model entirely after 1565, at the same time they turned to a new editor for a small-format Terence with apparatus. Aldo's in-laws, the Torresani family, on the other hand, retained the original, severe formatting for editions of Terence until 1570.

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One of Aldo's greatest admirers was the same Alessandro Paganino who experimented with a quarto Terence in 1526. Paganino issued a series of books in an entirely new format, the 24mo, between 1515 and 1525. The series was both modeled on and intended to rival the Aldine octavos. One such 24mo was a Terence that appeared in 1516 (but is mistakenly dated 1506 in its colophon). It is worth comparing it to the first Aldine Terence, which appeared in the next year. Paganino's title page was \"Aldine\" in its severity, reading simply TERENTIVS IN SVA / METRA RESTI- / TVTVS (following the Giunta title pages of 1505 and 1509). Such purely typographic titles, in fact, imitated the earliest Aldine octavos, those from 1501 to 1505 that appeared without printer's mark, and not the more developed form that was normal by 1516. (The 1517 Aldine would appear with the single word TERENTIVS and the Aldine anchor on the title page.) Also like the Aldines was Paganino’s choice of an italic type for the poetic text, set flush left with only the names of the characters protruding into the margin. Paganino’s books, however, were so small that they seem almost like toys, and the type had to be reduced proportionately. (48)

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Paganino had taken up some Aldine ideas but did not merely copy them. At its origin, the Aldine octavo was an imitation of graceful, small, late humanist manuscripts. As Angela Nuovo remarks, it was a bit of a step backward in book-history terms because it looked to manuscript models rather than building on the traditions already pioneered by and for print. Certainly its models were retrospective. But as Nuovo has also shown, this was not the case for the Paganino 24mos, which represented both design and production models that were purely typographic and without precedent in manuscript culture. They required immense mechanical precision, depended on highly skilled type founders and typesetters, and employed an imposition scheme that required handling the type forms and sheets more carefully than ever in the past. (49)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Still, the fact of these rare quarto experiments calls into question the commonplace of bibliographical history that the Aldine octavo was the inevitable \"œbest\" format for poetry. It is true that the largest number of editions of the text without…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/109","title":"1.09 Octavo and Smaller Formats","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Griffio title page (click to elarge - 475 KB jpeg file)
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By far the most prolific publisher of octavo Terences in the late sixteenth century was Giovanni Griffio the Elder. The Griffio printing family of Venice produced at least thirteen octavo editions of Terence between 1555 and 1590, standardized to 175 printed leaves. The exact history of the family is unclear, but the elder Giovanni Griffio printed from 1544 to 1576 in Venice, and in Padua as well from 1555 to 1563. He was succeeded by unnamed heirs who printed in 1576-77 only, and then by another Giovanni Griffio, probably his son or nephew, who was active from 1577 to end of century. The elder Giovanni established a basic format for Terence in 1555 and reprinted at least nine times before 1575. His heirs reprinted again in 1576. The younger Giovanni reprinted at least four more times.

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Griffio layout (clilck to enlarge - 491 KB jpeg file)
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The Griffio octavos did not take their inspiration from the formatting of contemporary Aldines, nor did they reprise the text or austere typography of earlier Aldines. Instead, their design was self-consciously busy and cluttered, as if a homely page were just the right look for a schoolroom text. In this regard, they almost seem to be imitating the crowded 12mos and 24mos offered earlier in the century, taking their start from a look that was originally enforced by the tiny page and importing it back into the slightly more spacious octavo. Their text was that of Portuguese humanist Antonio de Gouveia, whose extensive commentary was first printed in Italy by Girolamo Scoto in 1545. In the Griffio octavos, selections from the Gouveia apparatus were offered. Each scene was provided with a prose argument, delimited by a title in all caps and variously set in tiny italic or roman type, depending on the edition. Numerous marginalia crowded into a clearly defined note column at the outside margin of each page. The verse forms were de-emphasized by the layout because the names of the characters, abbreviated to one or two capital letters, are set into the lines to regularize the left margin, and because the page is so crowded that it almost looks like prose.

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The Griffio printing house set the type for each successive edition anew, usually reprinting on a line-by-line and page-by page basis. This was the elder Giovanni's general practice from 1555 to 1571 and his heirs resumed the practice in later editions. Such close reprinting would have saved on typesetting costs and recommended the new editions to teachers familiar with older ones. The practice was largely maintained even through a major change in the basic design of the book in 1575. Despite the economies realized in reprinting, however, the text was not entirely stable even within the Griffio house. The elder Giovanni usually named the editor on the tile page, with a phrase like \"œornamented with the annotations of Antonio de Gouveia.\" (50) It may be that the printer was proud to have introduced the editorial work of this prominent Portuguese humanist to the small-format Italian market. He certainly thought of the claim as a marketing tool. After the older Griffio's death, however, his heirs dropped this advertisement in favor of a simpler description for the same material, \"œwith marginal annotations.\" (51) The explicit mention of Gouveia actually disappeared on the title page of 1575, the last edition during Giovanni the Elder's lifetime; but since this edition appeared in the year of his death, it may be that the design, which is very different in other ways from earlier editions, was out of his hands. It is surely significant that the usage of seven editions should disappear just in the year of his death, and that the typography of the book should change so distinctly at the same time.

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Already in 1567 the elder Griffio had begun to experiment with the placement of the critical apparatus on the page. While for the most part still reprinting page by page, he moved some of the front matter around and deleted Gouveia's notes on meter from the marginalia (opening up the page a bit). In 1575 these metrical indications reappeared in small type with the arguments at the start of each scene (just as the author Gouveia's name disappeared from the title). From 1575 onward, moreover, the book was illustrated, but the woodcuts were purely ornamental. There was a conventional portrait of the author at his desk at the start of the introduction (the standard Life of Terence by Aelius Donatus) and thereafter each of the six plays begins with the same conventional cut of a single actor representing the Prologus on a large Renaissance stage with a crowd of onlookers in the pit. (52) The most important departure of the 1575 and 1576 editions, however, was a decision to frame each page with typographic rules that also separate the field of the text from the column of notes. These ruled borders did not really clarify the organization of the information in any way and they cluttered the overall page even more than the earlier format had done. The rules were abandoned for the editions of the fifteen eighties and nineties, perhaps in the hope of achieving a more spacious look. From 1575 onward, however, the firm maintained its line-by-line reprinting and made no further editorial changes.

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NOTES

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50 Terence 1567b, 1569b; compare Terence 1555b, 1557, etc.\r\n51 Terence 1575, 1576.\r\n52 The block is similar to one of the Prologus that appears in the influential Scoto and Bonelli editions (Terence 1545 and 1561). On the blocks see also Rozzo 1998, 120-121.

","excerpt":"By far the most prolific publisher of octavo Terences in the late sixteenth century was Giovanni Griffio the Elder. The Griffio printing family of Venice produced at least thirteen octavo editions of Terence between 1555 and 1590, standardized to 17…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/110","title":"1.10 Giovanni Griffio & Co.","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

We come away from these Griffio editions with the distinct impression that the elder Giovanni Griffio was, if not an enthusiastic promoter of his editor, at least faithful in serving the text as best he could with design, layout, and advertising. His heirs, on the other hand, seem to have treated Terence as mere commodity, and not too interesting a one at that. The critical apparatus was just so many bits of information that had to be included because the long printing tradition of the house meant that repeat customers wanted to find them in place. In the case of a school text like Terence, such considerations of consistency were important. Teachers depended on being able to get new printings of a textbook with which they were familiar while still using copies of earlier printings in their classrooms. This kind of conservatism worked against innovation in the market for textbooks.

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Editor more prominent than author
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The Griffio octavos, then, throw light on an important question, the degree to which the philological study of an author in the Renaissance could be promoted in the print market, retarded by market conditions, or sometimes even spurred on by marketing considerations. Terence, as we have already remarked, suffered relative neglect in textual terms in the early years of printing. From the late fourteen nineties onward, however, the plays were the subject of intense textual criticism among leading humanists. The record of their work is precisely evidenced in successive editions; but no general history of Terence criticism in this period has ever been written. A full account will have to await the work of future scholars. (53) It is clear, however, that the Italian market for Terence had languished after 1490. It revived in the new century, when new formats were offered just at the moment when a much improved text was also becoming available. Italians would see many attempts to improve the quality of the text in the next half-century, but teachers were little content with any single version until Paolo Manuzio commissioned a new text from French humanist Marc Antoine Muret (1526-1585) that became available in 1555. Thereafter the market was dominated by this text, whether Muret's contribution was attributed or not.

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The Sessa firm of Venice attempted to rival Muret in 1566 with a text based on a 1548 Basel edition by Theodor Poelmann; but Poelmann's text never achieved anything like the currency in Italy that Muret's would have for fifty-odd years. Similarly, in 1565 the Florentine Giunta published a text based on the work of Gabriele Faerno (1510-1561). The Medici family had long patronized Faerno, most recently in the person of Pope Pius IV, and the book was dedicated to no less a personage than Carlo Borromeo, cardinal archbishop of Milan. The publishers made great claims for its critical superiority because Faerno, employed for twenty years at the Vatican library, had had access to many early manuscripts. Scholars all over Europe admired and studied the work of Faerno, but the Giunta were the only ones to offer this text of Terence. (54)

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Giovanni Griffio, as we have seen, promoted the text edited and annotated by Antonio de Gouveia starting in 1555; the Griffio press stuck to this text through more than a dozen editions, so it must have found a school market as a learned alternative to Muret's text. Seventeenth-century editions by Northern European editors would find a still larger Italian market, but this success came in the period of the decline of the Venetian press. It is impossible in the present state of the evidence to say how much of their success should be credited to the quality of their philological work and what was due simply to the lack of effective competition from Italian publishers after 1600.

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Same editor, more modestly
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From the start, however, the marketing claims of printers and publishers reflected the philological advances of editors. We have already mentioned the work of Poliziano, the first really critical examination Terence received, stimulated by his collation of the text of the Codex Bembinus. (55) His collations were used by scholars in manuscript form, and the Bembinus was consulted directly for several editions. Glareanus tells us of the excitement this endeavor caused in the circle of Aldo Manuzio in the first decade of the sixteenth century, when both Erasmus and Glareanus himself were in Venice. (56)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"We come away from these Griffio editions with the distinct impression that the elder Giovanni Griffio was, if not an enthusiastic promoter of his editor, at least faithful in serving the text as best he could with design, layout, and advertising. His…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/111","title":"1.11 Can You Sell Philology?","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Not an Aldine (click to enlarge - 458 KB jpeg file)
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Benedetto Ricardini explicitly cited the Bembinus in a 1505 Giunta edition, reprinted in 1511 by Lazzaro Soardi, who had been the innovator in providing illustrated Terences to the Italian market. (57) Soardi, like the Giunta, presented the Ricardini text in octavo. We might have treated this edition under the rubric of octavo formats, but Soardi's quirky typography and formatting were less influential than the contemporary Aldines, and the real significance of this edition lies in its use of the critical text as a marketing tool. Soardi surrounded his octavo (and in other cases, 12mo) pages with prettifying floral borders. He employed a fussy italic of his own design for the text and filled out the spaces at the end of short poetic lines with curlicues. Any space left at the end of a volume he filled up with jocose addresses to the reader, and he often provided front matter in the same vein.

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Prettifying borders (click to enlarge - 659 KB jpeg file)
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Soardi's 1511 Terence is crowded and busy in the extreme. To the modern eye this odd design might seem to undermine the textual claims of its serious humanist editors. It is hard to say, however, that early sixteenth century readers would have judged it in the same way. Since Soardi was producing fully illustrated and annotated folio Terences for teachers throughout this same period, it seems likely that he saw these little octavos as strictly student copies. In their pretend-naïve ornamentation, they resemble elementary schoolbooks of the period that we will examine in the next chapter. They definitely did not aspire to the sophistication of the Aldine audience. Terence was an intermediate text in the Latin course, but he usually got more \"serious\" treatment than Soardi offered here. Perhaps this 1511 version (never reprinted) was an experiment in reaching a new audience.

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Title page text (click to enlarge - 458 KB jpeg file)
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Soardi's advertising prose was similarly in-between, alternately pretentiously scholarly and deliberately childish. Despite its floral border the title page is highly typographic. Arranged in a lozenge shape is an all-caps inscription that reads, \"In this portable [book] are contained Terence (arranged in verse) and L. Victor Faustus's booklet on comedy (newly edited), in new types.\" (58) This title vaunted Soardi's new italic types and the small format right alongside the learned apparatus.

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Serious stuff (click to enlarge - 590 KB jpeg file)
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Significantly, when it came time to introduce his humanist editors and their work, the design changed, for on the very next page, the verso of the title, Soardi launched into old-fashioned humanist style with one poem in Greek and one in Latin addressed to a Venetian patrician. These poems and the 32 pages of scholarly introduction that follow were printed soberly and compactly without borders.

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Two designs (click to enlarge - 631 KB jpeg file)
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But then, as soon as the text of Terence began, the pretty borders and ornamental typography resumed. It was unusual at the period to segregate apparatus from school text with so sharp a design change. We cannot know for certain what Soardi had in mind, but the strategy had to be deliberate.

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A not-so-serious ending (click to enlarge - 633 KB jpeg file)
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The last three pages of Soardi's octavo Terence contained the usual publication information but were also filled out with short prayers, proverbs, and poor verses about the processes of printing and book selling. These added materials could as well apply to other texts than Terence and some bits in fact appeared on other books from Soardi's press. They confirm our sense that this little Terence, for all its claims to textual originality, was offered for a student market. The colophon said the book was edited by \"a certain learned man\" (apparently the front matter sufficed to name him) and carefully printed by Lazzaro Soardi in August of 1511. This was followed by an \"Apology of Lazzaro\" (Excusatio Lazari) in which he said the reader should freely correct any errors that he finds. These six lines of verse conveniently contained a misprint that resulted in an error of noun-adjective agreement; it was corrected by hand in some copies. (59)

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A playful emblem (click to enlarge - 507 KB jpeg file)
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An emblem on the last page displayed the world turned upside down and an imprecation against anyone who would copy the work of Soardi -- \"may he be a horned he-goat\" (i.e. a cuckold).

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Benedetto Ricardini explicitly cited the Bembinus in a 1505 Giunta edition, reprinted in 1511 by Lazzaro Soardi, who had been the innovator in providing illustrated Terences to the Italian market. (57) Soardi, like the Giunta, presented the Ricardini…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/112","title":"1.12 Lazzaro Soardi's Mixed Messages","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Most octavo Terences of the early sixteenth century (excepting only that of quirky Soardi) remarked their editors on the title pages and included prefatory letters or dedications in humanist style. But octavo editions offered little else by way of apparatus until the fifteen forties when marginalia began to appear. Contemporary folios were much more complex internally and offered more room on the title page for advertisements. In all formats, however, more and more advertising prose came to be crowded onto the title pages. (60)

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Vigilant philology for sale, 1555 (click to enlarge - 616 KB JPEG image)
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By mid-century, advances in philology meant that it was essential to proclaim on the title page that the volume contained a good text. The form could be elaborate or summary. A number of editions of the fifteen fifties, for example, carried routine boastfulness to a perfunctory extreme with titles that read, The Six Comedies of Publius Terentius Afer, lately corrected with the greatest diligence according to all the editions of all [six plays]. (61) The phrase was safely impossible to verify. At the other extreme were claims made for the text of Marc Antoine Muret. Muret and his publisher Paolo Manuzio portrayed themselves as vigilant correctors of the text. They let themselves in for criticism on this account because humanist scholars immediately replied with further corrections. The 1555 Muret text of Terence was particularly problematic in this way because it abandoned the older Aldine text, edited originally by Aldo the Elder and still much admired at mid-century. The Muret Terence even became a cause for debate at the papal court since both Muret and his principal critic, Gabriele Faerno, were clients of Pius IV. (62)

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Other publishers who offered the Muret text, however, took up the theme of repeated correction as an advertisement and placed it prominently on their title pages. Gioacchino Brugnoli seems to have had this idea in mind when he took six lines on the title page of a 1582 edition to reclaim the quality of the text. Not only was the text corrected in almost innumerable places by Muret, something everyone knew had happened across many editions, but it was also furnished with Muret's notes giving the reasons for most of the corrections he made, and the book was carefully restored to the quality of Muret's original by the use of more than one corrected exemplar. Aldo Manuzio the Younger (1547-1597) adopted a similar advertisement on a 1588 title page, perhaps in an attempt to blunt criticism that the Aldine press had offered Muret's text in sloppy editions in the previous decade. (63)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Most octavo Terences of the early sixteenth century (excepting only that of quirky Soardi) remarked their editors on the title pages and included prefatory letters or dedications in humanist style. But octavo editions offered little else by way of…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/113","title":"1.13 More and More Advertising","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Inside folio Terences, the base text and commentaries varied far less than the front matter. Girolamo Scoto again set the standard in his 1545 edition. He provided three summaries for the action of each scene by three different humanist schoolmasters of note; the innovation was immediately copied by other publishers. Venturino Ruffinelli, who preferred his own layout and design (using comic-strip style illustrations), copied the 1545 text slavishly in 1546, but squeezed it into a page layout that had been designed for his 1539 edition of Gouveia's text. The basic layout problem in the case of Terence was that the text consists of short scenes with much back-and-forth badinage while the apparatus was typically very lengthy. As we have already noted, early printers of text with commentary had arranged the commentary for each scene in humanist-manuscript form all around the base text, creating a window or windows for the words of Terence. The resulting window-and-frame layouts are visually very lively, with each spread slightly different from the last, depending on the length of the commentary with respect to the text. (65) As the sixteenth century progressed, however, it became more usual to employ a simple two-column format that placed the base text of each scene first and the commentary afterwards, alternating but running continuously from column to column. The four columns on a spread owned variety and visual interest because the text of Terence was set in larger type and more generously leaded than the commentary, but the result was rarely as handsome as the older manuscript-style layouts. This two-column format took over because it was much easier to set, correct, revise, and reprint than a window-and-frame.

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Scotto at his best, 1545 (click to enlarge - 726 KB JPEG image)
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Similarly, fewer and fewer options were exercised in ornamenting and illustrating the folio text as the century wore on. Virtually the only ambitious editions from this point of view are the 1545 Scoto and the 1553 Cesano. These books preserve something of the grace of earlier folios, with both the repeated author portraits and the scene-by-scene illustrations that had characterized some folio editions in the fourteen nineties and early in the sixteenth century. Illustrations of individual scenes disappeared entirely after the 1555, perhaps because the enthusiasm for their rediscovery had waned, and again in recognition of the fact that they added little beyond their ornamental value. Once they had been reduced to comic-strip style, moreover, they could not claim any real utility, even if they once had it. Author portraits persisted a little longer, but slowly faded away too.

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Another page from Scotto's Terence, 1545 (click to enlarge - 718 KB JPEG image)
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The single, nearly universal decorative element across the whole of the fifteenth and sixteenth century was the use of woodcut initials. To my knowledge, no new initial blocks were commissioned specifically for a Terence at any period. The initials were simply those a given printer had in stock or could borrow for the project at hand. The inevitable result was that schoolbooks tended to lag a few years behind the latest ornamental fashions. Iniziali parlanti (\"speaking intitials\" that included classical or biblical scenes) were fashionable in Venice from 1530 onward. They were duly employed for Terence, but their use in so workaday a text for school teachers was entirely pro forma. No scenes from the plays were ever incorporated into initials. (66) By the fifteen sixties the reused blocks typical in Venetian schoolbooks were so badly worn that their mythological stories can hardly be read. Terence would wait until the eighteenth century to merit truly pompous dress again.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Inside folio Terences, the base text and commentaries varied far less than the front matter. Girolamo Scoto again set the standard in his 1545 edition. He provided three summaries for the action of each scene by three different humanist schoolmasters…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/115","title":"1.15 Design in Decline","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

One of the major achievements of the humanists in the sixteenth century was to devise and publish a broad range of auxiliary texts for studying the classics, from commentaries and self-study manuals to translations, dictionaries, and encyclopedias. (67) As with many other phenomena once considered fruits of the first age of printing, we now know that these reference sources, study guides, and how-to books derived from late medieval, scholastic models and from humanist philological scholarship that began well before the invention of printing. Moreover, books of the sort reached full maturity only a century after Gutenberg's press came to Italy, so they cannot rightly be said to be native to the medium of printing. As we will see repeatedly, however, the mature forms were very much a product of the market for printing. Terence provides us with good case studies for these auxiliary genres and their marketing.

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Vocabulary-study exercises were derived from classroom and private annotations. Most surviving textbooks with manuscript annotation contain vocabulary-study notes made by teachers. Very likely these were dictated to students as texts were read and parsed in class. It was only a short step from annotating thoroughly to compiling the annotations in print for the use of other teachers and students. Early models of the eventual print genre were provided by little synonym dictionaries like that (ostensibly based on Cicero) known to Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406). (68) The Neapolitan grammar master Lucio Giovanni Scoppa (d. ca. 1551) provided more detailed and better documented anthologies for students early in the sixteenth century with his Collectanea in diversos auctores and Spicilegium, two aids to Latin composition with elaborate indexes. (69) Cicero and Terence, mainstays of the intermediate Latin class and so the first \"difficult\" authors many students would encounter, were naturals for treatment in this way. In the case of Terence the lists usually appeared in appendixes to student editions. Cicero's vocabulary was sometimes treated in separate volumes for advanced students. (70)

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Latin vocabulary lists based on single authors could help first-time readers of these texts, but even more importantly they were intended to help composition students to imitate the style and usage of widely admired authors. (71) Terence was considered the best possible model for spoken Latin, so humanists like Cornelius de Schryver (1482-1558) compiled excerpts aimed specifically at helping students speak fluently. (72) Not surprisingly, the production of vocabulary and style excerpts was linked to the compilation of collections of proverbs and sayings (sententiae or dicta). Proverb collections could be Latin-only, Latin-and-vernacular, or vernacular-only anthologies. The most successful Italian author of such compilations was Niccolò Liburnio (ca. 1474-1557). Liburnio was a humanistically trained cleric, poet, and prolific translator. He worked at least briefly in the printing house of Aldo Manuzio, and composed several works on Latin and Italian stylistics. Liburnio published his first compendia of sayings in Italian in the fifteen twenties for the use of layfolk who wanted to achieve a veneer of verbal culture in the vernacular. (73) By 1537 he was assembling philosophical commonplaces from Greek and Latin writers (including Cicero and Terence) which were widely imitated. Obviously, the genre was not highly original to start with and it was easy to knock off a new collection by simply rearranging or re-titling an old one. So dicta notabilia, elegantiae, dogmata philosophica, gemmae, selectiores et puriores formulae abounded.

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Advertising erudition (click to enlarge - 805 KB JPEG image)
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Even truly learned Latinists like Bartolomeo Ricci (1490-1560) and Aldo Manuzio the Younger (1547-1587) assembled collections of extracts from Cicero and Terence. Both men probably sent their works of the sort to press simply to make money. (74) Collections based on Cicero and Terence had especially wide currency in the Netherlands and England, where they were a staple of the educational market until the mid-seventeenth century.

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Aldo the Younger's Terence, excerpted for Latin composition (click to enlarge - 803 KB JPEG image)
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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"One of the major achievements of the humanists in the sixteenth century was to devise and publish a broad range of auxiliary texts for studying the classics, from commentaries and self-study manuals to translations, dictionaries, and encyclopedias…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/116","title":"1.16 Vocabulary Drills and General Rules","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Fabrini, first edition, 1548 (click to enlarge - 620 KB jpeg file)
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The second half of the sixteenth century saw a proliferation of self-study manuals, many of them with title pages that offered far more than even their authors could have believed possible. Giovanni Fabrini (1516-ca. 1580) dedicated Il Terentio Latino to Cosimo de' Medici in 1548; it was reprinted at least ten times before 1594. He claims that the book is a text, a translation, a commentary (commento), and a bilingual grammar all in one.

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Fabrini, 1558, published by Valgrisi (click to enlarge - 456 KB jpeg file)
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From 1551 onwards, some editions also included Fabrini's compilation of the usages (osservazioni) of Terence, so the book grew in ambition from a treatment of a single author into a grammatical and compositional manual that proposes Terence as the best model for Latin of all sorts and for Tuscan prose and poetry as well. The list of contents on the title page stressed these broad ambitions, saying the volume includes: word-for-word commentary on the plays and clause-by-clause Tuscan paraphrases in duplicate or triplicate; a grammar of noun and verb rules for both Tuscan and Latin; vocabulary notes comparing Terence's usage to that of other poets and to prose authors; and lastly, a usage index to Terence which allows the user to find an apposite phrase for any topic. (75)

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Fabrini, 1580, published by Sessa (click to enlarge - 547 KB jpeg file)
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All of these study aids actually appeared in the book, along with a very thorough word index to the plays. But it is less clear that the results Fabrini claimed for it could have been achieved: \"All this is arranged in such an order that, for anyone who understands Latin, the Latin here (that is, the text [of Terence]) will explain the commentary and will teach him the vernacular; and so that anyone who understands only the vernacular will be able with this commentary to learn the Latin.\" Since the book was never published outside Italy, however, we must take the first of these processes to mean that the Latin of Terence could inform and improve writing in Tuscan, not actually teach the language to foreigners. The author also claimed that his book contains \"an interpretation of both the vernacular and Latin in which are declared the general rules of both languages.\" (76) The ultimate goal was that the reader should be able to \"express any and all vernacular words and ideas in good Latin, according to the usage of Terence.\" (77)

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Dedication page as advertising (click to enlarge - 531 KB jpeg file)
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Fabrini made all these claims on the title pages of early editions. They were explained further in a preface addressed to the Medici prince. It is no wonder, Fabrini wrote, that there are few learned men, since traditional schooling in languages seems designed to repel the student from the start. Fabrini designed his book instead to encourage Cosimo's two sons to find language study easier and therefore to get excited about other sorts of learning. The commentary in Tuscan ensures that they will be able to understand the explanations of the Latin base text without having to decipher more Latin and it avoids the further bad practice of making them read barbarous modern Latin. It obviates even the ancient commentaries. The young princes were to concentrate instead on the pure diction of Terence.

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Fabrini's work was imitated in Spain by Pedro Simón Abril (1530?-1595) who proposed a bilingual Latin/Spanish Terence as a way of learning Latin through translation. A first edition appeared in 1577, and it was revised in 1583 with an improved Latin text based on that of Gabriele Faerno. Abril acknowledged his debt to Fabrini in a dedicatory letter to young Prince Ferdinand of Austria, son of Emperor Ferdinand II, for whom he claimed the same solicitous care as Fabrini had displayed toward the Medici princelings. Abril made far fewer claims than Fabrini, however. He was mostly interested in helping Spaniards learn Latin; if they could also improve their vernacular style, that would be of benefit, but it was not the goal of reading Terence. On the other hand Abril offered an entire reading list of texts he says are best studied in bilingual editions: Terence, to be sure, but also, Aesop, Cicero, and the catechism of Pius V. Abril's intent was to make these classic texts, which every educated person should know well, easier to learn. (78)

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Complex typography (click to enlarge - 734 KB jpeg file)
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Fabrini claimed more. In Fabrini's book, but not in Abril's imitation of it, Terence was a vehicle for language study generally, not merely of Latin but of the vernacular as well. Of course, literary Tuscan was an acquired skill for most Italian writers of the period, and the best terms of linguistic analysis available were still in fact those of Latin grammar. Thus, in the second part of his book, what Fabrini entitled \"the interpretation of vernacular and Latin language,\" he expressly claimed that his is not an elementary grammar but one for those who already know the first principles of Latin. Apparently, however, he imagined that once the student arrives at the intermediate-Latin stage of reading Terence, he should proceed to study Latin and Tuscan by mutual translation. In his dedicatory letter to Cosimo de' Medici he mounted a spirited defense of translation as a cultural and educational activity. His claim in providing a translation manual along with his text of Terence was that the rules for nouns and verbs are common to both languages and that the mastery of each expressive need in either tongue is achieved by understanding the equivalent expressions in the other. So a typical subject heading is \"Concerning vernacular infinitives, and which of them have to be translated as Latin infinitives and which as Latin gerunds.\" (79) \"All these things,\" he continued, \"are demonstrated with general rules and confirmed with the authority of Latin writers, especially with the authority of Cicero and Terence.\" (80)

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While Fabrini's grammar was a sort of translation manual, he compiled the appendix of usages which follows as a compositional aid. It was an index to ideas and themes in Terence, based directly on his commentary. The indexing terms were listed in Tuscan with page citations to the Latin text, with the intention of aiding the reader in composing Latin prose or finding passages to quote. The appendix had its own dedicatory letters (three of them!) in which Fabrini explained that he composed this index for the use of a certain diplomat who felt the need of an aid to finding Latin phrases appropriate for conversation and oratory in foreign lands. Fabrini had already prepared a similar compositional manual based on Cicero's prose, but the Terence seemed an easier and more urgent work to publish since the diplomat had virtually all of Cicero by heart. Terence was both shorter and more directly useful, then, for someone who wants to mine the classics for elegant phrases appropriate to speechmaking. So much for Fabrini's expressed intentions. Given that the index is dependent on his own annotated text of Terence and that it is listed on the title pages of those editions where it appears, we may also suspect that it was also added for the sake of marketing them. Certainly, Fabrini's Terence was one of the most successful of the century. (81)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The second half of the sixteenth century saw a proliferation of self-study manuals, many of them with title pages that offered far more than even their authors could have believed possible. Giovanni Fabrini (1516-ca. 1580) dedicated Il Terentio…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/117","title":"1.17 Giovanni Fabrini and Self-Study","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Scholarly publishing is in crisis, we are told. Print runs are shrinking; unit costs are skyrocketing; research libraries cannot afford to buy even a fraction of what they would like. But in a very real way, the internet is taking over many scholarly-publishing functions.\r\nThe specialized monograph in history and the humanities is rapidly becoming extinct, and maybe, if we think hard about it, there is no great loss in that. Journal publishing still flourishes both online and in print, and that is a good forum for specialized research.

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Other, more extensive monographic work can as easily be self-published online, and that is what this e-book, Humanism For Sale, sets out to do. It is a self-published work offered without the expenses of printing, storage, and distribution. It indulges the usual hubris of the self-published author, but without the additonal vanity of a book on paper that few people really want. To compensate for the lack of paper, I have tried to make it as approachable as possible via the electronic means available to me.

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Obviously, what we lose in self-publishing of the sort is peer review and the stamp of approval that the traditional university press book offers. What we gain is a dynamic object that can be revised and improved via dialogue with the interested public. Moreover, we can hope for more than one public. I am an historian, but I wrote this book while immersed in the life of a research library and within the lively design community of Chicago, as well as in the more traditional world of academic history. So I am hoping for a broader public than I could get for a book published, cataloged, and shelved in one place in a library, as some infinitesimal subset of early modern intellectual history.

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In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Humanism For Sale was conceived as a scholarly history book with an American university press in mind. As such it failed to find a publisher. The reasons given me were purely economic -- there is no market for so specialized a book. Rather than pursue other kinds of peer-reviewed publishing, I have continued to work on the manuscript and have re-conceived it for publication as you see it now, a website with a blog that will invite feedback and futher revision.

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Humanism For Sale, then, has not had peer review in the traditional sense. Friends and colleagues have read all of it in one form or another, and I have profited from their criticism. I submit it now to the futher review of my peers in history, but also to many who know some of this material better than I do, from points of view I do not have, and with expertise I do not claim.

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I'm afraid Humanism For Sale still looks and works a lot like a traditional book. But given the potential of the blog, this \"book\" can get better as time passes, something a published volume cannot do.

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Curriculum Vitae of Paul F. Gehl

","excerpt":"Scholarly publishing is in crisis, we are told. Print runs are shrinking; unit costs are skyrocketing; research libraries cannot afford to buy even a fraction of what they would like. But in a very real way, the internet is taking over many scholarly…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/ps","title":"Personal Statement, 2008","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

To some degree, the 1566 controversy was a literary invention. The first book published, Grasso's anti-Terence, was either a joke, or a deliberate attempt to bait the illustrious Giraldi family into a debate they thought was already settled, or both. Grasso got his diatribe printed by the Torrentino printing house in Mondoví, the seat of the new Piedmontese university where Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio had recently been named professor. Giraldi Cinzio, who had just begun publishing with the Torrentino press, had been a protagonist for decades in a academic debates over dramatic poetry; he had repeatedly cited Terence in his attempts to define the meaning and scope of comedy. (85) It fell to his son Lucio Olimpio Giraldi to reply to Grasso's affront. The younger Giraldi is not known to have published anything but a few poems either before or after his defense of Terence, and it may simply be that he was looking for a quarrel that would allow him to cut his literary teeth in defense of a venerable humanist commonplace. It is even possible that the Giraldis set Grasso up for the fight, especially since the elder Giraldi was one of the most vigorous critics of the Jesuit educational paradigm and it was to their advantage to have the piety of the Counter-Reform seem to be an unsophisticated starting point for considering educational matters. (86)

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Grasso's booklet, however, though less polished than the younger Giraldi's, seems more genuinely serious or at least more earnest. He began with the notion that in modern times it is not obligatory to pay overmuch respect to secular writers. Unlike authorities in matters of religion, to whom humble deference is always due, the authors of pagan antiquity were justly censured when they were slight, inelegant, or obscene. Terence suffered all these defects, we are told; but Grasso reserved his most vehement criticism for the immoral behavior and immodest language of the comic characters. The low-life plots might make suitable reading for adults, who would take them as mere entertainment; but they should at all costs be kept away from boys who might instead imagine that they were admirable and worth imitating. (87)

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Giraldi's defense of Terence was more in the tradition of aesthetic appreciation, though not without political savvy. He was smugly convinced that Terence's place in the curriculum was not in any danger. Giraldi started by remarking that he must come to the comedian's defense personally because Terence was the school master from whom he himself had learned how \"to speak in good Latin on any subject, elegantly, and with dignity.\" (88) Giraldi lined up the ancient authorities on the quality of Terence's style and language. He then added citations from modern discussions of poetry, including those of Jacopo Sadoleto (1477-1547) and Pietro Bembo, both Roman cardinals as well as humanists. Giraldi argued all this vehemently but added nothing new to the debate; the weight of tradition was on his side.

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Giraldi turned to Grasso's moral argument only on page fifty-four of his eighty page book. The tone is scornful. Throughout, he had called his opponent not by name but \"Slanderer\" (il Calonniatore). Now he added that Grasso was just a pious hypocrite who wanted to forbid Terence to all the world, supposedly so the comedies will not corrupt the souls of the young. With a string of colorful epithets he made the point that Grasso was a sanctimonious do-gooder. (89) As withering as his tone was, however, Giraldi did not truly mount an effective counter-argument. He granted that bad images can incite the young to unwholesome desires, just as examples of great men can inspire them to do good. But then he turned the argument aside by insisting that the objectionable scenes in Terence are handled with admirable restraint and that the language is never really very coarse. This old humanist argument exactly opposed contemporary opinions expressed by the Jesuits. For Ignatius and his followers, Terence's plots had the potential to incite evil thoughts in adults as well as young people, and his language was irredeemably obscene. The learned fathers were troubled by exactly this power of drama to cause \"strange desires\" (Giraldi's paraphrase of Grasso's supposedly petty-pious fear). (90)

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Abril explains Terence to his royal patron (click to enlarge - 618 KB JPEG image)
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In ridiculing his opponent's supposed false piety Giraldi pinpointed the issue at hand in these years just after the Council of Trent. Medieval and humanist ethics allowed considerable room for bawdy fun; the new morality was less tolerant. Still, there was room for debate, and the question did continue to be discussed. A decade after the Grasso/Giraldi debate, Pedro Simón Abril offered an equally pious, Counter-Reform affirmation of Terence by reprising the argument that the young learn from good and bad examples alike. He was careful to add that the contrary opinion is held by good and pious folk who worry that Terence offers too many dubious characters and too many examples of bad behavior. But Abril concluded that this reasoning is faulty because narratives of evil, whether in Terence or in the Bible, teach young men to abhor vice and avoid it. (91)

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With Abril, we leave the question of the suitability of Terence unresolved in theory but clear in the minds of teachers on each side of the debate. Banned from the Jesuit schools but almost universally used everywhere else, Terence was many things at once. He remained an ancient comedian, revered and studied for his language, for the dramatic interest of the plays, and as a model for modern dramatists. He had become scholastic auctor on ethics during the Middle Ages, and he continued to play this role for traditionalizing teachers who proposed him as a model for learning morality. But Terence was also, in the age of printing, a textbook author in need of careful editing, annotation, commentary, sometimes even censorship. (92)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"To some degree, the 1566 controversy was a literary invention. The first book published, Grasso's anti-Terence, was either a joke, or a deliberate attempt to bait the illustrious Giraldi family into a debate they thought was already settled, or both…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/119","title":"1.19 Literary Joke or Careerism?","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Because Terence was still used so widely, the flood of new editions continued and even increased in the seventeenth century. If the first thirty years of printed Terences were rather a desert in text-critical terms, the end of our period, from 1600 to 1650, was truly a golden age for the Roman playwright. Even provincial booksellers of the mid-seventeenth century could boast a variety of editions, and the buyer could choose among editors of great fame and distinction. Indeed, the market looks very modern. A teacher or student in Strasbourg in 1668 could take his pick from eight different seventeenth-century editions in several formats by five modern scholarly editors. A prosperous buyer might have opted for an omnibus edition, two volumes printed in 1619 at Neustadt an der Haardt that combined a critical text by Johann Philipp Pareus (1576-1648) with commentaries and emendations by six other scholars. A comparable shopper at Frankfurt in 1660 would have seven different modern editions to choose from. A secondary market allowed less prosperous students or those with a taste for sixteenth century printing to choose from older editions also still to be had. (93)

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In Italian shops the choice was also wide, though restricted somewhat by the fact that the editions by Erasmus and some Protestant editors were not sold openly and by the general preference of Italians for Italian editions. Kaspar Schoppe at Padua in the sixteen thirties unequivocally recommended Fabrini's Terence, to the exclusion of all other editions. Still, at the upper end of the market, Francesco Cardinal Barberini (1597-1679) owned seven editions and three critical works on Terence. (94)\r\nThe great English text critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would take up Terence again and create what is now the accepted text, but they did so with the benefit of a century and a half of earlier work embodied in the many, many editions of the high Renaissance. And these latter-day editors did not have to worry the morals of this optimum auctorem latinitatis, since that question had been effectively settled for most Europeans in the long sixteenth century. They did not all agree, but they had agreed to disagree. The critical work could go forward. (95)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Because Terence was still used so widely, the flood of new editions continued and even increased in the seventeenth century. If the first thirty years of printed Terences were rather a desert in text-critical terms, the end of our period, from 160…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/120","title":"1.20 Epilogue: On the Market","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In 1566 a controversy appeared in print in Piedmont over the pedagogical appropriateness of Terence for young students. (82) The issue was not new but the moment is significant, for these were the first years after the closing sessions of the Council of Trent. Churchmen and laymen across Catholic Europe were grappling with moral strictures the council fathers proposed for everyday Christian life. A decade earlier, as the council was in session, Ignatius Loyola had ordered an expurgation of Terence to be produced for the use of the fast-growing Jesuit colleges. The effort continued for many years, largely unsuccessfully; and meanwhile the Jesuits eliminated Terence, forbidding its use by students and teachers alike on the grounds that the plays could not be made over into chaste and salutary texts. The Jesuits were followed in this ban by some other religious orders like the Barnabites. Thus, the largest school system in Europe renounced the most popular school author of the century. As we will see later and in greater detail in chapter five, Jesuit curriculum reforms like the suppression of Terence were largely accomplished by unilateral action of the superiors of the order. No public debate was invited, and none occurred. (83)

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By contrast, the protagonists of 1566 invited open debate about the use of Terence, though they themselves were obscure figures otherwise little known. Immediately, then, we may suspect them of careerism. We know nothing at all of Benedetto Grasso of Nice, self described anti-Terentian, except what he tells us in his book. Lucio Olimpio Giraldi, son of the eminent dramatist Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio (1504-1573) and grandson of the classicist Lilio Gregorio Giraldi (1479-1553) took the other part, in defense of Terence. The young Giraldi was in his early twenties, not yet an established figure. The controversy itself was short-lived, generating two small books from a single press. For the most part, the arguments expressed were not new; they represent themes that were implicit in the humanist endeavor from the start. The controversy merits our attention only because, like the Jesuits' renunciation, it provides a counterpoint to the continued success of Terence as a textbook. Grasso and Giraldi chose to join battle largely on literary grounds, but they ultimately had to come to terms as well with the increasingly prudish and morally sanctimonious tenor of the times. The age of open humanist debate was over.

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In the long humanist tradition of defending classical authors against Christian moralists for whom they represented dangerous invitations to paganism, the question of Terence would seem to have been settled by the end of the fifteenth century. As we remarked in section 1.02, both the forceful opinions of ancient and modern critics and the real practice of the schools endorsed the notion that Terence was good for school boys. The Academia Veneta summarized this standard opinion of Terence as one item in a long list of new editions they considered desiderata. Their prospective catalogue of 1559 included this entry:

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Terence, with brief, learned annotations that explain the purity of the language he used, and further, how the virtues of human life and its vices were scattered about in his comedies and yet observed in the common persons described in them, since those things that can provoke so much laughter are also discerned in other comic authors. (84)

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The academicians displayed a tranquil complacency about the position of Terence in the Latin curriculum.

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The controversialists of the fifteen sixties assigned a different meaning to the old commonplaces; their exchange derived a distinct color from its Counter-Reformation context. It is an early example of fully developed Tridentine piety in conflict with classicizing pedagogy. Significantly, the authors wrote in Italian, addressing a broad literary public and not merely the Latin-learned community. They presumed the power of the press to effect reform; but their soon-forgotten exchange also displayed the particular limitations of print as a forum in late sixteenth-century Italy.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In 1566 a controversy appeared in print in Piedmont over the pedagogical appropriateness of Terence for young students. (82) The issue was not new but the moment is significant, for these were the first years after the closing sessions of the Council…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/118","title":"1.18 More Controversy","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Elementary Latin instruction (almost the only formal education in the Middle Ages) depended on an outline of grammar attributed to the ancient grammarian Donatus. This textbook, commonly called a Donat, also included a set of moral proverbs called the Cato, again for a supposed author. These texts were used and modified through the entire early modern period, but there were also repeated attempts to replace them with more modern and useful textbooks, often designed with inexpert readers and the need for memorization in mind.

","excerpt":"Elementary Latin instruction (almost the only formal education in the Middle Ages) depended on an outline of grammar attributed to the ancient grammarian Donatus. This textbook, commonly called a Donat, also included a set of moral proverbs called…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/200","title":"2.00 CHAPTER TWO: Getting Started: Learning to Latinize","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Terence, used at the intermediate Latin level, was a remarkably durable presence in the Latin curriculum; but the first Latin course -- elementary grammar and beginning Latin reading -- was even more conservative. In Italy this course had two stages called \"learning the Donat\" and \"Latinizing.\" Equivalent modern terms would be \"memorizing the grammar booklet\" and \"early Latin reading.\" Students first parroted rules they did not understand and then began to decipher texts. In practice there was an even earlier stage, which involved learning the alphabet, making out words (called compitare), and memorizing a few Latin prayers, also for the most part without serious understanding. Such preliminaries might take two years and mastering the Donat another two, as evidenced in one mid-fifteenth-century school. (1)

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As the rubrics \"Donat\" and \"Latinizing\" imply, however, it was at these stages that the student was tested for real aptitude in Latin; this was the end of the basic reading course and the start of the specialized Latin one that would lead to higher learning of all sorts. With only rare exceptions, it was also the moment when the educational tracks for boys and girls diverged. Latin was for the most part a masculine pursuit; girls who mastered it were exceptional and likely to be praised as virile or condemned as mannish. (2)

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That the medieval texts used for this part of the curriculum survived humanist reforms of pedagogy and the even more radical changes wrought by the introduction of printing should come as no surprise. Nothing is more conservative than elementary classroom practice. Marketing textbooks to parents and teachers in the early classes consisted of repackaging comfortably familiar texts. Changes could be introduced only slowly and tentatively, first by adding on to the traditional curriculum or abbreviating it, and only later by substituting new texts for tried and true ones. As a rule, the authority of an esteemed teacher was necessary to create momentum for any novelty.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Terence, used at the intermediate Latin level, was a remarkably durable presence in the Latin curriculum; but the first Latin course -- elementary grammar and beginning Latin reading -- was even more conservative. In Italy this course had two stages…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/201","title":"2.01 Learning Reading / Learning Latin","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Once they had mastered the alphabet and a few simple prayers, then, the most serious students, overwhelmingly boys, set out on the Latin course. From the thirteenth century onward, they expected to start with two basic texts ascribed to ancient authors that together offered instruction for beginners in grammatical concepts and moral behavior. These texts were the Donat and the Cato, sometimes encountered individually but in Italy often confected as a single small textbook. The Donat was a late twelfth- or thirteenth-century question-and-answer introduction to Latin inflections named for a loosely similar grammar book of Aelius Donatus (mid-4th century C.E.) that was widely used in the early and high Middle Ages. Under the title Distichs of Cato, on the other hand, students read and memorized a collection of moral sayings that began with time-honored phrases, \"Pray to God; love thy parents; honor thy kin.\" Some early manuscripts of this collection bear the name Dionysius Cato, otherwise unknown, who was identified in the high Middle Ages with Marcus Portius Cato (d. 149 B.C.E.). (3) Both the Donatus and Cato attributions were incorrect but were part of the authority these texts owned in the Middle Ages. In what follows I will refer to these widely-used texts as \"the Donat\" and \"the Cato\" (the usage is an early modern English one) and to their authors as Pseudo-Donatus and Pseudo-Cato. These admittedly awkward forms have the advantage of mimicking what these booklets were called by Italian teachers and students of the period. Some modern scholars also label the work of Pseudo-Donatus by its opening word, Ianua. (4) In this they follow stationers and booksellers of the Renaissance who sometimes listed Ianua among their titles in stock. When I must refer to Aelius Donatus' authentic works, I will use his full name and the title Ars minor for his basic grammar.

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Italians called not only the attributed author and his text but also the physical textbook they used the Donat -- il Donato, or with a diminutive, il Donadello. Often they meant by this nothing more specific than \"grammar booklet.\" By the fourteenth century what the documents refer to as the Donat is almost always the schoolbook itself rather than the author, the text, or the course of study. The book in fact usually included other texts following that of Pseudo-Donatus, most often the Distichs of Cato. By the late thirteenth century in some parts of Italy, stationers could supply cheap copies of the Donat and the Cato (or both together under the one name, Donat) on a few sturdy parchment leaves, which might be used successively by several students studying across many years. (5) Well before the Renaissance, then, and long before printing, Italian stationers had created the expectation that boys in the elementary Latin classroom would have access to their own copies of these first Latin booklets. These are among the first known books designed specifically for the use of children. They were tools for learning both grammar and morals. They seem also to have been intended as marketing tools, that is, for inculcating the expectation of owning one's own books. They served as models for the layout and design of other primary readers that would appeal to youngsters. Thus, educational marketing and marketing-as-education were born together on the eve of the Italian Renaissance.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Once they had mastered the alphabet and a few simple prayers, then, the most serious students, overwhelmingly boys, set out on the Latin course. From the thirteenth century onward, they expected to start with two basic texts ascribed to ancient…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/202","title":"2.02 The Donat and the Cato","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Aelius Donatus was one of the many writers between the second and the fourth century who helped preserve classical Latin for later ages by composing formal grammars. His great reputation led to the confusing situation throughout Europe that almost any basic grammar could be called a Donat. Two authentic compilations have come down to us under his name, the so-called Donatus major, a substantial treatment of morphology, and the Donatus minor or Ars minor, a question-and-answer style introduction to the same material intended for drilling basic rules. This authentic minor Donatus was widely used in medieval Europe, where beginning Latin students were often called donatistae; but by the thirteenth century it was replaced in most Italian schools by Pseudo-Donatus, a different catechetical primer with a verse preface that begins Ianua sum rudibus..., \"I am a doorway for beginners...\" (6)

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Difficult material, dense page
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Oddly, by most common-sense standards Pseudo-Donatus or Ianua offered students a more difficult starting point and the book was much harder going than the old Ars minor of Aelius Donatus. The catechetical or question-and-answer portions of the two works are easily distinguishable. The Ars minor in the common Northern European, late medieval form starts its doctrinal section, \"How many parts of speech are there? Eight, that is, the noun, the pronoun....\" (7) The Ianua, after the verse prologue, begins more abruptly, \"What part of speech is poet? It is a noun. How so a noun? Because it signifies a substance...\" (8) Both texts, jump into abstract grammatical terminology from the start. But the Italian Donat does so completely without explanation, while the work of Aelius Donatus, composed in the late ancient world for Latin speakers, at least tried to move in a logical fashion from general concepts to more specialized ones. In fact, the Ianua would be criticized throughout the humanist period for its unfriendliness to beginners; but it probably was invented with the opposite intention in mind, to make the first part of the course more concrete. While Aelius Donatus's Ars minor was a brief sketch of grammatical concepts for students who already spoke some form of Latin, the Italian Donat was originally a drilling book that went into considerable detail for students coming to the language for the first time. (9)

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The manuscript tradition of Ianua in has been explored in depth by Robert Black and Gabriella Pomaro. (10) Surviving manuscripts are few, but in outline the history of the text is clear. By the fourteenth century Ianua dominated the Italian pedagogical landscape, virtually to the exclusion of the genuine work of Aelius Donatus and most other beginning grammars. (11) But as Black and Pomaro have demonstrated, it was not a stable text. In origin, it was a fulsome drilling text that rehearsed all standard forms and many irregular ones. It could be stuffed full of all kinds of examples and mnemonic verses, depending on the needs of the teacher and the level of study. In the thirteenth century it may have been intended as more of an intermediate than a beginner's grammar, but by the fifteenth century it had been substantially abbreviated and definitively took on the role it would have in the age of print, as the first introduction to Latin reading. Black explains this development as a byproduct of the increasing differentiation of the school curriculum. As grammar masters more and more concentrated on intermediate Latin instruction, they abandoned the Donat to teachers of reading, whose mission was to instruct the students in the alphabet, prayers, and deciphering and memorizing texts. More and more, then, the Donat became a skeleton grammar, a series of rules to be memorized without much immediate understanding or application. For students who went on with the Latin course it provided the basic terms and paradigms, but little more; for many others it was in fact the last Latin text they would ever see. In the course of the fifteenth century it seems increasingly to have been relegated to this minor role. (12)

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Whether as a last text in the basic reading course or as a useful summary grammar, it is clear that the Donat in Italy was also a diagnostic text. It stood at the point when parents and teachers decided that a few beginning students would go on to become Latinists, while the largest number of pupils were weeded out. These latter students abandoned the formal Latin course, and either did not study further or went on to study practical matters like business math. (13) It was in this diagnostic role that the Donat entered the age of printing. It would necessarily change again in the sixteenth century. As humanists increasingly insisted upon the role of Latin as an instrument of power and beauty, they would become increasingly ill content with a text like the Donat that presented Latin grammar as a barrier to be crossed.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Aelius Donatus was one of the many writers between the second and the fourth century who helped preserve classical Latin for later ages by composing formal grammars. His great reputation led to the confusing situation throughout Europe that almost…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/203","title":"2.03 Pseudo-Donatus","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Like the manuscript tradition, the print history of the Ianua is largely an Italian phenomenon. Of thirty-one recorded editions before 1500, only six were made outside Italy, including two in England and one in Barcelona, both places with significant Italian communities and active Italian teachers. Almost all of these small printed books (they usually consist of thirty-six or forty pages including both the Donat and the Cato) come down to us in single copies, so it is certain that there were many other editions that do not survive. The Donat in this form was printed in all major printing centers (Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan), but also in smaller towns like L'Aquila and Pescia. It was a staple of printers, a booklet with an assured market that could easily be printed up in small numbers and could therefore be used to keep presses and pressmen busy when larger projects languished. Totally unlike the printed Ars minor of Aelius Donatus in Northern Europe, which usually stood alone, the Italian Donat was usually found with the Cato in the same little booklet. (14) Italian printers were selling what modern educational publishers would call a package, neatly designed to fit the basic reading course common in Italy.

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We have evidence of three attempts to modernize the text of the Donat before the end of the fifteenth century. About 1487 the first edition of Antonio Mancinelli's Better Donat (Donatus melior) appeared, largely just a corrected basic text arranged in an attractive quarto pamphlet for student use. Mancinelli (1452-1506) was a renowned teacher; his works were widely adopted in humanist classrooms. Like many of Mancinelli's other textbooks, his new and improved Donat lasted as long as his personal reputation as a teacher did; it was printed repeatedly for about thirty years in Venice and Milan and reprinted in France. After the fifteen twenties it went out of use almost entirely in the booklet form Mancinelli had given it, though his corrected text was incorporated into most later editions. (15)

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In the fourteen nineties, Venetian printers and teachers made another attempt to dress the Donat in new clothes, in this case in bilingual editions with interlinear Italian text sometimes called a *Donat Understood *(Donato al senno). (16) Editions of this sort also give Italian equivalents for most or all of the Distichs of Cato. It had four printings at Venice before 1500, but it is difficult to trace this version of the text beyond that date because catalogers do not always distinguish it from the Latin-only editions. It was in print as late as 1670. At Milan in 1570 it was still a common classroom text, because printer Vincenzo Girardone had it on press at the time of his death that year. Apparently he was attempting to make some quick cash at a moment when he could not undertake more ambitious projects because he was gravely ill. He must have anticipated a ready market. (17) Still, it is not very clear what audience the authors and publishers had in mind for this book during its long life. The text could not have been intended for students learning to read in the vernacular, since the subject of the book is Latin grammar only. For Latin students the bilingual text must have been intended as an aid to comprehending the rules, so it was probably a response to the difficulty presented by the Donat as a diagnostic text. Students using the bilingual Donat were simply being given a crib for their promotion exams. (18)

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In 1500 a third reworking of the Ianua with Cato appeared, also at Venice, edited by (or at least under the name of) the renowned humanist Pomponio Leto. The title of the only surviving copy says it was \"ornamented in new order\" by Leto (per Pomponium letum novo ordine decorata). But Leto had died in 1498, and so it is unclear how many of the book's innovations in layout and design are to be attributed to him and which are the work of the printers, the De Gregori brothers, well known for the originality of their woodcut illustrations. Whoever they were, the author and designers of this Donat proceeded by presenting the grammatical doctrines as much as possible in diagram form, expressly so as to facilitate memorization. (19) The front cover of the book offers a tree-form diagram of the parts of grammar, the parts of speech, and the verb constructions (tied to the moods of the verb) -- an outline of sorts of the contents of the book as a whole. On later pages the printers arranged the paradigms in clear, chart-like columns (perhaps imitating the 1468 grammar of Niccolò Perotti); and they dressed the text in unusually complex typography, using no fewer than four different gothic types and several woodcuts. These woodcuts are for the most part simple brackets taken over from the scientific and legal books the De Gregori brothers had been publishing for some years. Here they serve to break down a given doctrinal statement into its two, three, or four parts. (20)

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\n","excerpt":"Like the manuscript tradition, the print history of the Ianua is largely an Italian phenomenon. Of thirty-one recorded editions before 1500, only six were made outside Italy, including two in England and one in Barcelona, both places with significant…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/204","title":"2.04 Printing the Donat","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

For the Leto Cato of 1500 the De Gregori also employed the red-and-black style of printing, which had become common in Venice for some elementary schoolbooks. It is used to unusually good effect in this case. While many red-and-black books merely alternate the colors for purely decorative effect or to emphasize a few headings, the Leto Donat uses red ink in a much more complex way. Red is used for many of the words that are subjects of discussion in the question-and-answer sections. In discussing personal pronouns, for example, the student is given the words ego, nos, tu, and uos in red at the left margin and the questions and answers that concern them are in black just to the right. [fol. 21v] Similarly the conjugation of amo is displayed in several column-format paragraphs across three pages. A typical one begins with a black bracket to divide the verb tenses -- present, past imperfect, past perfect, etc. -- which are named below the bracket in black. Beneath each tense is the corresponding form of amo, also in black, but introduced by the word ut (\"such as\") in red. Below this diagram, each of the sample words is then repeated in red at the right margin, and in a separate column to the left are arranged the questions and answers to be drilled. Thus: \"Amo [in red]: What is its tense? Present. How so? Because the present tense designates an action or passion.\" [6r-7v] These diagram-form paradigms are supplements to the traditional Donat, since the common Ianua-text of this section, rehearsing the conjugation of amo on an additional three pages, is also present. [8r-9r] In these sections giving the traditional text of Ianua, red ink is employed only for the first letters of paragraphs, a much more typical red-and-black usage. As a result, teachers familiar with the common teaching text could quickly and easily see the interpolated material in this edition; and students seeing it for the first time would also be able to discern that there are two sections that drill each major inflectional paradigm.

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Red & black for beginners; a Donat of 1500 (click to enlarge - 464 KB JPEG image)
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The practice of ornamenting in red and black has a complex history. (21) Most often used in the fifteenth century for liturgical and law books, it had been extended to some schoolbooks in the course of the fourteen eighties and nineties at Venice, chiefly for those at the most elementary level like the syllabary and the Donat. Along with the use of floral or figural woodcut borders and initials, red-and-black printing was an attempt to prettify the books offered to children. A 1478 Donat by Nicolas Jenson is the first documented example of red-and-black printing specifically for the school market in Venice, but it did not become common in elementary books until the late fourteen eighties, when Teodoro Ragazzoni began printing and reprinting the Donat in a red-and-black format that was obviously a marketing success. The style, whether for the Donat or for other very basic texts like arithmetics, had a long subsequent life in the Adriatic metropolis and was copied elsewhere, though it never became standard for grammar books as a whole and rarely rose to the level of sophistication displayed by the Leto/De Gregori Donat.

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An interesting example of the application of red-and-black beyond the Donat is in editions of Aldo Manuzio's Latin grammar. Aldo's grammar, first printed in 1493, was repeatedly revised until 1514 in an attempt to replace both the Donat and the commonly used intermediate grammar of Alexander of Villa Dei, the Doctrinale. Aldo offered a comprehensive treatment, intended to accompany students from their first reading of Latin through their school years and to serve as a reference book thereafter. He also included materials for a first course in Greek. Thus, he provided a full set of prayers in Latin and Greek, a few short Bible passages, a tabular syllabary for practicing the reading of syllables, and a systematic grammar that works from simple to complex concepts. Aldo apparently thought that the modern student should skip the Donat and avoid the Doctrinale altogether. (22)

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Red and black for beginners (click to enlarge - 875 KB jpeg image)
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The pressmen of the Giunta firm at Florence in 1519 used a red-and-black style for the first gathering of their Aldo. These few leaves contain the prayers and the syllabary, exactly the materials that would have been given to the very beginning students in the reading course. It constituted a sort of primer, effectively separable from the rest of the book. A book printed this way may in fact have been intended to be distributed in parts. The first gathering could have been put in the hands of elementary students who would only later see the next, intermediate grammar text. For the remainder of the book, including the question-and-answer portions parallel to the Donat exercises, the Giunta employed a straightforward, all-black style, indicating that the student had now progressed to Latin study and therefore deserved to have a book in an adult style. This practice of printing a separable primer in red and black at the beginning of Aldo's grammar was carried forward by other printers, including Aldo's heir Andrea Torresano. (23) Aldo's son Paolo Manuzio dropped it in his editions of Aldo's grammar after 1558. The practice had meanwhile become mere formula, however, since as early as 1543 we find an edition printed by Francesco Bindoni where the red-and-black style is used only in the first gathering even though the syllabary, a part of the primer for which the style was introduced, runs fully four pages into the second gathering. (24)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"For the Leto Cato of 1500 the De Gregori also employed the red-and-black style of printing, which had become common in Venice for some elementary schoolbooks. It is used to unusually good effect in this case. While many red-and-black books merely…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/205","title":"2.05 Red and Black","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Considering that the genuine text of Aelius Donatus was well known and understood in Italian scholarly circles from the early sixteenth century onward, it is perhaps surprising to discover that the Ianua continued to appear in print for elementary school use into the seventeenth century. Clearly, it was ingrained in the practice of schoolmasters, and its packaging remained traditionalizing. (25) It may even have become a trademark of sorts for self-consciously old-fashioned pedagogues. A copy printed at Milan in 1611, for example, survives in the same binding as the comparably old-fashioned intermediate grammar by Gian Alberto Bossi (ca. 1450-ca. 1512) also printed in 1611. (26) This context is interesting since Bossi's grammar was largely forgotten until the middle of the sixteenth century, but then it was repeatedly published at Milan for the use of students not enrolled in the fashionable Jesuit college of the Brera.

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The publisher of the 1611 Ianua was copying a pretty, medievalizing package that had originated a few years earlier in Milan. (27) The style marks it as elementary material by contrast to slightly more advanced grammar book of Bossi. This Donat has no title page. Instead, a caption title in red appears on the first page, which is also adorned with bold black borders. The title announced that the booklet (of forty leaves in a single gathering, the cheapest possible format) contained the Donat and the Cato for school use recently and punctiliously corrected for students of all sorts. The remainder of the book was similarly ornamented, and it contained some additional texts not announced in the title. There was a second set of catechetical grammar drills, a list of vocabulary words, an alphabet table with a few phrases to be read in Italian, and on the back cover, lists of things to do at morning and evening devotions. This 1611 booklet is the exact typographical and ornamental equivalent of the red-and-black Jenson Donat of 1478, proving that in some circles tastes in layout and design were almost as conservative as pedagogical practices.

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Although the Donat or Ianua clearly dominated the elementary teaching of grammar in Italy, the advent of printing made other texts easily available both at this exact, very basic level and for the next, intermediate steps in learning Latin. Some succeeded in rivaling the traditional Donat while others did not. The Ars minor of Aelius Donatus -- the real Donatus -- was never a contender on the Italian market. It was printed frequently in Northern Europe, where it was a standard elementary classroom text. Over three hundred editions dating before 1501 are known but only four were printed in Italy, and it is possible that some of these were intended for use in Germany. (28) An edition printed at Venice in 1495 combined the Ars minor catechetical text with the prologue usual on the Italian Pseudo-Donatus, that is, the twelve-line poem beginning Ianua sum rudibus.... If this odd combination was an experiment in introducing the genuine Donatus text to the Italian school market, it failed. Neither in manuscript nor in print did the genuine Ars minor ever have much influence on Italian pedagogy. (29) There are very few later editions of the Ars minor in Italy and most of those that appeared in the sixteenth century were scholarly ones aimed at humanists with a philological interest in ancient grammar. (30)

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The fifteenth century, moreover, saw the invention of humanist Latin grammars which, though not revolutionary in theoretical terms, were well tailored to fit the needs of classrooms where classical norms of Latin style and vocabulary were taught. The pedagogy of these texts will concern us only slightly (and has been extensively treated by others). (31) But the place these humanist alternatives held in the market is worth consideration here. Most fifteenth-century grammatical authors in Italy began with the desire to replace the text most often taught in medieval schoolrooms just after the Donat, namely the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villa Dei. This verse grammar composed in 1199 was popular both north and south of the Alps. Although the book was admired for its coverage and considered useful because its verses were easily memorized, humanists criticized its vocabulary and style, which seemed to them perniciously medieval. They even portrayed Alexander as a living enemy, so entrenched was the habit of teaching from this text and so strongly did they feel that it delivered the wrong message. As Giovanni Francesco Boccardo Pilade (d. 1505) put it, Alexander made a good humanist want to vomit. (32)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Considering that the genuine text of Aelius Donatus was well known and understood in Italian scholarly circles from the early sixteenth century onward, it is perhaps surprising to discover that the Ianua continued to appear in print for elementary…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/206","title":"2.06 Beyond the Donat","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The practical response of the Italian humanists was to author new grammars for the elementary and intermediate Latin course based on their own teaching. Pilade himself had attempted this before authoring a detailed critique of everything he found objectionable in the Doctrinale. (33) The most influential of the new intermediate grammars were those of Guarino Guarini Veronese (1374-1460) and Niccolò Perotti (1430 -1480). Guarino began work on his grammar textbook in the second decade of the fifteenth century, designing a concise prose grammar in a deliberate attempt to counter the prolix verse of the Doctrinale. He took over and simplified descriptive terms for noun and verb morphology that had been developing for a century or more in the Italian schools and exemplified each rule with good classical examples. Guarino's grammar was praised by other humanists (many of them his own students), and it came to have wide circulation in Italy as an intermediate grammar book. (34) Like the Donat, however, the text was not stable, since before the advent of printing there was no common or vulgate text, merely versions prepared by individual teachers for their own classrooms. Writing in 1459, Guarino's son Battista complained of these elaborations and modifications. (35)

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Guarino presents basic concepts, 1493 (click to enlarge - 690 KB jpeg image)
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After the appearance of the first printed editions, the Guarino text stabilized somewhat. Over sixty editions are known before 1501, all but three of them printed in Italy. Typically the text began with brief, basic definitions for the parts of speech and simple noun paradigms. There followed a series of short descriptive notes for verb forms and syntax accompanied by lists of regular and irregular forms, and usually some verse-form chapters on heteroclyte nouns, orthographic conventions, and vocabulary study.

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Intense vocabulary study of a 1493 edition (click to enlarge - 632 jpeg image)
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The last chapter, entitled Carmina differentialia, also circulated widely as a separate or appeared with grammar books by other authors. (36) In this form Guarino's Regulae were printed numerous times right through the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, especially in the Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, where Guarino had spent almost all of his long career as teacher.

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Unpretentious title page (click to enlarge - 761 KB jpeg image)
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Typically these editions echoed Guarino's own modesty in being short, simple, relatively un-ornamented, and largely devoid of marketing prose. (37) Some printers added first page borders to dress the book like a Donat. (38) Others included Italian-language equivalents for vocabulary words, probably following the model of the bilingual Donato al senno. (39) Guarino had intended his book to be used as an introductory grammar, probably after the Donat, and this was its usual place in the sixteenth century curriculum. (40) Other early sixteenth-century publishers offered Guarino as follow-up to another first grammar book. (41)

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In the fifteen fifties, Antonio Palmieri corrected and edited the received text of Guarino for the Venetian publisher Giovanni Griffio. For the first section he substituted a simple question-and-answer treatment of the parts of speech and basic noun forms. This version was copied by most later printers. Since the common printed text of Guarino's grammar was fairly summary, editors and printers throughout the sixteenth century felt free to add materials. Following some incunable editions and perhaps also in imitation of Aldo Manuzio's grammar of 1493, Palmieri added a Greek alphabet to fill out the last leaf of his 64-page booklet. (42)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The practical response of the Italian humanists was to author new grammars for the elementary and intermediate Latin course based on their own teaching. Pilade himself had attempted this before authoring a detailed critique of everything he found…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/207","title":"2.07 Guarino Guarini of Verona","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Revision of Guarino became an advertising claim like others that multiplied at mid-century. A 1583 Piacenza edition attributed new revisions to Antonio Bendinelli, but it basically followed Palmieri's text closely except for adding a few examples. Bendinelli replaced the Greek alphabet at the end with an extract from one of Cicero's letters and an extended diagrammatic paradigm for the verb esse. The publisher claimed on the title page that Bendinelli not only corrected the text but also arranged it better. This last claim was a real selling point in that the typography is unusually spacious. The paradigms are set in a graceful, formal manner accentuated by two-line woodcut initials. The booklet also boasts purely ornamental cuts borrowed from more ambitious books. The title page displays a madonna and child surrounded by angels; there is a naïve, half-page cut of a knight on fol. E2 labeled \"S. Antonino;\" and every chapter begins with a handsome initial showing a mythological or biblical figure.

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By the end of the sixteenth century, publishers usually treated Guarino's grammar as they did the Donat, as an old-fashioned text, distinctly down-market by comparison with more modern grammars. The 1596 Florence edition already mentioned was formatted exactly like a Donat that issued from the same Sermartelli press in the next year. We may imagine that they were intended for the same unambitious schools. The printer used the same type for the Guarino as for the Donat, but crowded the page even more than in the beginners' grammar. Then toward the end, at the point where the common text of Guarino changes from prose to verse, the printer changed type too, employing an ugly little roman and jamming forty two lines on each quarto page. (43)

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Marco Antonio Bonciari (1555-1616) worked yet another revision upon Guarino in the last decade of the sixteenth century, proposing it as a basic textbook for the newly founded Seminary College of Saint Bernard at Perugia where he was professor of humanities. As a first stage he cleaned up and re-edited the Palmieri text and added a drilling book for irregular verb forms. (44) Later he enlarged this basic textbook under the title Guarinus, Or, Introduction to the Latin Language, effectively turning Guarino's name into the title of the textbook. This appeared in 1597-1598 together with a reprint of the drill book for irregular forms and another drilling book for all the noun and verb paradigms, called Donatus and Guarinus Corrected, Enlarged, and Illustrated. All three booklets were presented in a handsome small octavo on blue paper. Bonciari also published a rhetoric textbook for the same school, and he turned Donatus and Guarino into characters in a poetic allegory about good grammar teaching. (45)

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Bonciari's Guarinus seems to have had considerable success. It was republished many times as late as 1694; the Donatus and Guarinus drilling book appeared as late as 1698. Meanwhile, the Roman teacher Giovanni Battista Corradi (fl. 1644-1681) prepared an enlarged version of the traditional Donat with Bonciari's Guarino under the title Bonciarius adultus, by which he meant a fuller and more mature version of Bonciari. So Bonciari himself, like Guarino and Donatus, became a title as well as an author. Still later, Corradi added translations of the base texts and extensive commentary, calling the resulting work Aelius Donatus the Roman, or rather, Concerning All Grammar, Latin and Vernacular. He dedicated this book to three young princes of the Altemps family, presenting it as if it were a textbook though, at over eight hundred pages, it seems unlikely to have been used by many students. (46)

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The fact that Bonciari and Corradi linked the revised text of Guarino's grammar with a similarly corrected and clarified version of the traditional Donat was not a novelty. Guarino himself seems to have expected that his work would be used as a follow up to memorizing Pseudo-Donatus; and printers often offered the two texts in combined form in one book or in paired editions printed to the same pattern. Giovanni Tacuino, for example, offered a Guarino uniform in style with Antonio Mancinelli's Better Donat in 1507. In 1511 Bernardino Benali did the same. Benali's Donat is printed in red and black and his Guarino in black only, but they use the same types and both have first sheets decorated with religious woodcuts reused from missals or books of hours. A more direct model for Bonciari and Corradi might have been a combined edition prepared by Giovanni Battista Spina (dates unknown) and printed at Rome by the prestigious Salviani firm in 1579. Spina imagined that Guarino himself had edited the Donat, so he called his book The Grammatical Rudiments of Aelius Donatus Once Digested by Guarino and Now Restored by Giovanni Battista Spina. The book is a tour-de-force of red and black printing but offers a traditional version of both the Donat and Guarino's Regulae. (47)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Revision of Guarino became an advertising claim like others that multiplied at mid-century. A 1583 Piacenza edition attributed new revisions to Antonio Bendinelli, but it basically followed Palmieri's text closely except for adding a few examples…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/208","title":"2.08 Improving Guarino","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Perotti in quarto, opening page (click to enlarge - 658 KB JPEG image)
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Niccolò Perotti's Rudimenta grammatices was a longer and more ambitious work than Guarino's and proposed a more significant substitution for the Doctrinale. It was the most successful Latin grammar authored in the fifteenth century. (48) Perotti begins with the usual presentations of morphology and syntax, employing mostly classical examples, and then goes on to a section on letter-writing which is actually an ambitious introduction to stylistics. Letter writing had long been the excuse for Italian schoolmasters to teach Latin style, but Perotti broke with the formulaic medieval tradition of ars dictaminis and presented the letter as an opportunity to master proper Ciceronian Latin. (49) Perotti's approach to grammar -- as a discipline that embraces morphology, syntax, and stylistics in one integrated course -- would set the measure for grammarians' marketing ambitions for several centuries. From Perotti onward, many publishers and printers looked to produce packages of grammatical texts that would either embrace an entire course of grammatical study or else correspond to parts of an integrated grammar course. (50)

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Perotti also attempted to enliven the course with direct addresses to the student. Even more remarkably he claimed to abandon the medieval notion that grammatical rules are worth memorizing in and of themselves. He wanted his students to master classical style through the analysis of classical usage. To this end he defined grammar in a new way, as the art of speaking and writing well based on the observation of writers and poets worth imitating, especially the authors from Cicero to Pliny the Younger. (51) Perotti was influenced by the resounding success of the Elegantiae of Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457). Valla's learned and truculent notes on classical usage were first published in 1439 and were widely admired and used by the time Perotti, a student of Valla's, penned his grammar in 1468. Most humanist grammarians after Perotti paid lip service to this ostensibly empirical approach wherein the rules were derived from classical usage; most also gave their students endless rules to memorize. (52)

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More than rules, Perotti invited his students to memorize long lists of words that occur in classical literature. We know from early annotations in editions of Perotti, moreover, that these vocabulary lists were attractive and useful. These sections of the grammar served as hooks on which owners of Perotti's book could hang notes from their own readings of classical authors. Annotations of this sort effectively rewrote the grammar book, making it over from a standard-issue word list into a personalized dictionary of usage as observed by the individual humanist reader. (53)

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In their work of annotating Perotti, readers were helped along by the format of the printed book, although it is clear that Perotti's own manuscript fair copy was formatted for study and consultation in an even more thorough way than the earliest editions. (54) Perotti numbered the rules in each section of his grammar and used other mnemonic devices derived from teaching practice. (55) Printers dealt with these innovations with differing degrees of success. Early editions used broad margins and centered, all-caps section heads to imitate the spacious look of humanist manuscripts. This was true whether the printed book was in quarto, imitating small-format manuscript schoolbooks, or in folio, more closely resembling larger and more luxurious humanist manuscripts. The numbering of the rules was emphasized by centering even simple heads like \"First rule on supines,\" \"Second rule,\" etc. (56)

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Perotti's word lists in quarto format (Click to enlarge - 662 KB JPEG image)
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Early printers set up Perotti's long lists of vocabulary words in columns that clarify their inflectional patterns, variable roots, and meanings. For example, Perotti invited his students to memorize forty-five third declension transitive deponent verbs. He placed a tabulated list of them within the text. It gives the first person singular in present, perfect, and past perfect form and an equivalent meaning for each verb. In one early quarto edition this tabulated list occupies almost two full pages. The same layout in large-format editions could take up well over a folio page. Such layouts, of course, were prodigal of paper and resulted in relatively bulky and expensive books. (57)

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More economical editions of Perotti began to appear around 1480, typically using smaller type and closer settings on quarto pages. This style never entirely replaced the earlier, more spacious editions, but the general trend was to abandon the humanist manuscript ideal in favor of denser, more utilitarian layouts. There is little doubt that the move to smaller formats was market-driven; booksellers wanted to have more than one version on offer. (58)

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Instead of centering the heading for each rule, the cheaper editions set the text in solid paragraphs and simply indicated the start of each rule with a section or paragraph mark ( ¶ ). They preserved the tabulated word lists, but sometimes squeezed them in, using far less white space. (59) Almost immediately after Perotti's death, moreover, editions began to appear in black-letter types instead of the romans that more closely imitated humanist manuscripts. Other printers mixed roman and black-letter. Such editions appear first at Reggio Emilia, Milan and Rome. After the turn of the century, some Venetian editions also appear with mixed black-letter and roman. The trend toward more economical editions probably reflects the increasingly widespread use of Perotti in classrooms. The cheapening of the book culminated in a Florentine edition of 1543 in which the Giunta firm, which usually turned out handsome products, presented Perotti in a particularly crowded and homely layout. They used cracked and worn woodblocks, badly locked up forms, and sloppy inking.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Niccolò Perotti's Rudimenta grammatices was a longer and more ambitious work than Guarino's and proposed a more significant substitution for the Doctrinale. It was the most successful Latin grammar authored in the fifteenth century. (48) Perotti…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/209","title":"2.09 A Best Seller: Niccolò Perotti","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

It is likely that Calfurnio would have numbered the Donat in this same company of basic books that taught Latin falsely. Indeed the Donat may very well be what he meant by \"foolish primers\" (insulsa rudimenta). Although deeply ingrained in the traditional curriculum, the Donat proved problematical for many humanist teachers. At first they complained primarily about its style -- limping prose stuffed with odd words, many of them medieval and not classical. This general concern had motivated the work of Guarino and Perotti. (66) Later teachers also criticized Ianua as too difficult for beginners to understand. This change in critique probably reflects the changing way the Donat was used in the classroom. Medieval students had parroted the verses mechanically to start with and then in a second part of the course repeated them with their teacher's explication, for comprehension. The first humanists seemed to have accepted this standard method, merely chafing a little at the bad Latin that embodied it. Later humanist masters took a more integrated approach to teaching Latin; they wanted their students to learn simple, pure classical vocabulary from the start, and they did not want them to begin with an ill-comprehended text. Only if students could recognize the meaning of the text immediately could they eventually come to love the language. Robert Black sees this humanist ideal contributing to the increasing marginalization of the Donat and its relegation to the reading course; he cites as evidence the increasing number of humanist grammars after 1480 that include basic paradigms that once were learned only with the Donat. (67) At least one sixteenth-century humanist, Stefano Piazzoni (dates unknown), made a concerted effort to correct the Donat and provide it with better declensional paradigms. He seems to have had his own students in Venice in mind. (68)

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Giovanni Sulpizio (1450-ca 1513), by contrast, accepted the entrenched place of the Donat and simply created a corrective Latin grammar to follow immediately upon it. Sulpizio probably intended his work to be called Opus grammaticum, but it circulated under several other titles, most often just Regulae Sulpitii. It was often printed together with the author's work on prosody (commonly Scansiones Sulpitii) and the two works in effect cover an entire intermediate Latin grammar course. Sulpizio expressly said his book was to be given to students right after the Donat; but he assumed that they have little understanding of the inflectional paradigms. He did not give the students new paradigms to memorize, but he rehearsed the definitions of the parts of speech in an introductory poem to be memorized and then explained the regular structure of inflected forms at length. He also provided long lists of irregular forms to be memorized. In other words, he was repeating some basic material from the rote-memorized Donat but insisting it be thoroughly understood through repeated, intelligent drilling. Sulpizio made extensive use of mnemonic verses so the rules would be easier to digest. Although the book is presented in a format confusing to modern readers, with repeated prefaces, inserted passages from earlier grammarians, short reading texts, and irregular headings, it was popular with humanist teachers for its wealth of drilling materials. One of the reading texts, Sulpizio's own poem on table manners, was widely excerpted and anthologized by other authors. (69)

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Both front and back covers have a title (click to enlarge - 910 KB jpeg image)
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It is possible that many teachers used Sulpizio more as a source book or teaching auxiliary than as a basic textbook. Giovanni Tacuino printed the two works in an unusual format in 1495, with the title Regulae Sulpitii on an otherwise blank front page and Scansione Sulpitii on the corresponding back page, effectively creating a paper wrapper for the two books if purchased and bound together. Such packaging rather effectively labels the book as work of reference. (70) Later editions styled Sulpizio's grammar accurately enough as a Grammaticae compendium. In this form the book included a chapter on the figures of speech lifted directly from Aelius Donatus' Ars maior (and attributed to him), as well as the De scansione. Sometimes the parts were pulled apart again and issued in editions designed to accompany each other. The full anthology had many editions across fifty years in Italy and was used in Northern Europe as well. (71)

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Sulpizio's basic strategy -- accept the traditional Donat as unavoidable, but correct it immediately -- was adopted by many authors across the sixteenth century. But not all teachers found Sulpizio's multiplication of examples and drills a wise procedure. In Milan in 1599, Alessandro Rubini at Milan rejected several grammars then on the market and proposed his own De grammaticis insitutionibus liber. Even at this late date, he assumed his students would have memorized the Donat. His follow-up grammar gave a very limited number of clear, simple rules with a single example for each, \"lest the weak minds of boys be overwhelmed by a multitude of examples.\" (72) From this stage, they would go on to memorize additional rules and examples, or better yet to apply them directly in reading and construing proverbs and moral sayings.

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This practical development, denigrating the Donat by marginalizing it and minimizing its influence, was paralleled in the rhetoric of humanist teachers, who increasingly condemned the way in which the Donat supposedly destroyed any possible enjoyment of or appreciation for the Latin language. In the context of just such an exhortation to make Latin admirable to beginners, Francesco Priscianese (1495-1549) recommended his own short introductory grammar as a substitute for the Donat:

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And the Donat too (to speak freely the truth and what, as I believe, every good man would say who had thought about it for a while) is far too dry a thing for real beginners, and too weak, and (what is most important) too difficult, both for its language, which no one understands without a translator, and also for the material treated in difficult fashion, out of order, and strangely. So much so that one can almost say that he who knows the Donat, unless he already knew a great deal of what he now knows beforehand, knows nothing at all, or rather that if he does know something, does not know what he knows. (73)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"It is likely that Calfurnio would have numbered the Donat in this same company of basic books that taught Latin falsely. Indeed the Donat may very well be what he meant by \"foolish primers\" (insulsa rudimenta). Although deeply ingrained in the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/211","title":"2.11 Humanist Critiques of the Donat","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

There were repeated attempts to displace the Donat in Italian schools from the early fifteenth century forward. Most early attempts foundered on the unmoving rocks of conservative educational practice. Guarino's brief prose grammar, a never-published verse grammar by Lorenzo Valla, and a series of short treatises by Pomponio Leto all intended to substitute for some of the material in the Donat, or at least to correct it at a very early stage. We have already seen this pattern in the case of Giovanni Sulpizio, who, like Valla and Leto, formed part of the coterie of Rome-based philologists who can be credited with a genuine humanist reform of grammar teaching. (74) Into the seventeenth century, printers were still designing pairs of textbooks to be sold together -- the Donat and Guarino's grammar or the Donat and some other local favorite. (75)

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Giovanni Battista Cantalicio (ca. 1450-1514?) composed a successful short grammar which seems to have been intended to substitute entirely for the Donat. It appeared in over forty editions between 1493 and 1613, usually under a title that clearly defines its content and method, A Most Useful Compendium of all Latin Grammar and Metrical Art Divided into Rules. (76) Cantalicio relied on short lists of brief rules, expressly tailored to the limited memory of younger students. His work may be taken as a criticism of the lengthy and obscure rule-making of the Donat. Cantalicio's grammar was advanced in terms of layout, especially for the paradigms. This fact probably reflects his own ideas about type and design. Indeed, his preface is a letter of complaint about the work of its first printer (for a Foligno edition that does not seem to survive). The book's publishers reprinted this preface in every edition I have seen. It functioned primarily as an example of Cantalicio's elegant prose. But the printers may also have taken its sentiments to heart, for the layout of the book and even the style of ornament is remarkably consistent throughout its long life in print.

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Aldo Manuzio reprinted in 1519 (click to enlarge - 683 KB jpeg image)
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Aldo Manuzio also proposed to substitute for the Donat entirely, with a comprehensive Latin-language textbook composed from scratch. Aldo's grammar was a steady seller through the first third of the sixteenth century and continued to be reprinted thereafter. It was apparently more popular north of the Alps than in Italy. (77)

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A more modest success, but entirely Italian, characterized the two grammar books of Lucio Giovanni Scoppa. These too represent a basic grammar course independent of the Donat. The Six Books of Introductory Grammar was completed in August 1508. Its preface assumes that it is self-contained and gives specific advice about teaching methods, especially for drilling paradigms.

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Scoppa's Epitome, 1517 (click to enlarge - 683 KB jpeg image)
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Whether because the book was criticized as too long and detailed or just because Scoppa decided that his drilling models needed clarification for beginning students, he composed a shorter Epitome, which appeared as an appendix to the original work in November of the same year. Scoppa's double grammar is notable for its indexes, which allowed readers to access every Latin word used in a paradigm or as an example in the entire 500-page book. (78)

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Scoppa's Epitome as a separate (click to enlarge - 849 KB jpeg image)
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In 1517, the Neapolitan printer Antonio Frezza offered Scoppa's Introductory Grammar and the Epitome in separate but uniform editions.

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Scoppa in 1524 (click to enlarge - 743 KB jpeg image)
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By 1524, the Nicolini da Sabbio firm in Venice advertised that they had much improved and corrected Scoppa's grammar and that the Epitome was available as a separate. In a 1534 edition, the Epitome occupied a separate group of gatherings that could be detached for use with beginners. So it seems clear that Scoppa's Epitome could be used with elementary students while the larger grammar constituted its \"teacher's edition\" or a second, more advanced textbook. Although the Epitome survives as a separate much more rarely than the larger grammar, it is clear that many publishers after 1517 followed the Frezza/Nicolini pattern and that the smaller book was widely used as a first grammar, to substitute or supplement the Donat. (79)

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Anthology for teaching (click to enlarge - 863 KB jpeg image)
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The learned Basle printer Adam Petri tried a different strategy of substitution in the fifteen twenties, following the same anthologizing method that Giovanni Sulpizio had used. Petri stitched together a more or less complete basic course composed entirely of texts and extracts from classical sources. His choice for a first grammar was the Regulae of (Pseudo-)Rhemnius Palaemon. This brief text bore the name of a second-century grammarian, though it is now believed to have been written in the fourth century. It was discovered and assigned to Palaemon in the middle of the fifteenth century by Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (1426-1503). Scholars in the circle of Pomponio Leto, the so-called Accademia Romana, copied and studied it. (80)

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Petri briefly introduced the text by situating it as an ancient one rediscovered in modern times. Moreover, he says, Palaemon beat Aelius Donatus at his own game:

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This man [Palaemon] compacted the whole of grammar into so brief a package that even Donatus is more prolix than he, and some day he may come to have as enduring a name. Gioviano Pontano, a poet most eloquent in his own day, discovered this text. (81)

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Commending Donatus (click to enlarge - 784 jpeg image)
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Notice that the role of the Donat as described here is to give a quick, exceedingly brief summary of grammar and to rehearse the paradigms, not to give a fuller structure to the subsequent course. This role, Petri says, is better played by Palaemon than by Donatus who in the common mind is synonymous with the brief introduction. (82)

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The surviving Pseudo-Palaemon text, however, only presented grammatical information about nouns and pronouns. Petri therefore filled it out with a patchwork of grammatical doctrines by such late antique authors as Quintus Terentius Scaurus, Aelius Donatus, and Marius Victorinus. In a preface Petri described these authors briefly with their credentials in terms of ancient or modern opinions; as a minimum he gave a clear statement of the time at which they wrote. Thus, Petri managed to provide the basics of a full grammar course without ever having to employ the teachings of any suspiciously modern grammarian, and he also laid the foundation for his student public to understand the importance of ancient Latin usage as the creation of a specific historical period. The result was slightly repetitive, but no more so than seemed useful in the elementary classroom. It is a tour-de-force of antiquarian pastiche.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"There were repeated attempts to displace the Donat in Italian schools from the early fifteenth century forward. Most early attempts foundered on the unmoving rocks of conservative educational practice. Guarino's brief prose grammar, a never-published…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/212","title":"2.12 Replacing the Donat","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Small, downmarket, and radical (click to enlarge - 743 KB jpeg image)
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In the fifteen twenties and thirties, other reformers attempted more thorough changes to the basic curriculum. One obscure effort (obscure because few copies of any of his books survive) was that of Pietro Cittadella (d. 1554). A Paduan poet and probably also a schoolteacher, Cittadella authored a grammar in 1535 in which he proposed a question-and-answer teaching system. He gave a fifty-odd concise rules to be memorized, and then proceeded to exercise the students with close explications of short sentences. The sample sentences (each called a thema) were presented in both Latin and Italian so that there would be no doubt as to their meaning. Then the students were quizzed by the teacher in an examen that proceeded through the thema word by word, asking about parts of speech, meanings, inflectional forms, and syntactical relationships. The student was to answer using the descriptive vocabulary of the brief, memorized rules. The book was printed very roughly and inelegantly and its preface promised a fuller treatment in a longer book on the parts of speech (apparently never published). Since Cittadella called his book a methodus, it is possible that he merely intended it for a demonstration piece.

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The most radical reformers suggested teaching Latin entirely in Italian. An early exponent was the Veronese humanist Bernardino Donato (1483-1543) whose Grammatica latina in volgare saw a single edition in 1529. It is notable for its front matter where Donato remarked that since arithmetic, astrology, medicine and philosophy could be studied in Italian, it was time to make Latin study available in that form too. He seems to have envisioned a reader who might want to \"pick up\" some Latin through self-study.

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Portrait of Priscianese (click to enlarge - 848 KB jpeg image)
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A more successful and influential reformer was Francesco Priscianese. Priscianese does not seem to have started with the intention of replacing the Donat, though he ended up claiming to have done so. His comprehensive descriptive grammar of Latin, composed in standard Tuscan, appeared in 1540. He believed that it would be easier and more agreeable for students to study the ancient language across the entire course if their handbook were written in the modern vernacular. He also opined that bilingual study is of benefit for mastery of both languages, enriching the vernacular by the example of Latin eloquence and making Latin more easily understandable. For realizing these goals in the form of a grammar, he was praised by several members of the Tuscan community in Rome, including Michelangelo Buonarotti. (83) Only in a second moment, Priscianese tells us, did he decide to make an abbreviation of his grammar as a direct substitute for the Donat. Perhaps inevitably, this substitute for the book that Florentines commonly called the Donadello came to be called the Priscianello, a marketing device that pointed out in a word that it was to be used to substitute for the Donat. Its modernity was its selling point. (84)

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By 1550, then, there were so many alternatives in print that the grip of the Donat was loosening. Editions of the traditional work continued to appear well into the seventeenth century, but increasingly the Donat stood for an older pedagogy, one resistant to modern teaching methods.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In the fifteen twenties and thirties, other reformers attempted more thorough changes to the basic curriculum. One obscure effort (obscure because few copies of any of his books survive) was that of Pietro Cittadella (d. 1554). A Paduan poet and…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/213","title":"2.13 Radical Grammarians","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Toward the middle of the sixteenth century Perotti's grammar ceased to be published frequently in Italy, but it did have a number of late-century editions, each one it seems with more fulsome advertising than the last. The Giunta at Florence, almost as if to make amends for the awful edition of 1543, gave the book a handsome, simple quarto edition in 1560. An abbreviated text in handy octavo came out in Venice in 1561, 1568, and 1579 \"liberated from innumerable errors by Borgaruccio Borgarucci.\" (60) The claim that the many earlier printings were badly inaccurate became a refrain in late-century editions, but it is hard to say exactly what it meant in marketing terms. It may be that the many Perottis printed early in the sixteenth century had acquired so bad a reputation for the quality of their text that this fact had contributed to the book's ceasing to be published regularly, with the further result that printers had to claim to have edited the text anew to recapture a market for it. (61)

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On the other hand, for some of these later editions we can infer other considerations than the reputation of the book. For example, it seems likely that Giorgio Marescotti's 1582 edition was part of his (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign to become official printer to the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. He gave Perotti's grammar a new preface that seems more than a little defensive about the whole project. Marescotti first reminded his readers of Perotti's century-long reputation. He then backtracked a bit, saying that, however old-fashioned, the book was still likely to be useful to the youths of Florence. He was claiming to be a servant of the Florentine state by printing a classic of humanist scholarship and pedagogy. He also claimed that he had decided to base his text not on any recent edition but on early ones, implying that he used an edition or manuscript close to the author's own text. (62) Although Perotti's grammar was not much reprinted in Italy after 1560, we know that it was still on the market much later and in use in some schools well into the seventeenth century. (63)

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Calfurnio commends Perotti (click to enlarge - 632 KB jpeg image)
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Advertising was part of the success of Perotti's Rudimenta from the start, and it tells us clearly what grammar masters valued in the work. Perotti himself provided no introduction to his text, but such humanist modesty was a liability in the competitive market for textbooks. Printers and editors almost immediately added prefaces composed with marketing needs in mind. Brief but otherwise typical is that of Giovanni Calfurnio (1433-1503) which appeared in Venetian editions from 1478 onward and with increasing frequency toward the end of the century. Calfurnio praised Perotti in general terms as one of those modern scholars who revived the beautiful Latin of ancient times, and specifically for having composed a grammar that would substitute for \"certain foolish primers and over-dense grammars with which boys were taught falsely.\" (64) Over-density is an interesting charge, since the Rudimenta is also chock full of things to memorize. Calfurnio probably meant that Perotti's work is relatively more concerned with vocabulary and less with multiplying rules than it predecessors. Calfurnio went on to name the Doctrinale among the worthless textbooks: \"Nor do I see what possible excuse those who employ the silly poem of barbarous Alexander can henceforth give.\" (65)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Toward the middle of the sixteenth century Perotti's grammar ceased to be published frequently in Italy, but it did have a number of late-century editions, each one it seems with more fulsome advertising than the last. The Giunta at Florence, almost…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/210","title":"2.10 Advertising an Old Standby","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

No such fate awaited the other medieval standard, the verse anthology of Pseudo-Cato. Since it was a collection of moral sayings in more or less classical Latin, the Cato could be embraced by grammarians with many teaching styles. (85) The early humanists particularly valued it as an open window on the morality of the ancient world. Because it was an elementary text, moreover, the Cato was exempt from the broader humanist critique of medieval florilegia. From Petrarch onwards, the Italian humanists rebelled against the scholastic practice, embodied in popular preaching as well, of excerpting pithy sayings as themes for new composition without regard for their proper literary and moral contexts. This practice amounted to treating the sayings as authoritative individually and in themselves rather than understanding their authors as creators of morally integral works of literature. (86)

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The Cato, however, was accepted by the humanists as an integrated work in its own right. Its anthologic nature was simply part of its elementary character. Heinrich Bebel, one of the most eloquent spokesmen for Italian humanist educational ideas in Germany, contrasted the Cato with the other moralizing poetry usually given to school boys. He concluded (on the authority of Lorenzo Valla) that it is highly salutary and written in excellent Latin, even if it is not to be attributed to the historical Cato. Moreover, he forbade teachers to read other \"minor authors\" (he meant the medieval schoolroom poets) with their students:

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In conclusion, all versifiers and minor authors are to be avoided by those who are eager to acquire eloquence and especially by those of tender age, unless they are authors who have written bountifully and elegantly on a pleasant and moral subject. I make exception as well for the book ascribed to \"Cato.\" For no one in a thousand years, says Valla, has written a more elegant Latin poem than the author of this book. ... And the book itself may well be called \"a Cato\" for its gravity and integrity, on which account works known as \"Catos\" are celebrated with the highest praise. (87)

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The issue for Bebel, as it had been for Valla and other early Italian humanists, was that students in the traditional scholastic curriculum absorbed bad Latin and chancy morals all at once. In humanist schools, they would instead learn both good usage and moral commonplace thought. (88)

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As the Counter-Reformation proceeded, teachers stressed more and more that the Cato was only one introduction to commonplace moral thinking. It was properly complemented by prayers, scripture passages, and simple devotional texts that would add a Christian dimension to the most elementary instruction. Angelo Turchini notes that by the turn of the seventeenth century teachers urgently maintained that the ancients were superior to modern men in eloquence but not in matters of religion or morals. Some authors of new grammars insisted that students should advance as early as possible to reading moral texts. (89)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"No such fate awaited the other medieval standard, the verse anthology of Pseudo-Cato. Since it was a collection of moral sayings in more or less classical Latin, the Cato could be embraced by grammarians with many teaching styles. (85) The early…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/214","title":"2.14 Catonis Disticha","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The most significant aspect of Bade's career, at least for the history of Italian textbooks, is that he packaged and re-packaged Italian humanist pedagogy for the Northern European market. His highly successful packages were then imported back to Italy by Venetian printers who proposed them for use in Italian schools in just the form we have seen, as teacher's manuals. I have found no evidence that these rather elaborate Venetian books were actually given to students in Italy, though some Paris editions by Josse Bade do bear marks of ownership by students. These fully annotated editions of elementary texts really represent an attempt to provide the humanist schoolmaster with books that will serve as reference aids (cribs, even) for his teaching. If we imagine that the target book buyer was a provincial teacher at an elementary level, we can see that these books were also intended to package the pretensions of such teachers to erudition and to embody their ties to the great world of humanist philological scholarship. Bade's extensive commentary on Pseudo-Cato was offered in Italy as part of a collected edition of the works of a famous Italian teacher of grammar, Antonio Mancinelli (1452-1506). The resulting package linked its humble, small-town buyer to the glorious tradition of Italian humanist scholarship, to the Roman Academy of which Mancinelli was a member, and to the pan-European world of humanism that had embraced the Italian achievement.

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To judge from the bibliographical record, scholarly editions of Pseudo-Cato would seem to have far outnumbered reading or student editions in the early years of printing. But this is an illusion created by survival rates and bibliographical practice. Annotated Catos survive in relatively large numbers because they were more substantial, had longer working lives, and so seemed more worth binding up; they were also distinct enough to have their own place in modern bibliographies. By contrast the small versions of the Cato on a few leaves intended to be given to children have often disappeared without a trace or with just a mention in a printer's ledger or bookseller's inventory. The Cato printed specifically for children most often appeared in the same booklet with Pseudo-Donatus and, since Pseudo-Donatus precedes Pseudo-Cato, the modern bibliographical entries for such books are under Donatus.

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The Cato anthology came to the humanists already assembled; it was fully traditional in medieval classrooms. On the model it offered, many humanists compiled other collections of moral sayings. In fact humanist schoolmasters seem to have felt that the new technology of printing afforded them opportunities to multiply the salutary effects of such collections by multiplying the collections themselves. Supplements to the Cato for schoolboys could be published easily and cheaply in any town with a printing press. With only a small investment a teacher could customize his basic Latin reading list with a great variety of texts that he wanted to teach. Almost always, these new anthologies included texts on Christian themes as well as the secular commonplaces included in the Cato itself.

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A good example of the form is the small collection published in provincial Fano in 1502 under the sponsorship of the Latin grammar master there, Lorenzo Astemio (ca 1435 - ca 1505). Astemio served as librarian to the Duke of Urbino before settling as grammar master in Fano. He probably copied texts for his personal use over the years and eventually worked them up into this little printed anthology for local school use. (100) It is highly miscellaneous, including patristic and humanist poetry on mythological, hagiographic, and even political themes. There are encomia of St. Paul, St. Francis, St. John the Baptist, the Holy Cross, and the birth of Christ. The single largest number of texts are hymns in praise of the Virgin Mary. But Astemio also includes Petrarch's poem in praise of the Vaucluse, Lactantius on the phoenix, and a \"verse of the Sibyll on the signs of the last judgement.\" The contents really have in common only that they are short poetic pieces on salutary themes. Astemio says they teach both elegant diction and \"what is necessary for a pious life.\" (101) This theme, of course, is exactly the one Bebel attributed to the circle of Valla, that schoolboys should be given pleasant and salutary texts.

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Astemio's anthology bears no title (its first page is blank); but it's author and printer made some advertising claims in the prefatory letter. Astemio tells us that he persuaded printer Girolamo Soncino, newly arrived in Fano, that the first work to come from his press should be one for young people, and that it should be sold at a small price, not out of consideration for the poverty of the students but because it would be so much the more widely used and therefore more salutary. In effect, this elegant little letter is selling the humanist commonplace we have already seen so often, that a good education is an education to good moral habits and that all of society is served by such schooling. Astemio does not remark the fact that it might also have been prudent for the famous Jewish printer to publish a work of Christian piety just after the run-in with the Venetian authorities that had prompted him to move to Fano. Instead he commends Soncino's friendship with the Franciscans in the person of the Venetian dedicatee of the letter, Fra Francesco Zorzi. As a whole, this letter is perfect advertising. It labels the intended audience exactly and advertises the good intentions of all the members of the publishing team. (102)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The most significant aspect of Bade's career, at least for the history of Italian textbooks, is that he packaged and re-packaged Italian humanist pedagogy for the Northern European market. His highly successful packages were then imported back to…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/216","title":"2.16 Packaging Morals","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Unlike Ianua, the regional variant of the Donat Italians knew, the Cato text used in medieval and Renaissance Italy was much the same as the one used beyond the Alps. It circulated under the rubric Catonis Disticha because most of the proverbs it contained were two-line verses. There is no distinct Italian manuscript tradition; and the base texts in printed versions were much the same North and South of the Alps. Once the Cato text began to appear in elaborate editions with extensive annotations for teachers, it was common for these printed texts to cross the Alps, just as other scholarly books did. (90)

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We have already noted, however, that in Italy Pseudo-Cato often circulated together with the Ianua in a single manuscript booklet subsumed under the name of the Donat. In the North the Ars minor of Aelius Donatus and the Cato were usually treated as separate texts both in manuscripts and in early printed versions. In origin, the Donat and the Cato had different roles in the curriculum, since Aelius Donatus wrote a book of grammatical rules (and the Italian Donat was an equivalent set of rules), while the Cato was offered as a first literary reader. This functional distinction was preserved in Northern European printed editions. In the North, the Cato was often paired with the fables of Avianus. (91) Both these texts also appeared in an anthology of medieval elementary reading texts that was partly standardized before the introduction of printing and which circulated widely in print as the Eight Authors (Auctores octo). Many of these same school texts circulated in medieval Italy too, but not in standardized collections. (92) With the exception of the Cato, they were slowly eliminated from the curriculum by humanist teachers for exactly the reasons cited by Bebel -- bad Latin and insufficient attention to simple, commonplace moral themes. None of them appeared with the Cato in printed Italian editions. Instead, humanist teachers continued to use the Cato together with or immediately after Pseudo-Donatus and then went on to more complex reading texts in parallel with an intermediate grammar book. This was the pattern on the eve of the invention of printing, and it continued into the seventeenth century. The Donat -- in the sense of Pseudo-Donatus plus Pseudo-Cato -- became the standard printed package in Italy for the first course in Latin. (93)

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The Cato starts with a brief caption title (Click to enlarge - 869 KB JPEG image)
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Because Pseudo-Cato and Pseudo-Donatus were so often used together in Italian schools, the typical Italian Cato is in fact just an appendix to a Donat. Entirely to pattern, for example, is the Cato that occupies nine and a half pages at the back of the pretty little Donat printed by Giovanni Battista Sessa in Venice around 1500. (94) The Ianua portion of the book is presented in colorful red and black print throughout; the Cato has only a few touches of red, most notably the two-line caption title which starts at the middle of page twenty three: \"The most felicitous precepts of the remarkable Marcus Cato, for the instruction of young men of virtue in liberal arts.\" (95)

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A change of format mid-page (Clilck to enlarge - 780 KB JPEG image)
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The printers employed a large round gothic type, and although the page is relatively crowded the text remains highly legible. The first forty-eight proverbs are very short and are arranged in two columns; the remaining aphorisms run to two lines of poetry each and are set in a single column.

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Mark of G.B. Sessa (Click to enlarge - 660 KB JPEG image)
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The only additional ornaments to Pseudo-Cato are a large, white-stem initial C at the start and printer Sessa's mark (a cat and mouse) filling out the blank portion on the last leaf. Though well printed and charmingly designed, this book is utterly traditional. Except for the advertisement implied in the red title, it offered the unelaborated Pseudo-Cato text that had been used in Italy for as long as anyone could remember. Interestingly, we know that Sessa was also offering a bilingual Donato al senno during the same years, that is, a non-traditional version of the same texts both in Latin and in Italian. (96)

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At the other end of book production for schools stands the fully annotated Cato printed in Venice by Giorgio Rusconi in 1518. This is a teacher's edition, in which the proverbs occupy not ten but 111 pages. The base text is set in small type and the notes for teachers are set even smaller. The Cato is one of three such traditional school texts in a 160-page booklet that was intended to stand at the front of a collected set of the works of Antonio Mancinelli. (97) The text of Pseudo-Cato was fixed by tradition; it is no longer here than in the pamphlet of 1500. The additional hundred pages contain a brief grammatical commentary by Mancinelli and much longer literary and moralizing notes by the editor, Josse Bade Ascensius. Between them, Mancinelli and Bade tried to imagine everything a teacher could possibly want to know or say to students about these texts. They routinely gave a paraphrase in natural (prose) word order of each proverb in poetry; and they supplied synonyms for unusual words. They pointed to problematic forms and indicate which ones are to be parsed in the classroom. Above all, they expanded on the moral meaning of each verse and refer to other ancient school authors who voice the same sentiments -- among them Horace, Seneca, and Juvenal. This last habit was an attempt to integrate this most basic reading text with others that schoolboys would encounter later in the Latin course. Such prospective commentary clearly reflected the interests of teachers more than students, since only a well-read audience would understand the references in this context. It is unlikely, in fact, that many teachers burdened their students with anything like this degree of detail at the elementary level; but commentaries like this do represent certain pedagogical practices. We know, for example, that paraphrase was the most common sort of explication and the most frequent drilling procedure throughout the grammar course, and that the recognition and manipulation of commonplaces was the aim of much that went on in the humanist classroom. At least one surviving edition of the Donat embodied this kind of moral paraphrase in marginal notes to selected distichs of Cato. (98)

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Josse Bade, editor of this and many other schoolbooks, is a particular case whose career outside Italy nonetheless influenced Italian textbook publishing considerably. Born near Brussels and trained at Louvain, he taught school in Lyon and then became a successful printer at Paris. His commentary on the Distichs of Cato was a very thoroughgoing one, concentrating on the philological issues of vocabulary, inflectional form, and literary parallels. It was first printed at Lyon as part of a large compendium of moral texts and commentaries called Sylvae morales in 1492 by Bade's father-in-law, Jean Trechsel. It was re-issued as a separate in 1505 and 1517 by other printers, and in 1518, as we have seen, as part of the Venice collected edition of the works of Antonio Mancinelli. Finally Bade reprinted it partially himself in 1527 and 1533, incorporated into a version of Erasmus's Cato. It may very well be that Bade left off printing his own commentary as a separate out of admiration for the version of Erasmus, which Bade published in 1515, soon after its first appearance, and which he continued to print right up to his death. (99)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Unlike Ianua, the regional variant of the Donat Italians knew, the Cato text used in medieval and Renaissance Italy was much the same as the one used beyond the Alps. It circulated under the rubric Catonis Disticha because most of the proverbs it…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/215","title":"2.15 Printing the Cato","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

We do not have to doubt the sincerity of Erasmus's criticism of his predecessors in order to ascribe a marketing motive to him. Note that the text of Pseudo-Cato had been \"contaminated\" not by medieval commentators or teachers but rather by scholars still alive and working in Erasmus's day, namely Giacomo Filippo Foresti (called Bergomensis, 1434-1520) and Robert d'Evremond (d. 1480). Their annotated texts were substantial folio volumes, aimed at teachers more than students. These editions were only thirty or forty years old when Erasmus sat down at Louvain in 1513 to work on the Cato, and they had been reprinted several times, as recently and as nearby as Antwerp in 1504. The texts Erasmus complains of, then, had not decayed through centuries of classroom misuse, but had been freshly packaged for the press in the 1470's and were still in current use. Their principal fault, as described in the great humanist's preface, was that they overloaded the little sayings of Pseudo-Cato with too many notes useless to schoolboys. Even in the hands of a talented schoolmaster, they could be pernicious in that they would encourage him to displays of erudition, the last thing his students needed. (108) Erasmus's real animus against these authors was that both of them were monks and that their notes loaded up the little Cato, an ancient and pagan text, with anachronistically Christian notions.

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Erasmus turned immediately to the matter of authorship: \"Next, I do not contemplate saying definitively who is the author of this work, or whether there was one author or many. I do think it is ascribed to Cato only because it contains sayings worthy of Cato.\" (109) No matter the uncertainty, for the proper context of the Cato anthology was clear, including other ancient proverbs that Erasmus included in his printed collection. One group, he says, is properly ascribed to Mimus Publianus, even though it had long been falsely entitled \"Proverbs of Seneca\" and contaminated with sayings taken from Seneca and Aulus Gellius. Although the point of the new textbook was to provide a large and varied collection of ancient proverbs for schoolboys, Erasmus insisted on the integrity of the smaller collections within it, this because they had their own philosophical content, identifiable authorship, and linguistic unity. Ancient proverbs could not be properly understood without taking these diverse historical contexts into account. Mixing up Mimus Publianus (of the first century B.C.E.) with Seneca (of a century later) and Gellius (of the second century C.E.) was bad philology, bad history, and bad pedagogy. Only after they had been properly situated philologically could they conduce to the higher, universal wisdom that is true philosophy. (110)

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For Erasmus, even the simple logic of putting together a school book spelled controversy. His preface continued:

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But meanwhile some wrangler will call out, \"Why do you, O Theologian, attend to such silly nuggets?\" Well, first of all, I hold nothing onerous, however humble, that pertains to good letters, much less anything that is as useful for the purity of Latin language as it is conducive to good morals. Moreover, why would I be ashamed to pass a few hours on this task, when many Greek writers, and not bad ones either, were praised for their learning in it? (111)

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Erasmus on the dignity of textbook authorship (click to enlarge - 272 KB JPEG image)
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There is a deliberate irony in Erasmus's calling his imagined adversary a vitilogator (brawler or wrangler); he knew this rare word from a preface of Pliny who ascribes its use to Marcus Portius Cato. But the irony is magnified for us, in that there was hardly any humanist readier than Erasmus to pick a fight. Indeed, this whole preface was a manifesto for a new way of using the proverb collections traditional in Latin pedagogy. Erasmus did not deny their age-old value in educating school boys to good conduct; he insisted upon that. But he insisted as well that they are good models of Latin. Moreover, he said, it is dishonest to teach these proverbs without a philological context that would allow the boys sooner or later to recognize that the morality of the ancients was historically conditioned and distinct from that of the sixteenth Christian century. (112)

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Erasmus's anthology had instant and wide success. It quickly became the most commonly used text of Cato and effectively drove other versions from the field. Its two \"inept,\" \"insipid,\" and \"idiotic\" predecessors were never again printed. Even the many later editions by other editors, who dispensed with Erasmus's careful packaging, took his textual emendations and paraphrases into account.

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Erasmus advocated a new kind of pedagogy for collections of moral sayings, one that respected their original non-Christian contexts. His work on improving the texts, however, was more enduring than his careful contextualization. The sixteenth century was an age of anthologizing, and the traditional pedagogy of memorization encouraged students at all levels to learn and recycle pithy phrases or commonplace ones without contextualizing them. Indeed, most teachers worked directly against Erasmus' ideal; they presented moral axioms and proverbs as mere commonplaces, universally or specifically applicable as any given thematic need arose in speaking or writing.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"We do not have to doubt the sincerity of Erasmus's criticism of his predecessors in order to ascribe a marketing motive to him. Note that the text of Pseudo-Cato had been \"contaminated\" not by medieval commentators or teachers but rather by scholars…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/218","title":"2.18 Erasmus Picking Fights","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

It is well recognized that Erasmus was one of the most accomplished polemicists of the early sixteenth century, an able apologist and propagandist for his own worldview. Scholars are not in the habit of describing Erasmus as a marketing man, but some of his prefaces read remarkably like other advertising prose we have seen or will examine later in this book.

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Erasmus interprets Pseudo-Cato (1538 edition) (click to enlarge - 521 KB JPEG image)
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The best single example may be his thoughtful and well made revision of Pseudo-Cato which appeared from 1514 onward under the title Cato's Moral Distichs in Latin and Greek with Annotations by Erasmus (Catonis Disticha Moralia Latine et Graece, cum scholiis D. Erasmi Rotterdami). This booklet was one of several textbooks Erasmus published in 1514, probably as a money-making expedient. (103) It is a new package for the Cato, including the familiar distichs with the base text as corrected by Josse Bade, further tweaked by Erasmus, and enhanced by a paraphrase commentary. But, as ad men say, there is also much much more: a medieval translation of the Cato into Greek by Maximus Planudes (ca. 1230-ca. 1310) designed for Byzantine schoolboys and here edited by Erasmus; three other small collections of philosophers' sayings; Erasmus's poem on Christian education; and the Paraenesis of Isocrates, a collection of hortatory commonplaces. This package was offered for relatively young readers; but, since the texts are in both Latin and Greek, it seems likely that Erasmus also intended it for use in schools across several years. Like many other basic schoolbooks, this reading anthology sets up the expectation that it will be a useful moral reference life-long, both because it will be memorized in part and again because it would become a pocket book for future consultation. (104)

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This Cato represents, moreover, a small installment in Erasmus's ongoing project of collecting and commenting proverbs, his Sayings (Adagia), which first appeared in 1500 and was continuously revised and enlarged until his death. The Adagia began as a sort of schoolbook too, as did another many-times-revised phrase book, On Abundance of Words and Things (De utraque rerum ac verborum copia). Modern critics have recognized that for Erasmus the proverb or adage was an historically situated literary artifact that could be immensely fruitful both of eloquence and of wisdom. Erasmus's Cato remained an elementary schoolbook, in keeping with its traditional place in the curriculum, while the De copia and the Adagia multiplied beyond their original dimensions into full-fledged monuments of humanist erudition. All three books stood in the tradition of rhetorical study as a pursuit of wisdom. Aphorisms and proverbs especially were closely associated with moral philosophy and with a tradition of prayerful meditation. In humanist hands the ethically succinct proverb could expand almost to a moral infinity. Even a teaching tool of the most elementary sort had this potential, and Erasmus' version of the Cato was already an expanded collection. (105)

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Erasmus slams the competition (click to enlarge - 754 KB JPEG image)
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There is little doubt that Erasmus himself devised the precise outline of the new Cato, although Lisa Jardine has argued convincingly that it also represents a collaboration with theologian Maarten van Dorp (1485-1525). (106) The preface begins:

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Erasmus of Rotterdam to Jan de Neve, greeting. The moral distichs commonly ascribed to Cato, O Nevius glory among theologians, we first purged of their errors by comparing them to the translation of Planudes, even if that little Greek frequently did not follow the sense of the Roman poem. We added also annotations which though very brief are somewhat more useful, if I am not mistaken, than the two commentaries with which certain men have hitherto contaminated this little work. One of those commentators, more idiotic than idiocy itself, pontificates like a fool; the other philosophizes ineptly. But neither says anything to the point. (107)

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Any modern ad man would recognize some classic strategies here. Praise the product. Praise the packaging. When possible, slam the competition.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"It is well recognized that Erasmus was one of the most accomplished polemicists of the early sixteenth century, an able apologist and propagandist for his own worldview. Scholars are not in the habit of describing Erasmus as a marketing man, but some…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/217","title":"2.17 Desiderius Erasmus, Ad Man","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Without attempting to follow the fate of Erasmus's several collections of sayings in detail, we can see the result of this process of accumulation and anthologizing by jumping forward to the end of our period and looking at a textbook collection of sayings by Kaspar Schoppe (1576-1649), a German-born humanist whose career was largely spent at the University of Padua. Schoppe is not now best known for his textbooks, published under the pseudonym Pascasius Grosippus, but rather for controversial works of political theory and ecclesiology, especially his writings against Protestants and Jesuits. Like Erasmus, however, he was a skillful popularizer, polemicist, and packager of books for students; and his textbooks went through many editions.

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Elaborate advertising (click to enlarge - 643 KB jpg image)
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Schoppe's Mercurius bilinguis, first published at Milan in 1628, was, according to its subtitle, a new and easy method for learning either Latin or Italian within one year. The \"method\" consisted of mastering exactly 1,141 short sayings arranged under forty-two broad subject heads. This method was not in fact new, since it had been used extensively in Northern Europe for decades, though it was still relatively untested in Italy at the period. (113) Schoppe begins with catechism rubrics, \"On God and some of his attributes,\" and \"On the passion of Christ.\" These are strictly orthodox in theological content, starting with the Trinity and the Eucharist so as to establish for the Italian market that the work is not in any way Protestant. There follow several other groups suggested by the experience of the Counter-Reformation Church, so: \"On the titles of various ministers of the church and their charges,\" and \"On Scripture, preaching, and penance.\" The anthology then goes on to traditional moral subjects such as \"On obedience and reverence for elders and respect for rulers,\" or \"On preserving love, concord, and a calm demeanor with your neighbor.\" Further along, there are more objective, encyclopedic categories: \"On the liberal arts and sciences,\" \"On medicine and disease,\" and the like. The collection concludes with one hundred witty sayings that can be used to counter detractors or critics.

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This choice of subjects betrays considerable ambition. The sayings were intended to cover a variety of facts, linguistic usages, and rhetorical situations; to inculcate religious and moral concepts; and to drill students in various specialized vocabularies. Many phrases are not proverbs at all, but merely conversational or compositional usages, a fact noted with advertiser's pride on the title pages of some editions: \"This work collects many proverbs, adages and apopthegmata of famous men, as well as many miscellaneous phrases adapted to everyday use.\" (114) Schoppe's preface told the reader that his book contains well chosen vocabulary of three types: quotidiana or everyday words; fundamentalia or root-words from which many derivatives can be learned; and rara, choice and unusual words. The second-category words are particularly important for drilling because they provide the broadest understanding of many cognates. Anthologizing of this wide-ranging sort goes back to medieval practices. In humanist pedagogy it was often presented as a method of learning conversational Latin. The sayings came from many sources but they were not attributed to their authors or contextualized in any way beyond the subject categorization. Schoppe banished Erasmus's insistence on nuanced, historical and philological context from the elementary classroom and replaced it with a rigid Counter-Reformation orthodoxy. (115) He presented the sayings as the raw material for grammatical analysis and composition, much as the Cato had been used in medieval schools.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Without attempting to follow the fate of Erasmus's several collections of sayings in detail, we can see the result of this process of accumulation and anthologizing by jumping forward to the end of our period and looking at a textbook collection of…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/219","title":"2.19 Kaspar Schoppe, Master Anthologizer","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Elaborate instructions
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Teachers were instructed in the preface to drill their students in the noun and verb paradigms (essentially the procedure of the old Donat) before beginning with the Mercurius. Then they were to parse and drill four sayings from the Mercurius each day in detail for two months. Thereafter they could increase the daily dose to ten sayings so that within a year all 1,141 sayings would have been drilled. In the sample drills, Latin is clearly the target language, but the title page implies that a Latin speaker (perhaps Schoppe envisions a German like himself) could master spoken Italian in the same way. That this was Schoppe's sense of his work is confirmed by the publication within a decade of a Mercurius quadrilinguis which offered the same sayings and proverbs in four-column format, adding Greek and Hebrew equivalents to the Italian ones in the bilingual original. Still, it is hard to say how seriously Schoppe intended his \"Mercuries\" to be used for teaching Italian to foreigners. They appeared mostly on the Italian market and the only modern language to appear was Italian, so the shortcut to languages they offered was almost surely intended for native speakers of Italian studying classical languages.

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Schoppe's parsing examples are instructive of the degree to which even so thoroughly bilingual a system as the one he advocates was based on traditional drills. In the main text of the book each phrase was given a precise Italian equivalent. So, for the very first phrase, In nomine Sanctissimae Trinitatis, the printed text gives in, o nel nome della Santiss. Trinita. The instructions in the front matter told the Latin master to make each student write out the Latin phrase. Then the class together was to drill each word with its Italian equivalent. Related or derivative words were added with their Italian equivalents. So, for nomine, the students were told to recite the nominative Latin, nomen and the Italian nome, and also to recognize the derivative Latin verb and its Italian twin, \"nominare, dar nome.\" Both the noun and verb were to be parsed fully in Latin with vernacular equivalents (\"nomen, a name; nominis, of a name; nomine, by or for a name...\") before the class went on to the next word.

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Schoppe was explicit on the pedagogical psychology of combining such oral drills with writing and on the responsibility of the master to proceed at a rate that the students can follow. The master, moreover, was to furnish his classroom with appropriate tools:

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[The teacher] will require his students to write out each of these words and those which have similar meanings in the vernacular, not so they will learn them immediately, but so that they will re-read them several times at home. For it is not easy for them to recall to memory the things that are contained in the sayings if they are merely admonished orally. On this account the master will employ a dictionary in which derivatives are always given together with the roots and compounds, the best being the Greek-Latin Lexicon of Scapula, and for German-Latin Rasyppodius and Basilis Faber. (116)

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This advice assumed, perhaps unrealistically, that the Italian schoolmaster would have access to the best recent reference books published abroad, for example, Johannes Scapula's Lexicon Graeco-Latinum recentiss. (published at Geneva in 1593; Basel in 1605, etc.). In fact these books might have been available in Milan, Padua, or Venice in the period, but it is unclear that they could easily be found in more provincial towns; and it is unclear why Italian students would want or need one of the Greek-German dictionaries that Schoppe also recommended. Certainly many a schoolroom did without.

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Schoppe framed his collection of proverbs as the start of a comprehensive beginning language course. He continued a long tradition of seeing moral sayings as well as practical ones as the right vehicle for language acquisition. However, he untied the reading of proverbs from the parallel memorization of grammatical rules that had obtained in medieval and Renaissance Latin classrooms. Schoppe developed a comprehensive, all-purpose phrase book for learning the spoken and written language; it is preceded only by drilling in the noun and verb paradigms. That is, the matter of Cato has been detached entirely from the schoolbook it accompanied for so long, the Donat, and subsumed into a new form entirely, the textbook targeted specifically at the speakers of one (usually modern) language who wish to learn another, ancient or modern one. Schoppe was nothing if not prolific and ambitious. He authored a number of other schoolbooks, including a Latin grammar intended to accompany the Mercurius bilinguis and introductory works on rhetoric. He also wrote several works on curriculum which combined remarks on educational psychology, details on the structure of a humanities course, bibliographical essays and recommended-reading lists, and pointed criticism of contemporary schools, especially the Jesuit colleges. (117)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Teachers were instructed in the preface to drill their students in the noun and verb paradigms (essentially the procedure of the old Donat) before beginning with the Mercurius. Then they were to parse and drill four sayings from the Mercurius each…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/220","title":"2.20 How and Why to Drill","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

From 1470 to 1650, Italians absorbed the lessons of humanism with the aid of printing. Printed grammars and reading textbooks in particular were the vehicle for widely promoting the ideals of pure classical Latin. Whether we choose to see humanist education as conformist and elitist or as conducing to the ideals the humanists themselves mouthed, that is, austere personal integrity, civic pride, and political engagement, (118) it is clear that humanist teachers went out of their way to market their program effectively to the readers of printed books. Their advertising prose slowly abandoned the pedantically diffuse, courtly, and avuncular formulas of the fifteenth century in favor of a more pointed and ebullient boosterism. But many of the themes remained the same. Latin was the key both to the door of success (to a career in public service, at court, or in the academy) and also to the treasure chest of ancient wisdom, that is, to an understanding of true philosophy. Cicero and a limited number of other writers were to be imitated for their style and expressive power. Above all, students were sold the idea that moral and grammatical correctness were one and the same thing.

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These themes were not new. Some had been inherited directly from medieval pedagogy while others were recast with the urgency of philological classicism. All were grounded in a philologically and morally normative practice of letters that was part of the classical inheritance. (119) The age of Reformation and Counter-Reform worked another, more profound change on the humanist educational and publishing agenda by introducing notions of doctrinal orthodoxy to classrooms at even the most elementary level. It was no longer enough for the student to conform his mind to the general political and spiritual commonplaces of his society or to respect civil and church authorities. In the sectarian Europe of the late sixteenth century, students and teachers had to conform with particular care to the finely pointed orthodoxies of specific institutional churches administered in detail by specialized bureaucrats and magistrates. Printers and publishers had to worry this same punctilious orthodoxy. Elementary textbooks were not exempt from the kind of scrutiny that more ambitious theological and philosophical writings endured. Erasmus, philosopher and ad man, is the most poignant case in point, for his Adagia, his Cato, and many other writings of no theological import were banned by Roman and local church authorities. We will encounter such censors again in later chapters, for their shadows were long and dark.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"From 1470 to 1650, Italians absorbed the lessons of humanism with the aid of printing. Printed grammars and reading textbooks in particular were the vehicle for widely promoting the ideals of pure classical Latin. Whether we choose to see humanist…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/221","title":"2.21 Modern Teachers","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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A Grammar classroom, from Sulpizio, 1495 (click to enlarge - 498 KB jpeg image)
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This chapter traces the professional activities of Antonio Mancinelli (ca. 1452-1505) as an example of a Latin grammar master whose career began in the age of manuscript textbooks but who quickly exploited the new technology of printing to create textbooks of his own devising. Mancinelli is one of the most self-conscious witnesses we have to the birth of the printed textbook and we discover that he influenced the design of his textbooks too.

","excerpt":"This chapter traces the professional activities of Antonio Mancinelli (ca. 1452-1505) as an example of a Latin grammar master whose career began in the age of manuscript textbooks but who quickly exploited the new technology of printing to create…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/300","title":"3.00 CHAPTER THREE: Antonio Mancinelli and the Humanist Classroom","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In November of 1490 a moderately well known grammar master at Rome, Antonio Mancinelli, wrote to Battista Gorio, a medical doctor in his home town of Velletri. He wished to dedicate to Gorio a small elementary Latin textbook designed for boys like the doctor's own sons. After remarking that he had composed no fewer than fourteen such schoolbooks, all printed in Rome, he put down a list of them and added this wry observation:

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Truly that is all. No other works of mine interrupt the leisure of the printers. All these books were composed during these last twelve years at night, at the insistence of students, and amidst difficulties and worry about domestic matters, as you well know. For what Eusebius writes of Lactantius is often the case, \"Up to the age of thirty-eight years, he lived partly in his homeland and partly at Rome.\" (1)

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Here, in the context of a classical commonplace -- the careerist away from home lamenting the difficulty of finding time to write -- Mancinelli slips in a minor but very modern complaint. He worked hard and incessantly at his writing but the printers had only to reproduce them, an easy task by contrast to his own.

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Master Antonio Mancinelli was a lay teacher with excellent philological credentials and impeccable moral ones, a combination not always found in late fifteenth-century humanist circles, especially in hedonistic Rome. His life offers a useful case for exploring the impact of print, and the role of printers, in the teaching of elementary subjects because he was so self-conscious a participant. Born in 1452, he undertook a teaching career in just those years in the early fourteen seventies when printing began to take hold in Italy. He matured while Italian humanists were actively engaged in editing the classics for the press and were at the same time debating the role of print in the transmission of classical texts.

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Twenty years later, when Mancinelli had been teaching for some years in Rome, and when his reputation as a grammatical humanist was at its peak, the Italian printing industry was well established. Printed books at all levels of ambition and price were plentiful. In major printing centers, notably Venice and Milan, there was lively competition among printers for the best works of the most successful authors, even in highly traditional fields like grammar. Starting in the 1480's we can observe the phenomenon of best-selling contemporary authors and a perhaps inevitable accompaniment, piracies and unauthorized editions. This competitive climate would deeply affect Mancinelli's reputation and even the survival of some of his works.  Mancinelli was an active player in the publication of his own works. He often addressed himself to the facts of printing, especially as these affected the classroom use of his works. His prefaces, afterwords, and poetry explained how his works were to be used in print in the classroom. Unlike many humanists Mancinelli was calm, sometimes even good humored about the inaccuracies of printers. He was probably among the most self-conscious teachers in print in his generation. Only Aldo Manuzio (1449-1515) and Josse Bade Ascensius (1463-1535) -- both practicing printers as well as grammarians -- were as astute. (2)

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It may even be that Mancinelli's success as an author of printed textbooks limited the survival of his works in manuscript form. There are few manuscripts of his pedagogical works and the frequently printed ones are particularly rare in manuscript, suggesting two conclusions. First, widespread printing so saturated the market for some schoolbooks that few teachers or students felt the need to copy these short, useful texts by hand. Mancinelli's textbooks could be had easily and inexpensively, especially in Italy, but also in France, Germany, and the Low Countries. Secondly, from mid-career onward, Mancinelli likely sent his works directly to press without ever preparing manuscript copies for classroom use. He truly made the transition from manuscript to print authorship in the course of his thirty-five-year teaching career.

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It was as a teacher that Mancinelli achieved notoriety. Most classroom reputations are modest and do not survive the life span of a \"famous\" teacher's students. This fact of classroom fame was true in most of Western intellectual history before the invention of printing. In ancient times, there is only one example of a grammarian, Aelius Donatus, whose name became a permanent fixture in the classroom literature. Among the many medieval grammatical pedagogues, only Alexander of Villa Dei had this kind of published afterlife. The cult of personality in early humanist circles created at least three more, Gasparino Barzizza and Guarino Veronese in the first generation, and Lorenzo Valla in the next. Valla' case is exceptional because, though he wrote an elementary grammar, it was never much used. His classroom afterlife (as distinct from his larger fame) came about because others digested his scholarly works for the use of students.

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Print publication created a different kind of fame. It gave some fairly ordinary teachers in Mancinelli's generation (and ever since) the opportunity for a permanent, or at least long-term literary reputation specifically as textbook writers. The first grammarian to achieve this distinction in print was Nicolò Perotti, a generation older than Mancinelli, who also penned one of the first critiques of the press as a transmitter of faulty texts. (3) Print also prolonged the useful life of textbooks by Donatus, Alexander, and Guarino, or books attributed to them. Thus, the pedagogical principles and teaching skills of the author of a successful textbook could last for generations. For the first time in history, textbook authors could reasonably hope to turn contemporary fame into a permanent reputation for good teaching practice, perhaps even into economic success in their own lifetimes.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In November of 1490 a moderately well known grammar master at Rome, Antonio Mancinelli, wrote to Battista Gorio, a medical doctor in his home town of Velletri. He wished to dedicate to Gorio a small elementary Latin textbook designed for boys like…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/301","title":"3.01 A Teacher in Print","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The conventions of humanist writing derived from ancient sources. Textbook prefaces like Mancinelli's were almost universally modeled on the familiar letters of Cicero, which were entirely adequate to such pedagogical commonplaces as patron/client relations, discipleship, the moral value of elementary education, and affection between teacher and student. Cicero, however, offered no models for discussing mechanical text production. There was little else in ancient literature to suggest that authors should address the mundane facts of publication. Mancinelli's contemporary Agnolo Poliziano (1454-1494) imitated Martial when describing copies of his works corrected by the author in contrast to uncorrected ones. But Martial wrote about fans who demanded personal, autograph copies, not stationer's products, so Poliziano's citation was a deliberate anachronism rather than a thoughtful address to printing. (4) Similarly, humanists sometimes moralized correct texts. They used martial, judicial, and above all Christian confessional terms to present printed texts personally, as if both texts and authors were in need of moral self-correction. (5)

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On the other hand, humanists often feigned surprise at the effects printing had on their works or reputation. (6) The French grammarian Jean Pellisson (ca. 1500-1557), for example, treated publication as a mildly unpleasant and sometimes burdensome by-product of composition. In the 1529 preface he wrote:

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Seven years ago or so, I allowed some Progymnasmata on Grammar to be published under my name, something I now wholly regret and acknowledge I did wrongly because I did not assemble very much material in that volume. ... But when I finally saw these books widely distributed daily, with copies printed many times at Lyon, and later at Poitiers and Rouen, and when the printers of Paris were again making preparations to publish the work, I revised it wholly without delay. ... This I did willingly, for even at the schools of Paris (which own a reputation of authority throughout the world for teaching and forming youths in good letters) one is wary of that ubiquitous carelessness into which I had unwisely fallen in publishing those Progymnasmata. (7)

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Of course, if Pellisson had really been embarrassed about the imperfections of his work, he would hardly have included the fact of its frequent publication in the preface to the revised edition. His remarks, however, do imply that he felt it was necessary to differentiate the fame that followed publication from the true worth of his teaching. (8)

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We will return in a later chapter (see section 4.09) to the marketing strategy embodied in such claims. For the present, Pellisson's fussiness need concern us only by contrast to Antonio Mancinelli's straightforward addresses to the vicissitudes of publication, including the potential circulation of highly imperfect texts. Only a few years separate Mancinelli's last works from Pellisson's first ones, but Mancinelli, in the first generation of teachers to know print, had already accepted the instability of the printed text and the concomitant need to revise and correct constantly. His insistence on this point is explicit, and it impressed itself on his students, admirers, and even his imperfect printers. Consider the preface to a second edition of his Better Donat: \"Concerning an earlier edition of the Better Donat: Certain printers had corrupted the text, as happens. And so, when they finally decided to go to print again, whatever was damaged by them seemed to be about to be corrected.\" (9)

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We might contrast this easy-going optimism with the prose of some of his publishers, who insisted strenuously on the correctness of their texts. Mancinelli's Roman printer Euchario Silber severely criticized Venetian editions by Giovanni Tacuino as totally unreliable. (10) Subsequently Tacuino insisted that Mancinelli himself had corrected the texts for new reprints shortly before he died. Upon examination, however, Tacuino's claim proves to have been copied in part from one by Pietro Martire Mantegazza who had reprinted some of the same works in Milan in the previous year, saying Mancinelli was present during the printing. There is no way of verifying either claim. (11)

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Josse Bade Ascensius took up Mancinelli's texts again. Most of his prefaces simply repeat the Mantegazza/Tacuino statement that the work was corrected by Mancinelli's own hand shortly before his death. In one case, however, Bade made a more specific advertising claim:

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In recent days, I have reread the several small works on Latin language by Antonio Mancinelli, whether collected by him or corrected. There I noted some few things that it seemed should be marked with asterisks and fewer still with daggers. The passages that seemed obscure are marked with asterisks or stars; with daggers or darts are labeled those which, either through the carelessness of the printer or his own haste, seemed corrupt; and things to be cancelled are indicated with a sideways stroke of the pen as with the darts. (12)

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Bade implied, then, that he had access to autograph corrections by Mancinelli, which he intended to take into account in his own revision of the text. This kind of remark was also a commonplace in humanist descriptions of problematic manuscripts. (13) We need not doubt the truth of Bade's account, but we should also recognize it for the advertisement it was.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The conventions of humanist writing derived from ancient sources. Textbook prefaces like Mancinelli's were almost universally modeled on the familiar letters of Cicero, which were entirely adequate to such pedagogical commonplaces as patron/client…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/302","title":"3.02 Advertising Oneself","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

All these prefaces advertise the value of reprinted books, that is, corrected ones. Still, we notice a distinct difference in tone between Mancinelli's own words and those of his editors and printers. Mancinelli advertised by explaining and insisted upon the need for continuous correction. His boosters were less modest and more aggressive. They claimed Mancinelli's diligence as a corrector for their texts, even after his death.

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The reader corrects and adds on (click to enlarge - 648 KB jpeg image)
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One might expect that the writers of advertisements would gloss over the inherent flaws of the printing process, but exactly the opposite was true. All these writers in Mancinelli's orbit were pretty matter-of-fact about the way in which printing introduced and perpetuated errors. Indeed, they emphasized the bad texts that printing produced. Their very self-consciousness was a vindication of the processes of correction, revision, and enlargement that characterized the creation of successive editions of texts that were -- even in imperfect form -- highly successful. It seems likely that Mancinelli himself prompted this notion of continuous revision as a positive aspect of his works. (14)

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Readers, too, often calmly took the imperfections of printed books in stride. They had, after all, been correcting their manuscript books for centuries; and it was an important part of a humanist education to learn to be critical of received texts, that is, to look for errors to correct. A copy of Mancinelli's Verses on the Figures of Speech (Carmen de figuris) now at the Newberry Library was heavily annotated by a humanist reader. At one point the reader remarked in the narrow bottom margin, \"Two articles, those on Sylepsis and Dialyton, are missing here. For lack of space at this point you will find them transcribed at the beginning of this book. Farewell.\" (15) Turning back to the first page of the treatise, we find these two articles fully transcribed in the ample left margin, and then another note to future readers:

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Missing text supplied by a reader (click to enlarge - 635 KB jpeg image)
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These two articles were omitted by the printer at the place in order where they belonged, and so I have supplied them from another source. The Reader. Nor is this omission to be ascribed to the author. Farewell, and love me. (16)

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Outline style annotations (click to enlarge - 637 KB jpeg image)
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This personable reader was fully capable of finding another edition of Mancinelli in order to correct the printed text he owned, just as he added hundreds of lines of notes from other authors on the figures of speech. He seems only mildly annoyed at the trouble this caused him; but he did want other readers (his students, perhaps?) to be clear that the fault, if fault must be found, was that of the printer.

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"This page printed twice" (click to enlarge - 484 KB jpeg image)
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In this particular case, in fact, the printer made a monumentally stupid error, repeating one entire page from the second sheet of a gathering on the first sheet of the next gathering and then necessarily leaving out an entire page. For such an egregious error to have occurred, all the text must have been set correctly; but one typeset form was misplaced and a different one mislabeled and inserted in its place. In some copies, moreover, the printer has glossed over the error by changing the signature mark on the offending page (but not changing the text!), making it clear that he preferred to hide his error rather than correct it. The alert Newberry reader noticed not only the omission but the duplication too, and marked it: \"This half-part of a leaf [i.e. one page] is printed twice.\" (17)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"All these prefaces advertise the value of reprinted books, that is, corrected ones. Still, we notice a distinct difference in tone between Mancinelli's own words and those of his editors and printers. Mancinelli advertised by explaining and insisted…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/303","title":"3.03 Printer's Errors","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The complex printing history of Antonio Mancinelli's works, then, can illuminate how teachers used print. He, his colleagues in the profession, and the students and parents in his circle all considered printing a boon to teaching, but not one that would solve all the problems of textbook production. If we consider his various pedagogical works in the order, not of their composition but of their printing, we will discover the biography (largely an autobiography) of a publishing teacher.

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Mancinelli's interest in grammar started in his hometown of Velletri, south of Rome, where he studied and later taught in the grammar school. In one preface he said that by the time he was 21 he was the head of the school. He described the first twenty years of his career in a brief verse autobiography that he published in 1493. By that time he had taught in Velletri, Sermoneta, Rome, Fano, and Venice. He returned to Velletri in the summer of 1493 to resume teaching there. Most of the autobiographical poem concerns his hometown and its countryside (the beautiful, south-facing slopes of the Alban Hills), his parents, and his own children. But he also refers to the newly elected Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, perhaps in the hope of patronage; and he describes his teaching and lists his publications chronologically. We know from other documents that he taught in Velletri from 1493 to 1498, in Orvieto from 1498 to 1500, and in Rome once more from 1500 forward. (18)

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Apparently Mancinelli early on felt the need for new classroom materials, for he said he devised his Rules for Construction (Regulae constructionis) and Summary of Declensions (Summa declinationis) in his earliest years of teaching. This tells us that in the early 1470's he used them in the classroom in manuscript form before they went to print. But no manuscript copies survive, and the Summa exists in a single copy now in London. The story of these early works is further complicated by their frequent reprinting in revised and enlarged editions. Two of the earliest surviving textbooks by Mancinelli -- the Rules for Verbs (Regimen verborum) and Introduction to Rhetoric (De oratore brachylogia) published in 1477-- are small sets of rules quoted from ancient grammarians and rhetoricians Mancinelli supposed that such works of extraction and compilation from the ancient writers would have direct use in the classroom. As we will see, Mancinelli retained for the rest of his life this habit of creating topical collections of extracts. (19)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The complex printing history of Antonio Mancinelli's works, then, can illuminate how teachers used print. He, his colleagues in the profession, and the students and parents in his circle all considered printing a boon to teaching, but not one that…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/304","title":"3.04 Teaching With Print","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

What then do we know of the very first works Mancinelli composed? What were the Regulae constructionis and Summa declinationis of the mid-1470's, which Mancinelli described as distinct works in his 1477 preface? The first surviving edition of the Regulae is that of 1490, which included the material from the 1477 Regimen. It was printed in such a way as to imply that Regulae and Summa were conceived together and indeed they are treated as a single work in Mancinelli's 1493 autobiography. In 1490, one preface addressed to Battista Gorio (quoted in section 3.01)) stands before the two works, which are also linked on the title page. In effect we have lost the first version of these works entirely, the one that Mancinelli tested in manuscript form in his Velletri classroom and sent to print in Rome about 1475.

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The content of the two treatises probably was roughly similar to that of the later, expanded versions. They treat, respectively, verb and noun inflectional paradigms. The originals may have been somewhat shorter than the earliest surviving versions, which occupy forty and sixteen leaves respectively, since Mancinelli said:

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This second version of these Epitomata [i.e. the Regulae] and Summa Declinationis is better than the first, for I have added examples of verbs which have difficult participles and supines. Often certain things were changed, for corruption occurs through the carelessness of the printers, as can be seen here and there in various places. Many things defended by the authority of the ancients in that edition are explained more briefly here. (22)

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Again, Mancinelli was matter-of-fact about the need for corrections to printed texts. He repeatedly tinkered with his textbooks to make them more useful in class. And useful they continued to be; there are recorded editions as late as 1563. (23)

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The next prefaces date from 1487 and 1488 (though they survive only in editions from 1491 and later) and concern works of an even more elementary character than the Regulae and Summa. The Donatus melior (Better Donat, or Improved Donat if you will), was Mancinelli's title for an anthology that he proposed as a universal first Latin textbook. It includes three short works, two of them so traditional in Italian classrooms that the practical Mancinelli knew they could not be supplanted. The anthology begins with the elementary rulebook ascribed to Donatus (the Ianua or Donat) emended by Mancinelli. There follow the Distichs of Cato, similarly corrected and provided with a short commentary by Mancinelli on the first sixteen proverbs. Finally, the Better Donat includes Mancinelli's own versified set of elementary grammatical rules for memorization, called Little Book on Grammar (De arte libellus). The earliest surviving edition already claimed to be a second edition with additions. (24)

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Mancinelli, like most pedagogues of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, used \"Donatus\" in two ways. The term referred specifically to the text of the rulebook ascribed to Donatus, and also to the physical grammar book, in this case the group of texts that make up the Better Donat. As usual, Mancinelli's preface is enlightening:

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DONATVS MELIOR. ¶ Antonio Mancinelli of Velletri to his dear sons Pindar, Quintus, and Festus. Greetings. I have decided to polish up for you the little book of Donatus on grammar, put out in the past disfigured in many places by the carelessness of scribes. For it is difficult to change habits of mind once they are established. ... It was hardly less troublesome to correct the little book of Cato, rich in wisdom and wise sayings but almost everywhere corrupt. ... After you have studied this Donat well, and once you memorize the summary of declensions and the booklet on constructions, which were published two years ago, you will easily understand the basics of all Grammar. (25)

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The teacherly father emerges clearly here. The Latin master uses a strictly classical form to address his sons, whom he had named for Roman martyrs and classical figures.

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More importantly for our purposes in studying educational publishing, Mancinelli clearly ascribed the poor state of the text of Ianua and the Distichs of Cato to the long tradition of scribal copies. Teachers in the past had been content with the poor text because they themselves learned from such defective copies, memorizing even the errors. Mancinelli's claim is demonstrably true in that many surviving manuscripts and early editons contain egregious errors of sense. The modern editor of the Distichs, Marcus Boas, points out how early and persistent these errors could be. (26) So Mancinelli did not merely parrot a humanist commonplace. His claim was phrased to frame a printed textbook. In the Better Donat, his labor of correcting will have a better chance to survive into many copies.

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Perhaps not surprisingly, Mancinelli's improved text met with some resistance. The earliest surviving edition already included an afterward labeled \"Mancinelli to the Reader,\" which is an apology for revisions he has made. It is an impassioned complaint against those teachers who criticized his textbook out of ignorance. Mancinelli ascribed their critique first to malice and secondly to their having been ill trained in their own childhoods, meaning that they had learned from a faulty text of the Donat and so would not accept his corrections to it. The remainder of the afterward is a list of authorities for a few changes he has made, clearly in response to specific complaints. He replied at length, for example, to the \"wicked men\" who criticized his phrasing of the rules for future imperatives. He also vindicated his favoring one ancient grammarian over another on the correct second person present indicative of fero, which is ferris and not fereris. These points may seem rather minor; but Mancinelli's highly colored rhetoric makes clear that such details represented more than the specifics at issue. The \"wicked men\" who complained about changing the traditional Donat stand in for all those who accepted unclassical Latin uncritically and even vaunted their ignorance of humanist Latin. (27) That this was not a one-time battle for Mancinelli and other humanist pedagogues can be deduced from the fact that this afterward to the reader was included in every subsequent edition of the Better Donat for fifty years and more. Publishers were also quick to claim to be using Mancinelli's improved texts. In Northern Europe, Mancinelli's much-improved Cato text and commentary had considerable success, especially when the Paris printer Josse Bade Ascensius promoted it. (28)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"What then do we know of the very first works Mancinelli composed? What were the Regulae constructionis and Summa declinationis of the mid-1470's, which Mancinelli described as distinct works in his 1477 preface? The first surviving edition of the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/306","title":"3.06 Elementary Schoolbooks","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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The author addresses his reader (click to enlarge - 713 KB jpeg image)
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Most of what we know about the circumstances and dates of composition of Mancinelli's works comes from the elegant Ciceronian letters that preface individual works. They were usually reprinted with the original dates in later editions. The prefaces had a dual function. They situated individual works in Mancinelli's network of patronage; and they were meant to stand as samples of humanist letter writing which could be studied and explicated in class like any other specimen of good prose. Mancinelli's early prefaces were addressed to his students or former students, or to their parents. They assume a community of learners centered upon the school of the master. The dedicatees were usually urban professionals, often themselves intellectuals -- canon and civil lawyers, doctors, notaries, and theologians. For the early works, almost all of them were natives of provincial Velletri. This fact of mid-range, local patronage bespeaks the professionalism achieved by humanist teachers in Mancinelli's generation. Mancinelli taught in institutional schools, and never, so far as we know, aspired to serve as tutor to an aristocratic family. Tutoring jobs of the sort were available and highly desired well into the sixteenth century; but it was in Mancinelli's day entirely possible for a humanist to have a teaching career without the benefits or burdens of personal, noble patronage.

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Printing, of course, also played a role in this professionalization of teaching. In a private tutor's classroom there was little need for printed books, even after they were available, since one or two students could manage with a few manuscript copies and might even benefit from the exercise of copying their own texts directly from those owned by the master. By the fourteenth century, the growth of urban schools had created a demand for relatively large numbers of elementary schoolbooks and these were produced to standard patterns by commercial stationers. (20) The application of printing to this production process increased the potential for standardized curricula and for teachers to work with ever larger numbers of students. Almost immediately, it also permitted the quick production and widespread diffusion of entirely new textbooks.

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Mancinelli was well placed to take advantage of this novel publishing opportunity and he even referred to it directly in the first of his surviving prefaces, saying, in effect, that no one has done this task before, and that printing the basic rules on difficult points of grammar is labor-saving for the teacher and beneficial to students in that they can progress more quickly. The advantages Mancinelli cited were specific to the printed book. The teacher no longer had to dictate and correct manuscript textbooks for student use in the classroom. Students could move faster because they did not have to write out their own copies of basic books or correct faulty ones obtained from stationers. (21) Note that speedy learning of this sort is most beneficial to the student who is a quick study. Much medieval and Renaissance basic schooling was aimed at identifying early on which students had the gifts to go on to further study and weeding out the others. Mancinelli elsewhere expressed a later ideal that the moral value of study makes Latin useful even for less gifted students; but he adhered to older pedagogical principles sufficiently to feel that quicker students should be given the (now printed) means to move along at their own pace.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Most of what we know about the circumstances and dates of composition of Mancinelli's works comes from the elegant Ciceronian letters that preface individual works. They were usually reprinted with the original dates in later editions. The prefaces…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/305","title":"3.05 Urban Schools, Urban Patrons","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The prefaces to the commentaries further confirm Mancinelli's view of current scholarship and publishing. The commentary on Virgil poses an important question: Why make another printed commentary on Virgil, especially in light of the new and popular commentary of Cristoforo Landino? There were, after all, no fewer than sixteen editions of Virgil with commentary available to Italian scholars at the date of writing in late 1490. Three more would appear before Mancinelli's edition got through the press in December 1491. Mancinelli's answer was to insist on the stubborn ignorance of his critics. He mentioned the eminent Landino (1424-1492) in passing; but he claimed that the real problem lay in the long-studied commentary of Servius (4th century), because scholars followed it blindly and uncritically. Mancinelli's version is a labor on behalf of his students who will read Virgil more easily with this commentary than with the others. His contributions, beyond careful copy editing of the received texts, were limited to grammatical comments on the Georgics and Bucolics, prefaces to each poem or book, and mnemonic-verse arguments. (36) Mancinelli's success may be judged by the fact that his notes were included in most editions of Virgil for the next forty years.

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Mancinelli's commentary on the Satires of Juvenal is a more thoroughgoing work. Although it is respectful of existing commentaries, just as the work on Virgil was, it represents a comprehensive approach to Juvenal as a school author. It appeared in December 1492, with a dedicatory letter dated June 1492, the first work of Mancinelli to issue from the Venetian press of Giovanni Tacuino, who would have a major role in the popularization of Mancinelli's works. It is a folio-sized volume with an elaborate apparatus. Mancinelli began the work at Rome (where Juvenal had been an important subject of discussion at the university) but its writing no doubt occupied a large part of the academic year 1491-92, when Mancinelli was teaching in Fano.

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Successful commentaries on Juvenal by Domizio Calderini (1446-1478) and Giorgio Valla (1447-1500) had been circulating for some years in Italy before Mancinelli set to work, exactly the situation of his Virgil edition and commentary. (37) Juvenal was commonly taught in humanist schools; and commented editions were of use to teachers in preparing their lectures. Mancinelli explicitly advertised the usefulness of his commentary in his letter dedicating it to his Venetian patron, Niccolò Rossi. He named four commentaries already available in print and said he will add a fifth because no matter how many learned things his predecessors had remarked, they nonetheless omitted many things which would be useful for adolescent students. Mancinelli's was to be a comprehensive commentary, since he had \"left nothing unconsidered, nothing implied, nothing unresolved.\" (38)

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Furthermore, since he had emended the text extensively to rid it of errors introduced by scribes and printers, Mancinelli said he would print his own remarks first in the commentary and follow them with the comments of Calderini and Valla, many of which referred to a corrupt text and so should not be read first. He followed his letter to Rossi with a further series of introductory notes, among them a complete list of the passages he has remarked that were also treated by earlier commentators, so that scholarly readers can turn first to those passages and see the justification for his philological work. This is a curious sort of advertisement, since it is hard to imagine anyone actually doing such laborious cross-checking unless they already knew the Satires by heart and could go quickly to passages they already knew well. The portion of Mancinelli's target audience composed of grammar masters, however, would indeed know the text in this way; or at any rate Mancinelli thought they should be this familiar with Juvenal. Inviting them to inspect his work this closely was an advertisement to specialists.

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Mancinelli also reprinted in full the introductory matter from Calderini's and Valla's commentaries. The commentary on each individual poem followed a standard form, including a prose argument and then detailed glosses with marginal notes to identify the contributions of the three commentators. There were also marginal index notes, but these cover only the notabilia in Mancinelli's commentary and not those of Valla or Calderini, another device to emphasize the new content of this volume. In a flourish typical of Mancinelli the school versifier, he also provided on the title page a 16-line poem, \"Arguments of Juvenal's Satires by Antonio Mancinelli.\" This bit of verse allowed students to memorize a table of contents, checking off each of the sixteen satires and their basic themes, the better to cite them in future.

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Mancinelli's commentary on Horace also appeared in Venice in 1492. It was more ambitious than the Virgil commentary and better integrated than the Juvenal edition because it incorporated only one previous commentary. It was a major scholarly achievement, expressly intended to counteract the risky Epicureanism of Cristoforo Landino's commentary of 1482. Like Landino, Mancinelli placed the poetry of Horace in a carefully constructed historical context, but he did so by circumscribing the hedonism of Horace (and Landino) with a more attractive Stoicism. Mancinelli no doubt avoided endorsing Horace's Epicureanism because he intended his work for classrooms teachers. This personal conviction may also have seemed prudent in light of the close supervision of humanists in Rome by curial officials. (39)

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Mancinelli on Horace keeps eminent company, in 1519 (click to enlarge - 735 KB JPEG image)
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Mancinelli's Horace commentary had few independent editions, but it was quickly incorporated into large, scholarly editions of Horace along with commentaries by Landino, Josse Bade, and other humanists. In this form, it was reprinted at Venice as late as 1707.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The prefaces to the commentaries further confirm Mancinelli's view of current scholarship and publishing. The commentary on Virgil poses an important question: Why make another printed commentary on Virgil, especially in light of the new and popular…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/308","title":"3.08 Scholarly Work","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Dedication, contents, address to the reader (click to enlarge - 668 KB jpeg image)
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Mancinelli named four other works that he says he composed at Velletri. The verse autobiography lists them as Spica: figurae: Thesaurus: flores. The order is presumably determined by the meter, since the Verses on Figures of Speech (Carmen de figuris) and the Verses on Ornament (Carmen de floribus) were in fact companion pieces from their first publication. Like the Spica (this poetic title means \"an ear of corn\"), the two carmina are versifications of grammatical rules intended for memorization. They aimed to help the students to recall obscure and difficult points of grammar. The Spica recapitulated in verse much of the irregular noun and verb lore presented in prose in the Regulae and Summa declinationis; the Carmen de figuris rehearsed over one hundred figures of speech; and the Carmen de floribus was an elaborate versified vocabulary. The Dictionary of Verb Usage (Thesaurus de varia constructione) gives a classified list of usages drawn from classical sources worthy of imitation in alphabetical order. Each article gives the verb, its \"constructions\" (the cases or prepositional forms which complete the verb phrase), and an example from a good classical author, cited explicitly. Unlike the other works in this group, it is not in verse. (29)

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Mancinelli said that these four works were written at Velletri, but they were printed only after his move to Rome in 1486. Their dedications reflect Mancinelli's suddenly enlarged and newly clerical acquaintance and the fact that at Rome his appointment was at the University level while he continued to teach younger students privately. Three of them were dedicated to prominent Roman churchmen and their kin. Only the Thesaurus claimed the patronage typical of earlier works, of a lay notable (a university professor) and his sons. (30)

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It would seem, then, that though Mancinelli placed these works in his Velletri period, they were also, at least in part, contributions to a campaign to get hired in Rome or to get recognition there once hired. Up to 1486, after all, Mancinelli had a purely regional reputation and had published only a few things, mostly in Rome. Mancinelli's earliest works were slight, auxiliary texts for grammar teaching at a fairly elementary level. These new works aimed higher, as their dedications imply. The Spica was also prefaced by a bald advertisement: \"Let barbarous Alexander begone, and retreat with his barbarities to his barbarous homeland. Let the truly Roman and elegant Mancinelli everywhere flourish, and everywhere be recited.\" (31) This is a striking claim, that the Spica would supplant the perennially popular Doctrinale of Alexander of Villa Dei, a work that had been used all over Europe for two centuries. Italian humanists had criticized the Doctrinale ineffectually for generations for its unclassical Latinity. Unlike the common Donat, it could not be \"fixed\" by good editing. (32) The pedagogy of the elementary and intermediate Latin course was tied to making students parrot verse rules; so none of the earlier humanist grammars, all in prose, offered an adequate substitute for the Doctrinale. A verse grammar attempted by Lorenzo Valla never even got printed. (33) A systematic treatment in verse of the basic noun and verb inflections was a desideratum, and the Spica was Mancinelli's offering. In the event it had modest success, but never really became a standard textbook.

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Rome also affected the kind of new writing and publishing Mancinelli undertook. As we have seen, the first of his works printed there after his transfer were school texts which he had perhaps been composing in Velletri. But while in Rome, he began work on scholarly commentaries (on Virgil, Juvenal, Horace and Pseudo-Cicero) based on his university teaching. He also composed another school text, called Versilogus (Verse-Form Guide). Part of the logic of this change of emphasis is explained in a letter of spring 1500, where, amidst contract negotiations with the city fathers of Foligno he said that he might be able to take up their offer of a teaching position, but could not do so until the end of September because he wanted to be in Rome that month studying manuscripts of classical authors. (34) One of the attractions of Rome for any humanist was the riches of its libraries, just as one of the costs of accepting provincial appointments was the relative paucity of scholarly resources. Since the indications we have about the dates and places of composition of his early works come from the autobiographical poem that he wrote on his fortieth birthday, it may also be that Mancinelli wanted to present his Roman and Venetian years (1486-1493) as those of maturing scholarly accomplishment, and not just a continuation of his successful teaching career. (35)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Mancinelli named four other works that he says he composed at Velletri. The verse autobiography lists them as Spica: figurae: Thesaurus: flores. The order is presumably determined by the meter, since the Verses on Figures of Speech (Carmen de figuris…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/307","title":"3.07 Off to Rome","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The fourth work that Mancinelli ascribed to his Roman period contrasts sharply with the scholarly ambitions of his commentaries. It is the small, classroom-oriented Versilogus, dated 1488 both in its preface and in the first, Roman edition. This would put its completion some two years after his arrival in Rome and well before the completion of his scholarly work on Horace, Juvenal, and Virgil. A later publisher's advertisement accurately calls it a book of rules for almost every kind of poem. (40) The text has two parts. The first consists of scansion rules for words, with details on syllable length for first, middle and last syllables. There follow brief treatments of the most common verse forms. Teaching texts of the sort were devised throughout the later Middle Ages; they provided reference guides for consultation in future, but their first goal was to help students recognize meters as they read and parsed poetry.

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In these same years, Mancinelli's publishing career took a decisive turn. After a clearly local, Roman start, many of his mid- and late-career works were printed first in the northern centers of Venice and Milan. Most of his teaching career was nearer the presses of Rome, so he might have been expected to want to publish there, especially in view of his apparent wish to correct his works in press. Certainly the burst of activity in printing his work in the North during the fourteen nineties can be explained by the fact that he lived outside Rome for much of that decade. From 1491 to 1493 he taught in Fano and Venice and may have visited Lombardy. This brief period of residence and the concomitant surge of publishing seems to have established his reputation in the North, and his works remained in print there for most of the next fifty years. Some of the work printed there never got Roman editions at all. When he returned to Central Italy to teach (at Velletri, Orvieto and Rome), he had the luxury afforded by his reputation of being able to get his work printed in several places at once. Several plague years in the fourteen nineties required closing the schools and so afforded him additional time to write and edit.

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The nature of the printing industry in Rome was also surely part of the reason why relatively few editions of Mancinelli's later books were printed there. By far the largest part of Roman printing between 1469 and 1490, Mancinelli's own maturing years, consisted of substantial, advanced-level patristic and classical works. Most of these books were directly subsidized by ecclesiastical patrons and much other printing was done for the institutional Church. As a result, none of the presses of Rome in this period was commercial in the sense of depending on competitively produced books. Small textbooks like those Mancinelli was writing were speculative ventures and these were a very minor part of the production of Roman presses by contrast to other major printing centers of Italy. Venice increasingly dominated commercial book publishing in the peninsula in the late fourteen seventies and eighties.

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Mancinelli's realization of these facts of the printing industry may even have contributed to his decision to leave Rome in 1491. He tells us explicitly that he was urged to go to Venice by Pomponio Leto, whose greatest success as a teacher had been in Venice. (41) Leto had had more than his share of troubles in Rome, brought on by his combative personality and his non-conformism (both philosophically and sexually). None of these problems ever beset Mancinelli. We may suspect, therefore, that it was Leto's positive teaching experience and his favorable opinion of the Venetian press that influenced Mancinelli. This supposition is made the more convincing by the fact that Mancinelli worked directly with two Venetian printers with whom Leto also collaborated, Cristoforo Pensi and Filippo Pincio. Giovanni Tacuino, another of Leto's printers, would later play a key role in Mancinelli's career in print. We know that Leto interested himself in matters of type and format during some twenty years' experience with printers. He may have been Mancinelli's model for taking an active part in the presswork. (42)

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As for Mancinelli's expressed interest in correcting his work, the evidence we have on this point is clearest for the last part of his career, from about 1500 onward. It seems to characterize the older and wiser Mancinelli. In those later years, he or his printers and patrons made repeated attempts collect or reprint his works. Mancinelli was concerned to take the opportunity reprinting provided to correct his textbooks and sometimes to expand them. Earlier, however, when individual works were being issued, he was less experienced with printers and perhaps less worried about the accuracy of their work. In the 1490 revised version of the Regulae and Summa, as we have seen, he remarked very much in passing the need for correcting the earlier printed texts. Thereafter neither he nor the printers make explicit mention of the problem until 1500, upon his return to teaching in the Roman university. The context in 1500 and afterward is clearly competitive, filled with claims that Mancinelli's new texts were better than those already on the market. Mancinelli was made in this sense to compete with himself, since the new editions claimed not only to be the best textbooks of many available but also to be better than earlier editions of the same texts.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The fourth work that Mancinelli ascribed to his Roman period contrasts sharply with the scholarly ambitions of his commentaries. It is the small, classroom-oriented Versilogus, dated 1488 both in its preface and in the first, Roman edition. This…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/309","title":"3.09 More Basic Schoolbooks","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Your thoughts about Humanism For Sale are welcome. When the blog was still live, you could use the comment feature, which allowed you to make a note beside any portion of the text that catches your eye, raises a question, or suggests an alternative opinion.

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Now that the comment feature has been disabled, I still welcome your thoughts by e-mail (gehlp@newberry.org) and will respond promptly if I can.

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Thanks in advance for your feedback,\r\nPaul Gehl

","excerpt":"Your thoughts about Humanism For Sale are welcome. When the blog was still live, you could use the comment feature, which allowed you to make a note beside any portion of the text that catches your eye, raises a question, or suggests an alternative…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/cont","title":"Contact","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Four works on a chaste 1498 title page (click to enlarge - 856 KB jpeg image)
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While at Venice, Mancinelli tackled two other publishing projects, both aimed at rounding out his offerings of textbooks on the Venice market. For the grammar course he prepared On Verse Virtue (De poetica virtute), an anthology of classical poets' sayings about the virtues and vices. It begins with a selection of their praises of poetry as a morally uplifting genre. It first appeared in print in Venice in late 1493 with the Carmen de figuris and Carmen de floribus, and in 1495 it was printed as a separate in Rome. It never appeared in this latter form again, but continued to be published at Venice alongside other small works on verse composition. (58)

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Chaste title page, 1493 (click to enlarge - 761 KB jpeg image)
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Mancinelli's second new textbook of the period was How to Speak and Write (Scribendi orandique modus). This is a brief, systematic treatment of rhetoric, starting with nine short chapters on letter writing, continuing with a discussion of public speaking in seven chapters, followed by three chapters on education in general. A final chapter, really an appendix, offered vocabulary useful for speaking and writing, in the form of an anthology of vocabulary distinctions (differentiae). In Mancinelli's mind the Scribendi orandique replaced the briefer compositional rhetoric he had composed in the 1470's called De oratore brachylogia, the contents of which are recapitulated in the chapters here on letter writing. Mancinelli, then, followed a pattern we have observed on other occasions. He revised and expanded works first published in brief form, or he returned to a subject from another point of view (or in verse instead of prose), or he created an additional anthology of texts on a given subject from ancient authorities. In the case of the *Scribendi orandique *modus, he actually did all three of these things. (59)

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Preface, 1493 (click to enlarge - 652 KB jpeg image)
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The preface of Scribendi orandique modus is dated at Venice in June 1493 while the printing of the first edition is dated July 10, 1493 at Venice. Mancinelli mentions in a letter that he returned to Velletri from Venice in mid-July that year, so it is almost certain that he saw this edition through press just before leaving. A second Venetian edition followed, probably in 1494, and others appeared between 1496 and 1500. At least five different Venetian printers published this work within a decade of its appearance. All this activity suggests lively interest on the Venetian market for works by the Roman humanist. The work was never printed at Rome but it had a considerable fortune beyond Venice, with multiple editions before 1500 at Milan, Ulm, Leipzig, and Paris.

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Table of contents, 1493 (click to enlarge - 699 KB jpeg image)
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More than any other work of Mancinelli, the Scribendi orandique modus has a distinctive typographical dress that is preserved through all the early editions, and which we may ascribe to Mancinelli's own influence, since we know he was present in Venice during the printing of the first edition. The printer Simon Bevilacqua had not worked with Mancinelli before, though he later printed other work from the humanist's pen. Most of Mancinelli's early works appeared with multiple titles on the title page, and often with a brief advertisement composed by Mancinelli or the printer. Scribendi orandique modus, by contrast, almost always appears with a chaste title page that includes the author and title and no other information. The invariable form is Scribendi orandique modus per Antonium Mancinellum.

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Bevilaqua contents imitated, 1499 (click to enlarge - 727 KB jpeg image)
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The Bevilacqua first edition is particularly spacious. The verso of the title page is blank and the entire recto of the second leaf is taken up by a table of contents, classically described as Operis Tituli. This page has a clear, tabular form for the first twenty chapters, and the page is footed with a paragraph-form description of chapter twenty one, the vocabulary. This last entry, called \"The Proper Meaning of Words\" (Vocum proprietas), names fourteen source texts for the lexicon. This distinctive form of contents listing indicates that Mancinelli viewed the last chapter as a sort of appendix, essentially a separate composition, and one that took its value from the list of important classical authorities on which it drew. Printers from the first edition forward emphasized this distinction by setting the text of the first twenty chapters in a single broad column in a large roman type and the last chapter in two narrow columns in much smaller type. (60)

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The table is followed by a dedicatory letter to Valerio Crispiano of Velletri that occupies another entire page, so that the actual text of chapter one only begins on page five, a striking degree of spaciousness in a schoolbook. The dedication, moreover, is entirely ceremonial and makes no reference to the specific content of Scribendi orandique modus except to commend the dedicatee for oratorical skills he regularly displayed in the city council of Velletri. Since we know Mancinelli was on his way back to Velletri in July of 1493, and since he tells us elsewhere that within three days of his arrival the city fathers offered him a position as teacher there, it may be that this last \"Venetian\" work was really intended to mark, and to celebrate, his homecoming to small-town Lazio after two years in the North. Without too much license, we may imagine Mancinelli crossing the Apennines with a saddlebag full of elegant little textbooks for friends and notables in Velletri, some already bound in the latest Venetian styles.

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The typography of the Scribendi orandique is striking and original. Despite the small types typically used, it achieved an elegant look, based on the best small humanist manuscripts of school texts. In this respect it mirrors the equally distinctive layout of the Lima in Vallam, another text we know was composed and typeset during Mancinelli's last months in Venice. We can only assume that Mancinelli's own preferences are at work, together with the technical versatility of the presses at Venice, and perhaps the schoolmaster's increasing sensitivity to type and the possibilities it offered.

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Late version of the table of contents (click to enlarge -
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Even in the collected editions of Mancinelli's works that began to appear about 1500, the Scribendi orandique modus retained its characteristic typographical dress. In the 1519 collected works, for example, it is compressed, like the rest of the booklets in this unlovely omnibus. So the title has lost its blank verso; and the table of contents and dedicatory letter are squeezed onto a single page. But the unusual order and the layout of the table are followed, and the change of type and format at the beginning of chapter twenty one is observed. The title page retains its single-line title, and is elaborated only slightly by the addition below of a two-line verse in praise of Mancinelli. (61)

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Ulm edition, 1499 (click to enlarge - 733 KB jpeg image)
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Northern European printers were less likely to preserve the chaste Venetian title page style, but they did follow the basic layout of the Scribendi even when it was at variance with their own house style. Antoine Denidel at Paris used a tiny, homely gothic type but followed the page layouts of his Venice models; Johann Schäffler at Ulm followed his Venetian models even more closely but substituted a pretty, relatively spacious gothic type. (62)

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Denidel's layout, Paris 1499 (Click to enlarge - 683 KB JPEG image)
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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"While at Venice, Mancinelli tackled two other publishing projects, both aimed at rounding out his offerings of textbooks on the Venice market. For the grammar course he prepared On Verse Virtue (De poetica virtute), an anthology of classical poets…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/312","title":"3.12 Impressing the Printers","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

We do not know why Mancinelli left Venice in 1493. The tensions evident in his Valla prefaces may offer a clue, but it would be speculative to assume that they represent real discontent in Venice rather than a normal rivalry among humanists or an even more normal homesickness. (63) We do know that Mancinelli went back to Velletri, and that he had offers to work elsewhere at high salaries, prompted not by his scholarly writing but by his teaching reputation. So Venice had given him not only new publishing opportunities but also a quantifiable sense of his own worth on the market for teachers. (64)

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His Venetian years were probably his busiest, but back in Velletri Mancinelli did not just return to teaching. He continued his scholarly editorial work and continued to crank out small textbooks and reading anthologies, the genres of publication in which he had been most successful to date. Befitting his newly achieved middle age (he had just turned forty), the new classroom works were all strongly moralizing in character, if possible even more earnestly so than his earlier texts. Increasingly they anthologize his own experiences. Almost immediately on his return, he wrote the autobiography in verse that is the source for much of what we know of his life. (65) This Vitae carmen is also a self-advertisement, since it gives a list of his published works to date, omitting only those, like the De rhetorica brachylogia, that he considered superseded. After this date, we must rely on dated prefaces and printers' colophons to follow his career.

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Mancinelli seems to have returned from Venice with commissions in hand for additional scholarly editions of Strabo's Geography, of Herodotus in the Latin translation of Lorenzo Valla, and perhaps of Diodorus Siculus. The sponsor of Mancinelli's work on these books was Nicolò Rossi, canon of St. Mark's, who had been dedicatee of the commentary on Juvenal. In the event the Strabo and the Herodotus came from the presses of Giovanni Rossi and Gregorio de Gregori in spring of 1494, while the Diodorus seems never to have appeared. The 1494 prefaces imply that Mancinelli returned to Venice in April to deliver the Herodotus manuscript and perhaps to see it through the press, and that he completed work on the Strabo while there. The Herodotus preface is particularly informative as to the process, careful but not really thorough, which Mancinelli felt was his task as editor. It also displays Mancinelli's usual sympathy for the printer, whose inevitable errors are remarked but not in any damning way. Mancinelli did not edit the text in a critical way, and he tells us so. He merely cleaned up what he found in two sources he had to hand. The principal innovations of this edition are marginal notes and indexes. (66)

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A curiosity of the Strabo and Herodotus editions is that both have prefaces dated after the dates in the colophons of the books. (67) The reason is to be found in the circumstances of their preparation, since Mancinelli must have been pressed to get the corrected texts to the printer even as they worked. The preface to the Herodotus was written while the work on Strabo was still in hand. Reading between the lines, we may imagine that Mancinelli was feeding the sheets to the printer a few at a time. The Strabo preface contains the only real complaint Mancinelli ever published about printers, \"If there be any error in what you read, let it be put down not to my fault but rather to the haste of the printers.\" (68) The sentiment is commonplace by the fourteen nineties but it is striking coming from Mancinelli, usually so indulgent.

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In both the Strabo and the Herodotus editions the lengthy indexes and the brief dedication letters are front matter; they occupy a separate set of sheets at the beginning of the book. The Strabo dedication is dated fully three weeks after the body of the text, which gives some idea of the amount of time spent on the preparation of the indexes. Not that the indexes are particularly well made. They are accurate in the page references, but seem at first to be alphabetized only half-heartedly. In fact they are perfectly regular in a different way, for they give the entries under each initial letter in the order of their appearance in the book: all the a-words on the first leaf, then the a-words on the next leaf, and so forth. This too may simply be a result of the printer's haste; but when Rossi reprinted the Strabo in January of 1495 (only eight months after the first edition) he used the same index setting. (69)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"We do not know why Mancinelli left Venice in 1493. The tensions evident in his Valla prefaces may offer a clue, but it would be speculative to assume that they represent real discontent in Venice rather than a normal rivalry among humanists or an…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/313","title":"3.13 Midlife","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Sometime in the fourteen nineties, Mancinelli or his North Italian printers seem to have conceived the notion of issuing all his short textbooks in a collected set. Mancinelli himself had made lists of his works as they multiplied, which appeared in print in 1490, 1492, 1493, and again in 1499, but the context of these early lists was mere advertising. The 1492 list of twenty four works, for example, appeared in a Venice edition of Regulae constructionis with Summa and Thesaurus. It may have been a sort of calling card for Mancinelli, newly arrived in Venice, or it may have been intended to announce a plan by the printer, Giovanni Roscio, to start a series. It is a confusing list, however, since it incorrectly describes the Spica as a work on supines and it includes the mysterious Centiloquium, of which no copy survives. At best it is a garbled version of a list Mancinelli might have supplied in manuscript. (76)

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A larger, later project is similarly fuzzy in the earliest documents, which date from the beginning of 1498. Giovanni Tacuino had been issuing textbooks by Mancinelli for some years. On January 21, 1498 he published an edition of the Regulae constructionis with Summa and Thesaurus that contained a note listing twenty seven distinct works of Mancinelli, in no particular order. (77) This list, like that of 1492, included not only grammatical textbooks and reading anthologies, but also the commentaries on Virgil, Horace and Juvenal, and the Centiloquium. It also included the never-published Lima on Giovanni Tortelli and another (but different) mistaken description of Mancinelli's Spica. This disordered list cannot be Mancinelli's making. Most likely Tacuino cobbled it together from earlier lists or from the title pages of earlier publications in his stock that he intended to use as copy texts for new issues. This would explain why the commentary on Tortelli shows up, since it was listed on the title page of the Pincio edition of Tortelli even though it was never issued. (78)

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Soon after the list above, the project becomes a little clearer. On February 9, 1498, Tacuino reissued the Valla/Ad Herennium tracts. Some copies of this little volume bear a title page announcing an Opera omnia. (79) This title page implies that Tacuino now saw himself as publishing a complete set. Perhaps he saw the project as a way of keeping his presses busy in otherwise slow periods. If he still had earlier editions of some works in stock, he would have had no incentive to reprint them in a new format, but the new title page might create a demand for the older booklets. Both the older and new issues were in standard chancery quarto format and could be bound together as any given customer desired. In the event, Tacuino does not seem to have gone far or fast with the series. He reissued only four works in the next two years. On January 9, 1500 Tacuino received a privilege from the Venetian authorities that included \"all of Mancinelli's works together with a new commentary on Valerius Maximus.\" But neither project resulted. Across two years, Tacuino had created a substantial little series, but it never approached a real Opera omnia. He only picked up the project again after Mancinelli's death. (80)

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Meanwhile, other printers also started collecting works of Mancinelli, probably spurred on by the announcement of Tacuino's project. Beyond the Alps, the Lyon printer Jean de Vingle carefully selected a few works to represent a complete curriculum from Donatus to the Rhetorica ad Herennium. (81) In Milan, the publisher Giovanni da Legnano began a grandly titled Opera omnia, starting with a Valla/Ad Herennium volume, just like Tacuino's issue of 1498. In fact the Milanese book is a close reprint of Tacuino's. The Milan book is undated but likely to have been printed in 1499 or 1500. (82 ) Da Legnano employed several printers; for this first volume he chose Pietro Martire Mantegazza. Part of the same project were several other small volumes that appeared desultorily with the De Legnano mark in 1500 and shortly thereafter. Some of these betray rather more care in correction than was usual in small grammar books, but there is no good reason to think that Mancinelli himself was directly involved. (83)

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The only clear indication we have that Mancinelli was personally involved in collecting his works is a preface dated 1504 which, however, first appeared with a 1507 Opera omnia title page by Tacuino. Mancinelli had died in the meantime, probably in 1505, and so here he was made to speak posthumously. He wrote that the project was to assemble the corrected works written for young boys and adolescents into a single volume, and then he gave a classified list, which is precious evidence for his retrospective sense of his own career. There are three classes, Grammaticae Praeexercitamenta, or preparatory exercises in grammar, Carminum Opuscula, short works in verse, and Solutae orationis Opuscula, short works in prose. (84) The list that appears under these headings is tantalizing. Missing are the commentaries on Juvenal, Horace and Virgil (presumably because Mancinelli did not see them as made for adolescent students), but included are the Valla and Ad Herennium commentaries. At the very end are the three lost anthologies -- Plato, Aristotle, and Centiloquium. If Mancinelli himself edited this list, it may be that the three \"lost\" anthologies were simply projects he still had in hand in 1504 and which he never completed.

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The evidence for Mancinelli's direct involvement in collecting his works is fragmentary, but, whoever came up with the idea initially, it seems that by 1504 the eminent author had been recruited to oversee the project. He started by imposing some order. For Tacuino, however, the order was still an afterthought. The title page with Mancinelli's logical classification dates from August 5, 1507; but the only copy of this Opera omnia I have seen contains more fascicles printed before that date than after. The title page was merely Tacuino's device for encouraging customers to collect a set. (85)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Sometime in the fourteen nineties, Mancinelli or his North Italian printers seem to have conceived the notion of issuing all his short textbooks in a collected set. Mancinelli himself had made lists of his works as they multiplied, which appeared in…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/315","title":"3.15 Collecting Himself","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Mancinelli's late works all aim to inculcate morals in Latin students. The Mirror of Morals and Duties (Speculum de moribus et officiis) is a verse treatment of the four cardinal virtues. It bears an interesting double dedication. A short, affectionate verse commending the work was addressed to Mancinelli's youngest son Festus. Mancinelli says the purpose of his work is double, to instruct in morals and to teach Latin. The first is the leader (or duke, dux) of the poem, the second its companion (or count, comes). Here Mancinelli offers his son both fatherly advice and also a schoolroom clarification (the technical term in grammar is differentia) between terms whose classical meaning had been distorted by their long use in feudal society. The verses to Festus are preceded by fourteen lines in praise of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (later Pope Paul III), a rare address by Mancinelli to a prince of the church. Farnese had been a student of Pomponio Leto and so was part of the Roman humanist circle by reason of real learning and intelligence as well as birth. Mancinelli's poem is punningly conventional. The cardinal exemplifies the cardinal virtues, so he is the perfect judge (optimus censor) of a poem on morals.

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Marketplace of Latin Speech (Latini sermonis emporium) is an Italian-to-Latin proverb and phrase book. Nearly seven hundred short phrases in Italian are given elegant Latin dress. There are proverbs like \"It's better to be a doctor than an unlearned man, said Aristippus\" or \"Don't be slow to learn,\" but also commonplace and even colloquial phrases, \"I was forced to do it\" and \"Set the table.\" The logic of such a compilation is set out in the brief dedication. Even young children, Mancinelli says, should be encouraged to use Latin conversationally. (70)

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Three other anthologies bring together classical extracts with original verse and prose by Mancinelli. They were offered in print as Latin reading books. Collected in Velletri, Orvieto and Rome in Mancinelli's later years, they were published first in Rome. (71) The first anthology, On the Care of Parents for their Children, and On the Reciprocal Obedience, Honor and Reverence Due to Parents from their Children, took inspiration from Mancinelli's own family life. It consists of extracts from classical, biblical, and patristic sources. Mancinelli coyly included an extract from his own recent Speculum de moribus et officiis.

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This Care of Parents was never published separately and first appeared in 1503 along with A Decade of Speeches (Sermonum decas). The two works were reprinted almost immediately in Milan. (72) In publishing terms, then, they were originally a single anthology on moral themes, but each was reprinted separately later. The Decade is a collection of Mancinelli's occasional speeches and letters, arranged in ten books by subject. The dedication was to the single most prominent intellectual among Mancinelli's dedicatees, Angelo Colocci (1474-1549), a renowned antiquary and editor who was at this date moving up the ranks within the papal curia. (73) Mancinelli's greeted Colocci with an exact curial title, but the body of the brief letter was affectionate, in the Ciceronian manner of learned friendships of the day. Collocci was twenty years Mancinelli's junior, a fact the latter emphasized by recalling the accomplishments of Colocci's father and paternal uncle. Always the schoolmaster, Mancinelli commented upon the younger man's brilliance and praised him both for his accomplishments and for his potential to do more.

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Also from about 1503, the Little Book of Epigrams (Epigrammaton libellus) and Fourfold Suite of Eclogues (Aepolion Aeglogarum quattuor) are collections of Mancinelli's short verse. They offer a microcosm of the life of a small town in the shadow of papal Rome, including ceremonial poems, epitaphs, and verses that mirror Mancinelli's interests. (74) The largest single group concerns marriage, and the next most prominent theme is Latin education as a preparation for the moral life. The conventionality of such themes, of course, does not detract from their importance both in humanist thought and in Mancinelli's own life. Exactly these most deeply held beliefs needed stating, repeatedly and eloquently.

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Lastly, we should remark four apparently lost works. Mancinelli seems to claim in his 1493 autobiographical poem that he had composed a set of glosses on Valerius Maximus, but they have never been identified. (75) We really know nothing about the other three lost works except that they are mentioned in lists starting in 1490. All three were apparently anthologies, like those we have met before, from classical authors. The title Centiloquium (One Hundred Sayings) alas, tells us nothing of the contents, merely that there were a hundred entries. Platonis sententiae (Sayings of Plato) and Aristotelis sententiae ex Ethicis, Politicis, Oeconomicis (Sayings from Aristotle's Ethics, Politics and Economics), on the other hand, are clear as to the sources of the extracts. Probably all three consisted of short passages intended for study by intermediate-level Latin students. They are unlikely to have been in Greek, since there is no evidence that Mancinelli ever taught Greek.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Mancinelli's late works all aim to inculcate morals in Latin students. The Mirror of Morals and Duties (Speculum de moribus et officiis) is a verse treatment of the four cardinal virtues. It bears an interesting double dedication. A short…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/314","title":"3.14 Late Works","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Tacuino's 1507-1508 collection was copied at Milan two years later in an altogether more systematic form. This collection had the patronage of publisher Leonardo Vegio, who had the means to command a fully integrated set of thirty one works in nine separate fascicles issued between July and December of 1509. These are again reprints of Tacuino's editions, but they have a prettified title page that reads Opera omnia and follows with a full list of works printed in black and red. (86)

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Leonardo Vegio's collection is important because it represents sophisticated packaging specifically for classroom use. Vegio gave each of the nine fascicles a separate title page so they could be had in the traditional form, as separates, if the customer wanted them that way. Indeed, we must suppose that for teaching purposes, students would normally be given one fascicle at a time. Some of the fascicles with a single title page are set and signed in such a way that they could be further broken down for classroom use. For example, the second fascicle has a title page that unites the Thesaurus de constructione, the Latini sermonis emporium, and the Speculum de moribus with other small moral poems. All are elementary works, but they would not necessarily be used in the same way or at the same time. The Thesaurus, in three gatherings, is signed a through c; the Emporium has a caption title and is gathered AA and BB; and the remaining small works, introduced by a new title page, run from aa to cc, three gatherings again. Even if it were only offered for sale as a single item, such an eight-gathering booklet could be separated for student use into three shorter pamphlets. Vegio and Mantegazza also imposed a uniform typographical style on their series, with regular use of types and carefully crafted running heads, so as to make for a genuine collection, usable as such. In the case of the fascicle described above, each separate work has running heads that make it clear where it begins and ends, simplifying consultation of the collected set and clarifying for the binder which leaves are which. All in all, these Vegio imprints are the most handsome presentation Mancinelli's school texts ever received. Another entrepreneurial Milan printer, Nicolò Gorgonzola, seems to have started yet another collected works of Mancinelli; seven titles survive. (87)

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Title page of one fascicle (click to enlarge - 837 KB jpeg image)
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It was the Venetians' turn to play copycat in 1519 when Giorgio Rusconi reproduced the 1509 Milanese title page for still another collection, this time using versions of Mancinelli's works edited by Josse Bade. Although he copied many aspects of the Vegio/Mantegazza printings, including the running heads, Rusconi's production standards were not as high. The heads are often erroneous; the signing is confused; and although there are cross-references from fascicle to fascicle, they are as often wrong as right. Several works that appear on the title page are omitted entirely, and the texts are often badly corrupt. Alas, this sloppy and unreliable edition of Mancinelli is the version most frequently encountered in modern libraries.

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Catch title in use, at lower right (click to enlarge - 669 KB jpeg image)
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Rusconi did add one refinement to the typography, a series of short titles on each printed sheet. In the bound volume these appear next to the signature mark at the bottom of the first and third leaf of each gathering. They serve in a limited way, in the fashion of running heads, to orient the reader or binder making his way through a set of unbound pamphlets with no printed folio numbers. In the fascicle corresponding to the one we described above for the Milan edition, for example, the same three works appeared in the same order. Instead of starting the signing anew in each subsection as the Milanese printer had done, Rusconi added the title THESAV.MAN (Thesaurus Mancinelli) to the bottom of the first and third leaves of signatures A and B, and SPECV.MAN (Speculum Mancinelli) to the first and third leaves of gatherings E, F, and G. Gatherings C and D have no such titles.

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"The Thesaurus of Mancinelli" (click to enlarge - 772 KB jpeg image)
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This practice, called a catch-title, was uncommon at most periods, but it had a certain fashion at Venice from the mid-fourteen nineties into the sixteenth century. (88) It makes best sense in the case of books stored in sheets in a bookshop, for it would allow the bookseller to pull only the sheets for a single work if that is all the buyer wanted. There is clear evidence that this was its meaning in Rusconi's shop. Apparently the 1519 Opera omnia of Mancinelli was available in three different ways. Rusconi offered individual works, composite units (two or three works each behind a single title page), and the series as a whole. The most common surviving form is the collected works with their Opera omnia title page. The composite fascicles also survive with some regularity. (89)

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Single-work pamphlets survive much more rarely to evidence this shop practice of using catch-titles; or perhaps more precisely, pamphlets of the sort have rarely been identified and cataloged. They may in fact be common but misidentified. As it happens, just in the case of this 1519 Rusconi edition, two such single works can be found in Illinois libraries. One at the Newberry Library in Chicago is a separate detached from the Thesaurus/Emporium/Speculum fascicle just described. It contains just the Emporium. A second such separate is held by the University of Illinois. It contains the Epigrammaton libellus and derives from a fascicle that once contained the De floribus and De figuris. It is presently bound with a complete but different fascicle, one that contains the Sermonum decas and other prose works. (90) The fact that catch-titles, though common in Venice in Mancinelli's day, do not appear in any of his works as printed in his lifetime suggests that he did not approve of the practice. It is a purely typographic usage, unrelated to the classic look of humanist manuscripts. It may have been uncongenial to Mancinelli for that reason alone.

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Although Rusconi's collected edition was very successful, other Venetian and Milanese printers did not simply cede Mancinelli's works to Rusconi. Giovanni Tacuino issued all the works separately between 1518 and 1526, and added an Omnia opera title page in the latter year to a Donatus melior. This time he copied the Milan edition, not Rusconi's. (91) Other printers offered individual works with some regularity for another thirty five years. The most popular would seem to have been the basic grammar unit, Regulae constructionis with Summa declinationis. First published as a combination in 1490, it got a printing as late as 1563 by Francesco Lorenzini. The presses of the Nicolini da Sabbio family issued this and other short works repeatedly between 1526 and 1550. In 1536, one large Milan bookseller had in stock no fewer than 358 copies of the Donatus melior, 709 of the Scribendi orandique modus, 198 of the Spica and 409 of the Speculum de moribus. (92) All in all, Mancinelli's was a remarkably long career for a textbook author. His most elementary grammar books were particularly durable. Apparently some teachers continued to take to heart the advertising phrase that Tacuino had put in Mancinelli's mouth on one of the first editions after his death, \"Whoever wants to become learned quickly, let him study my eight little textbooks.\" (93)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Tacuino's 1507-1508 collection was copied at Milan two years later in an altogether more systematic form. This collection had the patronage of publisher Leonardo Vegio, who had the means to command a fully integrated set of thirty one works in nine…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/316","title":"3.16 Packaging Celebrity","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Grammatical texts, especially those intended for elementary instruction, are unstable at most periods. In the manuscript age, they could be altered at any copying for the use of a specific teacher or student. (94) We tend to think that printed texts are inherently more stable, and they are so in two fundamental ways. First, printing created many identical or highly similar copies of a given work; and secondly, printed texts (absent manuscript variants) are easier to copy than to revise. As early as the 1470's these facts of printed-text inertia were cause for complaint among humanists who objected to poor texts of classical authors that got wide circulation because they were in print. (95) But even in the age of print, every edition was an opportunity for change. We have already observed Mancinelli's growing preoccupation with correction and enlargement, which he seemed to feel was a normal process of reprinting. Once the texts were out of his direct supervision, however, especially after his death, they were subject to detailed revision by other teachers.

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Practically every grammar master who published in this period faced the same problem of the need for revision and the concomitant urge to tinker, not only with his own original compositions but also with those of others that seemed useful but worth modifying for his own classroom. For example, the German humanist Johann Murmellius (1480-1517), whose career as a publishing teacher began in 1504 just as Mancinelli's was ending, typically published a second, \"improved\" edition of his schoolbooks within a year or two of the first editions. The improvements could involve significant enlargements, about fifteen percent in the case of his first printed work on verb conjugations. Or they could aim mostly at correcting typographical errors, as in the case of the second and subsequent editions of Murmellius' version of Mancinelli's Versilogus with commentary and original poetry by Murmellius. This anthology was published six times in the lifetime of the German schoolmaster. (96)

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A clear example of the unstable afterlife of grammatical schoolbooks is the wholesale appropriation of Mancinelli's works (and those of many other grammarians) by Josse Bade Ascensius. (97) As early as 1501, Bade incorporated Mancinelli's commentary on Lorenzo Valla into his own edition of the Elegantiae. Bade was usually careful to give attributions when he used other humanists' work, and indeed to claim on his title pages and in prefaces and marginalia that he had included them. Bade was both scholar and printer, so it was in his interest to advertise not only his own authority but also that of the other scholars whose work he reprinted.

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One of the clearest cases in which Bade both appropriated another scholar's work with attribution and also tampered with it without stating the changes was Mancinelli's Carmen de figuris. Mancinelli's short didactic poems were eminently practical; they were much reproduced both within and outside his immediate circle. The Carmen de figuris originally appeared as a separate booklet in August 1489, just five days before its companion piece the Carmen de floribus. Thereafter, these two works usually appeared in combined editions. In 1493 at Venice, for example, Mancinelli supervised a printing of this combination together with his newly composed autobiographical poem, the Vitae carmen. Subsequently, the Carmen de figuris was linked with other didactic poetry in small booklets published more or less under Mancinelli's direct supervision. In the collections made late in Mancinelli's life it had a clear position in the sequence of classroom poetry labeled Carminum opuscula that included as many as a dozen works. The Carmen de figuris almost always occurs together with the de floribus immediately after the Versilogus and before Mancinelli's extensive collection of epigrams. As such it has a place in a system of verse instruction that moves from simple moral instruction (the first work is Speculum de moribus et officiis), through technical instruction embodied in verse, and on to an anthology of moral sayings useful as starting points for composition even more than for moral self-education. (98)

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Already in 1505, the year before Mancinelli's death, Josse Bade began to publish a series of Mancinelli's classroom works. Usually the learned Paris printer furnished the texts with additional annotations. Sometimes he anthologized Mancinelli with other humanists. In 1508, for example, he included the Carmen de figuris in an edition of the grammar book of Giovanni Sulpizio (a contemporary of Mancinelli and like him a member of the circle of Pomponio Leto) as part of an appendix of several writers on the figures of speech. Curiously, Bade substituted six lines of his own composition for the first five lines of Mancinelli's poem. Clearly labeled Mancinellus de figuris, these read:

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Barbara scribendo fit siue loquendo figura
\nUna in uoce; aliud more insueto superaddens
\nDemens aut mutans seu transmutans: uti mavors
\nPro mars; & fates pro fantes; asuenio pro
\nAduenio, fors tymbrae legas pro timber eritque
\nAccentu veluti dicendo domina eodemque. (99)

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Compare this with Mancinelli's original, five verses which had stood for twenty years in all earlier editions:

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Fit barbarismus scribendo sive loquendo
\nAdiicit ac demit mutat transmutat et idem
\nUna in voce tamen mavors fates bene pandunt
\nAsuenio tymbrae & pro mars fantes quoque tymber
\nAdvenio: sic et dicendo domina dominus. (100)

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Presumably Bade thought he had clarified the obscure verses of Mancinelli or improved the meter. But both versions were complex enough to require explanatory comment. Mancinelli had produced such a note, twenty three lines of prose to explicate five of poetry. The poem and commentary stand together in all earlier editions. Bade reproduced this commentary word for word in 1508 (though it refers to a different poem!) and then added his own notes, at about the same length as Mancinelli's, so that these few lines of poor mnemonic verse swell to a full page loaded down with learned commentary.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Grammatical texts, especially those intended for elementary instruction, are unstable at most periods. In the manuscript age, they could be altered at any copying for the use of a specific teacher or student. (94) We tend to think that printed texts…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/317","title":"3.17 A Slippery Heritage","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In cases like this, a modern reader might suspect that the editor is just not being very scrupulous about the original. But this would miss an essential aspect of Latin grammatical writing and publishing. There are really only two cases in which much originality is to be expected in grammar and therefore in which a new grammatical text does not merely rewrite traditional teachings. There is the rare transformative moment when a pedagogical genius succeeds in radically reforming a curriculum. And there is the slower and more archaeological process by which the grammatical usage of a particular past age is reconstructed and reclaimed. The humanist endeavor of the fifteenth century claimed to be both of these things; but in fact it was original only in the second, archaeological sense of identifying a coherent period of great Latin and recreating it for contemporary use. (101)

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The fruits of such philological work necessarily invited rethinking and rewriting the basic textbooks, and the extraordinary productivity of Mancinelli was occasioned by this need. But the force of classroom tradition meant that teaching methods did not change much in the first age of print. Indeed, the inertia of the old manuscript culture meant that Mancinelli met opposition even on the level of reforming the most basic classroom texts, the demonstrably faulty Donat and Cato. His enemies, whom he described as ignorant men who knew how to teach only the faulty Latin they themselves had learned, were teachers at the most basic level with careers like his own. For some such elementary teachers, rote memory was not only a fundamental teaching technique, it was also the limit of their own learning and intellectual ambition. Their discipline was a grammatical fundamentalism with an inviolable scripture, the poor medieval Donat.

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When Mancinelli turned to original literary and philological work, he had to tackle the weighty reputation of Lorenzo Valla, the first great archaeologist of classical Latin. Here he met resistance not from fundamentalist grammar masters but from a considerable cadre of followers and other admirers of the justly famous philologist. These were learned men, comparatively speaking, and Mancinelli probably found their opposition baffling. They were willing to accept Valla's conclusions and to adopt the taste for classical usage he propounded, but without understanding or actively taking up the critical methods that got Valla to those conclusions. Mancinelli excused himself to this audience with an explanation that his own methods were just an extension of those pioneered by Valla. But Mancinelli eventually placed these men in the same category of intellectual sinners -- the stubbornly ignorant who have learned something one way and do not intend to un-learn it. The true humanist, for Mancinelli, was one who had internalized not only the classicizing taste but also the methods of Valla and who was willing to carry on his critical work.

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Josse Bade, then, and other editors of grammatical texts at the turn of the century were continuing two strands of editorial work-in-progress, work well begun by Valla, Mancinelli, and their contemporaries. Both traditions conduced to instability for grammatical textbooks. First, like grammatical writers for centuries before and after, the humanists worked ongoing transformations on the texts used in the classroom to make them more useful for students. They were limited in what they could do with some of the most widely used elementary texts, but even those were not absolutely fixed. Other propaedeutic texts were understood to be mere sketches of what a good grammar master might want to use in class. Textbooks of this sort, including much of the mnemonic verse Mancinelli devised, had a high degree of fluidity. They were subject to change and addition at any time. When Bade substituted his own mnemonic verses for Mancinelli's at the start of the Carmen de figuris, he was indulging in this sort of pedagogical license.

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Secondly, even normative texts -- reference grammars, dictionaries, commentaries on the major school authors, and the classical authors themselves -- were subject to continuous revision, not because they were inherently unstable like class texts but because of the ongoing progress of humanist research. The example of Josse Bade is again instructive. Whether editing Mancinelli's commentary on the Ad Herennium, incorporating Mancinelli's notes on Virgil into his own editions, or adding a second layer of commentary to Mancinelli's Lima in Vallam, Bade was playing the humanist philologist. The professional conventions in this case were the same that Mancinelli had observed in his own scholarly editing -- to reproduce and label what came from earlier philologists, to argue with it openly when it seemed wrong or misleading, or else to omit it selectively. By the 1490's it was essential in advertising such editions to claim that they incorporated the opinions of many scholars. The public for classical editions wanted as much of the scholarly apparatus as they could get.

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Aldo Manuzio, already within Mancinelli's lifetime, would offer a completely different publishing model. The Aldine editions were not just handsome new packages. They succeeded because they were careful, scholarly editions of the classics that presented only text and no commentary at all. It was a daring experiment, made possible only because Aldus's reputation and that of the editors he employed was already well recognized. Only well into the next century would the pedagogical potential of such editions be fully realized.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In cases like this, a modern reader might suspect that the editor is just not being very scrupulous about the original. But this would miss an essential aspect of Latin grammatical writing and publishing. There are really only two cases in which much…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/318","title":"3.18 Grammatical Publishing at the Turn of the Century","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Humanist philology, in the eyes of most Italians of the fifteenth century, was an Italian invention. It was a field in which non-Italians were either latecomers or simply did not count for much. For this reason, and perhaps also because most Northern humanists had relatively few direct relationships of patronage with Italian publishers, the Italian market of the late fifteenth and sixteenth century remained remarkably impervious both to printed editions of the medieval grammars popular in Northern Europe and to the many new teaching grammars produced there during the Renaissance. Such textbooks were known in Italy, even imitated there; but they were not as popular or as widely used as native products. Only after the middle of the sixteenth century did this begin to change.

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Geographical writing for schools and popular audiences offers an informative parallel to the fate of these Northern European grammars. Italians felt they should own this genre of humanist writing too. As a literary pursuit, it was a tradition going back to the thirteenth century. The earliest humanists, Petrarch and Boccaccio, had tried their hand at didactic geography. Italians in the fifteenth century also pioneered in mathematical cosmology and cartography. (1) But, Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci notwithstanding, the European reconnaissance was not to be an Italian enterprise; and scientific geography would not be an Italian monopoly in the sixteenth century, especially with the decline of Venetian map making after 1560. Early Italian writers \"imported\" their understandings of geography from the ancient world and the Muslim East. Later, after printing made imports of books even easier, many Italian writers and publishers took inspiration from the European North.

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Geography textbooks were unlike Latin grammars in two important respects. First, there were fewer scholarly prejudices. Northern writers on geography, unlike grammarians, were immediately studied and imitated in Italy. Some of the most successful basic textbooks for geography in the sixteenth century were widely imported from Germany and Switzerland and repackaged for the Italian market. Secondly, geography was of such great popular interest that learned lore in the field was translated into the vernaculars at all periods. Long before there were textbooks for Italian language study -- indeed well before printing -- there were elementary vernacular treatments of geographical matters. Geography and cosmology were multilingual fields before the invention of printing; and printers could find a variety of manuscript models for new treatments whether in Latin or the vernaculars. Latin grammar could never be so multilingual (even when taught with Italian phrases in parallel), and at the start of the age of printing there were no models of vernacular textbooks for language instruction.

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In this chapter, then, we will explore several kinds of \"importation,\" for it was as much a crossing of borders to translate classicizing Latin culture into colloquial Italian as to bring books from outside Italy and rework them for Italian readers. First we will consider a straightforward case of importation, the limited success of three Northern Latin grammarians on the Italian market. Then we will look briefly at the making of elementary geography books, also largely imports. Sometimes Italians imported them in fact, but almost always they \"imported\" basic geography in the larger sense of translating it from one cultural realm to another. In a later chapter (sections 6.01 and 6.10) we will take up this latter kind of cultural translation -- Latin to vernacular -- in greater detail in other fields of study.

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NOTE

\n","excerpt":"Humanist philology, in the eyes of most Italians of the fifteenth century, was an Italian invention. It was a field in which non-Italians were either latecomers or simply did not count for much. For this reason, and perhaps also because most Northern…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/401","title":"4.01 Transitions / Translations","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Northern European authors had varying success in penetrating the Italian market. This chapter first discusses the way several highly influential Latin grammar textbooks by Jan de Spauter (ca. 1460-1520), Josse Bade Ascensius (1463-1535), and Jean Pellisson (ca. 150-1567) were redesigned and repackaged for the Italian market. By way of parallel, the chapter concludes by comparing the publishing history of the most popular geography textbooks authored in the North, which also got new packages in Italy.

","excerpt":"Northern European authors had varying success in penetrating the Italian market. This chapter first discusses the way several highly influential Latin grammar textbooks by Jan de Spauter (ca. 1460-1520), Josse Bade Ascensius (1463-1535), and Jean…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/400","title":"4.00 CHAPTER FOUR: Crossing Borders: Northern Textbooks on the Italian Market","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Advanced scholarly works by Northerners in many fields had greater success on the Italian book market than textbooks, since Italians admitted easily enough that good advanced work could be produced anywhere good libraries were at the disposition of right-thinking (that is, humanist) scholars. This opinion had immediate resonance in the market for intermediate and advanced textbooks. For example, in the classroom scene that stands as frontispiece to the 1504 Venice edition of Terence with Five Commentaries, the Belgian-born Paris editor Josse Bade Ascensius is pictured to the right of a professorial Terence; he joins two ancient commentators and two moderns, one French and one Italian, in the stylized lecture hall that stands in here for the humanist republic of letters. Bade may have earned his place because he had studied in Italy; certainly none of the other Northerners of his generation ranked so high in the eyes of the Italian public. (2) But more importantly still, he was part of a humanist world without borders.

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By contrast to this ideal, international world of advanced scholarship, much elementary school book publishing remained tied to local demand and local networks of patronage. Sixteenth-century Latin speakers thought globally but Latin teachers acted locally. There were repeated attempts to create an international market for textbooks for teaching Latin. Venice was the site of the first such marketing campaigns toward the end of the fifteenth century. Later, Basel, Lyon, Paris, and Antwerp would seek international markets. To some degree Venetian printers succeeded; they printed for the South German, Hungarian, and Dalmatian markets for example, and their books were influential throughout Europe. But this broad ambition was always counter-balanced by local interests and needs, expressed in markets where local teachers made choices. In chapter five we will explore one internationally successful elementary Latin grammar, that of Manuel Alvares, championed by the Jesuits.

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Erarsmus of 1538 (with a censor's note added) (click to enlarge - 529 KB JPEG image)
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Only a humanist celebrity like Erasmus (1467-1536) could expect his Latin school texts to be published in Italy promptly. And Erasmus, once his works became controversial and suspect of Lutheranism, slowly but thoroughly disappeared from the Italian market too. Even technical and pedagogical works that were never expressly forbidden (and which, indeed, contained nothing even remotely heterodox) went into eclipse as soon as Erasmus's name appeared in early indexes of forbidden books. Silvana Seidel Menchi has shown how selective and tendentious readings of Erasmus could indeed conduce to heterodoxy, and how, therefore, the authorities had every reason to worry about an author so widely read and anthologized. (3)

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Surviving copies of Erasmus's educational works bear traces of ambiguous attitudes by the censors. His name was sometimes obliterated without actually censoring his work. Alternatively, long discursive passages from his pen might be excised without removing other sections also of his making. Early editions of Aldo Manuzio's grammar book proudly advertised that it included Erasmus's treatment of the parts of speech. Later editions included the same uncontroversial material but suppressed the title page mention; and many copies of the earlier editions have the name of Erasmus carefully blotted from the title page. (4) One copy of a 1567 Estienne anthology of Greek drama preserves the text of Erasmus's translation of Euripides in full, but the two leaves with his preface were cut out and his name was inked out in the running head on every page. None of this was mandated by the detailed instructions of the inquisitors; individual censors or censorious readers worked these changes. Other authors suffered even by association with Erasmus. A copy of Otto Brunfels's On Raising Children (De disciplina et institutione puerorum, a popular anthology of proverbs that merely claimed Erasmus and Rudolph Agricola as sources on its title page) was censored in Italy soon after its publication in 1530. (5)

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Erasmus's school texts almost always included large doses of his particular brand of Christian moralizing. At least one edition of his version of the Distichs of Cato was the subject of an inquiry by the Inquisition because it was suspected of crypto-Protestantism. (6) The Colloquies, which he frequently revised and enlarged, was a playful dialogue intended to rehearse students in conversation. But it was also a manual on manners and morals and it contained a lot of good natured criticism of churchmen. It was condemned early but remained widely influential, even in Italy. (7) A larger and more wandering anthology like the Adagia, a commonplace book intended for learners of all ages, was even more problematic for censors in that they could not easily discern which of the moral teachings it embodied might smack of Lutheranism. Better to ban it outright, or at least discourage its sale.

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The same suspicion of heresy that limited the reception of Erasmus's works in Italy affected other Northern authors from mid-century forward, even though grammar was not a field easily susceptible to heresy. His Latin grammar was often the first book a boy would own. To the considerable degree that humanist pedagogy insisted on the morally normative force of teaching Latin, these first books in Latin were considered important to the eventual formation of the student's character. (8) Even before the fear of heresy affected the Italian market, however, Northern authors were viewed as superfluous in the Italian-dominated field of elementary humanist education, suspect not of heresy but merely for being not-Italian, perhaps therefore coarse and un-Roman in speech, and certainly unsophisticated. As a result, the Italian market for grammar textbooks remained largely an Italian affair.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Advanced scholarly works by Northerners in many fields had greater success on the Italian book market than textbooks, since Italians admitted easily enough that good advanced work could be produced anywhere good libraries were at the disposition of…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/402","title":"4.02 Publishing Celebrity","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

We can consider this largely negative phenomenon by examining the fate in Italy of three grammatical authors of the early sixteenth century who were extremely popular in Northern Europe but whose works had only limited success south of the Alps. Jan de Spauter (ca 1460 -1520), Josse Bade Ascensius (1463-1535), and Jean Pellisson (ca. 1500-1567) were all connected in one or another degree with Erasmus or Erasmianism, but none of them was personally suspect of heterodoxy. Their grammatical works were rather conservative pedagogically (at least by comparison to Italian contemporaries) because they took over a great deal from the medieval grammatical tradition. (9) All three saw their own works or each other's through multiple editions in several countries of the North. All had teaching reputations sufficient to ensure that their elementary grammar books remained in print for a half century and more after their deaths. Italian publishers attempted to trade on their fame with textbooks issued under their names; but their works met varying and limited success in Italy. (10)

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For the purposes of this chapter, I will discuss these three grammarians separately, starting with the eldest and ending with the youngest, but it should be kept in mind that the three were at work across an overlapping period of about seventy-five years. Their careers were inextricably linked, largely through the vicissitudes of the press at Paris between 1508 and 1540. Bade was both publisher and scholar, and he was one of De Spauter's editors and printers at Paris from 1508 until the latter's death in 1520. Bade was so prolific a publisher of the schoolbooks of others like De Spauter that his own elementary grammar book was relatively little known even to faithful customers of his press. An ambitious young Pellisson edited and reworked De Spauter in the late 1520's for another Paris publisher. De Spauter, Bade, and Pellisson, then, were all part of a lively and influential humanist milieu of the early sixteenth century which the youngest of them vaunted in 1529 as \"the schools of Paris, which own the reputation of authority throughout the world for teaching and forming youths in good letters.\" (11) Italians at that date, needless to say, would not have agreed.

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Most editions of De Spauter that appeared in Italy derived from and were accompanied by work of Bade or Pellisson or both, and many of the editions of Pellisson's original schoolbooks were merely add-ons to his adaptation of De Spauter's better-known work. To borrow a term from one of Pellisson's titles, all three of them (and many other Northern teachers of the period) were \"Despauterian\" grammar masters, by sharp distinction to native Italian traditions of teaching and publishing. Of the three, De Spauter had by far the largest reputation, in Italy as elsewhere, because his innovative teaching methods were claimed by many who published him or who rewrote his work for new markets. The other two pedagogues sold in Italy largely as editors of De Spauter or of other humanist authors. We might view them, therefore, as parasitical in Italian publishing terms, no matter how great their personal reputations for learning and teaching were at home. A reading of the printing history of these three renowned grammar masters will offer an index of the degree to which the textbook markets of Italy were open to foreigners.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"We can consider this largely negative phenomenon by examining the fate in Italy of three grammatical authors of the early sixteenth century who were extremely popular in Northern Europe but whose works had only limited success south of the Alps. Jan…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/403","title":"4.03 Despauterian Grammar","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

What this distinction meant may best be understood in terms of the differing progress of Ciceronianism north and south of the Alps. Humanist pedagogy in Italy, following Poggio Bracciolini's unqualified praise of the Cicero of the orations, had drifted into an often servile and mechanical Ciceronianism, especially on the level of vocabulary study. Some scholars see this phenomenon as a particularly Roman one, tied to the desire of humanists at the papal court to develop an oratorical Latin worthy of the universalizing mission of the church. In this view the crucial innovators were Poggio and Lorenzo Valla. Valla in fact advocated a balanced and eclectic study of a variety of ancient models expressly for the sake of developing a sense of the changing usages of ancient Latin and a better appreciation of the best stylists in their proper historical context; he considered Quintilian an authority on rhetoric equal to Cicero. Many of Poggio's and Valla's followers, however, took the shortcut of proclaiming Cicero the one and only good model, or even of using Valla's Elegantiae as an alternative canonical text by which to judge contemporary Latin. Even a Roman insider like Antonio Mancinelli protested this narrow-mindedness among contemporary Italian schoolmasters. By the end of the fifteenth century neo-Ciceronian Latin had developed at Rome into a sort of jargon used by curialists to define who was in and who out of the ruling circle. (12)

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Agnolo Poliziano detested this practice and Erasmus parodied it wickedly in his Ciceronianus. These great scholars had too broad an experience of both Latin and Greek authors to fall into the simplifying trap of making Cicero the sole model of style. Beneath the ridicule of Erasmus lay another, largely geographically defined difference of approach. The Northern humanists had never gone as far in revering Cicero as some Italians had; and they had fewer opportunities for composing and delivering Ciceronian orations than Italians, who were fond of trotting out a Latin orator (often the local schoolmaster) for every urban event. Northerners did not portray Latin as the illustrious forbear of their own modern vernaculars, a tendency most Italian humanists (Poliziano notably excepted) indulged at one time or another. Northern humanists, it is true, excelled at technical rhetoric and letter-writing on Ciceronian models. But the surviving works of Cicero on rhetoric are not complete, so the technicians had long recognized that they needed to look to other sources, especially Greek ones. And they did not limit their lexicon to that of Cicero. (13)

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One thing humanists all over Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth century shared was a pugnacious willingness to argue that derived from scholastic models. Petrarch made many innovations in humanist thought, among them introducing a sustained polemic against the scholastics. In so doing he also imported into humanism the quarrelsomeness of the universities, where disputation pro and contra was a permanent fixture. The theme of attack earned a similarly permanent place in humanism, first as a critique of scholastic Latin, then as criticism of medieval philosophy. But criticism back and forth, not necessarily constructive, also became part of humanists' dealings with each other. They did not typically indulge in the formal disputations favored by university scholars, but they favored dialogue-form literary works, and they exercised themselves in rhetorical invective on classical models. (14) The prefaces and afterwords of printed books became a favorite forum for such invective. We saw Antonio Mancinelli's early exercise of the sort in sections 3.10 and 3.11; even elementary schoolbooks were not free of such invective. Northern humanists of De Spauter's day were willing to defend their eclectic choices of literary models against Italian Ciceronians with controversial philology as well as parody.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"What this distinction meant may best be understood in terms of the differing progress of Ciceronianism north and south of the Alps. Humanist pedagogy in Italy, following Poggio Bracciolini's unqualified praise of the Cicero of the orations, had…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/404","title":"4.04 Ciceronianisms","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Jan de Spauter was a Flemish humanist almost universally known during his lifetime (and in posthumous reputation) under the Latinized surname Despauterius. He studied at Louvain during the years Erasmus was there, and he was both a personal friend of Erasmus and a kindred soul in educational terms. The only known tension in their relationship came in 1508 when De Spauter published some of Erasmus's work on letter theory in a form Erasmus felt was undigested. The incident was entirely typical of their milieu. Scholars who worked in the shadow of the Trilingual College at Louvain were so intensely enthused by the heady results of their pedagogical experience that they fairly jostled to create new textbooks and to present the fruits of their humanist education to the broad public made possible by print. De Spauter rushed his own works to print and repeatedly re-issued them with additions and corrections. It seems that the presses could hardly keep up with him; in turn he had to scramble to keep his works from multiplying beyond his control. By mid-century, De Spauter's grammatical works had become so popular that his name, in the forms \"Despauterius\" or \"Despautère,\" had become almost synonymous in France with \"grammar book.\" (15)

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The cause of De Spauter's popularity was his teaching method, which consisted of organizing the whole of Latin grammar into short, easily memorizable bits that embraced both the rules and the many exceptions that bedeviled schoolboys. Medieval Latinists had tolerated neologisms that smoothed out the thorny irregularity of classical Latin because new words were formed mechanically on the basis of old, regular forms. With the rebirth of stylistics closely modeled on ancient writers, it became necessary to master an ever-larger vocabulary and many more irregular forms. (16)

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One early title page advertised De Spauter's teaching method thus: \" ... by inquiries and rules (but without the nonsense of sophists) all matters are clearly and easily digested.\" (17) The system depended on the ability of printers to reproduce the lessons in distinctive typographic dress so that the function of each section would be obvious and so that it would be clear which passages were to be memorized. On a typical page, De Spauter and his printers arranged several components: a rule; one or more examples of the Latin usage; parallel words or phrases in the vernacular to aid in immediate comprehension; and a rhymed couplet or two that repeated the rule and examples in memorizable doggerel. We have already seen the kernel of such a system in the classroom poems of Antonio Mancinelli who, like De Spauter, was adapting the pedagogical method of Alexander of Villa Dei's Doctrinale to better and more classical models. But De Spauter extended the practice from small groups of rules and limited, elementary vocabulary to the entirety of Latin grammar, and De Spauter's pedagogy got clear typographical expression. Rules, examples, and doggerel march like soldiers across the \"Despauterian\" page. (18)

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The typographic aspects of such a teaching system might be clearer if we examine a typical case, De Spauter's treatment of the use of ablative or accusative for answering place-name questions. A modern prescriptive grammar states this rule thus: \"The Names of Towns and words which follow their analogy are put 1. In the Accusative to denote the Place to Which. 2. In the Ablative to denote the Place from Which.\" This same grammar gives a single example of each usage. (19) De Spauter, by contrast, stated the rule first in verbose prose with numerous examples, and then in more concise verse. The first part of the prose, covering only half the rule, reads: \"Proper nouns for towns or places (or with two substantives like country and house), if there shall be an implied question 'from where' or 'by which route,' are put in adverbial position using an ablative without a preposition, thus: 'Whence come you? I come from Rome / from the Tiber / from Paris / from Lyon / from the country house.' See also your Terence where [several passages are cited]…\"

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The key to the Despauterian teaching system, however, was mnemonic and typographic. This prolix rule was first presented in paragraph form with type and formatting that indicate its role as an explanation to be read and discussed. It was also encapsulated in a thumping verse and re-presented in larger and bolder type, which indicated that it would be drilled and memorized. The verse in this case, belabored by generations of students, went something like this: \"Whenever you want to ask 'whence' or 'from where,' / Then you must put the sixth case there. / For 'to where\" or 'whither,' instead, / get the fourth case into your head. / Thus in place names, for ins and for outs, / or when you join two nouns like 'country' and 'house.'\" (20) A verse like this may have been easy to memorize by sheer rote, but even a student who could parrot it accurately might well not remember what it meant in practice. So the longer prose explanation with examples was essential both in classroom practice and on the page. (21)

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This much of Despauter's text was given to students and worked through in class. Many editions also include additional, closely set paragraphs of citations from classical literature, the \"authorities\" beloved of humanist scholars. These notes were intended for the teachers only, and there is some question with early editions of De Spauter whether they were truly student editions or teacher's manuals. One unambiguous case is constituted by the parallel editions issued by Robert Estienne starting in 1537. A grand folio was offered for teachers and modest quartos for students. (22)

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Schoolboys hated De Spauter's system for it gave them endless lines of bad verse to memorize. But teachers loved it, perhaps just because it absolved them from any more original or personalized teaching method. It reduced the vast forest of Latin grammar, difficult to traverse much less analyze and explain, to a large but limited number of thorny thickets, each with a set of drills. Teachers, of course, too often merely drilled; and the students were stuck with the uncongenial task of memorizing. No analysis needed, no explanations offered. Success for the student depended on a good memory, patience, and a strong will to please. The process of weeding out students who could not master the subject on these terms was relatively mechanical. (23)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Jan de Spauter was a Flemish humanist almost universally known during his lifetime (and in posthumous reputation) under the Latinized surname Despauterius. He studied at Louvain during the years Erasmus was there, and he was both a personal friend of…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/405","title":"4.05 De Spauter and the Reform of Pedagogy","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Many editions of De Spauter published after his death were not straightforward presentations of his texts but revisions, sometimes very thoroughgoing, and often, it seems, more mindful of advertising logic than pedagogical reform. The degree to which De Spauter's name could become an advertising hook is clear, for example, from a garrulous Lyon title page of 1536 that advertised De Spauter with revisions by Josse Bade Ascensius (both dead by this date), and much, much more:

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\n

The Versifying Art of John De Spauter of Ninove, diligently reconsidered, with many additions and whatever seemed less desirable excised.
\n~ Were it your wish to see certain things more thoroughly demonstrated or taken up in greater detail, this Despauterius will satisfy even what was little anticipated with his Annotations.
\n~ Next to the annotations that were most recently added to the work of Jan de Spauter you will find this mark: *.
\n~ The Isagoge of Ascensius is prefaced, enlarged and edited. There is added De Spauter's attack upon his adversary.
\n~ In addition there is an alphabetical index showing with folio numbers where each word is to be found. (24)

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A comprehensive teacher's manual -- De Spauter's original occupied about 150 pages in quarto -- could easily support all this apparatus. Here there are fully twenty eight closely set pages of prefatory matter and fourteen of appendixes, along with annotations that almost double the length of the original work.

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This publisher's punctiliously labeled title page is almost bizarre, but it is not entirely untypical of the practices of the period. Authorship became mere advertising when a publisher claimed to present so many things: original work of De Spauter; Josse Bade Ascensius as digest-maker, annotator, and editor; De Spauter as commentator both on Bade and on himself; and De Spauter yet again as critic of his own detractors. Some earlier editions are explicitly denigrated although they too came from De Spauter's pen. The publisher presented the public with an author who revisited his work on several occasions and who worked in constant dialogue with scholarly friend and foe alike. It may be that the dynamic pedagogy claimed on this visually lively title page was meant to distract from the fact that none of the protagonists was still alive. All that was new and improved here, with the possible exception of the index, was actually over fifteen years old by the time this book came off the press. The market offered many similar editions, so each title page had to compete for the attention of the choosy book buyer.

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Such marketing strategies were not necessarily imposed on an unwilling or unknowing De Spauter. Much of the rewriting described on this 1536 title page had been undertaken by him for earlier new editions. In a 1514 preface from his own pen, he was explicit about the marketing intentions of his revisions. Of the sample sentences in his most elementary textbook, he wrote, \"I have nowhere added vernacular equivalents, leaving this task to the teachers, for I wrote this little work not for our countrymen only, but rather for the French, Spanish, English and others.\" (25)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Many editions of De Spauter published after his death were not straightforward presentations of his texts but revisions, sometimes very thoroughgoing, and often, it seems, more mindful of advertising logic than pedagogical reform. The degree to which…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/406","title":"4.06 Re-Formatting the Reformer","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

De Spauter's assessment of his market was accurate. He omitted Italy. Despite his internationalism, De Spauter's works were almost never used in Italy during his lifetime, and even later they were used mostly in editions prepared by Jean Pellisson or Josse Bade, to whom we now turn. Bade was born at Asse or Asche in Brabant, whence his self-applied surname, Ascensius. He studied first at Gand and Louvain and then for a number of years in Italy, but it was in France that he earned his reputation, first as a schoolmaster and then as publisher. Marriage was part of his career strategy. While teaching at Lyon in the 1480's he wed the daughter of printer Jean Trechsel, in whose shop he had been a proofreader. Bade's two sons eventually became colleagues in the Paris printing house he founded after the death of his father-in-law. Four of his six daughters married Paris printers, all of whom collaborated at one time or another with Bade. So Bade was transformed from pedagogue to publisher by marriage, and his ongoing business strategy likewise depended on family ties. (26)

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Bade's output as a publisher has been studied by Maurice Lebel, who notes that despite his close association with Erasmian circles, Bade chose to print little in Greek, and by Mark Crane, who remarks the strong presence of late scholastic texts in Bade's catalogue. As publisher, Bade concentrated on useful editions of Latin classics, on new Latin translations of Greek texts, on school books, on moral theology, and on liturgical and devotional works. His editions came to have a reputation for the correctness of their texts. (27) This mix of products was closely tailored to the Paris market. The taste for classics was large and growing in the university community there. It was especially marked among the many scholars of law and theology who felt the need to add a classical veneer to their academic pretensions. Scholars of this sort wanted to read a wide variety of classical authors; but good knowledge of Greek was still a rare achievement. Latin learning, by contrast, had been sufficiently reformed on humanist models that even this second-hand scholarly public insisted on good, classicizing translations and a generally high quality of textual editing. They were looking for Latin classics with extensive annotation by humanist scholars, and free of disfiguring medievalisms. There was also a growing market for Greek authors that extended well beyond the traditional interest in Aristotle and other philosophical texts. Parisians wanted to read the Greek historians and orators in good humanist Latin too. (28)

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Bade's participation in the liturgical/devotional market was typical of another sector of Paris printing of the day, aimed at the growing population of literate lay folk outside the university. That Bade would stress good texts in such a market no doubt reflected his humanist training. He may also have felt that it would give him an edge in this highly competitive field where the principal marketing strategy of many Paris printers was to ornament their editions with fancy borders and illustrations. In any case prayer books were a diversifying factor in Bade's output.

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As for school books, these represent Bade's greatest achievement, since it was in this field that he did his most innovative and experimental work. (29) We know a great deal about his marketing of these books because he provided so many of them with prefaces. Lebel counts forty five prefaces addressed directly to students, professors or booksellers; and, although he rarely spoke of printing or design, Bade frequently discussed the content and use of a given book, its intended audience or effect, and the scholarly controversies that raged in the field of literary education. (30) It is clear, moreover, that Bade devised an international strategy. He deliberately brought to the French market as many elementary and intermediate school texts as he could find in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. His long residence in Italy, where he had met scholar-teachers like Aldo Manuzio, Agnolo Poliziano, and Battista Spagnuoli Mantuanus, no doubt helped him acquire new texts for his press as well as the good will of their authors. (31)

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It is interesting to note how frequently Bade reprinted certain texts and in what varying guises. We have seen in an earlier chapter (section 2.15) that he first published his own commentary on the Distichs of Cato as part of a larger reference work on morals, then allowed it to be published as a separate by others, and only toward the end of his life reprinted it on his own presses. Bade's notes on Terence, intended from the first to supplement those of other commentators already in print, were similarly published by others -- no fewer than forty times within his lifetime -- but never from his own presses. (32) His editions of the medieval verse grammar of Alexander of Villa Dei represent a continuous process of improving and updating this still-standard work and adapting it to humanist norms of style. (33)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"De Spauter's assessment of his market was accurate. He omitted Italy. Despite his internationalism, De Spauter's works were almost never used in Italy during his lifetime, and even later they were used mostly in editions prepared by Jean Pellisson or…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/407","title":"4.07 Josse Bade, Editor and Printer","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In the case of the Italian humanists he admired, Bade became their champion north of the Alps as editor, printer, and publisher. This was true for great authors and minor ones alike. His editions of minor humanist authors like Giovanni Sulpizio or Antonio Mancinelli, for example, granted an additional twenty or thirty years to the published works whose vogue had nearly passed in Italy. He first commented on the little grammar book of Sulpizio for a Paris edition commissioned by Jean Petit in 1502. In the very next year, when his own press was up and running, he printed the text himself for Petit; and after 1506 he printed and published the work three times under his own imprint. Meanwhile other Paris, Caen, and London printers issued his text of Sulpizio on eight other occasions before 1530. (34) In the case of Mancinelli, Bade edited four separate works, publishing each himself first and then allowing many reprints by others while reprinting only once himself. (35) By 1518, his version of Mancinelli's works had become the standard text at Venice and Milan as well as in France, supplanting the versions edited by Mancinelli personally. Mancinelli's Opera omnia as known in later centuries contains Bade's text. Bade similarly promoted classroom works by Filippo Beroaldo the elder, Battista Spagnuoli Mantuanus, Lorenzo Valla, and Niccolo Perotti. (36)

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Without a doubt, however, Bade's greatest acts of boosterism were in promoting the works of Jan de Spauter. Between 1512 and 1521 (the final and most productive years of De Spauter's life) Bade printed five editions of De Spauter's Grammatica, seven of his Art of Letter Writing (Ars Epistolica), four of his Art of Verse (Ars versificatoria), three of his Syntaxis, two of the Basic Introduction (Rudimenta), and one of On Figures of Speech (De Figuris). (37) Later in the 1520's, there were additional Bade editions of every one of these works, as well as reprints of Bade's versions by other French, Flemish, and Italian printers. By the time of Bade's death in 1535, the \"Despauterius,\" a grammar that included a brief epitome and the full Grammatica of De Spauter (with or without annotation or additional short works), was virtually unchallenged as a basic Latin textbook in northern France and the Low Countries. It would remain in use in France (and her colonies abroad) into the seventeenth century, often in radically modified form. (38)

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Unlike his treatment of many other school authors, however, Bade did not usually preface De Spauter's work with a commendation from his own pen, nor did he add notes to De Spauter's already fulsome texts. Rather, he presented De Spauter's prefaces and texts pretty much as the author wrote them. Exception was made only for the Ars versificatoria and the Syntaxis, which have brief prefaces by Bade. In the first case, it was the frankly controversial nature of the book that prompted an apology by Bade; humanists were always ready to argue about prosody and De Spauter took on every previous writer on the subject by name. The Syntaxis, by contrast, is presented with a show-off piece by Bade, a ceremonial letter in praise of De Spauter addressed to the \"Senate and People of Bergues,\" a town in French Flanders for whose gymnasium the textbook had been printed.

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The preface to the Ars versificatoria is particularly interesting because Bade explicitly compared De Spauter's learning and method with that of Lorenzo Valla, Aldo Manuzio, and other Italian grammarians whose prestige was at high water mark in the first decades of the sixteenth century. Bade had great respect for Italian scholarship, but only insofar as he agreed with its results. He declined to accept the authority of Italian authors if they seemed to have made errors of interpretation, and he frequently followed medieval sources in place of modern ones. (39) He also took exception to the climate of attack and counter-attack that surrounded much philological scholarship and that De Spauter indulged in this work.

\n

Bade's preface is worth examining closely, since it can be read as a manifesto against the kind of ad hominem argument that bedeviled so much publishing in the age of Erasmus. As always, the prose is carefully crafted. First Bade sets the scene for his own unusual intervention:

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\n

Here you have, learned reader, the versifying or stichological work of Jan de Spauter of Ninove together with his apology or recrimination against an adversary, which I have printed unwillingly, compelled to do so by the most just of reasons. For when he, contrary to the fathers' decree and Christian prescription, had already seen to the printing of two virtually defamatory pamphlets, it seemed disgraceful not to respond to those works, especially since he [De Spauter] could and indeed should have done so. (40)

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\n

Bade is exaggerating De Spauter's forbearance here. In fact De Spauter was always ready to argue. Next Bade folded this imagined, mildly reasoning voice of De Spauter into his own, commending especially De Spauter's scholarly method and thoroughness:

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\n

For, since grammarians argue about many matters of interpretation, and the case is still being adjudicated, it is unfair to attribute fault to a man who follows good authorities rather than all authorities, especially when he follows better and certainly more ancient ones. For who in his right mind would not prefer Virgil or Lucan to Aldo concerning [the Latin name for] Ischia? And who, for that matter, would not prefer Servius and a whole Greek tradition of wise men to Annius of Viterbo on the matter of Monaco? (41)

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\n

Bade then went on to praise De Spauter for his restraint in waiting to answer his critics until he could do so methodically and in the service of good letters and morals rather than, as so many do, for the sake of obtaining fame. He ended his conciliatory preface with an exhortation to Christian charity, a commonplace of humanist disputational prose. All these remarks worked to the same end, to blunt the inflammatory rhetoric of De Spauter; but interestingly, they did not spare Italians who might have erred. (42)

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Josse Bade's editions of De Spauter traveled in the international market, as evidenced in a collected volume of five of De Spauter's classroom works, all printed by Bade at Paris between 1511 and 1515 and now preserved in the library of the American Academy in Rome. This collection contains early notes in two hands, one perhaps French and the other Italian. The French annotator may have been close to the Paris circle of Bade himself because he makes reference to Lucio Giovanni Scoppa, a grammarian and editor who taught exclusively at Naples but whose commentary on Persius was included in one of Bade's editions a few years after the date of the items in this collected volume. The Italian notes are more extensive but they are not substantive; they serve merely to index some topics. Still, they tell us what interested one early Italian reader. Most of them index parts of the Ars versificatoria in which De Spauter criticized earlier authors. The errors of Alexander of Villa Dei are noted, but also those of Petrarch, Valla, and other Italian philological authorities. Most of the notes are matter-of-fact (\"an error of Tortelli and Calepino\"), but some seem a bit scandalized (\"Petrarch got it all mixed up\"). It would seem that Josse Bade had good reason to add a conciliatory preface to a work like this that took so many modern authors to task by name. (43)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In the case of the Italian humanists he admired, Bade became their champion north of the Alps as editor, printer, and publisher. This was true for great authors and minor ones alike. His editions of minor humanist authors like Giovanni Sulpizio or…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/408","title":"4.08 Advertising Grammar Books","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Gradually, De Spauter's Institutiones came to be used in the streamlined form given to them by Pellisson, entitled Union of All Despauterian Grammar (Contextus universae grammatices Despauterianae). This abbreviated version of De Spauter was prepared in 1529, the same year as the revision of Pellisson's Rudimenta. It would seem that Pellisson and his publisher had in mind that they would be marketed together. Certainly, they intended the new package not as a teacher's edition, but one that could be put into the hands of students without fear of confusing them with the excessive detail that characterized earlier versions of the Despauterius. Our sense of their editorial intent is somewhat blurred, however, by rates of survival. Both works have prefatory letters dated 1529, but the first editions to survive are of 1533 (Rudimenta) and 1532 (Contextus). After 1538, the Rudimenta often appeared as the second part of a book with a title page that names only the Contextus.

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Both the Contextus and the Rudimenta were reprinted frequently in France --together and separately-- across the remainder of the sixteenth century. Their fate was different in Italy, where it took several decades before these books gained any currency. There were a few Italian editions up to 1540, by way of proposing this fashionable new work by a Frenchman to the Italian market, but then both works virtually went out of print in Italy for a decade or more. Handsome editions of the fifteen forties and fifties printed at Lyon could have been had in Italy in the meantime. Again in the fifteen fifties there seems to have been unsuccessful attempts at Rome and Genoa to propose Pellisson's grammar books. (48)

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Pellisson's Despauterian method was picked up seriously and successfully in Italy only in the fifteen sixties. The highly productive and competitive presses at Venice made it over into an Italian phenomenon. Indeed, it achieved a certain vogue, for there were no fewer than fifteen Italian printings of the Contextus or the Rudimenta in the fifteen seventies, another nine in the eighties, and at least six more in the nineties. The Contextus and Rudimenta were reprinted at Venice as late as 1620. Alas, the late sixteenth-century Italian editions rarely have any front matter other than Pellisson's own prefaces, so there is no direct evidence as to why they were so popular. As we will see in chapter five, the 1570s saw the rapid expansion of the Jesuit schools, where the first Latin course was dominated by the Grammatica of Manuel Alvares, S.J. It may be that Pellisson's De Spauter was offered as an alternative for school masters who did not want to adopt the new Jesuit grammar. That Pellisson's Despauterian pedagogy could be considered consistent with traditionalizing (anti-Jesuit) grammatical instruction is suggested by the case of a surviving Pellisson Contextus and Rudimenta bound together with a contemporary edition of Guarino, an old standby of the humanist curriculum. (49)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Gradually, De Spauter's Institutiones came to be used in the streamlined form given to them by Pellisson, entitled Union of All Despauterian Grammar (Contextus universae grammatices Despauterianae). This abbreviated version of De Spauter was prepared…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/410","title":"4.10 Marketing a New De Spauter","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Jean Pellisson is the most recognizably modern of the Northerners in our group, and justly the least well known. Ambitious but relatively unoriginal, he was thoroughly given to playing the game of publishing for personal advancement. He was a company man before the fact, something his prefaces and annotations evidence clearly. Pellisson was self-conscious about his own pedagogical practice and advocated strongly for methods he had used with success in the classroom. Always, however, he phrased his remarks in praise of the work to hand, and so his prefaces read like advertisements of a very modern sort. They were product endorsements by a prominent educator who participated intellectually and financially in preparing new editions of textbooks.

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Pellisson called his first grammar book indifferently Progymnasmata (meaning elementary exercises) or Rudimenta (Introduction -- this last appears on all surviving title pages). He was emphasizing that it derived from his own classroom exercises. The book was devised about 1522, he tells us, as a simplification of the drills in De Spauter's collected works, but no copy survives of the early editions he mentions. In an earlier chapter (section 3.02), we saw the 1529 preface to the revised Rudimenta where, by contrast to Antonio Mancinelli's matter-of-fact notion that teaching texts benefit by print, Pellisson complained that once in print, his exercises were reprinted without his knowledge and outside his control, so that classroom informalities and minor errors multiplied wildly. (44) In the same preface of 1529, he expanded on his philosophy of teaching and textbook making. He insisted that no grammar book teaches by itself, and that students learn only under the attentive guidance of a good master. This remark, though it echoes a commonplace as old as humanism itself, seems aimed at those contemporaries who embraced the grammar books of De Spauter uncritically as easy to teach. Pellisson said instead that, although De Spauter's system was a good one, his textbooks only seemed easy because they reduced everything to the memorization of rules. This appealed to lazy teachers but not to good ones.

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In this regard, Pellisson in 1529 was also picking up on an idea that had been articulated by Niccolò Perotti in the fourteen seventies, that the memorization of endless rules was not good pedagogy. For Perotti, memorization was to be reserved for classical texts and vocabulary. (45) Aldo Manuzio, whose authority in Northern Europe was considerable, had sounded a similar theme in his elementary grammar of 1493 and repeated it with emphasis in editions of 1501 and later that had wide currency among professional grammarians, especially in the North:

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I would like you to keep in mind another thing, namely that you do not force the boys to learn anything except from the most learned authors. Indeed, I recommend their not even learning grammatical rules except in the briefest formulae that they can easily memorize, but they should only learn how to decline nouns and verbs so they can read the rules accurately and carefully. For, when we force them to memorize complex things, whether in verse or prose, even about the art [of grammar], then we fall into error in many ways. First of all because the things they learned with enormous toil they will unlearn in a matter of days. (46)

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With the authority of Manuzio and Perotti, it became a humanist commonplace that the multiplication of rules to memorize, especially those in modern Latin doggerel after the fashion of De Spauter, was bad practice on several levels. It did not take into account the abilities and preferences of students and it gave them the worst sort of models to imitate.

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Jean Pellisson, though he considered himself a Despauterian and composed primarily by abbreviating De Spauter's work, could not entirely escape the influence of Manuzio's and Perotti's ideas. Pellisson's solution was a political and marketing move, one that succeeded well. Pellisson proposed a considerably simpler rule book, based on De Spauter's but much abbreviated. It was intended to give structure to the course but left more to the individual teacher's initiative. The teacher was to evaluate the skills and preferences of his students and adjust the content and speed of the course accordingly. This principled stance does not mean that Pellisson dispensed with Despauterian drills.

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Instead, he proposed a three-step overall plan for basic Latin. The first step involved memorizing a few already-familiar prayers in classicizing verse paraphrases. Ostensibly this taught the basics of Christianity, but the practice of paraphrase was also intended to force students to observe the differences between poetry and prose, and between classical and ecclesiastical Latin style. Next, students would work through Pellisson's short-form rules by drilling the inflections. In this stage they also began reading Terence and Cicero, where many finer points of grammar could be observed.. In a third moment they would return to rules for the major concepts of syntax. Pellisson's Rudimenta follows this scheme exactly. (47)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Jean Pellisson is the most recognizably modern of the Northerners in our group, and justly the least well known. Ambitious but relatively unoriginal, he was thoroughly given to playing the game of publishing for personal advancement. He was a company…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/409","title":"4.09 Jean Pellisson, Company Man","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Although Pellisson never made a direct address to his Italian audience, we may attempt a late-century Italian reading of his earlier prefaces. In his brief prefatory letter to the Contextus, addressed to a fellow school teacher, Pellisson proclaimed that De Spauter had invented a highly productive method for teaching. The printed versions of De Spauter's grammars, however, were prolix and difficult for students to digest. Hence the need Pellisson felt for a simpler version. Pellisson was anxious to seem to be De Spauter's devoted follower, even his heir. So he insisted in this preface that if De Spauter had lived longer, he would have undertaken an abbreviation just like this one. This was cunning advertising, and successful too, for Pellisson's Contextus became the standard Despauterian grammar in Italy.

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As a coda to his preface, Pellisson complained of the continuing popularity of the barbarous verse grammar of Alexander of Villa Dei, the Doctrinale. He was repeating De Spauter who had decried Alexander in detail in his own prefaces and also within his grammar books. (50) For Pellisson, this commonplace lament served primarily to consolidate the reputation of De Spauter as the greatest modern grammar master. Contemporary teachers sometimes denigrated De Spauter, he wrote, but only because they were servile followers of Alexander. In this preface, Pellisson was working hard both to attach himself to De Spauter's reputation and also to belittle the opinions of enemies the Flemish master had made. He did not for a minute adopt the conciliatory tone of Josse Bade, nor did he accept Bade's notion that the Doctrinale could still be useful. The popularity of the Contextus in Italy after 1560 may have something to do with the fact that by then the controversies over De Spauter's negative opinions of other grammarians had died down. Mancinelli in 1500, as we noted in sections 3.10 and 3.11), was attacked as insufficiently devoted to the memory of Valla. But by 1560 neither Pellisson nor De Spauter were alive to cause further scandal and there were few Italian scholars or school masters who felt it was necessary to defend Valla (or Calepino, or other Italian masters) against all comers. Alexander, too, was largely out of use in Italian schools in this period, but the attack on the Doctrinale was a commonplace that might still resonate as advertising an author's humanist bona fides.

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Patterns of annotation also give us some clues as to the manner in which Pellisson's De Spauter was used in Italian classrooms. As with most textbooks, the most frequent kinds of annotations are indexing marks, aimed either at identifying specific contents for a subsequent use of the text or else at clarifying the typographical cues as to content already present on the printed page. The Italian annotator of a 1541 Lyon edition was typical. He began by clarifying the layout, marking each \"rule\" and \"exception\" as such in the margin. After forty pages of such notes, however, he changed his strategy and started to make true subject-index notes, either by underlining the index term and putting Nota in the margin or by transcribing the term itself. His indexing is completely systematic for certain parts of the course (nouns and irregular verbs) and thin or absent for others (regular verbs, figures of speech, prosody), indicating that he had different levels of need for indexing. The Rudimenta bound together in this volume is not indexed at all. Perhaps its layout (with clear chapter heads to serve as subject guides) suggested that annotation was unnecessary. Even more likely, the Rudimenta in this copy was never used at all, since it is not only unmarked but generally fresh and little thumbed. (51) This copy of the Contextus, at least, was well and thoroughly used by a serious student or teacher of elementary grammar who largely ignored the shorter grammar of Pellisson.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Although Pellisson never made a direct address to his Italian audience, we may attempt a late-century Italian reading of his earlier prefaces. In his brief prefatory letter to the Contextus, addressed to a fellow school teacher, Pellisson proclaimed…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/411","title":"4.11 Late-Century Readings","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Pellisson's Contextus succeeded on its own merits. Pellisson really did package a better De Spauter, more compact and easier for teachers and students to use. Pellisson omitted a few of De Spauter's verses and rearranged others, but he achieved his abbreviation primarily by reducing the explanatory notes by as much as two thirds. Printers in Paris, Lyon, and later Venice forwarded this project by preserving the clarity of De Spauter's typographically accented verses and sometimes improving upon them. In Italy, the couplets De Spauter intended his students to memorize were typically presented in a large roman or italic type and followed by explanatory material in smaller type, often contrasting italic to roman. (52) Alternatively, contrast was achieved by using two similarly sized types, a roman for the verses set off with spaces above and below, and italic in the same size set into tight blocks. (53)

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When presented in the typical Italian quarto or octavo page, these typographical arrangements could be quite pretty, and they were practical. A given rule could be located easily, even when referring to the book casually. When a class worked through the text in order, the students could easily see which parts of the next lesson they would be expected to memorize. These formats did not foresee (and did not allow for) much if any additional annotation, but the Contextus together with the Rudimenta offered a fairly complete set of rules and enough examples to get the student started reading serious literary texts, all in a compact package. As Pellisson made clear in the introduction, he omitted De Spauter's lengthy notes and examples because he expected extensive vocabulary study to be undertaken when Terence and Cicero were read, not as an independent drill.

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The late sixteenth-century package in which Italian schoolboys would most likely have met our Northern grammarians was a small octavo volume simply bound in paper or parchment. The book they owned either combined the Contextus of De Spauter/Pellisson and the Rudimenta of Pellisson behind one title page, or else it presented the two works as matching booklets bound together but with separate title pages and page numbering. A particularly handsome example of this second form is the graceful pair of octavos printed by Antonio Bellone at Genoa in 1563 and 1566. (54) Both booklets are presented as the work of Pellisson. The title page of the Contextus referred to De Spauter merely as the inspiration for this kind of grammar (\"Despauterian\") and the preface, as we have already noted, provided a back story of sorts, in which De Spauter did not finish the work of writing the perfect textbook. (55) The two title pages might induce the student to see them as separate texts to master, but they occur together in one volume so regularly in modern collections that it seems likely that they were often if not almost always presented to students as a pair. Bellone followed a house style for these books, one that gave schoolbooks a decorous, humanist look. He arranged the text using types in two sizes and a relatively spacious layout, with the result that the Contextus runs to 268 pages and the Rudimenta to 164. Bound together the volume was substantial but not weighty, handsome but not pretentious. (56)

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When more tightly packaged behind a single title page, the student would purchase the two works together and consider them as one textbook. In these cases, the shorter and in some ways more basic Rudimenta always followed the Contextus. (This was the usual order in composite volumes with two title pages too.) Unless the instructor made a point of it, the student might even overlook the fact that there were two works in his textbook. The order was no doubt dictated by the way in which the package was used. The Despauterian method emphasized the memorization of verse rules and the Contextus proceeded in this fashion. Some masters may have wanted to use only the Despauterian method and so for them the Rudimenta was a mere add-on, useful for reference but not drilled. Pellisson probably understood the exercises in the Rudimenta in this way too; its rules in prose could be dipped into as needed when drilling the canonical Despauterian doggerel.

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Small book, space at a premium (click to enlarge - 981 KB jpeg image)
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A typical combined edition is that printed by Francesco Lorenzini at Venice in 1562. It is an altogether homelier and less spacious production than the Bellone editions. The types are tiny, the layout ungenerous, and the volume is foliated continuously through both works. The design is notable for its economy, not for its beauty. De Spauter's verses are set off on separate lines, centered on the page and presented in a small italic type. The indentations around them provide the only white space on the page except the narrow margins, for the remaining explanatory notes are set very tightly in a roman of the same size as the italic. At least one student reader marked his copy to make the verses he was required to memorize even easier to find on the crowded page; he framed some of the verse rules in ink but marked none of the prose passages. Clearly, his interest was not in the fine points; he merely wanted to get through the course. (57)

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No separate title page (click to enlarge - 769 KB jpeg image)
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Lorenzini's printing of the Contextus was so tightly set that it runs to a mere 207 pages, ending at the bottom of a recto page with a simple Finis. The Rudimenta are introduced with a modest caption title at the top the next, verso page. Pellisson's preface to the Rudimenta is presented in full; and if the teacher made the students work through it they would have understood the point that this is a separate work. In fact prefatory letters were often read in class as examples of good prose, so it is not out of the question that the students were introduced to the personality and pedagogical principles of Pellisson this way. Lorenzini gave relatively generous space to the paraphrases of prayers that constituted Pellisson's first stage of learning.

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A great variety of packages were devised for Pellisson's Despauterian textbooks. In addition to the combined and separate editions that appeared at Venice from the 1560s onward, there was a distinct tradition of printing Pellisson in Piedmont -- at Ivrea, Turin, and Mondovì -- and at Genoa. These editions seem to have taken their starting point, not from Paris or Venice originals but from the editions that had come off the presses of Lyon in the fifteen thirties and forties. Piedmont was always more susceptible to direct influence from France than other Italian regions. It was a natural and nearby market for Lyon printers.

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A revision of the Despauterian grammar by the German humanist Sebastian Novimola (1500?-1579) was proposed in 1553 by the Venetian printing firm \"At the Sign of Hope.\" Novimola claimed to have corrected De Spauter's work using the author's own notes, to have revised the examples to make them more enjoyable and more conducive to good morals, and to have clarified the prose explanations of the verse rules. The Venetian printer took these pedagogical claims to heart and provided the text with a particularly clear if unlovely typographical dress. This publisher not infrequently imported texts from the suspiciously Protestant north, and this version of De Spauter included several references to Erasmus which at least one Jesuit censor carefully blotted out. (58)

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Still another version of the Contextus with Rudimenta specialized for the Italian market appeared at Venice in 1568 from the press of Giorgio Cavalli. It is characterized on the title page as \"now also enlarged and explained in many places in the Italian language.\" This practice reverted to that of De Spauter's early publishers, who had provided vernacular equivalents (in Dutch or French) in some of his original textbooks. Most Italian editions preserved Pellisson's intermediate work, which had deliberately dispensed with vernacular aids to consultation. The Sessa and Guerra firms at Venice picked up Cavalli's version and reprinted it several times in the 1570s and 1580s. The Sessa title page characterized it, perhaps a little more defensively than Cavalli and Guerra, as a Contextus of Pellisson, \"which we have explained in the Italian vernacular wherever it seemed necessary.\"

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Pellisson's Contextus succeeded on its own merits. Pellisson really did package a better De Spauter, more compact and easier for teachers and students to use. Pellisson omitted a few of De Spauter's verses and rearranged others, but he achieved his…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/412","title":"4.12 Textbook Packages","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

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Teacher & students in dialogue (click to enlarge - 725 KB jpeg image)
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Textbooks, obviously, are always packages -- packages for didactic texts. Pellisson and his publishers, however, went further and tried to package the classroom experience itself. For example, some but not all editions of the Rudimenta contain an appendix on syntax that demonstrates a question and answer fashion of parsing literary texts. This appendix is a bit of an oddment in that it both offered an exercise in sample prose and also made larger claims. It is presented as a specimen classroom dialogue, showing what Pellisson imagined a good teacher would do in class when approaching a literary text. The speakers, a grammar master and a student, are reading the first of Cicero's Epistolae familiares together. The student is asked to read aloud, and we immediately discover that he has some experience in this parsing exercise because he stops at the end of a rhetorical period and says he is doing so. With prompting, he is made to define the meaning of \"period\" and provide an etymology for it. When he cites Quintilian and then divides the period into its parts, it becomes clear that this is no real student, but someone who has already mastered the rules which are the subject of the dialogue. The remainder of the exposition is detailed and systematic, so no one would mistake it for a real conversation, no matter how stilted. The fact that the typesetter of Lorenzini’s 1562 edition missed some of the dialogue cues and assigned some of the student’s words to the teacher and vice versa hardly matters. It is merely a rule book in another form.

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Amidst all the definitions, however, Pellisson's teacher and student did manage to detail a procedure for reading literary texts. The text, in this case Cicero, is to be broken into periods and these are taken apart one by one. The student is to rearrange each period from classical word order into \"scholastic\" order, that is, according to the order of modern languages. This new order is understood very mechanically: vocative if any, nominative, verb with pertinent adverbs, and then any words governed by the verb. If there are words left over, the student must find a place for them within this rigid formula. To do this he runs through a memorized list of possibilities -- appositives, prepositional phrases, and subordinate clauses of various sorts. When every one of Cicero's words is accounted for, he goes on to the next period. Like diagramming sentences in a modern classroom, this method of analysis was repeated through many texts until it became second nature to the student. Thereafter it could be abandoned as a regular practice, but remained in mind as a fall back for approaching any difficult passage.

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Pellisson, then, was a very modern packager. He prescribed a clear method for using the books he authored or edited, and he provided step-by-step instructions for using other, classical texts in the early stages of teaching grammar. His descriptions of method are fuller and more systematic than those we have seen in other grammar books, and they also conform to the developing norms for advertising textbooks that we have encountered. As neatly packaged as a sixteenth-century textbook could be, Pellisson's Despauterian grammar was both a practical pedagogy and a marketable commodity. In this form -- but really only in this form -- our Northern grammarians had some success in the Italian market. (59)

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NOTE

\n","excerpt":"Textbooks, obviously, are always packages -- packages for didactic texts. Pellisson and his publishers, however, went further and tried to package the classroom experience itself. For example, some but not all editions of the Rudimenta contain an…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/413","title":"4.13 Packaging Pedagogy Too ","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

We have seen repeatedly how packaging can affect the success of textbooks. This fact is particularly clear when a given book has to cross an intellectual border and find a market in a foreign pedagogical environment. Even if the subject is identical on both sides of the border, and virtually timeless like Latin grammar, authors and publishers had to work certain cultural translations to make the import work. Geography offers other instances of cultural translation, though they are much more complex than simply moving from Brabant to France to Italy, changing typefaces, or advertising to a different public. Geography started the Renaissance as a literary pursuit, an armchair science, but already in the early sixteenth century it was also a practical discipline, based on data that did not even exist a hundred years earlier. Moreover, this new data was pouring in almost faster than the presses could report -- from Africa, India, and the New World, and from new celestial observatories. Textbooks lagged well behind the knowledge curve, at least in part because the scientists and explorers had to accomplish so many other exchanges and translations before authors could attempt elementary treatments. In this chapter, there is space only for a few examples of textbook or textbook-like treatments. We will discover more limitations than achievements, and even more barriers than Latin grammars faced.

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Literary geography derived from two traditions. First there were ancient and medieval travel narratives that had entertained Europeans for centuries. Secondly, an impressive but relatively recent humanist, philological tradition was devoted to deciphering place names in classical literature and providing geographical information in glosses to the ancient texts. (60) Only in the sixteenth century did anything like a basic geography textbook appear, and then only because writers began to see the subject as a practical discipline with information to absorb and skills to master -- a how-to genre -- rather than a primarily literary form. To the degree that geography remained proto-scientific, moreover, it was often treated in Latin and not in the vernacular. While many travel narratives were written in Italian, most geography textbooks were still composed in Latin up to the end of the sixteenth century. Only the most successful were translated.

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Writing about travel was an important early Renaissance genre. No less a humanist celebrity than Petrarch provided a model with his guidebook to the Holy Land, in Latin, compiled entirely from literary sources for the use of a friend who would travel there. (Petrarch himself never did, and probably never even wanted to.) In content it is fairly traditional, recounting an itinerary in some detail but without reference to broader geographical context. Other writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth century also offered itineraries. Those in the vernacular were usually versified. It was, if not a distinct literary genre, a fairly common and popular form offered to a variety of armchair travelers in the early Renaissance. (61)

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Dati describes the earth in a 15th-century manuscript (click to enlarge - 962 KB jpeg image)
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Somewhat more practical than Petrarch's guide but still highly literary was the Sfera of Gregorio Dati (1362-1436). This 1152-line poem starts with a general introduction to the shape of the cosmos. Later sections treat of the climates and seasons, navigation, and the continents and seas. It was the first vernacular text to offer such lore to a non-Latin audience, and it was widely popular. More than two hundred manuscripts survive and eighteen editions appeared up to 1543. The poetry itself and the contents of the surviving manuscripts suggest that the public for the piece was not humanistically trained. Dati's were readers of the merchant classes, comfortable reading Tuscan but not Latin. (62) To modern eyes, the work reads very much like a textbook. The competent but unpretentious ottava rima verses reinforce this sense, since texts to be memorized by students were regularly versified. Many manuscripts are richly illustrated with diagrams and maps in text, another didactic strategy that relates the Sfera to more scientific texts of the early Renaissance. Although it does not fit any known school curriculum, Dati's Sfera does fall into a category we might call moral-didactic. It is a reminder that how-to books did not limit themselves to actually making or doing things; they also set out to teach people how to live well and virtuously in a geographically defined real world. (63)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"We have seen repeatedly how packaging can affect the success of textbooks. This fact is particularly clear when a given book has to cross an intellectual border and find a market in a foreign pedagogical environment. Even if the subject is identical…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/414","title":"4.14 Geographical Fiction and Fact","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In the final, fourth book of the Sfera, Dati offered something different and indeed entirely new, an illustrated itinerary of the Mediterranean Sea. It appears to be incomplete, covering only the southern and eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Either it was unfinished at Dati's death or Dati considered it sufficient to deal with the major outbound destinations of Italian commercial travelers and pilgrims. The apparent gap was strongly felt by some readers, since it was remedied in part by an unsystematic continuation supplied by a Dominican friar, Giovanni Maria Tolosani (1472-1549). This supplement appeared as a separate in 1514 and was further enlarged for a 1515 edition of Dati. (64)

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Maps in the margin (click to enlarge - 896 KB jpeg image)
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Dati's verse itinerary was intended from the start to be accompanied by detailed maps derived from the portolan charts used by ship's captains. Dati's scribes squeezed the maps into the margins, where they diligently illustrated coastlines and offered tiny city views of major ports. This kind of illustrated poem defies modern logic, both pedagogical and cartographic. Like the cosmological, \"textbook\" portion of the poem, it seems to have been intended as a mnemonic for the use of merchants, diplomats, or other voyagers to Mediterranean destinations. But it surely was not used by the sailors who were in charge of actually getting there. Both the descriptions and the maps are good enough to appeal to a literate traveler (either the real or armchair version) but not precise enough for navigators. (65) Like Petrarch's work, then, Dati's Sfera provided the traveler with a set of expectations that would allow him to make sense of landscapes populated by unfamiliar sights and exotic folk.

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More marginal maps = the mouth of the Nile at right (click to enlarge - 955 KB jpeg image)
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The last part of Dati's Sfera introduced the genre of a sailing itinerary illustrated with maps. Printed editions of Dati's work, in fact, omitted the maps and simplified the diagrams, suggesting that by the end of the fifteenth century the Sfera was no longer considered an instructional poem but merely a literary recreation. Editions of 1503 and 1518 bear a title that emphasizes this aspect of the poem, In this book is contained the power of the planets that govern the world, which book is called The Sphere. Certainly Dati's work was out of date. As geography, it could not bear the weight of its own elaborate illustrations. Later authors of itinerary-based geographies, however, took full advantage of the technical possibilities of printing to include the most up-to-date information in text and in maps. Italians came to call such travel-based geographies isolari or island-books, since the reader/traveler proceeded from port to port with stops at islands or other destinations not joined to Europe or Asia by land passages. This genre, with its somewhat misleading name, would survive into the sixteenth century and beyond. Isolari became ever more factual because their authors were increasingly informed by the European reconnaissance of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. But the form remained that of a guidebook and not a textbook. Thus, across a period of over two hundred years, Cristoforo Buondelmonte (writing about 1420), Benedetto Bordone (1450-1530), Tommaso Porcacchi (ca 1530-1585), and Vincenzo Coronelli (1650-1718) used the idea of an island-collection to organize compilations of geographical knowledge intended for non-professionals. (66)

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Bordone's collection of islandds, 1528 (click to enlarge - 895 KB jpeg image)
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Thus, it was for a general but well-heeled audience that Bordone provided his Book That Treats of All the Islands of the World (1528) with three large maps and one hundred eight smaller ones. He framed them rhetorically by saying that his was a work of topography devoted to the Mediterranean world, adding that topography is part of the larger discipline called Astrology. This science is founded on Arithmetic, Geometry, and Music and its parts are Cosmography, Geography, Chorography, and Topography. Topography for Bordone was a narrative form, following a journey, and as such it was the most literary of the many parts of Astrology. Thus framed, it was possible for Bordone to include all sorts of information, some of it highly miscellaneous, and to update the book as needed. In several later editions, he and his publishers made minor additions to the general factual content, and for the second edition (1534) they even included a bit of exciting geographical news, the conquest of Peru. (67)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In the final, fourth book of the Sfera, Dati offered something different and indeed entirely new, an illustrated itinerary of the Mediterranean Sea. It appears to be incomplete, covering only the southern and eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/415","title":"4.15 Itineraries","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Boccaccio on topography, 1512 edition (click to enlarge - 877 KB jpeg image)
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An alternative, equally literary form of Renaissance geography was the compilation of toponymics. The earliest humanists again provided a model, in this case a miscellany by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), On Mountains, Forests, Springs, Lakes, Rivers, Swamps and Seas, which he assembled from long and close reading of classical texts. The market for such compendia must have been considerable, for Boccaccio's book came into print in the early fourteen seventies and remained available, either as a separate or combined with his Genealogies of the Pagan Gods, throughout the sixteenth century. It got new life when it was translated into Italian about 1520 by Niccolò Liburnio (1474-1557). Although Boccaccio took pains to identify wherever he could the present locations and modern names for the ancient localities, it is clear that both he and his readers were most interested in clarifying not geographical realities but the literary import of the place names they would encounter in their reading. (68)

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Formal opening for Lilio's treatise (click to enlarge - 973 KB jpeg image)
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Another influential work in the toponymic genre was the Orbis breviarium of Zaccharia Lilio (1452-1522), which reduced much of the lore that interested Boccaccio to textbook form. (69) Its title (we may translate it Handbook of the Globe) promised a well ordered and easily memorized digest.

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Brief discussion with diagrams (click to enlarge - 639 KB JPEG image)
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It opens with a brief, discursive discussion of the continents and the climate zones of the entire globe (rather the way Dati had opened his Sfera). But after this front matter the text quickly devolved into a dictionary of classical toponyms. The meaning of the book is stated in the letter of dedication, where Lilio claimed to have collected place names from Greek and Latin writers for the sake of advancing the eloquence of his readers, omitting only names that appear in travel writers whose authority was unclear. In particular, Lilio continued, he knew of many island books that contain newly discovered places not found in ancient writers, and their testimony must be treated with great care.

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A reader adds emphasis (click to enlarge - 852 KB jpeg image)
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One early reader underlined a passage that emphasized the accomplishments of modern (philological, not geographical) scholarship, \"In these cases authority belongs to those [writers] whom we have followed. For what can we moderns possibly claim as our own, since our ancestors failed to find anything that did not survive intact into our own day?\" (70) This same reader underlined two other phrases: a remark, quoting Pliny the Elder, that not all the peoples of the world were known to the ancients; and another that the ancient names of places are unfamiliar or hard to understand because they have been corrupted by modern usage. The implication is clear. The ideal humanist needed a basic familiarity with geographical concepts and he had to understand the proper meanings of place names. He would perhaps also want to be aware of the new discoveries that were accomplishments of his own age; but he would naturally interest himself most in the classical literary tradition that conduced to eloquence.

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Lilio in Italian, 1551 (click to enlarge - 796 KB jpeg image)
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Lilio published his work in Latin; an Italian translation appeared in 1551. Both versions were reprinted, attesting to the fact that this largely literary approach to geography continued to find an audience. Lilio's book was a genuine textbook, intended for study within the humanist curriculum; but the course in question was one in classical rhetoric, not geography as such. (71)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"An alternative, equally literary form of Renaissance geography was the compilation of toponymics. The earliest humanists again provided a model, in this case a miscellany by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), On Mountains, Forests, Springs, Lakes…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/416","title":"4.16 Toponomy","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Theodore Cachey has pointed to the fact that Italian humanism was in general uncongenial to absorbing and exploiting the New World discoveries of the sixteenth century. Perhaps Italian intellectuals simply found it difficult to share enthusiasm for the imperialist adventures of Portuguese, Spanish, and later explorers while Italy was marked by political disunity. Accustomed to a leading role in high culture, Italians were discomfited by the patent leadership of others. (72) No surprise, then, that for real, practical command of a geographical subject, lucidly explained in something we can recognize as a basic textbook, we must wait for the importation of Northern humanist texts on geography into the Italian market.

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Honter's geography in verse (click to enlarge - 794 KB jpeg image)
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As we will see with other genres of pedagogical literature, the key moment of transition came in the fifteen twenties and thirties. By this time, the New World discoveries were becoming common knowledge and more and more scholars wanted to take them actively into account. At the elementary level, it was no longer enough to conceive the world in purely European and Christian terms. Not incidentally, several of the most important general geographies of the period were penned by schoolmasters who also taught Latin grammar and rhetoric. Their polymathy made them more open than their contemporaries to including new geographical data.

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Joachim Vadianus (1484-1551) at St. Gall in Switzerland and Johannes Honter (1498-1549) at Braşov (Kronstadt) in Transylvania were true polymaths. They taught school, took part in local politics, and edited or composed texts on grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and science. Both men knew the latest books by Italian humanist authors but did not rest content with Italian humanism. Vadianus was also a medical doctor and poet; while Honter closely supervised the cutting of woodblocks for the highly accomplished maps that appeared in is works. Both were educational reformers on the local level and prominent internationally in Protestant Reform circles, feeling as they did that humanism was an appropriate vehicle for the new evangelical ideals. So it is no surprise that their works were only rarely used in Catholic Italy.

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Vadianus' voluminous manual (click to enlarge - 844 KB jpeg image)
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Honter's Cosmographical Basics (Rudimenta cosmographica) was a brief general geography textbook with toponymic lists and a map. First published in prose (1530) and then recast in Latin hexameters (dating from 1541), the Rudimenta saw over a hundred editions. But it was published only twice in Italy, both times discretely buried inside larger works by other authors. Composed for use as a textbook, its only Italian editions were inside enormous encyclopedias. Interestingly, in this same form three editions in Italian were published at Basel and Cologne, presumably for Italians resident in Switzerland and Germany. (73)

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Vadianus' Summary of the Three Parts of the Earth (Epitome trium terrae partium, first published in 1534) was similarly successful, but again, not in Italy. Vadianus developed this comprehensive geographical manual (most editions run to five hundred pages or more) by building on earlier scholarly and evangelical publications, respectively a commentary on Pomponius Mela and a study of the missionary voyages of St. Paul. Vadianus presented the Epitome as a logical outgrowth of Scripture study. He offered his readers no less eminent a mentor than St. Paul, whose missionary travels were a commonplace model for modern evangelicals. Vadianus claimed that Paul's letters are best understood by those who study geography so as to know about the peoples and physical features of foreign lands. Geography and the missionary impulse were thus inextricably linked in Vadianus' influential work. (74)

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Both Honter and Vadianus employed printers who knew how to make books in the latest humanist styles. Indeed, most editions of Honter's little geography would have been at home, graphically at least, in any Italian bookshop of the fifteen forties that catered to Latin-school students. The first edition of the Rudimenta in verse, printed at Braşov / Kronstadt under Honter's direct supervision, is an octavo with the poetic text set in italics, in the style of the popular Aldines of the period. The paper and presswork are first quality. The title page is adorned with a simple architectural border, not an Aldine look but still consistent with many books printed at Venice for the Hungarian and Balkan market. Later editions by Christoph Froschauer in Zurich are even more Venetian in look. They have clearly organized, typographic title pages with a handsome emblematic printer's mark.

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Vadianus in the types of Frischauer, 1534 (click to enlarge - 820 KB jpeg image)
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Vadianus's printers also dressed his work in Venetian style. The Epitome was much longer than the Rudimenta, and it usually came off the presses as a chunky octavo. In Basel and Zurich editions (the latter also by Froschauer), its prose text is less spacious on the page than Honter's hexameters, but the types are clear and well used, and the result was a book very much in tradition of Venetian scholarly octavos of the period. So, Northern humanists sought and got Italianate packages for many of their works, even when the books would never find wide currency in Italy. (75)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Theodore Cachey has pointed to the fact that Italian humanism was in general uncongenial to absorbing and exploiting the New World discoveries of the sixteenth century. Perhaps Italian intellectuals simply found it difficult to share enthusiasm for…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/417","title":"4.17 Imported Geographies, Italian Packages","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Other Northern geographies had mixed success in Italy. Repackaging with a Venetian imprint, it seems, was the best way to sell them. The single most influential geography manual of the sixteenth century was the Cosmographicus liber of the German humanist, mathematician, cartographer, and printer Peter Apian (1495-1552). First published in 1524, his Cosmographer's Book (Cosmographicus liber) covered basic terrestrial geography, cartographic principles, and simple astronomy, and was supplied with numerous maps and diagrams. It is prized by modern collectors for its volvelles -- movable diagrams that illustrate the heavens. Early readers appreciated such devices too, since they were carefully reproduced in dozens of editions. Italians knew and studied the Cosmographicus liber but it was never printed in Italy, suggesting that its audience in the peninsula was largely expert. The larger Italian public was looking for something else.

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Apian simplified (1533) for students (click to enlarge - 837 KB jpeg image)
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Apian himself prepared and printed an abbreviated version in 1529 under the title Introduction to Cosmography (Cosmographiae introductio). A true textbook intended for Latin-school students, it had fewer and simpler diagrams than the larger Liber.

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Apian reformatted for the Venice market, 1535 (click to enlarge - 685 KB jpeg image)
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As a result, it was much easier to reprint, and it got at least six Venetian editions. (76) There is little direct evidence for the way it was used in Italy, but the format and scope of this short work seem to conform to an Italian sense of how much geographical knowledge a humanist-educated layman would need. Clear, up-to-date concepts and a store of basic facts would allow a bureaucrat or gentleman to use geography in everyday cultured discourse. He could turn to experts when he needed deeper and more technical skills -- to navigate a ship, to predict a sunrise or an eclipse, to draw a map, or to cast a horoscope.

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Geography for Latin schools (click to enlarge - 707 KB JPEG image)
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A very similar publishing history characterized another influential geography textbook, the De geographia of Heinrich Glareanus (1488-1563), a Swiss humanist and university professor at Freiburg. Like the same author's basic music textbook (treated in a section 5.18), this seventy-page geography was designed for students in humanist schools. It covered terrestrial geography only and stuck very much to the basics because, as the author remarked in his preface, geography is one of the liberal arts, useful above all in the deliberations of citizens and as an ornament to public life. Despite this seemingly modest aim, Glareanus did not want his students to be mere dilettantes. His text was very much up-to-date with the state of geographical knowledge and technique. He included basic information about the newly explored lands of the Western Hemisphere; and he offered a clear and accurate description of mapmaking techniques. Glareanus advertised his work as briefer and more elementary than the important ancient sources for geography (he names Ptolemy, Strabo, and Proclus) and more accurate than other modern treatments. He claimed to have added information culled from other classical sources, among whom he named Pliny, Pomponius Mela, Macrobius, and Horace, a list that reminds us that humanist geography remained a literary pursuit even as it became more scientific. (77)

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Elegant placement of figures (click to enlarge - 631 KB JPEG image)
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Glareanus's De geographia was published at Basel in 1527 and again in 1528 in a very sober and dignified typographic dress. The printer was Johannes Faber. His spacious quartos easily embraced both in-text diagrams and marginal ones. Later editions at Frankfurt and Paris retained this original format.

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Glareanus (1538) in crowded octavo (click to enlarge - 820 KB jpeg image)
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By the end of the fifteen thirties, however, Venetian presses were repackaging the work in more Italianate style. The Venice editions (the first dates from 1538) are all octavos. The narrow margins and reduced-size diagrams yielded books more crowded in feel and generally less elegant than the Northern editions.

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Glareanus packaged for Italian hands (click to enlarge - 843 KB jpeg image)
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On the other hand they are true pocket books, running to a mere seventy-eight pages and no more than sixteen centimeters in height. As in the case of Apian, the Venetian printers seem to have had a precise notion how to package geographical information for the Italian public. Their formula included the Italianate octavo, by 1530 a ubiquitous form in Italy both for poetry and for short treatments of serious subjects. (78)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Other Northern geographies had mixed success in Italy. Repackaging with a Venetian imprint, it seems, was the best way to sell them. The single most influential geography manual of the sixteenth century was the Cosmographicus liber of the German…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/418","title":"4.18 Geography in Italian Classrooms","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Geography as a school subject remained largely in the Latin realm, at least in the first instance. Once textbooks in Latin had proven their utility in the classroom, they were sometimes translated, digested, or popularized for broader, non-Latin-reading audiences. Obviously, it was easier to accomplish such work of popularization when the starting point was an elementary textbook than when the source was an academic treatise. The new vernacular products were market-ready and, in a sense, market-tested, because they had already proved useful for beginning students. At the point of translation, however, such popular-level books also begin to seem (to us certainly, and perhaps also to their intended audiences) more like how-to books than textbooks. They were no longer part of a Latin-school curriculum, and they served useful and recreational purposes almost equally.

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In her influential Le latin ou l'empire d'un signe (1998), Françoise Waquet explained how the Latin language created an international cultural empire that predated the nation state and continued to exist as a Europe-wide ideal into the twentieth century. Our study of Latin grammars and elementary geography books suggests that the Empire of Latin also determined the way book markets functioned in the early modern period. Europeans invented printing at a crucial time, near the high-water mark of the humanist Latin program. Among philosophers and other scholars there was still hope for a unitary Europe, culturally if not politically. The market for high culture was as cosmopolitan and international as it would ever be, with all kinds of luxury goods and art (books and prints included) traded freely and frequently from the Balkans to the Baltic and the Irish Sea. Printers, like musicians and authors, were peripatetic. They followed the market for their services, whether the consumer was an individual patron, a church body, or the population of an entire city.

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The long sixteenth century, however, saw the rise of national monarchies and, not far behind, new national literatures and increased literacy in the vernaculars. Books, suddenly mass produced and plentiful, could not help but follow. Printers at first devoted by far the largest and most prestigious part of their work to books for international, learned audiences, and therefore in Latin. But printers also quickly discovered the value of local markets, even micro-markets like the students of a single school. We have seen how this localism functioned to limit the wide marketing even of Latin grammars. Local markets continued to exist for local Latin schools.

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In other fields, like geography, localisms also required the phenomenon we have called cultural translation, or, to use a different metaphor, the importation of ideas and information from the relatively borderless realm of Latin into other, smaller kingdoms. The change of language required other changes -- of format, type, or advertising pitch -- that were determined by the habits and preferences of readers on the local level. These changes were the effective minimum a book needed to cross the borders between one Latin market to another or to move from the Latin markets to vernacular ones. Sometimes, changes of genre followed. Versified geographies offer a particularly good example, one that bears more study. For, although the genre was popular, it is fairly clear that the authors envisioned several different audiences. Each work must be evaluated as to its intended readers; and, as in other genres we will explore in chapter six, the actual readers were sometimes not those envisioned by the author.

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Like political and language borders, moreover, the borders between book markets also had barriers. Import fees were a frequent source of complaint by booksellers. Religious differences and the consequent facts of censorship were equally problematic. In chapters five, six, and seven we will see that the authors of textbooks also exercised a considerable amount of self-censorship when they moved ideas from the homeland of Latin out to farther-flung, vernacular provinces.

","excerpt":"Geography as a school subject remained largely in the Latin realm, at least in the first instance. Once textbooks in Latin had proven their utility in the classroom, they were sometimes translated, digested, or popularized for broader, non-Latin…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/419","title":"4.19 Imports from the Empire of Latin","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

This chapter offers another case study, of the Latin grammar of Manuel Alvares, S.J. (1526-1583). This book appeared in both student and teacher's editions. Commissioned by the Jesuit order, it became the best selling Latin textbook of the early modern age, remaining in print into the late nineteenth century.

","excerpt":"This chapter offers another case study, of the Latin grammar of Manuel Alvares, S.J. (1526-1583). This book appeared in both student and teacher's editions. Commissioned by the Jesuit order, it became the best selling Latin textbook of the early…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/500","title":"5.00 CHAPTER FIVE: Universal and Instrumental: the Jesuit Grammar of Manuel Alvares","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Early in the humanist movement, proponents of the new, classicizing Latin stylistics posited the need for new textbooks to replace those which had served for centuries to introduce young boys to the bad old Latin of the Middle Ages. Almost every Latin textbook we have examined thus far trumpeted its contribution to this goal, and many were offered up as direct substitutes for specific, older grammar books. Renaissance grammar masters realized as well that the ancient grammars (both introductory and advanced) offered little guidance to the intricacies of Latin syntax. In particular there were no ancient grammars that treated subordinate clauses. Medieval grammars did address syntax extensively, but were hopelessly marred by \"barbaric\" medieval examples and mired in explanations that derived from scholastic categories of analysis. (1) Lorenzo Valla had offered a thorough critique of the results of this kind of education in his Elegantiae, but the many careful distinctions of usage he recorded there were not well adapted for classroom use. Soon an entire genre of textbook derived from the Elegantiae grew up. These epitomes or digests of correct usage offered students thoughtfully defined vocabulary words with concrete examples of idiomatic usage drawn from classical sources. Such usage manuals, however, were mere lists; they did not provide thorough rules. (2)

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Given the lack of systematic guides to syntax, it is no surprise that the largest number of entirely new fifteenth and sixteenth-century grammar books concerned \"construction\" (that is, syntactical relationships). The grammars that achieved the greatest success were those that offered teachers ready answers in this field. Much of the appeal of the excruciatingly detailed grammar of Jan de Spauter, for example, may be attributed to its value to teachers as a guide to explaining the complex syntax of authors they would likely read in class with their students. South of the Alps, writers like Perotti, Mancinelli, and Sulpizio had addressed the same problem, attempting to devise an adequate explanatory vocabulary for syntactical relationships based exclusively on classical examples. Progress was slow and most writers continued to borrow explanatory terms from medieval authors. (3) The systematic grammars attempted in the fifteen twenties and thirties incorporated lessons on syntax derived both from the epitome tradition and from earlier humanist manuals on syntax. As we have seen in earlier chapters, some of these textbooks achieved considerable local success and became entrenched in the schools of particular towns or regions. A few were sold in more than one regional market. (4)

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Before 1570, however, we cannot point to any textbook that was consistently used throughout Italy. The closest contenders were Perotti, used widely in Italy and France, (5) and De Spauter, whose Grammaticae Institutionis libri septem as edited by Josse Bade was used extensively in France and the Low Countries and spottily elsewhere. Versions of it (usually partial) also found ready, local markets in Italy after 1550. Also frequently printed was the introductory grammar of Aldo Manuzio, an important case studied by Kristian Jensen. Interestingly, more editions of Manuzio appeared in France and Germany than in Italy and many of the surviving copies of the Venetian editions show evidence of use in Germany, no doubt because Aldo deliberately marketed this and many other Aldine editions there. Twenty four of the twenty eight known Italian editions of Aldo's grammar were made in Venice and the other four issued from presses in Florence and Rome with close ties to Venetian houses. The obvious conclusion is that Aldo's grammar was s a Venetian export product, probably more widely consulted than taught in Italy. (6)

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Even with perennial favorites like De Spauter and Aldo, then, there is little evidence that systematic marketing of elementary and intermediate textbooks extended beyond a few major urban markets; and only Venice had a major export trade. The best marketing of the period failed to forward broad curricular reform. The limited market success, moreover, reflected teachers' continuing dissatisfaction with the quality of the textbooks available. This situation would change radically with the advent of the Jesuit colleges and later, schools of other religious orders. (7)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Early in the humanist movement, proponents of the new, classicizing Latin stylistics posited the need for new textbooks to replace those which had served for centuries to introduce young boys to the bad old Latin of the Middle Ages. Almost every…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/501","title":"5.01 Syntax Sells, Somewhat","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The Jesuit educational enterprise was international. The Jesuits established residential colleges (372 of them between 1548 and 1615) in almost every major provincial town. Their job was to train laymen of the elites and would-be clerics in Counter-Reformation piety and morals. They stressed the acquisition of Latin as an instrument of the universalizing mission of the Roman church -- in missionary work, in dogmatic and moral theology, and for the advancement of science. To this end, the Jesuits practiced what we today would call total-immersion language study. They forbade the use of vernaculars in class. They prescribed extensive oral drilling, poetic and oratorical competitions, making and reading emblems, and theater productions. They incorporated many achievements of humanist literary scholarship, offering Cicero as the best model for prose style, and Ovid, Horace and Virgil for poetry. Few of the Jesuits' methods were new, but they were highly successful in creating communities of young men from throughout Christendom, all sharing an easy command of spoken Latin and the religious vocabulary of a newly renewed Roman faith. (8)

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The first Jesuit college opened at Messina in Sicily in 1548. The curriculum was based on that of the early sixteenth-century humanist colleges of the University of Paris. This highly regulated Paris plan (modus Parisiensis) was conceived in direct opposition to the mishmash of existing curricula in Italy (what the Jesuits called a modus Italicus). It envisioned a sharp distinction between younger and older students. The younger pupils were to demonstrate complete mastery of classical Latin grammar, Latin composition, and rhetorical principles before they were permitted to go on to higher studies. Thereafter, students left classical studies behind and concentrated on philosophy, theology, modern languages, and other subjects appropriate to the needs of the Counter-Reformation church. For the Jesuits, then, Latin was a powerful instrument, but not the real point of education. This was not at all the traditional Italian humanist education, which had typically emphasized moral and practical instruction in which Latin language and literature were both the means and the end. As Codina Mir has noted, the Jesuits had to confront these traditional, classicizing expectations of Italian parents in every city where they established a new college. (9)

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The Jesuits were uniquely placed to create the teaching instrument humanist grammarians had been demanding for a century and more, that is, a fully systematic grammar entirely based on good classical models of usage. With an ever growing network of residential colleges, they created a demand for well-made textbooks. Even a single teacher's adoption of a given textbook had been able to ensure its local market success in the first age of printing. A prestigious, well-promoted teacher might also influence regional and national markets, as in the cases of Aldo Manuzio, Josse Bade, and Jan de Spauter. The Jesuits created a market on an international scale.

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It is a measure of educational conservatism as a universal impulse that even the Jesuits were slow to take advantage of their market-making powers, chiefly because they could not agree among themselves on the best textbooks. There were regional and national favorites, largely based on the expectations of the urban elites that dominated local markets. The earliest Jesuit-authored grammar was that of Annibal Codret, S.J. (1525-1599), composed in the late fifteen forties but only sporadically available and used mostly in the South of Italy and in France. It would later become popular in New France. (10) When in 1556 a verse grammar appeared, authored by André Des Fruex, S.J. (d. 1556) at the request of St. Ignatius himself, its publishers clearly expected that the whole order would come to adopt it. But they were deluded. It had only one Italian edition. (11) A more concerted effort to influence the teaching of the order was mounted by the Jesuit Collegio Romano in the fifteen sixties. They sponsored an introductory grammar by their own prefect, Diego de Ledesma, S.J. (1519-1575) which appeared simultaneously in Venice and Naples in 1569. Ledesma's supplementary Syntaxis plenior was issued by the same Venice and Naples printers that same year and at Turin the next. Ledesmo's textbooks, however, were never reprinted because they were quickly superseded by another official grammar, that of Manuel Alvares (1526-1583).(12)

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The period from 1550 to 1575, then, was one of intense experimentation with textbooks by the Jesuits. New rhetoric texts were authored and discarded with almost as much frequency as grammars, but the question of an elementary grammar was the most intensely debated one. Outside Italy and in some of the Jesuit colleges in the peninsula, the colleges tended to use the grammar of De Spauter or the Despauterian grammar of Pellisson which had been approved by St. Ignatius. It was briefly adopted even at the Collegio Romano in the early fifteen seventies \"until we shall have another composed by one of us.\" (13) In Spain, a grammar by Antonio de Nebrija (1444-1522) remained the local favorite. In Sardinia in this period, and perhaps also elsewhere, the Jesuits experimented with a grammar by the Spanish humanist Andrés Sempere (1510-1572). The catalogues of the Brera college in Milan and a miscellany from the Jesuit College at Loreto suggest that the teachers in these North Italian schools made use of many different grammar books. At various times at Loreto, for example, they apparently taught Jean Pellisson's Rudimenta in a Lyon edition of 1554, the 1556 Roman edition of André de Freux, a 1570 Venice edition of Guarino Veronese, and the 1572 De Spauter of the Collegio Romano. The Jesuits at Genoa owned copies of locally printed versions of De Spauter's Contextus and Pellisson's Rudimenta. (14)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The Jesuit educational enterprise was international. The Jesuits established residential colleges (372 of them between 1548 and 1615) in almost every major provincial town. Their job was to train laymen of the elites and would-be clerics in Counter…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/502","title":"5.02 The Jesuit Market","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In Portugal meanwhile, Manuel Alvares, S.J. was attempting to pass a quiet career as a schoolmaster. He served as rector of the Jesuit college at Coimbra and as superior of Jesuit houses of study in Lisbon and Evora; but his first love was teaching grammar. In 1564 he was invited to send his classroom materials to Rome to be published, and the invitation was repeated with increasing urgency for some years afterwards. Alvares seems to have been a perfectionist unwilling to part with his text, and he only delivered it gradually across the early fifteen seventies. In the event the published versions were a great success, both on their own merits and also because they were named as the standard grammar for elementary schools in the international Jesuit Order of Studies (Ratio Studiorum) proposed in 1586. Alvares would become the most widely published Latin grammatical author for several centuries, with well over five hundred editions. (15)

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Alvares' teaching method and its presentation in print were rigorously systematic, one of the factors which most recommended it to the Jesuits themselves and to the wider market. Its three books (Libri tres in the formal title of the textbook) followed the standard division of the grammar course in the period: first morphology, then syntax, and finally prosody. Alvares divided each book into small sections and began each section with a concisely stated rule. He then gave a few brief examples and proceeded to clarifications or exceptions in what he labeled \"appendices,\" each with its own set of examples. For each rule these appendices proceed from simple to more complex. The examples included precise citations of classical authors which encouraged the student to think of the rules not as absolute or abstract, but as deriving from classical usage. In Book One on morphology, each of the brief rules is also followed by a few mnemonic verses, a practice held over from \"Despauterian\" pedagogy. In student editions of the grammar, the presentation then went on to the next rule. Parallel teacher's editions included an extensive commentary on each section and each appendix. These explanationes contain further examples, notes on irregularities, more exceptions to the rules, or discussions of the changing usage between Golden Age and later authors. (16)

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Alvares conceived of his text as one that would evolve. Fuller and corrected versions were envisioned from the start because Alvares knew that his fellow Jesuits would have strong opinions that would have to be taken into account. In the event there were several official revisions of the textbook. Moreover, the Grammatica Emmanuelis, as it was commonly designated, was published both as a long-form teacher's manual and in more compact student formats. Modern bibliographies and library catalogs do not distinguish between the various revisions of the text, nor between the two formats. Historians have further confused the issue by asserting that the shorter, student form was conceived and issued after the longer one. In fact the publishing record is clear that for the syntax section (Book II) the reverse was true, while for the larger grammar the two editions were nearly simultaneous. It seems certain that both versions were conceived in parallel. (17)

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These books present a bibliographical dilemma. Contemporaries rightly saw this highly successful Jesuit grammar as one important intellectual achievement. From our point of view it was one of the greatest publishing successes of the sixteenth century. But how are we to distinguish several, radically different versions of the \"same\" textbook? It is essential at the outset, therefore, to reconstruct the stages in the history of the text within the sixteenth century, both within Alvares' lifetime and in the first twenty-five years after his death. Its subsequent history (it was widely used until the late nineteenth century) will concern us only slightly.

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Alvares 's work proceeded far too slowly for the authorities in Rome, and so the second book, the Syntaxis, was sent to press in 1570, three years before Alvares finally (and apparently reluctantly) let go of the full three-book version of his grammar. We may conveniently divide the very early history of the text, therefore, into editions of the Syntaxis and editions of the Libri Tres, keeping in mind that the former continued to be published as a separate up to about 1580, well after it was entirely incorporated into the latter. After 1600, it was common to separate the Libri Tres again; Book I and Book II often appeared separately in the seventeenth century, as did a short epitome (really just a paradigm book) based on Book I. Later still, Book III appeared as a separate and the latter half of it was sometimes even styled Book IV.

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Tension between Alvares and his superiors is evident in the early history of the text. (18) Out of deference for the author, the authorities in Rome gave him editorial supervision, but they were anxious to avoid further delays. Student and teacher versions of the Syntaxis appeared first at Venice, in 1570 and 1571 respectively. Alvares' direct participation in the editing probably seemed useful, and so the student and teacher versions of the full Libri Tres were first printed in 1572-1575 in Lisbon, where Alvares then worked. Almost as soon as copies arrived from Portugal, however, the new grammar was sent to press in Italy, so Rome and Venice editions appeared in 1573-1575 under supervision of the Italian Jesuits. In the late fifteen seventies and eighties, Venetian and Roman presses produced vast numbers of these standardized texts for the Jesuit colleges. The importance of standardization to the Jesuits may be judged from the fact that nearly all the teacher's editions are page-for- page and line-for-line reprints of the 1575 first Venetian edition.

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After Alvares' death in 1583, the locus of editorial activity on the grammar moved to Rome. The staff of the Collegio Romano worked a major revision of the student edition, concentrating on book two, the Syntaxis, which had proved unpopular with some teachers because it did not always use the terminology familiar to them from older grammars. This revision, in which the second book is characterized on the title page as \"recalled to the logic of the ancient grammarians,\" was published in 1584 at Rome and in 1585 at Venice. Some versions of this revision were styled \"recalled to clearer and more convenient logic.\" (19) As we will see, both these phrases implied better pedagogical practice, that is, the book was changed to conform to the way teachers actually presented the materials in question. (20)

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The Roman Jesuits also created a new Epitome or Compendiolum of Alvares for easier student use in 1589; and then immediately undertook yet another revision of the student text of the Libri Tres. This last edition included a title page that embraced the Epitome and so came to represent a new, unified assembly in which the original student text and a highly abbreviated, summary text were disseminated under one cover. This was an edition for students; their teachers would have a fuller, older teacher's edition to hand. The Roman editors filled out the volume by adding Aldo Manuzio's Orthography and Greek and Hebrew alphabets explicated by Paolo Manuzio. This revised and augmented student version was the basis of most of the later textbooks that went under Alvares' name. (21)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In Portugal meanwhile, Manuel Alvares, S.J. was attempting to pass a quiet career as a schoolmaster. He served as rector of the Jesuit college at Coimbra and as superior of Jesuit houses of study in Lisbon and Evora; but his first love was teaching…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/503","title":"5.03 An Evolving Textbook","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Alvares and his printers left a sizable body of self-conscious reflection on the publication of the new grammar in the form of extensive preliminary matter, including several prefaces from Alvares' own pen. The author's and publishers' concerns evolved across time. Documents also survive to evidence debates over the new grammar which took place within the Jesuit order. (These reports will be the principal concern of section 5.07.) It is significant that none of the doubts and controversies expressed within the order surfaced in the published record. The Jesuits effectively closed ranks in defense of their official grammar master.

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The printer chosen by the Roman authorities for the first edition of Alvares's Syntaxis was Michele Tramezzino, among the earliest Venetian printers to market his work successfully both in Rome and in Venice. That the project was a high-profile and potentially high-profit one for Tramezzino is clear from the fact that he obtained privileges for the book in 1570 from both Pope Paul V and the Venetian Senate, in the first case for ten years and in the second for twenty. (22) Both privileges expressly granted exclusivity to Tramezzino and his family for the Syntaxis with or without commentary, referring to the teacher's and student editions respectively. We do not know how many times Tramezzino and his heirs printed the student version. A student edition licensed by Tramezzino to the Roman printer Vittorio Eliano (at the time regularly employed by the Jesuits in Rome) bears the date of 1572. The teacher's version was published by the family in 1571, 1574, 1577 and 1579. (23) Again, a 1577 printing at Rome was licensed to another printer, Giuseppe de Angelis. The Roman reprints evidence the effectiveness of the privilege of Paul V and the fact that the immediate market for the book was the Collegio Romano. The Venetian reprints prove that there was also a demand in some part of the market for a separate teacher's manual on syntax even after the appearance of the full Libri Tres. Although the new grammar was to be tested in the laboratory of the Collegio Romano, it was immediately useful well beyond that setting, something the Tramezzino family would have understood perfectly.

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The publication of the Syntaxis separately from the larger grammar book was part of Jesuit official policy to create and promote new textbooks. The choice of Tramezzino, however, was probably a business decision, based on his solid record as a publisher of other textbooks. The printer surely had an agenda slightly different from that of his Jesuit patrons. The Venetian privilege included not only the new work on syntax by Alvares but also an older grammar book of Jan de Spauter on morphology. An edition of this small portion of De Spauter's general introduction to noun and verb inflections came from the Tramezzino press in this same year as the first, student version of the Alvares Syntaxis, 1570. Eliano, the Roman printer who reprinted the Syntaxis in 1572, also printed the full De Spauter introductory textbook under Tramezzino's privilege that year, producing, that is, a book which exactly covers the material which would eventually make up Book One of Alvares' Libri Tres. In the same period, Tramezzino published a version of De Spauter's Ars versificatoria, embracing the subject matter which would make up Book Three of the final Alvares grammar. On the Venetian market and internationally, this trio of books would constitute a full grammar course, with some entirely new and other, tried-and-true components. In Rome, it would fit the version of the grammar course for the moment in place at the Collegio Romano, substituting the newly available Alvares syntax for that portion of the approved De Spauter textbooks. (24) Tramezzino and his Roman collaborator could thus satisfy a substantial Jesuit market and offer a full set of grammar books to the larger textbook market as well.

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There is no direct evidence for it, but the 1572 Rome reprint of the student version of the Syntaxis and De Spauter's manual of morphology in the same format may have been a limited order exclusively for the Collegio Romano. Alvares was at this exact moment prevaricating yet again about the delivery of his long-awaited comprehensive grammar, which was finally printed at Lisbon in late September 1572 in a student version. Twelve copies were shipped off to Rome in early October, and it was ready for an Italian edition only in 1573. The Roman Jesuits might have found themselves caught short in 1572, having exhausted the limited number of copies of the De Spauter/Alvares combination they had ordered in 1570 for what they had expected would be a short-term need until the new Alvares should appear. In this scenario, employing their regular printer Eliano at Rome would have provided textbooks needed for the 1572-1573 school year.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Alvares and his printers left a sizable body of self-conscious reflection on the publication of the new grammar in the form of extensive preliminary matter, including several prefaces from Alvares' own pen. The author's and publishers' concerns…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/504","title":"5.04 Demands of the Market","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The Syntaxis was published before Alvares was truly done writing and the early editions have no authorial preface. When finally the first student editions of the complete Libri tres appeared in 1572-1573, the new textbook bore two prefaces, a half-page addressed \"to the reader,\" and a second, three-page preface without specific addressee. The first preface is very brief. It simply remarks that the student edition was \"almost naked of commentary ... without the multitude of scholia which might impede beginners.\" It was appearing before the fuller, scholarly grammar was ready. This preface is probably the basis for the assertion by some historians that the full version was the original and the student text an abbreviation, but in fact it evidences just the opposite fact, that Alvares already had a workable student text that he had used in his own classrooms. He was reluctant to publish it, however, because it incorporated the fruits of years of scholarly study without citing his sources in full.

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In most student editions the first, short preface is followed by two small poems by Alvares. These poems were probably explicated in class, because they also appear in the teacher's edition, usually after the second preface. The first poem was addressed \"to the book\" itself and invited criticism from any learned reader. This humanist commonplace would sit well with teachers of any sort. A second poem is addressed to the \"Christian teacher,\" and contains another conventional notion, that the first duty of the schoolmaster is to be a good moral model to his students. Only if the he joins the ornament of good Latin to true piety will the teacher be counted a success and attain salvation himself. This commonplace was a nod to the older tradition of teaching Latin as if it were in itself a moral discipline; but it embodied as well the more modern, Jesuit notion that morals are a study apart and that Latin is merely a tool of the learned man.

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The three-page, general preface that followed these preliminaries was self-justifying and also highly conventional, but, unlike most grammar book prefaces of the century, it was not boastful. Alvares assumed a modest, apologetic tone rather than an advertising one. He did not say that all previous books were woefully inadequate, merely that it was frustrating to discover that no existing book was so clearly superior to all the others as to justify its adoption in Jesuit schools around the world. This is a theme Alvares had been hearing from his superiors, that the order needed a grammar book of its own. He rephrased it with a simple, aphoristic account of Jesuit religious ideals. The Jesuit founders admonished all in the brotherhood to live in concord, agreeing among themselves in great matters as well as small. Even matters of apparently small moment, then, like the choice of an elementary grammar, should be made in common by all in the order. With this assertion Alvares recalled his brethren to the centrality of Latin study as part of their mission, what a contemporary Jesuit writing about the new grammar called \"a practice so important to the Company [of Jesus], and upon which so much depends, and on which account indeed our colleges were founded.\" (25)

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Beyond these few observations on the genesis of the book, Alvares offered a brief account of his compiling method. He named his sources among ancient grammatical writers (a very thorough list of those known to the Renaissance) and then ticked off the literary authors he used for examples of pure Latin style. Not a single Renaissance grammarian or writer appears in this list, neither as source, authority, or stylistic model, not even Lorenzo Valla. (26) The omission of Valla, who had been an almost obligatory reference in grammar book prefaces for fully a century, is significant. Alvares's implied claims are two. First, the only sure way to imitate classical usage is to limit oneself strictly to classical sources. Secondly, hypercorrectness and the showy learnedness of most professional grammarians has no place in the elementary classroom. Perhaps Alvares wanted to avoid entering into contemporary scholarly controversies or giving potential critics the opening to do so. He surely thought it unwise to offer his bickering contemporaries as models to schoolchildren.

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The method of the remainder of the book is in perfect concord with this rigorist stance. Alvares provided a wealth of examples drawn from ancient authors and thus instructed his students from the start to use classical models. They were to see grammar as a descriptive discipline based on real but strictly classical usage. In this he followed the sense as well as the letter of the late antique grammarians, Priscian and Donatus, and he ignored much grammatical tradition. Matters of disagreement among Alvares's contemporaries were relegated to the commentary sections of the teacher's edition and even then were not attributed to modern authors, merely exemplified with quotations from the ancients. (27) Sometime between the first appearance of the Syntaxis in 1570 and its final incorporation into the teacher's editions of the Libri Tres in 1573 and 1575, Alvares also added a little exhortation to the beginning of his treatment of syntax which is the clearest single statement of his convictions about the descriptive nature of grammar. It may be a response to criticisms of the early editions of the Syntaxis:

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I would like to ask those who will read this book that they should not be annoyed that the rules of syntax are illustrated with so many examples, for this was not done by chance or causally, but with thought and consideration. For grammatical concepts are dry, trite, and insipid in and of themselves; and unless they be seasoned with the elegance and beauty of the ancient writers, uncultivated usage will in short order besmirch the Latin tongue with barbarities. (28)

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Even for beginners, then, it is essential to stay close to classical models, for studying rules can only be valuable if the learner keeps his goal, the beauty of ancient Latin, constantly in mind.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The Syntaxis was published before Alvares was truly done writing and the early editions have no authorial preface. When finally the first student editions of the complete Libri tres appeared in 1572-1573, the new textbook bore two prefaces, a half…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/505","title":"5.05 The Rhetoric of the Preface","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Starting with the 1575 Venice teacher's editions , Italian editions of the Libri Tres also carried a third preface by Alvares, this one addressed specifically to teachers in Italy. This four-page essay concerned the ill effects of permitting students and teachers to pronounce Latin according to the habits of their native vernaculars. Alvares rehearsed vowels, diphthongs, and consonants in turn, giving extensive, very detailed instructions to teachers at Rome on how to avoid corruptions of good Latin pronunciation deriving from the natural accents of their Italian students. Curiously, this warning on pronunciation was incorrectly labeled in the 1575 Venice teacher's edition, with the title De nominum declinatione (On the Declension of Nouns), which should be the heading of the first chapter after the preface. This error persisted through several Venetian reprints of the teacher's edition. The advice on pronunciation appears correctly labeled, Admonitio auctoris (Advice of the Author), in most student editions, but the title was corrected for the teachers only in 1585.

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After this 1575 warning on pronunciation, Alvares fell silent. In the years before his death in 1583 he turned his attention to other matters, and his grammar book took on a life of its own. New editions continued to carry his two or three prefaces. The Italian editions, all sponsored directly by the Collegio Romano, did not normally include additional prefatory material until after Alvares death. Even then, editorial changes were more often remarked in passing on the title pages than described in detail in prefatory material, perhaps out of respect for the authority of Alvares and in the service of maintaining the myth that all the Jesuit schools were using the same grammar. (29)

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Prefatory and other added materials from the last decades of the century provide us with further clues as to the publishing history of the text. The oddest of the sixteenth-century prefaces to Alvares' work is certainly that of the printer Guglielmo Facciotti, who reprinted the fully revised student version of the Collegio Romano at least three times in the fifteen nineties. He tells his readers that it would seem logical to print Book One of the Alvares grammar separately, \"since it contains the rudiments, as it were, of noun and verb inflections.\" Still, though he says this would be \"in every way more convenient,\" Facciotti did not in fact do so, and not by oversight, as he expressly says, \"because I know you, most humane reader, will not be ignorant of this fact.\" This is poor logic and worse advertising. Indeed, it makes little sense at all, except perhaps as a feeble expression of the printer's disagreement with the Collegio Romano faculty. Since they largely made the local market for this text, Facciotti could not contradict them. Facciotti seems to be asking the teaching public to request this different format in sufficient numbers to convince the Roman Jesuits to let him do it.

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There is evidence that some Jesuits were considering this same change in the fifteen nineties. A 1587 Portuguese document remarks that Alvares himself contemplated such separate booklets; and a 1602 deliberation from Germany specifically orders that such editions be prepared, on the grounds that this was being considered in Rome. (30) It may be, then, that Facciotti was merely advocating a position some of the Collegio Romano faculty were already recommending. Certainly, the history of the text in the seventeenth century, especially outside Italy, is one of separate editions of one or two of the three books. For student use these were more convenient; and they allowed Jesuit college faculties to claim to be using Alvares in conformity with the Ratio Studiorum even when they were only using his texts for part of the course.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Starting with the 1575 Venice teacher's editions , Italian editions of the Libri Tres also carried a third preface by Alvares, this one addressed specifically to teachers in Italy. This four-page essay concerned the ill effects of permitting students…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/506","title":"5.06 Addressing the Teachers","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

However unified a face the Jesuits presented to the outside world, they did not always agree with each other on the details of their educational mission. The adoption of Alvares' grammar, though mandated for use in Jesuit schools from the mid-fifteen seventies, was in fact only gradual. The French Jesuits proved particularly resistant, but the earliest complaints came from Spain where the early editions were described as \"too prolix\" for easy use in the classroom. (31)

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For the reception of Alvares' work within the order we are blessed with a remarkable source, well explicated by Emilio Springhetti in a 1961 article and now fully published in the Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis Iesu. These are the critiques of the Ratio Studiorum of 1586 submitted across thirteen years by various provincial boards of experts. (32) The promulgation of the Ratio was already underway when the professors at the Collegio Romano published their first revised edition of Alvares, and the questionnaire that went to all of the provinces with the 1586 first draft of the Ratio was a referendum of sorts on the recent pedagogical reforms of the Collegio. The circular was apparently accompanied by copies of the new Alvares for comment. (33)

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Six Jesuit provinces had nothing in particular to remark on the matter of Alvares' grammar, but twelve provincial committees specifically replied to the question, \"Whether Alvares should be retained.\" The Roman professors themselves differed on this point. Some opined that each province should be allowed to choose its own grammar textbook. Others agreed with the representatives of other Italian provinces, one German province, the Spanish, and the Portuguese, who all voted to retain Alvares as the exclusive text for the entire order. The Polish province submitted the opinions of four separate teachers, but reserved judgement until new editions should appear, since they preferred other textbooks in some ways but felt that, properly revised, Alvares' grammar could be useful. The three French provinces (Paris, Aquitaine, and Lyon), on the other hand, were adamant that De Spauter's grammar should be used instead. The \"Despauterius,\" they insisted, was already widely used in France; it had been approved by St. Ignatius himself and praised by many humanists; it was older, shorter, and better organized than Alvares. (34)

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The French Jesuit masters did their best to seem fair to Alvares but they argued strenuously for their own favorite and did not hesitate to split hairs in his favor. It was true that De Spauter was often obscure, they said, but this prompted greater classroom diligence by teachers! His terminology was more technical and less elegant than that of Alvares, by which they meant De Spauter used long-known, late-medieval terms of analysis and not the less familiar, classicizing ones of Alvares. What is more, students who had started on De Spauter would have to forget what they had learned and start over if a new text were introduced. (35) This last argument tells us that the real issue was simply conservatism. The French masters themselves had started their careers by memorizing De Spauter and they did not want to \"unlearn\" it. Educational conservatism sometimes consists of such inertia. Teachers and (just as often) parents want the children of today to learn the same lessons in the same ways that their elders had. Attachments to textbooks, especially books that were widely memorized, often took this form -- affection reinforced by inertia. There was also resistance to having to re-train teachers.

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The revisers of the 1586 Ratio Studiorum also asked whether the present \"order of Alvares should go unchanged,\" a reference to the revisions proposed by the Collegio Romano in their Alvares editions of the mid-fifteen eighties. As a rule, the provinces in favor of retaining Alvares preferred to stick with the familiar textbook of the fifteen seventies. The Germans, for example, protested that Manuel Alvares had already, before his death in 1583, received and accepted a variety of criticisms, taking particular account of the suggestions of his most learned colleagues. They argued that the entire order should have just one set of textbooks. Alvares' work should remain as he had left it; this was essential to its authority and was the only way to restrain a natural tendency to tinker with textbooks. (36) This remark is telling, displaying as it does an uncharacteristically self-conscious understanding that, for all their natural conservatism, teachers also had an uncontrollable urge to innovate in the classroom, or at the very least to fiddle with textbooks. The authority of a textbook consisted not only in the strong reputation of it author but also in its durability, which could be ensured only by the sanction of a body of teachers determined to resist significant changes. The Germans may well have been criticizing the Collegio Romano with these remarks, since it was the Roman Jesuits who continued to tinker with Alvares. Their constant revisions, moreover, produced a continuing need to print new textbooks and made it harder to use older ones.

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Lastly, almost all of the respondents to the questionnaire about the Ratio Studiorum agreed that the verses used in the morphology section should be retained and that similar mnemonics would be useful for the other parts of the grammar. This recommendation seems to have been a reaction against the Roman editors' removal of the mnemonic verses in Book One in 1584 while seconding a revision that had been worked by the same Roman editors for Book Three on prosody. As a result, the original mnemonics for Book One were restored and new ones for Book Three were devised by the Portuguese Jesuit, Antonio Velès (1547-1609). (37)

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The final Ratio Studiorum mandated Alvares for all (click to enlarge - 628 KB JPEG image)
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The results of the international poll were incorporated into the definitive Ratio Studiorum promulgated for the entire order in 1599. The majority opinion won the day, namely that Alvares' grammar was a masterpiece, too good to discard. The new Ratio prescribed its continued use. But this victory on paper did not mean that all Jesuits immediately or even eventually adopted the Alvares grammar for everyday teaching. The teacher's edition would appear in almost every Jesuit college library, but the student versions did not necessarily end up in every student's hand. For example, Alvares' grammar was widely adopted in Portugal; but Spanish Jesuits continued to prefer a national favorite, the grammar of Nebrija. In France, the revised Roman version of Alvares was printed fifteen times in the sixteenth century, but it is unclear how widely it was used in classrooms. Many French Jesuits continued to prefer De Spauter. As late as 1664, for example, we find a detailed curriculum from the Jesuit colleges at Albi and Mauriac that prescribes De Spauter for all three levels of the grammar course. (38) In New France, both De Spauter and the earlier Jesuit grammar by Codret were in use in the seventeenth century. (39) In Belgium and Germany, there was some resistance early on. (De Spauter, after all, was a Flemming, a native son.) But most of the Jesuit colleges east of the Rhine had adopted the Alvares grammar by 1620. Its real triumph, however, came in Italy, where under the influence of the Collegio Romano it was adopted almost universally and came to be used in many non-Jesuit schools as well. (40)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"However unified a face the Jesuits presented to the outside world, they did not always agree with each other on the details of their educational mission. The adoption of Alvares' grammar, though mandated for use in Jesuit schools from the mid-fifteen…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/507","title":"5.07 Resistance is Futile","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Many of the criticisms of Alvares, and most of the revisions therefore, were based on practical pedagogical concerns. Clearly the agreement to add more mnemonic verses was of this order, and most of the other changes can likewise be attributed to classroom needs. From the start, however, Jesuit teachers had found the book as Alvares composed it difficult to use, or at least difficult to conform to the actual day-to-day and year-to-year course of study.

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The Ratio of 1598 divides the textbook between classes (click to enlarge - 779 KB JPEG image)
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A variety of curriculum documents from several Jesuit schools and provinces evidence the need to use Alvares out of order. To some degree, this just reproduced the catch-as-catch-can situation of teachers in the preceding period who could not find a good comprehensive textbook. In 1574 in Sardinia, for example, editions of the full Libri Tres were not yet available, and one teacher therefore recommended using the Rudimenta of Codret, \"supplemented for the genitives and past tense from the book of De Spauter,\" next the Syntaxis of Alvares, and finally the prosody manual of De Spauter. (41)

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This confusing situation would be corrected, the Jesuits had thought, when the new grammar \"by one of our own\" became available. But the new Alvares also had to be parceled out between classes. The 1578 curriculum rules for the province of Rome suggest that considerable confusion reigned. They offered two different ways of dividing the Alvares text between classes, depending how large the school was and how many graded classrooms were involved. One of the divisions follows the three books of the published grammar closely and without much comment. The other division envisions using the first few chapters of Book One in the first class; another group of chapters from Book One and the first chapters of Book Two in the next class; the last part of Book One and the middle part of Book Two in the third class; the remainder of Book Two and the \"appendices\" (special rules and exceptions to rules) in the fourth class. Every other year students were to study prosody using Book Three. Clearly some rearrangement of the text was called for, but subsequent revised editions respected Alvares's original order rather more than classroom experience suggested they might better have done. (42)

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The most important revisions were those undertaken by the teachers in the Collegio Romano, originally with an eye to circulating them with the 1586 draft of the Ratio Studiorum. These are incorporated into Italian editions of the student text from 1584 forward. In general, the revisers found the erudition of the author an impediment to beginning students. Even the shorter student versions, they thought, were overloaded with examples and exceptions that could better be left to advanced grammar students. Indeed, the full account of Alvares's learning was best suited to advanced studies. Decisions about using such material in the classroom could be left to the discretion of teachers and to their sense of what individual students could usefully digest. That the text was actually used this way is clear from surviving copies in which teachers have added their own notes from additional reading. (43)

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The nature of the Collegio Romano revisions will be clearer if we examine a few examples, comparing the student versions of the fifteen seventies to those of the fifteen eighties. The Roman editors claimed on their 1584 title page to have concerned themselves particularly with Book Two, on syntax. Alvarez himself revised the rather abrupt beginning of the Syntaxis, which originally leapt right into a discussion of the necessary agreement of intransitive verbs with their subjects. His revision included a definition of syntax. In the later Roman editions, this introduction was further enlarged so that the student started not only with a basic notion of syntax but also the general precept that certain words within sentences must agree. This simple change made it possible to proceed from the understanding that the first principle of Latin syntax is agreement to specific rules for verbs and subjects, for nouns and modifying adjectives, for prepositions and antecedents, and so forth.

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While the rules in Book Two were enlarged and clarified throughout in this manner by the Roman editors, the numerous examples offered for each rule were typically left standing. Despite complaints from teachers that the text was overloaded with examples, the editors abbreviated only sporadically, and even then the process was selective and favored certain authors, above all Cicero. For example, concerning the agreement of relative pronouns with their antecedents, one rule in the fifteen seventies was illustrated by four passages from Cicero, one from Seneca, and another from Quintus Curtius Rufus. In the edition of 1588, the exemplary material for this rule has been reduced to three quotations from Cicero. It is significant that the Silver Age authors disappear, especially the obscure Curtius, who was not much read in Jesuit classrooms. Cicero is rarely slighted, however. The very next rule was originally adorned with three quotations from Cicero which grew to five in the later edition; while in a later section, still on relative pronouns, three Ciceronian passages increased to seven. In general, the tendency was to multiply the passages from Cicero and to reduce in importance or even eliminate other prose authors. (44)

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Book Two on syntax, then, was somewhat rearranged and the examples were revised. Changes to the other books were less systematic, perhaps also less urgent. In Book One on morphology, which rehearses the declensions and conjugations in a traditional order, the Roman revisers followed exactly the sequence of rules and examples prescribed by Alvares for the first editions. The Roman editors claimed that they had eliminated some of Alvares's mnemonic verses, which they in fact did, to the dismay of Jesuits elsewhere. More constructively, the editors added more vocabulary words in each section, some of which had appeared in earlier editions as marginal notes. (45) In Book Three on prosody, by contrast, the principal change made by the Roman editors was to supply new mnemonic verses. They did not explain why the verses seemed useful in the one case and not so in the other.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Many of the criticisms of Alvares, and most of the revisions therefore, were based on practical pedagogical concerns. Clearly the agreement to add more mnemonic verses was of this order, and most of the other changes can likewise be attributed to…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/508","title":"5.08 In the Classroom","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

It is unclear how much of the formatting of the handsome Roman student editions of the fifteen eighties is directly the work of the editors and how much was undertaken on the initiative of the printers. The choice of typefaces (attractive new romans and italics) seems likely to have been left to the printers at Rome, Francesco Zanetti in the first instance (1584), but soon also Vincenzo Accolti (1585) and Bartolomeo Grassi (1585 and 1586). It is probable, however, that the editors had a direct hand in reformatting the quotations. Alvares favored including many examples with specific citations. This meant that most of the early student editions in octavo had cluttered pages, particularly in the so-called \"appendices\" to each rule where short quotations jostle in solid paragraphs with authors, abbreviated titles, and chapter numbers. The Roman editors and printers attempted to make this clearer typographically. They left the quoted examples inside solid-set paragraphs but removed the highly abbreviated citations to the margins where they appear in clear but tiny type.

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Questions of typography were definitely on the minds of the Roman editors, as they had been for others who were using the student versions of Alvares in classrooms. A fascinating survival from the Collegio Romano gives direct evidence of this process exactly in the period when the most extensive revisions were in progress. A copy of a 1583 Lisbon student edition with the ex libris of the Collegio Romano contains extensive notes about typographical revisions in the hand of a Portuguese reviewer. How this copy came to Rome we do not know, but it is clear evidence of the kinds of changes that were being contemplated there. The annotator marked numerous typographical errors including several passages that should be in italic and not roman type and vice versa. He would seem to have been working from another edition, since he supplied missing lines in poetic examples, rewrote passages that were confused, and added entire paragraphs omitted by the typesetter. In one case he directed that the quotations in a set of examples be rearranged into a clearer order. The largest number of changes concern the accuracy and arrangement of such classical examples: corrections to citations, corrections to the texts, additions of quotations, or substitutions of one quotation for another. More rarely, examples were deleted. These editorial interventions do not correspond to the changes made in any surviving edition I have seen, but they are consistent with the kind of work the Roman editors did in the early fifteen eighties. (46)

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Even with the extensive revisions undertaken in the fifteen eighties, and after the still more extensive discussions and criticisms mandated between the 1586 draft of the Ratio Studiorum and its 1599 promulgation, some confusion persisted about the order in which Alvares was to be taught. The 1599 Ratio recognizes this explicitly. The first of three classes of students was to study Book I and the first few sections of Book II. The second class would cover the next part of Book II up to the section of figured constructions together with the \"easier appendices.\" The third class would finish Book II, study the remaining appendices, and undertake Book III. This required curriculum, then, follows the overall order of the revised Alvares, but, as in most of the earlier critiques, it recognizes that the appendices were too advanced for most students. It was necessary to reposition this sophisticated material later in the course. (47)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"It is unclear how much of the formatting of the handsome Roman student editions of the fifteen eighties is directly the work of the editors and how much was undertaken on the initiative of the printers. The choice of typefaces (attractive new romans…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/509","title":"5.09 Typography for the Classroom","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The Jesuits, of course, suffered ongoing criticism from outside the order, on matters educational as on doctrine and discipline. (48) Alvares' textbook was the focus of one such controversy at Verona at the very end of the sixteenth century when it had already proved to be the best selling Latin grammar of the age. It seems unlikely that the attack was motivated by the strengths or weaknesses of the grammar alone; rather, it represented a small part of a larger critique of the Jesuits' educational success at Verona at the expense of established teachers. Still it offers us a remarkably thorough critique of Alvares' successful book.

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The protagonist of this Veronese controversy was Orlando Pescetti (1556?-1624?), a school teacher of local reputation much engaged in academy affairs in the Veneto but little studied today. He published defenses of Tasso and Battista Guarini and a spirited essay on the correct use of letter Z in Tuscan. His only enduring contribution was to assemble two collections of Italian proverbs, one in Italian offered as a literary commonplace book and model of vernacular eloquence, and the other in Italian and Latin expressly for use in Latin classrooms. He taught school for many years and seems to have gradually acquired a conviction that presenting boys with vernacular models could help motivate their study of Latin. This stance probably developed from another, more consistent position he took in defense of Catholic lay piety. For Pescetti, as for many other teachers of the period, language study and religious education were deeply entwined. He was convinced that contemporary schools, whether municipal, private, or run by religious orders, too often failed in this primary mission. (49)

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The Jesuits had established a college at Verona in 1577 at the request of the local bishop, with the patronage of Carlo Borromeo, and with the permission of the city council, though this last did not come without considerable dissent. Pescetti was too young to have had a useful opinion at the time but he later sided with the dissenters, feeling as they did that the city should take responsibility for elementary education and supervise it closely. The Jesuits, of course, tolerated no such local interference. (50)

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Pescetti launched an opening salvo in his anti-Jesuit campaign in 1592 with the publication of a lengthy Oration on the reform of the grammar schools The piece was utopian, but presented as the fruit of long, practical experience and offered as a real proposal to a city official, Count Giulio Cesare Nogarola. (51) The oration develops in an interesting way, both logically and in terms of rhetorical strategies. Pescetti seems at first totally incapable of irony, even though both his rhetoric and his ideas are writ improbably large. He proposed a radical school reform aimed at making Verona over into a Platonic philosopher's realm where there are no idle or irreligious youths. Universal education, required of all able citizens (males only, of course), would create a common commitment to the Catholic faith, a common sense of civic purpose, and a new flowering of Veronese culture. Specifically, he recommended that the city fathers construct a single, central, enormous school (ten halls, each able to seat one hundred students), hire a corps of teachers based on merit examinations, and offer schooling to all comers A detailed curriculum is prescribed, apparently based on specific textbooks; and twenty one rigorous rules of conduct for teachers are offered. (52)

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Concurrently with establishing this great school, Pescetti continued, the city council should forbid all other instruction, whether by tutors or in schools. Teachers not on the central-school faculty would be banned from practicing in Veronese territory. This last provision would enforce the universality of the proposed schooling. It would ensure that poor but able students would have equal opportunity with the rich, and that aristocratic parents would not distract their children from the urban educational experience by taking them off to the country for long parts of the year. And it would put all non-certified teachers, including the Jesuits, out of business in Verona.

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Pescetti did eventually grow ironic. He pretended to imagine all possible objections to such a program, both on theoretical and practical grounds, and rebutted them point by point. He rejected all theoretical objections, claiming they are overridden by the religious and moral-educational value of his new program. Logistical matters he referred to the wisdom of the city fathers and to their proven ability to get things done. Practical opposition by the numerous existing teachers of grammar he dismissed by saying that those private teachers who were any good would compete successfully for places in the new school. He admitted that the Jesuits might be expected to object too, but, since the good fathers were always known to act in the common interest, surely they would see the value of the new school at Verona and acquiesce. They would take their own school elsewhere, where they were better needed, that is, to a place where the city authorities were not so diligent on behalf of civic education. Indeed, the Jesuits would have no substantial objections at all, so their opposition offered Pescetti, he said, the least concern of all the possible complaints.

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The subsequent stages in Pescetti's campaign against the Jesuits are obscure because he was largely unsuccessful until political events overtook the educational question; but he continued to be preoccupied by the presence of the Jesuit college at Verona through the fifteen nineties and into the next century. Perhaps needless to say, however, the city council never did create the school he envisioned, nor did they ban other schools. (53) Pescetti went on with his academic publishing. As far as we know, he also continued to teach in his own grammar school. He published a small booklet in 1599 entitled The Teacher, or How Boys Should Be Taught, A Poem. The 327 verses limp, but they offer a unique portrait of the ideal Counter-Reformation schoolmaster. This figure is decidedly not a Jesuit. Indeed the ideal teacher is a layman whose principal duty is to offer an example of lay piety and virtue. His first and most important subject was religion, his real goal to build moral character, religious fervor, and obedience to ecclesiastical authority. The Latin language and love of Latin eloquence were to be learned by \"singing Virgil,\" but Latin's principal value was in the service of the faith, both for inculcating Christian values and also as a discipline. Loose, ill-learned, and unregulated speech led directly to bad morals. The Latin teacher should concentrate on good authors and good examples of classical usage. He should employ Tuscan at every stage so as to improve the overall level of vernacular learning. Good students should able to complete such a course in three years.

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Although there was no direct mention of the Jesuits, this portrait of the pious lay schoolmaster implicitly criticized certain elements of their program, specifically residential colleges with long courses of study and the technique of Latin immersion to the exclusion of the vernacular in the classroom. More fundamentally, it opposed the Jesuit's highly instrumental view of Latin as a communicative technology devoid of intrinsic moral content. Pescetti spoke for a much older humanist ideal, that of Latin as a morally normative language. For over two centuries, humanists had defended their preoccupation with classical authors, subjects, and style by claiming (following medieval monastic models) that Latin was also tied intimately to the Christian faith and to the fully realized morality of the free, adult, male citizen. For the Jesuits, Latin was a skills course; morality and piety were learned in other forums. (54)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The Jesuits, of course, suffered ongoing criticism from outside the order, on matters educational as on doctrine and discipline. (48) Alvares' textbook was the focus of one such controversy at Verona at the very end of the sixteenth century when it…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/510","title":"5.10 A View from Outside","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In 1609, ten years after the The Teacher and nearly twenty years after his utopian Oration, Pescetti decided to take on the Jesuits again, this time in the form of a highly specific pamphlet attacking the grammar book of Manuel Alvares. He may have been emboldened to do so by the fact that the Jesuits had closed their college in Verona and, indeed, had been expelled from the entire Venetian state after they supported the failed papal interdict of 1606-1607. The whole later period of Pescetti's career and especially the early decades of the seventeenth century were an age of intense anti-papal and anti-Jesuit sentiment in the Veneto, but we should not imagine that most of this feeling was irreligious or even anti-clerical. Instead, the Counter-Reformation had created a vigorous lay piety that often centered on local cults and local churches. Its mirror in the political realm was the cultural activism of urban lay elites and the local governments they dominated. In such a climate, even the performance of preachers was a matter for public, often political discussion. In 1607, concurrently with the closing of the Jesuit school at the time of the interdict, the city council actually took up one of the recommendations Pescetti had made in his 1592 Oration, setting up a municipal school board. The aim was to create municipal schools to take the part of the absent Jesuits in the service of true religion. The city fathers felt well rid of the Jesuits, but this did not mean that they wanted to encourage irreligion or, worse, Protestantism. (55)

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I have not been able to find a copy of Pescetti's 1609 pamphlet against Alvares (it probably ran to 32 pages), but the title, text, and colophon were completely reprinted in 1616 as part of a 500-page refutation of it published by a Jesuit teacher at the Collegio Romano, Sebastiano Berettari (1543-1622), writing under the pseudonym \"Jacobus à Fossa.\" (56) This reprint claims to give Pescetti's text word for word and spelling error for spelling error. If it does so, Pescetti would seem to have prepared a set of notes intended to refute specific points in Alvares' grammar as a brief against its use in Verona. It may be that with the closing of the Jesuit college, it had been proposed for use in other schools. The notes Pescetti provides could be read merely as suggestions for revising or correcting a text in common use, but more likely they were intended as an argument against adopting it in local classrooms. Alvares's Libri tres had been printed frequently in Rome and Venice in the fifteen seventies and eighties; more locally sponsored and printed editions also appeared elsewhere in Italy. There were editions (of the student grammar) at Genoa in 1588 and at Padua in 1591, for example. The first Verona edition of Alvares was a student edition of the De constructione in 1578, apparently intended for the new Jesuit college at a moment when there were not enough copies of the Libri tres to supply the rapidly expanding schools of the order. The Jesuits at Verona commissioned a full teacher's edition in 1592, again, probably because reprints of the Venetian edition of 1575 were not still to be had. This was followed by a small booklet with Alvares's rules on prosody in 1593 and yet another full-dress teacher's edition in 1597. This publishing record implies a popularity at Verona that must have alarmed Pescetti, who saw many flaws in Alvares' grammatical terminology and teaching methods. After the closing of the Jesuit college at Verona, all these textbooks were presumably on the market and in the hands of alumni of the college. We may imagine some pressure on the part of booksellers and parents, among them influential people who had sent their sons to study with the Jesuits, to see these by-now standard grammar books put to use. (57)

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Pescetti's brief critique of Alvares survives only in the context of the extensive defense by the Jesuits, a fact which presents us with some interpretive problems. Clearly the original pamphlet was intended for a local audience. It could not have been widely influential. Pescetti probably only wanted to strike a small, anti-Jesuit blow in Verona, taking advantage of the fact that the order was temporarily banned. Many of his criticisms repeat those voiced earlier by teachers within the Jesuit order, though Pescetti cannot have had access to such internal documents. The Jesuits, however, saw Pescetti's as a challenge from outside the order, and almost surely viewed the small booklet as part of a larger anti-Jesuit campaign in the region. Someone at the Collegio Romano, whether Sebastiano Berettari alone or a group of his colleagues, decided to squelch what they derided as Pescetti's \"dust up.\" (They titled their refutation \"A Puff of Dust Against Manuel Alvares, S.J.\" -- Efflatio pulveris adversus Emmanuelis Alvari e Societate Jesu.) They meant both to say that Pescetti's critique was of little substance and to note that it was directed at Alvares (now dead) and at the Jesuits' broader program. That Berettari expended 530 pages on such a nominally trivial challenge is due in part to his fulsome invective style, but it also suggests that someone in the order took Pescetti's challenge seriously.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In 1609, ten years after the The Teacher and nearly twenty years after his utopian Oration, Pescetti decided to take on the Jesuits again, this time in the form of a highly specific pamphlet attacking the grammar book of Manuel Alvares. He may have…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/511","title":"5.11 Adversus Emmanuelis Alvari","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

No fewer than three prefaces to the Efflatio (thirty pages) made fun of Pescetti's learning and impugned his motives. No doubt, the Jesuits asserted, this poor school teacher was just trying to make a name for himself by criticizing the most learned grammarian of the age, \"our Alvares.\" In keeping with the overall satirical tone, Berettari characterized himself too. He was a short, greasy, hirsute provincial who serves as a teacher's aide at the Collegio Romano and who collected these refutations of Pescetti from among the waste paper that the elementary pupils were forever throwing onto the classroom floors.

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The full text of Pescetti's critique is provided on pages 31-64, exactly as it appeared in 1609 we are told, except that Pescetti's 170 criticisms (reprehensiones, a term that apparently came from Pescetti's title page) are numbered for easier cross-reference with the refutations that follow on 464 separately-numbered pages. Marginal citations to Alvares by chapter and title are also given. Though his voice is almost lost within the scurrilous literary frame, we can hear Pescetti reasonably well and judge the substance of his critique.

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Pescetti drew up his pamphlet on the basis of the short, student form of the Alvares grammar, exactly the one which was getting such wide distribution in the fifteen nineties. But Sebastiano Berettari mounted his defense of Alvares by explicitly citing the longer, teacher's edition by page and line number. He knew that this standardized version would be in the hands of Jesuit grammar masters throughout Europe, and by citing it, he tells us that his principal audience was the Jesuits themselves. There is a certain disjunction from the start between a public critique of one, student-level book and an in-house defense based on another, more scholarly text. The confusion is further exaggerated by the furious invective of the Jesuit author. He pulled Pescetti's notes apart, literally, into small morsels of criticism that could be pounded to dust under the weight of a nasty-minded refutation.

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A few examples will serve to show the nature of the original notes and the refutations. Pescetti made three kinds of reprehensiones. He complained about teaching practices embodied in Alvares' work, usually editorial and design elements that imply classroom practices to which he objected. More seriously, he took issue with the highly detailed grammatical analyses, a problem the Jesuits themselves had worried when they repeatedly complained that the text was too prolix for beginners. And occasionally, he disputed specific points of grammatical teaching. Consistently, however, Pescetti's remarks had to do with the classroom value of the book. He spoke as an experienced teacher with strong opinions about what works in the classroom. As such, Pescetti's notes may be the most thorough critique to survive of any single printed textbook of the period.

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It is striking, for example, to find specific exception taken to the layout of the conjugational paradigms: \"Since it is essential to teach boys the persons of the pronouns, and it is hardly possible to do so unless these precede the verbs which they modify, it is not a good idea to omit them in speaking [i.e. drilling].\" (58) This was a criticism of the formatting of the paradigms in student editions of Alvares, where the Latin verb forms were given without pronouns. The last phrase, though clumsy, suggests that Pescetti had drilling in mind. He wanted the students to drill by saying the Latin pronoun before each inflected verb and not without the pronouns, as would be the case if they followed the text of Alvares' book literally. Berettari, entirely typically, picked up first on the clumsy phrasing, complaining that Pescetti is a poor Latinist. On the substantive point, whether students should drill with the pronoun or not, Berettari was less clear, perhaps because he had both models in front of him in various editions of Alvares. He felt the need to defend what Pescetti criticized, however, so he said that including the pronoun detracts from recognizing the inflectional changes and that students would be better advised to concentrate on the markers for person embodied in the verb endings rather than on the apposite pronouns. On this small point, at least, there was room for genuine disagreement among teachers.

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Pescetti mounted a more sustained critique of Alvares's detailed rules and paradigms for imperatives. These occupy reprehensiones 10 through 23 as chopped up and numbered by Berettari. In fact the original probably criticized in one paragraph the whole schema by which Alvares described a number of different future senses of the imperative and imperative senses of the future. Alvares, for example, described a \"Command or Constitutional Mode\" (modus mandativus, sive legitimus) for verbs when precepts, laws and the like were stated either in the future or in the imperative. His example is amato tu, uel amabis ...amato ille, uel amabit which he translates with the single command form, \"thou shalt love ...he shall love.\" Pescetti complained laconically that \"these two forms, amato and amabis .... amato and ama are not equivalent.\" (59) He made similar observations for other of Alvares's terms that describe the various future senses of imperatives. Pescetti probably objected to the whole complicated series, which multiplied the terms to be learned and at the same time made imperatives and futures seem virtually equivalent. This is not a clear way to get usage across to students, he was saying. Berettari countered that Alvares knew perfectly well that the two forms are not the same and in fact provided additional rules and examples elsewhere in the book for the future without imperative force. On the face of it, of course, this defense actually proved Pescetti's basic point, that the grammar is too complicated for beginners. Berettari ignored this cavil and defended Alvares first on the technical, terminological point and then by multiplying the classical passages cited to support the concept. To do this, he had to cite the teacher's edition with its full apparatus, not the student edition Pescetti was criticizing. (60)

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Elsewhere, Pescetti specifically objected not to faulty or overcomplicated pedagogical practice but to grammatical doctrine. Reprehensio 32 (again, Berrettari's numbering) concerned the \"potential mode.\" Pescetti simply said, \"The potential mode is a superfluous rule.\" (61) Pescetti did not say it is unhelpful in the classroom, merely that it is an unnecessary category of analysis because formally it is identical to the subjunctive. Berettari did not argue the theoretical point since he knew (as Pescetti did and as Alvares specifically said in the teacher's editions) that the term does not appear in the authoritative late ancient grammars which were Alvares' ostensible sources. Berettari merely claimed that it is a useful way to explicate some complex classical passages; and then he marshaled examples drawn from Alvares' teacher's manual.

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Repeatedly, then, Berettari's strategy was first to belittle Pescetti's learning (he even compares Pescetti to Alexander of Villa Dei, the ultimate humanist insult (62)), then to praise the erudition of Alvares, and finally to address the substantial criticism with whatever defense is to hand whether apposite or not. This pattern holds through much of the book. Obviously, neither Pescetti nor Berettari were giving a comprehensive or systematic account of the virtues of Alvares' grammar. Each had an agenda over and above that of discussing the book. Pescetti, ostensibly at least, was merely making notes of flaws observable. He wrote a book review, though with a clear intent to recommend against using the book in Verona classrooms. In the context of his long career, it is clear that he was also attacking the Jesuits more broadly. Pescetti concerned himself with the textbook as evidence of specific failures of Jesuit elementary education. For Berettari these arguments involved two distinct issues, first Alvares' authority as learned grammarian and with it the scholarly reputation of the Jesuits, and only then the utility of the standard textbook. The Jesuits were not about to give up the book, which was already a proven publishing success. Their defense was of their reputation as learned and effective teachers.

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Even more important than the fact that Pescetti should use Alvares' grammar to indict the order is the manner in which the Jesuits apparently concurred, or at least participated to the degree of publishing so furious and lengthy a defense. After their own long and sometimes unhappy experience with the Alvares grammar, the Jesuits were more than a little defensive of it. The Collegio Romano in particular had worked hard to secure the text from Alvares and had revised it repeatedly in the face of criticism from elsewhere within the order. The Jesuit teachers at Rome may even have welcomed the opportunity provided by Pescetti's pamphlet to solidify their claims on behalf of Alvares and to reframe its use as a defense of a Jesuit product against outside criticism. This new frame, born in the crisis of the Jesuit expulsion from the Veneto, might also have worked to mitigate lingering opposition within the order to using Alvares in Jesuit classrooms.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"No fewer than three prefaces to the Efflatio (thirty pages) made fun of Pescetti's learning and impugned his motives. No doubt, the Jesuits asserted, this poor school teacher was just trying to make a name for himself by criticizing the most learned…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/512","title":"5.12 Reviewing and Defending a Textbook","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Pescetti was not the only school master to take exception to the triumphal march of Alvares's grammar. When the Barnabite and Somaschi fathers opened religious schools with humanities curricula toward the end of the sixteenth century, they at first adopted the standard Jesuit textbook. But by the second decade of the seventeenth century, they began to devise grammars, rhetoric manuals, and even arithmetic books better suited to the needs of their urban, non-residential schools. Most of these schools were made possible by bequests from civic-minded laymen. The municipalities that hosted them retained considerable control over the curricula and required that the fathers accept students from all ranks of society. They found Alvares' grammar too detailed for use in non-residential schools. (63)

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Alvares was explicitly and implicitly criticized by still other educators, especially in the Veneto and Lombardy, where anti-Jesuit feeling ran high through much of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. In one curious Milanese example, even a writer who died long before Alvares wrote was made to criticize him. This is the case of Giovanni Alberto Bossi (ca. 1450-ca. 1518), a humanist priest at the court of Gian Galeazzo Sforza and his cultured wife Isabella d'Aragona. Bossi published an elementary grammar entitled Epitoma, seu regulae constructionis in 1503, about the time he retired from court to teach school in his home town of Busto Arsizio. It is a compilation from other, earlier works, but it clearly embodied Bossi's own take on what pedagogy should be. The book was printed a second time in 1521 and then apparently did not see print again until the age of the Jesuits. Its popularity was largely limited to the Lombard capital. It seems to have been proposed, then, as a local product on the local market, much as grammar books had always been published before the Jesuits made international marketing a norm. (64)

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Bossi's preface was generic enough to fit the market of 1566 (the third recorded edition) as easily as that of 1503. He complained that contemporary textbooks are either too long and detailed for beginners (he may have had Perotti's grammar in mind, but by 1566 the remark would have more naturally been taken to mean De Spauter's), or else ill-suited to teaching correct and beautiful usage (which describes the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villa Dei). His own plan was to produce something of middling length but fully correct. At fifty-six pages in print, he has clearly achieved the first goal. The text is in two parts, about twenty pages of very basic material in question-and-answer form, followed by Additiones including some rules stated and exemplified and several bits of advice to teachers and students. This second part is more miscellaneous, but very self-conscious about pedagogy. It contains introductory concepts for explication of texts and composition, together with admonitions on teaching method. He titles the final chapters \"The Duties of Teachers and Students,\" \"On the Order of Examinations and What is to be Done Daily and Weekly,\" and \"How to Construe\" (that is, recite paradigms).

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The mid- and late-century editions of Bossi's work are entitled Institutiones Grammaticae and have a second brief preface by Bartolomeo Moirani (active 1550-1570), whom the title page identifies as the editor of the work. Moirani spoke rather more directly to the market and teaching situation of the fifteen sixties. He lamented the lack of good Latin writing, ascribing it (in fairly conventional terms) to the venality and greed of teachers at all levels. Behind the conventional phases, however, we can discern a definite dissatisfaction with the educational institutions of the period, especially in Milan. He presented Bossi's grammar as one from the good old days, unjustly neglected by printers. (65)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Pescetti was not the only school master to take exception to the triumphal march of Alvares's grammar. When the Barnabite and Somaschi fathers opened religious schools with humanities curricula toward the end of the sixteenth century, they at first…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/513","title":"5.13 Conservative Alternatives","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

We may distinguish two versions of Moirani's Bossi. That of 1566 was designed to match the format of an old-fashioned Donat (that is, Ianua and Pseudo-Cato together with some other simple texts) edited in the same period by Moirani and published by the same printers, the Da Meda brothers. Moirani apparently intended the two textbooks to be used together, something we know happened in fact because some of the rare surviving copies are presently bound with contemporary editions of Pseudo-Donatus and Pseudo-Cato. (66) The 1566 edition of Bossi's Institutiones, apparently supervised directly by Moirani, presented the prefaces in a small roman type but the student text in a round gothic like those used for elementary textbooks early in the century. The Da Meda brothers were imitating the usage of Bossi's day; but Moirani may also have chosen to use this old-fashioned dress to distinguish his traditional authors from the modern ones then in use in Jesuit and other schools he disliked. In any case the date 1566 is suggestive, for the Jesuits had arrived in Milan in 1564 at the invitation of Carlo Borommeo to staff the diocesan seminary and found a college that would eventually become the great Brera institution, second only to the Collegio Romano in prestige. (67) A reprint in 1570 at Trino presented the same text in somewhat more modern typographical dress, roman types throughout. Milan would have been its logical market.

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Bossi's Institutiones got yet another life in print between 1589 and 1611, again in editions that were intended for classrooms in Milan, and which match Donats from the same printers. (68) These editions appeared at the height of anti-Jesuit sentiment in Lombardy and they were surely offered for the local market of non-Jesuit schools even though they merely repeat Moirani's text and contain no specific references to the Jesuits. Bossi and his companions, Pseudo-Donatus and Pseudo-Cato, now wear modern typographic dress, but of the sort common for the simplest and most elementary schoolbooks. The printers employed roman type throughout in a single size. But they clearly distinguish the rule books, Ianua and Bossi's Institutiones, from the Cato. The Cato is dressed with a clutter of red and black initials, head and tail pieces, and elaborate borders. Some of the printed marginalia are floral or composed of type ornaments; others display allegorical figures, cherubs, and garlands. In one edition we find a double-page spread with borders that depict female figures of Geometry and Arithmetic and a scholarly astrologer making celestial observations. By contrast, the printers gave little ornament to the rule books, just borders and red-and-black printing on the title pages. In one of the Bossi grammars, for example, the recto of the first leaf and verso of the last one are the only ones to use red-and-black printing, so that the resulting small-quarto booklet is drab inside but has a highly colored self-wrapper. Although the Donat was designed to go with the grammar of Bossi, the two little books could be (and probably most often were) given to school children as separate pamphlets sewn up but not necessarily bound more elaborately. The resulting products were diminutive and prettified in an old-fashioned way that must have seemed rather provincial in the age of Jesuit internationalism. We would call them down-market. By 1611, it might even be fair to think of them as medievalizing, since they reprise the look of fifteenth-century schoolbooks long after print conventions had moved on.

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Did this alternative textbook style also represent a critique of the Jesuit educational program? Certainly the makers and users of such books followed conservative, humanist models. A comparable pedagogical and design nostalgia may have suggested reprinting Antonio Mancinelli's Regulae and Donatus melior in similarly down-market booklets at Rome in just the same period. (69) Just as certainly, the sudden success of the Jesuits was before the eyes of the printers and schoolmasters who promoted these backward-looking revivals. In Milan it took the very concrete form of the enormous Brera college building under construction, while Roman schoolmasters could witness the pomp and pretensions of the Collegio Romano. Absent any explicit documentary evidence it is hard to assert that these little books represent a direct criticism of the Jesuits. But these books were certainly intended for non-Jesuit schools. Even when conservative teachers in such schools had nothing new to offer, they were resisting the novelties of the Jesuits, which were intimately tied in the popular mind both with the spirituality of the Counter-Reformation and with the centralizing institutions of the Roman church. (70)

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Still, conservative pedagogy claimed to be rooted in the Counter-Reformation too. Pescetti, remember, argued in 1592 for local control of lay teachers who would nonetheless be judged by their strict orthodoxy and dedication to teaching morals. At the same period Alessandro Rubini explicitly criticized Alvares's grammar as too difficult and implied further that the Jesuit had divorced teaching Latin from teaching morals. Rubini's corrective was to jettison the memorization of grammatical rules and classical examples altogether and substitute the reading of Christian maxims and proverbs. (71) These late-century authors were products of the Counter-Reformation but not enthusiasts for the Jesuits. Eighty years earlier, by contrast, Bossi had sounded only classicizing themes. He wrote before the Protestant Reformation began, and he complained of faulty pedagogical practices, not of the corruption of the church, teachers, or educational institutions. The prefaces of Bossi's editor Moirano, midway between Bossi and Pescetti or Rubini, are circumspect about institutions, but broadly critical of teachers for their venality, a charge long leveled at the clergy by laymen (and a subtext throughout Pescetti's anti-Jesuit writings). These lay critics were fully cognizant of the censorial power of the Counter-Reformation Church. They could complain of individual moral failures but not those of the institutions.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"We may distinguish two versions of Moirani's Bossi. That of 1566 was designed to match the format of an old-fashioned Donat (that is, Ianua and Pseudo-Cato together with some other simple texts) edited in the same period by Moirani and published by…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/514","title":"5.14 Conservative Typography","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Although the choices of text and editor continued to expand in the last half of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, the Italian market remained highly traditional in terms of format and presentation. Octavos like those of Griffio and the Aldine press got more and more annotation, but really substantial folio editions for teachers also continued to appear, especially at Venice and Milan. These folios offer a useful index of how printers constantly tinkered with the building blocks of text, commentary, illustration, and layout. That new editions appeared every few years means that Terence remained a staple of textbook publishing. The plays commanded a substantial number of new customers each year who demanded a certain look and feel and who expected to find this text in every serious bookshop. Latin teachers probably did not give such books to their students; but apparently most teachers wanted to own a Terence with extensive commentary and critical apparatus, front matter arranged strictly to pattern, and indexes to help in using the text and commentary for comparison to other classical authors.

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A monumental title page (click to enlarge - 401 KB jpeg file)
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The model for the front matter typical of the last half of the century was the beautiful Venice edition of 1545 printed by Girolomo Scoto. We find many variations on the pattern there established but they are usually just that, variations on a formula Scoto devised and others admired. Scoto's front matter occupied fourteen leaves (two gatherings of six and eight leaves respectively).

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More advertising (click to enlarge - 512 KB jpeg file)
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After a typographically restrained title page with elegant centering and a prominent printer's mark, the unpaginated front matter included Philip Melanchthon's summaries of the six plays; Erasmus's notes on Terence's meters and themes; Antonio Gouveia's corrections and annotations on each play; the life of Terence by Aelius Donatus; the Castigationes (textual emendations) of Pietro Bembo; and poetic tributes to Terence. This front matter was remarkably stable once it had been set by Scoto. In 1553, Bartolomeo Cesano rearranged it very slightly and, by employing a much smaller type face, managed to add a four-page index within the fourteen leaves of front matter. Giovanni Maria Bonelli took over Cesano's formatting in page-for-page and line-for-line reprints of this same front matter in 1561 and 1567; and Bonelli's heirs reprinted it again in 1570.

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Title pages from 1545 to the end of the century also stick closely to pattern typographically, although, since these are advertisements, the wording varies somewhat. In 1553, for example, Cesano trumpeted all the things he borrowed from earlier editions right on the title page: commentaries by four big names (Donatus, Cenomanni, Marsi, and Calfurnio); prefatory material by Desiderius Erasmus, summaries and notes in text by Phillip Melancthon, Antonio Gouveia, Bartholomaeus Latomus, Heinrich Glareanus, and Joannes Rivius; and marginal variants to the traditional text following the prestigious editions of Aldus and Gryphius. This puffery was a variant of Scoto's 1545 table of contents; but where Scoto had placed the adverts on the verso of the title page, presumably to preserve the classical restraint of his title, Cesano opted for more up-front advertising and a more crowded title page.

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After they appeared on the Index of Prohibited Books in the fifteen fifties, the names of Erasmus and Melanchthon were often cancelled by hand, both on the title pages and also inside the books. (64) But the useful classroom materials they had composed were left intact. A close reprint of the title and front matter of Cesano's edition was that of Bonelli in 1561. This contained all the advertising prose of Cesano with three significant changes. The contributions of Erasmus and Melancthon, though found in their assigned places inside the book, do not appear in the list on the title page and are unattributed in the text -- a direct typographic imitation of the manual censorship we can witness in surviving copies of the earlier editions. A third change is less easily explained. Cesano had taken over Scoto's 1545 wording to advertise the presence of important marginal variants from Aldine and Gryphius editions. Bonelli uses the same wording but fails to name the sources. Apparently the association of these materials with the great Venetian and Lyonese presses of the past seemed like good advertising to Cesano but not to Bonelli.

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The Scoto-Cesano-Bonelli model influenced other Venetian printers as well, though others felt able to depart from the pattern to some degree. Perhaps in reaction to the slavish copies of his earlier Terence made by Cesano and Bonelli, Girolamo Scoto issued a new Terence in 1569 that compressed the front matter into ten leaves. He was really reprinting his own 1545 edition, however, and not that of his rivals on the market, and so he did not include their indexes. He discreetly omitted all explicit mention of Erasmus and Melancthon, although he included their invaluable introductory material and comments. To emphasize the supposed novelty of his edition, moreover, he redesigned the title page, abandoning the chaste classicism of his 1545 title. He framed the author's name in a cartouche made up of printer's flowers and added other decorative elements; and he put the entire contents on the title page by way of advertisement. Eleven years later Giovanni Griffio the Younger issued yet another new folio Terence (1580b) which combined elements from the Cesano-Bonelli model and that of the 1569 Scoto. The title page listed all the contents (pace Erasmus and Melancthon who were again present but unnamed) and strengthened the design of the title page with extremely large type (at over 36 point) for the author's name and a bold roman (about 20 point) for the imprint.

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NOTE

\n","excerpt":"Although the choices of text and editor continued to expand in the last half of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, the Italian market remained highly traditional in terms of format and presentation. Octavos like those of Griffio and the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/114","title":"1.14 Teachers' Editions, Mid-Century and Beyond","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Some few critics influenced by evangelical reformers were more willing to criticize educational institutions on moral grounds. The most eloquent and direct criticisms to come down to us were penned by the humanist Aonio Paleario (1503-1570). Not coincidentally, Paleario was tried by the Inquisition. The charge against him was heresy, because he espoused several Protestant doctrines on matters of grace and free-will. But he was also a powerful critic of the church's educational practices. Paleario effected some reforms as superintendent of schools in Lucca in the fifteen forties and proposed even more sweeping ones in public orations during the fifties. (72) In 1557, Paleario's most important educational work appeared in Milan, The Grammarian, or Rather, The False Conduct of Schools. He was under warrant by the Inquisition when it was reprinted in Venice in 1567, along with a second work, a miscellany of essays on education that included a textbook-like anthology of grammatical rules, Ideas for Learning Latin Grammar Together with the Usage of Cicero. It is likely that his publishers sent these uncontroversial works to print in 1567 in the hope of saving Paleario's reputation (and his life). In the event he was executed in 1570.

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Like Bossi before him and Rubini and Pescetti afterwards but more radically than any of these others, Paleario's principal theme was that moral, linguistic, and scientific education should be an integrated whole. Teachers must learn to combine the science of things with the study of expressive means. The best model was Cicero, in whose political and philosophical writings Paleario saw an integrative power worth emulating. This was more than a humanist commonplace, for in Paleario's mind the political realities of sixteenth-century Italy included the corruption of the institutional church. The commonplace, then, had radical consequences institutionally and theologically. It was also radical when applied to the teaching of Latin. Bad Latin, Paleario insisted, results when it is studied merely instrumentally, for its own sake or as a tool. Latin will only be attractive to students and can only be beautiful when it is studied with immediate and constant reference to moral content and investigative contexts. (73) Like many earlier humanists, Paleario held that when rhetoric, science, and morality are one, language has the power to reform the individual and society. (74) This approach ran directly counter to the practices embodied in Alvares' textbook. The Jesuits also aimed at reforming society, but they hoped to do so with a high-powered, instrumentalizing, professional program of study. They separated off Latin as a discipline of total language mastery and taught other subjects in other courses in the Jesuit colleges. Their students, they thought, would become the leaders of a Roman Church reformed from the top down. Paleario's ideal students, like those of many other humanist pedagogues, were meant to be leaders of a Christian society renewed from the bottom up. No surprise, then, that Lucca, the city most profoundly influenced by Paleario's reform ideals, also resisted the establishment of a Jesuit college. (75)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Some few critics influenced by evangelical reformers were more willing to criticize educational institutions on moral grounds. The most eloquent and direct criticisms to come down to us were penned by the humanist Aonio Paleario (1503-1570). Not…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/515","title":"5.15 A Radical Reformer","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

By the end of the sixteenth century, after only twenty five years in use, the grammar textbook of Manuel Alvares had become a symbol of the Jesuit educational system. It was a monument, but not an unchallenged one. Critics variously complained about content, offered different teaching methods, or presented similar material with alternative design strategies. Others attempted to indict the Jesuit order and its highly successful pedagogy. (82) No surprise, then, that Alvares' grammar had a long and controversial afterlife. Conforming to the prescriptions of the 1599 Ratio Studiorum, the Jesuits continued to teach it until modern times. Editions for student use under their direct patronage appeared until the end of the nineteenth century.

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Printed in Budapest for Croatian students, 1817 (click to enlarge - 719 KB JPEG image)
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Meanwhile, Alvares was translated into thirteen languages and adapted by teachers inside and outside the order for students in England, Mexico, Peru, Slovenia, Poland, the Philippines, Hungary and Japan. In the eighteenth century, grammarians composed several books intended as substitutes for Alvares, but most of them actually reproduced the structure and methods of the Portuguese Jesuit. (83) A partial edition of Book Three, narrowly concerned with drilling students in prosody, had a separate afterlife from the late seventeenth century onwards, especially in Spain. But this drilling book was also published at London in 1707, 1730 and 1735, at Antwerp in 1729, at New York in 1805, and at the Jesuits' Georgetown University in 1831. The Georgetown Jesuits published a student edition of the larger grammar as late as 1895.

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In 1859, Alvares's full, scholarly grammar received a handsome edition at Paris, not as a Renaissance text but as a modern reference book for classroom teachers, ostensibly at least reproducing the function of the original teacher's editions of the fifteen seventies. Few textbooks of any age have lasted so long and in such varied form without being relegated to merely antiquarian interest. By the mid-nineteenth century, of course, the whole meaning of Latin grammar study had changed. The Latin course was a battlement from which educational conservatives in many countries defended the classical heritage. A comprehensive, sternly classicizing grammar was a useful tool in the defense of written Latin as a symbol of a culture that claimed to be the continuing synthesis of two millennia of wisdom. (84) Alvares's own goal and that of several generations of humanist grammarians before him had been entirely different -- to recapture classical usage and strip away the perceived falsehoods of the dark millenium between the ancient world and their own. This task they had largely accomplished. Alvares's textbooks were the fullest realization of the humanists' goal, at once rigorously systematic and exclusively classicizing. But they were also denuded of overt Christian evangelical impulses. Jesuit grammar was universalizing and intrumentalizing. It had an ideological meaning as part of triumphant Roman Catholicism in the missions and the defense of strict orthodoxy at home; but it was also useful as a basic tool for anyone who needed or wanted to employ Latin. Putting this humble sixteenth-century tool to the modern conservative use of defending Western culture was a betrayal of its own author's clear notions about the history and meaning of the Latin language.

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\n","excerpt":"By the end of the sixteenth century, after only twenty five years in use, the grammar textbook of Manuel Alvares had become a symbol of the Jesuit educational system. It was a monument, but not an unchallenged one. Critics variously complained about…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/517","title":"5.17 A Long Afterlife","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Humanist conservatives and religious reformers were not the only critics of the Jesuits, nor did conservatives monopolize the marketing of alternative textbooks. The end of the sixteenth century was an age of experimentation both in printing and in pedagogy, and there were plenty of innovators who had concrete, practical contributions to try out on the textbook market. Some had no broad reformist ambitions but were simply unwilling to suffer the continuing dominance of traditional pedagogy. An earlier chapter described the reform of Latin pedagogy proposed by Francesco Priscianese in 1540. In Priscianese's textbooks the old habit of teaching Latin only in Latin was abandoned for a more pragmatic use of Tuscan to describe and drill Latin grammatical concepts. As part of his more radical reforms, Aonio Paleario took up this theme in the fifteen sixties; and Orlando Pescetti did so again in the nineties. They all insisted that both Latin and vernacular language mastery would be improved by this technique.

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Still other authors and publishers experimented with the physical design of textbooks intended to make pedagogy more flexible and less dependent on rote memory. As in the case of Moirano's version of Bossi, there is no explicit critique of the Jesuit program in these books, but they were clearly offered as alternatives to the triumphant march of Alvares's grammar. And they were marketed locally, in the fashion of fifteenth-or early sixteenth-century textbooks. One of the most radical authors in integrating pedagogy and design was Giovanni Battista Tebaldi (1535-1608) whose Grammaticae Institutiones appeared in Brescia in 1590 as a slim 72-page booklet. It is a basic treatment of noun and verb morphology, intended to replace the Donat. Tebaldi also described a second book on syntax that may never have appeared. (76) Tebaldi claimed in his preface that he had worked as a private Latin tutor; he seems to have been proposing his textbook for that teaching situation, not for a school open to large numbers of students. Both the title page and preface explained that Tebaldi excerpted grammatical teachings from many books, choosing only what seemed to him most valuable for a basic understanding of the subject. The result was largely a paradigm book in which the author and printers made good use of several styles and sizes of type, graduated headings, and generous white space to frame and clarify the content. It is clear, moreover, that Tebaldi himself had a hand in the design. He said his chapters will vary in length, depending on what he felt the subject required; and he marked his text for graded study on the assumption that it could be used with students of different ages and different levels of experience. Although he assumed students would be set to memorizing rules, he also included material, clearly marked with a dagger (\" ) that should not be committed to memory and which should, indeed, be omitted entirely in a first review of the subject with younger students. (77)

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Other experiments in design anticipated the highly analytical and hierarchical manuals printed in the seventeenth century. As early as 1581 at Venice, the printer Giorgio Angelieri offered an extensive Latin grammar which was almost surely intended to rival the comparable, comprehensive grammar of Alvares, then still fairly new on the market. Angelieri employed a variety of design elements to make his closely set pages of small type more readable and easier to follow than the cluttered Libri tres of Alvares There are paradigms in columns, points of doctrine numbered in the margins, and chapters outlined with brackets and sub-brackets. As Tebaldi would insist his printers do a decade later in Brescia, Angelieri made good use of white space to ensure the legibility of his tiny types.

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This Angelieri grammar is a bit of a mystery. I have found only a single fragmentary copy and the compiler listed on the title page, Richardus Hesius Amorfortius (1547-1631), was a Dutchman studying in Italy who seven years later became a Jesuit. Like the later grammar of Tebaldi, this one explicitly claims on its title page to be a compilation of the best bits from earlier textbooks, \"collected, authored, emended, and set in order\" by the young and unknown \"Richard Hees of Amersfort.\" It is hard to imagine that his slender credentials would have lent any particular authority to the book on the Venetian market, but the claim may have been a sort of anti-Alvares marketing. The Jesuits of the Collegio Romano were presenting their new single-author grammar as authoritative because of the singular learning of the Portuguese school master. Angelieri may have accepted the anthology from (or assigned the compiling work to) the young Hesius by way of spiting the concerted publicity campaign on behalf of the official, single-author Jesuit grammar. In any case, the advanced design of the book must have been a deliberate attempt to improve on that of the Venetian editions of Alvares. In the end, Hesius was an ironic choice for a rival to Alvares since what little we know of his later career suggests that he subsequently spent forty years teaching Alvares's grammar in Jesuit colleges at Brescia, Bologna, and Piacenza. (78)

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As in other fields of study, the late sixteenth century also saw many books ostensibly marketed for self-study of Latin. We have already seen that the proverb collection of Kaspar Schoppe fell into this category. (79) Schoppe was one of the Jesuits' sharpest critics in political and theological forums. His works on pedagogy also took direct aim at Jesuit educational methods. Schoppe was a talented marketer of his own textbooks, but his anti-Jesuit feeling was not mere marketing. When he criticized Alvares for nearly insane elaboration of the grammar textbook, he was also offering a broader critique of the Jesuit political and missionary program. (80)

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Self-study books typically contained extravagant claims on the part of their authors about how fast and easy it was to learn with their \"new\" methods. A good example is the grammar proposed by the Franciscan Bonaventura Buratto at Milan in 1608. The title page informs us that the book \"contains the foundation of all [Latin] grammar in a new order and with facility for memorization.\" There are 368 pages of very full and clearly organized information, arranged on highly diagrammatic pages. Buratto offered a graded-teaching pattern, and though he claimed the book was for self-study, it could as easily serve as a reference grammar for those who had already studied Latin. (81) Interestingly, the printer was Pandolfo Malatesta, who published the nostalgically conservative grammar of Giovanni Alberto Bossi in these same early years of the seventeenth century. Malatesta was the founder of a printing dynasty that would last into the eighteenth century at Milan. His willingness to offer textbooks in such radically different styles is testament both to his marketing ambitions and also to the variety of non-Jesuit or anti-Jesuit possibilities in the educational marketplace.

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\n","excerpt":"Humanist conservatives and religious reformers were not the only critics of the Jesuits, nor did conservatives monopolize the marketing of alternative textbooks. The end of the sixteenth century was an age of experimentation both in printing and in…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/516","title":"5.16 Progressive Alternatives","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Structurally, Mancinelli's three technical commentaries are highly dissimilar. The commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herennium is unremarkable in form. It proceeds by lemmata, short phrases from the base text, like most commentaries derived from classroom teaching (and like Mancinelli's Horace and Virgil commentaries). As such it takes the base text as authoritative with no attempt to argue with the author. Corrections are offered to the received manuscript tradition but not to the authoritative doctrine. Mancinelli, after all, supposed that this was a genuine work of Cicero that embodied the very Latin it was the aim of the humanists to recreate.

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The two works intended to make Valla's lengthy Elegantiae Linguae Latinae useful in the classroom are quite different from the Cicero. It was not entirely original for Mancinelli to attempt to make the unwieldy Elegantiae more approachable by intermediate students of Latin. Indeed, epitomes and compendia of large works were common in all fields of knowledge in the late fifteenth century, made popular by the potential of printing to put copies into many hands. In the earliest years of Italian printing Bonus Accursius created a Compendium of Valla's teaching, roughly following the order of the Elegantiae but organizing the material more systematically, in the manner of a comprehensive introductory grammar. A similar approach was taken by Aurelio Bienato (d.1496), who had known Valla at Naples, and who dedicated his Epithoma to a young student of his own. (54) Mancinelli's approach was more radical. He set our to digest what is useful from Valla in a completely different format. The material that Valla presented by grammatical subject Mancinelli rearranged into short alphabetical entries, in a sort of authorized vocabulary. Completely rearranging the material in this way implied to Mancinelli's students that Valla's observations were of enduring value, but that they needed repackaging to be useful as a classroom tool.

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When Erasmus published his own Epitome of Valla's Elegantiae he criticized Mancinelli's approach. Erasmus found the compilation of alphabetical vocabularies for single authors like Valla ridiculous, and he mocked the apparent visual order of dictionary-style printing. He preferred to present his own Epitome as merely a simplification of Valla's rich treasury, giving the substance of Valla's arguments with fewer examples and less detail. (55)

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In fact, there are many difficulties with using Mancinelli's Epitome. To take an example Erasmus specifically mentioned, Mancinelli gave a substantial article for the conjunction ut, but no discussion at all for its near synonyms. Valla's careful distinctions between similar words get lost entirely. Elsewhere, Mancinelli cross-referenced from the Epitome to the Lima, but since this latter work is not alphabetical, the reader must search out the reference using the printed indexing notes in the margins. Mancinelli clearly intended these marginal notes to be there, but not all readers used them and some later printers omitted them so that the cross-references in the Epitome turned out to be useless.

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In the Lima in Vallam Mancinelli transformed the base text even more, as its audacious title tells us he will have done. A lima is a polishing file, and the phrase in Vallam means that the polishing is \"of Valla,\" but also that the commentator's refinements will be worked \"on Valla\" or even \"against\" him. The format in the printed editions is clear evidence that Mancinelli was intent on improving Valla's text. Mancinelli remarked only a few passages in each of the six books of the Elegantiae, proceeding in order as any commentary would. Recognizing that there were already in 1491 many editions of Valla available, Mancinelli cited the source text not by page but with Valla's first name, \"Laurentius,\" followed by a book and chapter number, all abbreviated and centered on a single line, for example, Lau.lib.vi.c.i. (\"Laurentius, book six, chapter one\"). The exact words of Valla were then reported on the following line or lines. Mancinelli's Valla speaks in lemmata, but he is quoted in full syntactical units, so he has his own voice. On the next line of each entry there followed Mancinelli's surname and a titulus number, a classicizing term for a unit or section number. Again, the information was centered. These numbers are consecutive throughout the entire commentary, so the heading corresponding to the above lemma from Valla is Man.Tit.lxv. (\"Mancinelli, unit sixty five\"). The next article is Laur.l.vi.c.xv (\"book six, chapter fifteen\"), and the corresponding comment is Man.Tit.lxvi (\"unit sixty six\").

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What is striking about this arrangement is that, although it preserved the notion of a commentary on an authoritative text by following Valla's order, it also privileged Mancinelli's independent work by giving his remarks their own, consecutive numbering. Valla's text, then, has authority by reason of his reputation for learning. Mancinelli's thoughts on Valla have an exactly parallel authority. Reflecting on a contemporary work of scholarship, Mancinelli says, is equally original scholarship. The Elegantiae were treated as requiring commentary not because the work was difficult or classical, but just because, as a printed text, it was so widespread and so frequently accepted uncritically that it needed polishing up and refining in the light of fifty years of additional humanist philology. Mancinelli's preface, then, was not only an observation on the state of the field, it also made two other claims, that he had mastered matters of Latinity that escaped even the great Valla, and that the text of Valla to be found in printed editions was incomplete, maybe even corrupt.

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Perhaps to reinforce this latter point, Mancinelli followed a numbering of Valla's text that was typical of early Roman and Milanese editions of the Elegantiae but not of the more recent and more numerous Venetian ones. Starting in 1476, Venetian editors typically numbered Valla's chapters with consecutive numbers through all six books. Mancinelli followed the practice of the first Roman edition (and several others) in numbering the chapters anew from the start of each book. (56)

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The handsome format of the Lima emphasized Mancinelli's authority. It is also rather prodigal of space because it uses a full line for the heading of each brief chapter, typically six or eight per quarto page. Whether this format, reminiscent as it is of manuscript practice, was Mancinelli's idea or the printer's we cannot tell, but it is interesting that it persists into successive editions despite the fact that it is relatively wasteful. In 1500 and again in 1503, Bartolomeo Zani published a new edition of Valla and added the Lima as an appendix. He transferred to the folio page the same spacious headings found in the early quarto editions, with the result that the brief Lima occupied fully sixteen folio pages. (57) In 1519 Rusconi would print the Lima in quarto, returning to the original spacious system of centered chapter heads.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Structurally, Mancinelli's three technical commentaries are highly dissimilar. The commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herennium is unremarkable in form. It proceeds by lemmata, short phrases from the base text, like most commentaries derived from…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/311","title":"3.11 Presenting Cicero, Fixing Lorenzo Valla","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Luca Pacioli imagined by a woodcut artist, 1494
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Latin education dominated the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance; but the future of educational publishing was in producing entirely new textbooks for teaching students who would learn to read only their native, vernacular language. This chapter considers these new reading, writing, and arithmetic books, and then discusses How-To books that provided instruction in practical disciplines.

","excerpt":"Latin education dominated the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance; but the future of educational publishing was in producing entirely new textbooks for teaching students who would learn to read only their native, vernacular language. This chapter…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/600","title":"6.00 CHAPTER SIX: Vernacular Literacy, Commercial Education, and How To Do Stuff","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Mancinelli's sojourn in the North is one of the least well documented periods of his life. From the time he left Rome in 1491 onward, the publication of his works becomes so frequent that we must really conceive of his life as a publishing career rather than a teaching one. An early example of how this is so is that the Spica and the Versilogus, originally printed in Rome in combination with other works, were published together in Venice in 1492 and remain paired in many later editions of Mancinelli's works. The value of the combination is not obvious at first, for Spica is a set of verse rules for the noun and verb inflectional paradigms, while the Versilogus contains rules for poetry. The logic of the combination must be sought in the market for textbooks. Both subjects were taught at about the same point in the organized curriculum, shortly after the most elementary presentations of Latin grammar in the Donatus and its accompanying reading texts. So, just about the time the students were ready for a second textbook, they would need both a text for drilling inflections and one to introduce the study of verse forms. \"Spica & Versilogus,\" as it came to be marketed, was just the ticket. (43)

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While in Venice Mancinelli wrote his most ambitious and influential technical works, namely, a set of notes on Lorenzo Valla's Elegantiae linguae latinae, a digest of that work, and a commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herennium. These three works were published together as a small manual of philology and rhetoric in the spring of 1494 and had a considerable reputation in this form. They are fully scholarly works, but Mancinelli included them in lists of his schoolbooks, and indeed they had the function of making simpler two classic texts on Latin grammar and rhetoric, one a humanist masterpiece, the other a late Roman one. He probably had Latin students at a fairly advanced level in mind, though surely also with an eye to his growing reputation as a scholar. (44) Both Valla' s works and the Ad Herennium were at the center of a controversy over Ciceronianism at Venice at this date. (45) The Ad Herennium commentary never became a standard; but the Valla commentary was later included in large, scholarly editions of the base text, Valla's Elegantiae, together with commentaries by other humanists.

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All three of these \"Venetian\" works have rather defensive trappings in the form they have come down to us, and we may wonder if this does not reflect the highly competitive world of Venetian publishing. The commentary on the Rhetorica ad Herennium is prefaced by the longest of Mancinelli's dedication letters. The letter, named separately on the title page, defends the Ad Herennium as a genuine work of Cicero's, a matter that was very much on the mind of Venetian humanists in the period and continued to be debated for some years into the sixteenth century. (46) The two guides to Valla, entitled Epitome Elegantiorum and Lima in Vallam, have prefaces that are even more defensive, probably based on the hard experience of their publishing.

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The Lima (the title means \"polishing file\") is a set of notes correcting and expanding specific points in Valla's Elegantiae. (47) It first appeared in the form of an addendum to the full-dress edition of Valla published by Filippo Pincio, the printer of the Venetian reprint Pomponio Leto's successful edition of Sallust. (48) By mid-March of 1493, Mancinelli had completed the second work, the Epitome, and in the spring of the following year these two works appeared together with the Ad Herennium commentary (completed in November 1493) in a small, separate volume. This April 1494 printing is the first edition of the Epitome and the Cicero commentary but it is described as the \"second edition\" of the Lima, because that work had first appeared in the Valla edition.

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In the preface to the Epitome, Mancinelli responded to criticisms of his daring to correct the great Valla. He did not address a specific patron but entitled his preface \"Antonio Mancinelli to the sons of his friends,\" a strategy that claimed a circle of students and friends but did not risk attaching the anticipated criticisms of the work to any one dedicatee. As a reply to criticism, moreover, the preface was remarkably unsubstantial. Its rhetorical strategy was the most extreme form of one that Mancinelli used elsewhere. He asked a challenging question, why correct Valla, answered it in part, but then shifted the argument to a different plane altogether, justifying his text in terms of the hard work and good intentions that went into it. This was not just bad logic; it was a deliberate strategy of deflection. Unlike the Donatus and Virgil prefaces, which described critics made stubborn by their own uncritical educations, or which refuted critics point by point, Mancinelli simply deflected criticism of his work on Valla by defending his motives in recasting Valla for a different audience. (49)

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The second edition of the Lima also has no personal dedication, a striking fact, because these two works on Valla are almost alone of Mancinelli's works in appearing without dedications to patrons or friends. Under the simple rubric, \"Antonio Mancinelli to the Reader,\" he invoked Valla's own method of studying ancient sources to determine correct grammatical practice. Mancinelli borrowed the title and fame of Valla's work but claimed that it can be made more useful with additions and corrections. Mancinelli wanted to be what one later commentator called him, a Latin observator, that is, a lexicographer who, like Valla, worked by selecting vocabulary from the best ancient authors. Valla, Mancinelli added, wrote about good usage and not about abuses, and sometimes Valla himself added something when he discovered new data. Apparently some of Valla's defenders had complained that when Mancinelli adduced additional passages to some of Valla's points he was implying that Valla had not read the works in question. There are traces of this critique within the commentary too. Mancinelli's sin, it seems, was that he would stack up his own reading list against Valla's. (50)

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An additional clue to Mancinelli's state of mind in his final months of teaching in Venice comes from another volume printed by Filippo Pincio in April 1493. The title page announced two works, the Orthography of Giovanni Tortelli, and a Lima on Tortelli by Antonio Mancinelli. (51) The editor, Pirro Pincio (otherwise unknown, perhaps the printer's brother), mentioned in his preface that he consulted with Mancinelli. Pincio praised Mancinelli's erudition in all matters of Latin philology, remarking especially his commentaries on Virgil and Juvenal. Given the title page and this preface, we would expect the main text to be followed by a set of corrections and additions to Tortelli's work, especially since the orthography of Tortelli was a frequently commented and sometimes problematic text. (52) But strangely, in the place where one would expect Mancinelli's contribution, there is a different, older work on orthography by Giorgio Valla. On the verso of an otherwise blank leaf at the back of the book -- in effect, the back cover -- we find a remarkable printer's note, which only partly explains the curious make-up of the book:

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Although on the front page of this work there is the title of a Lima by Antonio Mancinelli (which there was no chance to remove because we were already printing), we have omitted that work and in its place have printed the tract on orthography by Giorgio Valla. (53)

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While Mancinelli's Epitome of Lorenzo Valla was in preparation, then, and just a month or so after his controversial Lima in Vallam had appeared (and while a second printing of his Virgil commentary was also in press), the decision was made not to print a second lima on another widely esteemed contemporary grammarian. In fact, no set of corrections to Tortelli by Mancinelli ever appeared. We cannot know the motives of the author or printer, but the fates of the two limae were surely linked. Toward the end of his stay in Venice, Mancinelli must have been over-busy or feeling embattled or both.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Mancinelli's sojourn in the North is one of the least well documented periods of his life. From the time he left Rome in 1491 onward, the publication of his works becomes so frequent that we must really conceive of his life as a publishing career…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/310","title":"3.10 In the Capital of Printing","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Paul F. Grendler's 1989 overview of education in Renaissance Italy includes an important chapter with the title \"Girls and Working-Class Boys in School.\" (1) This way of categorizing students fits the usage of the early sixteenth century perfectly. Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (ca. 1465?-1528?), for example, on the title page of a 1524 primer described his audience as \"those who know nothing \"“ young, old, and women.\" A decade earlier, Gian Alberto Bossi had praised a bequest for a grammar school for poor boys by pointing out that it would make the unlikely possible, \"The poor boy will learn as if he were a rich one.\" (2) These classifications were not condescending, just matter-of-fact, since entire social classes (and the vast majority of women) were only rarely given the opportunity to learn to read and write. Even if they achieved literacy, individuals in these groups were almost entirely excluded from the Latinate sort of education for which most early textbooks were designed. Educational (and publishing) categories were largely determined by gender and by class, though not in a symmetrical way. (3) Women and working class men were not completely barred from education, but they had few opportunities to go far in school. In the sixteenth century, vernacular textbook authors would come to appeal directly to such readers.

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Readers and listeners (click to enlarge - 311 KB jpeg image)
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Tagliente elaborated on the kinds of non-Latin learners in a preface. First, he addressed his \"Most wise readers and dearest listeners,\" in recognition that some in his audience could read with facility while others could not. Then he claimed that he intended with this book to make it possible for anyone who knew how to read to teach anyone else who could not (\"even women\" he added: etiam le donne). Moreover, his book would be useful for self-study by \"all those who know the beginnings but do not yet read well.\" (4) Tagliente not only divided the social world of readers vertically among those who read Latin and those who did not, but he also delineated several categories among non-Latin readers, not all of them equivalent to differences in social status. Vernacular-only readers could be female or male (but not professional men). They could be looking to master simple reading skills or to achieve some level of facility in reading. They may or may not also have aspired to be able to write. This last category, furthermore, included some seeking to write in an elementary way, others whose ambitions were to facility, and even men (and more rarely, women) who aspired to write for a living, as scribes. (5)

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It is also clear that Tagliente was not composing a textbook in the sense of a book intended for use in a school. The schooling he imagined involved a parent teaching a child or, as he repeatedly added, a literate adult teaching an illiterate friend. The logic of this, of course, was that relatively few non-Latin schools existed. Not surprisingly, therefore, there were few vernacular textbooks before the invention of printing. Such texts as came to exist were often self-help or how-to manuals. This chapter will concern a broad range of non-Latin instructional books. It does not attempt to be comprehensive, merely to give some examples of the variety of publishing for learners outside the elitist, establishmentarian Latin schools.

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Tagliente's complex understanding of the public for his textbooks was possible only because he stood at the end of a long philological achievement, the humanist invention of a carefully periodized history of Latin and its descendant languages. The humanists had discovered that language was socially determined. They understood that languages were the products of speech communities that could be large or local and that varied from social class to social class. (6) An author, then, might well conceive a specific public for a given book, but once it was offered on the open market, its audience could vary greatly. Once a text was annotated, commented upon, translated, or reformatted it became a new work with a new audience. This understanding stood behind the successful marketing of Latin textbooks and it would become important to the development and marketing of learning tools in the vernaculars.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Paul F. Grendler's 1989 overview of education in Renaissance Italy includes an important chapter with the title \"Girls and Working-Class Boys in School.\" (1) This way of categorizing students fits the usage of the early sixteenth century perfectly…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/601","title":"6.01 Class and Gender, In School and Out","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Tagliente's mathematics textbooks were all co-authored since, by his own admission, he was not himself a specialist in the field. They were neither the first nor the best of the sort, but they are typical of the self-help or how-to genre, by contrast to advanced works, but also distinct from more comprehensive elementary math books. Tagliente co-authored his Showpiece for Arithmetic (Luminario de arithmetica) about 1525 with a reckoning teacher, Alvise Fontana, otherwise unknown except that he also collaborated with Giovanni Antonio's kinsman Girolamo. The Luminario is based on the most up-to-date academic treatise, *Summa de aritmetica *of Luca Pacioli (ca. 1445-1517). (12)

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A good index of whether any basic arithmetic was aiming at a non-expert audience or attempting to be more comprehensive is the degree to which its author simplified Pacioli's lengthy theoretical discussions. For the Luminario, Tagliente extracted just a few practical exercises on bookkeeping from Pacioli and offered them to merchants in strictly utilitarian form. He included only real-life examples of commercial problems. His title, Luminario, tells us from the start that Tagliente considered it a how-to book, with \"displays\" of useful information, in this case bookkeeping.

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Bibliographers rightly treat the Luminario as two different books with the same title. One concerned simple, single-entry bookkeeping for shopkeepers; and a second book dealt with double-entry and considered a greater variety of business situations. The two booklets, although separately issued and each with its own dedication, are similar in typography and were clearly intended to be part of a suite of small textbooks that began to appear in the mid-fifteen twenties under the Tagliente family name. The fact that they have the same title suggests that Tagliente considered them a single work in two parts. It is interesting, then, that his prefaces specifically directed the single-entry book to artisans and shopkeepers, while he addressed the slightly larger book on double-entry \"to our magnificent gentlemen and other merchants.\" For Tagliente, bookkeeping was a single subject that could have two different, if not entirely distinct audiences. (13)

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A wordy title page (click to enlarge - 611 KB jpeg image)
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One unusual aspect of Giovanni Antonio Tagliente's achievement was family collaboration. A second, highly successful mathematics textbook that bears the family name was authored by Girolamo Tagliente (dates unknown) who mentioned the help of his teacher and kinsman Giovanni Antonio. We may discern Giovanni Antonio's distinctive voice on the wordy title page. It starts with a descriptive, generic term, A Book on Commercial Maths..., and only six lines later gives the formal title, Universal Treasury. It is unclear how much else Giovanni Antonio contributed to the original form of this textbook, which first appeared in 1515, but he is generally regarded as its co-author. The book treats a few basics in highly summary form: simple arithmetic functions, money systems, the computation of interest, practical plane geometry, and international exchange rates. This Thesoro, though much more extensive and systematic than the Luminario, similarly avoided theory in favor of problem solving. A large part is taken up with multiplication tables, presumably for memorization, but also, given the pocket size of the book, for visual reference. It is hard to imagine a reader learning from the book entirely on his own. The treatment of multiplication \"by columns\" for example, provides several diagrams, including one in the form of a chalice and host, but does not explain the method, saying only that it will be clear from the diagrams. (14)

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A memory device for multiplication tables
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In 1525, no doubt as part of a program of developing small, pretty textbooks en suite that also produced the Luminario, the Libro maistrevole, and the famous Tagliente handwriting books, Girolamo revised and enlarged his Thesoro to make it conform more closely to the common reckoning-school curriculum. The preface to this Principles of Trade (Ragione di mercantia) acknowledged the help of Alvise Fontana who seems, therefore, to have been a mathematics consultant to the Tagliente family. The Ragione preserved the structure of the 1515 Thesoro but considered the basic math functions more thoroughly and offered better practical advice. In the multiplication section, for example, the Thesoro diagrams are used to represent eight methods of multiplying, but while the Thesoro had left it to the reader to figure out each method, the Ragione parsed each diagram with careful instructions. The Ragione also conformed closely to the mature design sensibility of Giovanni Antonio Tagliente. (15)

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The Ragione was apparently never reprinted, but the Thesoro in its original form received many editions. Only a few copies of any given printing survive, as is the case with most small commercial arithmetics. It is hard to tell how or if they competed with one another or with other books on the market. Still, it seems likely that books of the sort were produced in large numbers and that they had a long shelf-life in bookshops. One copy of the 1525 Ragione has the ownership mark of a velvet weaver who bought it, presumably new, in July of 1564. (16) Editions of the Thesoro continued to appear until 1586. The preface to a 1548 edition of the Thesoro from the presses of Giovanni Padovano seems to imply that the book had been off the Venice market for some time, but that assertion is hard to verify. Instead it was probably mere convention when the editor said of his copy text that, \"soiled and marred by numerous stains, it had passed through the hands of many students of the arithmetical art\" before he picked it up for reprinting. (17)

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Prologue addressed to citizens and artisans
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Padovano's editor also described the audience of commercial workers he envisioned, in a string of pieties more appropriate to the Venice of the Counter-Reformation than to the more secular-minded city that the Taglientes had inhabited:

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This book is offered to those thoughtful and modest youths, whom it will please to study it with diligence (all agitation put aside). Finding it corrected in many places and with several pertinent additions, and taking pleasure in its convenient usefulness, they will take care to give thanks to Jesus Christ, who has granted that they be able to work for the common benefit of good folk. (18)

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The Tagliente math books, like others of Tagliente's textbooks, were precisely calibrated to teach discrete skills at a basic level and to exercise students with a limited number of problems to solve. The authors did not pretend to cover an entire field, nor were their books designed for a specific school course. The treatments are highly incomplete even for the limited fields they addressed. It may be that Tagliente had in mind to simplify these skills to the point where how-to manuals could substitute for professional tuition. More likely still, he intended them as pocket-sized books of reference that would remind adults what they had learned in school. Whatever his intent, his pretty little booklets found a ready market.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Tagliente's mathematics textbooks were all co-authored since, by his own admission, he was not himself a specialist in the field. They were neither the first nor the best of the sort, but they are typical of the self-help or how-to genre, by contrast…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/603","title":"6.03 Commercial Skills","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In the course of the early sixteenth century, the growing availability of vernacular study texts in print tended to blur traditional genre distinctions. Latin textbooks, both before and for a century and more after the invention of printing, were designed to fit neatly into an existing Latin course that was much the same everywhere. The typical author of such a textbook was himself a teacher who wrote in the first instance for his own classroom. If he was proposing something innovative and wanted to sell his book widely, he would still work within established norms and label his book for a specific portion of the curriculum familiar to other teachers. In the first decades of printing, then, teachers were effectively in charge; they set the tone for what publishers produced. Latin textbooks followed teaching practice rather than leading it.

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Textbooks for aspiring merchants (click to enlarge - 444 KB jpeg image)
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Vernacular instructional books, on the other hand, had few precedents and no set style of presentation; they did not conform to a fixed curriculum. Their authors were virtually on their own. If they could find parallels in the Latin teaching tradition as guides, they could follow them. But vernacular authors were not beholden to an established corps of teachers. They had more freedom to develop new teaching methods, set the tone of their work to fit the temperament of the audience they envisioned, and even to invent new genres of textbook. One result of this fluid market is that many vernacular treatments of specific subjects read more like manuals for reference than instructional materials; it is often difficult to know how they were used. This interpretive problem is particularly acute in the case of books on technological or artisanal subjects since an elementary manual may have served to introduce a subject to interested individuals who never intended to master the art in question. (7)

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Language arts offer an example of this genre problem. The only possible manuscript-textbook precedent for elementary language study in Italian was the syllabary or \"Babuino,\" which may have existed in the early fifteenth century in the form of a handwritten classroom poster. The earliest surviving syllabary was printed in Venice or Treviso about 1478. Aldo Manuzio included a similar one in his Latin grammar of 1498, taking it over from the usage of vernacular classrooms. The first surviving copy clearly intended for Italian-language reading instruction dates from 1505. However, as Piero Lucchi has shown, syllabaries of the sort had been part of a vernacular, commercial arithmetic course (called abaco, English \"reckoning\") before printed versions appeared. The Babuino was a marginal phenomenon in Latin-school terms but it had a clear place in the reckoning curriculum. By contrast, the vernacular language-skills textbooks that came into print in the fifteen twenties were entirely new creations. They had no set place in the schools and so they addressed a great variety of learners in their potential market. (8)

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The authors of elementary mathematics textbooks had more models to contemplate but they too had to be inventive in creating print products. No full-dress arithmetic textbooks survive from before the age of printing, presumably because students in the commercial arithmetic schools did not possess them. They would instead have learned methods and rules by memory and by working out problems on slates or in paper notebooks. (9) Teachers may have had course books or outlines, but those materials do not survive. Still, we know some instructional texts existed because fragments of them can be found in merchants' notebooks. One of the earliest, a chapter on multiplying fractions copied about 1416, is specifically recommended as useful for merchants who may have forgotten the rules they learned in school. Printing would allow arithmetic students to repeat a pattern we have already seen in Latin classrooms. Not only would each pupil own his own book, but the mature merchant would also keep his textbook on hand to refresh his memory when out-of-the-ordinary computation needs arose. (10)

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While the publishers of Latin-school textbooks vied for a market of boys all educated more or less to the same pattern, publishers for vernacular-only students had a far less predictable audience. The vernacular textbooks these publishers put out concerned reading, writing, and arithmetic, especially commercial mathematics and record-keeping. At somewhat more advanced levels they offered works on geography, music, surveying, and other skills, some of which will occupy us later in sections 6.16 to 6.19. Perhaps just because the elementary guides in Italian did not follow an established school course, new manuals and textbooks did not appear in print in pedagogical order. Indeed, new forms did not appear at all in the first few decades of printing. Then, shortly before and after the turn of the sixteenth century, new vernacular textbooks came into print in exactly the reverse order from that of their pedagogical logic. Only the commercial mathematics books had real medieval precedents, and these appeared first in print in a form that suggests they exactly reproduce existing course materials. The first attested reckoning book in print, a substantial teacher's manual, dates from 1478. Commercial math books clearly intended to be put in the hands of students were becoming common by 1510 or so. The first printed handwriting manual appeared in 1514. And the first vernacular reading book to survive is the Teaching Book (Libro maistrevole) of Tagliente, cited in section 6.01. It was published in 1524.

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Calligraphic style (click to enlarge - 551 KB jpeg image)
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Giovanni Antonio Tagliente himself was a key figure in Italian textbook history; he authored early works in all three of these fields of study. Most of his textbooks had several revisions during his lifetime. Tagliente's books reflect his highly calligraphic sense of design. Some are among the prettiest textbooks of the period. They represent thoughtful attempts on the part of their author to capture a still ill-defined market. (11) The sections which follow on reading, writing, and arithmetic textbooks will each begin with a product from the pen of Tagliente and go on to discuss other examples.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In the course of the early sixteenth century, the growing availability of vernacular study texts in print tended to blur traditional genre distinctions. Latin textbooks, both before and for a century and more after the invention of printing, were…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/602","title":"6.02 Alternative Educations","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Tagliente's Luminario of 1525 had offered a brief introduction to bookkeeping based on the double-entry section of the Summa of Pacioli. Much more elaborate and more single-minded accounting textbooks were quickly produced, however, starting with the remarkable 1534 Double-Entry Ledger and Its Day-Book of Domenico Manzoni (dates unknown). Manzoni gave general and specialized rules for keeping a whole range of business ledgers, most of them derived from the bookkeeping section of Pacioli's Summa. Manzoni's most original contribution was that he illustrated the method with two, full-year specimen account books, first the daily account or day-book (giornale) and then the corresponding double-entry ledger (quaderno doppio). Double-entry, of course, was the pride of Venetian business culture, what Manzoni's title page advertises as the \"practice of Venice.\" (35) Little is known of Manzoni except what he tells us in his prefaces, and that is next to nothing in strictly biographical terms. He came from Oderzo on the Venetian mainland and he affected a certain aristocratic and philosophical stance, but his book is supremely practical. He apparently taught mathematics in a Venice school and he authored other textbooks. (36)

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Manzoni must have had good relations with his printer, Comin da Trino, for together they took considerable pains to make the specimen books (respectively forty and ninety-six pages in length) look realistic. Each has a mock-calligraphic title page that suggests how a merchant should open his blank ledger. The type in the body of the book is arranged in narrow columns to the left of each page to imitate the entry columns of the ledgers, and the empty spaces above and below entries are carefully filled with cancellation marks of the sort bookkeepers used to ensure that no false information was later supplied. The double-entry specimen reproduces the facing page format that all the bookkeeping teachers of the day recommended. Manzoni's precepts, like those of his principal source Pacioli, actually lagged some decades behind the current practice of the most sophisticated Venetian merchants. (37) This elaborate textbook, then, could have been intended in large part for an export market, to introduce the practices of the Adriatic metropolis to non-Venetians. Comin da Trino may have had the same market in mind for another bookkeeping manual with lengthy specimens, that of Alvise Casanova (dates unknown), published in 1558. Unlike Manzoni, Casanova does not seem to have been a schoolmaster. Instead he held several government accounting posts and practiced privately. Like Tagliente's Lucidario, Casanova's title boasted of the practical demonstrations on offer: A Most Bright Mirror in Which One May Observe Well Defined All the Types and Forms of Records That Should Be Kept in Business. (38)

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Venturoli’s Guide
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Dozens of bookkeeping manuals were produced more or less on the same principle as Manzoni's and Casanova's well into the eighteenth century. Not all of them were so elaborate, however, and most in fact dispensed with the idea of providing a lengthy (and repetitive) specimen account book. It was more usual to set out each rule simply and exemplify each kind of entry just once or twice. One such popularization from the end of our period is Giacomo Venturoli's Guide to Economics, or rather, Dialogue on Everyday Bookkeeping, published at Bologna in 1666 and reprinted at least three times up to 1717. Venturoli (dates unknown) was a priest who taught \"practical arithmetic\" in the catechism schools at Bologna. Later he authored a successful elementary textbook under the title A Brief Compendium of All the Rules of Arithmetic. (39) Venturoli's bookkeeping manual falls into the tradition of Tagliente and Manzoni, but he cast this textbook in the form of a dialogue between father and son. The dialogue was a popularizing literary device and definitely not an imitation of humanist dialogues. The father-son interaction reinforced the notion that bookkeeping was essential to good family life. The son has been studying arithmetic for some time and now his hard-nosed father wants him to recite what he has learned, starting with definitions and progressing step by step. The book is summary (there are only seventy three pages of text), but it covers a fair amount, including many kinds of computations that can be accomplished using the data account books embody. The father repeatedly asks for general rules and then poses related problems to be solved. At the end he asks what kind of examinations the bookkeeping master administers, and his son replies with a very thorough list that is in effect the outline of a bookkeeping course.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Tagliente's Luminario of 1525 had offered a brief introduction to bookkeeping based on the double-entry section of the Summa of Pacioli. Much more elaborate and more single-minded accounting textbooks were quickly produced, however, starting with the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/606","title":"6.06 Bookkeeping Textbooks","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Pacioli’s encyclopedic work, 1494
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Historians have made much of the sophistication of Pacioli's 600-page treatise, of his early, thoroughgoing utilization of Hindu-Arabic numerals, and of his numerous forms of visualizing mathematical functions. His Summa de arithmetica was indeed well ahead of its time and remained the single most influential academic arithmetic for many decades. Pacioli's Summa, however, had only two editions in the early modern period, and the book was expensive. It was studied by professional mathematicians. (27) The merchants' sons who made up the largest part of the audience for math textbooks learned their considerable computing skills from much more practical and down-to-earth textbooks. As we have seen, Tagliente's Luminario of 1525 concentrated single-mindedly on bookkeeping, while Borghi's 1484 Libro de abacho attempted to ground merchant practice in a somewhat broader study of arithmetic based on the traditional abaco school course. An early printed imitation of Borghi was Calandri's 1491 De arithmetica, but books of this type continued to be produced in manuscript too, especially at Florence. (28) Books in both these general formats persisted well into the seventeenth century and offered practical courses increasingly divorced from pure arithmetic, to say nothing of higher mathematics.

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A turning point came in the fifteen thirties, when the market matured to the degree that various elementary textbooks competed directly with each other. At just this period, moreover, writers for the elementary book market also began to feel the broader impulse to write in standard Tuscan. (29) The elaborate introduction to Giovanni Sfortunati's 1534 New Beacon, a Book of Arithmetic pointed to these new linguistic and market conditions. Sfortunati (b. ca. 1500) introduced himself as a Sienese schoolmaster who had taught arithmetic all over Italy and Sicily. He was a native speaker of Tuscan, then, but one with broad experience of other Italian students. This self-advertisement quickly turned into a claim that he was uniquely qualified to review the older arithmetic books on the market by way of recommending his own. He praised Luca Pacioli's Summa but noted that it contained too much that was not useful for merchants. Similarly Filippo Calandri's book was very learned but did not explain elementary notions well enough to be truly useful for beginners. Sfortunati then turned to Borghi's Libro de abacho. Fifty years old and well established in the market, Borghi's manual was the principal competition for any new elementary arithmetic book in 1534. Sfortunati claimed to have read it many times, implying perhaps that he had been constrained to teach from it. He rejected it because it was written in rough Venetian dialect and described Venetian business practices that were of little use to Tuscans or other Italians. (30) Despite his claims, however, Sfortunati's arithmetic book was also highly traditional. There was little to differentiate it from Borghi's treatment except his good Tuscan. His New Beacon was just old-fashioned abaco with new advertising.

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Selling parents on modern math (click to enlarge - 645 KB jpeg image)
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Pietro Cataneo (d. ca. 1569) presented a more progressive approach in his 1546 Practice of the Two Basic Mathematics. Cataneo went on to be an architectural writer but this was his first work to see print, apparently self-published in three editions. (31) Cataneo arranged his entire course to address the commercial prejudices of the market. He took some forty eight pages for an outline of essential arithmetic notions and then went on to discuss merchant situations almost exclusively. These occupy an additional hundred pages.

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Cataneo’s Practice, 1559 edition
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The transition between the two parts came in the form of a long chapter on proportional computation, in which Cataneo invited the reader to think of mathematics as a better form of merchant common sense. He had his students start from real-life situations, but they were to abstract each problem into a quasi-algebraic proposition with a single unknown term clearly situated in a mathematical formula susceptible to computation. This sort of reasoning, he said, is essential to finding \"a solution to commercial accounts\" (solutione alle ragioni mercatorie).

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Profit and loss problems (click to enlarge - 710 KB jpeg image)
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He proceeded to demonstrate the method with problems of increasing complexity concerning profit and loss, business partnerships, foreign exchange, barter, simple and compound interest, and rent contracts. (32) Before turning to geometry, Cataneo gave a substantial section of problems to be solved by estimation, the so-called \"rule of Cathay, or false positioning.\" (33) Among the practical problems in this section he also included a few mathematical amusements.

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Theory to practice, measuring land (click to enlarge - 774 KB jpeg image)
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The book concluded with geometry problems, all carefully attached to real-life situations like dividing parcels of land or computing weights and measures. With Cataneo we have arrived at a mathematics textbook that looks decidedly modern. It exercised the student thoroughly in theory but sold the idea of such instruction on the basis of its utility in the real world. Books on this model would serve math teachers and their target audience -- parents, of course -- well into the twentieth century. (34)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Historians have made much of the sophistication of Pacioli's 600-page treatise, of his early, thoroughgoing utilization of Hindu-Arabic numerals, and of his numerous forms of visualizing mathematical functions. His Summa de arithmetica was indeed…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/605","title":"6.05 Math for the Future","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Far more sophisticated textbooks on mathematics than the Tagliente family produced were available in print throughout the long sixteenth century. Some authors concerned themselves exclusively with bookkeeping practice. Others aimed at a more systematic arithmetic course. At the upper end, there were also mathematics-theory treatises, which will not for the most part concern us here, except insofar as they served as sources for the textbook-level works. (19)

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We know that an extensive, multi-year course in commercial mathematics was available to urban students all over Northern Italy, and that it was fairly standardized by the mid-fifteenth century if not also before. Tagliente's books were too sketchy to have fit this course, but other textbooks did. The very first surviving printed book for teaching commercial math is the so-called Treviso Arithmetic of 1478. It is an altogether more substantial book than those of Tagliente and at the date it probably was intended as a teacher's manual. The Treviso book presented a basic, overall treatment of what we know was the standard arithmetic course in reckoning schools. Although primarily concerned with teaching practical skills, it covered all the basic arithmetic concepts and functions. It does not seem to have been reprinted. (20)

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More influential by far than the Treviso Arithmetic was the nearly contemporary course book of Pietro Borghi, usually titled simply Book on Commercial Math (Libro de abacho). It saw at least seventeen editions between the first known one in 1484 and the end of the sixteenth century. Early editions advertise Borghi's ambition to provide a business-school course, \"Here begins the noble work On Arithmetic, in which all things concerning business practice are treated.\" Later versions are more specific about the elementary character of the work, by way of distinguishing it from more substantial books. In 1517, for example, Melchiore Sessa and his partner Pietro Ravani advertised the Borghi with a bit of doggerel: \"To the guy who really likes his maths / (first step on higher learning's paths): / Before you cross that brook, / you better read this book.\" (21)

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Prologue to Calandri’s Arithmetic, 1492
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Contrast this simple, down-market advertising for Borghi's elementary math book with that attached to the De arithmetica of Filippo Calandri (dates unknown), which appeared at Florence in 1492. Although Calandri covered virtually the same material and claimed a similar audience of \"artisans and merchants,\" he and his printer took a much more traditionalizing, humanistic approach to the look of the book. There is no title page, but on the page facing the preface there appears a majestic, seated teacher in a classroom with students. The scene is labeled, \"Pythagoras, Inventor of Arithmetic.\" The book then begins with a salutation that embedded the title of the work in a supposed network of patronage: \"A small work of Filippo Calandri On Arithmetic, [dedicated] to Giuliano di Lorenzo de' Medici.\" The preface goes on to claim preeminence in commerce for Florence and to claim that the author went to a great deal of trouble to make sure the book was printed in \"the Florentine style.\" The exact meaning of lo stile fiorentino is unclear, but it may very well have to do with the elegant dress of the book by comparison to the homely look of earlier printed arithmetics. Calandri is also given to dressing up his exposition with classical and patristic citations. Thus, he cites Lionardo Pisano Fibonacci (1170-1250), the usual source, on the subject of Arabic numerals, but he also adduces St. Jerome and Juvenal to the matter. (22)

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The increasingly popularizing dress of Borghi's book reflected a change in the usages of theorists, math teachers, and business people alike between 1470 and 1520. In exactly this period most authors finally left Roman numerals behind in favor of Hindu-Arabic ones. Well into the sixteenth century, however, textbook authors recognized that the new system of notation was less familiar to many readers and required some new habits -- strict adherence to columns, for example. Printing was key to the rapid progress of mathematics education. It was easier to teach notation systematically when every student had a nearly identical printed textbook than when the class worked from handwritten examples. By the third decade of the sixteenth century, this idea that each student in a class had an identical (or at least closely similar) textbook was taken for granted. (23)

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The increasing availability of printed texts also meant that the kinds of math books available multiplied. Two main types are easy to distinguish by style and level of detail. Primarily theoretical works like that of Luca Pacioli framed their discussions academically with humanist commonplaces about the value of mathematics. Their authors dwelt at length on definitions of terms and concepts and put readers through long series of problems. Some problems required working with enormous numbers, offered, it would seem, primarily to provide practice in computing that would reinforce theoretical concepts. Similarly, the theory books included many methods for solving the same problems. These were offered both as methods of computing and also as \"proofs\" for checking the accuracy of complicated computations. By contrast, more practically-oriented textbooks like Borghi's Libro de abacho simplified the definitions or omitted them entirely; offered fewer problems; never required computing with numbers larger than those commonly encountered in business; and gave a single method of computing and annotating each problem with just one or two kinds of \"proof.\" (24) In addition to these real, substantial textbooks at various levels, there was also a form of abaco book that was just a prompt or aide-memoire. A Perugia Abbaco of 1573 is typical. Its eight leaves contain tables for multiplication, division, and currency exchange and, on the last leaf, eight simple narrative problems. Booklets like this might have been given to very elementary students while their teachers used a more formal textbook.

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Like other early arithmetics for the reckoning schools, Borghi's presented the elementary mathematical functions first, but not in the order to which we are now accustomed. He began with multiplication, and then described division, addition, and subtraction. This order is so regular in early Italian books of abaco that it must have been the usual way of teaching the functions in reckoning schools at least until the fifteen twenties, even though the theoretical writers strongly recommended starting with addition. (25) Borghi's treatment of multiplication was typical. He presented thorough multiplication tables and then demonstrated their application with practical problems of increasing difficulty. The layout of the page assumed that the student would be referring back to the multiplication tables (or that they had been memorized) for each step of a problem. Pacioli had demonstrated no fewer than eight ways of visualizing a given multiplication problem on paper, because he expected his readers to comprehend all the various ways of arriving at a solution. Borghi just wanted his students to get to an answer and then move on to the next problem. (26)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Far more sophisticated textbooks on mathematics than the Tagliente family produced were available in print throughout the long sixteenth century. Some authors concerned themselves exclusively with bookkeeping practice. Others aimed at a more…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/604","title":"6.04 Better Arithmetic Books","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Like most how-to manuals, the first calligraphy books promised self-help. The authors suggested that it should be possible for the neophyte to master the scripts they describe without a professional teacher. At the same time, however, they were setting out to embellish their own reputations as professional teachers of scripts and inventors of new teaching methods. Armando Petrucci notes that these intersecting claims are not fully compatible. As a first step, the new writing masters distinguished themselves from humble teachers who merely transformed illiterates into literates. Textbook authors also promised to turn the newly literate into professional scribes qualified to serve in bureaucracies of the pen -- the government offices of emerging modern states. Printing was an essential tool for the ambitions of these writing masters. They could improve their own social status only by publishing writing manuals that at once disseminated their pedagogical principles and enlarged their claims to cultural influence and prestige. (50)

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Pedagogically, the writing masters were attempting to do two quite different things. First, they offered an entirely new kind of elementary instruction through textbooks that summarized skills hitherto taught only through practice. Their greatest originality was at this most elementary level of instruction. At a second level, however, they attempted to provide professional training for the purpose of full-time clerical employment. The language of the manuals reflects this dual purpose. The authors employed a lively, popular, bourgeois Italian with many regional and dialect forms. Their books embody the vernaculars spoken in elementary classrooms. On the other hand they taught chancery hand, the unified script of cultured Italians throughout the peninsula. Petrucci believes that the writing masters of the first half of the sixteenth century failed in their social ambitions because the skills they offered were still traditional ones and the working life of the scribes they trained was so routine that it did not allow for genuine artistic achievement. Only later in the century, when writing masters also ventured into the field of epigraphic and architectural lettering did they succeed in transforming themselves into graphic designers in the service of powerful political figures. (51)

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The advertising of handwriting manuals developed in this same direction across the century. Tagliente in 1524 wrote as a servant of the Venetian state, proud of his career as the official teacher of government scribes; but rhetorically he stayed close to his own middling social class. Without embarrassment he compared the well-equipped scribe to a \"barber [who] can never shave a beard well without hurting the man who is being shaved, unless he has a razor honed to a cutting edge.\" (52) A year or so later, Ludovico Arrighi aimed a little higher for models, taking his cue perhaps from the papal court where he worked and where his colleagues included a number of internationally renowned musicians: \"Just as a man who wishes to learn to play a musical instrument must also know how to tune it, because many contingencies may occur, so for many reasons the student who aims to learn handwriting must know how to cut quills.\" (53) Starting in 1540 with the Libro nuovo d'imparare a scrivere of Giovanbattista Palatino (d. ca. 1565?), writing masters openly criticized each other, patently attempting to aggrandize their own reputations at the expense of others. This same generation (including, besides Palatino, Giovanni Francesco Cresci and Luca Orfeo da Fano) began to claim that public lettering was a powerful political tool, and that the writing master was not just a scribe, but also, at least potentially, a propagandist in the service of the state. They were encouraged in this by highly visible commissions for public projects in Rome. (54) Their successes in stone encouraged them to make still broader claims for the humble secretary. The scribe is no longer to be compared to a barber or a musician, but, as Cresci says, a \"superb goldsmith,\" a great painter, even an \"erudite orator,\" that is, a humanist. (55)

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Calligraphic manuals in print played a major part in creating the personal reputations of all the leading designers of these later generations. Their epigraphic commissions were rarely signed, so they had to look to other forums in which to put their name before the public permanently. Like earlier writing masters they used print to validate reputations they had already achieved through teaching and patronage. On the level of book design, the generation of aggrandizers made an important innovation by turning the axis of the textbook page and presenting their writing specimens in landscape format, the better to make even chancery hand look as if it were inscribed on tablets of stone. They refashioned textbook authorship too. The author was now an artist; he made not a simple handwriting textbook but rather a calligraphic album that was an art object in its own right. As such, most of the important later calligraphic manuals were more specimen books than textbooks, well beyond the scope of our study. Real, skills-oriented handwriting manuals continued to be produced right up to the twentieth century, but often in very humble formats. Even the showiest of calligraphic specimen books, moreover, sometimes still included how-to sections in recognition of two facts: that even talented scribes continued to make a living as teachers, and that some in the public for such books were amateurs looking to educate themselves. (56)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Like most how-to manuals, the first calligraphy books promised self-help. The authors suggested that it should be possible for the neophyte to master the scripts they describe without a professional teacher. At the same time, however, they were…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/609","title":"6.09 Advertising a Fine Hand","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Venturoli names his sources
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Much the most interesting aspect of Venturoli's booklet is the way in which he identified his audience, for he gave a snapshot of the intended readers of vernacular self-help books at the end of our period. The title page announced that bookkeeping of the sort described here was specifically intended for householders, legal guardians, and administrators of guilds or societies. In a dedication to a Bolognese nobleman, Venturoli made it clear that his book was also an invitation to social mobility, suggesting that some of the servant boys in his patron's household might find the book a stepping stone to better employment later in life. An address to the reader followed, offering a pastiche of commonplaces: No one should take offense at what they fail to find here. This book is merely a simple introduction, not meant to replace more advanced books. It is intended only for beginners, not for those who have already mastered the subject. Apparently, Venturoli did not want to seem to be offering his book to pre-professional students of bookkeeping. On the other hand, to this almost abject introduction Venturoli appended a list of his sources, which range widely and ambitiously. He listed a few standard authors on bookkeeping (Pacioli and Manzoni) and others on commercial and domestic economy, but he also claimed greater weight for his work by citing the laws and statutes of Italian cities, a collection of papal bulls, the Code of Justinian with its learned glosses, St. Thomas Aquinas, and holy writ. At least in the popular market, then, it was not unseemly advertising to claim that bookkeeping had its place in a long tradition of high culture.

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Manzoni's, Casanova's, and Venturoli's preoccupation with the formal qualities of the ledger reflected a general tendency throughout our period to see careful record keeping (and good, clear handwriting too) as part of honest commercial practice. Tagliente and others published manuals in several fields relating to record keeping -- reading, writing, and abaco. Manzoni went so far as to offer a reading and calligraphy manual as an elementary introduction to his books on accounting. (40) Readers of bookkeeping manuals were repeatedly warned to keep their records neatly and accurately and to avoid falling into the vice of \"ill kept accounts\" (scritture mal tenute) which would later have to be \"re-ordered\" (drizzate). These are moralistic terms. Indeed, scrupulous bookkeeping served to legitimate business as a vocation. The good record-keeper was not only a good businessman, he was also a virtuous Christian. This attitude persisted well into the eighteenth century. (41)

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Venturoli addresses the reader
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Bookkeeping usage was as important to merchants of the sixteenth century as classicizing grammar was to contemporary humanists. Venturoli made the analogy explicit, saying that \"with this little work of mine [a student] will have the chance to improve himself, just as someone would who studies the Latin language making use of the rules in a grammar book.\" (42) One late edition, still published by Comin da Trino some forty years after the first, even included a substantial appendix of calligraphic specimens, which can only have been intended to suggest to the bookkeeper that he should cultivate good and careful script. (43) No surprise, then, that handwriting textbooks were published for the first time in just the years that saw the first bookkeeping manuals. And Giovanni Antonio Tagliente was on the spot.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Much the most interesting aspect of Venturoli's booklet is the way in which he identified his audience, for he gave a snapshot of the intended readers of vernacular self-help books at the end of our period. The title page announced that bookkeeping…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/607","title":"6.07 Who's Learning Math?","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Handwriting books are a specialized genre invented in the second decade of the sixteenth century and still with us today. To modern readers, they seem so perennial a form that it is hard to imagine how the schools went for fifty years and more after the invention of printing without textbooks for handwriting. Like many a manual skill, however, handwriting had a firmly entrenched tradition of teaching by personal demonstration and learning by doing that no doubt limited the perceived need for new tools. (44) Only when handwriting was proposed as a self-teachable, how-to discipline, did printed manuals appear.

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A clear set of personalities was involved in the creation of the new form. We start, again, with Giovanni Antonio Tagliente. His first calligraphic manual was entitled The Present Book Teaches the True Art of Writing Many Sorts of Letters Very Well. It appeared in 1524, a decade after the first known handwriting book by Sigismondo Fanti (d. ca 1520?) and within a year of one authored by Ludovico Arrighi (d. 1527). Tagliente was about Fanti's age; both were older by a generation than Arrighi. Tagliente had been teaching the chancery hand (cancelleresca) demonstrated in his book for at least thirty years in Venice. He claims to have invented several new teaching methods, but until his book was printed, he presumably followed the age-old practice of providing his students with handwritten models for copying. (45)

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What is most striking about this new form of textbook is that it was born fully developed. Fanti's, Tagliente's, and Arrighi's textbooks (and most calligraphy manuals for a generation afterward) looked alike and covered virtually the same material. The three works appeared in a small, broad quarto booklets that allowed the display of multiple lines of fluid script in letter format. All three authors declared that the basic and indispensable hand was the cancelleresca and they gave detailed instructions for achieving it stage by stage. They began with cutting the quill and moved on to rhythm, spacing, and layout. All three shared a method of analyzing scripts stroke by stroke, and they proposed a common method of learning through repetition first of the strokes, then of letters, and finally of groups of letters and common words. (46) All three knew and illustrated the geometrical construction of letter forms. Tagliente and Arrighi added handsome full-page calligraphic specimens. Although they advocated the use of the chancery hand, these writers also recognized and exemplified significant local script traditions -- the venerable merchant hands of Florence and Venice and various Italian and French documentary and book hands. They also gave models for Roman capitals and some other decorative letter forms in white on a black background. (47)

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None of these forms had ever been presented in print before but suddenly here they were, described by Fanti in 1514 and displayed in splendid woodcuts made between 1522 and 1525 at the behest of Tagliente and Arrighi. Obviously a long-standing tradition of pedagogy stood behind the new textbooks. But several new cultural trends also contributed to the creation of such books: the sixteenth-century urge to record in print all manner of arts and sciences; the growth of bureaucratic scribing and the need for widely accepted models that could be diffused through print; a general increase in literacy, especially in the vernacular. It was, moreover, the \"age of how-to\" when many kinds of practical skills became fodder for popularizers and when print was the preferred medium for such experiments. (48)

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The reason for a sudden burst of activity precisely in the fifteen twenties is less clear. Some personal considerations may have pushed the genre into existence. Tagliente knew he was nearing the end of his working life and probably wanted to leave a legacy in print on the model of his commercial mathematics books. Arrighi on the other hand was still vigorous and ambitious; he had been cultivating a reputation as a scribe and printer at Rome for a decade or so. It is also possible that a rivalry between the two was spurred on by the approaching jubilee year of 1525. At least one handwriting booklet specifically says that it was \"designed and made ... in this holy year of 1525.\" Since these small, handsome books were collector's items from the start and represented what was newest and most fashionable in Italian design, some authors may well have had a souvenir market in mind. (49)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Handwriting books are a specialized genre invented in the second decade of the sixteenth century and still with us today. To modern readers, they seem so perennial a form that it is hard to imagine how the schools went for fifty years and more after…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/608","title":"6.08 Writing Manuals","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Like commercial arithmetic books, many handwriting manuals were intermediate in intent from the start. Their authors recognized that the rudiments had to be acquired with a teacher's personal guidance and that a textbook could never be much more than a series of additional, increasingly complex exercises for the student to follow. Books of this sort skip such elementary matters as cutting the pen and positioning the hand and body. Instead they offer a series of models, more or less miscellaneous, to students who have already well begun. Most of the great masters of the sixteenth century produced model books on this intermediate or showpiece level in addition to their more comprehensive manuals and, as we have seen, some may even have been producing them as souvenir booklets aimed at a market of upscale travelers.

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Elaborate title page (click to enlarge - 813 KB jpeg image)
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Apparently, however, there was local demand for much humbler books of this intermediate sort too. Among the few that survive are the works of a Florentine writing master, who styled himself Giovambaptista Verini. The market for Verini's books probably consisted largely of his own students at Florence, Venice, and Milan. In 1526-27, clearly imitating the success of Tagliente and Arrighi, Verini issued a rather elaborate series of models in four books (each with a separate title page, although they are foliated continuously in print). On the first title page Verini or his printer called this manual Chapters on the Fundamentals of Letterforms (Elementorum Literarum Libri), a high-sounding Latin title. The preface and running heads indicate that Verini also called his book Showcase (Luminario), accurate enough a label since the book really does consist almost entirely of illustrations of the practice of lettering. As such it is highly miscellaneous.

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Teaching writing in woodcuts (click to enlarge - 735 KB jpeg image)
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Book One gives detailed instructions for the pen work of a gothic hand described stroke by stroke. Book Two gives geometrical constructions for this same letter form. Book Three is a constructed roman alphabet on models like those Sigismondo Fanti and Luca Pacioli (the mathematician) had published earlier in the century. Book Four is highly miscellaneous. It is arranged around a large, beautiful alphabet of initials in Flemish interlace style, but the rest of the contents do not much hang together. (57)

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Verini went on to issue a whole series of other, more modest booklets on writing, first at Venice and later in Milan. As time went on, these small productions seem more and more unambitious. Verini reused blocks from the Luminario which got badly worn. Although they are all slight, his pamphlets also got more and more miscellaneous. Some, like his Really Fine Secrets and Methods Newly Studied (Secreti et modi bellissimi nuovamente investigati), are not really instructional books at all but mere parlor amusements. (58)

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Humble writing book for schoolboys or ladies (click to enlarge - 835 KB jpeg image)
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Closer to Verini's schoolroom are the Work Most Useful for Learning to Write (Utilissima opera da imparare a scrivere), produced while Verini taught in Venice (probably between 1526 and 1532); a Tuscan word list of 1532 called Dictionario which was probably a sort of calling card for his new school in Milan; and two (or possibly three) versions of a small writing specimen book that Verini produced while he was teacher at Milan (between 1532 and 1538). Taken as a series, these works betray a career in decline. (59) In content Verini's pamphlets are dizzyingly miscellaneous, mixing rough pictorial woodcuts, calligraphic specimens, oversize initials, and occasional typeset texts. Some of the pieces in these books do not relate to any kind of writing or reading; instead they advise about how to behave in various social situations. This courtesy-book stuff is a clue to how Verini must have expected these booklets to be used. They are occasional practice pieces for boys in his school and edifying, \"finishing\" exercises for his lady students. Both these kinds of students are explicitly mentioned in these later books. (60)

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Four reused wood blocks on one page, Verini 1538 (click to enlarge - 910 KB jpeg image)
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Many calligraphic books of the sixteenth century reused woodcut specimens from earlier books, sometimes books issued very recently. Ugo da Carpi and Eustachio Celebrino, engravers for Arrighi and Tagliente, reused and re-cut their best blocks for books issued under their own names. Giovambaptista Verini, however, seems to have been the greatest master of this kind of adaptive reuse. Stanley Morison calls it plagiarism because Verini in the Luminario of 1527 presented copies of specimens from Arrighi and Tagliente and took over his titles from earlier works. But plagiarism is not an appropriate construct to apply in such cases. The period saw so many new calligraphic models come on to the market, both in classrooms and in print, that writing masters of the period could pick and choose freely among available models. Privileges were granted for these books, but they did not protect the content in any significant way. The point of a writing manual, after all, was to encourage its readers to copy the models it offered. (61)

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Flourished capitals reused, Verini 1538 (click to enlarge - 931 KB jpeg image)
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Verini's habits of reuse are evident even in his most original works, since like many artists, printers and publishers, he happily re-employed woodcut blocks designed for one purpose in other, later books. The most striking case is that of the alphabet of large, flourished initials in a Low-Countries gothic style, each of which occupies half a page of his Luminario. These gothic capitals recur in almost every subsequent book of Verini's, where they are displayed on much smaller pages but never to the same purpose as in the Luminario. (62)

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As with abaco books, then, the smaller and more elementary the writing book was and the fewer the pretensions it had to a broad audience, the more likely it was to be derivative and out of date. To some degree this was an inevitable consequence of the process of popularization inherent in composing basic textbooks and practical manuals, especially when they were translated from Latin originals. But among authors of language-skills books there was also a distinct element of condescension. No matter how strenuously they professed to be liberating their students from the tyranny of the \"Empire of Latin\" (Françoise Waquet's term), language teachers subscribed to the commonplace that vernacular-only instruction was for second-class students. (63)

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This condescending stance stands in contrast to the optimism and can-do attitude of many popularizing how-to books for scientific and craft disciplines produced in the same period. These always included a great deal of traditional lore, but they often also reported new techniques and theories within a few years of their devising. Unlike language study where claims of novelty were almost always trumped up, authors in these truly new disciplines of the age of print were not wedded to the past and instead saw the potential of print for diffusing new knowledge. We considered the case of humanist geographies that brought discoveries into the classroom (in section 4.16). More popularizing how-to books offered the pleasure of owning new facts and methods personally in the form of an inexpensive book, of \"taking knowledge, literally and figuratively, into one's own hands.\" (64) Upper-end writing books, as we have seen, strained to achieve the same progressive air, both in the presentation of new fashions in writing and lettering and in claiming new social status for their authors. By contrast, elementary writing books display a pedagogy wedded to the past. Writing was a skill with an increasingly large public, but one that should, these authors thought, be divided and segregated by class and gender.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Like commercial arithmetic books, many handwriting manuals were intermediate in intent from the start. Their authors recognized that the rudiments had to be acquired with a teacher's personal guidance and that a textbook could never be much more than…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/610","title":"6.10 Down-Market Handwriting Books","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The birth of the reading-instruction textbook in Italian can be just as precisely dated as the equivalent handwriting texts. Classroom materials for teaching the alphabet and syllabary existed in the late Middle Ages (in manuscript, of course); and they are evidenced in print in the early sixteenth century. The rare surviving examples are so similar in content and presentation that we must assume a fairly standard course of study that had been in place for some time. The abaco course was similarly standardized, and Piero Lucchi argues convincingly that the regular form of these most elementary language-teaching aids derived from a reading course that abaco masters had devised for those of their students who did not attend the pre-Latin reading schools. (65)

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The first First Reader (click to enlarge - 551 KB jpeg image)
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Outside Latin and abaco schools, the catechism would become the most common elementary reading book for early-modern children. (66) But there were no catechisms in Italian before 1530. The first full-blown vernacular reading textbook in Italy, then, was almost surely the strikingly non-religious Libro maistrevole of Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, dated 1524. Tagliente reveals a great deal about the facts of his invention. Indeed he spent five pages of his twenty-page booklet on an apology for it. We learn that Tagliente had taught reading as well as writing for many years, and that his son Paolo helped in bringing the project for a reading book into print. The elder Tagliente further implied that his decision to publish the work derived from the sense of duty he acquired as a servant of the Venetian state, even that he was charged (as an appointed teacher in the state schools) to find better methods of teaching non-Latin students. At Venice, state schooling for scribes was limited to a few students at a time. Tagliente claimed that the need for reading was so widespread in urban society that self-help books like his were called for. Anne Schutte points out that he saw this as a secular, specifically non-religious need in Venice, the commercial capital of the Mediterranean. Tagliente was not anti-clerical or irreligious, but religious education was not his brief. He carefully excluded devotional material from his textbook. It is less certain that he accurately understood the potential audience, since the Libro maistrevole, unlike other textbooks he authored, was apparently never reprinted. Later reading-book authors deliberately included the prayers and pious texts that were traditional for teaching reading to small children from the Middle Ages forward, exactly the sort of thing Tagliente left out. (67)

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Learning the syllables (click to enlarge - 543 KB jpeg image)
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Throughout his reading book, Tagliente modeled the teacher-student relationship in a double way -- both on that of parent and child and also on that of a literate friend for an illiterate one. At various times he called his students bono, sollicito, prudente, valente and the like, repeating the kind of encouraging compliment an affectionate teacher should constantly give the student. As Schutte notes, these claims do not seem to be mere advertising; they almost surely represent Tagliente's classroom practice of many decades. (68) Other telling bits of the Libro maistrevole must derive from Tagliente's classroom too, as when he explained the meaning of \"syllable\" by inviting the student to imagine a man on his sick bed who can only call out for the maidservant by gasping her name syllable by syllable, \"Ma-da-le-na!\" On the other hand, the fact that Tagliente's reading book appeared in the same year as his handwriting manual (and close in time to his arithmetic books) suggests that all these new books were aimed at a how-to market that Tagliente had only recently identified, and not at his students of many years.

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Letters of the alphabet (click to enlarge - 992 KB jpeg image)
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Although Tagliente explicitly disparaged the long and complicated course of Latin reading skills sanctioned by tradition, his own book proceeded in much the same order. The student must recognize letters, then syllables, then words made up of syllables. Tagliente stripped the process down to its barest essentials and concretized the lessons with examples of the kind of written Italian the student was actually likely to encounter: personal names, common account book phrases, friendly and business letters. Then, returning briefly to a commonplace of traditional Latinate pedagogy, he added a few moral proverbs.

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Writing samples in woodcut (click to enlarge - 531 KB jpeg image)
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Anne Schutte believes that the sample letters, the moral proverbs, and some specimens of merchant hand (mercantesca) at the close of the Libro maistrevole were miscellaneous and casual additions to fill out the pamphlet. Matter of this sort seems more appropriate to a writing manual or a composition course than to beginning readers. (69) But it is just as likely that the thoughtful Tagliente set out to give his neophyte readers some additional reading samples for practice. The letters and the otherwise unrelated mercantesca specimens were good practice in real-life reading, while the proverbs reinforced the kind of moral thought that parents and teachers of the period universally recommended, even when, as Tagliente did, they chose not to emphasize Christian themes. Tagliente's contemporary Marin Sanudo (1466-1535) expressed this sense of a good literary education when he described Venetians students wishing \"to acquire virtue and become learned\" and called state-school teachers like Tagliente men \"who teach virtue and grammar to the young patricians and others.\" (70)

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Sample letter (click to enlarge - 536 KB jpeg image)
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The Libro maistrevole is very handsome. Less fussily prettified than most how-to books that preceded or followed it, its design rests upon a beautiful italic type of Tagliente's own design. The typeface has numerous outsize ligatures to imitate chancery hand; and the body of the type is very large, so the space between lines is unusually generous for so small a booklet. The spacing has a pedagogical intent too, as we can deduce from Tagliente's advice to the teacher to use a knife or pointer to indicate the letters and syllables that the student is to read aloud. Tagliente's professionalism as writing master shows through in every line of type. His layouts offered the inexpert new readers a page that is both charming and highly legible. Though the format is not large, it is easy to imagine that the book could be used by two people at once, the struggling student and an affectionate parent or friend.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The birth of the reading-instruction textbook in Italian can be just as precisely dated as the equivalent handwriting texts. Classroom materials for teaching the alphabet and syllabary existed in the late Middle Ages (in manuscript, of course); and…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/611","title":"6.11 Vernacular Literacy","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Vernacular printing opened new markets for instructional books and allowed both authors and publishers to imagine new kinds of teachers, new kinds of learners, even learning without classrooms. As we have already seen, many vernacular textbooks took on the character of how-to books. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were, at this elementary level, skills to be mastered with minimal formal tuition. The formulaic methods of the humanist Latin school assumed years of study aimed at life-long learning. These lengthy courses could be significantly abbreviated and watered down for learners who did not want to master a second language and whose needs (and skills) were elementary.

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As this audience of literate-but-not-learned readers expanded during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, publishers ever more often assumed the role of \"culture brokers\" (the term is William Eamon's) or \"translators\" (as we described them in sections 4.01, 4.14, and 4.19). They digested and abstracted Latin literary and scientific culture for the use of a large, urban public. One Italian publisher described his ideal audience as \"thoughtful and modest youths.\" A German author of the same period said he published \"for the simple, respectable, and devout little people.\" Such readers might look to books for amusement and edification, but beyond literature and religious texts, they also wanted straightforward prose with lots of useful information and practical advice. The how-to model could be extended to many skills. Simple manuals multiplied, especially on the model of arithmetic books that offered a series of discrete problems to pose and solve. Gardening, agronomy, cookery, housekeeping, sewing, lace making, embroidery, sign painting, metallurgy, glassblowing, dyeing and many other craft disciplines soon occupied cheap little how-to books. (76)

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In some cases these booklets were authored by the same supposed experts who wrote handwriting or arithmetic texts. In others the authors were clerics who saw these practical books as ways to inculcate Christian morals along with the practical skills that recommended the books in the first place. Almost always, authors of manuals stressed the moral dimensions of social life. Habits of thrift, choosing the right tools, practicing techniques to perfection, being careful and vigilant, and keeping good records were not just good economics, they were also essential to the humble citizen's salvation. Books of this moralizing sort made it increasingly possible, even socially acceptable, to learn entirely outside the confines of a school. For ambitious individuals not born into social elites, the normal course of learning was self-directed and entirely outside the confines of formal schooling. Childhood schooling remained the preserve of a privileged minority, so for most people functional literacy was achieved only in adulthood. Their classrooms could be anywhere --shops, streets, and churches, but most of all at home. Their teachers were friends or relatives or even just the books they could find. (77)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Vernacular printing opened new markets for instructional books and allowed both authors and publishers to imagine new kinds of teachers, new kinds of learners, even learning without classrooms. As we have already seen, many vernacular textbooks took…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/613","title":"6.13 Whither How-To?","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The thoughtful beauty of Tagliente's design makes for a striking contrast to the elementary reading books that followed. Almost without exception they are crowded, ugly little productions. Attempts to prettify them with ornamental cuts, red-and-black printing, or large initials usually just made them cluttered and homely. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that their design was, consciously or not, a condescension. Children who learned to read only in the vernacular were second-class students by comparison with those boys who were intended for a Latin education. Condescension was the most common mindset of the educators of the early sixteenth century towards their vernacular-only students. In school books it was expressed in texts and formatting alike.

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At mid-century, the Council of Trent and the general reform of Catholic institutions which followed had a salutary effect on primary education, not least in transforming this attitude of condescension into one of Christian compassion. There was no question of breaking down distinctions of social class. Education would continue to have a separate track for privileged, Latin-school students. But contextualizing reading instruction within the teaching of Christian doctrine meant that basic literacy became a logical (if not quite essential) part of everyday Christian life. By the end of the third quarter of the century, most cities in Italy had organized catechism classes called Schools of Christian Doctrine. These schools prompted the production of enormous numbers of small catechisms and other devotional works at an elementary level for reading by their students. (71)

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Marketing considerations were never completely absent from the making of Christian Doctrine school books, of course. But printers and publishers were not leading the market but rather following the dictates of religious educators. Confusion and differences of opinion among educators, not competition among printers, resulted in considerable variety in the booklets made available to students in the catechism schools. (72) For printers, the manufacture in quantity of Christian Doctrine textbooks was an opportunity to benefit from a large, guaranteed market. And to the degree that such schools created readers of devotional literature for the future, the printers could anticipate an ever-larger market for simple religious books. In the second third of the sixteenth century, catechisms and other small religious textbooks joined Latin school books and popular secular literature among the bread-and-butter titles of any urban printing house. Small printing of the sort kept the presses busy between larger and more lucrative projects and provided a steady if small-scale flow of income. It could also represent a significant investment in materials in that many such books were adorned with woodblocks that had to be kept in stock to ensure a large and continuous supply of booklets. One 1570 printing house inventory, for example, listed blocks for the seven deadly sins, the twelve apostles, and twelve scenes of Christ's passion, all intended for small devotionals, in addition to the blocks needed for various offices of the Virgin and saint's-day booklets. (73) This wealth of illustrative material demonstrates that even modest printers in the second half of the century had ambitions to create pretty books for the use of the lowest classes of readers. (74)

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Illustrated catechisms picked up on Giovanni Antonio Tagliente's theme of learning in a family context. One edition of Giovanni Battista Eliano's Dottrina Christiana (a Jesuit catechism) even printed a promissory note that emphasized the economy of grace involved in teaching and learning the catechism in a family setting. Apparently intended for the father or mother of a family, the booklet contained a blank form that read: \"This Christian Doctrine was given to me by [blank] so that I and my entire family will learn the facts of the holy faith. With God's help I will earnestly try to learn it and to teach it to all in my house, and I will be obliged to pray to Our Lord for [blank] \" Such illustrated catechisms allowed lay people to teach each other. They were part of a concerted effort by Catholic preachers to encourage reading of approved devotional literature (by contrast to the Protestants' reading of Scripture in the vernaculars). (75)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The thoughtful beauty of Tagliente's design makes for a striking contrast to the elementary reading books that followed. Almost without exception they are crowded, ugly little productions. Attempts to prettify them with ornamental cuts, red-and-black…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/612","title":"6.12 Catechism and Condescension","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The last part of this chapter (sections 6.16 - 6.19) will concern high-end how-to books aimed at teaching a particular professional skill, music. But the publishing norms and the economics of the market for such serious skills textbooks will be clearer if we first examine a few examples of a humbler genre, one aimed at the non-professional adult learner. For our purposes the catch-all form of the ricettario serves best to illumine how sixteenth-century authors adapted medieval antecedents in order to create a new genre.

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The word ricettario literally means recipe book, but ricettari were not cookbooks in any modern sense. Their common element was that they offered formulas (ricetti) to solve everyday problems. Most often the formula involved making some sort of preparation appropriate to a particular ailment, beauty need, handyman's project, or self-improvement. The formulas often included superstitious or magical elements --actions or words unrelated to the practical mixing up of the glue, ointment. lotion, or powder. The formulas sometimes aimed more at creating a need than at solving a real-life problem. (78)

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Medieval recipe collections were common and provided sources for most sixteenth-century ricettari. In the Middle Ages, such books were typically called books of secrets and they partook of the late-antique spirit of hermetic or arcane knowledge. Their authors took the magical dimensions of the recipes seriously. Since books of secrets were generally just collections of loosely related advices, their texts were highly unstable. At virtually every copying, a scribe could add or subtract material. For the most part, books of secrets did not have any direct relationship to the university-level science; they were mostly laymen's compendia. The readership for such books as a class was wide. (79)

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The medieval book of secrets developed in two distinct directions, both resulting in books called ricettari in early modern Italy. Books systematically collected for the use of apothecaries and other medical workers could be called with this name, as in the case of the influential Ricettario fiorentino, first published in 1499 and enlarged and frequently reprinted with the sanction of the guild of physicians and spicers into the seventeenth century. These apothecaries' collections were both textbooks for teaching apprentices and also manuals for shop use. They were typically straightforward typographically and largely unadorned.

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On the other hand, extracts from official recipe books and academic sources were combined with folklore to make up little booklets for layfolk also called ricettari. Ricettari of this latter sort became common in Italian cities from the fifteen twenties onward. Since they first appear in print in Italy at just the time when the first handwriting and arithmetic manuals were appearing, it is clear that printers modeled ricettari on small language and math textbooks. Printers offered the newly literate classes as many practical manuals as they could. Almost every booklet offered self-help and each claimed somehow to be \"new,\" though few really broke new ground. Most assumed a deliberately conversational tone that seemed appropriate to their audience. (80)

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Popularizing style, clear typography (click to enlarge - 741 jpeg image)
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One much-reprinted ricettario was first issued at Venice in 1525 under the title Opera nuova intitulata, Dificio di ricette. (81) This Palace of Recipes is one of the better organized books of the sort, consisting almost entirely of really useful things: disinfectants, remedies for worms or fleas, tooth whiteners, vinegar substitutes. The title page advertised a book divided into three sections -- concoctions both useful and amusing, perfumes, and medicinal secrets. The recipes are largely devoid of magical or arcane formulas that were common in other books of the sort. There are a few harmless jokes too (candles that won't blow out, itching powder, an ointment to make a person's arm hairy); and the author frankly allowed as how he had not actually tested every recipe.

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Downmarket but beautifully designed (click to enlarge - 517 KB jpeg image)
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Though it was printed on the cheap, on poor paper with badly inked and broken types, this book was one of the best designed how-to books of the century. It is a broad, upright quarto (like handwriting books of the period, or humanist textbooks) which announced from the start that the book, though slender, is a serious compilation. In a 1528 issue, not only did the printer offer a good and accurate advertisement for the contents on the title page, he also displayed the title handsomely and gave the date of publication in enormous roman numerals to demonstrate that this was a more recent printing than rival ones on the market, whether in new or used copies. By emphasizing the date of printing in this way, moreover, he showed that he had no fear of the book staying in stock for very long. He could confidently expect to sell out and reprint again with another new date. The printer followed the handsome title page with a table of contents in clear, small italics that led the reader directly to the particular recipe she or he needed.

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Clear headings (click to enlarge - 658 KB jpeg image)
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Each individual recipe was distinctly labeled with its title and a new paragraph opening, for easier reading and repeated consultation. At several points the small, closely set type is varied with woodcuts, and the specialized second and third sections have separate title pages. The printer has fully understood the design issues: first, that a recipe is a prescriptive formula that implies but does not enact a particular narrative; and second, that it is susceptible of repeated application, and so must be consulted, not just read once through.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The last part of this chapter (sections 6.16 - 6.19) will concern high-end how-to books aimed at teaching a particular professional skill, music. But the publishing norms and the economics of the market for such serious skills textbooks will be…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/614","title":"6.14 Ricettari","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Pompous title page (click to enlarge - 628 KB jpeg image)
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Giovambaptista Verini, whom we met earlier (section 6.10) as an author of handwriting manuals, books of courtesy, and games, also assembled a ricettario. His is a good example of how unoriginal the genre could be and how poorly it could be designed and printed by contrast to the early versions of the Dificio. Verini entitled his grubby little booklet grandly enough, The Triumph of Recipes and Beautiful Secrets, composed by Giovambattista Verini the Florentine for the common good of every gentle spirit. (82) The colophon to this little octavo of 24 leaves indicated that it was printed at Milan at Verini's own expense. In the preface the author confessed that he did not make up or even test the recipes he offers, merely that he had extracted them from \"many books of recipes and of various clever speculations\" [assai Libri di ricette e di diversi speculativi, ingegni] as an offering to his genteel friends. Verini claimed that he collected the recipes over a long period; but most of his book is copied directly from the Dificio di ricette. He even copied the claim that he had made the collection for personal friends and associates. (83)

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Humble design inside (click to enlarge - 862 KB jpeg image)
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So there was little new here. Verini thought that his secrets were more in the manner of amusements than useful instructions, perhaps just to read and not to act upon. Those that do not clearly derive from common earlier books are of the most bizarre, even absurd sort. Some are presented in coded form, implying some obscene or disreputable use: \"Bufssftf ipmipsib tra la c.vtt.in [sic] Take the heart of a turtle dove and feed it to the person coded above.\" (84) There are many jokes, and Verini's ill humor comes through even when the joke itself is harmless. The itching powder of the Dificio is copied, but framed maliciously: \"How to play a trick on a visitor so that he can't sleep in his bed for thinking that he has a thousand fleas on him. ... This trick is to be performed on annoying and boastful people.\" (85) Sometimes the proposed formula is downright dangerous, as when a makeshift parachute of bed sheets is recommended to one \"who needs to jump from a window or other height either for love or because he is compelled.\" (86) So Verini has transformed a collection that once proposed to be useful into a literary construct complete with an array of character types: endangered lovers, unwelcome houseguests, and the like. We have seen this tendency to construct narratives in many textbooks, but it is particularly characteristic of vernacular books that popularized learned Latin disciplines.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Giovambaptista Verini, whom we met earlier (section 6.10) as an author of handwriting manuals, books of courtesy, and games, also assembled a ricettario. His is a good example of how unoriginal the genre could be and how poorly it could be designed…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/615","title":"6.15 Books to Formula","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Bonaventura in Italian, 1518 (click to enlarge - 715 KB jpeg image)
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At the humblest level stood the Breviloquium Musicale (later titled Regula Musice) of Bonaventura da Brescia (late 15th century), one of the first known books to describe norms for performance without elaborate reference to music theory. It appeared in 1497 and had at least five Latin editions before 1540. It was reprinted in Italian in 1507 in a version that had over a dozen further printings up to 1550. (90)

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\"Poveri religiosi\" (click to enlarge - 741 KB jpeg image)
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Physical examination of the two versions reveals that they were meant for different markets, even though both state the same ambition, to teach \"poor and simple religious as well as others desirous of having the solid basics of plainchant.\" (91) The practical content is virtually identical in Latin or Italian, so the formatting choices were related to the marketing expectations of the printers.

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Old fashioned title page, in 1549 (click to enlarge - 695 KB jpeg image)
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The 1497 edition and most later Latin versions assumed the quarto format favored at the period for Latin-school textbooks, unpretentious but decorous and substantial. Italian editions could be in quarto but more often appeared in humbler octavo instead. An example printed in the smaller format in 1518 looks like other vernacular booklets we have seen (ricettari, for example) in that it begins with a popularizing title woodcut. It is otherwise modest in the extreme, thirty-one leaves roughly printed.

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Woodcut examples in text (click to enlarge - 726 KB jpeg image)
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It differs in look from a simple ricettario only in having woodcut musical examples on almost every page. These cuts did not represent additional cost to the printer since they were simply blocks reused from an earlier Latin edition. Like the blocks, the text was a recycled product intended to make the original more widely available both by translating it into Italian and by cheapening the book in terms of paper, type, and format.

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A humble binding (click to enlarge - 719 KB jpeg image)
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The epithet poveri religiosi was to some degree conventional even in these first years of printing music manuals, but the fact that the book came out first in a modest Latin version and then in downright cheap Italian ones suggests that many members of the target audience would not or could not spend very much on a textbook. (92)

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The principal rival to Bonaventura's Breviloquium on the Italian market at the turn of the sixteenth century was an anonymously compiled Compendium musices that received several editions between 1499 and 1509. It is less well organized than the Breviloquium, merely a series of observations on basic music theory that might be useful to singers. It may have been intended more for choirmasters than for simple choristers, a supposition confirmed by its subsequent history. After 1509 it appeared in print more than twenty five times, but only as a preface to other, more extensive handbooks for liturgists.

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From 1513 to 1566 it was often printed in combination with the Cantorinus, a small, cheaply printed collection of specimen chants (primarily initial and final phrases) for use on various feast days throughout the year. From 1523 onward, the Compendium was also included in the Rituale, a large reference book of prayers and chants. (93) Both the Compendium musices and the Breviloquium of Bonaventura were practical texts for clerics who sang professionally. Neither had any pretensions to teach music theory as a cultural ornament.

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A similar audience, though perhaps one more open to humanist ideals, was intended for the Sparks of Music by Giovanni Maria Lanfranco (ca. 1490-1545), published at Brescia in 1533. This work does not seem to have been influential; but it was a real textbook for singers -- simple, step-by-step instructions with good examples for practice. Lanfranco dressed his book with elaborate front matter that claimed a classical pedigree for his teachings, but the remaining one hundred forty four pages are strictly matter of fact. Tellingly, he deliberately wrote not in Latin or literary Tuscan, but in \"the universal Italian speech\" (an all-purpose North-Italian amalgam), \"in order not to offend the ears of most with some words spoken in too Tuscan a fashion.\" More self-consciously than any earlier music writer, Lanfranco identified his audience as beginners. (94)

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Downmarket manuals (click to enlarge - 846 KB jpeg image)
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There continued to be a market for small, rudimentary manuals of plainchant right into the seventeenth century, guaranteed by the large number of churches and monasteries with choirs to train. The physical form of such books changed little, so that the first editions of the Compendium musices (1499) look much like copies of the Ladder of Music (Scala di musica) of Orlando Scaletta (1650-1630) published until 1665. Even a fashionable composer like Adriano Banchieri (d. 1634) published four small booklets for teaching plainchant in the traditional, downscale format between 1601 and 1623. (95)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"At the humblest level stood the Breviloquium Musicale (later titled Regula Musice) of Bonaventura da Brescia (late 15th century), one of the first known books to describe norms for performance without elaborate reference to music theory. It appeared…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/617","title":"6.17 Poor Churchfolk","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Music differed from other disciplines of the sixteenth century in two important ways. First of all, there was a long tradition of academic study of music theory in the medieval universities but the actual practice of singing and playing instruments had largely been taught by apprenticeship. In effect, medieval music had been two disciplines, not one. In the fifteenth century, theorists and practitioners made a conscious project of uniting the field, and their efforts, ongoing through the entire sixteenth century, showed up in many elementary texts. Secondly, many different kinds of music books came onto the market across the first hundred years of printing, complicating our understanding of what beginners learned and how. Perhaps more than in other disciplines, the authors of books on music tended to assume their audience would self-select, so they did not label their works in any obvious way for one or another level or type of reader. Together these factors make it hard to judge the audience for many music books.

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Gaffurius 1496 - Humanist philosophy of music (click to enlarge - 855 KB jpeg image)
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Music textbooks had to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Although at times the process seems confused and ad hoc, the sources for any given book are almost always clearly identifiable, and writers usually attempted to be fully systematic by the lights of their own learning. A much larger problem -- for readers of the period and for us too -- was that authors of new works, especially elementary ones, had to contend with two moving targets, or, to extend the metaphor of bridging the gap between practice and theory, they were trying to build a solid span between two floating islands. Performance practices and styles were changing rapidly as popular performers and melodies crisscrossed Europe. Music theory, meanwhile -- inherited from the ancient world, much discussed in the Middle Ages, rediscovered in ancient sources during the fifteenth century -- was the subject of intense debate up to about 1530, making it harder for teachers to adopt a single vocabulary. The place of music in the humanist curriculum was secure, based on both Aristotelian and Neoplatonic authorities, but the details of humanist music instruction seem to have varied from school to school much more than in language disciplines. Most students, moreover, learned music outside of humanist-inspired classrooms, in the song schools that supplied professionals to church choirs in every major town. These students had little use for a classicizing humanist version of music. They needed to learn to read and interpret music on the page. (87)

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Title page of basic singing textbok, ca. 1500 (click to enlarge - 785 KB jpeg image)\n
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Music was expensive to print, and different kinds of music books came onto the print market at different moments. It took sixty years of printing experience before well-developed music textbooks appeared, significantly longer than in any other field we have considered. Liturgical books for performance, a luxury genre, appeared in the earliest years of printing. Advanced music-theory books also had medieval precedents; these were printed in Latin for university-level audiences very early on. Later textbook treatments derived from such academic books; and the textbook authors often had already published at the specialist level. But well into the sixteenth century, it is often not clear when a given writer was popularizing or what audience he envisioned for his book. (88)

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Guidance for singers, ca. 1500 (click to enlarge - 672 KB jpeg image)
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More or less practical guides to theory for performers (singers in the first instance) were new creations of the late fifteenth century. They appeared around 1480, still in Latin since most concerned liturgical music. Separate music scores for performance -- both liturgical and secular in character and so in Latin and the vernaculars both -- began to become common in print in the years just around 1500. Practical instruction booklets in Italian that aimed at teaching music performance (again, singing earlier than other kinds of music making) began to be published, as nearly as we can tell, only toward 1520.

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Humanist title page, 1516 (click to enlarge - 621 KB jpeg image)
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The first full-scale music textbooks for Latin-school use appeared in the fifteen teens in Northern Europe and in the mid-twenties in Italy. These first humanist-inspired music textbooks (both in Latin and in the vernacular) were not based on any pre-print forms. Their authors could already draw upon an enormous printed literature for theory, practice, and repertoire alike. The new textbooks were fully typographic creations, not dependent on manuscript formats, and more sophisticated than other textbooks we have discussed in this chapter.

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Woodcut diagram in Glareanus 1516 (click to enlarge - 612 KB jpeg image)
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Music textbooks had a distinctive look. Illustrated with diagrams, depictions of instruments, and musical examples, they were more elaborate and expensive than most vernacular school books. Moreover, the visuals were almost never purely ornamental; in most cases they were essential to the teaching function of the books. Some of these textbooks were among the handsomest productions of the Italian presses in the first half of the sixteenth century. Modern scholars have written about them extensively, so it will suffice here to describe a few examples in terms that allow comparison with other textbooks. (89)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Music differed from other disciplines of the sixteenth century in two important ways. First of all, there was a long tradition of academic study of music theory in the medieval universities but the actual practice of singing and playing instruments…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/616","title":"6.16 Teaching Music Theory and Practice","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The fifteen thirties and forties also saw the first Italian manuals for learning instrumental music. They multiplied rapidly. Typically books of the sort promised to teach their readers how to play \"with all the artistry appropriate to this [or that] instrument.\" (100) The advertising on title pages and in prefaces to instrumental textbooks changed little over the next century. It did not matter much which instrument was in question, whether the book was really a beginners manual or a substantial, advanced one, or whether the contents were highly traditional or innovative. The lessons were always \"brief and easy\" and the process of learning \"quick,\" while the book itself was always \"most useful and necessary.\" (101)

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Behind the title pages, however, the contents could vary considerably. Most instrumental instruction books included a brief discussion of theory, thorough examples of notation, substantial discussions of the use of the hands or lips in playing, and some advice on style. This material was followed by exercise pieces for practice, sometimes graded in difficulty.

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A fictional public (click to enlarge - 704 KB jpeg image)
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Some authors clearly intended their discussions for beginners or do-it-yourself learners, so they simplified the content and broke it into small sections. Other authors were addressing music teachers and dwelt at greater length on theory. And some, like Girolamo Diruta (1550 - ca. 1620) at the end of the century, clothed their work in an elaborate literary frame. Diruta constructed a lengthy dialogue between himself and a title character, The Transylvanian, who stood in for the dedicatee of the book, Prince Sigismund Báthory (1572-1613). The prince can only have been an amateur, but he is made to ask for detailed information from Diruta. The result is generally considered the most original and important Italian manual of keyboard practice. It was not intended for amateurs like Báthory nor for beginning students, but rather for organ teachers. (102)

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The audience for a given music book is often hard to judge, though we can make some inferences based on content and formatting. Books that concerned instrumental practice often seem to have been aimed at amateur students or their teachers. Books on plainchant were clearly directed to professionals, though often performers of no great sophistication. Polyphony books almost always concern compositional norms as well as performance, and so we may assume that they were usually intended for professional musicians. (103) But the evidence for these conclusions is indirect or partial, except in the case of Lanfranco mentioned above (section 6.17). Only toward the end of the sixteenth century do we regularly find full-scale descriptions of the potential audience for music-instruction books in the vernacular.

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A prettified title page, 1609 (click to enlarge - 709 KB jpeg image)
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Pietro Cerone (1566-1625), a theorist and singing master at the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Naples, is typical of the new clarity. He published a short manual for student choristers in 1609. He labeled it clearly as a popularization, The Rules Most Necessary as an Introduction to Plainchant. His readers were beginners, or at any rate not highly skilled or well informed. His dedication described an audience exactly like that named by Bonaventura da Brescia in 1497, \"poor churchfolk and others desirous of learning the basics of chant,\" but he elaborated on their poverty by saying that many choristers worked like blind men, to whom he hoped his booklet would bring light. (104) Cerone was even more explicit about the limitations of a song-school education in the afterward to his book, where he provided a long list of things he had not covered in his Regole. The list concluded, \"and many other minor things too, which I think are not as necessary to a simple chorister as they are useful to the perfect choirmaster. What I have said thus far is great plenty for the service of the choir.\" (105)

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Pompous royal dedication (click to enlarge - 688 KB jpeg image)
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Cerone's forty-page Regole contrasts sharply with his larger manual, El Melopeo y maestro, which runs to no fewer than 1160 pages! This larger work appeared in 1613 in Spanish, a significant choice, for it must have been aimed in the first instance at the largely Spanish-speaking public of monks and nuns in aristocratic religious houses at Naples. Eventually it would be read widely in Spain and even in New Spain. (106) For such an audience, music was both a professional discipline and a cultural ornament worth studying in depth. It was also an integral part of a newly emerging international high culture. The new literature, art, and music were vernacular and international, but not univesalizing in the old Latinate sense. International use no longer depended exclusively on the old universal language, Latin, but could also be achieved multi-lingually, by employing sophisticated vernaculars with wide currency among cultured folk in many countries -- Tuscan Italian, Castillian Spanish, or the French of Paris. (107)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The fifteen thirties and forties also saw the first Italian manuals for learning instrumental music. They multiplied rapidly. Typically books of the sort promised to teach their readers how to play \"with all the artistry appropriate to this [or that…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/619","title":"6.19 Professionals or Amateurs?","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Vernacular textbooks of the sort we have described in this chapter have one important thing in common. They all embodied skills of urban citizens, whether elite, middling, or artisanal, for whom the ornament of traditional Latin learning was less important than knowledge that led to success in government, business, or the arts broadly understood. This was true even for music textbooks, for musicians were skilled professionals who sold their services to make a living. Increasingly they depended for patronage on urban aristocrats who also cultivated music as amateurs. The wealth of these patrons was business-based; they valued music mathematically just as they did such other mathematically based skills as accounting, surveying, and navigation. As Alfred W. Crosby has ably shown, the music and painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were supremely mathematical disciplines, perfectly suited to the quantifying spirit of the age. Each of the new skills was provided with a rhetoric -- largely independent of traditional Latin rhetoric -- that legitimized a new order of society in which fully moral success was possible in business. (108)

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What is more, all these disciplines were in themselves businesslike, precisely because they partook of quantification and the accuracy it demanded:

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The dictionary defines businesslike as efficient, concise, direct, systematic and thorough. Nothing about courageous or elegant or pious, terms the noble or priestly classes might claim for themselves. Businesslike means careful and meticulous and, in practice, is a matter of numbers. It was one of the trails that led to science and technology insofar as its practitioners were quantitative in their perception and manipulation of as much of experience as could be described in quanta. (109)

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Crosby here is pointing to a fundamental shift in mentalité, one that would lead away from the worldview of Christian humanism. The authors of vernacular textbooks started down this path by claiming a moral and intellectual high ground that had once belonged only to the clergy and ennunciating a nobility of purpose that had once been aristocratic and humanistic. Slowly, arts and crafts, manufacturing and shipping, trade and banking came to be both honorable and virtuous callings with professional literatures of their own. Eventually this shift in mentality would lead to a new political and social order worldwide. The European imperial adventure was not merely another Latinizing imitation of the Roman Empire; it was also a conquest of the natural world and the triumph of Western, quantifying culture.

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Vernacular learning was the future of education and of educational publishing. Competitive vernaculars, embodied in nation states, would require textbooks that were better suited to the new realities of European commerce and conquest than the universalizing Latin textbooks of the past. It would be centuries before the kinds of textbooks made for the Latin classroom would be obsolete, but already at the start of the sixteenth century the monopolistic grip of the Latin master was beginning to weaken. Vernacular high culture on the one hand and widely-available self-help and how-to literature on the other would slowly lessen the need for Latin learning. Of course, printers and publishers were more than willing to profit from the new learning even as they obediently created books that served the older order. They were businesslike too, after all.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Vernacular textbooks of the sort we have described in this chapter have one important thing in common. They all embodied skills of urban citizens, whether elite, middling, or artisanal, for whom the ornament of traditional Latin learning was less…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/620","title":"6.20 Conclusion: Into the Future","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The first humanist music textbook aimed at Latin-school students was the Isagoge in Musicen of Heinrich Glareanus, whom we have already met as an author of a successful geography textbook (section 4.18 ). His half-Greek title means nothing more than Introduction to Music. The ten chapters were intended for students who needed to understand music and perform it in simple fashion but who were not usually expected to go on to use music professionally. (96)

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Italianate style, clear and severe (click to enlarge - 801 KB jpeg image)
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The Isagoge was elegantly printed by Johann Froben at Basel in 1515. It is simple and sober except for a florid architectural title page with putti cut by Hans Holbein the Younger. Froben was the perfect humanist publisher, a friend of Erasmus and Alciati, with a workshop full of skilled craftsmen who could achieve any look while presenting the greatest literary achievements of humanism in handsome and readable form. His textbooks all followed a severely typographic style, but they also achieved a certain charm by the use of small, elegantly spaced italic types. The origin of this style was Italian --it derived from models provided by Aldo Manuzio-- but Froben applied it to a music book for the first time. It would take more than a decade for Italian printers to re-adapt the model for music books.

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Music textbooks published in Italy (starting in the fifteen twenties) were altogether more pretentious. Those of Pietro Aaron (ca 1480-1545?), for example, tried to rival the monumentality of university-level law or medicine textbooks in folio or large quarto. The title pages presented the author seated formally in a university chair surrounded by students. In fact, Aaron never actually taught at a university. This portrait was a pose intended to lend authority to his claim that his books would divulge \"the secret chambers of this [musical] art.\" (97) Despite such claims, which would seem to put his books into a popularizing category, Pietro Aaron's early works were intended for academics who were at the period debating the meaning of newly discovered classical texts on music. The pompous typographic dress, then, was fully appropriate to the pretensions of the author.

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Humanist title page (click to enlarge - 606 KB jpeg image)
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Toward the end of his life, Aaron composed a short, textbook-level treatment of music theory. It appeared (probably posthumously) with a title that also sounds like that of a ricettario: A Little Compendium of Many Doubts, Secrets, and Thoughts About Plainchant and Polyphonic Song. (98) This Compendiolo, however, did not for a minute look like a ricettario. It is only eighty pages long, but it appeared in a large quarto format furnished with an elegant title page that arranged roman capitals in three descending sizes followed by several lines in graceful italic types.

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Humanist typography (click to enlarge - 787 KB jpeg image)
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The printer was Giovanni Antonio Castiglione, well known at Milan for high-quality illustrated books and equally handsome volumes of music. The Compendiolo contains no musical examples. Instead, the book proceeds through seventy-five brief chapters, moving from rule to rule in solid blocks of text relieved only by section heads. Its layout is indistinguishable from that of a humanist textbook on a literary or historical subject.

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Aaron's Compendiolo appeared in 1545, about the time of the author's death. This date was some years after comparable humanist-style music textbooks imported from the North came onto the Italian market, but contemporaneously with the first native Italian textbooks on the model of Northern European ones. It is possible that Aaron's printer and others at the period had in mind the model offered by Glareanus's Isagoge or more recent textbooks like the pretty pocket books published for the Lutheran Christian schools by Georg Rhaw. Certainly, graceful roman and italic types in spacious quarto or compact octavo formats would become the norm for singing textbooks in the second half of the century. (99)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The first humanist music textbook aimed at Latin-school students was the Isagoge in Musicen of Heinrich Glareanus, whom we have already met as an author of a successful geography textbook (section 4.18 ). His half-Greek title means nothing more than…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/618","title":"6.18 Humanist Music Education","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

There is rarely anything completely new in educational publishing, but one genre of humanist writing, the emblem book, was invented in the sixteenth century. In fact we know the exact moment, December 1522! Emblems -- poems with pictures -- were widely used for preaching and teaching, and this chapter considers their classroom use in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

","excerpt":"There is rarely anything completely new in educational publishing, but one genre of humanist writing, the emblem book, was invented in the sixteenth century. In fact we know the exact moment, December 1522! Emblems -- poems with pictures -- were…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/700","title":"7.00 CHAPTER SEVEN: Emblems in the Classroom","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The first age of printing saw many changes in school books, as in books of other sorts. Many of these changes, however, were effected not by the demands of the technology itself but rather for the sake of marketing books. Similarly, the demands of a universal, moral pedagogy influenced both the content and form of new school books. In this chapter, we will consider a genre of book new in the sixteenth century that, perhaps more than any other, united the moral impulse with the marketing one. This was the emblem book, born of humanist recreation in making up playful analogies, but quickly taken up by publishers who marketed it as a tool for moral education.

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Moral-analogical thinking was essential to the medieval pedagogy which Renaissance school masters inherited and sought to reform. For Christian educators, every individual act had its analogue in the larger world, either in the present, through history, or in literary fact. In the age of print this belief was communicated in a variety of typographic dress and sometimes took the form of outlines, tables, diagrams, or illustrations which could be facilitated by the new technologies of relief printing and engraving. But no Renaissance pedagogue seriously challenged either the moral content of elementary and intermediate education or the fruitfulness of the analogical method. (1) On the contrary, the perceived urgency of moral education increased in the course of the long sixteenth century in response to political intrigues, religious wars, and the rising status of the commercial classes relative to that of the traditional noble and clerical elites. Educators of all classes clung to old-fashioned morals amidst a storm of social instability.

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By contrast to such conservatism, the marketing strategies applied to mass-produced books were genuine novelties. Title pages, prefaces, and colophons offered new rhetorical topoi on reading and study and variants on old ones. They also promoted new, consumerist behaviors with respect to books. The very fact of mass production acted to commodify books; advertising claims followed closely behind. In many forms and on many subjects, textbooks served to educate consumers in the new market behaviors as well as in the traditional skills of the Latin-school course.

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Another invention of the sixteenth century, closely tied both to marketing and to visually presented moral analogy, was the emblem book, which we may define most simply as a collection of picture-puzzles. In an emblem, a striking picture is accompanied by a motto and a poem or two, sometimes in several languages, typically with the intent of embodying several layers of meaning. Each emblem was a free-standing object, usually presented on a single page or single page opening. The emblem book was a collection of individual emblems, sometimes systematically organized, often not. It could have one theme or many, but almost always it claimed to have a moral purpose. Emblem books have generated an enormous critical literature in the last half century, but there are few accounts that explain how and why the emblem book came to be a popular educational tool even though it had no place in traditional classrooms. (2)

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The emblem form was popular throughout Europe but reached its greatest sophistication as a teaching tool not in Italy but in Northern Europe. In this chapter, then, our survey of sixteenth-century Italian textbooks will conclude by considering some teaching tools that were neither specifically Italian nor properly speaking textbooks. Still, despite their non-Italian pedigree, emblems and emblem books were quintessentially sixteenth-century, printerly inventions which pointed to the future of education. They served during most of our period to educate the public both to morals and to methods of reading and thinking. They offered a new way of visualizing moral problems. The emblem was in part a response by humanists to the nascent, alternative educational system of practical / technical training. Although emblems were often vernacular or multi-lingual as well as Latin, they represented for the most part a novel way of presenting the wisdom of classical Christianity (what Alfred W. Crosby calls the Venerable Model) to a broad new public. The potential of emblems as teaching tools was immense. Examining them will show where textbook publishing was headed by the time the long sixteenth century passed into the age of enlightenment.

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We will also discover that book workers -- from authors and editors to scribes, typesetters, and printers -- embraced emblematic thinking as a way of bridging the ethical distance between commerce and science, between textbook making and teaching. Although it is clear from their advertising that humanists accepted and even embraced the market model of book making and distribution, the printing revolution was not achieved without creating tensions in establishmentarian thought. In particular, humanists often portrayed printers as technicians run amok, automatically reproducing massive numbers of errors and infelicities that would pass unnoticed or do no permanent harm in a more natural oral / aural classroom situation. Emblematic printer's marks served to smooth over the difference between commercial and learned goals by situating publishers' aspirations within the framework of humanist morals. By including an emblematic printer's mark, book makers and sellers embedded humanist modes of thought into many books and pamphlets they offered. Teachers in turn adopted this emblematic manner of labeling to advertise their own learning in and outside classrooms. (3)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The first age of printing saw many changes in school books, as in books of other sorts. Many of these changes, however, were effected not by the demands of the technology itself but rather for the sake of marketing books. Similarly, the demands of a…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/701","title":"7.01 Marketing and Moralizing","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Emblems functioned as machines for interpretive reading, and as such they could be tools for teaching study skills. A few examples will show how this was so. The simplest emblems make us think immediately of classroom reading exercises, even though we know they were not originally intended for that purpose. In Alciati's Emblem 126, under the motto \"From one man's loss, another's gain\" (Ex damno alterius alterius utilitas), the reader is invited to imagine a lioness and a boar in mortal combat while a vulture sits watchfully in a nearby tree. The poem describes the action in simple verse, deliberately rustic in style and reminiscent of an Aesopian fable. The final line, again after the fashion of Aesop, offers an epigrammatic saying or moral, \"The trophy of the victor will be another's [the vulture's] plunder.\" (7) This moral, however, was the second one given to the reader, since he had already been told in the motto that one man's loss produces another's gain. Equally deliberately, the story is a little more complex than Alciati's rustic style or either pithy saying alone allowed. The attentive reader would notice that there were two winners and one loser in the story, while the motto described one winner and one loser, and the moral epigram named the two winners but merely implied a loser.

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Lion and Boar (click to enlarge - 505 KB jpeg image)
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The printed image could complicate the reading of the emblem or simplify it. In Alciati's first emblems, there were no visuals, only the poems and mottoes. One of the pleasures of the puzzle --something that recommended it as a pastime-- was that the poem invited the reader to visualize the scene for himself. In the case of an animal fable like that of the lioness, boar, and vulture this process did not in fact require much imagination since the animals in question had a familiar iconography. A printed emblem complete with image was puzzling in a different way, since the reader might not at first see how the meaning of the motto at the top of the page related to the picture. In the visual dynamic of the printed emblem, motto and picture are captured by the eye at once, but only carefully reading the poem in a second moment could resolve the tension between motto and image. Emblem 126 of the lioness and boar comes from the second published collection of Alciati's emblems, offered by the Aldine press in 1546. By this time, Alciati's earlier collection had been in print for fifteen years and the learned inventor knew that his new emblems would be presented with images. The result in this case of an animal fable was a simple, clearly described image easily translated by the artist.

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Obscure and complex (click to enlarge - 507 KB jpeg image)
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Many of Alciati's emblems, however, were less naturalistic in form and lent themselves less easily both to visualization and to reading. Emblem 16 in modern editions is also from the 1546 collection and is among the more mysterious, at least on the face of it. Certainly it requires a complex reading. The picture shows an enormous, disembodied hand floating over a rural landscape. In some versions the artist dotted the fields with flowers; in others, a single oversize flower floats alongside the hand. On the open palm of the hand, an eye stares out at the viewer. The motto appeared in both Greek and Latin, telling the reader at once that the author had found an interesting Greek text and was going to translate it both literally and into an emblem. The Latin translation was unusually wordy for Alciati; it exhorted the reader to be careful, not to believe too easily, for \"these are the limbs of the mind\" (haec sunt membra mentis). No reader could be expected to resolve the enigma posed by the image and motto with any degree of certainty unless he could also get some hints from the poem. Even then, the reader was made to work. The entire poem reads:

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Do not be credulous, do not be incautious, says Epicharmus. These will be the sinews and limbs of the human mind. Behold a hand with an eye, believing what it sees. Behold the pennyroyal flower, ancient symbol of sobriety. By displaying it [the flower] Heraclitus calmed the crowd and charmed it, though it was threatening with swelling sedition.

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Obscurity explained (click to enlarge - 695 KB jpeg image)
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This poem is not entirely self-explanatory, but at least it identifies the source of the quotation, tells an ancient story (which is not pictured), and gives a token meaning to the items that are in the picture, the pennyroyal and the odd, seeing hand. The functional dynamic of the emblem, however, can only be explained in terms of Renaissance memory theory, which held that a striking, if possible slightly weird image was easier to remember than an ordinary one. Indeed, the full force of the emblem depends on memory in several ways. The reader must first remember at least vaguely the story of Heraclitus. She or he must be willing to accept a miscellaneous grouping of objects as a memory device. It would help too if the reader had a good memory for Latin vocabulary and knew that the adjective oculata (here applied to the hand) often referred to eyewitnesses in a court room. A person who offered reliable testimony by distinction to mere hearsay was oculatus. At this level, the emblem required multi-level, retrospective reading. It was intended to provoke a strenuous exercise of memory and moral analogy, both personal and historical. (8)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Emblems functioned as machines for interpretive reading, and as such they could be tools for teaching study skills. A few examples will show how this was so. The simplest emblems make us think immediately of classroom reading exercises, even though…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/703","title":"7.03 Emblem as Machine","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Unlike most literary genres, we know the precise date and personalities involved in the creation of the emblem book. Both the form of the individual emblem and the idea of creating a collection of them were devised as a literary recreation for his humanist friends (including a number of printers) by a renowned professor of law, Andrea Alciati (1492-1550). The moment was December of 1522. His collection went to print in 1531 without his consent. It was imitated almost immediately, and by the 1540s the new genre was established and flourishing entirely outside of Alciati's control and indeed in forms he had not imagined. Alciati's long, international career as literary editor and translator and as teacher of law at Avignon, Milan, Bourges, Pavia, Bologna, and Ferrara no doubt contributed to the successful marketing of his emblem book, which saw hundreds of editions in a dozen languages within his lifetime. (4)

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Alciati expounds Aldo's anchor (click to enlarge - 865 KB jpeg image)
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We can also delineate a detailed intellectual context for the form. Emblems had many antecedents in Renaissance art, literature, and commerce, most importantly in heraldry and trademarking. But Alciati tells us he modeled his first emblems directly on the learned printer's marks of his day. He specifically mentions the mark of Aldo Manuzio, which, as he knew, had been explicated at some length by Erasmus in his Adagia. (5)

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Collected emblems (click to enlarge - 900 KB jpeg image)
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Alciati intended his collection for the amusement of a narrow circle of friends. He did not promote or supervise the earliest editions. Emblem collections for the entertainment and edification of a broader public were market objects invented by printers. The market drove further development of the form, which is analogous in this regard to successful collections of proverbs that often supplied the emblematists' mottoes. Both proverb collections and emblem books were complex, mimetic forms, derived from commonplaces in earlier literature and aimed at inviting the creation of additional commonplaces. The emblem book easily changed and grew well beyond the author's control because the form was composite; printed emblems required an artist to complement the work of the author. (6)

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Emblems were offered as learning tools for children and adults alike. The published genre was not specifically school-oriented, but we know that painted and printed emblems often appeared in schools. Alciati composed his emblems in the context of learned rhetorical culture (by definition Latin-literate) but his emblems were translated and adapted for children within only a few years of their first publication. At the end of the sixteenth century devising emblems became part of the standard Jesuit school curriculum. By the middle of the seventeenth century emblems and emblematic thinking were almost universal in Europe. Education to this mode of thinking was by then a common part of the Latin curriculum and became formalized in several ways outside the Latin schools.

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Like the textbook market, however, the emblem market allowed for many regional variations of taste and practice. Courtly and academic emblems were published throughout Europe. The form was rapidly adopted by Christian evangelists of many denominations, but secular emblem books also continued to be made in some markets. In Protestant Europe, emblem books were published specifically for a children's market, giving rise to an early genre of children's literature (as distinct from textbooks for school use). But emblem books for children, whether in or out of school, were never common in Italy. And the emblem book did not have a fixed place in the curriculum on either side of the Alps. American publishers today refer to some such books as \"ancillaries,\" that is, books that can be built into certain curricula as designed by educational publishers but which are also marketed and read separately. It is useful to imagine the emblem book having this function in early modern schools too, as a supplementary teaching tool that some teachers integrated closely into their curricula, while others did not use it at all.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Unlike most literary genres, we know the precise date and personalities involved in the creation of the emblem book. Both the form of the individual emblem and the idea of creating a collection of them were devised as a literary recreation for his…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/702","title":"7.02 Authors and Audiences","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Wrong Love, 1536 (click to enlarge - 948 KB jpeg image)
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From the start, Alciati assumed active reader response in visualizing the images, but the process could be problematic. John Manning has related how Alciati's Emblem 110 proved difficult for artists; it appeared in the first printed collection of 1531 with a picture that is entirely inappropriate to the poem. The image is that of Amor, and the poem asks a series of questions, wondering where are the love god's bow, arrows, torch, and wings. It adds, why does he hold three garlands and wear another on his brow? As Manning notes, Alciati was inviting his reader to imagine a child or youth without any of the usual attributes of Cupid/Amor; but the earliest editions offered a standard-issue cupid with bow, arrows, and wings.

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Wrong Love, 1540 (click to enlarge - 865 KB jpeg image)
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Apparently the highly standardized iconography interfered with a proper understanding of the verse, for the mysterious lack of attributes was made perfectly clear in the second half of the poem when the god himself replies that he is not promoting venereal love but love of virtue, that his laurel crown represents wisdom, and that he is weaving garlands of the other virtues. The motto also pointed in this direction, since it is \"Love of virtue\" (Amor virtutis). It took several editions prepared with advice from Alciati to fully correct the error.

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Exactly the reverse iconographical drift occurred with Emblem 6, False Religion (Ficta religio). Early editions correctly showed an enthroned prostitute who offers the wine of delusion to her followers. Later in the century, the poem's passing reference to Babylon led artists to imagine the biblical whore of Babylon and show Alciati's strumpet seated on the seven-headed monster common in images of the Apocalypse. (9)

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Straightforward image, multiple meanings
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Alciati's emblems were generally straightforward and eschewed the kind of pretend mysteriousness that many emblem authors affected. Even straightforward emblems, however, were susceptible to multiple readings and indeed demanded them. In the emblem adopted as a trademark by the Medici Oriental Press, for example, the reader is presented with an image of a hand reaching out from a cloud and sowing grain onto a recently plowed field. The plow, apparently just abandoned by the plowman, sits atilt at the bottom of the frame. The accompanying Latin motto reads, \"Rejoicing, they will gather the harvest.\" (10) In the then-current Italian fashion, and because this is a trademark as well as an emblem, there was no accompanying poem, so the relationship between motto and image was left to the viewer to figure out. The motto does not refer directly to the scene of plowing and sowing but to the far-off harvest. Since the Medici Oriental Press was a missionary effort devoted to presenting catechetical texts in oriental languages, the verbal/visual device here had a specific meaning with reference to Christian missionary efforts. But it was open-ended enough to be read more generally of the fruitfulness of hard work, something appropriate to any printing house and, indeed, to most areas of Christian life.

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Almost all emblems are based on literary sources and imply a comparative reading of texts on related themes. (11) In this example, there was no exact verbal parallel for the motto about the harvest in either the Old or New Testament, but the author deliberately evoked scriptural language (that of the gospel parables in particular); and the saying easily suggested a whole range of moral readings. The emblem as a whole embodied more of the related biblical stories than either the single image of sowing or the motto about reaping could offer. So the reader was presented with two themes commonplace in themselves but slightly different from any in scripture, that labor is its own reward and that joy is a precondition for as well as the result of fruitful work.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"From the start, Alciati assumed active reader response in visualizing the images, but the process could be problematic. John Manning has related how Alciati's Emblem 110 proved difficult for artists; it appeared in the first printed collection of…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/704","title":"7.04 Visualizing the Text","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The emblem was an open-ended form, embodying as it did both themes specifically intended by the author and also others that the reader could bring to it from his or her own reading. Collected into books with numerous images, the individual emblems became even more open-ended, since they invited the reader to conceive of study as a series of discrete problems which added up to a moral philosophy, personally acquired and personally applied. Admittedly, the intent was establishmentarian. The individual puzzles almost always led to commonplace solutions that were dictated by obvious social standards. The themes were those of European society at large; and the most significant single lesson intended by most authors was the value of conforming to the commonplaces. Indeed, conformity was an increasingly urgent emblem theme as the Wars of Religion progressed. Still, emblems required an activist kind of reading that engaged the mind in problem solving. The emblem book did not allow of passive learning or rote memorization. It could elicit a variety of responses. The mental activism it demanded particularly appealed to teachers, just as the overall lessons of conformity to authority did. (12)

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Because they were pictorial, emblems also assumed some kind of display, both of the complex, invented objects and of the author's learnedness which stood behind the images, mottoes, and poems. There were many everyday opportunities to display emblems, but the emblem book rather quickly became the usual way to transmit emblems to the public. It is easy to see how this kind of public/private, learned/popular, esoteric/on-display object came to symbolize Renaissance ideals of moral education and rhetorical/scientific invention. At their most pretentious, emblem authors imagined that long study and experience were distilled into a single, revelatory moment embodied in the emblem. The emblem would both explicate an author's insight and also stand permanently as witness to the genius of the inventor. In practice very few emblems \"invented\" in the modern sense of the word. Instead, they discovered morally persuasive themes in the literature of the past -- the classical, rhetorical sense of inventio -- and this was exactly the goal traditionally claimed for a good Latin education. It is in this important sense that emblem collections can be seen as a humanist response to the new realities of education through printed tools. Once collected into series, emblems in book form served for meditation and for teaching, but also for the processes of rhetorical invention and other sorts of design. They were how-to books for inventive thought, whether moral, graphic, or scientific. Because they were puzzles, emblems presupposed a leisurely, Latinate sort of reading and study, not the kinds of simple amusement, quick reference, or stepwise directive that was the method of the usual vernacular how-to book. (13)

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The printed emblem book flourished as a high-culture phenomenon until about 1600. Starting in the mid-sixteenth century, however, and continuing throughout the seventeenth, the form was popularized. This developmental arc is important, because the form rather quickly became something its inventor never imagined. Already in the late sixteenth century, emblem-making was diffused into a variety of everyday life situations and popularized. Printing played a key role, both by multiplying the individual emblems and also by proposing the emblem book as tool for extended meditation. The emblem book elevated the activity of composing and puzzling out individual emblems from an occasional pastime to a literary genre with its own rules and conventions, its own critical literature, and a series of audiences defined by the market. Some emblems had always had moral meaning, but, increasingly in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, moral emblems in book form were offered to women and children as tools for learning how to conform to the expectations of society. The process began very early, with several translations of Alciati's 1531 collection intended for student readers that appeared in France in the 1540s. (14)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The emblem was an open-ended form, embodying as it did both themes specifically intended by the author and also others that the reader could bring to it from his or her own reading. Collected into books with numerous images, the individual emblems…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/705","title":"7.05 Emblem Books","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Image on a wall calendar, 1511 (click to enlarge - 701 KB jpeg image)
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There were many precursors to the fully-formed emblem in popular and learned culture alike, and many related phenomena that suggested emblematic forms of thought. Those that children might have encountered even before they got to school include religious art with mottoes for explication by preachers; flags, festival banners, livery and buildings with the insignia of towns, families, or confraternities; and, at the most basic level of all, coins and shop signs. In their own homes, some children would also have encountered hallmarks or ornamental devices on earthenware or metalwork, family coats of arms, and the ubiquitous personal devices of aristocrats. (15)

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Vittorino's emblem on a medal (click to enlarge - 161 KB jpeg image)
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The earliest emblem books were not intended for elementary or intermediate classroom use, and in Italy it never became common to propose whole books of emblems for children. Still, the possibility that some were used in classrooms at an early date cannot be excluded. The emblem of the pelican widely associated with Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446), for example, suggests that he and his successors presented such literary images to boys in his famous school at Mantua. (16) We can be sure that emblems in the form of printer's marks did arrive in classrooms on the title pages of school books. So, even before a student encountered an emblem book, that is, a systematic collection of emblems, he or she would have encountered the emblem form repeatedly. Emblem books were just a way of owning the genre personally. They made the educational activity of reading complex symbols into an object to buy on the market.

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Sixteenth-century children probably learned to read emblems actively for the first time in the advertising context we have already explored in earlier chapters, namely the front matter, especially the title pages, of their school books. (See especially sections 1.06, 1.10, 1.14, and 2.08.) By the end of the sixteenth century, when popular prints and posters of all sorts were to be found on display everywhere in European cities, they could also read such emblems in the street with the same active form of reading they learned in school. It is important to understand this everyday emblem dynamic before we delve into the function of the educational emblem and emblem books, because it is clear that emblems in schools functioned both from the bottom up, using simple and familiar symbols to suggest more complex meanings, and from the top down (as more often described in the literature), as a secret or esoteric sort of communication between savants intended to exclude the non-initiate or unlearned viewer. As we will see, some students were given the exercise of creating emblems too, but they could not have done this if they were not already fully familiar with the form.

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Medieval European towns boasted a welter of pictorial shop signs. Early modern streets and shops were also increasingly cluttered with printed posters or broadsides announcing everything from royal and municipal laws to the latest news events to public ceremonies and even private ones like christenings, weddings, and funerals. The communicative problem in any poster is to attract members of the target public and keep them standing long enough to get the message. (17)

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Cluttered informational design (click to enlarge - 646 KB jpeg image)
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Take, for example, a festival announcement from seventeenth-century Rome for the feast of the Triumph of the Wounds of Christ. It gave the details of a celebratory mass, offered some poetry on its devotional subject, and named the sponsors of the events. The design challenge in such a poster was to make present to a varied public the meaning of an abstract religious doctrine. At the center of the poster is an engraved emblem of the wounds, displaying in solemn fashion the tools of torture. Devotion to the wounds of Christ was a common late medieval practice that would have been familiar to many relatively unschooled folk. (18) The version in this Roman poster of 1671, however, was somewhat removed from popular, late medieval iconography. The wounds themselves were not depicted, only the instruments --the nails, lance, scourge, and crown of thorns. Many popular images, moreover, included the sign affixed to the cross that read \"Behold the King of the Jews,\" the mocking words that were at once a part of the torture and a prophesy of the triumph of Christ.

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Words inside the picture
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Here we find instead a different verbalization, one that tells us we are to take the image emblematically as well as literally. An elegant banderole woven into the crown of thorns displays the motto Plaga plagis curatur, or \"The blow is cured by blows.\" Other texts on the poster include the names and titles of the noble patron of the feast and an original but unlovely sonnet on the wounds. Note, however, that the longer texts do not explicate the emblem any more than the motto does; these texts merely accompany the image and contextualize it. Some of the words here are strictly information, telling us when and where the solemn mass would be celebrated; others are more celebratory and ornamental. As is usual in emblems, the motto is an essential part of the puzzle. It does not label or explain the picture; rather, it offers one clue to the puzzle represented by the emblem as a whole.

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The emblematic symbol of the theological doctrine being celebrated on this feast day is by far the most prominent element on the poster even though the text is fulsome and the layout is complicated by other visuals (borders, putti, flowers). Centering the most important visual may seem an obvious strategy in a case where there is really too much textual information for an effective, fully typographical presentation, but only because we, like the audience for this poster, are fully expecting to locate the meaning in a central, typographically surrounded image. Like them, we have been educated by printers, publishers, and other middle-men to expect certain things in an informational design, among them a strong visual. In this case, the reader is invited to stop and puzzle out the emblem as well as to read the information in the accompanying text. Words, graphics, border, and white space act together to ornament the central, theological doctrine; they contribute to the generally festive character of the event. But all these things also clutter the page visually and intellectually. In this way, by creating several levels of meaning for audiences with differing intellectual pretensions, this otherwise banal festival poster is typical of much early modern graphic and educational practice.

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Early modern reading was rarely straightforwardly informational, and so too, reading education was not aimed at finding single meanings. Even when the educational aims were heavy-handedly moralistic, and even when the creators of the works ostentatiously talked down to their audiences, the resulting graphic objects were rarely simplistic. They were multi-layered by design. Their puzzle-like nature derived directly from pedagogical theory that insisted upon multiplicity of meaning. (19)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"There were many precursors to the fully-formed emblem in popular and learned culture alike, and many related phenomena that suggested emblematic forms of thought. Those that children might have encountered even before they got to school include…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/706","title":"7.06 Reading Emblems Every Day","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In design terms, popular products like posters functioned very much like the emblematic title pages on books. That is, they combined informational and moral import in individual images that were surrounded by type but usually not closely explicated in the adjacent text. Commercial or advertising motives were never absent but they did not usually function alone, if only because the emblematic mode of thinking encouraged readers to look for more than one level of meaning. The presence of the image was an invitation to think on more than one level, to add imaginative value, if you will, to the textual content. (20)

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All these meanings were present in printer's marks even before Alciati invented the emblem as such. Not incidentally, they were just beginning to be a regular feature of title pages about the time Alciati imagined the literary genre. In her book on the development of the early title page, Margaret Smith distinguishes between the protective value of a cover sheet, its labeling value, and its function as a sales tool. (21) If we recall that sophisticated book buyers in the fifteenth century approached any page with the expectation of multiple meanings, it comes as no surprise that these several functions worked simultaneously. Putting a printer's mark on the title page added yet another marketing function and another level of sophisticated consumer expectation. Even if the mark were merely ornamental or functioned primarily as a hallmark ensuring quality, its presence was already an addition of sorts, signifying a certain quality of manufactured object. If it was also an emblem of the kind educated readers were trained to puzzle out, then it recommended the book in intellectual and moral as well as other consumer terms.

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It is well worth asking how these design-oriented motives went along with the literary, moral, commercial, and practical ones. Emblems were puzzles, and puzzling them out was considered a sort of invention. Invention still had a strongly rhetorical meaning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It always meant inventing arguments or finding them out in the raw materials of a subject. In the case of emblems it also meant encoding them in symbols that could be unlocked in a second moment by another inventor. As such the emblem participated in a sort of retrospective or reflexive design process. From the start, the maker of an emblem expected that it would be the subject of intellectual back-formations on the part of its readers. The act of devising or inventing images and the act of decoding them were not just technical skills. They were moral acts, fruitful applications of mental skill to problem solving, and practice in making and effecting moral decisions. (22)

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Adding an emblem to the title page in the form of a printer's mark (or, less commonly, the personal emblem of the book's author or that of a scholarly academy) usually had more to do with the authority of the product than its subject. It was validation, not information. It invited the reader to take the book seriously. The emblematic mark also embedded in every text from a given press the multi-layered meanings of the emblem, whether they had anything to do with the specific content of the book or not. (23) Claude Mignault, a late sixteenth-century theorist of the emblem, pointed to this specific function of the emblematic printer's mark:

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... I must add a few words about the emblems of certain learned men of the press which they are accustomed to add ingeniously to the title pages of their books, and by which they encourage themselves either by genius or by design, to do those things necessary for the cultivation of better letters. (24)

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Thus the emblematic mark is both an ingenious device or company logo and a way for the printers to encourage themselves and others to do their best for the republic of letters.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In design terms, popular products like posters functioned very much like the emblematic title pages on books. That is, they combined informational and moral import in individual images that were surrounded by type but usually not closely explicated…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/707","title":"7.07 Title Page Emblems","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Today we take this quality-assurance function entirely for granted when we look at an imprint. Oxford University Press with its heraldic mark on the spine and title page, or even its name just spoken, has a cachet some other imprints do not. As we move into the age of electronic publishing, with less extensive peer review and less stability for texts in circulation, we are reverting to a situation like that of the early title page, when the maker's mark was not always a recognized guarantee. The early modern printer's mark was something you had to stop and read, whether you encountered it in a bookshop, in a library, or in a classroom. It was a hallmark of quality, but one that had to be evaluated on a continuing basis. Its ability to function as a hallmark, that is, depended on a public of readers educated to understand the emblem and willing to take the time to puzzle it out.

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The habit of claiming intellectual high ground in printer's marks elicited at least one negative critique in the sixteenth century. Johann Arnold of Marktbergel (fl. 1515-1547) published a poem in 1540 in praise of the marvelous invention of printing. Like Erasmus in the later editions of the Adagia, Arnold recognized that the glorious intellectual achievements of his age were both promoted by printers like Aldo Manuzio and counterfeited by other, less scrupulous men. Erasmus and Arnold assigned the blame to profit seeking; and both pointed up the hypocrisy embodied in the high-culture pretension of printer's marks. (25) Arnold was far more direct in his criticism than Erasmus. One of the printed marginal rubrics to Arnold's poem was \"On printers' marks\"(De typographorum insigniis), and the poem went right to the point with more than one double entendre: \"The present age sells/praises reputations/symbols on books, and puts them for all to see right at first sight/on the title page\" (Vendicat ac praesens aetas insignia libris / Et prima facie conspicienda locat). Arnold quickly dispensed with the ambiguity of such wordplay and launched into a bitter complaint about the misuse of complex and often obscure classical symbols to sell shoddy goods. Even Delphian Apollo could not figure some of them out. The passage ends:

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Every [printer] hopes he will shed favorable light on his books with this kind of deceit, and he expects dishonest profit thereby. But what the image displayed on paper actually shows is its owner's everlasting negation of his own good deeds. No one offers a symbol of virtue; no one takes up just arms in the hand of Justice. (26)

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The significant wordplay here is in that usque (continuing, everlasting) -- the durability of the mark on paper is compared to the eternity of the printer's damnation.

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Perhaps it was just too much to expect commerce and humanism to mix easily in the confined space of a title page. Still, Arnold was in the minority. Most other writers on emblematic printer's marks were less critical. They praise the printers who live up to the intellectual pretensions of their marks. Even Erasmus, who complained long and bitterly about the greed of printers, did so in the context of his explication of the mark of a printer he admired. Arnold, by contrast, fixed on the marks as symbols of hypocrisy. His depth of feeling cannot be denied. It attests to the real influence such emblems were thought to have for teaching good --or for embodying evil. (27)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Today we take this quality-assurance function entirely for granted when we look at an imprint. Oxford University Press with its heraldic mark on the spine and title page, or even its name just spoken, has a cachet some other imprints do not. As we…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/708","title":"7.08 Trademarks Good or Bad?","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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The Aldine Anchor, 1555 (click to enlarge - 437 KB jpeg image)
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The educational power of this emblem dynamic on title pages might be clearer if we examine a few examples of textbook title pages with emblems. The most common type of title page emblem was the printer's mark, and the best known such mark is also one of the earliest, that of Aldo Manuzio, which appeared on the many school texts from his press starting in 1502. The Aldine anchor-and-dolphin mark was one of a particular sort, where the image required the compliment of a motto, in this case Festina lente (\"Make haste slowly\"), but the motto was never displayed along with the mark. Such emblems with implied but not stated mottoes were common and intended to add a further dimension to the puzzle-like nature of the device. In the specific case of Aldo, the mysterious mark on so many schoolbooks not only identified the products of the Aldine press, it also invited discussion and explication. (28)

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A missionary emblem (click to enlarge - 559 KB jpeg image)
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Most printer's marks were less mysterious. The typical printer chose an emblem with both an image and a motto that could be read and interpreted fairly easily. The reader had to search his memory for the classical references and he was intended to admire the ingenuity of the printer; but he was not taxed with overmuch obscurity. The mark of the Medici Oriental Press described above is of this sort. There was a great deal of visual/verbal word play in the book trade, which served in the market to commend the books to those who thought of themselves as witty.

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Mr. Pozzo's mark (click to enlarge - 552 KB jpeg image)
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When Francesco Moscheni of Milan put a tiny fly (mosca) in the middle of a mark that concerned other, weightier matters, he was just looking for a smile of recognition. Similarly, a play on the name of the Spanish Viceroy by another Milan printer was an elegant compliment that recognized a patron. On the other hand, when Cesare Pozzo included a title page emblem of Christ meeting the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well (pozzo), he was both punning and also making a serious statement about his evangelical religious stance. No motto was needed, for Jesus's speech on the living water of salvation was one of the most quoted passages in all of the New Testament. (29)

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By the middle of the sixteenth century, it was essential for printers to display marks, and emblematic marks were the most common form. Only a few genres of printed matter were exempt. In government printing the arms of a town or ruler could take the place of a printer's mark. Pamphlets or handbills with no expectation of permanence also went without marks. These were the cheapest literary products on the market -- ballads, burlesques, and simple how-to books. Inevitably, heterodox or politically radical works also lacked marks (or employed false ones). The printer's mark on all other works assured buyers of the piety, good faith, respectability, and economic stability of the press. As the century wore on, religious conformity and even Counter-Reformation zeal were increasingly embodied in printer's marks as well. (30)

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Sometimes these thoroughly Christian and bourgeois qualities were not quite enough. The case of Bernardo Giunta shows how this could be so. Bernardo was a third-generation printer from a prominent family that had branches in Florence, Venice, Burgos, and Lyon. He headed the Florence house from 1517 to 1551. All the Giunta affiliates used some form of the fleur-de-lis as their mark. It was the device of the Florentine Republic, and so displayed their pride in Florence as well as in their family traditions. The lily was not in itself an emblematic device. It represented a slightly older tradition of printer's marks, closer in design logic to a coat of arms or a traditional merchant's hallmark. Bernardo himself, however, favored a version which had been transformed into an emblem. His lily was supported by two putti holding vines emerging from a vase; the sometime motto was Nil candidius (\"None more brilliant\" or \"None more famous,\" in effect, \"None better\"). This mark had moral and literary pretensions but it could as easily be read as pure advertising, a sort of product endorsement.

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More than just a lily (click to enlarge - 249 KB jpeg image)
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Apparently, Nil candidius did not suffice for Grand Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574). He wanted Florence's oldest and most productive press to work to the highest standards of scholarly printing in Europe. With his sanction, the court poet and cultural impresario Vincenzo Borghini (1515-1580) pressured an aging and apparently reluctant Bernardo to acquire better type and equipment and to adopt a new, emblematic printer's mark devised by Borghini himself. The new mark would conform to the highest expectations of emblematists and the greatest pretensions of printers. With it, Borghini and the Duke exhorted still greater effort from Bernardo and advertised Florence's claims to be a European cultural capital. From 1547 until his death in 1551, Bernardo's title pages displayed a finely wrought image of a snake shedding its skin between two rocks. Behind and above the serpent rose an elegant, naturalistic lily to reflect Giunta tradition. But the motto, Novus exorior (\"I arise renewed\"), referred only to the snake. In Borghini's own words, the motto \"yields the meaning of a book that with extreme care and labor, as if rubbed between two stones, has left behind the skin of old errors and negligences that once weighed it down.\" For his compliance, Bernardo was rewarded with a noble title, but his heirs continued to use the new device only until 1559. Thereafter they reverted to a stylized fleur-de-lis more in keeping with family tradition. (31)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The educational power of this emblem dynamic on title pages might be clearer if we examine a few examples of textbook title pages with emblems. The most common type of title page emblem was the printer's mark, and the best known such mark is also one…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/709","title":"7.09 Classroom Title Pages","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

In some cases, we know that book men chose to substitute other sorts of emblems on title pages. Famous authors could command the addition of their personal devices up front, in which case the printer's mark might stand in a secondary place, at the end of the book or on the verso of the title. Learned academies placed their institutional emblem on title pages, similarly banishing or displacing the printer's mark. But even relatively unknown textbook authors, when they were in control of the process of printing, could do the same.

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Cafaro's homemade emblem (click to enlarge - 600 KB jpeg image)
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One such book to survive from the sixteenth century is the product of a provincial schoolmaster and a provincial press, the Grammatices Phoenix by Girolamo Cafaro (d. after 1564), printed at Cortona in Tuscany in 1546. Cafaro was a native of Salerno who proposed a radically simplified Latin grammar course. The book had considerable success, since it went through more than twenty subsequent editions and was printed as late as 1607. (32) Cafaro intended the phoenix in his title to suggest that his new grammar would replace those of older-fashioned pedagogues; and he emphasized the point on the title page of the first edition with an emblem, apparently cut to order by an unskilled local craftsman. It shows a phoenix rising from the flames and facing the sun with a motto, \"It strives toward the clear light in a star-producing heaven.\" (33) Cafaro, at this date a minor figure anywhere but in Cortona, could only have commanded this degree of consideration from a provincial printer; and the roughness of the cut suggests that the printer could only secure the services of a local artisan.

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Pico's custom-made title page (Photo: ANSAS, Florence) (click to enlarge - 702 KB jpeg image)
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If a school master had the means to subsidize the publication of a textbook entirely by himself, he could also dictate the title page design to include his own personal mark. Evenzio Pico, a grammarian who taught at Ancona, turned to Antonio Blado in Rome for a beautifully designed elementary grammar that appeared in 1560 together with some shorter works --letters and orations-- authored by Pico. Although Blado used somewhat worn type, the format and layout are spacious and handsome, entirely up to the design standards of his firm. Most remarkable of all, however, is the large, fresh woodcut emblem on the title page. It is a personal mark, not a family crest, since it plays on Evenzio Pico's unusual first name with a motto that reads Eventus Bonus, literally \"a good result,\" also the name of the Roman god of success and fruitfullness. The extensive front matter of the book presents it as a gift from the author to his erstwhile employers, the people of Ancona. It is unclear whether Pico intended this book as the capstone to a successful career or as a bid for re-employment in Ancona. But in any case it displays considerable vanity in offering his collected works behind a title page with a personal device. (34)

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A mysterious emblem (click to enlarge - 598 KB jpeg image)
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An even more upscale grammar book was that of Francesco Priscianese (d. ca. 1547), a humanist and printer who participated in the brilliant circle of Tuscan intellectuals that included Piero Vettori and Michelangelo Buonarotti. Like humble Cafaro, however, Priscianese proposed a radical restructuring of the grammar course (see above, sections 2.11 and 2.13). In 1540, he offered the first edition of his new grammar (written in Italian), with a mysterious, full-page emblem on the verso of the last page. In a draped niche, we see a jeweled monstrance decorated with fleurs-de-lis and, in the central field, two palm fronds encircled by a crown. Above them hovers a palm wreath tied with a ribbon that surrounds the letters F S D N. On the base of the monstrance is the motto Omnia octo (\"All in eight,\" a proverb from the Byzantine writer Michael Apostolios), while the single line of poetry at the bottom of the page reads \"Whatever of true love exists is received in me\" (Quanto è di vero Amore in me s'accoglie). This is about as deliberately obscure as an emblem can get. Indeed, though beautiful, the image detracts from the advertised utilitarianism of the work by inserting it into a highly academic context.

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The author on the title page (click to enlarge - 767 KB jpeg image)
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The book was pretentious in several other ways too. It appeared in a stout quarto format and included a woodcut portrait of the author on the title page. The portrait was apparently taken from life and done in a distinctively Florentine, high mannerist style. The dedication is to Francis I, King of France (to whom the emblem might refer, though it does not include any of his personal insignia); and the volume included full texts of privileges from Pope Paul III and Emperor Charles V. It made reference as well to additional privilegii amplissimi from the French king, the Venetian Senate, the governments of Florence and Ferrara, and \"other lords of Italy.\" The name of the printer appears only on the second-last page in tiny type. (35)

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Standard, later title page (click to enlarge - 606 KB jpeg image)
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Priscianese presumably had considerable control over editions of his work that appeared in his lifetime, since, as a printer himself, he would have dealt with his Venetian publishers from a position of knowledge and prestige. It is interesting, therefore, that the subsequent editions of his grammar, all printed after the expiration of his initial privileges, do not include this emblem and omit the title page portrait as well. We do not know the exact date of Priscianese's death, but it seems that these later editions were done without his supervision. Or perhaps Priscianese simply yielded to the publishing conventions of the day that permitted printers and publishers to display their proud marks with emblematic messages of their own.

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Girolamo Cafaro probably knew and imitated the grammar of Priscianese. At Cortona in 1546, as we have seen, he could only manage to elaborate his title page with a roughly cut phoenix emblem by a local artist. A second edition, done at Rome in 1555, was also called Phoenix, and displayed a new cut of the mythical bird, in every way more elegant and expertly done. An enlarged edition of the grammar appeared at Venice in 1560 where Cafaro transformed it again. The title Phoenix is gone, in favor of a more straightforward Hieronymi Caphari Grammatice. And the title page bears a woodcut portrait of Cafaro that seems to be a direct imitation of the Priscianese portrait of 1540. Presumably, Cafaro or his patrons were subsidizing these early editions, for they violated conventions of the day by using an original emblem or author portrait on a grammar book. All later editions (produced under commercial conditions at Venice, Rome, Pesaro, and Torino) bear ordinary printer's marks on their title pages. (36)

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The cases of Priscianese and Cafaro were exceptions to firm, general rules. The fact that their personal interventions lapsed later demonstrates that there were clearly understood and rarely contravened conventions of title-page emblematics. Institutional publishers could intervene for good reason to displace the printer's emblem. Authors too could stretch the rules in cases where they were subsidizing the production of the books themselves; but they could not make anomalous usages last long in the competitive marketplace. Textbooks were a particularly traditionalizing form; and these two authors distorted the norm in the service of their radical educational ideals as well as for self-promotion. But in the larger textbook market, where learning was for sale, it was the publishers who made decisions.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"In some cases, we know that book men chose to substitute other sorts of emblems on title pages. Famous authors could command the addition of their personal devices up front, in which case the printer's mark might stand in a secondary place, at the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/710","title":"7.10 Breaking the Rules","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Did children encounter emblem collections as well as single emblems in early modern classrooms? Absent more substantial evidence, we should allow for the possibility that painted emblems in series existed in some classrooms and that schoolboys would be encouraged to read series of emblematic devices sculpted or painted in churches and other public places. We know that educated people in the late Middle Ages could read publicly displayed images in highly sophisticated ways. (37)

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Still, the fully developed emblem was an invention of the age of printing and we can assume that its regular and widespread use in classrooms cannot have predated the production of printed emblem books. Alciati's pioneering emblem book appeared in print in 1531 and was reprinted frequently from the start. Within twenty years it had been published throughout Europe and translated several times. But none of the early Latin editions of Alciati can be said with certainty to have been intended for classroom use, and I have never seen a copy with notes by students or teachers. (38) By comparison to textbooks we have examined in earlier chapters, moreover, emblem books were relatively expensive and probably out of reach of many students.

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It is Alciati's translators who provide us with the earliest evidence that emblem books were put to classroom use. (39) The earliest translators were humanist teachers. Both Wolfgang Hunger (1511-1555), the law professor who made the first translation into German, and Bartolomé Aneau (d. 1561), a rhetorician who published a French translation in 1549, had studied in Bourges, where Alciati spent a large part of his early career. It is not certain that either of them ever met the great Italian jurist, but both trained with disciples of Alciati and both acquired an intense admiration for the classroom potential of the emblem book form. In the preface to his 1542 German translation, Hunger repeatedly stressed that his purpose is didactic, not recreational or belletristic. He hoped that \"students and teachers will find this golden little book attractive and commendable\" and that through studying it \"they will be able to distinguish the splendor of virtues and the wretchedness of vices, just as in the primer.\" (40)

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Hunger's preface is unusually lengthy and fulsome. He listed almost all the themes future emblem book authors, editors, and translators would sound in describing the educational value of emblems. Hunger named the audience he had in mind as the \"sons of noblemen, the children of other wealthy persons, and youth more generally.\" Such a claim reproduced the social hierarchy of the period, and it did so in a way that advertised the book to a very broad public. Any youth could benefit, but the noble born, presumably future leaders, needed this kind of education most. Others, if they were ambitious, might imitate their betters. This kind of socially layered audience was implicit in almost all emblem books. Even those authors who named a narrower target readership than Hunger assumed that the larger society was hierarchical and that their particular readers would use the emblems to find and keep their proper social place. (41)

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Hunger situated his interest in Alciati in the context of his own humanist education to languages. Translating these emblems into French or German not only made them more accessible, it also enriched the general store of morally useful poetry. He specifically compared the utility of emblems to fables and proverbs and suggested that, like music, they would make studying easier and more pleasant for children. (42) These humanist commonplaces signified that, whatever other pretensions emblems had, they were also specifically applicable in the humanist classroom at a relatively elementary stage.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Did children encounter emblem collections as well as single emblems in early modern classrooms? Absent more substantial evidence, we should allow for the possibility that painted emblems in series existed in some classrooms and that schoolboys would…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/711","title":"7.11 Emblem Books in the Classroom","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

The one well and extensively documented application of emblems in an organized curriculum is that of the Jesuit schools. The initiative for this expansion of the basic Jesuit curriculum seems to have come from the order's Dutch and German provinces late in the sixteenth century. It was adopted by the Collegio Romano and other Italian schools only somewhat later. There is no direct mention of emblems in official Jesuit educational documents before the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, nor are they envisioned by any of the highly detailed regulations for Jesuit colleges in Italy. Jesuit emblems in formal classroom use were an import into Italy. It should be remembered in this regard that Italians looked upon the whole of the Jesuit curriculum as a foreign importation from the very start, at the founding of the first Jesuit college at Messina in 1548. The Jesuits' highly regulated modus Parisiensis envisioned a total-immersion style of Latin study for the younger students combined with rigorous religious training. Jesuit teachers successfully confronted substantial local opposition to these methods and rarely compromised with local authorities on educational matters. Throughout the sixteenth and well into the seventeenth century, they continued to devise and impose new methods of instruction. When emblematics became part of the curriculum in the North, it was also imported to Italy. (48)

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The Jesuits employed emblems for a variety of literary and pastoral purposes, and the majority of Jesuit emblem books did not see use in elementary or intermediate courses. But advanced students in the Jesuit colleges were expected to know how to use emblems. For example, when Juan de Pineda. S.J. (1512?-1593) prefixed a series of emblems on a sort of title page to his 1591 commentaries on the book of Job, he clearly assumed that his audience was educated to their proper use. The twelve emblems, one for each chapter of the commentary, had mnemonic value. They also invited the reader to use the commentary as a jumping off point for private meditation. Similarly, the Jesuits used emblems in works of systematic theology, in prayer books, and in preaching manuals that would not have appeared in classrooms of the colleges. Some Jesuit emblems seem to have been designed for the private use of aristocratic laymen as part of the work of spiritual direction that members of the order undertook at Catholic courts across Europe. Again, the Jesuits assumed their former students knew how to use emblems, so we can be sure some formal instruction occurred in the colleges. (49)

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Some kinds of Jesuit emblems were very close to curriculum concerns, especially in the context of the residential colleges where members of the Society closely supervised the spiritual life of their charges. Teachers in the colleges, as we have remarked elsewhere, taught Latin grammar as a skill without burdening it overmuch with moral import. But the students learned more than Latin. They also conformed to a rigorous program of religious exercises: daily mass and examination of conscience at an early age, frequent confession and communion, and exercises in meditative prayer. Some Jesuit emblem books follow this spiritual program closely. Almost all of them employ highly emotional language and vivid imagery in keeping with the meditative principles enunciated by Ignatius Loyola.

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Nadal's version of a parable (click to enlarge - 471 KB jpeg image)
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Scholars have noted that Ignatius seems to have collected religious images for his own devotional use. Jesuit emblem books were comparable collections crystallized in print and intended to be put to use by all who subscribed to the Jesuit religious program. Ignatius commissioned Gerónimo Nadal (1507-1580), the founder of the college at Messina, to compose a gospel paraphrase with illustrations, the Pictures of Gospel History (Evangelicae Historiae Imagines). Some consider this the first Jesuit emblem book. Though not true emblems (since they do not have mottoes), these pictures were used in classrooms; and they functioned very much like emblems by inviting students to visualize the incidents described in the accompanying texts. Nadal's book embodied the early Jesuits' belief that pictures were aids to teaching Christian truths, a principle they would go on to incorporate in works as varied as advanced theology texts and illustrated catechisms for the barely literate. (50)

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The direct use of true emblems in Jesuit classrooms in Italy is not attested until the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, where suddenly it appeared as an accepted part of the course of rhetoric. Emblem-making was one of composition exercises given to relatively advanced students. Presumably the Jesuits had been experimenting with emblems for some years before they came into use at the Collegio Romano, where the final version of the Ratio was drafted. In the context of formal rhetoric, the emblem was no longer merely a piece of religious art used in the classroom, it was also a functional rhetorical device. It did not just prompt multiple readings or encourage meditation. It also invited rhetorical inventio, the active creation of new literary expression. (51)

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Pia Desideria Bk I Emblem 3 (click to enlarge - 798 KB jpeg image)
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Almost all the original Jesuit emblem books were composed in Northern Europe and first published there. Relatively few were reprinted in Italy. One of the most influential Jesuit emblem collections was the *Pia desideria *of Hermann Hugo(1588-1629). First published in 1624, it received at least fifty five editions in Latin and sixty three vernacular editions, including three in Italian. The Collegio Romano library owned two early Latin editions, neither of them published in Italy. (52) Hugo's images are deliberately charming and straightforward, not mysterious like those in some earlier emblem books. The original poems are moderately complex but carefully crafted to take their starting points from a familiar scripture verses that act as mottoes to the images.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"The one well and extensively documented application of emblems in an organized curriculum is that of the Jesuit schools. The initiative for this expansion of the basic Jesuit curriculum seems to have come from the order's Dutch and German provinces…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/713","title":"7.13 Jesuit Emblems","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Hunger even compared the emblem book to a primer of virtues and vices, a tool that can profitably be used for educating children to moral virtue from the beginning. Emblems would become one of the emerging genres of children's literature, but the emblem book was never just a primer. Emblems were intended to be reused and reinterpreted in later moments of moral and literary reflection. Then too, emblem books were handsome, artistic products sold at substantial prices. They might well be used with young people but they were not trivial or throw-away books. We have seen this sort of expectation before, that textbooks would not only serve students through their school years but also accompany them for lifelong learning. As the sixteenth century progressed, this way of portraying emblems became more urgent and insistent. It may be that schoolmasters felt that, as the study of grammar and rhetoric became more instrumentalized (emphasizing techniques of composition in place of the earlier humanist ideal of internalizing wisdom through language study), it was all the more necessary to have other texts to hand that could be used for moral education. Print could provide profusely illustrated texts perfectly attuned to this purpose. Whether the marketers of printed emblem books created or followed this perceived pedagogical need we cannot say for sure, but it is clear that in many cases publishers took the lead. It would seem, for example, that Paris printer Christian Wechel first truly popularized Alciati's Latin collection; and it was Wechel who published the first French translation and who encouraged Wolfgang Hunger to complete his German version. (43)

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The work of Bartolomé Aneau as editor, translator, and arranger of the emblems of Alciati followed this same pattern. Aneau collaborated closely with several Lyon presses, especially that of Macé Bonhomme (fl. 1536-1569) who had two specialties -- textbooks for teachers of Latin and courtesy books in French. Aneau crossed the boundaries between these two genres. He authored numerous works in French, including plays, fables, and proverbs translated from Greek and Latin. We know that some of his own original emblems were composed to fit woodcuts already in the shop of his printer. In order to make the emblem book more useful for moral education and more valuable for lifelong reference, Aneau developed a \"new\" Alciati, translated into French but also rearranged. Aneau put 201 emblems drawn from Alciati's earlier collections into a single sequence that presented ethical ideals systematically under a series of topics. The resulting collection was useful pedagogically in two ways. On a day-to-day instructional basis, it allowed teachers to present students with puzzles related to everyday decision making. The emblems presented concrete, pictorial ways of working through everyday moral choices. More generally (and educationally speaking in a second, more mature moment), the exercise of reading emblems provided students with an ethical tool for solving more difficult moral dilemmas and making sense of the world at large. It gave them a mirror in which to contemplate an individual's life problems as part of a larger civilizational ideal. (44)

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Elaborate commentary (click to enlarge - 846 KB jpeg image)
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Hunger and Aneau were merely the first of many Renaissance school masters to adapt emblems for school use. Johannes Köhler has suggested that the extensive commentary on Alciati by Claude Mignault (1536-1606), first published in 1576, was largely intended to describe and circumscribe Alciati for classroom use. (45) The bulky work of Mignault, however, was almost surely not put into the hands of children. If Köhler is correct, it was a teacher's manual for using emblems with students. Many individual emblems embody humanist commonplaces about teaching children; and while some seem aimed at the teaching parenting skills, others were clearly addressed to the children themselves. For example, emblems that recommended reading as a fruitful pastime were probably not in the first instance aimed at bookish adults. (46)

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In the course of rewriting and popularizing learned emblems for schoolboys and other, even less Latin-literate audiences (in preaching for example), some authors also tried to limit the possible readings that could be given to the innately puzzle-like emblem. There were several strategies for accomplishing this narrowing of meaning in the service of social control. Some authors circumscribed each emblem with commentary that dictated one or another moral meaning rather than offering a variety of interpretations. Another strategy was to change or expand the verses to direct the reader toward one reading or away from another. Some scholars see these re-writers as favoring a passive approach to emblems. Certainly they tended to simplify the experience. But the emblem remained a complex form. Even in its most fixed and determined form, the combination of picture and texts invited imaginative responses. (47)

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Hunger even compared the emblem book to a primer of virtues and vices, a tool that can profitably be used for educating children to moral virtue from the beginning. Emblems would become one of the emerging genres of children's literature, but the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/712","title":"7.12 Primers of Virtue","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Except in Jesuit schools, we have little solid evidence that Italians used emblems in classrooms. Indeed the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a trend in Italian emblem-making that was exactly the opposite of the popularizations common in Northern Europe. Among Italian emblematists, theory took center stage with the appearance of a number of weighty methodological works. Italian theorists concentrated on the abbreviated emblem-form called impresa. The impresa was typically conceived as a personal device rather than a commonplace one, so it related a particular, sometimes hidden truth about an individual or a closed group. The authors did not necessarily propose useful themes for others to imitate. Italians, moreover, consistently emphasized esoteric and elitist emblem-making. Imprese were meant for members of the elites, especially for the gentlemen and scholars who belonged to the Italian academies. The emblems of academies defined the group against others. In this rarified atmosphere emblematics participated in a revival of Neo-Platonic thought and played an important part in the debates over the nature of poetry. The academic impresa was above all a vehicle of meditative poetics and a machine for contemplation of the divine. It was a stimulus to the quest for personal and corporate virtue. (64)

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We do know of a few specific instances of educational, even classroom use of emblems in Italy. What we know of them, however, reinforces our sense that they were exceptional and suggests as well the ways in which the Italian emblem \"scene\" was distinct from that of Northern Europe. Above all, Italian educational emblems almost always trained students in devising or resolving the esoteric dimensions of the emblem or impresa, not in the potential pastoral or popularizing functions of the form that were most important in emblem making elsewhere. Even the Jesuit emblems of the Imprese di tre Academie follow the Italian tradition and not that of northern emblem making. Though the emblems all relate to a specific Christian doctrine, the chastity of the Virgin Mary, they do so for the sake of creating collegiality among an elite group of students. The lengthy explications are weighted down with citations from classical and Christian literature. And the student authors explicitly measured their imprese against the standards for the genre described in the most prestigious Italian manual of emblem making, Scipione Bargagli's Delle Imprese, which had seen print in successively larger editions between 1578 and 1594. (65)

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Outside the Jesuit colleges, Italian teachers seem to have used emblems only occasionally if at all. The humanist schools of the fifteenth century included intensive study of Christian symbols. Students also studied and composed ecphrastic poetry that evoked the works of Christian art displayed in churches and other public places. This older tradition of literary image-making and image-reading was an essential part of the humanist rhetoric curriculum. It was replaced in Italian schools only rarely by the study or creation of true emblems, and then only late in the sixteenth century as far as we can tell. By sharp contrast to French, German, and Dutch schools, where an abundance of evidence points to frequent emblem-making, there are only a few documentable examples of emblems in use in Italian schools. The Milanese educationist Giulio Porri, writing in 1561, recommended using adages, mottoes, proverbs, stories, fables, and similes in stimulating students to good morals through literature; only as an afterthought does he recommend an image, and then in terms that suggest he is thinking not of an emblem but a more conventional painting or print. (66)

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By the middle of the seventeenth century, preaching, iconographic programs, and religious publishing had made the emblem ubiquitous in Italy, even for parts of the public relatively unschooled in Latin. The Counter-Reformation may be credited with this flourishing of the public emblem. Preaching and meditative manuals, art works commissioned for the churches of every religious order and even for parish churches, posters and shop signs --all these forms could function emblematically. Most did so on several levels at once, from esoteric to streetwise. Thus, a single emblem (like the poster of the Wounds of Christ examined above) could serve as the basis for elaborate, private meditative practice, as the pompous, communitarian symbol of a confraternity, and also as a call to prayer aimed at the whole populace of Rome, native and pilgrim alike.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Except in Jesuit schools, we have little solid evidence that Italians used emblems in classrooms. Indeed the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a trend in Italian emblem-making that was exactly the opposite of the popularizations common in…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/715","title":"7.15 Italians Out of Step","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"
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Psalm 68 verse 8 (click to enlarge - 462 KB jpeg image)
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Part of Hugo's approach to younger students was his extensive use of adolescent guardian angels, and even more often child-angels, as protagonists in the images. These angels appeared alongside adults or children who represented the souls of the penitent. For example, Hugo and his engraver-collaborator Boëce van Bolswert (ca. 1580-1633) illustrated the Psalm-verse \"Lord thou knowest my foolishness\" with a cherubic guardian angel who covers his eyes rather than behold the antics of a fool. (53) The fool is depicted in more adult form than the angel, but they are about the same height, so their ages remain ambiguous. More important to understanding the dynamic of the child-angel is the fact that the angel is not mentioned in the motto or the poem and really plays no functional role in the theme of this emblem. The cherub here merely stands in for the reader as viewer of the emblematic action. In some cases both the guardian angel and the soul are children. (54)

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Interestingly, the first edition of Hugo's Pia desideria published in Italy (Milan, 1634) took considerable freedom with these children and cherubs. Very occasionally, the childlike figures were preserved, as for example when both Dutch and Italian editions portrayed a childlike penitent before a bench at which a cherubic judge presides. (55) Sometimes the figures have merely aged a few years at Milan. The emblem for Job10,20, \"Shall not the fewness of my days be ended shortly?\" displayed a pair of very young children in 1624 and a pair of older ones in 1634. (56) More often however, the artist for the Milanese edition (probably Carlo Bianchi, fl. 1610-1635) made the protagonists over completely into adolescents or adults. The angel and the fool, for example, are both adults in the Milan version of Emblem I,5. In the very next emblem a child angel consoles a sick adult in 1624, but the angel in 1634 is clearly adolescent and not childlike. (57) Hermann Hugo and Boëce van Bolswert apparently thought that introducing child actors and childlike observers was important to the thematic development of the book or to its potential audience. But Bianchi either did not understand this aim or had a different audience in mind. The 1634 Milan edition is dedicated to an aristocratic nun, so the publisher may have been thinking of convent readers rather than children. (58)

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"After darkness I hope for light" (click to enlarge - 482 KB jpeg image)
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The Jesuits seem to have been particularly fond of chubby children. The Typus Mundi, published by the Antwerp Jesuit college in 1627 is full of them, often in improbable situations. There was little obvious reason to introduce a little angel into the scene of a table full of forged coins that illustrates the motto, \"All that glitters is not gold\" (Non omne, quod hic micat, aurum est).

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Nor did it add much to show both an adult bourgeois and a cupid falling from the spinning globe in an emblem that illustrates the instability of social standing. John Manning opines that \"the use of children in emblem books was part of a palpable design on the reader, and it mattered little...whether this reader was an adult or a child. ...Calendar age ceased to matter under Christ's Gospel imperative to become as little children.\" (59)

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This evangelical theme was indeed widespread in emblem literature. But the Antwerp Jesuits had a further goal, I think, to include even their youngest charges into a community of learning where emblematic thinking became second nature. The artists and authors wanted children in the pictures specifically so readers would draw the conclusion that such morals were not for grownups only. Clearly, then, they had an audience in mind that included both real children and also older students who could still identify with children. (60)

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Historians have tended to treat the so-called college emblem books in a separate category from other Jesuit emblems. These emblem collections were created and published by single Jesuit colleges. It is difficult to identify a specific audience for them, but they were not mere curiosities, since some titles ran to several editions. Books like these came out of the rhetoric curriculum. They offered completed exercises by advanced students (closely supervised by their instructors, of course). It is not clear that they were intended to be taken back into the classroom in a second moment.

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"We play around" (click to enlarge - 888 KB jpeg image)
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The students do seem to have bought into the notion of the emblem as an entertaining way of learning. Thus, the best known college book, the Typus Mundi, is exceedingly playful; the students made fun of themselves and even of their teachers. As their preface to the reader says, \"œWe are youths, we are rhetoricians. Just when you expect a great deal of us, we play around.\" (61)

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Inventing emblems was part of the rhetoric curriculum in Italy too, but few Jesuit colleges there produced emblems in print. The single, notable exception is the 1603 Imprese di Tre Academie Partenie, dedicated by its publisher Giovanni Battista Piccaglia to Cesare Speziano, reform-minded bishop of Cremona. This 106-page volume contains only three emblems, one for each of the Jesuit-sponsored Parthenic academies, supposedly extra-curricular confraternities of the Blessed Virgin restricted to small groups of noble students at the three largest Jesuit colleges in Rome, Naples, and Milan. Unlike Jesuit students from the Netherlands or France, these young noblemen did not offer true emblems. Instead, they followed the Italian fashion of inventing imprese, that is, truncated emblems with picture and motto but no explanatory poem. Instead, they provided lengthy prose explications attributed to the student presidents of each academy. It is clear that each academy's impresa was a group project of the advanced rhetoric students. They scoured ancient and medieval literature (and modern encyclopedic works) for learned quotations to embellish their understanding of the symbols chosen. The authors praised, among other things, cooperation among themselves both in spiritual life and in the pursuit of eloquence, chastity and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and real mastery of ancient literature. (62) They also made the point that the emblem of a student collective must be useful to all its members even those of only middling intelligence. (63) There is no doubt that the three emblem essays were separately composed, since the style and tone of each is distinct, but these are students who have learned their lessons well and have thoroughly internalized the Jesuit world view.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Part of Hugo's approach to younger students was his extensive use of adolescent guardian angels, and even more often child-angels, as protagonists in the images. These angels appeared alongside adults or children who represented the souls of the…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/714","title":"7.14 Chubby Children and the Blessed Virgin","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

This brief conclusion summarizes some of the themes of Humanism For Sale, and describes what we can and cannot still learn from the study of early printed textbooks.

","excerpt":"This brief conclusion summarizes some of the themes of Humanism For Sale, and describes what we can and cannot still learn from the study of early printed textbooks.","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/800","title":"8.00 CONCLUSIONS: Selling Books and Selling Ideas","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Since emblem theory differed so much in Italy and in the North, we might expect that the everyday uses of emblems were also rather different north and south of the Alps. In Latin classrooms this apparently was the case, but it was only partly true in the more generalized pastoral realm. North of the Alps, it would seem that ordinary layfolk owned emblem books more often than was the case in Italy. The extensive collections of non-scholarly emblems common in the North were rarely printed in Italy. But preachers used emblems in both Catholic and Protestant countries and there is little apparent difference between North and South in the display of individual emblems. If anything, they were more elaborately and exuberantly displayed in Italian and other Catholic churches than in the Protestant North, where they seem to have appeared in public more in triumphal or processional contexts than in permanent church art.

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Both North-South and Catholic-Protestant differences disappear entirely if we turn to the other major practical application we discussed in section 7.05, the emblematic printer's mark. Unlike educational emblems, emblematic printer's marks were regularly and consistently used in Italy. In part this simply reflects the continuing traditionalism and particularism of Italian educational practice. Increasingly cut off from the Protestant North, Italy's schools failed to respond to humanist educational reforms that were too closely linked in the minds of Italian churchmen to Reformation spirituality. Meanwhile, the progress of the Catholic Reform led educators in Italy in different practical directions -- even, as we saw in the case of Terence (section 1.19), attempts to limit the teaching of highly traditional school authors.

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Even more than highlighting the traditionalism of the schools, however, the varying European experiences of using emblems point up that the emblematic printer's mark somehow escaped the kind of circumscribing religious and political censorship that affected other sorts of emblematics. The printer's mark preceded the literary emblem as a form and was an established part of printing practice and intellectual life before the start of the Reformation. It would survive and flourish long after emblem books became mere curiosities. It held its prominent place on Catholic and Protestant books alike and disappeared from view only rarely, when the printer needed to be invisible because the book might be considered heterodox or subversive. We may well ask what mysterious force the printer's mark owned. The textbook market, as durable and multiform as the marks themselves, offers us an easy test case for the meaning and power of the emblematic printer's mark. (67)

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Although the form was no more than fifty years older than the emblem, the printer's mark was part of a publishers' lingua franca throughout Europe. It had quickly arrived in Africa, the Far East, and the New World on the title pages of books carried by traders, missionaries, and conquistadores. Religious and missionary works were among these books because the spread of Christianity was a primary goal of official European travelers; but the need to educate new Christians to European languages and political norms was equally urgent. Teachers in the outposts of empire would provide a ready market for textbooks. It is no surprise, then, that carefully branded editions of Cicero and Terence, De Spauter, Perotti or Alvarez, Alciati or Hugo were read in Lima and Boston, in Quebec and Manila and Cape Town and Goa. In those outposts of European imperialism, printer's marks endorsed the quality of editions that bore them and bespoke the bona fides of their publishers.

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Thus, we must posit a distinct school of emblematic thought that embraces the printer's mark, sets it off from other kinds of emblems, and accounts for its survival well past the greatest vogue of emblem books proper. Whatever other force and meaning it had, the emblematic printer's mark was a commercial object, the ancestor of modern, pictorially allusive advertising. (68) We have seen how it compared to emblems on early posters in this regard, since in both cases the emblem stood relatively alone, with a single-minded communicative goal, and without immediate reference to other printed objects. On a title page or in a colophon the emblem's primary function was as a label and guarantee in the market for books. It had no pretensions to be an educational tool or an ideological symbol in itself. Nor was it a moralizing literary genre. In some ways it retained the playfulness of the original emblems of Alciati. Beyond its role as a hallmark, it was mostly a puzzle and a mental exercise --no more, no less.

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Given these conventions of creation and use, the emblematic printer's mark was an important locus of mediation between book workers and book users. The mark symbolized both cultural unity in the European book market and also the pride of individual makers in their work. Even as Europe tore itself apart religiously and politically in the long sixteenth century, and while governments at every level sought to exploit and control the press, book workers claimed a universal brotherhood and the right to communicate directly with each other and with their public. Students learned a common way of reading images from the marks on the title pages of their textbooks. A quick way for a teacher to find or locate the right textbook in a crowded shop was to spot the Jesuit monogram or the mark of a trusted publisher -- the Aldine anchor, the Giunta lily, or the griffin of Giovanni Griffio -- according to his preference for this or that brand in a particular unit of the curriculum. Government and church authorities too kept an eye out for the marks of suspect printers and even more for heterodox books that did not guarantee their truth with a proper printer's mark. In anticipation of a much more modern mindset, emblems on books allowed Europeans to act locally even as they more and more often thought globally.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Since emblem theory differed so much in Italy and in the North, we might expect that the everyday uses of emblems were also rather different north and south of the Alps. In Latin classrooms this apparently was the case, but it was only partly true in…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/716","title":"7.16 Conclusion: Schools of Emblematic Thought","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Humanism For Sale describes many kinds of selling, some of them commercial, some professional, others merely rhetorical. Humanists sold an educational program to parents and a philological one to the scholarly world. They sold their services as thinkers, writers, and public speakers to patrons both public and private. Of course, intellectuals had done these things for centuries, on a small scale at least; but the humanists of the long sixteenth-century had another, much larger opportunity for public relations created by the new market for print. They used print to discuss their ideas with each other and to elaborate their program for a more general public. They sold their services to the printers; and they helped printers sell books to the public. In the cases most extensively discussed in Humanism For Sale they authored textbooks on commission for publishers, or organized editorial work for a publishing enterprise, or acted as publishers themselves. Some few even printed and sold their own books.

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Beyond the textbook market, and even sometimes within it, humanists were buyers too. A large portion of the literary discourse of the sixteenth century appeared in books and pamphlets that were subsidized by their authors so thoroughly that they were in fact simply buying publishing services from a local press. For some publishers and in some cities, this kind of vanity publishing was the norm, representing the largest single part of their finances. (1) In such cases it is not strictly correct to speak of a marketplace, except insofar as the subsidies created products that then went onto the market without substantial risk to the printer. By contrast, most textbooks were published for a truly competitive, even cutthroat market. The rare exceptions -- largely Latin grammars for a single schools subsidized by teachers who either did not approve of older, standard texts or wanted to make a career with something under their own name -- can be spotted easily. They had no imitators and no afterlife. (2)

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In a much larger sense, however, humanists sold ideas retail, piece by piece, because a hallmark of humanist thought was the creation and adaptive re-use of commonplaces. Commonplaces took many commercial forms. Oratory had always been a well-rewarded art, and sermons in particular were confected out of commonplaces from ancient times forward. In the later Middle Ages they were collected and sold in manuscript form; and sermon collections would become a staple of the new print culture precisely because they sold well. Humanist sermons in Latin were a small sub-genre, but they were perhaps more venal than other sermons in that they were most often delivered in college or court chapels for wealthy and powerful patrons, not directed to the general public. The humanist sermon was an elitist performance, intended (among other things) to advance the career of its author. Another highly visible form of oratorical commonplace was the secular humanist speech, often a panegyric delivered at court, in a civic setting, or in the schools. Orations of this sort paid well too, whether in honoraria, patronage, or prestige.

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The commonest and most obviously commercial humanist commonplaces were sold in print. Every kind of humanist literature proceeded by commonplace, and so every humanist-inspired book retailed commonplace thoughts. Some genres were more thoroughly commonplace than others, and textbooks were prominent among them because they were by their nature introductory treatments, composed in small, well-labeled sections designed to be easily digestible by young or inexperienced readers. Textbooks in turn helped create habits of mind that informed all humanist writing. Even Erasmus' Adagia or Alciati's Emblemata, the grandest of all commonplace books, partook of this digestive, ruminative character.

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NOTES

\n","excerpt":"Humanism For Sale describes many kinds of selling, some of them commercial, some professional, others merely rhetorical. Humanists sold an educational program to parents and a philological one to the scholarly world. They sold their services as…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/801","title":"8.01 A Market for Humanism","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Sales pitches were never far to seek in humanist books, and though the commonplaces employed were always high-sounding and usually derived from classical sources, the flood of competing books in the print market lent urgency to both packaging and advertising. The long sixteenth century (and the age of print) began amidst the full flowering of humanist rhetoric, whose practitioners followed Cicero in claiming that their discipline's greatest power was the ability to persuade. Much of pre-print humanism viewed the goal of such persuasion personally, as the moral improvement of the individual. Rhetoric of this sort, in the form of private study, tutoring, and small schools, conduced to a life well lived (that is, to a commonplace, morally conformist life) and to personal salvation in the afterlife. Humanists and other writers also assumed a communitarian ideal, in which the ability to persuade others in large groups led to the betterment of society as a whole. The myth of the origin of rhetoric that stands at the beginning of Cicero's De inventione was the commonplace most often cited for this rhetorical philosophy. Cicero's original sage was the orator who first persuaded his fellows to organize themselves politically and economically. (3)

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These non-commercial ideals of persuasive rhetoric did not fail or even weaken when they entered the print market. On the contrary, they found a new and wider audience. Across the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, they increasingly displaced less rhetorical models of Christianity. (4) They remained the highest ideals of European civilization for centuries. In one way or another they are still with us.

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Printing, however, slowly became the primary rhetorical medium, and the new medium imposed new norms. Philology, not just morality, became both a selling point and a goal in life. The case of Terence shows how productive the new print reality could be but also how constraining the classroom context was. In the first forty years of printing Terence, the market was almost exclusively for teaching editions that contained poorly edited texts. The value added by printers was largely in the form of old and new commentaries. These editions looked solemnly the same and were in fact largely unoriginal. But the philological work embodied in the many competing commentaries slowly built momentum for a real revision of the text. Finally, just around 1500, a vastly improved text could be offered, one that set a new standard and stimulated further editorial work that would continue into the eighteenth century.

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The sixteenth century also saw many new packages for teaching Terence. These classroom formats determined competitiveness in the market. The text of Terence was so intimately connected with Latin-language learning that it never quite had a literary life of its own. The great moments of philological progress on the text (Poliziano's notes, Aldo's edition, and later Faerno's) caused a certain amount of scholarly excitement, it is true; but philological advances were quickly absorbed by the textbook market and the competition reverted to being one between publishers who touted new classroom formats or teacher-editors of note. However beloved and imitated, Terence remained a school author.

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The market for elementary Latin grammars displayed many of the same characteristics as that for intermediate school authors like Terence. Originality was rarely an issue, and what novelties there were usually concerned bringing old rules and proof-texts up to date by reference to ongoing philological research on the classics. Grammar textbooks were particularly unstable because they were almost never more than exercise pieces. Every teacher at every period felt free to modify them for his own classroom. Marketing for such textbooks relied heavily on the reputations of modern authors and editors. Guarino, Perotti, Mancinelli, De Spauter, Priscianese, and Bonciari each in turn became a brand name for a kind of textbook or a kind of pedagogy.

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The rhetoric of selling textbooks changed relatively little before the mid-sixteenth century. Latin was marketed in print just as it had been by the earliest humanists, in threefold fashion: as a career-enhancing professional language, as the key to the treasures of ancient wisdom, and as a morally improving discipline. Different authors emphasized one or another of these themes, but they all appeared repeatedly. Authors and editors in the early sixteenth century did devise and sell new packages for the Latin course. Some emphasized the novelty of the textbooks themselves -- better type or design -- but most also claimed, like De Spauter and his followers, to be offering a more effective Latin pedagogy. Mostly these claims meant more and better-defined drills and, on the level of book design, clearer and better paradigms and other diagrammatic aids to memorization.

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NOTES

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3 Elkins 1999, 209-212.\r\n4 Rummel 1995, 3-7, 193-195.

","excerpt":"Sales pitches were never far to seek in humanist books, and though the commonplaces employed were always high-sounding and usually derived from classical sources, the flood of competing books in the print market lent urgency to both packaging and…","frontmatter":{"id":null,"slug":"/text/802","title":"8.02 The Rhetoric of Print","post_id":null,"author":null,"date":null}}},{"node":{"html":"

Around mid-century the claims to innovation became more insistent and the reforms more substantial. Perhaps the truest advertising was that of Francesco Priscianese, who advocated the thoroughgoing use of vernacular in the classroom. Other radicals were abbreviators who cut the course content to a minimum needed for reading comprehension and jettisoned the ideal of a fully realized classical Latinity. Still other reformers expunged pagan sample texts altogether or used Cicero to critique the established Roman church. None of these late-century reformers succeeded in supplanting the traditional early humanist pedagogy or the reformed one of the Despauterians which had meanwhile become well entrenched. It would take the universalizing mission and influence of the Jesuits to effect a more thoroughgoing reform.

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Seen in this broad context, Manuel Alvares, S.J. must be considered one of the radical reformers. His reform of the Latin course was fully classicizing, Romanizing, and motivated by the larger Jesuit program of studies. He was radical in that he truly realized the antiquarian aims of earlier humanists. He propounded pure Latinity, rejection of all post-classical forms, a rigorous system of rules and exceptions, even abandoning mnemonic verses. In this last innovation his fellow Jesuits deserted him; they restored the mnemonic verses almost as soon as Alvares was in his grave. But his grammar achieved another radical goal that had not been part of the humanist program, divorcing Latin from Christian literature and from the long-held idea that Latin grammar was a moral art in itself. The Jesuits had their own, more philosophical approach to morals and they were willing to make Latin over into a tool without intrinsic moral power.

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In this regard, the Jesuits were thoroughly modern and forward-looking, for most language textbooks of the future would do the same. Slowly across the long sixteenth century a new market emerged for teaching and learning tools in vernacular languages. We have seen that at first these books too emphasized morality as the proper context of learning. Indeed they did so stridently and defensively, probably because their authors feared that they were putting powerful intellectual tools once an elite monopoly into the hands of relatively unschooled commoners. But the expanding vernacular market slowly demanded more instrumental textbooks -- simplified, skills-oriented, unburdened with philosophical or moral goals. Early modern textbooks never achieved anything like the twentieth-century ideal of value-free content, but they did move gradually in the direction of skills-based education. Moreover, whether Latin or vernacular, a textbook with no pretensions to higher values was a mere commodity. It was easier to buy and sell and more broadly palatable in a Europe increasingly riven by nationalistic and religious rivalries.

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Most of Humanism For Sale says very little about prices or profits. Some documents exist for studies of book prices in local markets, but they are complicated by a variety of uncertainties. Inflation rates, the effects of political events on currency values, and the persistent use of credit and discounting in book sales at every stage in distribution all mean that the many numbers we can find in local archives cannot be aggregated or compared with those in other sources or other cities. The rare studies available on large, international publishing houses demonstrate that textbooks and other minor genres played an important role in the overall profitability of these firms. Individual genres or single titles, however, cannot be evaluated clearly in terms of their contribution to the bottom line.

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Profits to authors are an even trickier subject of study. Authors who failed to profit or who felt they did not do so sufficiently complained loudly enough. (We saw the examples of Antonio Mancinelli and Jean Pellisson in sections 3.01 and 3.02.) But those who profited adequately did not record the fact directly. In any case, rewards in the educational market were widely and unevenly distributed. An author might be paid in several ways. He might get a commission, fee, or honorarium; he might receive a portion of the print run in return for his services; or he might take his profits less tangibly in the prestige of a publication or in the convenience of having his textbooks readily available for use in his own school. He might profit in all these ways at once. We have good evidence for all these forms, but there are not enough figures to allow for quantification or comparison, much less meaningful generalization. There is no way to know if a given contract or payment was frugal or generous, standard or exceptional. The cases for which we have the greatest amount of detail -- Bonciari in Perugia, for example, or Mancinelli at Velletri and Rome -- suggest that local traditions of study, provincial reputations, personal networks of patronage, and small-town civic pride were the most important factors in how well a given teacher was paid and how well his brand of humanism sold on the print market. His textbook sales are never mentioned.

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In larger, less provincial cities, textbook authors did not usually profit directly from repeat sales. Once a given textbook had proven itself in the market, it was up to the publisher to decide whether it merited the added investment of a second or further editions. The \"Despauterian\" case is particularly telling in this way. De Spauter himself tinkered with his textbooks throughout his later life. He may have profited from the new editions, but there is no direct evidence for it except that his publishers continued to encourage and advertise his revisions. Similarly, Jean Pellisson apparently did not profit from or even authorize any of the early reprints of his own elementary textbook; but he did re-assert control of it when he revised it for a later edition. In a second stage of his publishing career, Pellisson edited and abridged De Spauter for the French market. Presumably he was paid for that work, but again the texts he devised got away from him and were widely reprinted throughout France during his lifetime and after. Still later, Pellisson's \"Despauterian\" textbooks were imported into the Italian market, and it was up to the Italian publishers to decide whether they were marketed primarily as Pellisson's work or De Spauter's. Neither author profited at this point. Theirs had become brand names for a pedagogical style, used by many publishers who sold textbooks marketed under the emblematic logos of their own presses. Similarly, Andrea Alciati probably never profited directly from his popular emblem collection. After a period of attempting to correct and add to it, he abandoned it to the realm of pure celebrity.

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Humanism was for sale, then, in many ways, but it did not have a single market or price structure. Textbooks offer some of the most concrete evidence we have for the economic dimensions of humanism, but even they can only tell us part of the story. They offer hints as to the needs of students and the desires of parents. They tell us a great deal about the role of printers and publishers in creating a market for learning. Textbooks also tell us about the internal logic of the school disciplines, both traditional and new ones. Many textbooks offer windows on the classrooms of local schools with local traditions of pedagogy and printing. Most vividly, however, textbooks represent the highly self conscious, highly rhetorical presupposition of their authors that learning was a goal in several ways: for professional advancement or other practical reasons, for moral improvement, and as an end in itself.

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