The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Volumes 1 and 2 in One)

Citation preview

The printing as an agent of

press change

lit izahattı L . Eisen&teiit

T H E P R I N T I N G PRESS AS A N A G E N T OF CHANGE Communications and cultural transformations in early-modern Europe Volumes ELIZABETH

I and I I L. E I S E N S T E I N

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press 40 West 20th Street, New York, N Y 10011-4211, USA www. caiiibridge.org Information on this title:www. canibridge.org/9780521299558 © Cambridge University Press 1979 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in two volumes 1979 Fist paperback edition 1980 11th printing 2005 Printed in the United States of America A catalogue record for this book is available from the British

Library.

ISBN-13 978-0-521-21967-9 volume I hardback ISBN-10 0-521-21967-1 volume I hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-21969-3 volume II hardback ISBN-10 0-521-21969-8 volume II hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-22044-6 set of two hardback volumes ISBN-10 0-521-22044-0 set of two hardback volumes ISBN-13 978-0-521-29955-8 combined paperback edition ISBN-10 0-521-29955-1 combined paperback edition

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of U R L s for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

TO T H E M E M O R Y J O H N EISENSTEIN

OF

I953"I974

CONTENTS

Preface

page i x PART

ONE: INTRODUCTION

T O A N ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

1

The unacknowledged revolution

3

2

Defining the initial shift; some features o f p r i n t culture

43

1. Dissemination 71; 2. Standardization 80; 3. Reorganization 88; 4. Data collection 107; 5. Preservation 113; 6. Amplification and reinforcement 126, From hearing to reading 129, Republic

PART

TWO: CLASSICAL

REORIENTED;

A N DCHRISTIAN

RENAISSANCE

of letters 136

TRADITIONS

A N D REFORMATION

REAPPRAISED

3

A classical revival reoriented: the t w o phases o f the Renaissance

163

1. Introduction 163; 2. Transitory revivals and a permanent Renaissance 181; 3. Toward modern forms o f consciousness 225; 4. Arcana disclosed 272 4

T h e scriptural tradition recast: resetting the stage for the Reformation

303

1. Introduction 303; 2. The end o f the medieval church 313; 3. Gospel truths recast 329; 4. Resetting the stage for the Reformation 367; 5. Relating the Protestant ethic to capitalist enterprise 378; 6. From Catholic south to Protestant north 403; 7. Aspects o f the new book religion 422 vii

CONTENTS

PART

5

THREE:

T H E BOOK

OF NATURE

TRANSFORMED

Introduction; problems o f periodization

453

r. 'The great book o f Nature' and the 'little books of men' 453; 2. Problems o f periodization: (a) Burckhardtians versus 488, (b) The shortcomings of medieval science 498,

Medievalists

{c)-Corrupted

materials duplicated 508

6

Technical literature goes to press: some new trends i n scientific w r i t i n g and research

520

1. Bridging the gap between town and gown 520; 2. Publicizing science 543; 3. Galenic science revived and surpassed 566

7 8

Resetting the stage for the Copernican Revolution

575

Sponsorship and censorship o f scientific publication

636

1. Introduction 636; 2. Divergent Protestant and Catholic policies 648; 3. Blocking thought experiments 660; 4. Resetting the stage for Galileo's trial 670

Conclusion: Scripture and nature transformed

683

Bibliographical index

709

General index

769

viii

PREFACE

I do ingenuously confess that in attempting this history o f Printing I have undertaken a task much too great for my abilities the extent of which I did not so well perceive at f i r s t . . . Joseph Ames, June 7, 1749 1

This book has been composed over the course o f some fifteen years. Its inception goes back to 1963 when 1 read Carl Bridenbaugh's presidential address to the American Historical Association. This address which was entitled ' T h e Great Mutation* belonged t o an apocalyptic genre much i n vogue at that time (and unfortunately still ubiquitous). I t raised alarms about the extent to w h i c h a 'run-away technology' was severing all bonds w i t h the past and portrayed contemporary scholars as victims o f a k i n d o f collective amnesia. Bridenbaugh's description o f the plight confronting historians; his lament over 'the loss o f mankind's m e m o r y ' i n general and over the disappearance o f the ' c o m m o n culture o f Bible reading' i n particular seemed to be symptomatic rather than diagnostic. I t lacked the capacity to place present alarms i n some k i n d o f perspective - a capacity w h i c h the study o f history, above all other disciplines, ought to be able to supply. I t seemed unhistorical to equate the fate o f the ' c o m m o n culture o f Bible reading* w i t h that o f all o f Western civilization when the former was so much more recent - being the by-product o f an invention w h i c h was only five hundred years old. Even after Gutenberg, moreover, Bible reading had remained Hficommon among many 2

' D i b d i n , ed. Typographical Antiquities, preface o f 1749 b y Joseph A m e s , 1, 12. B r i d c n b a u g h , ' T h e Great M u t a t i o n . ' O t h e r essays o n the same theme appearing at the same t i m e are n o t e d i n Eisenstein ' C l i o and C h r o n o s . '

1

IX

PREFACE

highly cultivated Western Europeans and Latin Americans w h o adhered to the Catholic faith. In the tradition o f distinguished predecessors, such as Henry Adams and Samuel Eliot Morison, the president o f the American Historical Association appeared t o be projecting his o w n sense o f a g r o w i n g distance f r o m a provincial American boyhood upon the entire course o f Western civilization. As individuals g r o w older they do become worried about an unreliable memory. Collective amnesia, however, did not strike me as a proper diagnosis o f the predicament w h i c h the historical profession confronted. Judging by m y o w n experience and that o f m y colleagues, i t was recall rather more than oblivion w h i c h presented the unprecedented threat. So much data was i m p i n g i n g o n us f r o m so many directions and w i t h such speed that our capacity to provide order and coherence was being strained to the breaking point (or had i t , perhaps, already snapped?). I f there was a 'run-away' technology w h i c h was leading to a sense o f cultural crisis among historians, perhaps i t had more to do w i t h an increased rate o f publication than w i t h new audio-visual media or even w i t h the atom bomb? 3

W h i l e mulling over this question and wondering whether i t was wise to turn out more monographs or instruct graduate students to do the same - given the indigestible abundance n o w confronting us and the difficulty o f assimilating what we have - 1 ran across a copy o f Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy. I n sharp contrast to the American historian's lament, the Canadian professor o f English seemed to take mischievous pleasure in the loss o f familiar historical perspectives. H e pronounced historical modes o f inquiry t o be obsolete and the age o f Gutenberg at an end. Here again, I felt symptoms o f cultural crisis were being offered i n the guise o f diagnosis. McLuhan's book itself seemed t o testify t o the special problems posed b y print culture rather than those produced b y newer media. I t provided additional evidence o f h o w overload could lead to incoherence. A t the same time i t also stimulated m y curiosity (already aroused by considering Bibleprinting) about the specific historical consequences o f the fifteenthcentury communications shift. W h i l e studying and teaching aspects o f 4

3

H e n r y A d a m s , The Education, p . 5, felt cut o f f f r o m , the eighteenth c e n t u r y b y the o p e n i n g o f the B o s t o n a n d A l b a n y R a i l r o a d , t h e first C u n a r d steamer a n d the advent o f the t e l e g r a p h . Samuel E l i o t M o r i s o n Vistas in History, p.24, saw his generation b e i n g c u t o f f f r o m p r e c e d i n g ones ' b y t h e i n t e r n a l c o m b u s t i o n engine, nuclear fission a n d D r F r e u d . '

* M c L u h a n ' s b o o k was b r o u g h t t o m y a t t e n t i o n b y F r a n k K e r m o d e ' s 19(53 Encounter ' B e t w e e n t w o Galaxies.'

review:

PREFACE

the history o f Western Europe over the course o f several decades, I had l o n g been dissatisfied w i t h prevailing explanations for the political and intellectual revolutions o f early-modern times. Some o f the changes t o w h i c h M c L u h a n alluded m i g h t w e l l be helpful for providing more satisfactory solutions t o long-standing problems and at least seemed t o offer a possible way out o f some circular arguments and inconclusive debates. B u t McLuhan's oracular pronouncements did not provide an adequate starting point. A large number o f questions about the actual effects o f the advent o f printing w o u l d have to be answered before other matters could be explored. W h a t were some o f the most important consequences o f the shift from script to print? Anticipating a strenuous effort t o master a large and mushrooming literature, I began to investigate what had been w r i t t e n o n this obviously important subject. As I say i n m y first chapter, there was not even a small literature available for consultation. Indeed I could not f i n d a single book, or even a sizeable article w h i c h attempted t o survey the consequences o f the fifteenth-century communications shift. W h i l e recognizing that i t w o u l d take more than one book to remedy this situation, I also felt that a preliminary effort, however inadequate, was better than none, and embarked o n a decade o f study - devoted primarily to becoming acquainted w i t h the special literature (alas, all too large and rapidly g r o w i n g ) o n early p r i n t i n g and the history o f the book. Between 1968 and 1971 some preliminary articles were published t o elicit reactions f r o m scholars and take advantage o f informed c r i t i cism before issuing a full-scale w o r k . The reader w h o has seen these articles w i l l be familiar w i t h some portions o f the first three chapters, although each has been extensively revised. Fresh content increases as the chapters progress; most o f chapter 4 and all o f the rest appear i n this book for the first t i m e . 5

M y treatment falls into t w o main parts. Part 1 focuses o n the shift f r o m script t o print i n Western Europe and tries to block out the main features o f the communications revolution. Parts 2 and 3 deal w i t h the relationship between the communications shift and other developments conventionally associated w i t h the transition f r o m medieval t o early s

P r e l i m i n a r y articles f o r chaps, i , 2, a n d 3 respectively are Eisenstein, " T h e P o s i t i o n o f t h e P r i n t i n g Press i n C u r r e n t H i s t o r i c a l L i t e r a t u r e ' ; ' S o m e Conjectures a b o u t t h e I m p a c t o f P r i n t i n g o n W e s t e r n Society a n d T h o u g h t ' ; a n d ' T h e A d v e n t o f P r i n t i n g a n d t h e P r o b l e m o f t h e Renaissance.' A t h i r t y - p a g e a b r i d g e m e n t o f parts o f chap. 4 appeared as ' L ' A v è n e m e n t de l ' I m p r i m e r i e et l a Réforme.*

xi

PREFACE

modern times. ( I have concentrated on cultural and intellectual movements, postponing for another book problems pertaining t o political ones.) The last t w o parts thus take up familiar developments and attempt to v i e w them f r o m a new angle o f vision. The first part, h o w ever, covers unfamiliar territory - unfamiliar to most historians, at least (albeit not to specialists in the history o f the book) and especially exotic t o this historian (who had previously specialized in the study o f the French Revolution and early nineteenth-century French history). W h i l e trying to cover this unfamiliar ground I discovered (as all neophytes do) that what seemed relatively simple on first glance became increasingly complex o n examination and that new areas o f ignorance opened up much faster than o l d ones could be closed. As one m i g h t expect f r o m a w o r k long-in-progress, first thoughts had to be replaced by second ones, even t h i r d thoughts have had to be revised. Especially when Ï was w r i t i n g about the preservative powers o f print (a theme assigned special importance and hence repeatedly sounded in the book), I could not help wondering about the wisdom o f presenting views that were still i n flux i n so fixed and permanent a form. I am still uncertain about this and hope that m y decision t o publish at this point w i l l not be misinterpreted. I have not reached any final formulation but have merely become convinced that beyond this provisional resting point, diminishing returns w i l l set i n . It also should be noted at the outset that m y treatment is primarily (though not exclusively) concerned w i t h the effects o f printing on written records and on the views o f already literate élites. I t is the shift f r o m one k i n d o f literate culture to another (rather than f r o m an oral to a literate culture) that I h a v e i n m i n d when referring t o an ' u n acknowledged revolution.' This point needs special emphasis because it runs counter to present trends. "When they do touch o n the topic o f communications, historians have been generally content t o note that their field o f study, unlike archeology or anthropology, is limited t o societies which have left w r i t t e n records. The special f o r m taken by these written records is considered o f less consequence i n defining fields than the overriding issue o f whether any have been left. Concern w i t h this overriding issue has been intensified recently b y a doublepronged attack on older definitions o f the field, emanating f r o m African historians o n the one hand and social historians dealing w i t h Western xii

PREFACE

civilization on the other. The former have had perforce to challenge the requirement that w r i t t e n records be supplied. The latter object t o the way this requirement has focused attention on the behavior o f a small literate élite while encouraging neglect o f the vast majority o f the people o f Western Europe. N e w approaches are being developed - o f t e n in collaboration w i t h Africanists and anthropologists - t o handle problems posed by the history o f the 'inarticulate' (as presumably talkative albeit unlettered people are sometimes oddly called). These new approaches are useful not only for redressing an o l d elitist imbalance but also for adding many new dimensions t o the study o f Western history. W o r k i n progress on demographic and climatic change, on family structure, child rearing, crime and punishment, festivals, funerals and food riots, to mention but a few o f the new fields that are n o w under cultivation, w i l l surely enrich and deepen historical understanding. B u t although the current vogue for 'history f r o m below' is helpful for many purposes, i t is not well suited for understanding the purposes o f this book. W h e n Jan Vansina, w h o is both an anthropologist and an historian o f pre-colonial Africa, explores 'the relationship o f oral tradition t o w r i t t e n history' he naturally skips over the difference between written history produced by scribes and written history after p r i n t . W h e n Western European historians explore the effect o f p r i n t ing on popular culture they naturally focus attention o n the shift f r o m an oral folk culture to a print-made one. I n both cases, attention is deflected away f r o m the issues that the f o l l o w i n g chapters w i l l explore. These issues are so unfamiliar that some readers o f m y preliminary sketches j u m p e d t o the mistaken conclusion that m y concerns were the same as Vansina's. 6

7

This misunderstanding,, alas, is more easily explained than forestalled. For one thing, the advent o f printing did encourage the spread o f literacy even while changing the way written texts were handled by already literate élites. For another thing, even literate groups had to rely much more upon oral transmission i n the age o f scribes than they did later on. M a n y features w h i c h are characteristic o f oral culture, such as the cultivation o f memory arts and the role o f a hearing public, were also o f great significance among scribal scholars. Problems associated 6

7

Vansina, Oral Tradition, p a r t I , section 2, p p . 2 ff. See e.g. N a t a l i e Z . D a v i s ' essay o n ' P r i n t i n g and t h e People.*

xiii

PREFACE

w i t h oral transmission thus cannot be avoided even when dealing w i t h literate groups. Nevertheless the experience o f the scribal scholar was different f r o m that o f his preliterate contemporaries and the advent o f printing had à different effect o n Latin-reading professors than o n unlettered artisans. T o leave out the former and consider only the latter is t o lose a chance o f helping t o explain major intellectual transformations o f early-modern times. I n dealing w i t h these transformations one cannot ignore h o w printing spurred the spread o f literacy. N e w issues posed by vernacular translation and popularization had significant repercussions w i t h i n the C o m monwealth o f Learning as w e l l as outside i t . Nevertheless i t is not the spread o f literacy but h o w printing altered written communications within the Commonwealth of Learning w h i c h provides the main focus o f this book. I t is primarily concerned w i t h the fate o f the ««popular (and currently unfashionable) 'high* culture o f Latin-reading professional élites. I have also found i t necessary t o be unfashionably parochial and stay v/ithin a few regions located i n Western Europe. Thus the term ' p r i n t culture* is used throughout this book i n a special parochial Western sense: to refer t o post-Gutenberg developments i n the West while setting aside its possible relevance to pre-Gutenberg developments i n Asia. N o t only earlier developments i n Asia, but later ones i n Eastern Europe, the Near East and the N e w W o r l d have also been excluded. Occasional glimpses o f possible comparative perspectives are offered, but only t o bring out the significance o f certain features which seem t o be peculiar to Western Christendom. Because very o l d messages affected the uses t o w h i c h the new m e d i u m was put and because the difference between transmission by hand-copying and by means o f print cannot be seen w i t h o u t mentally traversing many centuries, I have had to be much more elastic w i t h chronological limits than w i t h geographical ones: reaching back occasionally to the Alexandrian Museum and early Christian practices; pausing more than once over medieval bookhands and stationers' shops; looking ahead to observe the effects o f accumulation and incremental change. 8

The developments covered i n Parts 2 and 3, however, do n o t go 8

M y earlier t r a i n i n g a n d special interests have l e d t o a preference f o r selecting F r e n c h a n d E n g l i s h examples. I realize t h a t t h e r e are rich yields t o be f o u n d elsewhere i n W e s t e r n E u r o p e (that G e r m a n l i t e r a t u r e is especially large o n t h e subject o f a G e r m a n i n v e n t i o n , t h a t V e n e t i a n p r i d e has l e d t o a scholarly i n d u s t r y focused o n V e n e t i a n printers, etc.) b u t I have n o t managed t o d o m o r e t h a n scratch t h e surface o f a f e w regions as i t is.

xiv

PREFACE

beyond the first t w o centuries o f printing, w i t h the story carried beyond Galileo's Trial only in order to see the Copernican Revolution completed and periodical publication embarked on, and to provide an appropriate prelude t o Enlightenment thought. The age o f N e w t o n and Locke coincides w i t h the interval when the leadership o f the Republic o f Letters is taken over f r o m the great merchant publishers and scholar-printers by the editors o f literary reviews such as Pierre Bayle and Jean LeClerc. The point at w h i c h the p r i n t shop gives way to the editorial office represents the passing o f the heroic age o f the masterprinter and forms an especially appropriate stopping-point for m y book. I am fond o f Marc Bloch's d i c t u m : 'The good historian is like the giant o f the fairy tale.. .wherever he catches the scent o f human flesh, there his quarry lies,' and I w o u l d have liked to underline the human element in m y title by taking the early printer as m y 'agent o f change.' B u t although I do think o f certain master printers as being the unsung heroes o f the early-modern era and although they are the true protagonists o f this book, impersonal processes involving transmission and communication must also be given due attention. I n the end, practical considerations became paramount. I decided that cataloguing w o u l d be simplified i f I referred to the t o o l rather than its user. O f course not one tool but many were involved i n the new duplicating process. As I t r y to make clear in the first chapters, the term p r i n t i n g press in the context o f this book serves simply as a convenient labelling device; as a shorthand way o f referring to a larger cluster o f specific changes entailing the use o f movable metal type, oil-based i n k , etc. M y point o f departure, i n any case, is not one device invented in one Mainz shop but the establishment o f p r i n t shops in many urban centers throughout Europe over the course o f t w o decades or so. 9

One final comment on the title is in order: i t refers t o an agent n o t to the agent, let alone to the only agent o f change i n Western Europe. Reactions to some o f m y preliminary articles make i t seem necessary to draw attention to these distinctions. The very idea o f exploring the effects produced by any particular innovation arouses suspicion that one favors a monocausal interpretation or that one is prone to reductionism and technological determinism. O f course disclaimers offered in a preface should n o t be assigned too much weight and w i l l carry conviction only i f substantiated by the » B l o c h , The Historian's XV

Craft, p . 26.

PREFACE

bulk o f a book. Still i t seems advisable to make clear f r o m the outset that m y aim is to enrich, not impoverish historical understanding, and that I regard monovariable interpretations as antipathetic to that aim. I t is perfectly true that historical perspectives are difficult to preserve when claims made for a particular technological innovation are pressed too far. B u t this means that one must exercise discrimination and weigh the relative importance o f diverse claims. T o leave significant innovations out o f account may also skew perspectives. I am convinced that prolonged neglect o f a shift i n communications has led to setting perspectives ever more askew as t i m e goes o n . As an agent o f change, printing altered methods o f data collection, storage and retrieval systems and communications networks used by learned communities throughout Europe. I t warrants special attention because i t had special effects. I n this book I am t r y i n g to describe these effects and to suggest h o w they may be related to other concurrent developments. The notion that these other developments could ever be reduced to nothing but a communications shift strikes me as absurd. The way they were reoriented by such a shift, however, seems w o r t h bringing out. Insofar as I side w i t h revisionists and express dissatisfaction w i t h prevailing schemes, i t is to make more r o o m for a hitherto neglected dimension o f historical change. W h e n I take issue w i t h conventional multivariable explanations (as I do o n several occasions) i t is n o t t o substitute a single variable for many but to explain w h y many variables, long present, began to interact i n new ways. Interactions o f many kinds - between old messages and new medium, cultural context and technological innovation, handwork and brain w o r k , craftsmen and scholars, preachers and press agents - crop up repeatedly i n the chapters w h i c h follow. One friendly scholar suggested that I should take as m y epigraph E. M . Forster's celebrated plea: ' O n l y connect!' I t does seem suitable-to genre as w e l l as content. For despite some analytical and critical portions, this is primarily a w o r k o f synthesis. I t brings together special studies i n scattered fields and uses monographs o n limited subjects to deal w i t h problems o f more general concern. Needless to say it has the defects as w e l l as the virtues o f any largescale synthetic w o r k . I t is based on monographic literature n o t archival research, and reflects very uneven acquaintance w i t h relevant data. I have consulted specialists, sat i n o n seminars and colloquia and taken xvi

PREFACE

advantage o f informed criticism wherever possible. Yet I cannot rule out the likelihood that I w i l l blunder - either b y relying o n some authorities w h o are outdated or unsound, o r by drawing incorrect inferences on m y o w n . Nevertheless I am convinced that the dangers o f neglecting this large and important topic far outweigh the disadvantages o f m y inevitably inadequate, necessarily tentative treatment. As I note i n the f o l l o w i n g chapter, neglect by conscientious scholars has allowed the topic t o go by default into incautious hands. A l t h o u g h Marshall McLuhan's w o r k stimulated m y historical curiosity, among many o f m y colleagues i t has been counter-productive, discouraging further investigation o f print culture or its effects. Concern w i t h the topic at present is likely t o be regarded w i t h suspicion, to be labelled 'McLuhanite' and dismissed out o f hand. I hope m y book w i l l help t o overcome this prejudice and show that the topic is not incompatible w i t h respect for the historian's craft. D u r i n g the long interval this w o r k has been i n progress, I have incurred more than the usual number o f scholarly debts. W h e r e m y memory has not failed, contributors o f special pieces o f information have been thanked i n footnote references. The f o l l o w i n g acknowledgements are limited to those w h o have furnished general guidance and instruction and support. A m o n g the small group o f senior scholars w h o provided sustained encouragement, I owe a special debt t o the late Crane B r i n t o n . F r o m the 1940s, when he supervised m y dissertation, u n t i l shortly before his death he urged me to persist w i t h research and w r i t i n g despite other demands o n m y time. That this book was finally w r i t t e n is due, i n no small measure, to the strong backing he provided w h e n i t was i n an unpromising early phase. A t a somewhat later stage, I was heartened b y unexpected encouragement f r o m Robert K . M e r t o n , thanks in part t o the good offices provided by Elinor Barber, w h o has taken an i n formed interest i n m y w o r k throughout. I have also profited f r o m many hours o f conversation w i t h J. B. Ross. T h e names o f Natalie Z . Davis and Robert M . K i n g d o n appear i n m y annotations w i t h sufficient frequency t o indicate m y heavy reliance on their special studies o f sixteenth-century p r i n t culture. B o t h deserve additional thanks for the many other services they have performed..Margaret Aston helped m e over the course o f many years, b y reading and commenting on the xvii

PREFACE

drafts that I sent her after our weekly meetings i n the Folger Library ended and we had t o resort t o correspondence overseas. For introducing me t o some o f the 'mysteries* o f early printing and the history o f the book I am grateful to Frederick Goff, w h o let me attend his informative seminar o n incunabula at the Folger Library and to R u d o l f Hirsch, w h o guided me around the rare book collection at the University o f Pennsylvania, sent me articles and books and discussed controversial issues w i t h remarkable amiability. John Tedeschi o f the Newberry Library and Francis J . W i t t y o f the Library Science department o f The Catholic University o f America provided me w i t h many offprints, references and helpful advice. For more than a decade I took full advantage o f the opportunities extended to its readers by the Folger Shakespeare Library and feel especially indebted t o its hard-working staff. A t the Folger I sat in on a seminar given by A . G. Dickens, received helpful counsel f r o m Paul O . Kristeller and had useful conversations w i t h Jan van Dorsten. I am grateful to R. J. Schoeck w h o supervised research activities when I was there; to the Library's Directors: Louis B . W r i g h t and O . B . Hardison; to N a t i Krivatsky, Reference Librarian; t o Letitia Yeandle, Curator o f Manuscripts; and, above all, t o the three staff members: Elizabeth Niemyer, Rachel Doggett and Sandra Powers, w h o cheerfully participated i n m y first seminar o n early printers while teaching me more than I taught them. For clarification o f problems associated w i t h the manuscript booktrade i n Renaissance Italy I have turned repeatedly to Albinia de la Mare o f the Department o f Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. She has generously shared w i t h me her unparalleled k n o w ledge o f the w o r l d o f Vespasiano da Bisticci and o f the notaries w h o served h i m as scribes. Some o f the 'secrets' o f medieval codicology have been unlocked for me b y Richard Rouse o f the University o f California, Los Angeles. H e corrected several misconceptions and supplied me w i t h useful studies I w o u l d not otherwise have seen. That I could take advantage o f this expertise before completing the first part o f m y book was due to Elizabeth Kennan, w h o - as a friend and as a medievalist - has helped i n many ways. M y acquaintance w i t h medieval studies has been further enriched b y M a r y M . McLaughlin. For an opportunity to meet various luminaries o f the W a r b u r g Institute and for sharing w i t h me his special knowledge o f Renaissance xviii

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Aristotelianism I owe much t o Charles Schmitt. I am indebted t o Paul Lawrence Rose for imparting t o me the results o f his research o n the librarians and mathematicians o f Renaissance Italy. M a r t i n L o w r y shared w i t h me his w o r k i n progress o n Aldus Manutius; Paul Grendler has kept me informed about his w o r k o n Venetian bookmen. M i r i a m Chrisman, John Elliott, E d m u n d Fryde, Donald Kelley, Benjamin K o h l , Nancy Roelker, Charles Nauert, Orest Ranum, Thomas Tentler, Charles Trinkaus are among the many historians o f early-modern Europe w h o have helped me i n diverse ways. M y r o n Gilmore, w h o guided the studies o f several o f those named above, has also helped me directly by supplying offprints and reacting p r o m p t l y and positively to m y requests for aid. "When w o r k i n g o n the last part o f the book, I received help f r o m a different group o f specialists, associated w i t h the history o f science and technology. I am particularly grateful to Robert Palter and Robert Westman for being faithful correspondents; checking early drafts, sending me relevant data and keeping me informed about current w o r k . O w e n Gingerich also deserves special thanks for enabling me t o participate i n a Copernican conference at the Smithsonian Institution and for supplying me thereafter w i t h his o w n pertinent studies. Additional services were provided by W i l l i a m Wallace o f The Catholic University w h o read and commented o n a draft; by Uta Merzbach and D . J . Warner at the Smithsonian w h o helped me w i t h mathematical and astronomical data; and by Francis Maddison o f the Museum o f the History o f Science at O x f o r d . A chance t o give a paper to O x f o r d scholars at a Linacre College seminar sponsored by Margaret G o w i n g was made possible through the k i n d offices o f Christopher H i l l , w h o has during the last decade provided heartening encouragement. Although I was greatly assisted b y the advice and support o f those named above, I must naturally assume full responsibility for the contents o f this book. I must also extend apologies t o those contributors w h o have gone unmentioned because inadequate records were kept. I may be forgetful, but I am, nonetheless, t r u l y grateful t o every one w h o helped me. I n addition to aid f r o m individuals, I owe much to institutional support, w h i c h came just when i t was most needed, and enabled me t o complete a final draft. B y granting me a Fellowship for Independent Study and Research, the National Endowment for the Humanities xix

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provided the necessary incentive for spending six months o f hard labor at a desk. The Rockefeller Foundation made i t possible for me to spend a m o n t h as a scholar-in-residence at the Villa Serbelloni Conference and Study Center i n Bellagio, Italy, where the concluding chapter was w r i t t e n . I am grateful to Joel Colton, director o f the Humanities D i v i sion o f the Foundation w h o alerted me to this opportunity and to D r and M r s "William Olson, the resident Director o f the Center and his wife, w h o d i d everything possible to make m y stay enjoyable. Several editors helped w i t h the publication o f both m y preliminary articles and o f this full-length book. For their acceptance o f m y early essays together w i t h their tactful suggestions for revision, I am grateful to Trevor Aston, Hanna H . Gray, Richard Vann and Robert W e b b . Responsibility for handling the book-length typescript f r o m beginning to end was assumed by a single editor, whose present post is that o f Publisher at the Cambridge University Press. Michael Black, w h o first came t o m y attention as an authority on early printed bibles, has exhibited remarkable patience and unflagging good humor over the course o f many years o f negotiations w i t h a procrastinating author. He also obtained the services o f N . Carol Evans to help w i t h indexing. In completing b o t h indexes, Clarissa Campbell O r r proved invaluable. The assistance o f A n d r e w B r o w n and Maureen Leach was p r o v i ded at the stage o f copy-editing; Jane Majeski o f the Cambridge University Press N e w Y o r k office cheerfully performed the thankless task o f relaying messages overseas. For unexpected assistance w i t h plans for a French edition I am much obliged to Philippe Aries - w h o has been a remarkably sympathetic listener, stimulating conversationalist and helpful correspondent. I am also indebted t o those w h o typed and retyped several versions o f a l o n g manuscript. Over the course o f some fifteen years I have relied on services cheerfully supplied b y Phyllis Levine. She made herself available on short notice, and proved skillful i n unravelling snarled footnotes and deciphering illegible scrawls. For help w i t h the exacting w o r k o f retyping, p r o o f reading, correcting, and checking for consistency, I have turned to Flora Symons, w h o has put in l o n g hours o f painstaking w o r k on m y typescript and relinquished more than one holiday trip t o help me out. I n concluding w i t h a note o f thanks to members o f m y immediate family I regret that this procedure has become so conventional; that xx

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readers are likely to dismiss as superficial the very statements w h i c h are most deeply felt. I n this instance, m y feelings are stronger than m y powers o f expression. M y husband and all three o f m y children contributed i n different ways t o shaping m y thoughts and strengthening m y determination to finish the book. M y daughter, Margaret, w h o is pursuing graduate study i n history and m y son, Ted, w h o has cast type and operated hand presses, repeatedly refreshed m y interest i n w o r k that was often o n the verge o f seeming stale. M y husband's support o f all m y professional activities has been manifested for more than thirty years. I t was never more helpful than after our oldest son's fatal stroke. A l o n g w i t h his sister and brother, John had taken a lively interest in m y work-in-progress. Engaged i n graduate study o f neuro-biology, he was interested i n the humanities as w e l l as the sciences and valued clarity and precision i n assessing w r i t i n g styles. W h e n he looked over an early version o f one o f m y chapters, he expressed concern about excess verbiage and urged me to reduce what he described (by means o f an equation) as the 'fog-count.' H a d John lived, the 'fog-count' o f this book w o u l d have been lower. His father's editorial help prevented i t f r o m becoming higher, and thus placed the reader as w e l l as this author in Julian Eisenstein's debt.

xxi

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ONE

I N T R O D U C T I O N TO A N ELUSIVE TRANSFORMATION

I THE

UNACKNOWLEDGED REVOLUTION

I n the late fifteenth century, the reproduction o f w r i t t e n materials began to move f r o m the copyist's desk t o the printer's workshop. This shift, w h i c h revolutionized all forms o f learning, was particularly important for historical scholarship. Ever since then, historians have been indebted t o Gutenberg's invention; p r i n t enters their w o r k f r o m start to finish, f r o m consulting card-files t o reading page-proofs. Because historians are usually eager t o investigate major changes and this change transformed the conditions o f their o w n craft, one w o u l d expect the shift to attract some attention f r o m the profession as a whole. Yet any historiographical survey w i l l show the contrary t o be true. I t is symbolic that Clio has retained her handwritten scroll. So little has been made o f the move into new workshops, that after five hundred years, the muse o f history still remains outside. ' H i s t o r y bears witness to the cataclysmic effect o n society o f inventions o f new media for the transmission o f information among persons. T h e development o f w r i t i n g and later the development o f printing are e x a m p l e s . . . ' Insofar as flesh-and-blood historians w h o t u r n out articles and books actually bear witness to what happened i n the past, the effect o n society o f the development o f printing, far f r o m appearing cataclysmic, is remarkably inconspicuous. M a n y studies o f developments during the last five centuries say nothing about i t at all. 1

Those w h o do touch on the topic usually agree that the use o f the invention had far-reaching effects. Francis Bacon's aphorism suggesting that i t changed 'the appearance and state o f the whole w o r l d * is cited 1

St J o h n , b o o k r e v i e w . The American Journal of Sociology, p . 255. (For f u l l c i t a t i o n o f all f o o t n o t e references, consult B i b l i o g r a p h i c a l i n d e x at e n d o f v o l u m e I I . )

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repeatedly and w i t h approbation. B u t although many scholars concur w i t h Bacon's opinion, very few have tried to follow his advice and 'take note o f the force, effect, and consequences' o f Gutenberg's invention. M u c h attention is paid to developments that paved the way for this invention. M a n y efforts have been made t o define just what Gutenberg d i d 'invent,' t o describe h o w movable type was first utilized and h o w the use o f the new presses spread. B u t almost no studies are devoted t o the consequences that ensued once printers had begun to p l y their new trades throughout Europe. Explicit theories as to what these consequences were have not yet been proposed, let alone tested or contested. There is, to be sure, a large and ever g r o w i n g literature devoted to the history o f printing and related topics. A l t h o u g h much o f i t seems to be w r i t t e n b y and for specialists - custodians o f rare books and other librarians; experts on typography or bibliography, literary scholars concerned w i t h press-variants, and the like - this literature does contain material o f more wide-ranging interest. Historians w o r k i n g i n neighboring fields - such as economic history, comparative literature, or Renaissance studies-have also contributed useful treatments o f special aspects. The field o f social history has probably yielded the richest harvest. There one finds a bewildering abundance o f studies on topics such as investment i n early presses and the book trade i n various regions; labor conditions and social agitation among journeymen typographers; scholar-printer dynasties and publication policies; censorship, privileges, and regulation o f the trade; special aspects o f pamphleteering, propaganda and journalism; professional authors, 2

1

A c c o r d i n g t o ' N o u v e l l e s d u L i v r e A n c i e n * ( F a l l , 1974) n o . ï (a t r i - a n n u a l newsletter issued b y t h e ' I n s t i t u t de Recherche et d ' H i s t o i r e des T e x t e s ' ) , almost a thousand periodicals are covered b y t h e n e w Annual Bibliography of the History of the Printed Book and Libraries issued f r o m , the H a g u e since 1970. I n t h e 1972 v o l u m e ( w h i c h excludes all U . S . publications as w e l l as those o f several E u r o p e a n countries) there are some 2,800 entries. The Selective Check Lists of Bibliographical Scholarship issued at five-year intervals b y t h e B i b l i o g r a p h i c a l Society o f t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f V i r g i n i a are especially h e l p f u l f o r k e e p i n g u p w i t h recent o u t p u t . T h e Archiv fur Ceschichte des Buchuiesens w h i c h first appeared i n 1956 u n d e r W e s t G e r m a n auspices covers a w i d e r , geographic a n d t o p i c a l , area t h a n the o l d Archiv fur Geschichte des Deutschen Buchhandets a n d , a l o n g w i t h t w o n e w j o u r n a l s launched since 1970 f r o m H o l l a n d a n d France, enables one t o sample the dazzling v a r i e t y o f research activities u n d e r t a k e n i n t h e second h a l f o f this c e n t u r y . L i k e the Archiv, Quaerendo : A QuarterlyJournalfrom the Low Countries Devoted to Manuscripts and Printed Books ( A m s t e r d a m ) (a successor t o Het Boek) a n d Revue Française d'Histoire du Livre ( B o r d e a u x ) (sponsored b y t h e Société Française d'Histoire du Livre) stress t h e broader c u l t u r a l i m p l i c a t i o n s o f t h e h i s t o r y o f the b o o k . A useful selective b i b l i o g r a p h y is i n B e r r y a n d Poole, Annals of Printing, p p . 2 8 7 - 9 4 , b u t n o t e the c a u t i o n g i v e n b y Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography, p . 392. For a basic i n t r o d u c t i o n t o t o p i c , Gaskell s h o u l d be c o n sulted i n a n y case.

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patrons and publics; the sociology o f reading and the sociology o f literature. The list could be extended indefinitely. Furthermore, several works that synthesize and summarize parts o f this large literature have recently appeared. Thus R u d o l f Hirsch surveys problems associated w i t h ' p r i n t i n g , selling, reading/ during the first century after Gutenberg, for the benefit o f ' t h e general reader o f social and intellectual history* as w e l l as for the specialist. A more extensive, well-organized volume by Febvre and M a r t i n , w h i c h skillfully covers the first three centuries o f printing, has appeared i n the Evolution .âe L'Humanité series. A n even broader coverage, embracing 'five hundred years/ is provided by Steinberg's remarkably succinct semi-popular English survey. A l l three o f these books summarize data drawn f r o m many scattered studies. B u t although the broader historical implications o f these data are occasionally hinted at, they are never really spelled out. Like the section o n printing i n the New Cambridge Modem History the contents o f these surveys rarely enter into treatments o f other aspects o f the evolution o f humanity. 3

4

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According to Steinberg: *The history o f printing is an integral part o f the general history o f civilization.' Unfortunately the statement is not applicable t o w r i t t e n history as i t stands although i t is probably true enough o f the actual course o f human affairs. Far f r o m being integrated 7

3

T h e w i d e range o f periodicals c o n t a i n i n g relevant m a t e r i a l is suggestive. A p a r t f r o m n u m e r o u s j o u r n a l s specifically d e v o t e d t o special aspects (such as The Library o r t h e Gutenberg Jahrbuck), I have also f o u n d useful data i n the Journal des Savants, t h e UCLA Law Review, Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, Archivfur Reformationsgeschichte, Isis, Shakespeare Studies, a n d o t h e r seemingly unrelated specialized j o u r n a l s .

+ H i r s c h , Printing, Selling. I n m y v i e w t h e specialist w i l l p r o f i t m o r e t h a n t h e general reader f r o m s a m p l i n g t h e richly detailed f i n d i n g s contained i n this w o r k . F o r a second p r i n t i n g i n 1974, t h e a u t h o r has a d d e d a b i b l i o g r a p h i c a l i n t r o d u c t i o n b u t has l e f t i n t a c t t h e t e x t . , T h e latter p r o v o k e d perhaps a n u n d u l y harsh c r i t i c a l r e v i e w i n the Times Literary Supplement (Sept. 2 1 , 1 9 6 7 ) , p . 848. 1

6

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Febvre a n d M a r t i n , L'Apparition. (Febvre d i e d before t h e b o o k was c o m p l e t e d a n d c r e d i t f o r m o s t o f i t s h o u l d g o t o M a r t i n . ) M a r t i n ' s later master w o r k : Livre, pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle has been described as a ' s p l e n d i d sequel.' (See ' B o o k s i n France,' Times Literary Supplement ( N o v . 2 0 , 1969), p . 1344.) I t is i n d e e d a splendid w o r k encompassing m o r e t h a n its t i t l e suggests. B u t t w o v o l u m e s o n c o n d i t i o n s i n seventeenth-century France d o n o t really serve as a ' s e q u e l ' t o one v o l u m e c o v e r i n g a l l o f E u r o p e d u r i n g t h r e e centuries. A s a synthesis, t h e one v o l u m e is, as y e t , unsurpassed a n d , u n l i k e t h e o t h e r surveys, contains a large classified b i b l i o g r a p h y . A n English, t r a n s l a t i o n w h i c h has j u s t been issued: The Coming of the Book, t r . D a v i d G e r a r d ( L o n d o n , 1970) u n f o r t u n a t e l y o m i t s t h e b i b l i o g r a p h y , w h i c h is b y n o w i n need o f u p d a t i n g . Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, covers a w i d e r i n t e r v a l i n f e w e r pages b u t lacks t h e richness a n d d e p t h o f t h e F r e n c h v o l u m e . I n dealing w i t h t h e m o s t recent centuries, Steinberg's w o r k is especially t h i n . B u t i n c o v e r i n g t h e first c e n t u r y after G u t e n b e r g , he offers some data t h a t is n o t duplicated i n t h e o t h e r surveys despite t h e i r traversal o f t h e same g r o u n d . H a y , ' L i t e r a t u r e : T h e p r i n t e d b o o k , ' p p . 359-^6. See n . 64 b e l o w . Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, p . 1 1 .

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into other works, studies dealing w i t h the history o f printing are isolated and artificially sealed o f f f r o m the rest o f historical literature. I n theory, these studies center on a topic that impinges on many other fields. In fact, they are seldom consulted by scholars w h o w o r k i n any other field, perhaps because their relevance to other fields is still n o t clear. ' T h e exact nature o f the impact w h i c h the invention and spread o f printing had on Western civilization remains subject to interpretation even today.' This seems to understate the case. There are few interpretations even o f an inexact or approximate nature upon w h i c h scholars may draw when pursuing other inquiries. The effects produced by printing have aroused little controversy, not because views on the topic coincide, but because almost none have been set forth i n an explicit and systematic f o r m . Indeed those w h o seem to agree that momentous changes were entailed always seem t o stop short o f telling us just what they were. 8

9

The f o l l o w i n g t w o citations may suffice to illustrate the range o f evasive tactics that are employed. The first comes f r o m a justly celebrated study o f comparative literature by an eminent literary historian: ' T h e immense and revolutionary change w h i c h i t [the invention o f printing] brought about can be summarized i n one sentence: U n t i l that time every book was a manuscript.' The author goes on to discuss scribal book production, i n a somewhat fanciful and romantic v e i n . N o t h i n g more is said about what happened after books ceased being manuscripts and perhaps this explains h o w Curtius can assert: ' w e have modernized our railroads but n o t our system o f transmitting t r a d i t i o n . ' I n m y view, the transmission o f literary traditions was 'modernized' several centuries before the steam engine appeared; but this cannot be seen unless one takes a longer l o o k at the 'immense and revolutionary change,' than Curtius does. That an otherwise careful scholar entertains 10

11

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1 0

"

1 1

H i r s c h , Printing, Selling, p . z. T h e casual t r e a t m e n t g i v e n t o t h e t o p i c b y m o s t historians has o f t e n been u n d e r l i n e d b y students o f l i b r a r y science, w i t h o u t m u c h effect. See e.g. remarks b y U h l e n d o r f , ' T h e I n v e n t i o n a n d Spread o f P r i n t i n g , " p . 179. C u r t i u s , European Literature, p . »38. C o m p a r e C u r t i u s ' remarks a b o u t t h e d i l i g e n t , l o v i n g , sedulous scribe ( p . 328) w i t h I v i n s ' ' s l o p p y , c l u m s y , inelegant, hastily a n d carelessly w r i t t e n m a n u s c r i p t ' as r e p o r t e d b y B i i h l e r , The Fifteenth Century Book, p . 87- C u r t i u s says t h a t ' e v e r y b o o k p r o d u c e d b y c o p y i n g ' was ' a personal achievement,' o v e r l o o k i n g a l l t h e evidence that s h o w s piecemeal c o p y i n g was c o m m o n - at least as far b a c k as t h e n i n t h c e n t u r y . See Destrez, La Pecia, p p . 2 1 ; 44. T h e misleading impression o f m a n u s c r i p t b o o k s c o n v e y e d b y the b e a u t i f u l specimens preserved i n l i b r a r y treasure r o o m s is u n d e r l i n e d b y B u t l e r , O r i g i n of Printing, p . i r . C u r t i u s , European

Literature,

p . 16.

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the notion o f summarizing such a change i n a single sentence is surely remarkable. A less exceptional approach is provided b y the author o f the second citation, w h o has contributed much to the special literature on printing and whose competence i n this field gives his views added weight. ' I t w o u l d require an extensive volume to set forth even i n outline the far-reaching effects o f this invention i n every field o f human enterprise.' This is probably so. Yet n o volume, whether slim or extensive, can set forth or present i n outline f o r m , effects that have not yet been described or explicidy defined. Douglas McMurtrie's reference t o an immense unwritten volume turns out to be scarcely more satisfying than Ernst Curtius' summary sentence. I n b o t h instances we learn nothing more about seemingly momentous consequences save that they occurred. N o r is the curious reader offered any guidance as to where one m i g h t go to. learn more. 13

Since we are concerned w i t h 'far-reaching effects' that, by common consent, left no field o f human enterprise untouched, one m i g h t w e l l wonder w h y such effects still remain undetermined. 'Neither political, constitutional, ecclesiastical, and economic events, nor sociological, philosophical, and literary movements can be fully understood w i t h o u t taking into account the influence the printing press has exerted upon t h e m . ' A l l these events and movements have been subjected to close scrutiny by generations o f scholars w i t h the aim o f understanding them more fully. I f the printing press exerted some influence upon them, w h y is this influence so often unnoted, so rarely even hinted at, let alone discussed? The question is w o r t h posing i f o n l y to suggest that the effects produced by printing are by no means self-evident. Insofar as they may be encountered b y scholars exploring different fields, they are apt to pass unrecognized at present. T o track them d o w n and set them f o r t h - i n an outline or some other f o r m - i s much easier said than done. 14

W h e n M c M u r t r i e or Steinberg refer t o the impact o f printing on every field o f human enterprise - political, economic, philosophical and so forth - i t is by no means clear just what they have i n m i n d . In part at least they seem to be pointing to indirect consequences w h i c h have t o be inferred and w h i c h are associated w i t h the consumption o f printed products or w i t h changed mental habits. Such consequences are, o f course, o f major historical significance and impinge on most forms o f human enterprise. Nevertheless i t is difficult t o describe them 1 3

M c M u r t r i e , The Book, p. 136.

t 4

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Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, p . I I .

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precisely o r even t o determine exactly what they are. I t is one thing t o describe h o w methods o f book production changed after the m i d fifteenth century o r t o estimate rates o f increased output. I t is another thing to decide h o w access t o a greater abundance or variety o f written records affected ways o f learning, thinking, and. perceiving among literate élites. Similarly, i t is one thing to show that standardization was a consequence o f printing. I t is another t o decide h o w laws, languages, or mental constructs were affected b y more u n i f o r m texts. Even at present, despite all the data being obtained f r o m l i v i n g responsive subjects; despite all the efforts being made b y public opinion analysts, pollsters or behavioral scientists; w e still k n o w very little about h o w access t o printed materials affects human behavior. (A glance at recent controversies on the desirability o f censoring pornography shows h o w ignorant w e are.) Historians w h o have t o reach o u t beyond the grave to reconstruct past forms o f consciousness are especially disadvantaged i n dealing w i t h such issues. Theories about unevenly phased changes affecting literacy rates, learning processes, attitudes and expectations, do n o t lend themselves, at all events, t o simple, clear-cut formulations that can be easily tested o r integrated into conventional historical narratives. 1 s

Problems posed b y some o f the more important effects produced b y the shift from script to print, b y indirect consequences that have to be inferred and b y imponderables that defy accurate measurement, probably can never be overcome entirely. B u t such problems could be confronted more squarely i f other impediments d i d not lie i n the way. A m o n g the far-reaching effects that need t o be noted are many that still affect present observations and that operate w i t h particularly great force upon every professional scholar. Thus constant access t o printed materials is a prerequisite f o r the practice o f the historian's o w n craft. I t is difficult t o observe processes that enter so intimately into our o w n observations. I n order t o assess changes ushered i n b y printing, for example, w e need to survey the conditions that prevailed before its advent. Y e t the conditions o f scribal culture can o n l y be observed through a veil o f print. Even a cursory acquaintance w i t h the findings o f anthropologists or casual observations o f pre-school age children may help to remind us o f the g u l f that exists between oral and literate cultures. Several studies, •s Berelson a n d J a n o w i t z , Reader in Public Opinion contains several relevant articles.

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accordinglyv have muminated the difference between mentalities shaped by reliance o n the spoken as opposed to the w r i t t e n w o r d . T h e g u l f that separates our experience f r o m that o f literate élites w h o relied exclusively o n hand-copied texts is much more difficult to fathom. There is nothing analogous i n our experience or in that o f any l i v i n g creature w i t h i n the "Western w o r l d at present. The conditions^ o £ scribal culture thus have to be artificially reconstructed by recourse to history books and reference guides. Yet for the most part, these works are more likely to conceal than to reveal the object o f such a search. Scribal themes are carried forward, post-print trends are traced backward i n a manner that makes i t difficult to envisage the existence o f a distinctive literary culture based on hand-copying. There is not even an agreed-upon term i n c o m m o n use w h i c h designates the system o f written communications that prevailed before p r i n t . , Schoolchildren w h o are asked t o trace early overseas voyages o n identical outline maps are likely to become absent-minded about the fact that there were no uniform w o r l d maps in the era when the voyages were made. A similar absent-mindedness on a more sophisticated level is encouraged by increasingly refined techniques for collating manuscripts and producing authoritative editions o f them. Each successive edition tells us more than was previously k n o w n about h o w a given manuscript was composed and copied. B y the same token, each makes i t more difficult t o envisage h o w a given manuscript appeared to a scribal scholar w h o had only one hand-copied version to consult and no certain guidance as t o its place or date o f composition, its title or 1 6

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F o r suggestive i m a g i n a t i v e use o f t h e d i s t i n c t i o n b e t w e e n o r a l a n d literate cultures t o i l l u m i n a t e diverse phases o f Greek t h o u g h t , see H a v e l o c k , Preface to Plato. T h e same d i s t i n c t i o n is discussed f r o m t h e v i e w p o i n t o f anthropologists b y G o o d y a n d W a t t , ' T h e Consequences o f L i t e r a c y , ' 304-45. Sec also c o l l e c t i o n o f essays, edited b y G o o d y , Literacy in Traditional Societies f o r p e r t i n e n t discussion a n d references. Despite passing reference t o t h e w o r k o f M c L u h a n a n d O n g i n G o o d y ' s i n t r o d u c t i o n , t h e différence b e t w e e n scribal c u l t u r e a n d p r i n t c u l t u r e tends t o be b l u r r e d b y arguments w h i c h contrast alphabetic w i t h i d e o g r a p h i c w r i t i n g a n d o r a l w i t h w r i t t e n transmission b u t n o t script w i t h p r i n t . F o r a n earlier, s o m e w h a t neglected essay c o m p a r i n g o r a l w i t h w r i t t e n transmission, see Gandz, ' T h e D a w n o f Literature.* A s n o t e d i n m y preface, recent interest i n A f r i c a n studies has s t i m u l a t e d a n e w , large a n d m u s h r o o m i n g literature o n this question. See b i b l i o g r a p h y g i v e n b y Vansina. F o r e l a b o r a t i o n o n this p o i n t , see m y essay, ' C l i o a n d C h r o n o s . ' I have f o u n d t h e t e r m ' s c r i b a l culture* useful as a s h o r t h a n d w a y o f r e f e r r i n g t o such activities as p r o d u c i n g a n d d u p l i c a t i n g b o o k s , t r a n s m i t t i n g messages, r e p o r t i n g n e w s a n d s t o r i n g data after t h e i n v e n t i o n o f w r i t i n g a n d before t h a t o f m o v a b l e t y p e . ' C h i r o g r a p h i c ' is m o r e c o r r e c t l y opposed t o ' T y p o g r a p h i c ' b y Father O n g b u t seems s o m e w h a t t o o r e c o n d i t e for m y purposes. As n o t e d i n m y preface, t h e t e r m ' p r i n t culture* is used t o refer o n l y t o p o s t G u t e n b c r g developments i n t h e W e s t . H o w p r i n t i n g affected p r e - G u t c n b e r g Asia m u s t be l e f t t o others t o investigate.

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author. Historians are trained t o discriminate between manuscript sources and printed texts; but they are not trained to think w i t h equal care about h o w manuscripts appeared w h e n this sort o f discrimination was inconceivable - w h e n eveiything was off the record, so to speak, save that w h i c h was read to those w h o were w i t h i n earshot. Similarly, the more thoroughly w e are tiained t o master the events and dates contained i n modern history books, the less likely we are to appreciate the difficulties confronting scribal scholars w h o had access t o assorted written records, but lacked u n i f o r m chronologies, maps and all the other reference guides w h i c h are n o w i n c o m m o n use. 19

Efforts to reconstruct the circumstances that preceded printing thus lead t o a scholarly predicament. Reconstruction requires recourse to printed materials, thereby blurring clear perception o f the conditions that prevailed before these materials were available. Even when the predicament is partly resolved by sensitive scholars w h o manage to develop a genuine 'feel* for the times after handling countless documents, efforts at reconstruction are still bound to be frustratingly incomplete. 20

For the very texture o f scribal culture was so fluctuating, uneven and m u l t i f o r m that few long-range trends can be traced. Conditions that prevailed near the bookshops o f ancient Rome, i n the Alexandrian library, or i n certain medieval monasteries and university towns, made i t possible for literate élites to develop a relatively sophisticated ' b o o k ish' c u l t u r e . Yet all library collections were subject t o contraction, and all texts in manuscript were liable to get corrupted after being copied over the course o f time. Outside certain transitory special centers, moreover, the texture o f scribal culture was so thin that heavy 21

'» T h e need t o d i s t i n g u i s h b e t w e e n t h e p r e - G u t e n b e i g m a n u s c r i p t a n d t h e p o s t - p r i n t one has been recognized b y specialists i n the h i s t o r y o f t h e b o o k . For general discussion o f t h e 'archeo l o g y * o f t h e m a n u s c r i p t b o o k , see-Josserand, 'Les Bibliothèques.' O n e scholar has suggested r e s e r v i n g t h e t e r m * c o d i c o l o g y ' f o r t h e s t u d y o f t h e p r e - p r i n t m a n u s c r i p t b o o k a n d using t h e t e r m ' m a n u s c r i p t o l o g y ' f o r t h e study o f mss. after G u t e n b e r g . See i m p o r t a n t article b y G r u i j s , ' C o d i c o l o g y o r A r c h e o l o g y o f the B o o k ? ' w h e r e p e r t i n e n t r e m a r k s o f W . H e l l i n g a at a D u t c h P h i l o l o g i c a l Congress i n i p s z are cited ( p . 107, n . 4 ) . T h e absent-mindedness o f m o s t m o d e r n b o o k users a b o u t t h e n a t u r e o f m a n u s c r i p t books h a n d l e d b y scholars before p r i n t is b r o u g h t o u t b y G o l d s c h m i d t , Medieval Texts, p . 9. i f >

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A r e m a r k a b l e i m a g i n a t i v e r e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f the E u r o p e a n m e n t a l i t y before p r i n t is offered b y Febvre, Le problème. See especially t h e sections d e v o t e d t o t h e p r i n t i n g press a n d hearsay, p p . 418-87. F o r a n o t h e r example o f sensitivity t o t h e c o n d i t i o n s o f scribal c u l t u r e , see Smalley, English Friars, p p . 9-10- A p i o n e e r i n g e f f o r t t o describe h o w m e d i e v a l literature was shaped b y scribal procedures is C h a y t o r ' s From Script to Print. I have n o t m e n t i o n e d M o s l e m o r B y z a n t i n e centers s i m p l y because t h e y are o f f l i m i t s f o r this b o o k . I t is a t r u i s m that scribal c u l t u r e flourished m o r e v i g o r o u s l y i n certain centers outside Latin Christendom than w i t h i n i t d u r i n g m u c h o f the medieval millennium.

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reliance was placed on oral transmission even b y literate elites. Insofar as dictation governed copying i n scriptoria and literary compositions were •published* by being read aloud, even 'book* learning was governed b y reliance on the spoken w o r d - producing a h y b r i d halforal, half-literate culture that has no precise counterpart today. Just what publication meant before printing or just h o w messages got transmitted i n the age o f scribes are questions that cannot be answered i n general. Findings are bound to vary enormously depending on date and place. Contradictory verdicts are especially likely t o p r o liferate w i t h regard to the last century before p r i n t i n g - a n interval when paper had become available and the literate man was more likely t o become his o w n scribe. 22

Specialists i n the field o f incunabula, w h o are confronted by ragged evidence, are likely to insist that a similar lack o f u n i f o r m i t y characterizes procedures used by early printers. T o generalize about early printing is undoubtedly hazardous and one should be on guard against projecting the output o f modern standard editions too far back into the past. Yet one must also be on guard against blurring a major difference between the last century o f scribal culture and the first century after Gutenberg. Early p r i n t culture is sufficiently u n i f o r m t o permit us t o measure its diversity. "We can estimate output, arrive at averages, trace trends. For example, w e have rough estimates o f the total output o f all printed materials during the age o f incunabula. Similarly, w e can say that the 'average* early edition ranged between t w o hundred and one thousand copies. There are no comparable figures for the last fifty years o f scribal culture. Indeed we have no figures at all. "What is the 'average edition' turned out between 1400 and 1450? The question verges on nonsense. The term ' e d i t i o n ' comes close to being an anachronism when applied to copies o f a manuscript b o o k , 23

24

Some o f the difficulties o f t r y i n g t o estimate scribal output are "

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A l t h o u g h v e r y o l d , the article b y R o o t , ' P u b l i c a t i o n before P r i n t i n g , * still provides the best i n t r o d u c t i o n t o this t o p i c . See also Bennett, ' T h e P r o d u c t i o n a n d D i s s e m i n a t i o n o f Vernacular M a n u s c ri pts.' H o w operations p e r f o r m e d b y actual early printers differed f r o m those i m a g i n e d b y b i b l i o graphers is v i v i d l y described b y M c K c n z i c , ' Printers o f the M i n d . ' A w a r n i n g against a t t r i b u t i n g m o d e r n standardization t o early editions is offered b y B l a c k , ' T h e P r i n t e d B i b l e . ' See also discussion i n chap. 2, section 2 b e l o w . H e r e , as elsewhere, o p i n i o n s v a r y . F o r references t o a n ' e d i t i o n ' o f a t h i r t e e n t h - c e n t u r y Paris B i b l e , see B r a n n e r : ' M a n u s c r i p t M a k e r s ' a n d ' T h e Soissons B i b l e PaintShop.'

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illustrated in the f o l l o w i n g chapter. As examples given there w i l l show, quantification is n o t suited t o the conditions o f scribal culture. The production figures w h i c h are most often cited, o n the basis o f the memoirs o f a Florentine manuscript bookdealer, t u r n out t o be entirely u n t r u s t w o r t h y . Quattrocento Florence, i n any case, is scarcely typical o f other Italian centers (such as Bologna), let alone o f regions beyond the Alps. B u t then no region is typical. There is no ' t y p i c a l ' bookdealer, scribe or even manuscript. Even i f we set aside problems presented by secular book producers and markets as hopelessly complex and consider only the needs o f churchmen on the eve o f printing, we are still faced by a remarkable diversity o f procedures. Book provisions for diverse monastic orders varied; mendicant friars had different arrangements f r o m monks. Popes and cardinals often turned to the 'multifarious activities' o f the Italian cartolai; preachers made their o w n anthologies o f sermons; semi-lay orders attempted to provide primers and catechisms for everyman. 25

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The absence o f an average output or a typical procedure poses a stumbling-block when w e t r y t o set the stage for the advent o f print. A n earlier version o f this chapter, for example, asserted that book production moved f r o m scriptoria to printers' workshops i n the late fifteenth century. The assertion was criticized by a medievalist scholar on the grounds that book production had already left the monasteries i n the course o f the twelfth century, when lay stationers began to handle book provisions for university faculties and the mendicant orders. W i t h the so-called 'book revolution* o f the twelfth century and university supervision o f copying, there came a ' p u t t i n g - o u t ' system. Copyists were/no longer assembled i n a single r o o m , but w o r k e d on different portions o f a given text, receiving payment f r o m the stationer for each piece (the so-called 'pecia' system). B o o k p r o duction, according t o m y critic, had thus moved out o f scriptoria three centuries before the advent o f print. The objection seems w o r t h further thought. Certainly one ought to pay attention to the rise o f the lay stationer in university towns and other urban centers during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The 27

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See reference t o A l b i n i a de la M a r c ' s research o n Vcspasiano da B i s t i c c i i n n . 28 b e l o w . F o r useful w a r n i n g against t h e n o t i o n o f a ' t y p i c a l ' m a n u s c r i p t b o o k , see Délaissé, Le Manuscrit Autographe, 1, 50. F o r terse description o f t w e l f t h - c c n t u r y ' b o o k r e v o l u t i o n ' see H u m p h r e y s , The Book Provisions, p. 13. T h e system o f the ' p e c i a ' h a n d l e d b y u n i v e r s i t y stationers i n O x f o r d , Paris,

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contrast between the free labor o f monks w o r k i n g for remission o f sins and the wage labor o f lay copyists is an important one. Recent research has stressed the use o f a putting-out system and has also called

later middle ages - more cautious than I was i n m y preliminary version.

tices o f university stationers - let alone to bookdealers serving n o n university clientèle. That relatively clear thirteenth-century patterns 29

B o l o g n a w h o f a r m e d o u t pieces o f a g i v e n ms. f o r c o p y i n g a n d w e r e m e a n t t o have t h e i r mss. p e r i o d i c a l l y checked against a n e x e m p l a r b y u n i v e r s i t y officials is described i n exhaustive detail b y Destrez. 1 8

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C o m p a r e categorical statement i n Febvre a n d M a r t i n , L'Apparition, p p . 18-10, c o n c e r n i n g 'véritables ateliers de copistes' w i t h p e n e t r a t i n g c r i t i q u e b y Délaissé q u e s t i o n i n g t h e existence o f a n y such ' w o r k s h o p s ' i n his Art Bulletin r e v i e w o f M i l l a r d Meiss* w o r k . T h e dispersal o f the diverse i n d i v i d u a l s responsible f o r t u r n i n g o u t m a n u s c r i p t B i b l e s i n t h i r t e e n t h c e n t u r y France is also described b y B r a n n e r : ' M a n u s c r i p t M a k e r s ; ' ' T h e Soissons B i b l e Paintshop.' T h e l o n g l i v e d n o t i o n that Vespasiano da B i s t i c c i (the m o s t celebrated F l o r e n t i n e bookdealer o f t h e q u a t t r o c e n t o ) h a d a n actual s c r i p t o r i u m attached t o his shop is n o t sustained b y the intensive research o f de la M a r e , 'Vespasiano' a n d 'Messer P i e r o Strozzi, A F l o r e n t i n e Scribe.' She says that Vespasiano f a r m e d o u t manuscripts f o r c o p y i n g t o notaries l i k e S t r o z z i w h o d i d t h e w o r k i n t h e i r spare t i m e . T h e r e are n o records s h o w i n g t h a t he ever k e p t a n y g r o u p o f copyists r e g u l a r l y e m p l o y e d o n a n y task. F o r f u r t h e r c o m m e n t o n Vespasiano a n d de la M a r e ' s f i n d i n g s see chap. 2, notes 6, 13, 14 b e l o w . O n t h e o t h e r h a n d , I have n o t seen anyone challenge t h e 'secular s c r i p t o r i u m ' i n early f o u r t e e n t h - c e n t u r y L o n d o n w h i c h was u n c o v e r e d b y L o o m i s , ' T h e A u c h i n l e c k M a n u s c r i p t , ' o r J o h n Shirley's ' p u b l i s h i n g f i r m , ' as n o t e d b y R a y m o n d I r w i n , i n t r o d u c t i o n , The English Library Before 1700, p . 5. T h e o f t - c i t e d ' b o o k factory* r u n b y D i e b o l d Lauber i n H a g c n a u (Alsace), a n d o t h e r s i m i l a r l a y scriptoria i n Strassburg a n d S t u t t g a r t are n o t e d b y L e h m a n n - H a u p t , ' T h e H e r i t a g e o f the M a n u s c r i p t , ' and Peter Schoeffer, p p . 6 4 - 5 . F o r discussion a n d references o f f e r i n g a c o n v e n t i o n a l ( n o w o u t m o d e d ? v i e w ) see H a r r i n g t o n , ' T h e P r o d u c t i o n a n d D i s t r i b u t i o n o f B o o k s . ' C h a p t e r 5 is devoted t o ' p u b l i c c o m m e r c i a l s c r i p t o r i a ' f r o m t h e t w e l f t h t o t h e f i f t e e n t h centuries. E v i d e n c e that Paris college chambers w e r e used as scriptoria even i n t h e late m i d d l e agesisgiven b y W i l l a r d , ' T h e M a n u s c r i p t s o f Jean Peril's j u s t i f i c a t i o n . ' F o r t h e purpose o f r a p i d simultaneous c o p y i n g , t h e advantages o f g a t h e r i n g m a n y copyists t o receive d i c t a t i o n i n one r o o m seem so o b v i o u s , i t is difficult t o envisage a c o m p l e t e a b a n d o n m e n t o f t h e s c r i p t o r i u m at a n y p o i n t d u r i n g t h e centuries o f h a n d - p r o d u c e d b o o k s . A l t h o u g h authorities o f t e n assume t h a t t h e ' p e c i a ' a c t u a l l y p e r f o r m e d as u n i v e r s i t y statutes i n t e n d e d i t t o - that i t arrested c o r r u p t i o n a n d encouraged t h e p r o d u c t i o n o f u n i f o r m texts (see e.g. Febvre and M a r t i n , L'Apparition, p p . 10-11 ; H i r s c h , Printing, Selling, p . x i ) - a careful reading o f Destrez, La Pecia shows t h e c o n t r a r y was often t h e case (see discussion o f pecia corrupta o r falsa, p p . 7 0 - 1 ; also passages o n p p . 3s; 4 0 - 1 ) . T h e n u m e r o u s categories o f m a n u script b o o k s that w e r e n o t subject t o this system a l t h o u g h carefully n o t e d b y Destrez ( p p . 2 0 , 43) are also o f t e n o v e r l o o k e d i n m o r e general accounts.

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get smudged by the late fourteenth century must also be kept i n rnind. I t is a mistake t o i m p l y that the 'pecia* once introduced, continued d o w n t o the advent o f printing. Available evidence suggests that i t declined a full century before the first presses appeared. D u r i n g the interval between 1350 and 1450 - the crucial century when setting our stage - conditions were unusually anarchic and some presumably obsolete habits were revived. Monastic scriptoria, for example, were beginning t o experience their 'last golden age'. 30

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T h e so-called ' b o o k r e v o l u t i o n ' o f the twelfth century had n o t entirely extinguished the tradition o f copying as part o f the opus dei. I t was energetically revived i n the Netherlands by the orders founded by Gerhard Groote. ' N o religious community had ever concentrated its energies on book production as Groote's brethren d i d . ' This revival was not confined to regions where the devotio moderna flourished. Elsewhere the tradition o f Cassiodorus was also given a new lease o n life. The early fifteenth-century treatise by Jean Gerson In Praise of Scribes was w r i t t e n i n reply to queries f r o m Carthusians and Celestines about permission to copy books o n feast days. 3 2

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T h e existence o f monastic scriptoria right d o w n to and even beyond the days o f early printing is most intriguingly demonstrated by that anomalous treatise w h i c h owed much to Gerson and is often cited as a curiosity i n books o n early p r i n t i n g : Johannes Trithemius' De Laude Scriptorum. This is the treatise where the Abbot o f Sponheim not only exhorted his monks to copy books but enriched an ancient topos by explaining w h y 'monks should not stop copying because o f the invent i o n o f p r i n t i n g . * A m o n g other arguments (the usefulness o f keeping idle hands busy, encouraging diligence, devotion, knowledge o f scripture, etc.) Trithemius somewhat illogically compared the w r i t t e n w o r d o n parchment w h i c h w o u l d last one thousand years w i t h the printed w o r d o n paper w h i c h w o u l d have a shorter life-span. The possible use o f paper (and scraped parchment) by copyists, or o f skin for 34

Destrez, p . 25, notes t h a t the system o f t h e ' pecia' declined b y the t i m e paper came i n t o c o m m o n use, f o r reasons t h a t are unclear. I t s r e l a t i v e l y s h o r t - l i v e d existence is u n d e r l i n e d b y H a j n a l , L'Enseignement, p . 238. I n O x f o r d i t existed f r o m t h e 1230s u n t i l t h e m i d - f o u r t e e n t h c e n t u r y a c c o r d i n g t o P o l l a r d , ' T h e U n i v e r s i t y and the B o o k Trade.* K l a u s A r n o l d , i n t r o d u c t i o n t o Johannes T r i t h e m i u s ' In Praise of Scribes-De Laude Scriptorum, p . 14. S o u t h e r n , Western Society, p . 3J0. Gerson, ' D e Laude.' * T r i t h e m i u s Praise of Scribes (ed. A r n o l d ) , chap. 7, p . 63, Versions o f this advice are cited b y several a u t h o r i t i e s : C l a p p , ' T h e S t o r y o f P e r m a n e n t D u r a b l e B o o k Paper,* n , 108; B u h l e r , Fifteenth Century Book, p . 3 5 ; Fussner, The Historical Revolution, p . 8 ( w h o cites a relevant passage f r o m I v y , ' B i b l i o g r a p h y o f t h e M a n u s c r i p t B o o k . ' )

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a special printed version went unmentioned. As a hebraist, a Christian scholar and a reader o f Gerson, the Abbot was clearly familiar w i t h the topos w h i c h had first set durable parchment against perishable papyrus. His arguments show his concern about preserving a f o r m o f manual labor w h i c h seemed especially suitable for monks. Whether he was genuinely w o r r i e d about an increased use o f paper - as an ardent bibliophile and i n the light o f ancient w a r n i n g s - i s an open question. B u t his activities show clearly that as an author he did n o t favor handwork over presswork. H e had his Praise of Scribes p r o m p t l y printed, as he did his weightier w o r k s . Indeed he used one Mainz print shop so frequently that ' it could almost be called the Sponheim Abbey Press.' 35

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Even before the Abbot o f Sponheim made his trip f r o m scriptorium to print shop, the Carthusian monks o f Saint Barbara's Charterhouse i n Cologne were turning to local printers to extend their efforts, as a cloistered order bound by vows o f silence, to preach ' w i t h their hands.' As many accounts note, the same thing happened outside Cologne and not just among the Carthusians. A variety o f reformed 38

39

35 T r i t h e m i u s ' dependence o n Gerson f o r o t h e r sections is n o t e d b y A r n o l d , i n t r o d u c t i o n , p . 20Febvre a n d M a r t i n , L'Apparition, p . 3 1 , n o t e h o w Gerson advised durable p a r c h m e n t r a t h e r t h a n perishable paper ( g i v e n t h e date, n o t h i n g is said a b o u t p r e s s w o r k as against h a n d w o r k , o f course). O n e o f Saint Jerome's f o u r t h - c e n t u r y epistles describes the damage done t o p a p y r u s (paper) volumes i n the great l i b r a r y o f P a m p h i l u s at Caesarea a n d h o w t h e y w e r e replaced b y m o r e durable v e l l u m ones. T h e r e are also i n j u n c t i o n s i n t h e Talmud a b o u t w r i t i n g o n s k i n rather t h a n paper. (See K e n y o n , Books and Readers, p p . 4 4 - 5 ; 115.) O n T r i t h e m i u s * contacts w i t h Basel p r i n t e r s , G e r m a n h u m a n i s t circles a n d his significant 3 6

3

roles as b i b l i o g r a p h e r , c h r o n i c l e r , c r y p t o g r a p h e r a n d necromancer, see p p . 9 4 - 7 b e l o w . ? A r n o l d , i n t r o d u c t i o n , p . 15, notes t h a t T r i t h e m i u s closely supervised t h e p r e s s w o r k o f Peter v o n Fried b e r g at M a i n z a n d t h a t t h i r t e e n o f t h e t w e n t y - f i v e editions t h i s p r i n t e r p r o d u c e d d u r i n g the decade 1490-1500 w e r e w o r k s b y T r i t h e m i u s ( 1 4 9 4 - 8 ) ; another six w e r e b y t h e A b b o t ' s friends.

3 8

3 9

C o l l a b o r a t i o n b e t w e e n the C a r t h u s i a n m o n k , W e r n e r R o l e v i n c k a n d t h e C o l o g n e p r i n t e r , A r n o l d T h e r h o e m c n i n t h e 1470s is discussed b y t h e f o r m e r i n his preface t o his Sermo de Présentacione Beate Virginis Marie ( C o l o g n e , 1470) a n d is n o w b e i n g investigated b y R i c h a r d B . M a r k s . M a r k s is f o l l o w i n g u p his recent m o n o g r a p h : The Medieval Manuscript Library w i t h a series o f articles o n t h e late mss. a n d early p r i n t e d versions p r o d u c e d b y t h e C o l o g n e C a r t h u sians a n d has k i n d l y supplied m e w i t h advance copies o f hia papers - u p o n w h i c h I have d r a w n . F o r f u r t h e r references t o t h e t h e m e o f ' p r e a c h i n g w i t h one's h a n d s ' ( w h i c h goes b a c k at least t o Cassiodorus), see p p . 316-17, 373-4 b e l o w . A c c o r d i n g t o H i r s c h , Printing, Selling, p . 54, at least seven monastic presses w e r e established i n G e r m a n areas b y the 14705. K r i s t e l l e r , ' T h e C o n t r i b u t i o n o f R e l i g i o u s O r d e r s t o T h o u g h t a n d L e a r n i n g , ' p . 9 9 , n . 13 offers references t o early m o n a s t i c presses i n I t a l y a n d E n g l a n d (p. 99 discusses t h e C o n v e n t o f San Jacopo o f R i p o l i as one o f t h e c h i e f early presses i n Florence). Febvre, Au Cœur Religieux, p . 33n notes t h e setting u p o f presses b y F r e n c h m o n k s i n Chartres. Febvre a n d M a r t i n , L'Apparition, p . 2 6 4 , m e n t i o n several F r e n c h abbeys i n B u r g u n d y . T h e a d o p t i o n o f p r i n t i n g b y the B r e t h r e n o f the C o m m o n L i f e i n t h e N e t h e r l a n d s a n d the large o u t p u t o f t h e D e v e n t e r press, w h i c h h a d an u n c e r t a i n affiliation w i t h Groote*s

15

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Benedictine orders also kept local printers busy and, i n some cases, monks and nuns ran monastic presses themselves. The possible significance o f this intrusion o f a capitalist enterprise into consecrated space belongs to other sections o f tins b o o k . Monastic copying and pressw o r k have been mentioned here merely to suggest what m i g h t be missed i f the rise o f the lay stationer i n the twelfth century is overplayed. T o rule out die formula ' scriptorium to printshop * completely seems almost as unwise as to attempt to apply i t i n a blanket f o r m . 40

As these comments may suggest, i t is easier to generalize about the new system o f book production than about the old, especially when considering the interval 13 50-1450. U n i f o r m i t y and synchronization have become so c o m m o n since the advent o f printing, that we have to remind ourselves repeatedly that they were usually absent i n the age o f scribes. W h e n one has been trained to v i e w phenomena at a distance, however, one is prone to myopia about those that occur, so to speak, directly under one's eyes. The apparent blindness o f most scholars t o effects exerted by the m e d i u m they look at every day has been most emphatically stressed and elaborately treated by Marshall M c L u h a n . According to his thesis, subliminal effects are engendered by repeatedly scanning lines o f print presented in a standardized format. Habitual book readers are so subjectively conditioned by these effects that they are incapable o f recognizing them. The bizarre typographical format o f The Gutenberg Galaxy is presumably designed to counteract this conditioning and to j o l t the reader out o f accustomed mental ruts. McLuhan attributes his o w n awareness o f and ability to withstand the quasi-hypnotic power o f print to the advent o f new audio-visual and electronic media. B y affecting our senses and conditioning our perception differently, he holds, the new media have begun to break the bookish spell that held literate members o f Western society i n thrall during the past five centuries. 41

I t is noteworthy that the author, while presenting his thesis i n an o r d e r is covered b y S h e p p a r d , ' P r i n t i n g at D e v e n t e r . ' T h e intellectual influence o f t h e B r e t h r e n i n general a n d t h e i r i n v o l v e m e n t i n D e v e n t e r i n p a r t i c u l a r has been overstated, a c c o r d i n g t o Post, Tfje Modern Devotion, p p . 8 - 1 0 ; 551-3. T h e transition f r o m s c r i p t o r i u m t o press i n Z w o l l e is w e l l d o c u m e n t e d i n t h e Narratio de Inchoatione Domus Clericorum in Zwollis, ed. M . Schoengen (1008), c i t e d b y S o u t h e r n , Western Society and the Church, p. 349. 4 0

4 1

See reference t o H e l l i n g a a r t i c l e , chap. 2, n . 55, a n d discussion o f L u t h e r ' s attitudes a n d t h e W e b e r thesis, chap. 4, sect. 5 b e l o w . M c L u h a n , The Gutenberg Galaxy. T h e same t h e m e is elaborated i n Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. For f u r t h e r c o m m e n t o n M c L u h a n , see b e l o w p p . 4 0 - 1 .

16

THE

U N A C K N O W L E D G E D

R E V O L U T I O N

unconventional format, tends to undermine i t at the same time by drawing heavily for substantiation on conventional scholarly literature even while reiterating conventional nineteenth-century literary themes. T h e chaotic format o f The Gutenberg Galaxy probably owes less to the impact o f new media than to the old-fashioned difficulty o f trying to organize material gleaned f r o m wide-ranging reading - evaded i n this instance b y an old-fashioned tactic, by resorting to scissors and paste. W h e n its author argues that typography has become obsolescent and that an 'electric age' has outmoded the 'technology o f literacy' he is himself (in m y view, at least) failing to take full note o f what is under his o w n eyes and that o f the reader he addresses. Elaborate media-analysis does not seem to be required to explain current myopia about the impact o f print. Since Gutenberg's day printed materials have become exceedingly common. They ceased to be newsworthy more than a century ago and have attracted ever less attention the more ubiquitous they have become. B u t although calendars, maps, time-tables, dictionaries, catalogues, textbooks and newspapers are taken for granted at present (or even dismissed as old-fashioned by purveyors o f novelties) they continue to exert as great an influence on daily life as ever they did before. Indeed the more abundant they have become, the more frequently they are used, the more profound and widespread their impact. Typography is thus still indispensable to the transmission o f the most sophisticated technological skills. I t underlies the present knowledge explosion and much o f modern art. I n m y view, at least, i t accounts for much that is singled out as peculiarly characteristic o f mid-twentieth century culture. But, I repeat, the more printed materials accumulate, the more w e are inclined to overlook them i n favor o f more recent, less familiar media. Articles speculating about the effects o f television w i l l thus find a larger market than conjectures about the impact o f print. Because the latter has become increasingly less visible, repercussions that are actually being augmented and amplified at present are paradoxically believed to be diminishing instead. 42

43

•** T h e extent t o w h i c h ' o u r s is a t y p o g r a p h i c a l c u l t u r e ' a n d t h e a c c o m p a n y i n g tendency t o take t h e functions w r o u g h t b y p r i n t i n g t o o m u c h for granted is b r o u g h t o u t clearly b y B u t l e r , Origin of Printing, p p . 2 - 4 . 4 3

As n o t e d i n Eisenstein, ' C l i o a n d Chronos,* p . 63, present n i h i l i s t i c a n d chaotic aesthetic trends o w e m o r e t o t h e preservative p o w e r s o f p r i n t t h a n is o f t e n realized. See also t h e c o n c l u d i n g chapter o f v o l u m e n o f this b o o k .

17

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T h e prolonged ubiquity o f printed materials, however, does not completely explain current myopia. The era o f incunabula had ended w e l l before Bacon, Campanella, Galileo or Kepler were born. B u t none o f them was inclined to take typography for granted; o n the contrary, each commented o n its great significance. T o be sure, by present standards, printed materials were relatively scarce i n the early seventeenth century. Nevertheless, b y contemporary standards they were remarkably abundant and were already being described as a glut on the market; 'begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements o f scholars and to maintain the Trade and Mystery o f Typographers* according t o Sir Thomas B r o w n e . Since the scanning o f printed pages had become a familiar daily routine i n seventeenthcentury scholarly circles and yet letterpress was still being discussed as a conspicuous innovation, our present tendency to overlook i t needs further explanation. 44

Some additional points are w o r t h considering. I n the seventeenth century, many scholars and intellectuals were o n much closer terms w i t h print shops and typographers than they have been since the i n dustrialization o f printing led to new divisions o f labor. D o w n through the Age o f Enlightenment, genteel publishers and mechanic printers had not yet come t o a parting o f the ways. A n early seventeenth-century virtuoso, such as Kepler, w h o spent hours i n p r i n t shops himself, closely supervising scientific presswork, was likely t o be more alert t o p r i n t technology than are contemporary astronomers, w h o send o f f their findings to the editors o f journals and assume publication w i l l be forthcoming, after receiving a favorable verdict f r o m referees. H o w this g r o w i n g distance f r o m printing plants has affected the attitudes o f men o f knowledge remains to be assessed Has i t helped, perhaps, t o reinforce a disdain for technology and applied science o n the part o f those w h o are engaged i n ' p u r e ' research? 4 5

I n addition t o the industrialization o f printing trades and new d i v i sions o f intellectual labor, problems o f censorship and ideology also 4 4

4 5

Religfo Medici (1643), sect. 24 i n The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne, p . 32. See also c i t a t i o n f r o m L o p e de V e g a i n Preserved S m i t h , A History of Modern Culture 11, 276. A l t h o u g h S m i t h i m p l i e s t h a t i t was o n l y i n the seventeenth c e n t u r y t h a t the m u l t i p l i c a t i o n o f b o o k s began t o be felt as a n oppression, Erasmus h a d already c o m p l a i n e d a b o u t t h e s w a r m s o f n e w b o o k s . See 'Festina L e n i e , ' The 'Adages' of Erasmus, p p . 182-3. T h i s c o m p l a i n t p r o b a b l y o w e d somet h i n g t o ancient scribal l i t e r a r y conventions. B o t h Petrarch a n d J u v e n a l h a d , after a l l , c o m p l a i n e d a b o u t t h e n u m b e r o f scribblers at w o r k i n t h e i r day. See discussion o f M a n n h e i m ' s v i e w s p . 154, b e l o w .

18

THE

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neecl to be brought into the picture. I n the early-modern era, gaining access t o publication outlets often entailed circumventing censors and engaging i n illicit activities. A man o f letters w h o had to smuggle out a manuscript for publication by a foreign press or locate a clandestine press i n his native land was less likely to take the services o f printers for granted than are most men o f letters (in Western Europe, at least) today. This was especially true o f Campanella, Galileo and Kepler, as it was o f the later philosophes w h o lived under Catholic rule. Tributes t o the power o f the press were more compatible w i t h patriotic themes i n Protestant realms; emphasis on the epoch-making functions performed by printing had anti-papist and anti-Roman overtones. The theme was thus developed by anti-Italian German humanists, amplified by Lutherans and other Protestants, carried on by Huguenots, Puritans, freethinkers and Enlightenment philosophes, reaching a final climax in the writings o f W h i g historians, such as Macaulay, and anti-clerical ones, such as M i c h e l e t . Thereafter, however, the apostles o f progress were diverted f r o m gunpowder and printing, first t o the steam engine and then t o the dynamo. B y the late nineteenth century, the hand press itself was becoming something o f a museum piece - a point that also helps to explain w h y i t seems less conspicuous to us than to Francis Bacon or Condorcet. 46

The cumulative impact o f recent technological advance thus has also helped to relegate the fifteenth-century invention to the position o f an antique; o f more interest t o rare book dealers than to observers o f the modern scene. I t is symptomatic that incunabula have j o i n e d hand-produced books as highly valued scarce objects t o be placed in glass cases and cherished as vestiges o f a distant, lost past. Given the 47

*

6

O n Condorcet's i n f l u e n t i a l Protestant h i s t o r i o g r a p h y is Louis Philippe 1, 4 start w i t h event i n t h e h i s t o r y o f m a n '

scheme and its use b y M i c h c l c t , see chap. 3, n . 420 b e l o w ; discussed o n p p . 304-5 b e l o w . T h e r e c e n t l y published Mémoires de describing the i n v e n t i o n o f p r i n t i n g as perhaps ' t h e m o s t decisive and assign i t a p r i m e r o l e i n d e s t r o y i n g feudalism.

* ' T h e present ' m u s e u m - c u l t u r e ' veneration o f manuscripts and incunabula is i n m a r k e d contrast t o the careless approach o f earlier eras. T h e fact t h a t s i x t e e n t h - c e n t u r y m e n o f t e n discarded manuscripts ' l i k e o l d newspapers' once a p r i n t e d e d i t i o n h a d been made (see Dcstrcz, La Pecia, p . 18) o r that seventeenth-century O x f o r d librarians sold o f f Shakespeare's first f o l i o as superfluous after the t h i r d h a d appeared ( B u h l c r , Fifteenth Century Book, p . 101, n . 44) is sometimes taken t o indicate a b e n i g h t e d c o n t e m p t f o r manuscripts that came w i t h p r i n t i n g . See e.g. A l l e n , Tlte Age of Erasmus, p p . J 59-60. B u t even before G u t e n b e r g , some h u m a n i s t b o o k - h u n t e r s showed s i n g u l a r l y l i t t l e interest i n preserving t h e m a n u s c r i p t f r o m w h i c h t h e y copied a g i v e n t e x t . Sec Reynolds a n d W i l s o n , Scribes and Scholars, p . 116. O n the o t h e r h a n d , as an e d i t o r w o r k i n g f o r S w e y n h e i m and Pannartz, dc Bussi c o m p l a i n e d o f n i g g a r d l y collectors w i t h h o l d i n g t h e i r loan o f manuscripts t o the firm he served because ' t h e y esteemed t h e

19

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recent rapid pace o f innovation, moreover, the Renaissance convention o f coupling printing w i t h other post-classical inventions has also helped t o diminish the attention focused upon i t . The more rapidly new inventions proliferate, the less conspicuous earlier ones tend to become. The expansion o f the so-called modern knowledge industry has p r o duced similar results, w i t h modern scholars uncovering o l d inventions almost as rapidly as modern technology has brought forth new ones. As just one more item in an increasingly cluttered inventory, the p r i n t ing press has also become less distinctive. 48

In this respect we have come around almost a full circle since the press was first tacked on to a long list o f post-classical novelties. This list had been drawn up before Gutenberg, by a Papal lib See Burckhardt, Tfie Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy 1, p. 204 where Duke Federigo's shame is attributed to the idea of owning a printed book and Cardinal Bessarion's envoys when seeing a printed book in the house of Constantine Lascaris 'laughed at the discovery made among the barbarians in some German city.' Burckhardt's use of Vespasiano is discussed by •Wierus20wski, 'Burckhardt and Vespasiano.' Sec also chap. 3, n. 420, below.

48

DEFINING

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The heed to make Renaissance bibliophiles and patrons into snobbish enemies o f machine-made objects seems oddly compelling. W h y else is the story so often told w i t h no real hard evidence to support i t and expanded t o Florence w i t h no supporting evidence at all? Actually, Florentine bibliophiles were , sending to Rome for printed books as early as 1470. Under Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, the ducal library at U r b i n o acquired printed editions and (shamelessly or not) had them bound w i t h the same magnificent covers as manuscripts. T h e same court also sponsored the establishment o f an early press i n 1482. That Vespasiano was indulging i n wishful and nostalgic thinking is suggested by his o w n inability to find sufficient support f r o m princely patrons t o persist i n his exclusive trade. His chief rival i n Florence, Zanobi d i Mariano, managed t o stay i n business right d o w n t o his death i n 1495. 'Zanobi's readiness to sell printed books - a trade w h i c h Vespasiano spurned - explains his survival as a bookseller i n the tricky years o f the late fifteenth century. Vespasiano dealing exclusively i n manuscripts was forced out o f business i n 1478/ 20

21

One must wait for Vespasiano to close shop before one can say that a genuine wholesale book trade was launched. As soon as Gutenberg and Schoeffer had finished the last sheet o f their monumental Bible, the financier o f the firm, John Fust, set out with a dozen copies or so to see for himself how he could best reap the harvest o f his patient investments. And where did he turn first o f all to convert his Bibles into money? He went to the biggest university town in Europe, to Paris, where ten thousand or more students were filling the Sorbonne and the colleges. And what did he, to his bitter discomfiture find there? A well organized and powerful guild of the book-trade, the Confrérie des Libraires, Relieurs, Erdumineurs, Ecrivains et Parcheminiers.. .founded in 1401... Alarmed at the appearance o f an outsider w i t h such an unheard o f treasure o f books; when he was found to be selling one Bible after another, they soon shouted for the police, giving their expert opinion that such a store o f valuable books could be in one man's possession through the help o f the devil himself and Fust had to run for his life or his first business trip would have ended in a nasty bonfire. 22

The story may be just as unfounded as the legend that linked the 1 0

BUhler, Fifteenth

Century

Book,

p. 62; de la Marc, 'Vespasiano,* p. 112; Moranti,

Tipografía in Urbino, p. 9.

"

De la Mare, 'Bartolomeo Scala's Dealings,' p. 2 4 1 .

1 1

Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance Bookbindings 1, 4 3 - 4 .

49

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figure o f Johann Fust w i t h that o f D r Faustus. ^ T h e adverse reaction it depicts should not be taken as typical; many early references were at worst ambivalent. The ones that are most frequently cited associate printing w i t h divine rather than diabolic powers. B u t then the most familiar references come either f r o m the blurbs and prefaces composed by early printers themselves o r f r o m editors and authors w h o found employment i n print shops. Such men were likely to take a more favorable view than were the guildsmen w h o had made a livelihood f r o m manuscript books. The Parisian libraires may have had good reason to be alarmed, although they were somewhat ahead o f the game; the market value o f hand-copied books d i d not drop until after Fust was d e a d . Other members o f the confrérie could not foresee that most book-binders, rubricators, illuminators, and calligraphers w o u l d be kept busier than ever after early printers set up s h o p . "Whether the new art was considered a blessing or a curse; whether i t was consigned to the D e v i l o r attributed to G o d ; the fact remains, that the initial increase i n output d i d strike contemporary observers as sufficiently remarkable to suggest supernatural intervention. Even incredulous 2

24

25

26

27

"

14

2S

By 1910, when the article for the eleventh edition of the Britannica was written, Phillips, 'Faust,* Encyclopedia Britannica x, 210, n. 1, could assert that 'the opinion, long maintained' of Faust and Fust being identical was 'now universally rejected.' Evidence showing that Fust was in Paris selling books in 1466 when he was killed by the plague suggests that the outcome of his first business trip did not discourage him from making a later one. The ambivalence of scholars who cursed the errors made by careless printers much as earlier authors had cursed careless scribes is brought out by Biihler, Fifteenth Century Book, pp. 5 0 - 1 , and by Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 48, n. 20. Early tributes to the ' divine ' art are conveniently collected by Stillwell, The Beginning of the World of Books, appendix A : 2, pp. 88 ff. They often echo tributes to Che labors of scribes - a topos that goes back at leait to Cassiodorus and which was publicized by early printings of both Gerson's and Trithcmius' De Laude Scriptorum. See discussion in chap. 1 above. Gianandrea de' Bussi, a minor cleric, one-time private secretary to Nicholas of Cues and later Bishop of Aleria, helped to edit texts for Sweynhcim and Pannartz (after they established the first press in Rome). In his dedicatory letter to Pope Paul II which appeared in the 1469 Roman edition of Saint Jerome's Epistles de' Busst attributes the phrase 'divine art' ('Hacc sancta ars') to Cusanus. Needless to say, early printers saw to it that the phrase received maximum exposure. A thoughtful essay on less well-publicized reactions - particularly some unpublished diatribes against early printing by a Dominican friar who had served as a copyist and reacted unfavorably to the Venetian press in the late fifteenth century - is contained in an article by Martin Lowry, 'Intellectuals and the Press in fifteenth century Venice' to appear in a forthcoming issue of the Bulletin

1 6

2 7

of the John

Rylands

University

Library.

De la Mare, 'Vespasiano,' p. 113. O n prices, see also Hirsch, Printing, Selling, pp. 6 8 - 7 3 ; Febvre and Martin, L'Apparition, chap. 4 ; Pettas, 'The Cost of Printing a Florentine Incunable.' O f course, hindsight is required to show that technological unemployment was not severe, and fears, whether ultimately justified or not, may well have been aroused. O n the new jobs created by printing, see Biihler, Fifteenth

Century

Book, pp. 2 5 - 7 ; Hirsch, Printing,

Selling,

pp. 4 8 - 9 . In Florence the number of stationers' shops rose from twelve to thirty during the first half-century after the advent of the press. De la Mare, 'Vespasiano,' p. 44.

50

DEFINING

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modern scholars may be troubled by trying to calculate the number o f calves required t o supply enough skins f o r Gutenberg's B i b l e . I t 28

should not be too difficult t o obtain agreement that an abrupt rather than a gradual increase d i d occur i n the second half o f the fifteenth century. Scepticism is much more difficult to overcome when we turn f r o m consideration o f quantity to that o f quality. I f one holds a late manuscript copy o f a given text next to an early printed one, one is likely to doubt that any change at all has taken place, let alone an abrupt or revolutionary one. Behind every book which Peter Schoeffer printed stands a published manuscript. . .The decision on the kind o f letter to use, the selection o f initials and decoration of rubrications, the determination of the length and width of the column, planning for margins... all were prescribed by the manuscript copy before h i m . 29

N o t only did early printers such as Schoeffer t r y to copy a given manuscript as faithfully as possible, but fifteenth-century scribes returned the compliment. As C u r t Buhler has shown, a large number o f the manuscripts made during the late fifteenth century were copied f r o m early printed books. Thus handwork and presswork continued t o appear almost mdistinguishable, even after the printer had begun t o depart from scribal conventions and to exploit some o f the n e w features inherent i n his art. 30

That there were new features and they were exploited needs t o be given due weight. Despite his efforts to duplicate manuscripts as faithfully as possible, the fact remains that Peter Schoeffer, printer, was following different procedures than had Peter Schoeffer, scribe. T h e absence o f any apparent change i n product was combined w i t h a c o m plete change i n methods o f production, giving rise to the paradoxical combination, noted above, o f seeming continuity w i t h radical change. Thus the temporary resemblance between handwork and presswork seems to support the thesis o f a very gradual evolutionary change; yet the opposite thesis may also be supported b y underlining the marked difference between the t w o different modes o f production and noting 2 8

« 3 0

See amusing speculations on sales of veal by Buhler, Fifteenth CetUury Book, p. 4 1 . Lehmann-Haupt, Peter Schoeffer, pp. 37-8.

Buhler, Fifteenth Century Book, p. 16. A detailed description of particular cases found in the Bcinecke Library at Yale is offered by Lutz, 'Manuscripts Copied from Printed Books.'

51

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TO AN ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

the new features that began to appear before the fifteenth century had come to an end. Concern w i t h surface appearance necessarily governed the handwork o f the scribe. H e was fully preoccupied trying to shape evenly spaced uniform letters i n a pleasing symmetrical design. A n altogether different procedure was required to give directions to compositors. T o do this, one had to mark up a manuscript while scrutinizing its contents. Every manuscript that came into the printer's hands, thus, had to be reviewed i n a new way - one w h i c h encouraged more editing, correcting and collating than had the hand-copied t e x t . W i t h i n a generation the results o f this review were being aimed i n a new direction - away f r o m fidelity to scribal conventions and toward serving the convenience o f the reader. The highly competitive c o m mercial character o f the new mode o f book production encouraged the relatively rapid adoption o f any innovation that commended a given edition to purchasers. W e l l before 1500, printers had begun to experiment w i t h the use ' o f graduated types, running heads... footnotes... tables o f contents... superior figures, cross references... and other devices available to the c o m p o s i t o r ' - all registering 'the victory o f the punch cutter over the scribe.' Title pages became i n creasingly common, facilitating the production o f book lists and catalogues, while acting as advertisements i n themselves. Hand-drawn illustrations were replaced by more easily duplicated woodcuts and engravings - an innovation w h i c h eventually helped to revolutionize 31

32

33

34

35

31

3 2

3 3 3

J

Some Yale mss. marked up by early printers to be used as copy are noted by Lutz, 'Manuscripts Copied,' p. 262, who also offers evidence of the irritation of a thirteenth-century scribe at a correction made by a bookdealer which destroyed the surface symmetry of two pages of a copy of a commentary by Thomas Aquinas. For a pertinent example, see the account of the procedure used by Aldus Manutius' chief editor, Marcus Musurus, when preparing the printer's copy for the 1498 edition of Aristophanes' works. Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 132-3. Lehmann-Haupt, Peter Schoeffer, pp. 53-4 contains relevant data.

* Steinberg, Five Hundred

Years, p. 28.

s Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, p. 145. Along with many other authorities, both Steinberg (pp. 145 ff.) and Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 25 overstate the novelty of the title page when describing it as a purely post-print phenomenon. The Folger Library has a copy of Lorenzo Valla's De Elegantiis Linguae Latinae- Phillipps Ms 2966 (Folger 'v.a. 102') which is identified by A. M . de la Mare as being by the hand of a Veronese scribe: Cristoforo Schioppo. The name of the book's author, 'Lauretii Vallae,' and part of the title arc clearly placed on a single page as if engraved on a stone tablet. That this is by no means the only ms. 'title page' of its kind is attested to by Dr de la Marc. But the basic points made by Steinberg in his section on the title page are not really invalidated by his overlooking quattrocento humanist manuscripts and taking Northern ms. styles for his norm. Title pages did not become common and information contained in colophons did not get shifted until after print.

52

DEFINING

T H EINITIAL

SHIFT

technical literature b y introducing 'exactly repeatable pictorial statem e n t s ' i n t o all kinds o f reference works. T h e fa£;t t h a t identical images, maps and diagrams could be viewed simultaneously b y scattered readers constituted a k i n d o f communications revolution i n itself. This point has been made most forcefully b y W i l l i a m Ivins, a former curator o f prints at the Metropolitan Museum. A l m o u g h lvins' special emphasis o n ' t h e exactly repeatable pictorial statement' has found favor among historians o f cartography, his propensity f o r overstatement has provoked objections f r o m other specialists. Repeatable images, they argue, go back to ancient seals and coins; while exact replication was scarcely fostered b y woodblocks which got w o r n and broken after repeated use. Here as elsewhere one must be w a r y o f underrating as w e l l as o f overestimating the advantages o f the new technology. Even while noting that woodcuts d i d get corrupted when copied f o r insertion i n diverse kinds o f texts, one should also consider the corruption that occurred when hand-drawn images had t o be copied into hundreds o f books. A l t h o u g h pattern books and ' p o u n c i n g ' techniques were available t o some medieval illuminators, the precise reproduction o f fine detail remained elusive until the advent o f woodcarving and engraving. Blocks and plates d i d make repeatable visual aids feasible for the first time. I n the hands o f expert craftsmen using good materials and w o r k i n g under supervision, even problems o f wear and tear could be circumvented; w o r n places could be sharpened; blurred details refined and a t r u l y remarkable durability achieved. 3 6

37

38

30

It is n o t so m u c h i n his special emphasis o n the printed image b u t rather i n his underrating the significance o f the printed text that Ivins seems to go astray. I n his w o r k the use o f movable type is oddly described as 'little more than a way to do w i t h a smaller number o f p r o o f readings.' A reference b y Pliny the Younger to one thousand copies o f 30 Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication. Some specific examples discussed by Ivins arc treated in later discussion of scientific data collection and early field trips. See pp. 22fTbelow. 3 7 See e.g., Bagrow, History of Cartography, p. 8o;SkeIton,Mopi, p. 12; Robinson,' Map making,* Five Centuries of Map Printing, p. 1. The illustrations (in this last mentioned work) of relevant tools and techniques are unusually clear and helpful. 3 8 O n medieval pattern books, see n. 123 below. 3 9 Thus the second edition of Vesalius* De Fabrica profited from the sharpening of indistinct letters and lines by a Basel woodcarver using a fine knife. Woodblocks impressed only on moist paper and made of birchwood treated with hot linseed oil can remain unspoiled even after running off 3,000 to 4,000 copies, according to TVilly ^"iegand (who printed an edition of Vesalius' hones anatomicae from old woodblocks in 1935). See Herrlinger, History of Illustration, p. 113.

53

Medical

INTRODUCTION

TO AN ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

a book being made i n the second century A . D . is cited repeatedly as evidence that the duplicative powers o f p r i n t were relatively feeble. The incapacity o f any t w o scribes (let alone one thousand) to produce identical copies while taking dictation is overlooked. A l t h o u g h he mentions i n passing that *the history o f prints as an integrated series' begins w i t h their use 'as illustrations i n books printed f r o m movable types' Ivins' analysis elsewhere tends to detach the fate o f printed pictures f r o m that o f printed books. His treatment implies that the novel effects o f repeatability were confined to pictorial statements. Y e t these effects were b y no means confined to pictures or, for that matter, to pictures and words. Mathematical tables, for example, were also transformed. For scholars concerned w i t h scientific change, what happened to numbers and equations is surely just as significant as what happened to either images or words. Furthermore, many o f the most important pictorial statements produced during the first century o f printing employed various devices - banderoles, letter-number keys, indication lines - to relate images to texts. T o treat the visual aid as a discrete unit is to lose sight o f the connecting links w h i c h were especially important for technical literature because they expressed the relationship between words and things. 40

41

42

Even though block-print and letterpress may have originated as separate innovations and were initially used for diverse purposes (so that playing cards and saints' images, for example, were being stamped f r o m blocks at the same time that hand illumination continued to decorate many early printed books), the t w o techniques soon became intertwined. The use o f typography for texts led to that o f xylography for illustration, sealing the fate o f illuminator along w i t h that o f the scribe. W h e n considering h o w technical literature was affected b y the shift f r o m script to print, i t seems reasonable to adopt George 43

* ° Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication, 4 1 Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication,

pp. 2, n , 163. p. 27.

See fascinating section on 'indication lines' in Herrh'nger, History of Medical Illustration, pp. 54-60. I owe thanks to Karen Reeds for bringing this to my attention. « Questions pertaining to the relationship between block-printing and book-printing and to whether the block book preceded the invention and use of movable type have given rise to a massive controversial literature that cannot be examined here. To sample recent arguments see Muspcr, 'Xylographie Books,' pp. 341-7 (esp. bibliography p. 347) and Lehmann¬ Haupt, Gutenberg and the Master of the Playing Cards. A close-up view of the overlap between hand illumination and early Mainz printing is offered by Vaassen, Die Werkstatt der Mainzer Riesenbibel in Wiirzburg und Ihr Umkreis. See review article by Labarre, ' U n Atelier Mayençais d'Enluminure vers 1450-1500.* For stimulating speculation relating changes in shop structure to new handbooks for illuminators, see Bober's review of The Gotiingen Model Book. 4 1

54

DEFINING

THE INITIAL

SHIFT

Sarton's strategy o f envisaging a ' double invention; typography for the text, engraving f o r the images.' T h e fact that letters, numbers and pictures were all alike subject to repeatability b y the end o f the fifteenth century, needs more emphasis. That the printed book made possible new forms o f interplay between these diverse elements is perhaps even more significant than the change undergone b y picture, number o r letter alone. 44

Intellectual historians m a y find the new interplay between 'literate, figurative and numerate' forms o f expression o f particular interest. Social historians also need to be alerted to the new interplay between diverse occupational groups w h i c h occurred w i t h i n the new workshops that were set up b y early printers. T h e preparation o f copy and illustrative material for printed editions led to a rearrangement o f all bookmaking arts and routines. N o t only did new skills, such as typefounding and presswork, involve veritable occupational m u t a t i o n s ; b u t the production o f printed books also gathered together i n one place more traditional variegated skills. I n the age o f scribes, book-making had occurred under the diverse auspices represented b y stationers and lay copyists i n university towns; illuminators and miniaturists trained i n special ateliers; goldsmiths and leather workers belonging to special guilds; monks and lay brothers gathered in scriptoria; royal clerks and papal secretaries w o r k i n g i n chanceries and courts; preachers compiling books o f sermons o n their o w n ; humanist poets serving as their o w n scribes. T h e advent o f printing led to the creation o f a n e w k i n d o f shop structure; to a regrouping w h i c h entailed closer contacts among diversely skilled workers and encouraged new forms o f cross-cultural interchange. 45

46

Thus i t is not uncommon to find former priests among early printers or former abbots serving as editors and correctors. University p r o 47

4 4

4 5

4 6

4 7

Sarton, The Appreciation of Ancient and Medieval Science During the Renaissance 1450-1600, p. id.

I borrow these terms from Derek da Solla Price's article, 'Geometrical and Scientific Talismans.' How the diverse skills of the punchcutter, matrix-maker and mold-maker got lumped under the heading of'typefounder* is discussed by Harry Carter, A View of Early Typography, p. 9 2 . The widely varying social and occupational origins of early printers, extracted from biographical dictionaries such as those compiled by E . Voullieme and Joseph Benzing for Germanspeaking regions, are indicated by Hirsch, Printing, Selling, pp. 18-23. A 'flocking of priests into printing' is noted on p. 22 and the numbers of priests and bishops involved in proofreading, on p. 47. How a former monk and abbot abandoned his monastery to work full-time as an editor for Peter Schoeffer's early firm is noted by Lehmann-Haupt, Peter Schoeffer, p. 8 3 , n. 6. A recent finely derailed study of the Paris book-trade in the mid-sixteenth century confirms the impression of diverse backgrounds among those entering the trade: Parent, Les

55

INTRODUCTION

TO AN ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

fessors also often served i n similar capacities and thus came into closer contact w i t h metal workers and mechanics. Other fruitful forms o f collaboration brought astronomers and engravers, physicians and painters together, dissolving older divisions o f intellectual labor and encouraging new ways o f coordinating the w o r k o f brains, eyes and hands. Problems o f financing the publication o f the large Latin volumes that were used b y late medieval faculties o f theology, law, and medicine also led to the formation o f partnerships that brought rich merchants and local scholars into closer contact. T h e new financial syndicates that were formed to provide master printers w i t h needed labor and supplies brought together representatives o f t o w n and g o w n . As the key figure around w h o m all arrangements revolved, the master printer himself bridged many w o r l d s . He was responsible for o b taining money, supplies and labor, while developing complex production schedules, coping w i t h strikes, trying t o estimate book markets and lining up learned assistants. He had to keep on good terms w i t h officials w h o provided protection and lucrative jobs, while cultivating and p r o m o t i n g talented authors and artists w h o m i g h t bring his firm profits or prestige. I n those places where his enterprise prospered and he achieved a position o f influence w i t h fellow townsmen, his workshop became a veritable cultural center attracting local literati and celebrated foreigners ; providing both a meeting place and message center for an expanding cosmopolitan Commonwealth o f Learning. 4 8

49

50

*8

Métiers du Livre, pp. 175ff.Parent also notes that publication of devotional literature was often supervised by a priest who was sent by a bishop to receive room and board from the printer (p. I 2 z ) . References to pertinent studies are given by Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 5 1 . BUhler, The University

and the Press in 15th Century

Bologna,

pp. 15-16 gives an example of a contract

drawn up in 1470 to build and run a press for academic purposes. The complex arrangements that went into the printing for academic purposes of a massive commentary on Avicenna's Canon (comprising over a thousand double column large folio-sized pages of text) are described by Marderstcig, Remarkable Story. «* He was such a protean figure that no one label such as 'printer' adequately designates his manyfaceted role. O n my unorthodox use of this label, see n. 136 below, so Mardersteig's Remarkable Story shows the printer, Petrus Maufer, coping with strikes and many other complications before triumphantly concluding the actual printing which began in May 1477 when the first reams of paper were delivered. From then until December 1 , 1477 when the last sheet came off the press, 'not a working day was wasted.' Four hand presses had been in operation from daybreak to nighttime without interruption, and 6,800,000 separate pieces of type had been procured and used. For general description of the complex working routines observed in most print shops during the first centuries after Gutenberg, McKenzie's article, 'Printers of the Mind,' is unexcelled. A useful glimpse of Plantin's operational plan is given by Lotte and Wytze HelUnga, 'Regulations.'That routines were somewhatmore orderly than either McKenzie or the Hcllingas imply is suggested by K . I. D. Maslen and John Gerritsen, correspondence in The Library (June, 1975).

56

DEFINING

THE INITIAL

SHIFT

Some manuscript bookdealers, to be sure, had served rather similar functions before the advent o f printing. That Italian humanists were grateful to Vespasiano da Bisticci for many o f the same services that were later rendered b y Aldus Manutius has already been noted. Nevertheless, the shop structure over which Aldus presided differed markedly f r o m that k n o w n to Vespasiano. As the prototype o f the early capitalist as well as the heir to Atticus and his successors, the printer embraced an even wider repertoire o f roles. Aldus' household i n Venice, w h i c h contained some thirty members, has recently been described as an 'almost incredible m i x t u r e o f the sweat shop, the boarding house and the research institute.' A most interesting study m i g h t be devoted to a comparison o f the talents mobilized b y early printers w i t h those previously employed b y stationers or manuscript bookdealers. O f equal interest w o u l d be a comparison o f the occupational culture o f Peter Schoeffer, printer, w i t h that o f Peter Schoeffer, scribe. T h e t w o seem to w o r k i n contrasting milieux, subject to different pressures and aiming at different goals. U n l i k e the shift f r o m stationer to publisher, the shift from scribe to printer represented a genuine occupational mutation. Although Schoeffer was the first to make the leap, many others took the same route before the century's e n d . 51

52

Judging b y Lehmann-Haupt's fine monograph, many o f Schoeffer's pioneering activities were associated w i t h the shift f r o m a retail trade to a wholesale industry w h i c h led the printer to turn peddler and to launch what soon became an annual book fair at Frankfurt. ' F o r a while the trade i n printed books flowed w i t h i n the narrow channels o f the manuscript book market. B u t soon the stream could n o longer be contained.' N e w distribution outlets were located; handbills, circulars and sales catalogues were printed and the books themselves were carried d o w n the Rhine, across the Elbe, west to Paris, south to Switzerland. T h e drive to tap markets went together w i t h efforts to hold competitors at bay b y offering better products or, at least, b y printing a prospectus advertising the firm's ' m o r e readable' texts, 'more complete and better arranged' indexes, ' m o r e careful p r o o f Martin Lowry's forthcoming biography of Aldus Manutius contains this description. « In sustaining a gradual evolutionary approach to the impact of printing, authorities on the history of the book naturally emphasize the stationer as the true precursor of the printer. Yet the use of the term scriptor for impressor by printers showed that they considered themselves the successors not of stationers but of copyists. (See Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 19, n. 21.) It seems fait to say that early printers took over functions performed both by copyists and by stationers (or 'publishers') while diverging from both in significant ways.

S I

57

INTRODUCTION

TO AN ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

reading' and editing. Officials serving archbishops and emperors were cultivated, not so much as potential bibliophiles, nor even as potential censors, but rather as potential customers, w h o issued a steady flow o f orders for the printing o f ordinances, edicts, bulls, indulgences, broadsides and tracts. B y the end o f the century, Schoeffer had risen t o a position o f eminence in the city o f Mainz. He commanded a 'far-flung sales organization,' had become a partner in a j o i n t mining enterprise, and had founded a printing dynasty. His supply o f types went to his sons upon his death and the Schoeffer f i r m continued i n operation, expanding t o encompass music printing, through the next generation. 53

As the foregoing may suggest, there are many points o f possible contrast between the activities o f the Mainz printer and those o f the Paris scribe. A l l need to be brought out more clearly when considering fifteenth-century trends. The movement o f centers o f book production f r o m university towns, princely courts, patrician villas and monasteries to commercial centers; the organization o f new trade networks and fairs; the new competition over lucrative privileges and monopolies; the new restraints imposed by official censors have been covered i n special accounts. B u t the implications o f such changes need to be underlined so that they may be related to other concurrent developments. Competitive and commercial drives were not entirely absent among the stationers w h o served university faculties, the lay scribes w h o were hired b y mendicant orders, or the semi-lay copyists w h o belonged to communities founded by the Brethren o f the C o m m o n Life. B u t they were muted i n comparison w i t h the later efforts o f Schoeffer and his competitors t o recoup initial investments, pay off creditors, use up reams o f paper, and keep pressmen employed. The manuscript bookdealer did not have to w o r r y about idle machines or striking w o r k m e n as did the printer. I t has been suggested indeed that the mere pet o f setting up a press in a monastery or in affiliation w i t h a religious order was a source o f disturbance, bringing 'a multitude o f worries about money and property' into space previously reserved for meditation and good works. W h e n one considers that such an event 54

s 3

s

Sec Lehmann-Haupt, Peter Schoeffer, passim.

* Much of this is covered in detail by Fcbvre and Martin, L'Apparition, chap. 6, and is also well documented by Pollard and Ehrman, The Distribution of Books. Hirsch, Printing, Selling, pp. 6 3 - 4 points out how Schirokauer's (1951) study drastically underestimates the size of markets tapped by early printers.

58

DEFINING THE INITIAL

SHIFT

occurred i n several places i n the late fifteenth century, i t seems to w a r rant more attention i n studies o f changes affecting late medieval religious l i f e . "We also need to hear more about me j o b - p r i n t i n g that accompanied book-printing. I t lent itself t o commercial advertising, official propaganda, seditious agitation, and bureaucratic red tape as no scribal procedure ever h a d . T h e very t e r m 'avertissement' underwent an intriguing change. I n the L o w Countries, books copied during holy days i n medieval scriptoria were regarded as specially consecrated. A note placed i n the colophon designating holy-day w o r k served as a warning (or 'avertissement') against sale. O f course such a warning can be interpreted as indicating the commercialization o f the m a n u script book-trade. Books were being copied not just for the love o f God but for sale, o n all save holy days. B u t a different, more muted commercial theme was sounded b y this k i n d of'avertissement' than would be the case after presses were established. 55

5 6

57

As self-serving publicists, early printers issued book lists, circulars and broadsides. They p u t their firm's name, emblem and shop address on the front page o f their books. Indeed, their use o f title pages entailed a significant reversal o f scribal procedures; they p u t themselves first. Scribal colophons had come,last. They also extended their new p r o motional techniques to the authors and artists whose w o r k they published, thus contributing to the celebration o f lay culture-heroes and to their achievement o f personal celebrity and eponymous fame. Reckon masters and instrument makers along w i t h professors and preachers also profited from book advertisements that spread their fame beyond shops « Wytze Heliinga, 'Thomas A Kempis', 4-5. For references to monastic presses in diverse regions, see chap. I , n. 39 above. s* Although Steinberg, Five Hundred Years (p. 22) stresses this aspect of Gutenberg's invention as the most far-reaching, it receives little attention from Febvre and Martin, L'Apparition because of their focus on ' the book.' 'Jobbing printing ' was also, with one exception, omitted from the exhibition on 'Printing and the Mind of Man' assembled at the British Museum and at Earl's Court, July 16-27, 9 3 - See British Museum Catalogue [London, 1963) p. 8. Official printing for ecclesiastical and secular governments is discussed by Hirsch, Printing, Setting, pp. 5 2 - 3 . It furnished an important part of Peter Schoeffer's output, according to Lchmann-Haupt, I

G

Peter Schoeffer, pp. 7 8 - 9 .

"

See item 7, Catalogue of Exhibition held in the Royal Library ofBrussels (Sept.-Oct. 1973): Le Cinquième Centenaire de L'Imprimerie

dans les Anciens Pays-Bas

(Brussels, 1973), pp.

11-12

and footnote référence to B. Kruitwagen, 'Het Schrijven op Feestdagen in de Middeleuwen.' One might compare this medieval approach to holy-day book making with the indignation of a member of the Royal Society at printing delays caused by 'the holy days sticking in the workman's hands," cited by Hill, hook review, English Historical Review

(1973).

59

INTRODUCTION

TO

AN

ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

and lecture halls. Studies concerned w i t h the rise o f a lay intelligentsia, w i t h the new dignity assigned to artisan crafts or w i t h the heightened visibility achieved by the 'capitalist spirit' might well devote more attention to these early practitioners o f the advertising arts.

\ i 1 |

Their control o f a new publicity apparatus, moreover, placed early printers in an exceptional position w i t h regard to other enterprises, They not only sought ever larger markets for their o w n products; but they also contributed to, and profited f r o m , the expansion o f other commercial enterprises. W h a t effects did the appearance o f new advertising techniques have on sixteenth-century commerce and i n dustry? Possibly some answers to this question are k n o w n . Probably others can still be found. M a n y other aspects o f j o b printing and the changes it entailed clearly need further study. The printed calendars and indulgences that were first issued f r o m the Mainz workshops o f Gutenberg and Fust, for example, warrant at least as much attention as the more celebrated Bibles. Indeed the mass production o f indulgences ^ illustrates rather neatly the sort o f change that often goes overlooked, so that its consequences are more difficult to reckon w i t h than perhaps they need be.

1 j j 1 j J | j I J | j \ J f

In contrast to the changes sketched above, those that were associated w i t h the consumption o f new printed products are more intangible, indirect, and difficult to handle. A large margin for uncertainty must be left when dealing w i t h such changes. M a n y o f them also have to be left for later discussion because they involved prolonged, unevenly phased transformations w h i c h occurred over the course o f several centuries. This seems especially true o f those changes which are most commonly associated w i t h the impact o f p r i n t i n g : changes, that is, which hinge on the spread o f literacy and which entail a variety o f popularizing trends.

| 1 j j | j | 1 | j

58

5

O n the difficult problem o f estimating literacy rates before and after | printing, the comments o f Carlo Cipolla seem cogent: | It is not easy to draw a general conclusion from the scattered evidence that I have quoted and from the similarly scattered evidence that I have not quoted.. .1 could go on to conclude that at the end of the sixteenth century 'there were more literate people than we generally believe'...I could

I 1 | |

$8 Printed announcements of university lectures containing blurbs for pertinent books on sale arc described by Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 51 and Parent, Lcs Metiers, p. 142. For further discussion of changed status of artists, authors, instrument-makers, etc. sec pp. 2 j a f f and 5 9 chap. 6, vol. 11, below. On indulgence-printing, see pp. 375 fT, below.

| } | |

60

1

DEFINING

THE INITIAL

SHIFT

equally conclude that 'there were less literate people than we generally believe' for in all truth one never knows what is it that 'we generally believe'.. .one could venture to say that at the end o f the sixteenth century the rate of illiteracy for the adult population in "Western Europe was below 50 percent i n the towns o f the relatively more advanced areas and above 50 percent in all rural areas as well as in the towns o f the backward areas. This is a frightfully vague statement.. .but the available evidence does not permit more precision. 60

Statements about literacy rates during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries are likely to be just as vague - perhaps even more so. I n the absence o f hard data, plausible arguments may be developed to support sharply divergent opinions and there is no way o f settling the inevitable conflict between revolutionary and evolutionary models o f change. Thus one may envisage a relatively swift 'educational revolution' i n the sixteenth century, i n w h i c h case, the effects produced by printing w i l l loom large; or, one may instead describe a ' l o n g revolution' w h i c h unfolds so slowly that these effects are completely flattened o u t . 6 1

In view o f the fragmentary evidence that is available and the p r o longed fluctuations that were entailed, i t w o u l d seem prudent to bypass vexed problems associated w i t h the spread o f literacy until other issues have been explored w i t h more care. That there are other issues worth exploring - apart f r o m the expansion o f the reading public or the 'spread' o f new ideas-is i n itself a point that needs underlining (and that w i l l be repeatedly underscored i n this book). W h e n considering the initial transformations w r o u g h t by print, at all events, changes undergone by groups w h o were already literate ought to receive priority over the undeniably fascinating problem o f h o w rapidly such groups were enlarged. Once attention has been focused on already literate sectors, i t beCipolla, Literacy, p. 60. *> Sec Cipolla, Literacy, p. 52 where he discusses whether Lawrence Stone's concept of an 'educational revolution' in England is relevant to continental trends. In his article on 'Literacy and Education,' p. 78, Stone underlines the importance of cheap paper and movable type whereas Williams, The Long Revolution, pp. 132-3 discusses the interval encompassed by Stone's 'educational revolution' without mentioning printing at all. On pp. 156-7, Williams mentions printing but traces the growth of the reading public back to the eighth century and beyond to Rome. When this approach is coupled with emphasis on the advent of a mass reading public after the steam press, the fifteenth-century typographical revolution is bound to recede. Williams does bring out the importance of printing as against writing in his brief study of Communications, p. 22. The topic is especially likely to be underplayed in connection with the history of education. See e.g. Talbott, 'The History of Education,' where a survey of the literature shows printing to be omitted from among factors which 'triggered educational expansion' in early-modern England (p. 136). 6 0

61

INTRODUCTION

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TRANSFORMATION

comes clear that their social composition calls for further thought. D i d printing at first serve prelates and patricians as a 'divine art* or should one think o f i t rather as the 'poor man's friend'? i t was described i n both ways b y contemporaries, and probably served i n b o t h ways as well. W h e n one recalls scribal functions performed b y Roman slaves or later by monks, lay brothers, clerks and notaries, one may conclude that literacy had never been congruent w i t h élite social status. One may also guess that i t was more compatible w i t h sedentary occupations than w i t h the riding and hunting favored by many squires and l o r d s . In this light, i t may be misguided to envisage the new presses as making available to l o w b o m men, products previously used only by the high born. That many rural areas remained untouched until after the coming o f the railway age seems likely. Given the large peasant population i n early-modern Europe and the persistence o f local dialects w h i c h imposed an additional language barrier between spoken and written words, i t is probable that only a very small portion o f the entire population was affected by the initial shift. Nevertheless w i t h i n this relatively small and largely urban population, a fairly wide social spectrum may have been involved. I n fifteenth-century England, for example, mercers and scriveners engaged in a manuscript book-trade were already catering t o the needs o f l o w l y bakers and merchants as well as t o those o f lawyers, aldermen, or k n i g h t s . The proliferation o f literate merchants i n fourteenth-century Italian cities is n o less notable than the presence o f an illiterate army commander i n late sixteenth-century France. 62

63

64

65

It w o u l d be a mistake, however, to assume that a distaste for reading was especially characteristic o f the nobility, although i t seems plausible that a distaste for Latin pedantry was shared by lay aristocrat and com¬ « The very term 'poor man's book' ('Liber Paupcrum') goes back at least as far as the twelfth century in England where a Lombard master arranged a compilation of the Code and Digest for poor law clerks. Cf. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, p. 211. M Thus in Richard Pace's celebrated anecdote about the early Tudor squire, who questioned the need to teach his sons how to read, hunting and hawking are opposed to armchair study. See chap. 4 , n. 315, below. 6 * Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, pp. 663-667. See also Adamson, "The Extent of Literacy in England,' 1 6 3 - 9 3 ; Bennett, English

Books and Readers 1475-1557, p. 2 0 ; Parkes, 'The Literacy

of the Laity*. Thrupp, The. Merchant Class, p. 1S7 provides a useful table as well as relevant data. «

See Renouard, Etudes d'Histoire Médiévale, 1, pp. 4 1 9 - 2 6 ; Jcannin, Merchants of the Sixteenth Century, pp. 8 0 - 6 ; Sapori, The Italian Merchant, passim. Bec, Les Marchands Ecrivains, passim,

has data on the numerous merchants who kept diaries as well as accounts. O n the reputed illiteracy of a famous Marshal of France (Montmorency) see anecdote cited below, p. 395.

62

DEFINING

THE INITIAL

SHIFT

moner alike. I t also remains uncertain whether one ought t o describe the early reading public as being ' m i d d l e class/ Certainly extreme -'caution:, is needed when m a t r m n g genres o f books w i t h groups o f readers. A l l too often i t is taken for granted that ' l o w - b r o w * or 'vulgar* works reflect 'lower class' tastes, despite contrary evidence offered b y authorship and library catalogues. Before the advent o f mass literacy the most 'popular* works were those w h i c h appealed to diverse groups o f readers and not just t o the plebes. 66

: Divisions between Latin and vernacular reading publics are also much more difficult to correlate w i t h social status than many accounts suggest. I t is true that the sixteenth-century physician w h o used Latin was regarded as superior to the surgeon w h o d i d not, b u t also true that neither man was likely to belong to the highest estates o f the realm. Insofar as the vernacular translation movement was aimed at readers who were unlearned i n Latin, i t was often designed to appeal to pages as well as apprentices; to landed gentry, cavaliers and courtiers as w e l l as to shopkeepers and clerks. I n the Netherlands, a translation f r o m Latin into French often pointed away f r o m the urban laity w h o knew only Lower Rhenish dialects and t o w a r d relatively exclusive courtly circles. A t the same time, a translation into ' D u t c h ' m i g h t be aimed at preachers w h o needed to cite scriptural passages i n sermons rather than at the laity (which is too often assumed to be the only target for 'vernacular' devotional works). Tutors t r y i n g to educate young princes; instructors i n court or church schools; and chaplains translating from Latin i n response to royal requests had pioneered i n 'popularizing' techniques even before the printer set to w o r k .

:

But the most vigorous impetus given to popularization before prmting came f r o m the felt need o f preachers to keep their congregations awake and also to hold the attention o f diverse outdoor c r o w d s . Unlike the preacher, the printer could only guess at the nature o f the audience to w h i c h his w o r k appealed. Accordingly, one must be especially careful when taking the titles o f early printed books as trustworthy guides to readership. A case i n p o i n t is the frequent description o f the fifteenth-century picture Bible, w h i c h was issued i n 67

6 6 6 7

Useful warnings on this point are offered by Natalie Z . Davis, 'Printing and the People.' A thirteenth-century Dominican manual: De Arte Predicandi issued on 'how to sew a sermontogether quickly* and how to appeal to special interest groups such as 'rich women in towns* or 'crowds at fairs' or 'young girls* is described by Murray, 'Religion among the Poor.*

63

INTRODUCTION

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TRANSFORMATION

both manuscript and then blockbook form, as the 'poor man's' Bible. T h e description may well be anachronistic, based on abbreviating the full Latin title given to such books. The Biblia Pauperutn Praedicatorum was n o t aimed at poor men but at poor preachers w h o had a mere smattering o f Latin and found scriptural exposition easier when given picture books as guides. Sophisticated analysts have suggested the need t o discriminate between ' audiences' - that is, actual readership as determined b y library catalogues, subscription lists and other objective data - and 'publics,' the more hypothetical targets envisaged by authors and publishers, those to w h o m they address their w o r k s . Given the tendency to cite titles or prefaces as evidence o f actual readership, this distinction is w o r t h keeping i n mind. 68

6 9

To arrive at valid conclusions.. .we must proceed with care and caution. Information on the spread o f reading and w r i t i n g . . .is limited and must be supplemented by analysis o f the subject contents o f the total production (in itself not an easy task); this in turn provides circumstantial evidence on the composition o f the reading public: a cookbook.. .reprinted eight or more times in the xvth century was obviously read by people concerned with the preparation o f food, the Doctrinal des Filles.. .a booklet on the behavior o f young women, primarily by 'filles' and 'mesdames.' 70

Such 'circumstantial evidence,' however, is highly suspect. W i t h o u t passing judgment o n the audience for early cookbooks (its character seems far f r o m obvious to me), booklets pertaining to the behavior o f young ladies d i d n o t necessarily attract feminine readers and were probably also o f interest t o male tutors, or confessors, or guardians. As a later chapter suggests, the circulation o f printed etiquette books had wide-ranging psychological ramifications; their capacity t o heighten the anxiety o f parents should n o t go ignored. Furthermore such works were probably also read b y authors, translators and publishers o f other etiquette books. That authors and publishers were wide-ranging readers needs to be perpetually kept in m i n d . Even those sixteenth-century court poets w h o shunned printers and circulated 6 8

James Strachan, Early Bible Illustrations,

p. 7 raises the question of whether the abbreviated title

Biblia Pauperum is appropriate or not. 6 9

7 0

This distinction, suggested by T . J. Clark in his study of Courbet is discussed in connection with problems posed by sixteenth-century 'popular' culture by Natalie Davis, 'Printing and the People.' It seems futile to try to restrict usage of terms already employed interchangeably in a large literature. I prefer the phrase: 'assumed public' (which is used by Davis elsewhere in the same article) since it is less likely to be nusinterpretcd. Hirsch, Printing,

Selling, p. 7.

64

DEFINING THE INITIAL

SHIFT

their verse i n manuscript f o r m took advantage o f their o w n access to printed materials. I t has been suggested that books describing double entry bookkeeping were read less by merchants than b y the writers o f accountancy books and teachers o f accountancy. One wonders whether there were not more playwrights and poets than shepherds w h o studied so-called Shepherd's Almanacks. Given the corruption o f data transmitted over the centuries, given the false remedies and impossible recipes contained i n medical treatises, one hopes that they were studied more by poets than by physicians. Given the exotic ingredients described, one may assume that few apothecaries actually tried to concoct all the recipes contained i n early printed pharmacopeia, although they may have felt impelled to stock their shelves w i t h bizarre items just i n case the new publicity m i g h t bring such items into d e m a n d . The purposes, whether intended or actual, served b y some early printed handbooks offer puzzles that permit no easy solution. W h a t was the point o f publishing vernacular manuals outlining procedures that were already familiar to all skilled practitioners o f certain crafts? I t is w o r t h remembering, at all events, that the gap between shoproom practice and classroom theory was just becoming visible during the first century o f printing and that many so-called 'practical' handbooks and manuals contained impractical, even injurious, advice. 7 1

72

73

W h i l e postponing conjectures about social and psychological transformations, certain points should be noted here. One must distinguish, as Altick suggests, between literacy and habitual book reading. B y no means all w h o mastered the written w o r d have, d o w n to the present, become members o f a book-reading p u b l i c . Learning to read is different, moreover, f r o m learning b y reading. Reliance o n apprentice¬ 74

"

Saunders, 'From Manuscript to Print,' pp. 507-28.

"

On accountancy books, almanacs, pharmacopeia and other 'practical' guide-books see Natalie Davis, 'Printing and the People' and discussion on pp. 243m and 554ff. below. ? 3 In his Speculum review of The Gbttingen Model Book, Harry Bober suggests that the detailed instructions for illumination contained therein (which included sixteen separate steps for painting one acanthus leaf) must have been aimed at a new group of untrained craftsmen mobilized by printers since scribal illuminators had no need of such a manual - any more than 'an experienced chef needs the numbered instructions on soup cans.' Even if this argument holds good for book-making, it still leaves open questions raised by other craft manuals in trades where there was no dramatic change in shop structure nor influx of neophytes. The purposes served by the early publication of vernacular booklets by the two German master masons: Matthias Roriczcr and Hans Schmuttermaycr, for example, remain somewhat baffling, as I have learned from two articles by Shelby, 'The Education of Medieval English Master Masons,' 1-26; 'The Geometrical Knowledge,' 395-421, and correspondence with their author. ' * Altick, The English

Common Reader, p. 3 1 .

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TRANSFORMATION

ship training, oral communication and special mnemonic devices had gone together w i t h mastering letters in the age o f scribes. After the advent o f printing however, the transmission o f written information became much more efficient. I t was not only the craftsman outside universities w h o profited f r o m the new opportunities to teach himself. O f equal importance was the chance extended to bright undergraduates to reach beyond their teachers* grasp. Gifted students no longer needed to sit at the feet o f a given master in order to learn a language or academic skill. Instead they could swiftly achieve mastery on their o w n , even by sneaking books past their tutors - as did the young would-be astronomer, Tycho Brahe. ' W h y should old men be preferred to their juniors n o w that it is possible for the young by diligent study to acquire the same knowledge?' asked the author o f a fifteenth-century outline o f h i s t o r y . 75

As learning by reading took o n new importance, the role played by mnemonic aids was diminished. Rhyme and cadence were no longer required to preserve certain formulas and recipes. The nature o f the collective memory was transformed. In Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris a scholar, deep in meditation in his study.. .gazes at the first printed book which has come to disturb his collection o f manuscripts. T h e n . . .he gazes at the vast cathedral, silhouetted against the starry sky.. ,'Ceci tuera cela,' he says. The printed book will destroy the building. The parable which Hugo develops out of the comparison of the building, crowded with images, with the arrival in his library of a printed book might be applied to the effect on the invisible cathedrals of memory o f the past o f the spread o f printing. The printed book will make such huge built-up memories, crowded with images, unnecessary. It will do away with habits of immemorial antiquity whereby a 'thing' is immediately invested with an image and stored in the places o f memory. 76

T o the familiar romantic theme o f the Gothic cathedral as an ' encyclopedia i n stone,' Frances Yates has added a fascinating sequel. N o t only did printing eliminate many functions previously performed by stone figures over portals and stained glass in windows but it also affected less tangible images by eliminating the need for placing figures and objects in imaginary niches located in memory theatres. The way was paved for a more thorough-going iconoclasm than any Christian 7 5

Jacobo Filippo Forcsti, Supplementmi Chronicarum (Venice, 1483) cited by Martin Lowry in 7 6 his forthcoming biography of Aldus. Yates, Art of Memory, p. 131.

66

DEFINING

THE INITIAL

SHIFT

church had ever k n o w n . ' T h e "Ramist m a n " must smash the images both w i t h i n and w i t h o u t , must substitute for the o l d idolatrous art, the new image-less w a y o f remembering through abstract dialectical order.'

77

This line o f argument dovetails neatly w i t h "Walter Ong's earlier studies o f Ramism and p r i n t culture - perhaps too neatly i n the j u d g ment o f some medieval scholars w h o see evidence i n medieval manuscripts o f those diagrammatic features w h i c h O n g reserves for the printed p a g e . B u t even i f all parts o f the argument are not deemed equally acceptable, the basic point still seems valid. Printing made i t possible to dispense w i t h the use o f images for mnemonic purposes and thus reinforced iconoclastic tendencies already present among many Christians. Successive editions o f Calvin's Institutes elaborated on the need to observe the Second Commandment. The favorite text o f the defenders o f images was the dictum o f Gregory the Great that statues served as 'the books o f the illiterate.' Although Calvin's scornful dismissal o f this dictum made no mention o f printing, the new medium did underlie the Calvinist assumption that the illiterate should n o t be given graven images but should be taught to read. I n this light i t may seem plausible to suggest that printing fostered a movement ' f r o m image culture to w o r d culture,' a movement w h i c h was more c o m patible w i t h Protestant bibliolatry and pamphleteering than w i t h the Baroque statues and paintings sponsored b y the post-Tridentine Catholic Church. 78

79

Yet the cultural metamorphosis produced b y printing was really much more complicated than any single formula can possibly express. For one thing, the graven image became more, rather than less, ubiquitous after the establishment o f print shops throughout Western 80

7 7 7 8

7 0 8 0

Yates, Art of Memory, p. 271. Sec n. 1J4 below, for references. In slide lectures given at Catholic University during the 1974 Medieval Academy Summer Institute program on 'The Archeology of the Book,' Professor Richard H . Rouse of U . C . L . A . demonstrated graphically the frequent use of diagrams, brackets, cross-references, marginal guides and other devices in scribal compilations (especially in concordances and guides to patristic works) produced by medieval teachers and preachers. Myron Gilmore, 'Italian Reactions to Erasmian Humanism,' pp. 87-8. Although Stone, 'Literacy and Education,' p. 7 6 cites my preliminary 'Conjectures' as suggesting that the printed book caused Europe to move 'decisively from image culture to word culture' I am not convinced that this formulation is valid and regret any inadvertent implication that such a movement occurred. That Protestant bibliolatry and iconoclasm were more compatible with early print culture than Tridentine Catholicism was suggested in my article (and is now spelled out more fully in chapter 4 ) but that is a different matter than suggesting that European culture moved from image to word. For objections to the latter formulation, see paragraphs following this note in text above.

67

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Europe. For another thing, Protestant propaganda exploited printed image no less than printed w o r d - as numerous caricatures and cartoons may suggest. Even religious imagery was defended by some Protestants, and on the very grounds o f its compatibility w i t h print culture. ' I f graving were taken away we could have not printing,' wrote Stephen Gardiner, putting the case for images against Nicholas Ridley in 1547. ' A n d therefore they that press so much the words o f N O B fades tibi sculptile... they condemn printed books, the original whereof is graving to make matrices literarum.' A close study o f two versions o f sixteenth-century D u t c h Bibles, one Protestant, the other Catholic, suggests that there was indeed a tendency for Protestants to deemphasize pictures and stress words; yet at the same time, they d i d engage in illustrating Bibles-a movement which Lutherans, at least, encouraged. Luther himself commented on the inconsistency o f iconoclasts w h o tore pictures o f f walls while handling the illustrations in Bibles reverently. Pictures 'do no more harm o n walls than in books,' he commented and then, somewhat sarcastically, stopped short o f pursuing this line o f thought: ' I must cease lest I give occasion to the image breakers never to read the Bible or to burn i t . ' &1

8 2

8 3

I f we accept the idea o f a movement f r o m image to w o r d , furthermore, we w i l l be somewhat at loss to account for the w o r k o f Northern artists, such as Diirer or Cranach or Holbein, w h o were affiliated w i t h Protestantism and yet owed much to print. As Diirer's career may suggest, the new arts o f printing and engraving, far f r o m reducing the importance o f images, increased opportunities for image makers and helped to launch art history d o w n its present path. Even the imaginary figures and memory theatres described by Frances Yates did not vanish when their mnemonic functions were outmoded, but received a' strange new lease on life.' They provided the content for magnificent emblem books and for elaborate Baroque illustrations to Rosicrucian and occult works i n the seventeenth century. They also helped to inspire an entirely new genre o f printed literature - the didactic picture book for children. Leipzig boys in Leibniz' day 'were brought up on Comenius' Tite Letters of Stephen Gardiner, pp. 2 5 8 - 9 . 1 owe this reference and the one from Luther below (n. 83) to Margaret Aston, who is completing a major study of iconoclasm in Tudor England. * Hindman, 'The Transition from Manuscripts.' See esp. p. 205. 83 'Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments,' (1525), Luther's Works, X L 99-100. On Lutheran Bible illustration, see Ph. Schmidt, Die Illustration der Luther¬

8 1

8

bibel

1522-1700.

68

DEFINING

THE INITIAL

picture book and Luther's Catechism.'

84

SHIFT

I n this f o r m , the ancient

memory images re-entered the imagination o f Protestant children, ultimately supplying Jung and his followers w i t h evidence that suggested the hypothesis o f a collective Unconscious. Surely the new vogue f o r image-packed emblem books was n o less a product o f sixteenth-century print culture than was the imageless 'Ramist' textbook. Furthermore, i n certain fields o f learning such as architecture, geometry o r geography and many o f the life sciences as well, p r i n t culture was n o t merely incompatible w i t h the formula offered above; it actually increased the functions performed b y images while reducing those performed b y words. M a n y fundamental texts o f Ptolemy, Vitruvius, Galen and other ancients had lost their illustrations i n the course o f being copied for centuries and regained them only after script was replaced b y p r i n t . T o think i n terms o f a movement going from image to w o r d points technical literature in the w r o n g direction. It was n o t the 'printed w o r d ' b u t the 'printed image' w h i c h acted as a 'savior for "Western science' i n George Sarton's view. "Within the Commonwealth o f Learning i t became increasingly fashionable t o adopt the ancient Chinese m a x i m that a single picture was more valuable than many w o r d s . I n early T u d o r England, Thomas E l y o t expressed a preference for 'figures and charts' over 'hearing the rules o f a science' w h i c h seems w o r t h further thought. A l t h o u g h images were indispensable for prodding memory, a heavy reliance on verbal instruction had also been characteristic o f communications i n the age o f scribes. T o be sure, academic lectures were sometimes supplemented by drawing pictures on walls; verbal instructions to apprentices were accompanied b y demonstrations; the use o f blocks and boards, fingers and knuckles were c o m m o n i n teaching reckoning and gestures usually went w i t h the recitation o f key mnemonics. Nevertheless, when seek¬ 8 5

8 6

87

** Yates, Art of Memory,

pp. 134; 377. The magnificent Baroque engravings that made visible

the elaborate memory systems developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be sampled by examining almost any work by Robert Hudd. How much Comenius'

Orbis

Pictus (1658) owed to Campanella's City 0/the Sun and Rosicrucian manifestoes is noted by Yates, p. 377. B s

86

8 7

For references to loss of maps, architectural and anatomical illustrations, see chap, s, volume 11 below. Sarton, Appreciation, pp. 9 1 ; 95. As is noted in chap. 3, the notion that the ancient Egyptians had compressed valuable data in each hieroglyph was believed by would-be decipherers of hieroglyphs until the nineteenth-century discovery of the Rosetta Stone. See citation from the Boke Called the Gouvernour

{1531) in Watson, The Beginning of the

Teach-

ing of Modem Subjects in England, p. 136. It is given in my conclusion, p. 698, volume 11 below.

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ing rapid duplication o f a given set o f instructions, words simply had to take precedence over other forms o f communication. H o w else save b y using words could one dictate a text to assembled scribes? After the advent o f printing, visual aids multiplied, signs and symbols were codified ; different kinds o f iconographie and non-phonetic c o m m u n i cation were rapidly developed. The fact that printed picture books were newly designed by educational reformers for the purpose o f instructing children and that drawing was considered an increasingly useful accomplishment by pedagogues also points to the need to think beyond the simple f o r m u l a : image to w o r d . As these comments may suggest, efforts to summarize changes w r o u g h t by printing in any one statement or neat formula are likely to lead us astray. Even while acknowledging that there was an increased reliance on rule books and less o n rules o f thumb, or that learning by reading gained at the expense o f hearing or doing; one must also consider h o w printing encouraged new objections to bookish knowledge based on 'slavish* copying and h o w i t enabled many observers to check freshly recorded data against received rules. Similarly, one must be cautious about assuming that the spoken w o r d was gradually silenced as printed words multiplied or that the faculty o f hearing was increasingly neglected i n favor o f that o f sight. Surely the history o f Western music after Gutenberg argues against the latter suggestion. As for the many questions raised by the assertion that p r i n t silenced the spoken w o r d ; a few are noted elsewhere in this chapter; all must be passed over here. The purpose o f this preliminary section has been simply to demonstrate that the shift f r o m script to print entailed a large ensemble o f changes, each o f w h i c h needs more investigation and all o f which are too complicated to be encapsulated i n any single formula. B u t to say that there is no simple way o f summarizing the complex ensemble is not the same thing as saying that nothing had changed. T o the contrary ! Granted that some sort o f communications revolution did occur during the late fifteenth century, h o w d i d this affect other historical developments ? Since the consequences o f printing have not been thoroughly explored, guidance is hard to come by. M o s t conventional surveys stop short after a few remarks about the wider dissemination o f humanist 70

SOME F E A T U R E S OF PRINT

CULTURE

tomes or Protestant tracts. Several helpful suggestions - about the effects o f standardization o n scholarship and science, for example - are offered i n works devoted to the era o f the Renaissance or the history o f science. B y and large, the effects o f the new process are vaguely implied rather than explicitly defined and are also drastically minimized. One example may illustrate this point. D u r i n g the first centuries o f printing, o l d texts were duplicated more rapidly than new ones. O n this basis we are told that ' p r i n t i n g did not speed up the adoption o f new theories.' B u t where did these new theories come from? M u s t we invoke some spirit o f the times, or is i t possible that an increase i n the output o f old texts contributed to the formulation o f new theories? Maybe other features that distinguished the new mode o f book production f r o m the o l d one also contributed to such theories. W e need to take stock o f these features before we can relate the advent o f printing to other historical developments. 88

I have found i t useful, i n any case, to make a start at taking stock by following up clues contained i n special studies o n printing. After singling out certain features that seemed to be distinctive, I held them in m i n d while passing i n review various historical developments. Relationships emerged that had not occurred to me before and some possible solutions to o l d puzzles were suggested. Conjectures based o n this approach may be sampled below under headings that indicate m y main lines o f inquiry.

I.

A CLOSER INCREASED

LOOK

AT W I D E

OUTPUT

AND

DISSEMINATION:

ALTERED

INTAKE

Most references to wide dissemination are too fleeting to make clear the specific effects o f an increased supply o f texts directed at different markets. I n particular they fail to make clear h o w patterns o f consumption were affected by increased production. Just as the 'spread' o f literacy tends to take priority over changes experienced by already literate sectors, so too the 'spread* o f Lutheran views or the failure o f Copernican theories to 'spread' as rapidly as Ptolemaic ones seems t o outweigh all other issues. T o o often the printer is assigned the sole function o f serving as a press agent. His effectiveness is judged b y circulation figures alone. Perhaps the term 'dissemination* is distracting 8 8

Febvre and Martin, UApparition,

71

pp. 4 2 0 - 1 .

INTRODUCTION

TO AN ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

and more emphasis on cross-fertilization or cross-cultural interchange m i g h t be helpful. For even while more copies o f one given text were being 'spread, dispersed, or scattered' by the issue o f a printed e d i t i o n , different texts, w h i c h had been previously dispersed and scattered were also being brought closer together for individual readers. I n some regions, printers produced more scholarly texts than they could sell, and flooded local markets. I n all regions, a given purchaser could buy more books at lower cost and bring them into his study or library. I n this way, the printer, w h o duplicated a seemingly antiquated backlist, was still providing the clerk w i t h a richer, more varied literary diet than had been provided b y the scribe. ' A serious student could n o w endeavor to cover a larger body o f material by private reading than a student or even a mature scholar needed to master or could hope to master before printing made books cheap and p l e n t i f u l . ' T o consult different books i t was no longer so essential to be a wandering scholar. Successive generations o f sedentary scholars were less apt to be engrossed by a single text and expend their energies i n elaborating on i t . The era o f the glossator and commentator came to an end, and a new 'era o f intense cross referencing between one book and a n o t h e r ' began. 89

90

91

92

That something rather like a knowledge explosion was experienced i n the sixteenth century has often been suggested, i n connection w i t h the N o r t h e r n Renaissance i f n o t w i t h the advent o f printing. Few studies o f the literature o f the era fail to cite relevant passages f r o m M a r l o w e or Rabelais indicating h o w i t felt to become intoxicated b y reading and h o w bookish knowledge was regarded as i f it were a magic elixir conferring new powers w i t h every draught. ' A l l the w o r l d is full o f learned men, o f most skilled preceptors, o f vast libraries.. .neither i n Plato's time nor i n Cicero's was there ever such opportunity for 8 9

5 0

"

Insofar as this enabled scattered readers to consult the same book, I agree with Sarton that the appearance of the edition has to be considered in connection with standardization. Sec comment on p. 81 below. Early crises of overproduction of humanist works are noted by Hay, 'Literature, the Printed Book,' p. 365. The failure of printers to assess their markets shrewdly, accounting for some of these crises, is noted by Btihlcr, Fifteenth Century Book, pp. 59-61. Inadequate distribution networks at first were largely responsible. Zainer's firm, for example, turned out 36,000 books when the population of Augsburg was half that number (p. 56). Craig Thompson, The Colloquies of Erasmus, tr. and ed. p. 458 (note to 'The Art of Learning,' 1529)¬

»* Hay, 'Literature, the Printed Book,' p. 366. By the mid-sixteenth century, 'even obscure scholars could possess a relatively large collection of books on a single topic' according to A. R. Hall, 'Science,' p. 389.

72

SOME FEATURES

OF PRINT

CULTURE

studying.. . ' I n commenting on the comprehensive program o f study •which accompanied this passage f r o m Rabelais, H . O . Taylor notes that a very similar program had been set forth by Roger Bacon three centuries earlier. Renaissance humanism had intervened between the t w o eras, Taylor says, so that Bacon did not have the 'literary feeling for the classics' that the sixteenth-century humanist had. Otherwise, his program reflected the same goals. B u t because theology was still enthroned in the thirteenth century, the friar's program, unlike Rabelais', went unfulfilled. 9 3

This line o f argument w h i c h implies a rise i n 'secularism* and decline o f religiosity, although often employed, seems to raise more questions than i t answers. Just h o w had theology lost ground i n the age o f Luther and polyglot Bibles? Could anything be more 'Rabelaisian' than the vernacular sermons o f medieval friars? Instead o f spinning out debate over ' the religion o f Rabelais * perhaps more attention should be devoted to 'the vast libraries' and new opportunities for study that marked his age. The desire to master original tongues and an encyclopedic urge to comprehend every part o f creation were manifested i n the middle ages. B o t h played significant roles i n the sixteenth-century knowledge explosion. Special research programs developed by scribal scholars and book-hunting humanists i n quattrocento Italy also helped to fill library shelves. B u t when searching for the strategic element which had been lacking i n the thirteenth century and was available in Rabelais' time i t is w o r t h pausing longer over the invention that Rabelais and other Christian humanists described as 'divine.' The same point applies to the remarkable erudition displayed by the most celebrated polymaths o f the sixteenth century - by scholars such as Conrad Gesner, w h o pioneered i n both bibliography and z o o l o g y or by J. J . Scaliger w h o seemed to fulfill Gargantua's grotesque ambition for Pantagruel by becoming a 'bottomless p i t o f e r u d i t i o n . ' ' T h e most richly stocked m i n d that ever spent itself on knowledge' - M a r k Pattison's description o f Scaliger - seems fair enough. B u t i n all fairness 94

95

Cited from Urquhart's {1653) translation of Gargantua's letter in Pantagruel (chapter 8) by Henry Osborn Taylor, Thought and Expression 1, part 3 : 'The French Mind,' chapter 4. 9 4 On Gesner, sec pp. 07-9, below. " For vivid account of erudite circles frequented by Scaliger, sec Pattison, Isaac Casaubon. Although Casaubon took as his second wife the daughter of Henri Estienne [I, he failed to get the scholar-printer's library he hoped to inherit. For contemporary epithets applied to Joseph Justus Scaliger as 'the light of the world,' 'the sea of sciences' etc., see Preserved Smith, 0 1

Origins of Modern Culture

1543-1687, p. 268.

73

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ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

to earlier scholars one ought to take into consideration the fact that Scaliger was better served by printers than his predecessors had been by scribes. This point is especially w o r t h keeping i n m i n d when considering developments associated w i t h classical scholarship or scientific advances. As later chapters may suggest, when dealing w i t h any major intellectual change in the sixteenth century, the ferment engendered by access to more books is likely to receive much less attention than the effect o f the voyages o f discovery or o f the Lutheran revolt, or o f humanist attacks o n Aristotle and scholasticism. I n a recent perceptive account o f the sense o f intellectual crisis reflected in Montaigne's w r i t i n g , for example, we are told about the shattering impact o f the Reformation and wars o f religion and 'the extension o f mental horizons' produced by geographical discoveries and humanist recoveries. I t w o u l d be foolish to assert that the most newsworthy events o f the age made no impression on so sensitive an observer as Montaigne. B u t it also seems misguided to overlook the event that impinged most directly on his favorite observation post. That he could see more books by spending a few months in his Bordeaux tower-study than earlier scholars had seen after a lifetime o f travel also needs to be taken into account. I n explaining w h y Montaigne perceived greater 'conflict and diversity' i n the works he consulted than had medieval commentators i n an earlier age, something should be said about the increased number o f texts he had at hand. 06

M o r e abundantly stocked bookshelves obviously increased opportunities to consult and compare different texts. Merely by making more scrambled data available, by increasing the output o f Aristotelian, Alexandrian and Arabic texts, printers encouraged efforts to unscramble these data. Some medieval coastal maps had long been more accurate than many ancient ones, but few eyes had seen e i t h e r . M u c h as maps f r o m different regions and epochs were brought into contact i n the course o f preparing editions o f atlases, so too were technical texts brought together i n certain physicians* and astronomers' libraries. Contradictions became more.visible; divergent traditions more difficult to reconcile. The transmission o f received opinion could not proceed 07

« 5 Rattansi, 'The Social Interpretation of Science,' p. 7, " The superiority of manuscript charts to early printed maps is noted by Penrose, Travel and Discovery, chap. 16. The logical conclusion - that intelligent, literate sixteenth-century printers did not know what cartographers and mariners in coastal regions did - is, however, not drawn.

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smoothly once Arabists were set against Galenists or Aristotelians against Ptolemaists. Even while confidence i n o l d theories was. weakened, an enriched reading matter also encouraged the development o f new intellectual combinations and permutations. Viewed i n this light, cross-cultural interchanges fostered b y printing help to explain Sarton's observations: ' T h e Renaissance was a transmutation o f values, a " n e w deal," a reshuffling o f cards, b u t most o f the cards were o l d ; the scientific Renaissance was a " n e w deal," but many o f the cards were n e w . ' Combinatory intellectual activity, as A r t h u r Koestler has suggested, inspires many creative acts. Once o l d texts came together w i t h i n the same study, diverse systems o f ideas and special disciplines could be combined. Increased output directed at relatively stable markets, i n short, created conditions that favored new combinations o f o l d ideas at first and then, later on, the creation o f entirely new systems o f thought. 98

99

I t should be noted that cross-cultural interchange was experienced first o f all b y the new occupational groups responsible for the output o f printed editions. Even before a given reference w o r k had come o f f the press fruitful encounters between typefounders, correctors, translators, copy editors, illustrators or print dealers, indexers and others engaged i n editorial w o r k .had already occurred. Early printers themselves were the very first to read the products that came o f f their o w n presses. They also kept an anxious eye on their competitors' output. T h e effects o f access to more books (and indeed o f all the varied features associated w i t h typography) were thus first and most forcefully experienced, w i t h i n printers' workshops, b y the n e w book producers themselves. Whereas other libraries were nourished b y the output o f scholar-printers such as the Estiennes or Christopher Plantin, the valuable collections they themselves built up contained many b y products o f their o w n daily s h o p w o r k . 100

* 8 Sarton, 'Quest for Truth,' p. 57. M Koestler, Act of Creation. For a close-up view of a fruitful interaction produced fay reading two books on separate topics and combining their themes in one mind, sec Voràmmer, 'Darwin, Malthus.' The veritable explosion of'creative acts' during the seventeenth century -the so-called 'century of genius' - can be explained partly by the great increase in possible permutations and combinations of ideas. 1 0 0 Plantin's library, which began as a collection of books needed by correctors and included the lexicons, thesauruses, and other major reference works produced by the Estiennes, is described by Voët, The Golden Compasses 1, 339. O n the Estiennes and the valuable collection of books amassed by the dynasty (partly through marriage and litigation) see Elizabeth Armstrong, Robert Estienne, and Robert Kingdon, 'The Business Activities of Printers Henri and Francois Estienne.*

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That a remarkable amount o f innovative w o r k i n both scholarly and scientific fields was done outside academic centers i n the early-modern era is often noted. The new attraction exerted by printers' workshops upon men o f learning and letters w h o had previously frequented college lecture halls helps to explain this noteworthy development. The same point holds good for discussion o f the new interchanges between artists and scholars or practitioners and theorists which proved so fruitful i n early-modern science. As we shall see in a later chapter, the printer's workshop attracted diverse talents in a way that was conducive to cross-fertilization o f all k i n d s . Printing encouraged forms o f combinatory activity w h i c h were social as well as intellectual. It changed relationships between men o f learning as well as between systems o f ideas. 101

102

Cross-cultural interchange stimulated mental activities in contradictory ways. The first century o f printing was marked above all by intellectual ferment, and by a 'somewhat wide-angled, unfocused, scholarship.' Certain confusing cross-currents may be explained by noting that new links between disciplines were being forged before old ones had been severed. I n the age o f scribes, for instance, magical arts were closely associated w i t h mechanical crafts and mathematical wizardry. As later, discussion suggests, when 'technology went to press' so too did a vast backlog o f occult lore, and few readers could discriminate between the t w o . Historians w h o are still puzzled by the high prestige enjoyed by alchemy, astrology, 'magia and cabala' and other occult arts w i t h i n the Commonwealth o f Learning during early modern times m i g h t find i t helpful to consider h o w records derived f r o m ancient Near-Eastern cultures had been transmitted in the age o f scribes. Some o f these records had dwindled into tantalizing fragments, pertaining to systems o f reckoning, medicine, agriculture, mythic cults, and so forth. Others had evaporated into unfathomable glyphs. Certain cosmic cycles and life cycles are experienced by all men, and so common elements could be detected in the fragments and glyphs. I t seemed plausible to assume that all came f r o m one source and 103

1 0 1

During his stay in Basel, Ramus was drawn toward the presses rather than toward the academic centers. In his 'Pancgyrique dc Bale' (1571), he eulogized the university and local academy but reserved his highest praise for the firms of Amerbach, Frobcn, Bischoff, Petri, Isingrin, Oporinus et at. Flcckcnstein, 'Pctrus Ramus,' pp. 119-33. That town and gown were not necessarily opposed but were often drawn into fruitful collaboration by early printers should also be kept in mind. See critique of Stillman Drake's thesis pp. 524ff., volume n below. 103 See discussion, pp. 2.51 ff., below. Harbison, The Christian Scholar, p. 54.

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to take seriously hints i n some patristic works about an U r - t e x t set down by the inventor o f w r i t i n g , w h i c h contained all the secrets o f Creation as told to A d a m before the Fall. The teachings contained i n this corpus, i t was believed, had been carefully preserved by ancient sages and seers, before becoming corrupted and confused i n the course o f the dark ages and barbarian invasions. A large collection o f writings containing ancient lore was received f r o m Macedonia b y Cosimo de Medici, translated f r o m Greek by Ficino i n 1463, and printed i n fifteen editions before 1500. I t took the f o r m o f dialogues w i t h the Egyptian god T h o t h , and seemed to come f r o m the same corpus o f texts as other fragmentary dialogues long k n o w n to medieval scholars. I t was, accordingly, also attributed to 'Hermes Trismegistus.' The hermetic corpus ran through many editions until 1614 when a treatise b y Isaac Casaubon showed i t had been compiled i n the post-Christian era. O n this basis we are told that Renaissance scholars made a 'radical error in dating.' N o doubt they had. A neo-Platonic, post-Christian c o m pilation had been mistaken for a w o r k w h i c h preceded and influenced Plato. Yet to assign definite dates to scribal compilations, w h i c h were probably derived f r o m earlier sources, may be an error as w e l l . 1 0 4

The transformation o f occult and esoteric scribal lore after the advent o f printing also needs more study. Some arcane writings i n Greek, Hebrew or Syriac, for example, became less mysterious. Others became more so. Thus hieroglyphs were set i n type more than three centuries before their decipherment. These sacred carved letters were loaded w i t h significant meaning by readers w h o could not read them. They were also used simply as ornamental motifs by architects and engravers. Given Baroque decoration on one hand, and complicated interpretations by scholars, Rosicrucians, or Free Masons on the other, the duplication o f Egyptian picture w r i t i n g throughout the Age o f Reason presents modern scholars w i t h puzzles that can never be solved. I n the next chapter the fate o f hieroglyphs w i l l be discussed i n more detail. Here I just wanted to suggest that one should not think only about new 1 0 4

Yates, Giordano Bruno, passim. That some ancient Egyptian ingredients were present in the post-Christian compilation is noted on pp. 2-3, n. 4 ; 4 3 1 . Yates implies that Baroque argument about 'hetmetica' ended with Isaac Casaubon's early seventeenth-century proof that Ficino had translated works dating from the third century A . D . But Greek scholarship alone could not unlock the secrets of the pyramids. Interest in arcana associated with Thoth and 'Horapollo' continued until ChampoUion. By then the cluster of mysteries that had thickened with each successive 'unveiling of Isis' was so opaque, that even the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone could not dispel them. See discussion below, pp. 270-84.

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forms o f enlightenment when considering the effects o f printing on scholarship. N e w forms o f mystification were encouraged as well. I n this light i t seems necessary to qualify the assertion that the first half-century o f printing gave 'a great impetus to wide dissemination o f accurate knowledge o f the sources o f Western thought, both classical and C h r i s t i a n . ' The duplication o f the Hermetic writings, the Sybilline prophecies, the hieroglyphics o f ' H o r a p o l l o ' and many other seemingly authoritative, actually fraudulent esoteric writings worked i n the opposite direction, spreading inaccurate knowledge even while paving the way for a purification o f Christian sources later on. Here as elsewhere there is need to distinguish between initial and delayed effects. A n enrichment o f scholarly libraries came rapidly; the sorting out o f their contents took more time. Compared to the large output of unscholarly vernacular materials, the number o f trilingual dictionaries and Greek or even Latin editions seems so small, one wonders whether the t e r m : ' w i d e dissemination' ought to be applied to the latter case at all. 105

Dissemination, as defined in the dictionary, seems especially appropriate to the duplication o f primers, ABC books, catechisms, calendars and devotional literature. Increased output o f such materials, however, was not necessarily conducive cither to the advancement o f scholarship or to cross-cultural exchange. Catechisms, religious tracts, and Bibles w o u l d fill some bookshelves to the exclusion o f all other reading matter. The new wide-angled, unfocused scholarship went together w i t h a new single-minded, narrowly focused piety. A t the same time, practical guidebooks and manuals also became more abundant, making it easier to lay plans for getting ahead in this w o r l d - possibly diverting attention f r o m uncertain futures in the next one. Sixteenth-century map-publishers thus began to exclude 'Paradise' f r o m this w o r l d as being o f too uncertain a l o c a t i o n . Eventually Cardinal Baronius w o u l d be cited by Galileo as distinguishing between ' h o w to go to heaven' - a problem for the H o l y Spirit - and ' h o w the heavens g o ' a matter o f practical demonstration and mathematical reasoning. I t w o u l d be a mistake to press this last point too far, however. As noted above, many so-called 'practical guides' were impractical. Moreover, until Newton's Principia, the output o f conflicting theories and astro106

107

'°s

Gilmorc, World of Humanism, p. 190.

">6 Sec comment by Ortclius cited, p. 227 below. ,0 ? Galileo, 'Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina,' p. 186.

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nomical tables also offered very uncertain guidance on ' h o w the heavens go.' Manuals on devotional exercises and guidebooks on spiritual questions provided clear-cut advice. Readers w h o were helped b y access to road maps, phrase books, conversion tables and other aids were also likely to place confidence i n guides to the soul's journey after death. Tracts expounding the Book o f Revelation entailed a heavy reliance on mathematical reasoning. The fixing o f precise dates for the Creation or for the Second C o m i n g occupied the very same talents that developed new astronomical tables and map projection techniques. 108

I t is doubtful, at all events, whether 'the effect o f the new invention on scholarship' was more significant than its effect on vernacular Bible reading at the beginning o f the sixteenth c e n t u r y . W h a t does need emphasis is that many dissimilar effects, all o f great consequence, came relatively simultaneously. I f this could be spelled o u t more clearly, seemingly contradictory developments m i g h t be confronted w i t h more equanimity. The intensification o f both religiosity and secularism could be better understood. Some debates about periodization also could be by-passed. Printing made more visible long-lived and much used texts which are usually passed over and sometimes (mistakenly) deemed obsolete when new trends are being traced. M a n y medieval w o r l d pictures were duplicated more rapidly during the first century o f printing than they had been during the so-called middle ages. They d i d not merely survive among conservative Elizabethans *who were loth to upset the o l d o r d e r . ' They became more available to poets and playwrights o f the sixteenth century than they had been to minstrels and mummers o f the thirteenth century. 100

110

In view o f such considerations, I cannot agree w i t h Sarton's c o m ment: ' I t is hardly necessary to indicate what the art o f printing meant for the diffusion o f culture b u t one should not lay too much stress on diffusion and should speak more o f standardization.' H o w printing changed patterns o f cultural diffusion deserves much more study than 111

108 The efforts of such distinguished virtuosi as Napier and Newton to determine the number of the Beast are well known. An excellent example of how rational theory and mathematical techniques were applied to the calculation of the year of the Second Coming is offered by John Craig's Mathematical Principles of Christian Theology (London, 1690), tr. from Latin in History and Theory, Beikeft 4 (1963). The date, calculated by Craig, hinges on the growth of disbelief in the gospels which is described as the 'velocity of suspicion* and is held to increase in an arithmetic progression until it becomes sufficiently probable to make the Second Coming inevitable. 100 Gilmore, World of Humanism, p. 189 suggests that its effect on scholarship was most important. 1 , 0 1 , 1 Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture, p . 8. Sarton, 'Quest for Truth,' p. 66.

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it has yet received. Moreover, individual access to diverse texts is a different matter than bringing many minds t o bear on a single text. The former issue is apt to be neglected by too exclusive an emphasis on 'standardization.'

2.

CONSIDERING

SOME

EFFECTS PRODUCED BY

STANDARDIZATION

Although i t has to be considered i n conjunction w i t h many other issues, standardization certainly does deserve closer study. One specialist has argued that i t is currently o v e r p l a y e d . Yet i t may well be still understressed. One must be careful not to skew historical perspectives by ignoring the difference between early printing methods and those o f more recent times. B u t i t is equally important not to go too far i n the other direction and overestimate the capacity o f scribal procedures to achieve the same results as did the early presses. Doubtless medieval university faculties 'attempted to achieve what the presses succeeded later'in d o i n g ' ; but the production o f identical copies remained an unobtainable goal even when academic regulations pertaining to the 'pecia' were actually enforced. Indeed the division o f exemplars into separate segments probably hastened corruption while speeding up the multiplication o f copies o f much desired academic texts. Moreover not one master copy but many exemplars (no t w o o f which were quite the same) were distributed to the many stationers w h o served a given university. 112

1 1 3

114

Although early printing methods made i t impossible to issue the kind o f 'standard' editions w i t h w h i c h modern scholars are familiar, they represented a great leap forward nevertheless. Certainly press variants did multiply and countless errata were issued. The fact remains that Erasmus or Bellarmine could issue errata; Jerome or Alcuin could not. The very act o f publishing errata demonstrated a new capacity t o locate textual errors w i t h precision and to transmit this information simultaneously t o scattered readers. I t thus illustrates, rather neatly, 1 1 2

On what follows, sec remarks by Black, 'The Printed Bible,' pp. 408-14 and same author's review of Steinberg's Five Hundred

Years.

Hirsch, Printing, Selling (1974 edition), pp. xl; 13. " 4 See chap. 1, n. 29 above for pertinent references to misinterpretations of Destrcz' thesis. Saenger, 'Colard Mansion,' p. 413 writes of manuscripts being 'highly standardized' in a fifteenth-century Burgundian court where only a single master copy, the minute, was used. How mss. could be copied accurately, in quantity and with speed by using only one exemplar is puzzling to me. m

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some o f the effects o f standardization. However late medieval copyists were supervised - and controls were much more lax than many accounts suggest - scribes were incapable o f committing the sort o f 'standardized' error that led printers to be fined for the ' w i c k e d Bible* o f 1 6 3 1 . I f a single compositors error could be circulated i n a great many copies, so too could a single scholar's emendation. 115

The mere fact that a single emendation by a great scholar could now be circulated in thousands o f copies without the danger o f a copyist's error signified a complete revolution in the conditions o f activity o f the learned world. ' 1

6

Those w h o may overstate the case b y overlooking compositors' errors i n early editions still seem to me to be less wide o f the mark than those w h o understate i t and w h o underestimate the diversity that made every manuscript error unique. The need to qualify the thesis o f standardization is less urgent than the need to pursue its ramifications. Sarton's remark: 'Printing made it possible for the first time to publish hundreds o f copies that were alike and yet m i g h t be scattered everyw h e r e ' is too important to get lost i n quibbling over the fact that early printed copies were n o t all precisely alike. They were sufficiently uniform for scholars i n different regions to correspond w i t h each other about the same citation and for the same emendations and errors to be spotted b y many eyes. 117

118

In suggesting that the implications o f standardization may be underestimated, however, I am not thinking only about textual emendations and errors, but also about calendars, dictionaries, ephemerides and other reference guides; about maps, charts, diagrams and other visual aids. The capacity to produce uniform spatio-temporal images is often assigned to the invention o f w r i t i n g w i t h o u t adequate allowance being made for the difficulty o f multiplying identical images b y h a n d . T h e 1 1 0

's On the 'wicked' Bible 0F1631 which omitted 'not' from the seventh commandment, see Black, 'The Printed Bible,' p. 412. Other editions of English Bibles celebrated for containing standardized errors, such as the 'Judas Bible' of 1611; the 'Printers' Bible' of 1702 and the 'Vinegar Bible' of 1717 arc noted by Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, p. 204. 116 Gilmore, World of Humanism, p . 189. The significance of standardization for erudition was brought out clearly by Allen, Erasmus: Lectures and Wayfaring Sketches, pp. 4 - 5 . " ? Sarton, 'Quest for Truth,' p. 66. 118 This point is especially pertinent to classical scholarship. According to Kenney, The Classical Text, p. 19, n. 1 , classical texts were relatively unaffected by the unfortunate practice of mixing sheets from different states. 'The multiplication of textually uniform copies became the norm.* See discussion of the 'disassociated transcript' by Boulding, The Image, pp. 64-8, and my criticism of Boulding's treatment pp. 478ff, volume ir, below. l

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same point applies to systems o f notation whether musical or mathematical. H o w different fields o f study and aesthetic styles were affected by exact repeatability remains to be explored. I t does seem w o r t h suggesting that both our so-called t w o cultures were affected. This feature o f print technology impinged on the disciplines o f the quadrivium as w e l l as o n those o f the trivium, o n poetry and painting along w i t h mathematics and medicine. T o o many important variations were, indeed, played on the theme o f standardization for all o f them to be listed here. This theme entered into every operation associated w i t h typography, from the replica casting o f precisely measured pieces o f type to the making o f woodcuts that were exactly the right dimension for meeting the surface o f the t y p e s . I t also involved the 'subliminal' impact upon scattered readers o f repeated encounters w i t h identical type-styles, printers' devices, and title page ornamentation. ' Calligraphy itself was affected. Sixteenthcentury specimen books stripped diverse scribal 'hands' o f personal idiosyncrasies. They did for hand-writing what style books did for typography itself; what pattern books did for dressmaking, furniture, architectural motifs or ground plans. W r i t i n g manuals, like pattern sheets and model books, were not u n k n o w n i n the age o f scribes.' But like the manuscript grammar books and primers used by different 120

12

122

23

1 2 0

1 2 1

1 I Z

Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, p. 2 5 ; Goldschmidt, The Printed Book of the Renaissance,

p. 38.

The probable effect of title page ornamentation on sixteenth-century fine arts and the necessity of taking printing into account when dealing with new aesthetic styles is noted by Chastel, 'What is Mannerism?' p. 53. Sec also Adhcmar, 'L'Estampc.' An illustration of a fifteenth-century type specimen sheet, issued from Augsburg by Erhard Ratdolt dated April i , 1486, is given by Steinberg, Five Hundred Years (facing p. 54). The same author discusses Ludovico dcgli Arrighi's pioneering writing manual of 1522 (pp. 57 ff). Sec also Hofer, 'Variant Issues,' p. 95. According to Hofcr, Sigismondo Fanti's Thcoria et Practica (Venice, 1514) was the first printed treatise on writing for professional scribes. An earlier printed treatise on letter forms by Damianus Moyllus printed in Parma between 1477 and 1483 is noted by Goudy, The Capitalsfrom

the Trajan Column at Rome, pp. n - 1 2 . Arrighi's

Operina, at all events, is a good example of how an early printed edition although not free of variants still contributed to a new kind of standardization.

1 1 1

On a medieval writing master's specimen sheet, see von Dijk, 'An Advertisement Sheet.' The 'everpresent need of the medieval craftsman for patterns,' the methods employed to transfer patterned outlines by first pricking a piece of parchment and then ' pouncing' with charcoal dust, and some albums of useful sketches and models compiled by diverse masters arc well described by Dorothy Miner's Library of Congress pamphlet on The Ciant Bible of Mainz. The use of a 'pattern book' by a thirteenth-century painter is shown and described by Egbert, The Medieval Artist at Work, pp. 38-9, plate ix. For a close-up study of a unique sketch book by an early 15th century Lombard master see Pacht, 'Early Italian Nature Studies,' T3-47. The problem of distinguishing between the so-called medieval 'sketch book' and 'pattern book' is noted by D. J. A. Ross 'A Late Twelfth Century Artist's Pattern Sheet.' For conjectures about the remarkable Gottiugcn Model Book, sec n. 73, above on Harry Bober's review.

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teachers i n different regions i n fifteenth-century England, they were variegated rather than u n i f o r m . 1 2 4

I t seems likely that the very concept o f a 'style' underwent transformation when the w o r k o f hand and 'stylus' was replaced b y more standardized impressions made b y pieces o f type. Distinctions between bookhand and typeface are such that b y p l a t i n g a given manuscript against a printed text one may see much more clearly the idiosyncratic features o f the individual hand o f the scribe. W h e n set against a printed replica, a given sketch o r drawing offers an even more dramatic contrast. I t appears much fresher and more ' o r i g i n a l ' than when i t is set against a hand-drawn copy. Thus distinctions between the fresh and original as against the repeatable and copied were likely t o have become sharper after the advent o f printing. T h e process o f standardization also brought o u t more clearly all deviations f r o m classical canons reflected i n diverse buildings, statues, paintings and objets d'art. 'Gothic' initially meant n o t yet classic; 'barocco,' deviation f r o m the classic n o r m . Ultimately the entire course o f Western art history would be traced i n terms o f fixed classical canons and various deviations therefrom: ' T h a t procession o f styles and periods k n o w n to every beginner - Classic, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical, Romantic - represent only a series o f masks for t w o categories, the classical and the n o n classical.' 125

126

W i t h the disappearance o f variegated bookhands, styles o f lettering became more sharply polarized into t w o distinct groups o f typefonts: 'Gothic' and ' R o m a n / A similar polarization affected architectural designs. A heightened consciousness o f the three orders set d o w n b y Vitruvius accompanied the output o f architectural prints and engravings along w i t h new treatises and o l d t e x t s . Heightened awareness o f distant regional boundaries was also encouraged b y the output o f more uniform maps containing more uniform boundaries and place names. Similar developments affected local customs, laws, languages, 1 2 7

128

120

I M

On the standardization of English primers and grammars, see p. 350 below.

' » BUhler, Fifteenth Century Book, p. 37. 1 1 6 Gombrich, Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, pp. 8 3 ; 84.

» » See below, pp. 20ifF. 118 Burns, 'Quattrocento Architecture,' chap. 27, pp. 285-7 describes how preoccupation with the ancient orders became dominant after the printing of the first edition of Alberti's De Re Aedificatoria 125

in 1485.

Hay, 'Geographical Abstractions' contains useful speculation about the influence of cartography on regional consciousness.

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and costumes. A given book o f dress patterns published i n Seville i n the 1520s made 'Spanish* fashions visible throughout the far-flung Habsburg Empire. N e w guidance was provided to tailors and dressmakers and, at the same time, the diversity o f local attire became all the more striking to the inhabitants o f Brussels or o f Lima. A

fuller recognition o f diversity was indeed a concomitant o f

standardization. Sixteenth-century publications not only spread identical fashions b u t also encouraged the collection o f diverse ones. Books illustrating diverse costumes, w o r n throughout the w o r l d , were studied by artists and engravers and duplicated i n so many contexts that stereotypes o f regional dress styles were developed. They acquired a paper life for all eternity and may be recognized even n o w on dolls, in operas, or at costume balls. Concepts pertaining to uniformity and to diversity - to the typical and to the unique - are interdependent, they represent t w o sides o f the same coin. I n this regard one m i g h t consider the emergence o f a new sense o f individualism as a by-product o f the new forms o f standardization. The more standardized the type, indeed, the more compelling the sense o f an idiosyncratic personal self. N o period was w i t h o u t some sense o f the typical and o f the individual but concepts pertaining to both were, nevertheless, transformed by the output o f standard editions. Even while an author such as Montaigne was developing a new informal and idiosyncratic genre o f literature and laying bare all the quirks and peculiarities that define the individual ' m e , m y s e l f as against the type, other genres o f literature were defining ideal types setting forth the requirements o f service to k i n g or country and delineating the role played b y priest, merchant, and peasant; b y nobleman and lady, husbandman

and wife, well-bred b o y and

girl 30 1

Here again the 'exactly repeatable pictorial statement

1

helped to

reinforce the effects o f issuing standard editions. Repeated encounters w i t h identical images o f couples, representing three social groups: noble, burgher, peasant, wearing distinctive costumes and set against distinctive regional landscapes probably encouraged a sharpened sense o f class-divisions and regional g r o u p i n g s . 13(1 1 3 1

131

A t the same time the cir-

For further discussion of this point, sec pp. 230-1 below. Sixteenth-century costume manuals and engravings displaying diverse groups of citizens against views and plans of different towns are described and illustrated by Yates, The Valois Tapestries, pp. 12-15.

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culation o f royal portraits and engravings o f royal entries made i t possible for a reigning dynast to impress a personal presence i n a new way upon the consciousness o f all subjects. The difference between the older repeatable image w h i c h was stamped o n coins and the newer by-product o f print is suggested by one o f the more celebrated episodes of the French Revolution. The individual features o f emperors and kings were not sufficiently detailed when stamped o n coins for their faces to be recognized when they travelled incognito. B u t a portrait engraved o n paper money enabled an alert Frenchman to recognize and halt Louis X V I at Varennes. It should be noted that a new alertness to b o t h the individual and the typical was likely t o come first to circles frequented by those printers and engravers w h o were responsible for turning out the new costume manuals, style books, commemorations o f royal entries, and regional guides. Just as the act o f publishing errata sharpened alertness to error w i t h i n the printer's workshop, so too d i d the preparation o f copy pertaining to architectural motifs, regional boundaries, place names, details o f dress and local customs. I t seems likely that a new alertness to place and period and more concern about assigning the proper trappings to each was fostered by the very act o f putting t o gether illustrated guidebooks and costume manuals. T o be sure, the use - i n The Nuremberg Chronicle, for example - o f the same engraving of silhouetted buildings to designate many different cities, or o f the same portrait head to designate many different historic personages, may seem to argue against such a thesis. There are many examples o f early printers frugally using a few prints to do service for many diverse purposes. A n U l m edition o f 1483 'has one cut w h i c h is used t h i r t y seven times and altogether nineteen blocks do duty for one hundred and thirty-four illustrations.' Nevertheless during the same decade of the 1480s, t w o Mainz publications contained illustrations made b y a travelling artist-engraver sent out to the H o l y Land w i t h the specific purpose o f producing fresh renderings o f cities and plants encountered on the pilgrimage. Erhard Reuwich's illustrations o f cities for Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (i486) and o f plants for Schoeffer's 132

133

See amusing discussion by Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication, p. 38. The re-use of the same blocks for various scenes in the same book and by diverse printers for diverse books is discussed by Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 4.9. Specific examples affecting Bible illustration are given by riindman, 'Transition from Manuscripts," p. 199. 1 3 3

Bland, A History

of Book Illustration,

p. 106.

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vernacular herbal Gart der Gesundheit (1485) d i d point the way to an increasingly precise and detailed recording o f observations i n visual form. The careless re-use o f a few blocks for many purposes also needs to be distinguished f r o m the deliberate re-use o f a 'typical* t o w n or portrait head, to serve as pointers or guide marks helping readers find their way about a t e x t . Whatever the purpose served b y the cuts o f towns and heads i n a w o r k such as The Nuremberg Chronicle, previous remarks about individuation and standardization also seem cogent. The more standardized the image o f typical t o w n , head or plant, the more clearly the idiosyncratic features o f separate towns, heads, or plants could be perceived by observant draughtsmen. Painters and carvers had been rendering natural forms on manuscript margins, church vestments or stone fonts during previous centuries. B u t their talents were used for new ends b y technical publication programs initiated by master printers and learned editors f r o m the days o f Peter Schoeffer on. 1 3 4

1 3 5

Here as elsewhere, we need to recall that early printers were responsible n o t only for publishing innovative reference guides b u t also for I3

* On Brcydenbach volume and the vernacular versions that appeared soon after the first Latin edition of i 4 8 6 , sec H . W . Davics, Bernhard von Brcydenbach. The likelihood that Erhard Rcwich (or Rcuwich) of Utrecht was not only responsible for the illustrations to Brcydcnbach's Peregrinatio but was also the 'wise and skillful painter' who accompanied the chief author of the Gart der Gesundheit {a Frankfurt physician named von Cube) and receives thanks in the preface to this Peter Schoeffer publication of 1485 is noted by Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, 1, 350; 354. In Prints and Visual Communication,

p. 36, Ivins oddly regrets

not knowing the names of any one who contributed to Gart der Gesundheit while referring two paragraphs later to Rcuwich accompanying Brcydenbach and producing the celebrated fold-out views of towns such as Venice, Rhodes, and Jerusalem. An earlier collection of Ivins1 essays: Prints and Books: Informal Papers contains a paper on 'B rey den bach's Itinerary,' pp. 10-21 which describes Reuwich's role not only as illustrator but also as 'printer' of both the Latin and German versions of the Brcydenbach volume. There Ivins notes Reuwich's own reference in the German edition (Mainz, 1486) to his carrying out 'the printing in his own house'and that the type used came from Peter Schocffcr's firm. On the significance of the illustrations in Gart der Gesundheit (Peter Schoeffer's Mainz publication of 1485) sec below, pp. 262ff. The fact that the plants were drawn on a trip to the Holy Land madcat the same time that Brcydcnbach's pilgrimage occurred, as well as stylistic similarities, leads Hind to concur with L. Baer's 1925 opinion that Rcuwich illustrated both books. His closeness to Peter Schoeffer also makes it a reasonable assumption that he had a hand in the vernacular herbal. This assumption is taken for granted by Hcrrlingcr, History of Medical Illustration, p. 47 who suggests that the illustrator of Gart der Gesundheit may also be the ' master of the Houscbook * - a celebrated early copper-plate engraver. ,3

s Bland, History of Book Illustration, p. 107 credits Paul Kristcllcr (the author of Eariy Fforenline Woodcuts) with the suggestion that the Nuremberg Chronicle cuts were intended to act as signposts for the benefit of readers rather than as detailed visual aids. An interesting case where successive editions of a six tec nth-century encyclopedia show stereotyped cuts being replaced by actual town profiles and genuine likenesses is described by Gerald Strauss, "A Sixteenth-Century Encyclopedia,' pp. 154-5.

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compiling some o f t h e m . T o those o f us w h o think i n terms o f later divisions o f labor, the repertoire o f roles undertaken b y early printers seems so large as to be almost inconceivable. A scholar-printer himself might serve n o t only as publisher and bookseller b u t also as indexerabridger-lexicographer-chronicler. Whatever roles he performed, decisions about standards to be adopted when processing texts f o r publication could not be avoided. Suitable type styles had to be selected or designed and house conventions - relating to orthography, punctuation, abbreviation and the l i k e - h a d to be d e t e r m i n e d . Textual variants and the desirability o f illustration or translations also had to be confronted. Insofar as such decisions entailed consultation w i t h the professors and physicians, print dealers, painters, translators, librarians and other learned men, i t is n o t surprising that printers' workshops served as cultural centers i n several towns or that the most advanced work i n scholarship and science during the sixteenth century seemed to gravitate away f r o m older lecture halls and academic precincts. M o r e over, printers were i n the unusual position o f being able to profit from passing o n to others systems they devised for themselves. They not only practiced self-help but preached i t as w e l l . I n the later middle ages, practical manuals had been written to guide inquisitors, confessors, priests and pilgrims - and lay merchants as w e l l . A l t h o u g h large summae now attract scholarly attention, medieval scribes also turned o u t c o m pact summulae, comprehensive guidebooks designed to offer practical advice o n diverse matters - ranging f r o m composing a sermon to dying i n one's b e d . Here, as i n many other ways, the printer seems 1 3 0

137

1 3 8

" 6 This applies particularly to the publisher-printer (or printer-bookseller) as described e.g. by Armstrong, Robert Estienne, pp. 18, 6 8 . It is also applicable to many independent masterprinters, to some merchant-publishers (who, literally defined, were not printers at all and yet closely supervised the processing of texts - even editing and compiling some themselves), and finally to some skilled journeymen (who served as correctors or were charged with throwing together from antiquated stock, cheap reprints for mass markets). The divergent social and economic positions occupied by these groups are discussed by Natalie Z . Davis, 'Strikes and Salvation in Lyons,' p. 4 8 : and 'Publisher Guillaume Rouillé,'pp. 73-6. Within workshops down through the eighteenth century, divisions of labor varied so widely and were blurred so frequently, they must be left out of account for the purpose of developing my conjectures. Accordingly, I use the term 'printer' very loosely to cover all these groups I have also blurred gender when describing 'his' print shop and never mentioning 'hers.' As noted byLenkey, 'Printers' wives,' p. 3 3 1 , although widows and daughters of printers did take over the family enterprise, it was more common for male relatives to do so. O n a noteworthy sixteenth-century woman printer, see references to Charlotte Guillard's Paris firm in Parent, Les Métiers, p. 138 On English compositors' sense of obligation to amend orthography and grammar, see Hereward T . Price, 'Grammar and the Compositor,' S40-8. 138 Peters, 'Editing Inquisitors' Manuals,' 95-*°7-

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AN

ELUSIVE

TRANSFORMATION

to have taken over where the clerical scribe left off. B u t in so doing, he greatly amplified and augmented older themes. There is simply no equivalent i n scribal culture for the 'avalanche* o f 'how-to* books which poured off the new presses, explaining by 'easy steps* just h o w to master diverse skills, ranging f r o m playing a musical instrument to keeping accounts. M a n y early capitalist industries required efficient planning, methodical attention to detail, and rational calculation. The decisions made by early printers, however, directly affected both tool-making and symbolmaking. Their products reshaped powers to manipulate objects, to perceive and think about varied phenomena. Scholars concerned w i t h 'modernization' or 'rationalization' might profitably think more about the new kind o f brainwork fostered by the silent scanning o f maps, tables, charts, diagrams, dictionaries, and grammars. They also need to look more closely at the routines pursued by those w h o compiled and produced such reference guides. These routines were conducive to a new esprit de systeme. I n his preface to his pioneering atlas which contained supplementary texts and indexes, Abraham Ortelius likened his Theatrum to a ' w e l l furnished shoppe' which was so arranged that readers could easily find whatever instruments they might want to obtain. 'It*s much easier to find things when they are each disposed in place and not scattered haphazardly' remarked another sixteenthcentury publisher. He was justifying the way he had reorganized a text he had edited. He might equally well have been complaining to a clerk w h o had mislaid some account papers pertaining to the large commercial enterprise he ran. 139

140

3. S O M E E F F E C T S

PRODUCED

AND RATIONALIZING,

BY

REFERENCE

REORGANIZING

TEXTS

GUIDES:

CODIFYING, AND

CATALOGUING

DATA

Editorial decisions made by early printers w i t h regard to layout and presentation probably helped to reorganize the thinking o f readers. McLuhan's suggestion that scanning lines o f print affected thoughtprocesses is at first glance somewhat mystifying. B u t further reflection suggests that the thoughts o f readers are guided by the way the contents 139 Ortelius, 'Message to the Reader,' Theater of the Whole World. 1 4 0 Cited by Natalie Z. Davis, 'Guillaume RouiUcV p. 100.

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o f books are arranged and presented. Basic changes i n book format might well lead to changes i n thought-patterns. T o handle printed reference works, for example, readers had to master certain skills that are n o w considered rudimentary b u t were previously esoteric, even among learned men. A 1604 edition o f an English dictionary notes at the outset that 'the reader must learne the alphabet, to w i t : the order of the letters as they s t a n d . ' One wonders w h y defining the meaning of the term alphabet was thought to be needed i n England at so late a date. Numerous editions o f A B C books, which had made profits for privileged printers such as John Day, m i g h t be expected to have made the definition unnecessary. A t all events, printed reference works d i d encourage a repeated recourse to alphabetical order. Ever since the sixteenth century, memorizing a fixed sequence o f discrete letters represented b y meaningless symbols and sounds has been the gateway to book learning for all children i n the West. This was so little the case before printing, that a Genoese compiler o f a thirteenth-century encyclopedia could write that 141

'Amo' comes before 'bibo' because 'a' is the first letter o f the former and 'b' is the first letter of the latter and 'a' comes before ' b ' . . .by the grace o f God working in me, I have devised this order. 142

This is n o t to say that systems based o n full use o f alphabetical order were u n k n o w n before the thirteenth century, b u t only that they were sufficiently esoteric to be unfamiliar to the compiler o f the Catkolicon. * Other ways o f ordering data were no less likely to be used in reference works. As for library catalogues, the full use o f alphabet systems b y the fabled custodians o f the Alexandrian Library had vanished w i t h the 1

w

Cited (from Robert Cowdrey's 'table alphabetical') by Daly, Contributions Alphabetization,

to a History

3

oj

p. 9 1 .

w* Cited in Daly, Contributions, p. 73 from remarks by 'Giovanni di Genoa' (or Friar Johannes Balbus of Genoa) in his Catholicon of 1286. This popular thirteenth-century encyclopedia is celebrated for being printed by Gutenberg in Mainz, 1460, with a colophon describing how the 'noble book' was printed 'without help of reed, stylus, or pen but by the wondrous agreement, proportion and harmony of punches and types.. .in the noble city of Mainz of the renowned German nation' which 'by God's grace' has been endowed 'above all other nations of the earth with so lofty a genius.' Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, p. 19. Should this claim for Gutenberg's invention be taken in the same spirit as the friar's claim to have 'devised' alphabetic order? See Butler's perceptive comments on how claims set forth concerning 'invention' of typography entail a different concept of 'invention* than ours. Origin of Printing, p. 97. For further discussion of problematic nature of 'invention,' see n. 251 and n. 252 below. '*3 For data on medieval alphabets, see Wolpe, 'Florilegium Alphabeticum.'

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institution i t s e l f . ' W h e n i t comes to cataloguing, a poem is a far cry f r o m a card index,' note Reynolds and W i l s o n , i n connection w i t h some verses attributed to Alcuin describing the eighth-century library at Y o r k . The rhymed book list was incomplete because metrical exigencies required the exclusion o f various works. Medieval library catalogues, to be sure, were not usually i n verse but they were, nevertheless, far f r o m being ordered along the lines o f modern card indexes - or, for that matter, along any kind o f uniform lines. They reflected the m u l t i f o r m character o f scribal culture and were, for the most part, idiosyncratically arranged, designed to help a given custodian find his way to the books which reposed i n cupboards or chests or were chained on desks i n a special c h a m b e r . 144

1 4 5

146

The increasing use o f full alphabetical order, both for book catalogues and also for indexes, has been attributed to the introduction o f paper, which made it less costly to prepare the necessary card-fi!es. Doubtless cheaper writing-materials made indexing and cataloguing less costly, but they did little to overcome a natural resistance to repeatedly copying out long lists by hand. Occasional efforts were made to make one index valid for several copies but they were invariably thwarted by scribal errors o f diverse kinds. For the most part the owner o f a medieval compendium, preparing an index for his o w n use, felt no obligation to employ anybody else's system but rather followed whatever method he chose. Similarly a custodian keeping track o f a library collection had no incentive to arrange his records in accordance w i t h those o f other librarians - and no incentive, either, to make the arrangement o f volumes f o l l o w any clear order at all. ( O n the basis o f encounters w i t h some living guardians o f rare books, one suspects 147

148

i * 4 in addition to Daly Contributions, see also Francis Witty, 'Early Indexing Techniques,' 141-8. A review of Daly's book by Sherman Kuhn discusses the repeated loss and recovery of partial alphabetization. Kuhn's article 'The Preface to a Fifteenth Century Concordance,' also has useful data on arrangements of glossaries and vocabularies going back to the eighth century. '+5 Reynolds and Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, p. 76. us Even the catalogues of libraries maintained in university towns by members of the mendicant orders retained the character of inventories or shelf lists. Humphreys, The Book Provisions, P-83. *f This seems to be Daly's conclusion in Contributions and that of Sherman Kuhn's Speculum book review. Although Kuhn notes that full alphabetization is established only after printing, this review suggests 'that it came not so much as a direct result' of printing as of the 'greater availability and cheapness of paper.' l * 8 O n the frustration of efforts to make the index of one manuscript valid for other copies sec Smallcy, English Friars, pp. 33-5. The idiosyncratic and highly particularized character of indexing by owners of compendia is noted by Hay, introduction, Printing and Mind of Man, pp. xviii-xix. l

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that the more unfatliomabie the arrangement o f a given inventory the better some medieval custodians were pleased.) After the advent o f printing, however, shelf lists were supplemented by sales catalogues aimed at readers outside library walls, while any index compiled for one text could be duplicated hundreds o f times. Thus the competitive commercial character o f the printed book-trade when coupled w i t h typographical standardization made more systematic cataloguing and indexing seem not only feasible but highly desirable as well. T o tap markets and attract potential purchasers while keeping competitors at bay called for booksellers' lists that presented titles i n a clear and coherent arrangement, and for editions that could be described as w e l l indexed, as w e l l as 'new and improved.' Peter Schoeffer's prospectus w h i c h claimed that his f i r m offered ' m o r e complete and better arranged' indexes as w e l l as ' m o r e readable' texts than those o f his c o m p e t i t o r s should not be taken at face value. The early printer, like the modern press agent, often promised more than he could deliver. Nevertheless the pressure o f competition did spur efforts to look for ways o f i m p r o v i n g familiar products and w o r k e d against the inherent resistance to change w h i c h had hitherto characterized the copying o f valued texts. A rationalization o f format helped to systematize scholarship i n diverse fields. Robert Estienne's five Paris book catalogues issued between 1542 and 1547 reflect a rapid advance along many fronts. D i v i d e d along trilingual lines, w i t h each section arranged in a u n i f o r m progression, beginning w i t h alphabets i n Hebrew, Greek and Latin, going o n to grammars, dictionaries and texts; these catalogues have justly been described as 'a miracle o f lucid arrangement.' The same skills were used b y Estienne for his pioneering w o r k i n lexicography and his succession of biblical editions. M u c h as Estienne's successive improved editions of the Bible produced i n sixteenth-century Paris m i g h t be compared to the one so-called 'edition' turned out b y scribes i n thirteenthcentury Paris; so, too, his many contributions to lexicography m i g h t be compared w i t h that single unique bilingual lexicon produced 149

150

151

Sec citation above, p. 57. " ° Pollard and Ehrman, Distribution of Books, p. 53. 151 DeWitt T . Starncs, Robert Estienne's Influence on Lexicography, pp. 86-7. Starncs also notes how Estienne expanded on earlier thesauruses dealing with Greco-Roman literature by including the vast array of biblical references he had compiled in the course of producing his Bible editions and how his reference works furnished English poets (down to Milton and beyond) with classical and biblical allusions.

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by thirteenth-century schoolmen Grosseteste.

TRANSFORMATION

under the direction o f Robert

152

Such comparisons are useful, not only because they show what the new power o f the press could achieve, but also because they suggest that attempts at lexicography had been made before print. Efforts at codifying and systematizing which prc-dated the new presses had long been made b y preachers and teachers w h o had compiled concordances for the use o f other churchmen or arranged scriptural passages, sermon topics, and commentaries for themselves. A poem is not only 'a far cry f r o m a card index'; i t is also fairly distant f r o m many scholastic treatises on medical and legal as well as theological subjects. Such treatises were surrounded by glosses, and bristled w i t h abbreviations and marginal notations. Some contained diagrams which showed the branches o f learning, schematized abstract concepts or connected human organs w i t h heavenly bodies. Others were furnished w i t h small tabs made o f parchment or paper to permit easy reference. One must be wary, i n other words, o f overstating the novelties introduced by printing or o f overlooking h o w previous developments helped to channel the uses to which the new tool was p u t . Such devices as diagrams and brackets, along w i t h the habit o f cross-referencing be153

1 5 4

•s* Daly, Contributions, p. 70 notes that (his Greek-Latin lexicon-a rare example of such a bilingual reference work-was also unusual because it came close to achieving a complete alphabetical order. Grosscteste's own considerable skills as an indexer arc indicated by Hunt, 'The Library of Robert Grosseteste.' O n Esticnnc's Bible printing, see p. 328 below. "S3 Medical and astrological diagrams are abundantly illustrated in Herrlingcr, History of Medical Illustration, passim. Saxl, *A Spiritual Encyclopedia,' pp. 82-136 presents a number of diagrams showing relationships between abstract concepts. The large number in this fifteenth-century manuscript strikes Saxl as unusual and possibly due to contemporary agitation over theological issues during the Hussite Wars (p. 83). Sec aiso Yates' Art of Memory (plate 11), where a fourteenth-century miniature depicting the art of Ramon Lull suggests the kind of diagramming that was associated with memory arts and may be found in many manuscripts. Other illustrations in Yates' book, which come from early printed versions, are aiso of interest. Sec e.g. visual alphabet given in figure 7c. l s +

In several suggestive studies, "Walter Ong has brought out the 'diagrammatic tidiness' imparted by print to the world of ideas in a way that might lead hasty readers to discount the extent to which diagramming and graphing preceded print. See e.g. Ramus; 'System Space and Intellect*; 'From Allegory to Diagram in the Renaissance Mind.' Actually Ong does credit medieval scholasticism with many of the habits of mind that became more pronounced after printing and in one article: 'Tudor Writings on Rhetoric, Poetic and Literary Theory' (19(18) Rhetoric, Romance, p. 85 notes that the 'resort to diagrams and other visual models' was a 'procedure encouraged both by scholastic /ogiVand by typography.' [Italics nunc.] Nevertheless, the actual use of such devices as brackets, diagrams and cross-references in medieval compendia and concordances docs not receive much notice in Ong's studies. For a fully documented account of medieval anticipations of modem scholarly apparatus see Parkcs, 'The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book.'

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OF PRINT

CULTURE

tween one passage and another, were n o t uncommon among medieval compilers and commentators, even though such practices took i d i o syncratic and variegated forms. Just as the u n i f o r m use o f alphabetic order for all reference words d i d not result f r o m the invention o f printing alone but required an alphabetic w r i t t e n language as a base, so too much o f the cataloguing, cross-referencing and indexing that marked sixteenth-century scholarship should not be regarded only as by-products o f typographic culture but also as reflecting new opportunities among clergymen and clerks to realize o l d goals. At his most characteristic, medieval man...was an organizer, a codifier, a builder of systems. He wanted a place for everything and everything in the right place. Distinction, definition, tabulation were his delight.. .There was nothing medieval people did better or liked better than sorting out and tidying up. O f all our modem inventions, I suspect that they would most have admired the card index. 155

As this citation suggests, one need not think only o f ' w e l l furnished shops' when considering the urge to rationalize Western institutions. A desire to have 'everything i n its right place' was shared b y the medieval schoolman and the early capitalist alike. The print shop performed a significant, albeit neglected function - b y bringing t o gether intellectual and commercial activities w h i c h reinforced each other and thus created an especially powerful - almost ' overdetermined' - drive. O n the other hand, one must be on guard against the temptation to make too much o f occasional medieval anticipations o f trends that could not be really launched until after printing. T h e schoolmen m i g h t have admired our card index but their sense o f order was not based upon its use. A unique bilingual lexicon cannot do the same w o r k as hundreds o f thousands o f trilingual reference guides. There is simply no counterpart in medieval houses o f studies or monastic libraries for the printed polyglot Bibles o f the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or for the reference apparatus w h i c h accompanied them. The same point applies to the clarity o f organization and readers' aids contained in the Geneva Bible. As for attempts at cross-referencing and indexing, one may marvel at the 'vast amount o f labor and ingenuity' that scribal compilers expended on such thankless tasks; even while recognizing that the results were bound to appear inadequate by later + The increasingly high value assigned to drawings, sketches, and other evidence of work in progress by artists is noted by Arnold Hauser, Social History of Art n, 7 1 . Hauser makes no mention of possible changes wrought by printing, but does, however, refer to a relevant passage from Filaretc's treatise where the forms of a work of art arc compared to the penstrokes of a manuscript revealing the hand of the writer. , o s Baxandall, Giotto; Lamer, Culture and Society, chap. 11 are among many studies which cover relevant scribal works including the tributes paid to Giotto by Dante and his successors, Filippo Villani's inclusion of painters in his tribute to Florentine citizens, Albcrti's treatise on painting, Filarete's on architecture and the section on painters {which included Flemish masters) in De Viris lllustribus by Bartolomco Facio. 1 5 6 A key work here is Lorenzo Ghiberti's three-part Commentaries (written over the course of decades and left unfinished at the author's death in USS) especially the artist's autobiography provided at the end of Book 2. See Richard Krautheimcr and T . Krautheimer-Hess, Lorenzo Ghiberti and R. Krautheimer, 'The Beginnings.' Ghiberti's work is also cited as evidence of a new kind of self-conscious ncss by Wittkower, 'Individualism in Art and Artists: A Renaissance Perspective.' See also the Wittkowcrs' Bom Under Saturn, chap. 3 and Gombrich, 'The Renaissance Conception.' • « Sec R. Krautheimer, 'The Beginnings," p. 268; Gombrich, 'Art and Scholarship'; Blunt, Artistic

Theory, chap, vn, p. 98.

232

A CLASSICAL

REVIVAL

REORIENTED

•which deserve more attention because they show h o w the art o f b i o graphy profited f r o m changes w r o u g h t by print. The sheer number o f separate individuals, all engaged i n a similar endeavor, covered b y the second edition o f his multi-volumed w o r k is, i n itself, noteworthy. T o match art-works w i t h biographical records for 250 separate cases represented an unprecedented feat. I n addition to the expansion i n scale, there was a new effort at research i n depth. Vasari's was the first systematic investigation based on interviews, correspondence, field trips, o f the procedures used and the objects produced by generations o f European artists. The Lives also reflect the new opportunity offered by print to extend the scope o f a given w o r k f r o m one edition to another. The second edition o f 1568 was a vastly expanded version o f the first one o f 1550. I t broke out o f the limits imposed by Florentine civic loyalties and introduced no less than seventy-five new biographical sketches. A m o n g other notable innovations, woodcut portraits were designed to go w i t h each biographical sketch. Significantly enough, despite the special effort made to match faces w i t h names, purely conjectural portraits had to be supplied for artists w h o lived before the fifteenth c e n t u r y . 198

199

Before the fifteenth century, even artists' self-portraits were deprived o f individuality. The conditions o f scribal culture thus held narcissism in check. A given master might decide to place his o w n features on a figure i n a fresco or on a carving over a door; but, i n the absence o f written records, he w o u l d still lose his identity i n the eyes o f posterity and become another faceless artisan w h o performed some collective task. The same point also applies to those occasional author portraits which survived f r o m antiquity. I n the course o f continuous copying, the face o f one author got transferred to another's text and distinctive features were blurred or erased. After the passage o f centuries, the 200

1 5 8

1 0 0

Petrucelli, 'Giorgio Vasari's Attribution of the Vesalian Illustrations to Jan Stephan of Calcar.' The Mellon lectures, given at the National Gallery, Washington, D.C., on the theme of *Vasari:The Man and the Book' by T . R. Boase also contain much relevant data. One might compare the scale and scope of Vasari's investigation with that undertaken by Bartolomco Facio for the section on artists in the latter's De Viris Illustrious. (Evidence that Facio did request information from Poggio about his own writings and those of Bruni, Manetti and Traversari is offered by Kristellcr,' Bartolomeo Facio and his Unknown Correspondence.') A similar expansion in scope and scale and a similar development from edition to edition may be demonstrated by looking at Polydore Vergil's De Inventoribus which was issued in some thirty editions during the second half of the sixteenth century and which contains abundant references to 'an amazingly rich array of literature.' Hay, Polydore Vergil, 1 0 0 pp. 5 6 - 8 . Rud, Vasari's Life and Lines, provides this information. Pacht, 'Early Italian Nature Studies,' p. 26, n. 3, describes how authors' portraits in herbals of the sixth century got interchanged.

233

CLASSICAL

AND

CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

figure at the desk or the robed scholar holding a book simply became an impersonal symbol o f the author at large. As a previous chapter suggests, these impersonal images d i d not disappear when print replaced script. O n the contrary, they were subject to a greater degree o f standardization and multiplied by woodcuts and engravings. Just as the same city profile m i g h t be labelled w i t h different place names i n an early printed chronicle, so too, an identical human profile served to illustrate diverse individuals performing the same occupational role. Careless handling o f corrupted woodcuts also led to further comedies o f errors and mistaken identities. A t the same time, however, the drive for fame moved into high gear; the self-portrait acquired a new permanence, a heightened appreciation o f individuality accompanied i n creased standardization, and there was a new deliberate p r o m o t i o n by publishers and print dealers o f those authors and artists whose works they hoped to sell. A l o n g w i t h title pages and booksellers' catalogues, came portrait heads o f authors and artists. M o r e and more, distinct physiognomies became permanently attached to distinct names. Sixteenth-century portraits o f Erasmus, Luther, Loyola et ah were multiplied w i t h sufficient frequency to be duplicated i n innumerable history books and to remain recognizable even n o w . 201

202

W h e n historical figures can be given distinct faces, they also acquire a more distinctive personality. The characteristic individuality o f Renaissance masterpieces i n comparison w i t h earlier ones is probably related to the new possibility o f preserving by duplication the faces, names, birth-places, and personal histories o f the makers o f objects o f art. The hands o f medieval illuminators or stone carvers were in fact no less distinctive - as investigations by art historians show. B u t the personalities o f the masters (who are usually k n o w n only by their initials or by the books, altarpieces, and tympana they produced) are as unfamiliar to us as those o f cabinet makers or glaziers. Even those masters whose names are k n o w n because they lacked the modesty 2 0 1 2 0 1

See above, pp. 85-6". The replacement of 'stereotyped' profiles and portrait heads by more authentic ones in a sixteenth-century encyclopedia is noted above, chap. 2, n. 135. 'Medallions of portraits' which were issued by an early sixteenth century Lyonnais publisher are described by Natalie Z.Davis, 'Publisher Guillaume Rouillé,' p. 89. Sec also N . Z . D a v i s , 'Printing and the People,' p. 215. Sarton's Six Wings contains thirty portraits based on contemporary renderings. Their 'authenticity' is noted in the preface (p. ix) and their provenance is described beside the space where they appear. The three figures on p. t 3 4 representing the two artists and the engraver who drew the plants for Fuchs' herbal of 1542 arc good examples of the kind of self-advertisement which could flourish in early printers' workshops.

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often attributed to ' h u m b l e ' medieval craftsmen and took pains t o carve their names o n permanent materials - even such men seem to lack individuality because there are no other written records to accompany the p r o u d inscriptions they left behind. At the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.. .the sculptor Wiligelmo placed a tablet in the façade o f Modena cathedral bearing the words: Among sculptors how greatly are you worthy in honor N o w , oh Wiligelmo, your sculpture shines forth. On the portals of Ferrara and.. .of Verona cathedral, a pupil of Wiligelmo working in the 1130s announced his own fame in a similar way: Coming together men w i l l praise for generations That Niccolô the skilled artifex who carved these things. . . . From this period, inscriptions o f this type appeared quite frequently in other centres in northern Italy, as they did at the same time in France. 203

Sculptors such as W i l i g e l m o and Niccolô were, clearly, conscious o f themselves as individuals, but they were also powerless to transmit the sense o f their individuality beyond their graves. Every hand-copied book, i t is sometimes said, 'was a personal achievement.' Actually a great many hand-produced books were farmed out piecemeal to be copied and w o r k e d over by several h a n d s . But even where a single hand runs f r o m incipit to colophon and a full signature is given at the end, there is almost no trace o f personality left by the presumably 'personal achievement.' Paradoxically we must wait for impersonal type to replace handwriting and a standardized colophon to replace the individual signature, before singular experiences can be preserved for posterity and distinctive personalities can be permanently separated f r o m the group or collective type. 204

205

Thus w e k n o w that architects and musicians were ranked fairly high i n the hierarchy o f medieval arts. Certain master builders and master singers must have achieved considerable local celebrity, but few traces o f i t remain. They must n o w be portrayed, just as B u r c k hardt envisaged them, according to the garb they wore or the life-style 1 0 1

Lamer, Culture and Society, p. 266.

* See reference to Curtius' comment, chap. 1, n. 11 above. 1 0 1 The contrast felt by paleographers, who move from the anonymous bookhand of the medieval scribe to the more 'human documents' provided by eponymous humanists, is vividly conveyed by Wardrop, Script of Humanism, p. 3. Walter Ullmann, Individual and Society, pp. 32-4, with a certain insensitivity to historical circumstances, is 'annoyed' by the anonymity of medieval 'writers, scholars, pamphleteers, chancery personnel, architects, scribes.' M

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they shared w i t h other members o f their occupational group. There is ample evidence - at least enough to arouse the indignation o f medievalists - to suggest that a sense o f spiritual individuality was n o t lacking i n the middle ages. B u t there is also a dearth o f the homely details needed b y historians w h o want to flesh out portraits o f those individuals whose spiritual life they can t r a c e . For centuries the p u l pit served as the chief public address system o f Christendom. Yet w e k n o w very little about the personal style o f medieval preachers. T h e very language i n w h i c h they delivered their sermons is veiled b y the conventional Latin outline f o r m used b y auditors w h o recorded what was s a i d . H o w different is our sense o f the style o f a Savonarola or a Geiler v o n Keysersberg, whose sermons were swiftly transmuted into print. 206

207

I f w e turn to a different occupational group, an even more striking comparison may be drawn. T h i n k o f the t w o celebrated Italian mathematicians: Leonardo o f Pisa (also called Fibonacci) and Girolamo Cardano (Jerome Cardan). A biographer o f the thirteenth-century man can tell us nothing about his personal appearance or private life. Cardano's biographer has an embarrassment o f riches: location o f warts, style o f beard, foot-size, sex-life, etc., etc., placed at his disposal. T o be sure, the number o f details provided b y Cardano, i n his posthumously published De Vita Propria, is sufficiently unusual to raise doubts about exceptions and rules. As controversies over Shakespeare and some later authors suggest, n o t all lives during the past five centuries are as fully documented as his. B u t there can be little doubt about the case o f Fibonacci. T h e lives o f most medieval masters o f the abacus were even less w e l l documented than his. Whether o r n o t medieval men were conscious o f themselves ' o n l y through some general 208

209

2 0 6 T n c troublesome absence of basic details concerning year, place of birth, and family background is noted by Benton, ed. and introd., Self and Society, appendix i , pp. 220-33. An amusing account of the shock experienced by an historian accustomed to handling the modem abundance of biographical data when confronting fourteenth-century scarcity is given by Tuchman, 'Hazards on the Way to the Middle Ages.' 1 0 7 Gallick, 'A Look at Chaucer and His Preachers.' See esp. p. 458. ioB Vogel, 'Fibonacci, Leonardo,' notes the few details supplied by the preface to the Liber Abaci. See also J. and F. Gics, Leonardo of Pisa; Ore, 1 0 9

Cardano.

Cardano's De Vita Propria did not get into print until 1643, sixty-seven years after his death. Similarly, Cellini's autobiography had to wait for publication until 1728. These delays lead Delany, British Autobiography, p. 7 , to discount the significance of printing for the new genre of autobiography. As I see it, however, works such as Cardano's and Cellini's reflected new features introduced by print culture even though their writings remained for a long time in manuscript form.

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category,' as Burckhardt w o u l d have us believe, i t is very difficult for historians to portray them i n any other way, w i t h o u t trespassing into the domain o f fiction or deserting Clio for some other muse. The same point applies to the celebrated mathematicians, philosophers or artists o f antiquity. Classical ideals pertaining t o 'mens sanus i n corpore sano' have to be somewhat abstractly embodied by idealized figures. Images o f discus throwers and scribes, young men and o l d , maidens and matrons are collected; shards registering h o w daily life was lived are assembled; lyric poems, satiric gossip, orations, and apocrypha are sorted out. B u t despite the w o r k o f generations o f classical archeologists and social historians, w e still have t o envisage Sophocles the playwright, Aristotle the philosopher, Hippocrates the physician, or Euclid the geometer as marble statues, as fanciful engravings contained i n the Bettmann Archives, or merely as names listed on incompleted employment forms. The occasional glimpses o f personal lives w h i c h w e do get at second hand - when w e learn about Socrates' shrewish wife or about Archimedes taking a bath - tend also to be transmuted and frozen into archetypical symbols. As architect, physician, astronomer, and court councillor, Imhotep w o u l d be w o r shipped as a deity. Hadrian was perhaps as versatile as Jefferson, b u t he does not come alive for us i n the same way. I t seems doubtful that Alberti was the first architect to embody Vitruvius' ideal o f the versatile man and display so many talents as athlete, orator, scholar, and artist. He was, however, probably the first whose after-dinner speeches and boasts about boyhood feats were preserved for posterity along w i t h treatises on aesthetic theory and descriptions o f the buildings he designed. Thus Burckhardt's often cited t r i b u t e : ' In all by w h i c h praise is w o n , Leon Battista was f r o m his childhood the first.. .his serious and w i t t y sayings were thought w o r t h c o l l e c t i n g . . . ' needs to be supplemented by an additional consideration. The 'serious and w i t t y sayings' o f this architect could be not only collected b u t also preserved and transmitted t o posterity. I t was i n part because he could be displayed i n a variety o f moods and activities, as an athletic y o u t h and as a scholarly sagemoving through all the 'ages o f man* - personifying as a single i n dividual multiple archetypes and collective social roles that he appears to Burckhardt i n the guise o f T u o m o universale.' ' A n acute and practised eye m i g h t be able to trace, step b y step, the increase i n the number 2 I 0

Burckhaidt, Civilization

of the Renaissance i, 149-150.

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o f complete men during the fifteenth c e n t u r y . ' This apparent i n crease may in part be explained by the fact that i t becomes easier to see men ' i n the round,' so to speak, as we move f r o m the age o f copyists and illuminators to that o f printers and engravers. The preservation o f records b y duplication does not, however, completely explain the apparent increase. For although documentation proliferates as we continue m o v i n g toward the present, the number o f ' c o m p l e t e m e n ' does not. Instead, versatility appears to diminish. Collective biographies begin t o be written w h i c h trace distinctive genealogies for separate arts and sciences. N e w divisions o f labor and increasing specialization o f function become increasingly apparent as the centuries wear on. 211

212

' T h e age w h i c h we commonly think o f as characterized by versatility and the universal man was in fact the period when the walls between art and science, between politics and ethics, began t o be b u i l t . ' Because the walls were still l o w during the first century o f printing, they could be straddled w i t h relative ease; while the higher they grew, the more remarkable an earlier versatility w o u l d seem. L i v i n g in an age when 'the barriers which kept things in o r d e r - b u t also a p a r t during the M i d d l e A g e s ' were dissolving and the foundations for new walls were only beginning to be laid, Renaissance man w o u l d appear to have the best o f both worlds. 213

214

N e w opportunities to master technical literature while profiting f r o m the expertise o f generations o f unlettered men in arts, crafts, and sports also contributed to his protean appearance. He was among the last w h o could handle a lute or a sword w i t h ease; among the first to read musical scores or chart the path o f a cannon's projectile. The ' w e l l rounded m a n ' described i n courtier literature 'can fight, dance, swim, hunt, w o o , and warble. His m i n d introduces system into every field. W a r becomes strategy, business is bookkeeping, statecraft is diplomacy, art is perspective.' O n the one hand, the old arts are perfected; on the other, new professions are initiated. 215

Leonardo da Vinci, notes Burckhardt, 'was to Albcrti as the finisher to the beginner, the master to the dilettante.' Along w i t h Raphael and Michelangelo, Leonardo brought to a point o f perfection an artistic tradition that had flourished i n Italy at least since Giotto's day. Cele2 1 1

Burckhardt, Civilization

of the Renaissance i , 147.

Sec Rose, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics, pp. 256-7 for discussion of this new develop2 1 3 ment during the sixteenth century. Gilmorc, World of Humanism, p. 26$. z , 2 1 5 « Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' p. 128. Bainton, 'Man, God and Church,' p. 80.

2 1 2

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braced among contemporaries for having perfected an o l d art, he was credited b y posterity w i t h having originated the new sciences. T h e painter o f the'Last Supper' is acknowledged as o l d master; the designer o f flying machines is heralded as a k i n d o f infant prodigy. I n point o f fact, most o f Leonardo's ingenious designs and precisely rendered pictorial observations went unpublished. As is noted i n later discussion, although he absorbed many useful lessons f r o m the technical literature o f his day he made no direct contribution to technical literature h i m s e l f . Centuries later, after the celebrated notebooks had finally appeared in print and the cult o f genius had been thoroughly romanticized and modernized, he w o u l d be credited, nevertheless, w i t h anticipating twentieth-century developments i n sophisticated specialized fields, such as aeronautics o r embryology. 216

Although romantic biographers tend to overplay the theme (by failing to allow for later professionalization and specialization), there are good reasons for associating a new versatility w i t h the Renaissance man. Polymaths w h o took advantage o f opportunities extended b y printing d i d contribute to a dazzling variety o f disciplines. Artisans who learned to master letters became more well-rounded as w e l l as more upwardly mobile and more conscious o f their o w n w o r t h . Professions w h i c h required a coordination o f brain w o r k w i t h handwork were given a new impetus, as the h y b r i d terms: scholar-printer, anatomist-printer, astronomer-printer m a y suggest. Where I disagree w i t h Burckhardt is n o t i n his suggesting that 'many-sided m e n ' appeared during the Renaissance, b u t rather i n his insistence that they 'belonged to Italy alone* and i n his failure to account for their emergence save b y referring to an 'impulse.' T h e group o f changes he describes i n conjunction w i t h the 'perfecting o f the individual' can best be accounted for, I think, n o t b y resorting to theories about w i l l power or volition but b y considering new circumstances w h i c h enhanced opportunities to combine learning by doing w i t h learning by reading. Similarly, I agree w i t h Panofsky o n the need to account for ' t h e 1 1 6

For further discussion, see pp. 564-6, volume 11 below. (The technical literature consulted by Leonardo is described by many authorities. See references given in chap. 6, volume n, n. 135 for relevant titles.) Panofsky's speculation that Vesalius may have had a look at Leonardo's anatomical drawings ;/' he paid a visit to Melzi's house seems to be the only way Leonardo could have posthumously contributed to the De Fabrica and the only basis for describing him as 'founding anatomical science.' Since Vesalius collaborated with a living artist from Titian's workshop, whatever he saw had a remote bearing on the actual drawings for his plates and Leonardo's contribution, if any, was very indirect. See Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' pp. 142, 147-51, n. 3 1 , and discussion on p. 269, below.

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new prestige o f the inventor, the military and civilian engineer and quite particularly the a r t i s t , '

217

but feel that his discussion leads us

unnecessarily far afield, toward metaphysical speculation about the relationship between 'ideas' and social 'reality.' B y examining specific changes introduced by the printing press, it m i g h t be possible to bypass such issues i n favor o f others that are more down-to-earth. The g r o w i n g prestige o f the inventor, for example, was probably connected w i t h new forms o f intellectual property rights that printing introduced. It is noteworthy t h a t ' authors' are coupled w i t h ' inventors' by article I o f the U n i t e d States Constitution, w h i c h guarantees to both an exclusive right, for a limited time, to their 'respective writings and discoveries,' i n order to promote 'the progress o f science and useful arts.' The first privilege granted to a printer and the first law pertaining to patenting both appeared i n the same place in the same decade: in Venice between 1469 and 1 4 7 4 .

2 1 8

Such laws transformed the anony-

mous artisan into the eponymous inventor, released individual initiative f r o m the secretive cocoon o f the guild, and rewarded ingenuity w i t h the luster o f fame as well as the chance to make a fortune. The mathematical practitioners.. .had no guild to protect them. Literate without being scholars, they had to make their own way, and, often moving from place to place in search of pupils, they felt a need to advertise their presence. And what better way than by inventing a new mathematical instrument? So the book fairs were flooded, from the 1530's on with holomctres, mecometres, pantometres, and even Henry-metres (not, however, to measure Henrys), all-purpose instruments of calculation in rich variety. Jacques Besson had led a career of this type, as a wandering teacher of mathematics, and one of his earlier books is devoted to the 'cosmolabe', a mathematical instrument to end all mathematical instruments and of incredible complexity.. . I t may be that the success of these books of instruments gave Besson the idea o f publishing his machines, t o o . 219

Before book fairs could be flooded or advertisements pay off, fairs for books had to be established and printed handbills produced. The emergence o f mathematical practitioners and instrument-makers as a distinctive occupational group is often associated w i t h new demands 3 1 7 2 1 8

Pano&ky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' p . 166. Frumkin, 'Early History of Patents' contains much relevant data but no explicit discussion of effects of printing on issues discussed. Other useful references arc offered by Lynn White, 'Jacopo Aconcio.' Problems associated with scribal inventions arc illuminated (again without explicit reference to communications techniques) in the late medieval case study offered by Rosen, 'The Invention of Eyeglasses,' and in the survey of ancient developments by Finley, 'Technical Innovation.' Keller, A Theatre of Machines, p. 3 .

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for greater precision made b y monarchs, bureaucrats and merchants during early-modern times. The output o f mathematical instruments, atlases, globes and theatres o f machines also hinged on the advent o f a new publicity apparatus w h i c h made i t possible t o profit f r o m disclosing, instead o f withholding, the tricks o f varied trades. The new prestige o f the inventor was thus related to his new role as eponymous author - a role that was assumed, i n part, because o f the practical need to advertise products and b r i n g trade t o shops. M a n y o f the technical manuals w h i c h were issued during the first century o f printing may be regarded as promotional literature. They assigned new dignity and w o r t h to the mechanical arts, and at the same time called the attention o f readers to special services and products w h i c h were for sale i n local shops. N o t all o f the new breed o f technicians were as peripatetic as the mathematical practitioners described above. Specific locations were sometimes given for the benefit o f readers w h o were close at hand. A n example is provided b y the English translator o f Simon Stevin's treatise o n decimals. Henry Lyte's booklet ' T h e A r t o f Tens or Decimall Arithmeticke' (London, 1619) invites the reader to 'repaire' to M r Griffin (his publisher) t o learn the author's address and, i t is hoped, hire h i m as a private tutor. Those w h o want to have a ruler 'made very well according to the A r t e o f Tens' as set d o w n i n the booklet are also advised to go t o ' M r Tomson dwelling i n Hosier Lane, w h o makes Geometricall Instruments.' Three birds: the i n terests o f publisher, author, and instrument-maker are thus neatly killed w i t h one stone. Another, more celebrated, example is the treatise by the instrument-maker Robert N o r m a n on the lodestone:' The N e w e Attractive.. .concerning the declyning o f the Needle' (London, 1581). The preface makes much o f Norman's fear o f publicity and reluctance to reveal his secret. I n order to ' g l o r i f y G o d ' and help his country, however, he manages t o overcome his hesitation, to the point o f i n cluding a notice that he resides i n Ratcliffe. 220

221

In view o f these examples, and others given later on, the strong contrast drawn by some authorities between the self-serving elitist a M

Cited by Sarton, "The First Explanation of Decimal Fractions and Measures,* pp. 180-90, See the long citation from Norman's work given by Zilsel, 'The Origins of William Gilbert's Scientific Method.* Several authorities note that the Parisian potter, Bernard Palissy, suggests that readers can get his address from his publisher and come for a free demonstration to his shop. See Rossi, Philosophy, Technology and the Arts, pp. 7 0 - 1 ; N. Z . Davis, 'Printing and the People,' p. 216. That Palissy may have hoped to attract potential purchasers by this offer is worth more consideration than is given in diverse accounts.

24I

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Latin-reading literati and a cooperative public-spirited artisanate does not seem to be sustained. The evidence suggests that both groups - like most human beings - were spurred by a mixture o f selfish and altruistic motives. Moreover, the output o f technical literature tapped the talents o f both groups. As a later discussion o f Agricola's De Re Metallica suggests, technology went to press w i t h the aid o f scholars and schoolmasters. Vernacular editions o f Euclid, Archimedes or Vitruvius also required collaboration w i t h Latin-reading l i t e r a t i . Numerous translations o f classical technical texts in turn raised the status o f builders, surveyors, draughtsmen, and engineers, by providing them w i t h a lustrous classical lineage. T o have some share in the fabled wisdom o f the ancients helped to elevate the practitioners o f diverse arts and crafts. 222

Once profits could be achieved by publicity and inventions spelled out in print, ambitious or ingenious artisans had new incentives both to master letters and to contribute to a growing literature themselves. As readers and authors, artisans and mechanics were viewed more favorably by élites. The muses themselves were eventually affected by the simple vernacular style which artisan-authors used. It was primarily as authorsas early beneficiaries o f the title page and the printed edition - that Palissy the potter, Paré the barber-surgeon, and many other sixteenthcentury guildsmen emerged f r o m obscurity to achieve eponymous fame. Like the learned writer they present themselves to the unknown buyers of their books in proud author portraits quite different from the humble donor picture characteristic of medieval manuscripts. Thus Miles de Norry, previously a modest reckon master in Lyon, gazes from his 1574 commercial arithmetic fitted out with a ruff and a Greek device... practicing apothecaries get into print.. .surgeons write on their art.. .Sailors publish accounts of their travels to the new world. Female writers also appeared... in noticeable numbers.. .Louise Labé, the rope-maker's daughter,... Nicole Estienne, printer's daughter and physician's w i f e . . .and the Midwife, Louise Bourgeois... .Bourgeois wrote on her art, believing herself the first woman to do so. Her wide practice, she claimed would show up the mistakes of Physicians and Surgeons, even of Master Galen himself... 22

1

Such authors were often less inclined than were university professors 2 3 2

2 : 3

Sec c r i t i q u e o f Zilscl's approach (pp. 558 ff.) and discussion o f A g r i c o l a (p. 545), v o l u m e 11 below. N. Z . D a v i s , ' P r i n t i n g and t h e People,' p p . 215-17. T h a t a m i d w i f e was sufficiently familiar w i t h Galen to criticize h i m (whether r i g h t l y or w r o n g l y ) indicates the services rendered b y vernacular translations o f ancient technical literature.

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to treat masters such as Galen w i t h reverence. For the most part, they had not gone through the schools and had not mastered Latin or the rules o f rhetoric; nor had they learned to see the w o r l d i n terms o f schemes inherited f r o m ancient philosophers. They set d o w n plainly and directly what they had seen and done i n the course o f long experience practicing their craft. I n this w a y urban craftsmen gained an entry into the Commonwealth o f Learning and w o n a hearing f r o m royal ministers and Latin-reading philosophers i n foreign lands. Francis Bacon knew o f Bernard Palissy, the French p o t t e r ; Sir W i l l i a m Cecil placed Albrecht Diirer i n the company o f Vitruvius and Alberti as an authority o n military fortifications. 224

225

Burckhardt connects the 'awakening o f personality' w i t h a new spirit o f independence and a new claim to shape one's o w n life - apart f r o m one's 'parents and ancestors.' He seems to ascribe this phenomenon also t o 'Italy alone.' The careers o f Palissy or Pare were not shaped b y Italian developments, however. N o r was i t o n Italian soil that U l r i c h v o n Hutten revealed a concern w i t h the problem o f selfeducation, a novel concern for a Teutonic k n i g h t . N e w forms o f self-help and self-awareness o w e more to the mid-century German invention than one is likely t o realize i f too much attention is concentrated o n quattrocento Italy. As numerous studies have documented, the sixteenth century saw a flood o f treatises come o f f the new presses which were aimed at encouraging diverse forms o f self-help and selfimprovement - ranging f r o m holding family prayers to singing madrigals and keeping accounts. Even a superficial observer o f sixteenthcentury literature cannot fail t o be impressed b y the 'avalanche' o f treatises w h i c h were issued to explain, b y a variety o f 'easy steps,' (often supplemented b y sharp-edged diagrams) just ' h o w t o ' draw a picture, compose a madrigal, m i x paints, bake clay, keep accounts, survey a field, handle all manner o f tools and instruments, w o r k mines, assay metals, move armies or obelisks, design buildings, bridges and machines. H o w actual practices may have been affected by all these 226

2 2 7

228

220

M

"

+ Rossi, Philosophy, s

1 1 6 1 1 7

1 1 8 2 1 9

Technology, pp. 8 - 9 .

Sec letter of 1559, cited by Lynn White, 'Jacopo Aconcio,' p. 430.

Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissances, 147, n. 1. Hajo Holbom, Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation,

p. 2.

Many examples are offered by Wright, Middle Class Culture, passim. This 'avalanche' is documented in many studies. In addition to Wright, sec e.g. Gille, Renaissance Engineers;

and Apprenticeship.'

Charlton, Education

in Renaissance England,

243

p. 298; Curtis, 'Education

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

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REORIENTED

' teach-yourself ' manuals is a complex question, as later discussion suggests. B u t i t can scarcely be doubted that the new genre extended new opportunities f o r would-be authors and would-be autodidacts alike. 230

I t was accompanied b y promotional literature which probably stimulated aspirations toward self-improvement even while being aimed simply at spurring sales. I f only they purchased works such as Thomas Morley's Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music, Elizabethan readers were assured, they could overcome their shameful ignorance and ineptitude when music books were brought out by their h o s t . I t is, o f course, possible that a natural ineptitude on the part o f many readers became more apparent, and that self-confidence was undermined the more such claims were put to the test. (The manipulation o f shame by commercial advertisers needs to be set beside the manipulation o f guilt b y indulgence sellers and confessors during the sixteenth century.) O n the other hand, the chance to master new skills w i t h o u t undergoing a formal apprenticeship or schooling also encouraged a new sense o f independence on the part o f many w h o became self-taught. Even though the new so-called 'silent i n s t r u c t o r s ' did no more than duplicate lessons already being taught i n classrooms and shops, they did cut the bonds o f subordination w h i c h kept pupils and apprentices under the tutelage o f a given master. 231

232

The opportunity to teach oneself affected learned élites as w e l l as artisanal groups - a point that warrants further emphasis when considering intellectual innovation i n diverse fields. Guillaume Budé" 'was one o f those rare beings,' writes Bolgar, ' w h o can instruct themselves primarily f r o m books w i t h a m i n i m u m o f outside help. "With writings o f Italian and German humanists at his elbow he could mount to the level they had attained and move b e y o n d . ' M u c h the same kind o f activity may be observed, later on, in the young Isaac N e w t o n , w h o 233

" ° The incfficacy of books and engravings compared to human operators for transmitting technical skills is brought out by CipoIIa, Before the Industrial Revolution, chap. 6. (See csp. relevant citation from Oakeshott, p. 176.) For further discussion of this issue, sec pp. 554 ff., volume 11 below. 1 ) 1

Morley, A Plain and Easy Introduction,

2 3 2

The term was used by Isaac Joubert, a professor of medicine at Montpellier, in his preface to

pp. 9-10.

his reissue of his father's edition of La Grande Chirurgie de M. Gui de Chauliac restituée par M. Laurent Joubert (1578) {Toumon, 1598), cited by Charles Sherrington, The Endeavour of

Jean Feme!, p. 111. Both Jouberts were ardent proponents of increasing the literacy of surgeons and making more technical literature available to them in vernacular form. See pp. 53 8-9, volume ir below. 2

"

Bolgar, Classical Heritage,

p. 309.

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took full advantage o f local book fairs and libraries. W i t h editions o f ancient and modern mathematicians at his elbow, he mounted t o the level attained by Descartes and then moved beyond during his ' m i r a c u lous* year. Newton was self-taught in mathematics, deriving his factual knowledge from the books he bought or borrowed with little or no outside h e l p . . . The transformation of a youth who knew no more mathematics than simple arithmetic and who could not read a treatise on astrology for want o f trigonometry into the profound creator of higher mathematics is marvelous to f o l l o w . . . a small notebook i n which Newton had begun to make a Hebrew-English dictionary lists the.. .Pythagorean theorem.. .Before long he is deep in the geometry combinations.. .This is 1664 but before long he has gone deeply into number theory and algebra a n d . . . mastered ' the arithmetical symbols of Oughtred' and the 'algebraical from Descartes.' 234

Acceptance o f diverse traditions, w h i c h had hitherto been transmitted b y personal interchange between masters and disciples, was probably modified when one no longer needed to sit at a master's feet before standing on one's o w n . The fact that young men could master an inherited body o f knowledge more efficiently b y reading for themselves than by listening to their elders was a significant, albeit neglected, stimulus to the quarrel between ancients and moderns. Similarly (as is later suggested) the transmission o f sacred traditions was also affected and the authority o f the priesthood weakened, once the laity had an opportunity to read God's words for themselves. 235

'The ultimate origins o f faith i n unaided human capacity remain mysterious,' writes Keith Thomas, i n a passage w h i c h attributes to the Lollards a new 'spirit o f sturdy self h e l p . ' Thomas goes on to note that although the urban occupations o f ' t h e carpenters, blacksmiths, cobblers and above all textile workers' w h o espoused the Lollard cause are often cited as an explanation; urban trades are not really any more compatible w i t h the n e w spirit than rural ones. Granted that all 'ultimate origins' tend t o be shrouded i n mystery, and that many puzzles about Lollardy are still unsolved, the increased visibility o f a 'spirit o f self-help' - during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 236

* J * I. B. Cohen, review of Whiteside ed. The Mathematical an autodidact, see Meyer, Leibniz

and the Seventeenth

Papers of Isaac Newton. Century Revolution,

On Leibniz as

pp. 8 5 - 6 . See also

discussion of Tycho Brahe's self-instruction pp. 596-7, 6 2 3 - 4 , volume 11 below. »'

See pp. 387ff., below.

2 3 6

Thomas, Religion

and the Decline

of Magic, pp. 6 6 3 - 4 .

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at any rate, - may become less mysterious when new

occupations

associated w i t h the printed book-trade are taken into account. Indeed some o f the central problems posed i n Thomas's seminal study w o u l d become easier to handle i f the effects o f printing received more attention. There is, for example, his puzzlement over the fact that the Reformation did not 'coincide w i t h any technological revolut i o n : the men o f the sixteenth century were as vulnerable i n the face o f environmental hazards as their medieval predecessors. Yet many were able to discard the apparatus o f the Church w i t h o u t devising a new magic i n its place.'

237

But the Reformation did coincide w i t h the early

phases o f a communications revolution - which provided new incentives to publicize trade secrets and which changed the character o f magic and the quality o f religious experience as w e l l .

2 3 8

The 'breath-

taking faith i n the potentialities o f human ingenuity' that Thomas sees being reflected i n early patent a p p l i c a t i o n

239

also becomes less puzzling

when one considers the new incentives and opportunities extended to inventors and instrument-makers by print. That a 'spirit o f practical self-help' was manifested i n the field o f medicine well before any real progress had been made i n prevention or c u r e ,

240

once again, seems

less anomalous when the output o f 'silent instructors' is given due weight.

241

A n excellent example o f h o w printing might encourage new kinds o f medical self-help, even while physicians were killing more patients than they cured, is offered by a study o f a seventeenth-century medical reformer w h o is also described as the 'father o f French j o u r n a l i s m ' : In 1642, he published 'a formulary for the use of malaeies ahsens, so simple that not only the country apothecary or surgeon or those who might have the least knowledge of illnesses and their forms but also simple peasant women and dieir children, provided that they can read will be able to indicate the condition o f the sick person, of his malady and of all the symptoms and circumstances so that we may treat him as methodically and as well as i f he were present.' The blue covered 60-page pamphlet sold for 5 sous and had a very complete index, its format and price indicating it was intended for 2 3 7

1 3 8

*

i 9

2 4 0

1 4 1

T h o m a s , Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 6 5 7 . Sec n e x t section o f this c h a p t e r : ' A r c a n a Disclosed.' T h o m a s , Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 662. T h o m a s , Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. (159. T h i s a n o m a l y is b y n o means self-evident. T h e v e r y failure o f c a r l y - n i o d c r n medicine to cope w i t h disease m i g h t be expected t o engender distrust o f t r a d i t i o n a l a u t h o r i t y , a n d a recourse to some f o r m o f self-help - w h e t h e r ' m a g i c a l ' o r ' p r a c t i c a l ' o r b o t h .

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a wide audience. It consisted o f diagrams o f the human body upon which the absent could mark the location o f the malady and extended lists of possible symptoms from which he could select those that applied. He then sent the filled out formulary to Renaudot's staff for evaluation. Such long distance diagnosis would force everyone to be more exact i n the recognition and discernment o f their maladies... W i t h his enthusiasm for chemical medicine Renaudot's clinic attracted a large number o f syphilitics... those with 'shameful' maladies [could].. .use the Bureau's services without appearing in person. 242

T o be sure, Théophraste Renaudot was an exceptional figure among his compatriots, and his diverse pioneering experiments occurred almost t w o hundred years after Gutenberg. B u t even i f attention is confined t o an earlier period and focused o n a more ' c o m m o n , ordinary, garden-variety' o f printed products, one can scarcely avoid noting that self-reliance was being encouraged i n new ways. Sixteenthcentury Europe 'was deluged w i t h small convenient school manuals' where traditional subjects were 'reduced to rules so simple that any child, literally, could learn t h e m - any child, that is, w h o could read. B u t book markets were also deluged w i t h A B C books and primers which made i t feasible to teach oneself reading and w r i t i n g , so that a new element o f self-selection entered even into acquisition o f literacy. The autodidact like the printer himself was a new k i n d o f self-made man - one w h o was necessarily set apart f r o m his parents and ancestors. 2 4 3

As a N o r t h e r n painter and draughtsman, Albrecht Dürer was p u r suing the sort o f career one m i g h t expect a Nuremberg goldsmith's son to pursue. As the author o f widely circulated treatises o n human proportions, geometry and fortifications, however, he broke the conventional m o l d . I n this latter guise he came to the attention o f foreign noblemen. H e was also placed by his fellow citizens i n a select circle o f Nuremberg savants - a circle w h i c h included the most distinguished mathematicians and astronomers o f the d a y . T h e prefaces he wrote 244

1 4 1

1 4 4

Solomon, Public Welfare, pp. 175-6.

2

« Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method, p. 73.

Diirer's reputation as a Nuremberg savant, associated with Regiomontanus' successors such as Schöner and Werner, is brought out in a pertinent essay by Margolin, ' L a Réalité Sociale.' (See esp. 215-18.) The actual relationship between Dürer and Regiomontanus' successors is documented by Rose, The Italian

Renaissance of Mathematics,

pp. 108; I l 6 n . ;

135. Rose

refers to a pertinent monograph by de Haas, Albrecht Diirer's Engraving, suggesting a possible link between Diirer's engraving of 'Melancholia I ' and the first astronomer-printer. For further discussion of Regiomontanus and later contributions to the Copemican revolution made by Nuremberg printers, see pp. 586-8, volume 11 below.

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to his much translated treatises are n o w singled out as anticipating a later ' Baconian' vision o f scientific enterprise as an organized cooperative and cumulative disclosure o f nature's secrets f o r the benefit o f mankind. As artisan-author, as autodidact and as print-maker, the Nuremberg master w i t h the initials ' A . D . ' departed f r o m the late medieval guildsman's accustomed role. 245

That Diirer's 'Weltanschauung' was different f r o m that o f earlier Nuremberg guildsmen is recognized by many authorities, w h o often attribute the difference to Italianate influences or more vaguely to the 'spirit o f the Renaissance.' A recent essay has attempted to be more specific i n assessing the varying factors which shaped this particular 'new man.' Civic loyalties, class structure, military technology, the peasant rebellion, Erasmian humanism, Lutheran Protestantism and other contemporary developments are discussed i n an effort to portray the social forces w h i c h shaped Diirer's life and w o r k . N o t h i n g is said o f the occupational culture o f early printers which was, i n m y view, a most significant new element both i n late fifteenth-century Nuremberg and i n the life and w o r k o f Albrecht Dürer, where i t played an absolutely fundamental r o l e . After all, Dürer was not merely a goldsmith's son w h o became a great print-maker. He was also the godson o f A n t o n Koberger, the greatest entrepreneur o f the printed book-trade i n the fifteenth century. Diirer's wife was uneasy about the company her husband kept and objected to his spending time away f r o m his studio w i t h patrician humanists like W i l l i b a l d Pirckheimer. She took the traditional view. A man w h o earned an honest living w o r k i n g w i t h his hands should not waste time discussing books and antiquities and d i d not belong w i t h gentlemen and scholars. Dürer, however, had frequented printers' workshops since his early boyhood and i f for no other reason, held different views than his wife. In these workshops, scholars did mingle w i t h artisans. Often the versatile master printer combined both roles. 2 4 6

247

248

*+s Zihel, 'The Genesis,' pp. 334-5. 1 4 6 Sec Margolin, 'La Rcalitc Sociale,' passim. For further discussion of other works which overlook the novelty of print shops when considering the social ambiance of fifteenth-century Nuremberg, see below, pp. 403-5. 1 4 7 For interesting contrast drawn by George Sarton between Diirer's affinity for print and Leonardo's antipathy to it, sec pp. 564-6, volume 11, below. How much Diirer's 'singular fame' owed to the power of the press is noted by Goldschmidt, The Printed Book, pp. 55-6. The extent to which his 'earliest prints' exercised an 'overwhelming influence' upon Italian engravers, opening a new chapter in Italian print-making shortly before 1500 is brought out by Obcrhuber, introduction to Early Italian Engravings,

245

p. xx.

2 4 8

Panofsky, Dürer 1, 7 - 8 .

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'The Renaissance bridged the gap w h i c h had separated the scholar and thinker f r o m the practitioner.' O f course, the 'Renaissance' is too much o f an abstraction to have done this. Like others w h o discuss the issue, Panofsky really means that the gap was bridged during the Renaissance and, like others also, he has certain specific factors i n m i n d . Whereas others focus on certain socio-economic factors, he stresses the versatility displayed b y quattrocento artists: The 'demolition o f barriers between manual and intellectual labor was first achieved by the artists (who tend to be neglected b y Zilsel and S t r o n g ) . ' Actually, many diverse groups - medical and musical as w e l l as architectural sought to combine handwork w i t h brainwork at different times. I n my view, the permanent achievement o f this combination, however, could not come until after printing. W h e n i t did come, i t resulted i n occupational mutations w h i c h affected anatomy no less than a r t . 249

250

2 5 1

In seeking to explain new interactions between theory and practice, schoolman and arrisan, few authorities even mention the advent o f printing. Yet here was an invention w h i c h made books more accessible to artisans and practical manuals more accessible to scholars; w h i c h encouraged artists and engineers to publish theoretical treatises and rewarded schoolmasters for translating technical texts. Before the Renaissance, says Panofsky, the absence o f interaction between manual and intellectual methods.. .had prevented the admirable inventions o f medieval engineers and craftsmen from being noted by what were then called the natural philosophers a n d . . . conversely had prevented the equally admirable deductions o f logicians and mathematicians from being tested by experiment. 252

The printing press was one invention that d i d not escape the attention of natural philosophers. Although i t came f r o m Vulcan's workshop and was capable o f provoking snobbish disdain i t served grammarians M 9 1 5 0 2 i I

2 5 1

Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' pp. 135-6. Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' p. 136, n. 13. The demolition of barriers which divided choirmasters and instrumentalists from scholarly musicologists is discussed by Lowinsky, 'Music of the Renaissance as Viewed by Renaissance Musicians'; 'Music in the Culture of the Renaissance.' By considering the effects of printing - not only of scores but also of books about music - 1 think many of the issues Lowinsky discusses could be illuminated. Santillana, 'The Role of Art,' p. 4 8 suggests that architecture played a key role in the integration of brainwork with handwork. The claims of Vesalius and Femel show that medical faculties were equally insistent on the Vitruvian theme. For Jean Femel medicine was an art which encompassed all others: 'from the bared bowels of the earth to the wheeling of heavens.' See Sherrington, The Endeavour of Jean Femel, pp. 3-22. Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,* p. 137.

249

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and philosophers no less than artisans and engineers. I t was also associated w i t h Minerva, goddess o f wisdom and was esteemed by literati and churchmen as a 'divine a r t . ' 2 5 3

Bacchus and Ceres were made divinities for having taught humanity the use of wine and bread but Gutenberg's invention is of a higher and diviner order, for it furnishes characters by the aid of which all that is said or thought can be written, translated and preserved to the memory o f posterity. 254

The new mode o f book production not only brought the w o r k o f philosophers to the attention o f craftsmen and vice versa. I t also brought bookworms and mechanics together in person as collaborators w i t h i n the same workshops, i n the figure o f the scholar-printer, i t produced a 'new m a n ' w h o was adept i n handling machines and marketing p r o ducts even while editing texts, founding learned societies, p r o m o t i n g artists and authors, advancing new forms o f data collection and diverse branches o f erudite disciplines. The sheer variety o f activities, both i n tellectual and practical, sponsored b y the more celebrated firms o f the sixteenth century is breathtaking. Greek and Latin classics, law books, herbals, Bible translations, anatomy texts, arithmetic books, beautifully illustrated volumes o f verse - all these, issued f r o m one print shop, pointed to fertile encounters o f diverse kinds. Contemporary tributes to master printers and their products must be taken i n a sceptical spirit - just as one takes the overblown claims made b y blurb writers and publicists today. B u t hyperbole docs not seem misplaced when applied to the number and variety o f interchanges fostered b y the master printers o f Venice, L y o n , Basel, Paris, Frankfurt, Antwerp and other major centers o f the sixteenth-century t r a d e . 255

1 S J

As is noted above p. 48 the repetition in many secondary works of remarks made by one manuscript book dealer who had a clear vested interest in denigrating printed books has led to the false impression that printed books were disdained as inferior mass-produced objects by Renaissance patricians. 'Aristocrats opposed printing as a mechanical vulgarization and feared it would lower the value of their mss. libraries' says Durant in The Reformation, p. 159. Actually, most aristocratic book collectors sought printed books as eagerly as they did mss. and often valued them more highly than mss. Buhler, Fifteenth Century Book, p. 62. On Minerva as 'the Mother of Printing and Goddess of Knowledge' sec discussion ofjourneymen's festival in sixteenth-century Lyon and plate no. 1 in N. Z. Davis,' Strikes and Salvation in Lyon," p. 5. On the later use of Minerva both as patron of printing and guardian of a secret wisdom see p. 143, above.

zs4 Letter from Guillaumc Fichct to Robert Gaguin attached to gift copy of the second book to be printed on the first Paris press, which was set up in the Sorbonnc 1470-2: Gasparint Orthographia (a treatise on orthography by Gasparini Barzizi of Bergamo) cited in Updike, Printing z

Types 1, 84-

ss For pertinent data, sec Fcbvre and Martin, VApparition,

250

chap. 5, section in.

A CLASSICAL

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REORIENTED

It is, indeed, surprising that the figure o f the scholar-printer does not loom larger i n discussion o f the 'formation o f groups and friendships conducive to cross-fertilization between all kinds o f people.. . ' In his hands the w o r k o f editing, translating and textual analysis was removed f r o m cloistered precincts, such as monastic scriptoria, houses o f study, college chambers and walled patrician villas. Instead texts were handled i n a bustling commercial establishment where robed scholars and merchants w o r k e d alongside craftsmen and mechanics. T h e masterprinter's activities combined forms o f labor, w h i c h had been divided before and w o u l d be divided again, o n a different basis, later on. His products introduced new interactions between theory and practice, abstract brainwork and sensory experience, systematic logic and careful observation. 2 5 6

Recognition o f the need to combine empirical and theoretical k n o w ledge went back to the medical literature as well as the architectural literature o f a n t i q u i t y . I n the middle ages, there were enlightened surgeons such as G u i de Chauliac w h o insisted that book learning was needed for practitioners o f his demanding craft. B u t the conditions o f scribal culture w o r k e d against such r e f o r m e r s . They supported a continuation o f ancient quarrels between 'head and h a n d . ' The celebrated invective o f Petrarch and o f his successors, such as Salutati, perpetuated this state o f affairs: 257

258

2 5 9

Carry out your trade, mechanic, i f you can. Heal bodies, i f you can. I f you can't, murder; and take the salary for your crimes.. .But how can you dare.. .relegate rhetoric to a place inferior to medicine? How can you make the mistress inferior to the servant, a liberal art to a mechanical one? «6 Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' p. 138. See also very similar discussion of the appearance of new 'lay circles,' by Baron, 'Toward a More Positive Evaluation," p. 42. 2 " That a combination of theoretical with empirical knowledge was urged in ancient Roman treatises, notably by Cornelius Celsus (whose De Medkina was published in Milan in 1481) is brought out by Kemp, 'II Concetto deU'Anima,' see esp. pp. 116; 130. " 8 See references given in chap. 6, n. 46 and 47, volume n below. *s» Practical inventions were derogated as 'vile, low, mercenary' and deemed unworthy of being recorded in antiquity, according to Frurakin, 'Early History of Patents,* p. 47. According to Finley, 'Technical Innovation in the Ancient World,* pp. 3 3 - 4 : 'Only the tongue was inspired by the Gods, never the hand.' The use of slave labor for manual work (including that of scribe and copyist) may have contributed to this ancient contempt, while the medieval church by encouraging monks to engage in manual labor (including scribal work) may have reduced it. O n the twelfth-century scheme of seven 'mechanical arts' which Hugh of Saint Victor devised as a counterpart to the seven liberal arts and other pertinent references, see Kristellcr, 'The Modern System of the Arts,' p. 175; Chenu, Nature Man and Society, p. 4 3 . The affirmative view of Western Christendom toward the mechanical arts is brought out by Lynn White, 'The Iconology.'

251

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It is your business to look after bodies. Leave the care and education o f the mind to genuine philosophers and orators. 260

The long-lived division between the ' liberal' arts practiced by freemen and the 'mechanical' b y slaves was thus carried over into early humanist attacks on the practitioners o f the medical arts. The situation confronting artists during the quattrocento was, o f course, quite different f r o m that o f the medical faculties w h o provoked Petrarchan wrath. There were, to be sure, guilds w h i c h linked painters w i t h apothecaries; both, after all, used mortar and pestle as tools. Similarly stone carvers and surgeons shared in common certain technical concerns. Nevertheless, i n their quarrels w i t h graduate faculties o f law and medicine, the humanists regarded artists not as foes but as natural allies. Thanks to unusual municipal schools moreover, the young apprentice i n architecture, painting or sculpture was also well ahead o f his N o r t h e r n counterparts i n his mastery o f the written word. Some quattrocento Tuscan artists were familiar w i t h pertinent technical literature - not only on h o w to m i x paints but also on geometry and optics. A few masters, such as Piero della Francesca, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Leon Battista Alberti, authored significant treatises themselves. B u t these treatises were designed for the edification o f a given prince or p a t r o n , and not for would-be artists or readers-at-large. Indeed, vernacular treatises on perspective and proportion were unavailable i n artists' ateliers, even i n quattrocento Florence-just as most technical texts lacked useful visual aids until after the advent o f printing. O n l y after then w o u l d the gap between manual and mental labor be permanently closed and new institutions be created to implement professional training o f new kinds. 2 6 1

262

Here, as elsewhere, early printers, w h o had to be proficient in mechanics and i n book learning, d i d much to point the way. I n the printing trades particularly, literacy was required for journeymen w h o hoped to become their o w n masters. As the pace o f publication 2 6 0

2 6 1

2 6 1

Petrarch's Invectiva in Medicum Quendam is cited and discussed by Eugcnio Garin, Italian Humanism, p. 24. See also pp. 35 ff. for references to other aspects of'La disputi dellcarti' and to Garin's own monograph on this topic. O f course there is also counter-evidence showing that several humanists were less biased against manual labor and mechanical arts than this passage suggests. See Keller, 'A Renaissance Humanist,' esp. p. 345. For pertinent data (in addition to Baxandall, cited above) sec Zervas, 'The Trattato dell'Abbaco.' Zervas notes the diifcrencc between the Italian situation she describes and Shelby's articles on medieval master masons in Northern Europe. See chap. 6, n. 81 and n. 88, volume 11 below for comment on treatises by Piero and Alberti.

252

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quickened, the same requirement pressed harder o n certain other trades and crafts as w e l l . I n some instances an entire craft was transformed; in others, a split occurred. Wherever i t took hold, the new combination o f book learning w i t h manual labor resulted i n some sort o f occupational mutation. Academies were founded, learned journals published, professional standards fixed and practitioners, w h o still w o r k e d w i t h their hands, began to mingle w i t h other literate élites. T h e changed status o f artists i n sixteenth-century Italy provides a celebrated case: The three visual arts, painting, sculpture and architecture were... clearly separated from the crafts w i t h which they had been associated...The term Arti del disegno upon which 'Beaux Arts' was probably based, was coined by Vasari who used i t as a guiding concept for his famous collection o f biographies.. . i n 1563, i n Florence, again under the personal influence o f Vasari, painters, sculptors and architects cut their previous connections w i t h craftsmen's guilds and formed an Academy o f Art (Accademia del Disegno) . . .that served as a model for later, similar institutions.. .The Art Academies followed the same pattern of the literary Academies that had been in existence for some rime and they replaced the old workshop tradition with a regular kind o f instruction that included such scientific subjects as geometry and anatomy. 263

Insofar as a new combination o f manual and mental labor resulted, the shift f r o m artisan t o artist thus appears to be similar to other occupational m u t a t i o n s . O f course, each case requires separate analysis. The impact o f print affected musicians i n one w a y , medical practitioners i n another. Even w i t h regard to medicine, the fate o f apothecaries differed f r o m that o f surgeons while w i t h i n the latter group military surgeons formed a special category o f their o w n . Furthermore different regions had diverse professional and academic traditions. N o two university faculties responded to the challenge presented b y new claims i n the same way. T h e reactions o f rulers and o f patrons also were far f r o m uniform. T o explain h o w craftsmen w h o wielded chisel or paint brush were transformed into practitioners o f the 'fine arts,' we must deal w i t h a set o f special problems w h i c h are exceedingly complex. I n discussing all such cases, however, i t is helpful to keep the 264

Kristeller, 'Modern System of the Arts,' p. 182. See also Jack, 'The Accademia del Disegno,' which is based on author's unpublished doctoral dissertation on same topic. (Chicago 1972.) l 6 * On the shift from the medieval master mason to the Renaissance architect, see Shelby, 'The Geometrical Knowledge'; 'The Education of Medieval English Master Masons.' How musicians were affected by the bridging of the gap between instrumentalists and teachers of the quadrivium is discussed by Lewinsky in the articles noted above, n. 2 5 1 . 263

253

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advent o f printing i n m i n d . W h e n attempting t o account f o r the changed role o f artists during the Renaissance, i t is not enough to point to humanist antagonism t o graduate faculties or to the recovery o f texts showing that artists were esteemed i n antiquity or t o parvenu patrons w h o invested i n beautiful objects t o satisfy various needs. The position o f the artist and the nature o f his products were fundamentally changed b y the shift f r o m script to print. Printing diminished reliance o n memory aids and hence altered significant social functions performed by image-makers i n the past. A t the same time i t enabled artists ' t o publish their o w n designs for profit and i n the way they wished their inventions to be seen.* The artist thus acquired a share i n the new prestige assigned to eponymous artisan-engineers, authors, and i n v e n t o r s . He 265

266

was no longer a purveyor o f goods which every one needed and which could be ordered like any other material goods, but an individual facing a public.. .by the beginning of the sixteenth century, it became an accepted idea that the educated layman could give a useful opinion on the arts and there was even a small outcrop of treatises on the arts written by laymen... The artist was now faced with a wide p u b l i c . . . and in this spirit of competition he began to cany out works other than those directly commissioned . . . 2 6 7

A t the same time, new links between beaux arts and belles lettres were forged. A continuous interchange between book-reading painters and image-viewing literati was initiated - one that is still going on to this day. Printed publicity, skillfully exploited by new academies, expanded markets - not only for art works, but also for books about artists and their w o r k s . Critics and dealers, collectors and connoisseurs, aesthetes and middlemen o f all kinds found immortality o f sorts by praising, 'discovering' or patronizing new 'immortals.' A n ever more elaborate literature o f explication helped to transform products turned out i n workshops into cult objects guarded in museums. Beginning w i t h quattrocento eulogies o f Giotto, precedents were noted 268

2 6 9

l 6 i

1 6 6

Oberhuber, introduction. Early Italian Engravings,

Ut Pictura Poesis, p. 17 and appendix 2, p. 70. 1 6 8

2 6 9

p. xv.

For use of term 'inventio' in classical rhetoric and how it was transposed to the craft of the painter by Renaissance theorists even before the advent of printing, see Rensselaer W . Lee, 2 6 7

Blunt, Artistic

Theory in Italy, p. 56.

How cinquecento artists were already reacting to the 'gadfly of criticism* is described by Gombrich, 'The Leaven of Criticism.' See also pertinent data in Blunt, Artistic Theory in Italy, chap. vr. Academic publicity is well demonstrated by Tiie Divine Michelangelo, The Florentine Academy's

Homage on his death in 1564.

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and landmarks recorded, so that imitation and innovation became more deliberate. Typographical f i x i t y affected the w a y images were shaped, partly by changing the way they could be collected, catalogued and reproduced. B y encouraging a recurrent recycling o f identical motifs, the duplicative powers o f print also placed an increasingly high p r e m i u m on the development o f new visual vocabularies. Images initially designed to be placed on walls or on parchment were duplicated i n woodblocks and engravings, purveyed b y print dealers, reworked b y cabinet-makers, glaziers, potters and tapestry weavers, taken up b y a new generation o f artists as elements i n large-scale compositions, only to be copied again b y print-makers and redistributed for the benefit o f craftsmen all over a g a i n . I n this w a y visual cliches were created w h i c h later generations had to manipulate self-consciously or attempt, w i t h i n creasing desperation, to evade. ' A n immense new variety o f types and themes' was stimulated, but the creativity o f one generation proved all the more burdensome to the next. Thus the move f r o m craftsman to creative artist was not as liberating i n the long r u n as i t seemed to be at first. A l o n g w i t h other culture-heroes such as composers, playwrights or poets, artists were raised to the rank o f ' i m m o r t a l s ' b y the preservative powers o f print; as aspirants to this elevated position, they were caught up i n an ever more frantic pursuit o f novelty and threatened b y an ever more oppressive 'burden o f the past.' 270

271

T o be sure, several centuries had to elapse before such cumulative effects became apparent and a 'tradition o f the n e w ' was fully launched. Other changes, however, came more immediately. After Alberti had counselled painters to read the rhetorici, there came printers w h o made it easier to implement this advice, followed b y critics w h o w o u l d n o t let i t be ignored. The canons governing literary composition and the time-honored rules o f rhetoric anchored pictorial design to poetic 3 7 0

1 7 1

For a striking example of sixteenth-century transfers of printed book illustrations to enamels, ceramics, windows, dressers, cabinets, and 'objets d'art' see illustrated article by Thirion, 'Bernard Salomon.* Note how one of Salomon's designs was, in turn, drawn from one of Marcantonio Raimondi's engravings of Raphael's composition (p. 6 5 , n. 22). A shift from the output of a few master themes and archetypical visual forms to a torrential outpouring of myriad diverse themes and forms is noted by Kubler, The Shape of Time, p. 2 9 . Kubler locates this shift roughly around A . D . 1400 but also notes that 'the torrent of new forms has been rising ever since the fifteenth century' a development I would attribute to typographical fixity. Kubler's stimulating study makes no mention of the shift from script to print, but does contain relevant speculations about such issues as 'prime objects and replications,' 'invention and variation,' and 'aesthetic fatigue.'

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construction. Parallels between painting and poetry, drawn f r o m the ancient sayings o f Horace and Simonides, began to appear w i t h i n creasing frequency i n treatises on painting f r o m the sixteenth century on. T o produce a major 'history painting' became the equivalent o f composing an epic poem. The 'learned painter' was coupled w i t h the 'learned poet' and assigned an ever more ambitious program o f research. I t demanded no less o f the painter than is furnished today by the staff o f experts w h o are hired to check out authentic costumes and furnishings, buildings and grounds, flora and fauna, for films dealing w i t h historical themes. Albert! thought the painter should glean enough f r o m his reading to talk intelligently w i t h the learned men o f his day and select subjects o f universal interest. Later critics required that he 'be learned not only in sacred and profane literature, but also in geography, climatology, geology, theology, and the manners and customs o f various c o u n t r i e s . . . ' As Lee points out, the learned painter represented an almost unattainable ideal - so much time spent i n the library w o u l d leave little for the workshop. Still the theory does suggest h o w increased book production extended the mission assigned the artist, even while enhancing Ins powers to reach toward new goals. 2 7 2

273

M u c h as the collaboration o f artist w i t h anatomist contributed to the so-called 'scientific revolution,' so too did the coupling o f artist w i t h antiquarian contribute to the so-called 'historical revolution.' Detection o f anachronism and o f stylistic change expanded beyond the philological concerns o f Latinists such as Lorenzo Valla to encompass all the objects that were entailed i n precise visual reconstruction o f past events. The prudent painter should know how to paint what is appropriate to the individual, the time and the place.. .so that he does not represent Aeneas as coming to Italy in the time of the Emperor Justinian, or the battles of the Carthaginians in the presence of Pontius Pilate... Is it not an error to paint Saint Jerome with a red hat like the one cardinals wear today? He was indeed a cardinal b u t . . . i t was Pope Innocent IV, more than seven hundred years later, who gave cardinals their red hats and red 2

a

" Confusion between the precepts drawn from Simonides ('painting is speechless poetry and poetry is speaking painting') and from Horace ('a poem is like a picture') is discussed and skillfully analyzed by Trimpi, 'The Meaning of.. .Ut Pictura Poesis,' pp. 31-4. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought 11,182, notes that the parallel 'appeared prominently for the first time' in sixteenth-century treatises and retained 'its appeal down to the eighteenth.' "

R. W . Lee,

Ut Pictura Poesis, pp. 4 0 - 1 .

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gowns... All this proceeds from the ignorance o f painters. I f they were educated they would not make such elementary and obvious mistakes. 274

failure to portray a given historical event i n accurate detail was thus scored as an error u n w o r t h y o f the 'learned painter.' The effort to spot errors helped to propel antiquarian research and contributed to the unscrambling o f historical data. The new pedantic insistence o n 'correct* presentation o f costumes and setting entailed a more literal, timebound interpretation o f episodes which hitherto had been presented i n more timeless context. T h e demand for fuller visual information thus encompassed mythical figures such as Aeneas as w e l l as Church fathers such as Saint Jerome. N o t all episodes lent themselves easily to this new demand. T o envisage i n convincing graphic detail the building and provisioning o f Noah's ark, for example, posed special problems. Diagrams o f the ark had been drawn b y medieval scholars; H u g h o f Saint V i c t o r and Nicholas o f Lyra had suggested possible plans and elevations; the possible size o f a Hebrew cubit had been learnedly discussed. B u t the visual imagination o f medieval schoolmen was more flexible than that o f sixteenth-century pedants w h o were accustomed to envisaging creatures rendered i n proper scale according to central perspective devices. "When attempting to cope w i t h the logistics involved i n Noah's ark, the new insistence o n 'correct presentation' was unhelpful, and may have encouraged speculation whether scripture should be taken literally after a l l . 275

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* * • Excerpt from G. A. Gilio da Fabriano, The Errors of Painting (1564) cited by Burke, Sense of the Past, p. 28. The extent to which Poussin in the following century took pains to avoid such errors is underlined by Burke in his comment on this excerpt. 2 ™ Strachan, Early Bible Illustration, p. 23, notes how sectional drawings of Noah's ark done by Paul of Burgos, commenting on Nicholas of Lyra's work, appeared in early printed editions of Lyra's Postillae turned out by Kobcrger and others beginning in 1481. Victorine manuscript diagrams are discussed on p. 17. Fig. 50 offers a small woodcut produced in Venice for a Czech Bible of 1506 where the absence of natural proportions is striking - Noah and his family standing with their heads level with the ark. 2 7 6 Medieval glosses on the cubit and its allegorical religious significance are discussed by Milburn, 'The "People's" Bible,' pp. 294-6. « 7 Problems posed by these logistics crop up in Sebastian Casccllio's mid-sixteenth century biblical annotations (Basil Hall, 'Biblical Scholarship', p. 83) and serve as ammunition against scholasticism and literalism in the hands of later freethinkers and philosophes. The diverse problems (Would extra sheep be needed to nourish carnivores? How much space was needed for food supplies and equipment for cleaning out stables?) and the ingenious solutions proposed are summarized in Abbé Mallet's article on Noah's Ark in the Grande Encyclopédie. The straight-faced presentation has a comical effect on modern readers and doubtless was intended to arouse scepticism among readers by the editors. The author, however, seems to have been a conservative theologian and oblivious to the effect his summary produced. Sec

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It is also w o r t h noting that heightened critical insistence on 'learned' painters went hand i n hand w i t h the careless output o f ignorant printmakers. A pedantic concern w i t h appropriate context on the part o f sixteenth-century literati may be partly explained by the numerous blunders committed by early printers and by the notoriously inappropriate uses to w h i c h many early woodcuts and engravings were put. As we have already seen, errors in captioning, reversed images, repeated use o f identical blocks, made many early printed illustrations seem more like visual hindrances than like visual a i d s . Crude woodcuts, contained in texts which ranged f r o m Bibles to botany books, often fell short o f faithfully duplicating the handwork o f medieval scribes. Ironically, the contempt o f sixteenth-century cognoscenti for the barbarous ignorance o f early times may have owed something to the clumsy handling o f the new m e d i u m ; a garbled and inferior woodcut could be, all too easily, mistaken for a true artifact o f the benighted 'dark a g e . ' Whether they served as visual hindrances or furnished visual aids i t does seem clear, at all events, that the new forms o f book illustration did not simply perpetuate earlier scribal conventions or leave them unperturbed. 278

279

In this regard there is need to qualify the view, expressed by several authorities, that a reunion o f pictorial and textual traditions characterized high Renaissance c u l t u r e . In the field o f book illustration, at least, what happened in the late fifteenth century resembled a divorce rather more than a reunion. W h e n the graceful lines that linked text to marginal decoration were severed, pictures and words were disconnected. The former even while being reproduced were removed from their initial context and became more liable to being used indiscriminately. Relationships between text and illustration, verbal description and image were subject to complex transpositions and disruptions. 280

Calligraphy had been intertwined w i t h manuscript illustrations. Even where many hands were at w o r k , rubricators and illuminators

1 7 5

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Rex, 'Arche de Noé and Other Religious Articles by Abbé Mallet.' Fig. i facing p. 340 in this article shows a plate from a 1777 Supplement to the Encyclopédie illustrating the a r k - a testament to l'esprit géométrique, it depicts a vast structure which appears quite incapable of 1 , 8 floating. See discussion p. 108, above. McLuhan's comment in Gutenberg Galaxy, that Renaissance men saw 'more of the Middle Ages' than medieval men ever did, needs to be qualified by this consideration. Even though medieval texts 'became more portable and easier to read' after printing, the woodcut also conveyed a somewhat different, often distorted view, of what the illuminator had drawn. Both Sczncc, Survival, p. 213 and Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 100, stress the theme.

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usually worked over the same texts as did copyists and scribes. B u t printed illustrations drew o n the talents o f goldsmiths, woodcarvers and a r m o r e r s . Such workers did not necessarily have their hands on the pages o f texts at all; nor were they always informed about the destination o f their products. A middleman - the print publisher frequently intervened. T h e frugal custom, already discussed, o f reusing a small assortment o f blocks and plates to illustrate a wide variety o f textual passages also helped to set picture and words at odds w i t h each other. Sacred images borrowed f r o m manuscript books o f hours were oddly juxtaposed w i t h news o f battles and royal entries i n sixteenth-century broadsides and gazettes. A t least i t seems unlikely that God the Father supporting Christ on the Cross was deliberately chosen to illustrate the E n t r y o f Margaret o f Flanders i n Cambrai, 1 5 2 8 . Other even more 'ludicrous' effects resulted when literal-minded craftsmen w h o were unfamiliar w i t h scribal convention tried to render the visual equivalents o f certain poetical phrases o r cut the w r o n g inscription under the image o n the block. Certain encounters between prosaic print and poetical text had special comical implications - much as i f Sancho Panza had been called o n to illustrate D o n Quixote's favorite tales o f chivalry. There is one engraving, w h i c h may have inspired Sir Philip Sidney, where the juxtaposition o f Breughel's peasant girl w i t h Virgil's pastoral verse reminds one o f B o t t o m blundering into Oberon's r e a l m . T h e servant w i t h the pig's snout and padlocked m o u t h w h o was used to point up a moral, and the use o f Leda and the swan to decorate the Epistle to the Hebrews, are other examples o f incongruous imagery w h i c h arrests the attention o f modern scholars. 281

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Ï B I Usually but not always. In fifteenth-century Utrecht, divisions of labor were carried so far that texts and miniatures were separately produced and copies of miniatures were often subject to being sold for export separately. Délaisse, A Century of Dutch Manuscript Illumination, pp. 7 0 - 1 . As Délaissé notes, however, the modus operandi of these Dutch miniaturists bears less resemblance to the usual procedures of ms. illustrators than to those of painters. Guidance concerning the appropriate images to be placed in medieval academic texts was supplied by a master who indicated what should be shown by a marginal comment and sometimes even sketched a preliminary draft, according to Dcstrez, L a 'Pecia', pp. 38-9. 2 i z î 8 + ï 8 s

1 8 6

1 8 3 Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication, p. 24. See chap. 2, n. 132 above. Trénard, 'La Presse Française,' pp. 3 2 - 3 . A 'glaringly inappropriate' quotation from Virgil's Eighth Eclogue, appended by either publisher, engraver, or artist himself, to an engraved reproduction of Breughel's picture of 'The Ugly Bride' (a Flemish folk motif) furnished Sir Philip Sidney with the inspiration for a comical character in his Arcadia, according to McPherson, 'A Possible Origin.' The literalism of woodcuts and the case of the servant is discussed by Saxl, 'A Spiritual Encyclopedia,' pp. 100-1, n. 3. The so-called 'notorious Leda Bible' of 1572 is mentioned by Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, p. 158 to show the careless use of the wrong woodcut.

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A l l such evidence o f incongruity, however, should be approached w i t h caution. Traps lie in wait for the unwary; modern scholars may on occasion be cast as comical blunderers themselves. Ovid's tale o f Leda, for example, had long been imbued w i t h Christian significance by medieval allegory. As we have learned f r o m scholars at the W a r b u r g Institute, pagan tales were scarcely stripped o f religious associations during the Renaissance:' Renaissance humanists contemplated A m m a n nati's "Leda and the S w a n " (based on a Michelangelo design) not as the portrayal o f an event but as a symbol o f the power o f love to free the soul and to unite i t w i t h Deity.' The 'Leda Bible' thus may p r o vide evidence o f refined discrimination rather than carelessness. (One wonders when and h o w it became 'notorious'?) Similarly the j u x t a position o f Virgilian Eclogue w i t h Flemish genre scene, which possibly inspired Sir Philip Sidney, may w e l l have been an intentional sophisticated w i t t i c i s m rather than an accidental blunder. 2 8 7

2 8 8

Such problems make sixteenth-century iconography peculiarly baffling. One can rarely be certain whether a subtle allusion was intended or a simple mistake was made. For any given image, there is no sure way o f allocating responsibility; too many possible agents - artists, engravers, caption writers, editors, print dealers, publishers - were at w o r k . Even the ingenuity o f modern scholars may lead to obfuscation; i n seeking recondite allusions, connections may be drawn which were not apparent to sixteenth-century eyes. The vision o f the modern observer is liable to distortion not only by being myopic; but also by being too keen. Apart f r o m vexed questions o f intentionality, moreover, one must also consider that the categories o f literal and allegorical scarcely exhaust the diverse uses to which images were put. Other purposes - ranging f r o m mnemonic and didactic to purely decorative - need consideration as well. W h i l e making due allowance for wide margins o f uncertainty, one may at least suggest that the imagination o f sixteenth-century poets and playwrights was stimulated by the new interplay between pictures and words. A variety o f Mannerist and Baroque inventions - conceits, puns and paradoxes - m i g h t be traced to the altered forms assumed by early printed images and their diverse encounters w i t h printed texts. M a y not the same thing be said o f other kinds o f inventions - o f those Rosenthal, 'The Renaissance,' pp. 6 1 - 2 . aBB McPherson 'A possible Origin,' argues that it was intentional. a 8 7

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which had scientific implications or technical applications? Certainly the stimulating effect o f the new forms o f book illustration was by no means confined to imaginative literature. N e w combinations and permutations were probably suggested by the provision o f illustrations for diverse genres o f technical literature - genres w h i c h proliferated rapidly after printers set to w o r k . Gutenberg's invention 'released a stream o f m i n i n g and metallurgy handbooks'; while 'the chemical industry went to print even earlier than m e t a l l u r g y . * As the tools o f all trades and professions, the contents o f workshops, and the r o u tines o f w o r k i n g men came to be rendered i n specific graphic detail, a vast backlog o f unpatented innovations and o f naturalistic observation was brought into view. 2 8 9

290

M u c h as the new medium was used to publicize the names and faces o f authors and artists so too i t was exploited by the designers o f siege engines, canal locks and other large-scale public works. The new w o o d blocks, engravings, broadsheets and medallions made more visible and also glamorized a variety of'ingenious' devices. Major 'public works,' once published, became "tourist attractions w h i c h vied w i t h old p i l grimage sites and Roman r u i n s . I n the hands o f skillful artists, the somewhat prosaic functions o f levers, pulleys, gears and screws were dramatized; engineering feats were illustrated i n the same heroic vein as epic poems. A t least some o f these sixteenth-century engineering epics may be described as promotional ventures undertaken by ambitious technicians i n search o f patrons and commissions. As the winner o f a competition to move an obelisk for Sixtus V , Fontana was n o t crowned w i t h laurel wreaths but he d i d manage to publicize his successful achievement w i t h a lavishly illustrated vast folic, which was followed by a flurry o f pamphlets. Other elaborate picture books, devoted to presenting 'theatres o f machines,' n o t only served as advertising for instrument makers but also pointed the way t o the plates o f the eighteenth-century Encyclopédie and even t o the real displays 291

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» A Gilbert and Sullivan patter song might be composed about sixteenth-century Italian illustrated treatises on matters 'architectural, mathematical and medical, anatomical, physiognomical. . . ' etc. noted in a recent review by Trapp, 'The High Renaissance at Harvard,' p. 41 (of part 2 of Ruth Mortimer's magnificent descriptive catalogue of illustrated printed books at the Houghton Library). According to Trapp, 'it is the new genre of scientificpractical rather than fabulous-moral instruction that steals the show.' Forbes and Dijksterhuis, A History of Science and Technology 11, 313, 316. Chapter 16 is aptly titled, 'Technology goes to Press." M l Keller, 'Mathematical Technologies," p. 22, cites Montajgne's report of 1580-1 as well as 1 9 1 other relevant contemporary journals. Keller, 'Mathematical Technologies,' p. 22.

a8

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mounted i n nineteenth-century industrial exhibition h a l l s . Presented by artful engravers as three-dimensional objects o n two-dimensional planes, even the grimiest m i n i n g machinery acquired a certain dignity and aesthetic appeal. Similarly, corpses raised f r o m demonic depths seemed t o lose their odor o f decay and fearful appearance when displayed (as i n De Fabrica) performing stately pavanes against idyllic Italian landscapes. 293

The use o f the same visual devices t o delineate machine parts and human organs - both hidden from readers before - may have encouraged new analogies between pump and heart or between mechanical piping and p l u m b i n g and human venous or arterial systems. This particular suggestion (which I b o r r o w f r o m A . R. H a l l ) * is difficult to substantiate. So too is the possibility (suggested i n a later chapter) that repeated encounters w i t h the new sharp-edged visual aids, w h i c h illustrated printed treatises o n proportion, perspective, optics and geometry, may help to account for the special concern w i t h 'fixed symmetry* exhibited b y Copernicus and K e p l e r . Although I find such speculation illuminating, others may regard i t as too far-fetched. There can be no doubt, however, that the character o f scientific data collection was changed by the output o f printed visual aids. 2 9

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This point is probably best demonstrated by looking at developments i n fields such as botany and anatomy where visual information plays an especially crucial role. A pertinent example is offered b y Ivins' discussion o f t w o early printed herbals. One, printed i n Rome i n 1480, contained replicas o f corrupted scribal images which had long since drifted away f r o m the much-copied Latin text. Crudely rendered by draughtsmen w h o had their eyes trained on books, these woodcuts raise a problem that crops up repeatedly i n this b o o k . They show 297

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2 , 3

Sec introduction by Keller to Jacques Besson's rs79 work: A Theatre of Machines. Some forty plates from Agostino Ramelli's Le Diverse ed Artijiciose

Macchine Composte in Lingua

Italiana

ed Francese (Paris, 1588) which contained 195 full-page illustrations, were copied, clarified and used by a German instrument-maker, Lcupold, for his multi-volumcd Theatrum Machinarum (Leipzig, 1724-39) which was in turn consulted by James Watt (who studied German for this purpose). See Eugene Ferguson, 'Lcupold's Theatrum Machinarum,' pp. 64-6. How Diderot borrowed from Ramelli for his Encyclopédie plates is noted by Proust, Diderot et l'Encyclopédie, pp. 177-8. * A. R . Hall, 'Science,' p. 391. M

2

« A passage from Fabricius noting that nature's device of valves placed in veins is ' strangely like that which artificial means have produced in the machinery of mills,' cited by Whittcridge, William Harvey, p. 21, suggests that analogies between machinery and anatomy were at least 2 , 6 being drawn. Sec p. 588, volume 11 below. Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication,

pp. 33-6.

See above p. 108, and chap. 5, section 3, volume 11 below.

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h o w indiscriminate use o f the new medium perpetuated and indeed multiplied the defects inherent i n the old. Furthermore they appeared at the very time when master drawings based o n real plants were being rendered by skilled pens. I f advances i n visual aids are sought i n the fifteenth century, should we not examine the w o r k o f artists w h o drew f r o m nature rather than inferior printed images copied f r o m o l d books? That the new m e d i u m simply prolonged the half life o f archaic conventions has indeed been argued in several w o r k s . B u t further reflection suggests that this argument fails to allow for the limitations imposed, before printing, by scribal procedures. I t assumes that fresh drawings based o n direct observation w o u l d somehow remain intact so that corruption could be recognized and inferior copies discarded. U n t i l printing intervened, however, conventions n o w labelled as 'archaic* had an indefinitely long lease on life. Fresh observations could be preserved, only precariously and temporarily, i n special charthouses, workrooms or houses o f studies. They could not be used for long, or circulate outside closed circles w i t h o u t undergoing corruption. 2 5 9

As a medium for repeated copying, drawing compares most u n favorably w i t h woodcut or engraving but this is a difference that cannot be seen at first glance. (As noted below, modern reproductive techniques have made i t hard to see this difference at all.) Insofar as 'seeing is believing* indeed the woodcut w i l l appear inferior even o n second glance. Pen-and-ink drawing is a better m e d i u m than is the woodcut for the accurate rendering o f a given observation. A drawing is not only fresher and more spontaneous but is also better suited to the precise handling o f fine detail. I n addition to these intrinsic differences between the t w o media, the late quattrocento also saw a marked contrast i n the state o f the t w o arts w h i c h placed the new forms o f book illustration at a further disadvantage. Draughtsmen and illuminators had developed a high degree o f sophistication i n wielding their pens and brushes. I n contrast to the refinement and elegance o f manuscript illustration early printed visual aids seem especially clumsy and crude. Most important o f all any visual comparison w i l l convey no informa3 0 0

* « See appendix A : 'Botanical Illustration' in A. R. Hall, The Scientific Revolution, p. 396. References given there and others offered on same topic by Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 147, n. 50 omit Ivins' seemingly relevant treatment. , M For vivid contrast between delicate, lively spontaneous pen and ink designs and drawings as against clumsy, crude and rough woodcuts see Lchmann-Haupt, 'The Heritage,' pp. 18-19.

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tion about the relative merits o f the t w o media for transmitting exact images over space and over time. Thus w e are not accustomed to distinguishing between the muchcopied hand-drawn image i n the much-used reference w o r k and the freshly drawn image i n the unique sketchbook or manuscript. The visual contrast between ' f i n e ' pen drawing and 'crude' woodcut is so powerful, the difference between fresh and copied handwork is especially likely to be overlooked. This is unfortunate. The difference between the hand-copied image that decays over the course o f time and the repeatable engraving that can be corrected and improved is essential for understanding h o w visual aids were affected by print. The fate o f the much-copied image was so decisively reversed, however, that its very existence has almost faded f r o m view. I n this respect modern reproductive techniques have been unhelpful and block our vision o f an earlier process o f change. T h e simultaneous duplication o f old master drawings i n hundreds o f copies o f books is achieved so effortlessly n o w that i t is difficult to remember this feat was utterly impossible when the o l d masters were at w o r k . Before printing, indeed, the detailed rendering o f natural phenomena for readers was a 'marginal activity' i n the most literal sense o f the w o r d . Given our present capacity to spot some 'real' birds or plants on the margins o f certain manuscripts or w i t h i n the landscapes o f certain paintings, w e are prone to forget that earlier readers lacked plant guides and b i r d watchers' manuals, and could n o t discriminate between a fanciful or factual r e n d e r i n g . This is n o t to deprecate the ability to render lifelike insects, plants or birds w h i c h was highly developed b y certain masters i n certain ateliers. I t is merely to note that this ability was just as likely to be employed decorating the borders o f psalters or embroidered church vestments as to appear i n books. It was rarely, i f ever, used to demonstrate visually points made i n technical texts. 301

302

See e.g., discussion of so-called 'Cocharelli Ms.,' produced near Genoa in the fourteenth century, by Hutchinson, 'Aposcmatic Insects' (especially p. 161), where Crombic is cited on how such marginalia contributed to the 'rise of modern biology' and Hutchinson himself describes a movement that continued 'producing the formal natural history treatises.. .in the sixteenth century and.. .has never stopped.' J « Pacht, 'Early Italian Nature Studies,' p. 19 describes the 'astonishingly life-like creatures' interspersed on the borders of early fourteenth-century East Anglian psalters and embroidered church vestments. The absence of any relation between the fine figures drawn by a certain artist (Cybo of Hycres) and the text they adom is noted by A. R. Hall, Scientific Revolution in appendix A. 3 0 1

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In the age o f scribes one m i g h t hire a particular illuminator to decorate a unique manuscript for a particular patron, but there w o u l d be little to gain b y hiring illustrators, as Agrícola did, to make detailed drawings o f 'veins, tools, vessels, sluices, machines and furnaces* for embellishing a technical t e x t . Agrícola provided illustrations *lest descriptions w h i c h are conveyed b y words should either n o t be understood b y the men o f our times or should cause difficulty to posterity/ I n this approach he seems to prefigure the spirit o f Diderot and the encyclopedists. H e was also departing f r o m scribal precedents by taking for granted that words and images w o u l d n o t be corrupted or drift apart over time. ** 303

30

Historians have often been puzzled to account for the shocking difference between the crude and conventional woodcuts illustrating fifteenth-century herbáis and the accuracy and artistic merit o f the work o f painters and miniaturists o f the same period. It is reasonable to suppose that the fifteenth century saw no conflict; the woodcuts were copied from the illustrations o f the manuscript whose text was also faithfully copied; the illustrations illustrated the text, not nature, a peculiar view, no doubt, but there was as yet no really independent botanical (or zoological) study. That was to be the contribution of the sixteenth century.. . i n herbáis... a revolution took place as authors, i n despair at the inadequacies o f purely verbal description, sought the aid o f skilled draughtsmen and artists, trained to observe carefully and w e l l . 305

i n duplicating crude woodcuts, the publishers o f early printed herbáis were simply carrying o n where fifteenth-century copyists left off. Reversals, misplacements, the use o f w o r n or broken blocks may have served to compound confusion, but the basic gap between masterdrawing and misshapen image was an inheritance f r o m the age o f scribes. I t was n o t so much a new awareness o f the * inadequacies o f purely verbal description' as i t was the new means o f implementing this awareness that explains the 'sixteenth-century revolution.' For the first time the w o r k o f skilled draughtsmen could be preserved intact in hundreds o f copies o f a given book. In short, Ivins seems justified i n taking the inferior printed herbal o f 1480 to represent an end-product o f scribal transmission. For compari3 0 3 3 M

O n Agricola's new approach see pp. 469-70, 54$, volume n below. The separation of textual and illustrative materials associated with the medieval Dioscoridean herbal is discussed by Stannard, 'The Herbal,'p. 217. For other references see p. 485, volume (i 3 0 s below. Marie Boas, Scientific Renaissance, p. 52.

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son, he points to another book, a vernacular herbal entitled the Gart der Gesundheit, w h i c h was printed b y Peter SchoefFer i n Mainz i n 1485. This pioneering book contains a preface describing h o w some new drawings were commissioned for the purpose o f publication. A master learned i n medicine (that is, one w h o had edited the works o f Galen, Avicenna and others) was first consulted and asked to go over the text that was to be freshly illustrated. I t turned out that many o f the plants mentioned were not indigenous and could not get drawn ' i n their true colors and forms save b y hearsay.' Accordingly, a new k i n d o f secular pilgrimage was organized (aptly described by Ivins as the first scientific expedition to be recorded in print and illustrated) - and a painter ' w i t h a subtle and practised hand' was hired to accompany i t . His drawings were copied o n blocks and put i n the w o r k , along w i t h other woodcuts o f indifferent quality. The edited text was translated into the vernacular for the benefit o f a German-reading lay public. This herbal was a forerunner. Although i t contained much-copied as well as freshly drawn images and was atypical in its day, it pointed the w a y to future developments. 3 0 6

B y the mid-sixteenth century, botanical illustration was n o t being based simply on direct observation. I t was departing f r o m scribal and painterly precedents w i t h schematic presentations that facilitated classification o f a rapidly expanding data p o o l . B y this time m u l t i lingual 'pocket' editions o f freshly illustrated herbals, expressly designed to be carried on field trips, were being p r e p a r e d and new large-scale botanical publication programs were being orchestrated i n diverse European print shops. Distant correspondents began to supply actual seeds and specimens along w i t h reports and drawings to cele3 0 7

308

3 0 6

As noted above, Ivins oddly regrets that we know none of the names of those responsible for this collaboration (Prints and Visual Communication, p. 36) although the names of publisher Peter Schocffer, of the town physician Johann von Cube of Frankfurt and of the probable painter Erhard Reuwich are noted in many secondary accounts. Rcuwich's name is actually cited by Ivins as the illustrator of von Breydenbach's Peregrinations on the very same page where he regrets the anonymity of the artist who contributed to Cart der Gesundheit. Sec discussion above, chap. 2, n. 134 for further information.

Technical advances made by new illustrations placed in printed herbals arc well documented and graphically demonstrated by Arbcr, 'From Medieval Herbalism,' pp. 317-36. Note plates showing three successive illustrations of henbane. 3 0 8 A gift of Ruth G. Bush to the Vassar College Library provides a fine example of a pocket edition of Leonhart Fuchs' De Stirpium... (Basel: Isengrin, 1349) which contains 516 full page woodcuts, the illustrations from the great folio edition of 1542 having been executed under Fuchs' supervision, in reduced form. In addition to Latin and German letterpress titles, the sixteenth-century owner has added French titles in a contemporary hand, showing how this pocket guide was used for the field trips for which it was intended. 3 0 7

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prated editors such as M a t t i o l i and Chasms, Once records based o n direct observations and actual specimens drawn f r o m distant regions began t o be sent to editors o f technical publications, one may say that modern scientific data collection was launched on its present path. 309

The 'subtle and practised* hands o f Renaissance draughtsmen also began to contribute to the study o f anatomy after print-makers replaced i l l u m i n a t o r s . O n l y specialists are competent to enter into the dispute over whether Joannes Stephanus o f Calcar did have a hand in illustrating Vesalius' De Fabrica, h o w large were the contributions made by other draughtsmen from Titian's studio and the extent to which Vesalius himself guided the hands o f the artists and artisans he employed. T h e non-specialist can only note that the evidence is incomplete o n these points and verdicts appear t o be inconclusive. Whatever the verdict i n this case, i t is clear that new kinds o f collaboration between the learned anatomist-author, w h o had studied i n the schools, and the artisan-draughtsman, w h o acquired his skills through apprenticeship, were encouraged b y the new anatomical publication programs. 310

311

The significant role played b y printed illustration i n anatomy texts and the 'elaborate system o f cross-reference between image and w o r d ' developed i n works such as De Fabrica have been brought o u t so w e l l by various authorities, few additional remarks are needed. Rupert Hall's account seems to be especially w e l l balanced. Hall n o t only indicates h o w illustrating textbooks helped to guide scientific observation, he also makes due allowance f o r the prior development o f new pictorial conventions by quattrocento artists even before the advent o f print. I n v i e w o f the tendency o f some media analysts to overlook the w a y image making was transformed b y draughtsmen before printed book illustration had begun, this point seems w o r t h restating here. 312

3 1 3

3 M

3 1 0

3 1 1

1 1 2

Sarton, Six Wings, pp. 137,144 gives relevant references. For further discussion, see pp. 484 fF., volume 11 below. For vivid graphic contrast of scribal with printed visual aids in this field, see pictures of *wound-men' used by barber-surgeons in Kutz, 'The Medical Illustrations.' Ivins' views (echoed by Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' pp. 163-4, n. 36) which assign a predominant role to Calcar are challenged by O'Malley, Andreas Vesalius, pp. 124 ff. He argues that Vesalius (himself an accomplished draughtsman) closely supervised work done by others in his employ and that Vasari's assignment of credit to Calcar is untrustworthy. The debate has been reviewed and evidence reassessed by Kemp, 'A Drawing for the De Fabrica.' Kemp holds that Vasari's account is more reliable than O'Malley's. See description of De Fabrica as a 'servo-mechanism' in O'Malley and Saunders, Leonardo da Vinci, pp. 2 0 - 1 .

3 1 3

A. R. Hall, Scientific Revolution,

267

pp. 41-50.

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A glance at ambiguous medieval medical drawings may be sufficient to call i n question the dictum (which tends to be taken for granted in an age o f photography) that one picture is always w o r t h more than many words. A picture may be unclear or misleading and no easier to decipher than a foreign phrase. As Gombrich's brilliant studies suggest, all pictures require some measure o f decoding, and all 'fool the eye* one way or another. But Gombrich also indicates that pictures can clarify as w e l l as obfuscate our perception o f natural phenomena. Images conveying correct information may be distinguished f r o m those providing false reports. Artists may come closer to achieving verisimilitude by means o f correction and feedback - provided o f course that correct information is their chosen g o a l . ' Quattrocento artists were w o r k i n g toward this goal even before printed book illustrations had become common. B y developing new aesthetic conventions which stressed unified composition and focused perspective and by striving for clarity as w e l l as verisimilitude, they provided sixteenthcentury anatomists w i t h a new and useful vocabulary o f f o r m s . 314

3

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3 1 6

But although the development o f a new visual vocabulary needs to be acknowledged as an important ingredient, i t d i d not in itself suffice to launch anatomy as a science. T o overlook the sketch pads o f Renaissance masters is misguided, but it is also misguided to ignore h o w new pictorial statements were transferred onto editions o f technical books. Anatomy as a science (and this applies to all other observational and descriptive sciences) was simply not possible without a method of preserving observations in graphic records, complete and accurate in three dimensions. In the absence of such records even the best observation was lost because it was not possible to check it against others and thus to test its general validity. It is no exaggeration to say that in the history of modern science the advent of perspective marked the beginning of a first period, the invention of the 3 ' * Gombrich, Art and Illusion. The output of drawing books which helped to disseminate Renaissance pictorial conventions after printing is discussed on pp. 157-67. 3 1 5 See Gombrich, Art and Illusion, pp. xi; 276, 299 and Robert Paltcr's review (of Hypothesis and Perception by E . E . Harris). Palter notes (pp. 208-9) C n c tendency for Gombrich's discussion of Diircr's stylized rhinoceros (which was borrowed by Conrad Gcsncr for his zoological works) to become over-stylized itself J The importance of retrieving Alexandrian technical literature, particularly Ptolemy's geography, in the development of new perspective renderings by quattrocento artists is shown by both Edgcrton, The Renaissance Rediscovery and Gadol, L . B. Albcrti. Although t think she underestimates the importance of printing in the development of geodetic surveying and mapping, by limiting its function to making 'manuals more numerous' (p. 171); Gadol brings out clearly how much Albcrti's early work in Rome in the 1430s on cartography, surveying and mapping contributed to the shaping of these new conventions. 1 6

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telescope and the microscope that of a second; and the discovery o f photography that of a third: in the observational or descriptive sciences illustration is not so much the elucidation o f a statement as a statement in itself. 317

In m y view, i t is an exaggeration to launch modern science w i t h the advent o f perspective renderings and to regard pictorial statements as sufficient i n themselves. ' A method o f preserving observations i n graphic records' and a chance to check them against others should not be presumed to lie i n an artist's sketchpad. A n exaggerated emphasis on pictorial statements alone leads Panofsky to describe Leonardo as 'founding anatomical science.' B u t the case o f Leonardo (as is later discussed) actually seems to show that eagle-eyed observation (even when combined w i t h masterful drawing and dissection) was not i n itself sufficient to set the study o f anatomy on a new course. Familiarity w i t h books as w e l l as bodies was required. Knowledge o f medieval and ancient nomenclature, command o f Greek and Arabic as w e l l as Latin terms and other skills gained f r o m editing ancient works, also entered into the anatomist's art. T o say that Vesalius' w o r k 'does not essentially differ' f r o m Leonardo's ' i n purpose and m e t h o d ' is t o overlook all the differences w h i c h distinguish a collaborative publication program f r o m the keeping o f a single sketchbook. In this regard one must be wary o f placing too much emphasis upon the new visual aids and upon the special skills o f artists when considering developments i n such fields as anatomy or botany. A fuller discussion o f other changes w h i c h affected these fields must be postponed for a later chapter. Let me merely note here that questions relating to collaboration and coordination deserve more consideration when dealing w i t h observational or descriptive sciences. Doubtless certain ateliers, academies, courts and colleges have to be singled out for special attention. Contributions made by particular masters do l o o m large. B u t i t is also a mistake to linger too long in any one region or focus too much attention o n any one activity. For the chief new feature that needs to be considered is the simultaneous tapping o f many varied talents at the same time. Publication programs launched f r o m urban workshops i n many regions made i t possible to combine and coordinate scattered investigations on a truly unprecedented scale. The new interactions w h i c h were encouraged, both w i t h i n the printer's workshop and by the circulation o f his products, w o u l d 317 Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' p. 146.

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probably not have proved so fruitful had i t not been for typographical fixity. The preservative powers o f print made i t possible to dispense w i t h the 'barriers' o f w h i c h Panofsky speaks. ' T h e Renaissance was a period o f decompartmentalization : a period which broke d o w n the barriers that had kept things i n order - but also apart - during the Middle Ages.' As he notes, these barriers had previously divided different forms o f knowledge into separate compartments and had conveyed them by separate 'transmission belts.' Whereas he regards the 'irresistible urge to compartmentalize' as an 'idiosyncrasy o f the high medieval m i n d , ' Ï am inclined to think, instead, o f discontinuities w h i c h were inherent in the conditions o f scribal culture. Keeping channels o f transmission apart probably helped to prevent the dilution or corruption o f information as i t was passed f r o m one generation to another. 318

3 1 9

M a n y forms o f knowledge had to be esoteric during the age o f scribes i f they were to survive at all. Quite apart f r o m issues associated w i t h religious orthodoxy and heterodoxy; closed systems, secretive attitudes and even mental barriers served important social functions. Despite drifting texts, migrating manuscripts and the dispersal or destruction o f record collections, much could be learned by trial and error over the course o f centuries. B u t advanced techniques could not be passed on w i t h o u t being guarded against contamination and hedged i n by secrecy. T o be preserved intact, techniques had to be entrusted to a select group o f initiates w h o were instructed not only i n special skills but also in the 'mysteries' associated w i t h them. Special symbols, rituals, and incantations performed the necessary function o f organizing data, laying out schedules, and preserving techniques i n easily memorized forms. i n these circumstances, opportunities for cross-cultural interchange were necessarily restricted and limited. A n apprentice learning to wield the tools o f the surgeon-barber, and a university student transcribing passages f r o m Latin translations o f Greek and Arabic medical texts were acquiring skills that were conveyed by entirely separate 'transmission belts. ' Even w i t h i n the university itself, the conditions o f scribal culture prevented an interchange between disciplines that n o w seem to be closely related: astronomy and physics, for example. T o be sure, J'

8

Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius', p. 128.

1 ' Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 106. 1

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the very migration o f manuscripts occasionally resulted i n a fruitful encounter between t w o previously separate textual traditions. A new fusion o f theology w i t h natural philosophy was w o r k e d o u t by the fortunate schoolmen w h o received the newly recovered Aristotelian corpus. A l t h o u g h the synthesis was at first resisted by conservatives, i t did ultimately w i n acceptance. Hellenic and patristic cosmologies were dovetailed sufficiently w e l l that the orders o f angels and orbits o f planets could be simultaneously memorized and held i n m i n d . I t is noteworthy, however, that the more complicated calculations w h i c h traced every planet's apparent path b y means o f deferents and equants were omitted from Aquinas' grand design. W o b b l i n g and retrograde motions d i d n o t interfere w i t h Dante's stately ascension t o w a r d the empyrean heavens. T h e charts and tables o f the Almagest were preserved, outside circles frequented b y philosophers and poets, b y a select group o f professional astronomers, f r o m w h i c h Copernicus ultimately e m e r g e d . Records containing precise computations required special training f o r copyists, close supervision o f scriptoria, careful custody o f relevant texts and detailed instruction i n h o w to use them. Mastery o f planetary astronomy under such conditions was almost b o u n d to isolate this discipline f r o m other branches o f learning. 320

Curiously enough, doctrines cultivated b y cloistered monks and veiled nuns were less hedged i n b y secrecy than trades and mysteries k n o w n to lay clerks and craftsmen. T h e Church w i t h its armies o f apostles and missionaries, its oral and visual propaganda, its pervasive exoteric symbols and rituals, seems to have represented a remarkable exception to prevailing rules. Despite reliance o n scribes, i t succeeded in transmitting Christian doctrine even while proclaiming i t openly and eschewing the sort o f secrecy that had characterized pagan priesthoods and mystery cults. B u t the Church, w h i c h controlled most centers o f book production and the recruitment and training o f copyists, was probably the only institution that was capable o f instructing its priests while openly proclaiming the T r u t h to the laity. Heroic efforts were required to ensure that the special meaning associated w i t h Christian symbols, ritual and l i t u r g y w o u l d n o t be lost o r diluted over the course o f centuries but w o u l d become increasingly available " ° The limited audience that was equipped to handle the Almagest and the special position occupied by astronomy in medieval universities are discussed in pp. 536-7, p. 6 0 4 n . , volume 11 below.

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to a partly Latinized, largely barbarian population. Energies mobilized for this evangelical task tended to exhaust the capacities o f scribal culture to transmit other messages w i t h o u t restricting access to select minorities w h o perpetuated divergent closed systems o f knowledge by using separate channels o f transmission.

4.

ARCANA AND

THE

DISCLOSED: IDEA

OF

A

THE CULT

OF ANTIQUITY

' R I N A S C I T A '

TRANSFORMED

The process o f cross-fertilization that occurred when these compartmentalized systems entered the public domain was by no means a neat or elegant one. Retrospective studies o f the interlocking o f the relatively rigorous trades and disciplines practiced by artists, anatomists, mechanics, astronomers, and the like are misleading in this regard. According to Frances Yates, mechanics and machines were 'regarded i n the Hermetic tradition as a branch o f m a g i c . ' D u r i n g the age o f scribes, the tendency to associate magical arts w i t h mechanical crafts was not, however, confined t o those w h o followed the doctrines o f Hermes Trismegistus. As long as trade skills had been passed d o w n b y closed circles o f initiates, unwritten recipes o f all sorts seemed equally mysterious to the uninitiated. Even when instructions were written down and preserved in lodgebooks, they m i g h t still appear as 'mysteries' to people on the outside. The mason's apron m i g h t serve just as well as the eye o f Horus to indicate secrets veiled f r o m the public at l a r g e . Secret formulas used by the alchemist could not be distinguished f r o m those used b y apothecaries, goldsmiths, glaziers or l u t h i e r s . A l l had belonged to the same 'underworld o f l e a r n i n g , ' and emerged into view at more or less the same time. 321

322

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324

Thus when 'technology went t o press' so too did a vast backlog o f occult practices and formulas and few readers were able to discriminate between the t w o . For at least a century and a half confusion persisted. Publications dealing w i t h unseen natural forces wandered all over the map and into the spirit w o r l d as well. W h a t later came to be described 3 2 1

3 1 2

3 1 3

Yates, Art of Memory, p. 340; see also her intriguing account of belief in ancient Egyptian proficiency in mathematics and mechanics, 'The Hermetic Tradition,' pp. 259-00. On problems associated with defining the so-called 'secret' of the master masons, see Shelby, 'The "Secret." ' That Paracelsus considered the weaver, the baker, the cultivator to be 'alchemists' is noted by Rossi, Francis Bacon, p. 2 0 .

3 I

*

Bolgar, The Classical

Heritage,

p. 180.

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as a 'natural history o f nonsense' was greatly e n r i c h e d . The same publicity system that enabled instrument-makers to advertise their wares and contribute to public knowledge also encouraged an output o f more sensational claims. Discoveries o f philosophers' stones, the keys to all knowledge, the cures to all ills were proclaimed b y selftaught and self-professed miracle workers w h o often proved to be more adept at press agentry than at any o f the older arts. A t the same time medieval secretive attitudes persisted among many artisans, even after the decline o f craft guilds. M o r e than t w o centuries after Gutenberg, Joseph M o x o n was still complaining, 'Letter cutting is a h a n d y w o r k hitherto so conceal'd among artificers o f i t that I cannot learn anyone hath taught i t any o t h e r . ' 325

326

Fear o f new censors as well as ambivalence about new publicity also provoked widely varying reactions among professional and academic élites. Deliberate resort to 'Aesopian language,' the use o f veiled allusions and cryptic comment were, i f anything, more c o m m o n after printing than had been the case before. Ancient esoteric injunctions to w i t h h o l d the highest truths f r o m the public were amplified and reinforced, at f i r s t . As a later discussion suggests, whereas some natural philosophers followed Francis Bacon i n urging the opening o f closed shops and a freer trade in ideas, others, like Sir W a l t e r Raleigh, reacted against new publicity b y praising ancient sages for w i t h h o l d i n g or disguising certain t r u t h s . Copernicus and N e w t o n were as reluctant as Vesalius or Galileo were eager to break into print. ' T h e conception of scientific collaboration as a meeting o f illuminati jealously guarding their precious and mysterious discoveries* was b y no means decisively defeated i n Francis Bacon's day. Nevertheless, the basis for this 327

328

329

This is richly documented by Thomdike's two volumes on the sixteenth century: A History of Magic. Thomdike's view that printing had a largely pernicious effect-by flooding book markets with pseudo-scientific stuff- is discussed on p. 529, volume 11 below. 3Ifi Cited by Clapham, 'Printing,' p. 385. Moxon's 'Mechanick Exccrcises,' published serially from 1667 on (a one-volume edition appearing in 1683) represents a landmark in publicizing technology. His account of printing is especially notable and was later incorporated in the celebrated article in L'Encyclopédie. How he visited Amsterdam (and made contact with Blacu's firm) in 1652 to study printing before setting up shop as a globe and instrument maker in Comhill is noted by E . G. R. Taylor, Mathematical Practitioners, pp. 231-3. 3 « For detailed account of a German humanist who adhered to a cautious, prudential position and avoided publishing anything in his lifetime, see Baumann, 'Mutianus Rufus,' 567-98. Baumann refers to a key work by Leo Strauss, Persecution. The shift, noted by Strauss (p. 3 3 ) , from esoteric to exoteric philosophical approaches seems to me to be predicated on printing and has many implications for early-modern science which remain to be explored. î ï B See p. 563, volume 11 below. 3 2

' Rossi, Francis Bacon, p. 27.

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conception had been drastically transformed almost as soon as the first booksellers' catalogues appeared. Views which were shaped by the need to preserve data f r o m corruption were incongruous w i t h mass-produced objects sold on the open market. Insistence o n concealment, as Bishop Sprat later noted, came oddly f r o m authors w h o were turning out bestsellers and 'ever printing their greatest mysteries.' ' W e ask you,' writes Paracelsus, ' t o handle and preserve this divine mystery w i t h the utmost secrecy.' The request, which seems appropriate when addressed to a select group o f initiates, becomes absurd when disseminated, via commercial promotion, to the public at large. Similarly, to hear someone talk o f protecting pearls f r o m swine when he is trying to sell gems to all comers is to provoke scepticism both about his intentions and about the real w o r t h o f the products he purveys. The sorcerer w h o exploited fear o f the u n k n o w n eventually became the charlatan w h o exploited mere i g n o r a n c e - a t least i n the eyes o f 'enlightened' professional and academic élites. Having emerged f r o m an old 'underworld o f learning' in the company o f artisans and craftsmen, the master o f occult arts w o u l d end by being submerged once again - but into different subterranean regions and w i t h a different motley assortment o f companions: ranging f r o m Rosicrucians and Freemasons and Mesmerists to faith healers, spiritualists, and pseudo-scientists o f all kinds. ' T h e Rosicrucians represent the tendency o f Renaissance Hermeticism and other occultisms to go underground i n the seventeenth century, transf o r m i n g what was once an outlook associated w i t h dominant philosophies into a preoccupation o f secret societies and minority g r o u p s . ' 330

331

332

There are many significant differences between the old ' u n d e r w o r l d ' which contained unlettered artisans and unwritten recipes and the new 'underground' w h i c h was inhabited by men o f letters - too many to be analyzed h e r e . Let me merely note that the new 'secret' societies 333

3 3 0 3 3 1

3 3 1

3 3 3

For fuller citation and discussion, sec p. 562, volume 11 below. Cited by Rossi, Francis Bacon, p. 29. Other relevant references (including warnings about pearls of wisdom) are given in this passage. John Dee ended his Monas Hieroglyphka with a published request to his printer to limit the edition since it contained 'mysteries' not intended for the 'vulgar.' Trattncr, 'God and Expansion,' p. 23. Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 407. According to Yates, Isaac Casaubon's rcdating of the Hermetic corpus in 1614 and his proof that the assemblage was compiled in the post-Christian era was the event which 'shattered the position of the Renaissance magus' and forced Hermeticism underground. Among other complications, the one term 'underground' is used - with reference to early modern European intellectual history - to designate quite different phenomena by ditferent 274

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presented an especially dramatic contrast w i t h the older guilds and lodges i n their paradoxical exploitation o f publicity. Far f r o m being restricted to small closed circles o f adherents, they extended invitations to u n k n o w n readers and b y hinting at mysteries revealed only to the initiated, appeared to use secrecy as a recruiting device. The Rosicrucian manifestoes 'were highly publicized statements t h r o w n provocatively out into the w o r l d . Since the prime aim o f a secret society must ever be to keep itself secret, i t w o u l d seem an odd thing for a r e a l . . .secret society to do, to publicize itself so dramatically.' 334

The normal way o f trying to get into touch w i t h the R.C. Brothers, after reading the manifestoes was to publish something addressed to them or expressing admiration for them. These replies were not answered; the R.C. Brothers did not reply either to their admirers or to their critics... The Rosicrucian furore which arose in response to the stirring... manifestoes soon became inextricably confused through the large numbers who tried to join without inside knowledge of what it was about being merely attracted by the exciting possibility of getting in touch w i t h mysterious personages... or angered and alarmed by the imagined spread o f dangerous magicians or agitators. 335

authorities. Yates, Giordano Bruno, is referring to a region created by new boundaries set by the Commonwealth of Learning in accordance with newly developed rules of evidence and consensual validation. More often, the term designates a more clearly subversive region created-not by learned élites —but by official censors, who determined the contents of a clandestine book-trade. In this latter sense, much of the Commonwealth of Learning itself was forced 'underground,' and in Catholic regions, a Protestant scholar, such as Isaac Casaubon, would be an 'underground' author. " * Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, p. 207. " s Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, pp. 74, 9 1 . The 'amazing response' elicited by the first manifesto: the 'Fama Fraternitas,' which was published in four languages and issued in nine editions between 1614 and 1617 is also noted by Debus, Science and Education, pp. 21-4. See also Debus' article, 'The Chemical Debates of the Seventeenth Century.' Both Debus and Yates note that Robert Fludd made his first appearance in print (under the aegis of the Basson firm inLeiden which was allied to the Familists, see above, chap. 2,11.297) in reply tothe appeal of the 'invisible' brethren and in an effort to defend them from the attacks of Libavius, the Lutheran schoolmaster who fought the Paracelsians and wrote textbooks on chemistry. How print entered into the quarrels between Libavius and the Paracelsians is discussed by Hannaway, The Chemist and the Word. Libavius* insistence on public disclosure as against Paracelsian secretîveness is noted on p. 84; how much his didactic approach owed to the printed book is handled along lines that follow Father Ong's work on Ramus (pp. 112-13). But the paradoxical exploitation of the printed word by Paracelsians - who often denounced book learning even while making good use of both printing and engraving - is not brought out. Plates from the magnificently illustrated volumes turned out by the de Bry firm in Op¬ penheim for both Fludd and Michael Maier appear in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, chap. 6. One of Johann Theodore de Bry's sons-in-law was William Fit2er, the publisher of Harvey's De Motu. Another was the Swiss engraver, Matthieu Merian, the celebrated illustrator of Maier's Atlanta Fugiens (Oppenheim: de Bry, 1618). O n connections between the de Bry firm and that of the Wechels when both were in Frankfurt, see Evans, 'The Wechel Presses," pp. 12, 28. The Wechel firm published the works of Libavius' opponent, the Paracelsian, Oswald CroII. See discussion on p. 474, volume 11 below.

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Just ' w h a t i t was about' remains baffling to this day. The sequel proved equally strange. Soon after the initial furore, a new commotion was produced. As reported b y Gabriel Naude i n 1623, placards appeared throughout Paris proclaiming that 'the deputies o f the principle [sic] college o f the Brothers o f the Rosy Cross are making a visible and invisible stay i n this c i t y . ' Perhaps no placards were actually printed and posted, and i t was merely the publication o f Naudc's report that caused rumors to fly. A t all events there was another outpouring o f pamphlets defending and attacking the Rosicrucians. However invisible or incredible, the Brethren thus provoked sufficient controversy to make an indelible historical mark. Modern scholars seem to be no more i n agreement than were seventeenth-century observers as to whether the matter warrants a serious investigation or whether it should be dismissed as a hoax. The brothers o f the Rosy Cross took their secrets to their graves. Whatever their intentions we may at least agree that they succeeded in producing a long-lasting' media event.' 336

The old 'underworld o f learning' was signally devoid o f events o f this kind. A significant difference between the medieval alchemist and the later Paracelsian was that the latter found the role o f publicist congenial. Early printers and engravers indeed were among his closest friends. The same point could be made o f other claimants to the role of'Renaissance magus,' a peculiarly protean figure w h o seems to be half revealing and half concealing the diverse tricks o f his l o n g lived trade. The shift f r o m sorcerer to sage and the re-evaluation o f magic which occurred i n the age o f Trithemius, Agrippa and John Dee have been noted in several recent accounts. This transformation recalls several other occupational mutations which we have already discussed. Indeed Frances Yates compares the elevation o f the magician to that o f the artist in a manner that suggests h o w the acquisition o f letters and learning affected b o t h . The position o f conjurers was 337

338

3 3 9

5 ) 6

"

7

Yates, Roskrucian

Enlightenment,

p. 103.

Paracelsus received his position as physician in Easel through Frobcn's good offices and had employed Oporinus as an assistant. Croll's relationship to the Wechcl f i r m and Fludd's to the Basson f i r m in Leiden and the dc Brys in Oppenheim is noted above n. 335. On John Dec's important stay with his Antwerp printer, Sylvius, and Trithemius' use of Mainz printers, sec chap. 1, n. 37; chap. 2, n. 158 and n. 167 above. In her Roskrucian Enlightenment Yates traces to John Dec many strands which seem to me to have indigenous continental roots. Trithemius* work on magic and ciphers preceded Dec's after all. (See also discussion of Paci'oli, pp. 547 f f , volume 11 below.)

J Rossi, Francis Bacon, pp. 17-19; Yates, Giordano Bruno, >M Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 107. j B

276

pp. 107-i 1 ; Naucrt, Agrippa,

passim.

A CLASSICAL

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probably enhanced when sorcerers' apprentices learned to handle books as w e l l as brooms and their masters could acquire a reputation for erudition. T o be adept at sleight-of-hand was merely to be allied w i t h shady tricksters and pickpockets. T o publish books o n hidden powers was to j o i n the company o f learned men and often to achieve eponymous fame as a scholarly author oneself. 340

Moreover, efforts to translate ancient texts or to decipher inscriptions and glyphs were naturally linked w i t h the study o f magic squares and cabalistic signs. W o r k s used i n all manner o f advanced studies were liable to the suspicion o f being 'conjuring books' i n an age when geometry was considered a ' black art,' and Arabic numerals, like Greek letters, were still arcane. The Hebrew alphabet not only entered into efforts to emend scriptural passages but also figured prominently in necromancy. Since many medieval scholars developed their o w n idiosyncratic methods for cross-referencing and indexing large c o m pilations, i t was (and still is) unclear whether the presence o f ciphers, acrostics and letter-number codes should be taken to indicate study of the Cabala or n o t . I n addition to all the special trade secrets associated w i t h scribal arts, there were numerous key mnemonics associated w i t h the memory arts w h i c h helped to compound confusion. Given centuries o f reliance o n mnemotechnics, moreover, i t was a reasonable hypothesis that clues to the properties o f things were contained in the names used to designate t h e m . Belief that divine secrets had been entrusted by God to A d a m and that these secrets entered into the names A d a m gave all things is often associated w i t h the influence exerted by the so-called Hermetic tradition. The textual assemblage attributed to the Egyptian scribal god ( w h o m the Greeks called Hermes Thrice-Blessed) was only one among several textual compilations which pointed i n the same d i r e c t i o n . The Hermetic corpus w o u l d 341

3 4 2

3 4 3

344

Or even, perhaps, as a scholar-printer. The now discredited, long-lived legend linking Gutenberg's partner Johann Fust with the historical prototype For D r Faustus (see chap, z, n. 161, n. 163 above) suggests the new status-role achieved by the Renaissance magus. Printing itself was originally regarded as a 'magical' invention. 3 1 * See references cited by Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 362. 3 4 2 This is brought out in a discussion of the key mnemonics, acrostics and ciphers used in Roger Bacon's work by Derek de Solla Price, introduction to Chaucer's The Equatorie of the Planetis, cd. Price, pp, 182-3. 3*3 Mystico-magical properties associated with names and etymology arc discussed by Borchardt, 'Etymology,' p. 417, 3 4 4 Others such as the Orphica, the Sybylline Prophecies, the Pythagorean Carmina Aurea, the Oratula Chaldaica are noted by D. P. Walker in his introduction to his collected studies on 'Christian Platonism': The Ancient Theology, p. 27. The names of the gods sung in Orphic 3 4 0

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scarcely have exerted such great authority had i t n o t expressed views which conformed to the experience o f learned men w h o relied on forms o f transmission which have n o w dissappeared. T h e same point applies to the enthusiasm for study o f Cabala shown by Christian scholars such as Pico, Reuchlin and Lefèvre d'Etaples. 345

The hidden meaning o f hieroglyphs was concealed until the nineteenth century; that o f Hebrew v o w e l points remained mysterious for a shorter t i m e . Yet for Renaissance Hebraists such as Pico o r Reuchlin, the same mystical magical properties were locked up i n both Egyptian and Hebrew letters; the mystery o f the T r i n i t y as well as the secrets o f Creation having been engraved on the tablets handed to Moses and entrusted first to A d a m when he was told the names o f all things. N o w i t was common for the most ignorant wizards, a T u d o r bishop complained, to boast that their cunning was derived f r o m Adam, Moses or the Archangel Raphael. As ignorant possessors o f corrupted lore, such wizards were regarded w i t h contempt, n o t only by orthodox bishops, but also b y heterodox scholars. T h e grounds for rejection were quite different, however. W h e n Pico della Mirandola contemptuously dismissed the medieval wizard - w h o invoked the names o f A d a m and Moses and used Hebrew letters - as 'ignorant and barbarous,' he d i d so i n much the same spirit as the critic w h o objected to ignorant history-painting. The practitioner and n o t the art was called into question. T h e practice o f 'magia and cabala' i n other words was probably viewed by Pico i n the same way as all other arts and letters were. Cabala had been subjected to ' Gothic' barbarism much 3 4 6

347

348

hymns concealed the names of natural and divine powers distributed in the world by the Creator according to a citation from Pico. 3 4 S Blau, The Christian Interpretation, passim. Yates, Giordano Bruno, chap. 5; Spitz, 'Reuchh'n's Philosophy.' How his study of cabala entered into Reuchh'n's theories about scriptural composition is discussed by Schwarz, Principles 1 4 6

1 4 7

3 4 8

and Problems of Biblical

Translation,

pp. 6 4 - 8 2 .

The key work was the anonymously published Arcanum Punctationum Revelatum (Leiden, 1624) by Louis Cappcl (Capellus), a Huguenot professor at the college of Saumur. Controversial publication about the vowel points goes back at least to the editing and publication of Plantin's Antwerp polyglot Bible of 1560, but reached a climax in the early seventeenth century as is noted on p. 332 below. The fact that CappePs 'mystery of the vowel points revealed' appeared ten years after Isaac Casaubon's publication, placing the Hermetic corpus in post-Christian times, suggests that cabala as well as Hermeticism lost intellectual prestige during roughly the same interval. That 'old magical systems were robbed of their capacity to satisfy the educated élite' during the seventeenth century is noted casually and only in passing by Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 645, despite its seeming relevance to the central theme of his book. Thomas, Religion

and the Decline of Magic, p. 2 7 1 .

Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 107 refers to Pico's rejection of 'wicked magics going under the name of Solomon, Moses, Enoch or Adam.'

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as Ciceronian Latin had been. W h a t had been garbled and corrupted needed to be purified and restored. As a recipient o f ancient secrets passed d o w n t h r o u g h the centuries, the magician seemed to hold a key to the fabled body o f knowledge that had been guarded by scribal priesthoods before o l d temples had been destroyed and a confusion o f tongues let loose on the w o r l d . His fortunes were linked to a cult o f antiquity w h i c h had been shaped b y the conditions o f scribal culture - a cult w h i c h was rapidly propelled before being dispelled b y the output o f scholar-printers. In his review o f Yates' w o r k on Giordano B r u n o , Giorgio de Santillana points to certain problems presented by the 'churning turbid flood o f Hermetic, cabalistic, Gnostic, theurgic, Sabean, Pythagorean and generally mystic notions that broke over Europe w i t h the Renaissance carrying everything before i t . ' Here again, I w o u l d argue that the flood was released n o t ' w i t h the Renaissance' but b y means o f printer's ink. I t came, I think, w i t h the casting o f typefonts, the duplication o f old inscriptions, and w i t h the piecemeal publication o f what at first appeared to be fragments drawn f r o m some vast U r - b o o k o f K n o w ledge. As is suggested b y the dating o f diverse post-Christian compilations and the prosaic explanation o f Hebrew v o w e l points, some o f these writings gradually became less mysterious after typefonts were cut; grammars and lexicons were issued; and scholarly findings accumulated. Printed side by side i n polyglot reference books, Greek and Hebrew letters could be seen as equivalent to the familiar Latin alphabet. 3 4 0

B u t not all arcane letters lent themselves to this treatment. The Aldine press contributed to enlightenment by publishing Greek texts and lexicons; i t also contributed to mystification w i t h its editions o f the 'Hieroglyphics o f H o r a p o l l o . ' For the next three hundred years, Egyptian picture-writing was loaded w i t h significant meaning by readers w h o could not read i t . Most o f them could and d i d read Erasmus' bestselling Adages, however; and many agreed that these 'sacred carved letters' had been devised by ancient priests to conceal 350

de Santillana, book review, American Historical Review. This review contains hints of de Santillana's later collaborative book with Hertha von Dechend: Hamlet's Mill. The authors argue that a variety of ancient myths were designed to transmit information concerning the long-term slow-motion precession of the equinoxes. " ° Early publications by Aldus and previous history of ms. versions are given by George Boas 3 4 9

(ed.

and tr.),

TTie Hieroglyphics

of Horapollo,

pp. 22 ff. See

pp. 48-9, 151, n. 34. David, Le Déliât.

279

also Iversen, The Myth

of

Egypt,

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AND CHRISTIAN

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secret wisdom f r o m the vulgar, even while preserving i t for w e l l trained minds to decode. Described b y Alberti as 'ageless symbols o f universal knowledge which had lasted when ordinary letters perished and their meanings had disappeared,' the sacred glyphs became ever more fascinatingly mysterious as other mysteries were unveiled. 351

352

A printer's device had provided the occasion for Erasmus' comments, and these much publicized trademarks often conveyed special occult meanings to those w h o moved i n the circles to which printers and engravers b e l o n g e d . Printers thus led the way in emulating the wise Egyptians; but other well-read laymen soon followed, until entire books were filled w i t h veiled messages conveyed by means o f picturew r i t i n g . Learned artists produced engravings w h i c h covered Roman arches w i t h replicas o f picture-writing drawn f r o m recent books. "With new printers' devices and emblem-books added to ancient hieroglyphics, there came a profusion o f symbols that engendered further c o n f u s i o n . Successive attempts to unveil the secrets o f the pyramids n o t merely failed to clarify issues but actually seemed to obscure them more completely. Even after the riddle o f the sphinx could be deciphered, other unfathomable glyphs and engravings rem a i n e d - l i k e John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica, emblems containing a rose and a cross, or the libretto o f The Magic Flute - to tantalize later scholars. 353

354

The fact that new meanings continued to be read into hieroglyphics over the course o f three centuries o f printing helps to account for some o f the more puzzling aspects o f the later phases o f the Hermetic tradi« ' The occasion for this discussion is Erasmus' description of how Aldus showed him a Roman silver coin given by Cardinal Bembo, stamped with an effigy of Titus Vcspasianus and an anchor-and-dolphin. The meaning of the latter, 'Festina Lente,' had been Augustus' motto, according to the 'books on hieroglyphics,' writes Erasmus and he goes on to discuss these enigmatic carvings (from the 1508 edition of the Adages, tr. M. M . Phillips, pp. 174-6). He thus stimulated curiosity about his publisher's books on hieroglyphics as well as publicized the firm's trademark in this adage. * 2 Iverscn, Myth of Egypt, pp. 6sfF. Sec also intriguing discussion of Ficino's view of hieroglyphs, Goiiibrich, 'Icones Symbolicae,* pp. 171—2. * 3 Some of the alchemical symbols (such as the griffon, the pelican, etc.) used in printers' devices arc described by Rosarivo, 'Simbolos Alquimicos.* Since these symbols were also imbued with Christian significance by medieval allegorises, and were also used for mnemonic purposes, a wide margin for uncertainty needs to be left when labelling them as 'alchemical.' See discussion of'Lcda Bible' abovc,-p. 260. is* On tremendous vogue initiated by Alciati's Embkniata, its links with the Aldine edition of 'HorapolloY Hieroglyphics and suggestive treatment of printers' devices, sec Goldschmidt, 3

3

Printed Book of the Renaissance, pp. 8 5 - 6 ; also Praz, Studies in Seventeenth Century

Imagery,

pp. 23fF. O n Diirer's use of hieroglyphics for his engraving of the Triumphal Arch for Emperor Maximilian, see Panofsky, D'urer r, 177.

280

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tion. For the reputation o f the Egyptian scribal G o d was n o t really dealt a fatal b l o w i n 1614 when Isaac Casaubon demonstrated that the assemblage translated b y Ficino was w r i t t e n i n the early Christian era. The Hermetic corpus may have been post-Christian, but T h o t h Hermes obviously was not. His venerable antiquity (attested to b y Saint Augustine) and his role as an inventor o f arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and w r i t i n g (recalled b y Plato i n the Phaedrus) were, i f anything, confirmed. That such a figure had existed long before Jesus and also before Plato was i n no w a y disproved by the imputation o f ' f o r g e r y . ' D a t i n g the 'forged' Donation o f Constantine showed that the Emperor had not made it. Dating the Hermetic assemblage showed that the Egyptian scribal God was not responsible for it. Just what he was responsible for, however, still remained unclear. D i d rhe inscriptions found o n obelisks provide clues to the secrets o f Creation o r show foreknowledge o f Christian truths? As long as they remained u n deciphered, h o w could anyone be sure? 355

3s6

Moreover the Hertnetica presented all the familiar problems associated w i t h an ancient assemblage o f diverse writings drawn f r o m different places and times. I t d i d n o t really lend itself to being handled as a printed treatise, assigned a single publication date or attributed to an individual author. This point, to be sure, was not likely to be perceived by most seventeenth-century scholars. I n an era when imputations o f forgery and imposture were being directed at Aristotle and Homer, i t was natural that they be used to deflate the reputation o f ' t h a t supposititious semi-Platonic also semi-Christian, b u t however erudite writer w h o is commonly called Hermes Trismegistus.' Nevertheless the point is w o r t h keeping i n m i n d . Even n o w there is no agreement about h o w much or h o w little genuine ancient Egyptian material entered into the post-Christian assemblage. 8 Those Cambridge Platonists 357

35

" Walker, Ancient Theology, p. 192 warns against exaggerating the destructive effects of Casaubon's dating. 3sfi Trcvor-Ropcr, review essay, History and Theory (19(16), p. Bo, n. 32 notes that Walter Raleigh inconsistently praised the 'excellent work of Master Casaubon' who showed 'the books of Hermes were no better than counterfeited pieces' and then later calmly referred to the prophecies of 'Hermes who lived at once with or soon after Moses, Zoroaster...' In thus dismissing the 'counterfeited pieces' while upholding the antiquity of the real sage, perhaps Raleigh was not really being so inconsistent after all.

J

3

" Walker, Ancient De Idolatria

3 s S

Theology,

p. 193, cites this description of Hermes from Gerard Vossius'

(1642).

Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 4 3 1 . Shumakcr, Tlie Occult Sciences, p. 210 says we may be confident

that Egyptian religious doctrines were not 'preserved accurately and in detail' in the corpus, but this leaves open a wide margin for uncertainty.

28l

CLASSICAL

ANDCHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

w h o were not entirely persuaded b y Casaubon's arguments, and w h o believed some ancient Egyptian teachings to be contained i n the corpus, may have been less wide o f the mark i n certain respects than their more sceptical contemporaries. T h e 'forged books o f Hermes which contain a philosophy not Egyptian' were being used, Bishop W a r burton complained, ' t o explain and illustrate o l d monuments n o t philosophical.' B u t h o w could the Bishop be certain that a given philosophy was not that o f ancient Egyptians when writings which were ancient Egyptian could not be read? 359

360

Warburton's complaint was aimed at a celebrated Baroque m o n u ment to Jesuit erudition, Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652-4), described b y Frank Manuel as an 'elephantine set o f four Latin folio volumes' and 'one o f the most learned monstrosities o f all times.' Hieroglyphs were there demonstrated to be the secret repositories of a great fund o f ancient Egyptian wisdom. Using analogies and indulging freely in flights of scholarly fancy... - his text was bedecked with quotations from twenty different tongues - Kircher showed that every branch of knowledge . . .had already been fully developed among the Egyptian priests. He knew the classical corpus, rabbinic literature, the cabala, Hebrew and Arabic philosophy and through his devious interpretations, every Egyptian pictorial image on a mummy, an obelisk, on the wall of a tomb, on papyrus, assumed concrete scientific or theological significance. 361

In thus amassing all the drawings o f genuine Egyptian hieroglyphs that he could obtain f r o m correspondents, Kircher actually performed a scholarly service which later Egyptologists acknowledged. B u t his w o r k provoked considerable ridicule f r o m the Jesuit-baiters o f the day. N o t that the futility o f reading meaning into undeciphered picturew r i t i n g was acknowledged. O n the contrary, the volume o f controversial publication simply thickened; new layers o f interpretation were deposited over the old. 302

"> See discussion of Cudworth's argument in Yates, Giordano Bruno, pp. 4 2 7 - 3 1 . Walker shows how this argument was used by the eighteenth-century French freemason, André Michel Ramsay, author of Tfie Travels of Cyrus (who made the celebrated announcement that a

3

Universal 1 6 0 3 6 1

Dictionary was to be undertaken as a masonic project in 1737). Tlte Ancient

Theology,

pp. 2 3 1 , 2 4 1 . Cited by Manuel, The Eighteenth Century, p. 191. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century, p. 190. See also Yates' discussion of Kircher, Giordano

Bruno,

pp. 416-23. 3 6 1

Iverscn, The Myth of Egypt, pp. 86-97 calls Kircher the 'true founder of Egyptology' and regards his work more respectfully than docs Manuel.

282

A CLASSICAL REVIVAL REORIENTED

B y the eighteenth century some 'enlightened* scholars were prepared t o dismiss the sphinxes as mere fetishes and the Egyptians as 'primitive* brute worshippers. B u t others were persuaded that the pyramid builders had mastered sophisticated techniques for measuring the earth and charting the heavens. Alberti's 'ageless symbols o f u n i versal knowledge* were assigned n e w astronomical and geodetic significance - much as the pillars o f Stonehenge have been i n our a g e . The sacred carved letters, while retaining their significance, at least among some Jesuits, as arcane symbols o f a special revelation, lost much o f their mystical-magical significance for adherents o f the ' n e w philosophy.' A t the same time they gained new attributes i n accordance w i t h the shift from occult and revealed t o demonstrable and o b served. In some interpretations, notions o f concealment were retained although occult content was denied. T h e glyphs stood for a pure, clear and certain knowledge w h i c h had been withheld f r o m the populace by ancient priests, much as Latin treatises seemed to w i t h h o l d religious and scientific truths according t o vernacular translators i n the seventeenth century. H o w 'ancient wise men concealed mysteries f r o m the vulgar i n Hieroglyphics* thereby enhancing 'reverence' b u t n o t advancing the 'philosophy o f nature' was noted b y , among others, the propagandist for the Royal Society, Bishop S p r a t . T h e secrecy imposed b y priests w h o prevented lay Bible-reading was coupled w i t h that imposed b y censors w h o required circumvention. I n his Tachygraphy o f 1641, Thomas Shelton pushed his scheme for shorthand as a w a y o f using Bibles and other books w i t h o u t danger o f ' bloudy Inquisi t o u r s . ' That hieroglyphs m i g h t be a k i n d o f shorthand designed not so much b y priests t o fool the populace but b y initiates to deceive censors was a possibility that fitted the purposes o f the literati, printers and engravers w h o contributed t o a clandestine book-trade. I f they did represent a k i n d o f shorthand, then the ancient glyphs were esoteric 363

364

365

366

367

3 6 3

Manuel, The Eighteenth Century, pp. 189-90.

364 Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramids cites the measurements of the pyramids made in 1638 by John Greaves (later Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford) and by Tito Livia Burattini, a Venetian sent to Egypt by Father Kircher. This book contains an appendix by L. C . Stecchini which shows how the art of reading hidden meanings into hieroglyphs is continued in our day. Stecchini's first insight into 'the Egyptian geodetic system' came from reading 'Italian Renaissance Scientists, influenced by Cabah'sts' (p. 301). j 6 s

The relevance of this distinction to Hermcticism is spelled out by Nock, introduction, Corpus Hermeticum 1, i-ii.

i W

1 6 7

Sprat, History of the Royal Society, p. 5. The attack on Latin and the defense of vernaculars by translators is discussed in chap. 4 , below. (See pp. 360IF.) Cited by Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton, p. 4 0 9 , n. 17.

283

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AND

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TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

only in the sense that Latin or Greek or mathematical symbols were esoteric to the uninstructed. Perhaps the wise Egyptians had possessed a truly universal language, as Alberti held, one w h i c h transcended linguistic boundaries much as Comenius' picture books and Leibniz's mathematical symbols managed to d o . B y the end o f the Enlightenment, all these possibilities had been explored. The still undeciphered images had come to stand for everything that was secret and everything that was k n o w n . 3 6 8

I n this regard the contrast w h i c h is often drawn between Renaissance syncretism and seventeenth-century criticism needs to be modified. Renaissance neoplatonists, i t has been said, tried to abolish the borderline not only between philosophy, religion and magic, but between all kinds of philosophies, all kinds of religions and all kinds of magic, including Hermeticism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, Cabala, and the ancient mysteries o f Egypt and India. This wild mixture could not resist the criticism, both scientific and philological, that was to set in during the seventeenth century. 309

Seventeenth-century scholars did solve certain puzzles and separated out some o f the disparate ingredients which had earlier been combined. But, as we have just seen, they also contributed to puzzlement on their o w n by venturing somewhat further than their philology could take t h e m - m u c h as the earlier 'neoplatonists' had done. I n both cases, I think, the scholars involved were not m i x i n g things up deliberately but rather perpetuating a deep-rooted monotheistic tradition while being flooded w i t h an unprecedented output o f data drawn f r o m disparate cultures and presented i n scrambled form. ' T h e Renaissance thirst for synthesis, for syncretism, was unquenchable.' This point has become a scholarly commonplace. But, as in many other cases, what is commonly attributed to the Renaissance seems no less characteristic o f medieval movements. T o produce a synthesis f r o m apparent antitheses was part o f the schoolman's training - at least since the era o f Abelard's Sic et Non and Gratian's Concordance of Discordant Canons. Certainly the great sitmmas o f the thirteenth century contained a smoother blend o f ingredients than did the ' w i l d 370

David, Le Débat, pp. 31-7, discusses the confusion between ancient writing systems and modem attempts to invent a universal language. 369 Panofsky, 'Artist, Scientist, Genius,' pp. 129-30. Much of the 'wild mixture' is, incidentally, still fermenting - as a glance at brochures sent out by occult book clubs and the output of the 3 7 0 Bollingen Press suggests. Shumaker, Tiie Occult Sciences, p. 20s. 3 6 8

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mixture' o f the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This may have been partly because lay humanists, despite the disapproval they often p r o voked, were less restrained by church authorities than were the medieval friars. B u t i t was also because fewer ingredients were available t o the l a t t e r . I n m y view, at least, the m i x t u r e resulted less f r o m a deliberate effort t o abolish boundaries or t o concoct a new syncretist faith than from making available t o a Latin-reading public, inspired by medieval traditions, an unprecedented profusion o f o l d texts w h i c h had never been published before. 371

372

In this light, one wonders whether the term 'syncretist* is really suited to the endeavors o f Renaissance neoplatonists. Syncretism implies an effort t o combine conflicting schools o f thought o r variegated materials w h i c h have previously been placed apart. The texts, attributed to Zoroaster, Orpheus, Hermes, Plato and Plotinus, w h i c h were translated into Latin and made available i n the late fifteenth century, had not yet been sorted out. They arrived i n the wake o f rumors w h i c h credited them to a single source. Later feats o f scholarship were required to date and place them. T h e neoplatonists were indeed i n much the same position as the sixteenth-century mythographers mentioned earlier i n this chapter w h o found 'history and geography* i n a disordered state. 373

M u c h as the mythographers were described as 'bookish and barbaric* by Jean Seznec; so too the neoplatonists provoke criticism from Wayne Shumaker - not for regressing to the middle ages but for never leaving there: ' T h e Renaissance m i n d was medieval o r pre-medieval i n many o f its assumptions.* A l t h o u g h he thus departs from Burckhardt's schema, Shumaker uses the term 'medieval' i n the same pejorative sense that Burckhardt d i d - to mean childlike, credulous, incapable 374

Condemnations, such as that delivered by the Archbishop of Paris in 1277, against the acceptance of certain Aristotelian doctrines, may be cited as examples of restraint. Savonarola's inconclusive debates with Pico della Mirandola over the value of the Hermetica are discussed by Walker, Tlte Ancient

Theology, chap. a.

" * Roger Bacon's belief in the revelations which passed from Adam through Zoroaster, Hermes, and others to Solomon, Plato, Aristotle and finally to Avicenna is noted by Rossi, Francis Bacon, pp. 69-70. But Roger Bacon did not have on hand as did Pico the full corpus of texts attributed to Hermes, Zoroaster, Plato et al. See Walker, TJie Ancient Theology, pp. 12-13. For run-down of mss. and of early printed editions of Ficino's Latin translation of the Hermetic corpus, see Festugière, L a Révélation n, 1-28. O n the numerous French editions that were printed after Lefèvre D'Etaples's 1494. edition of Ficino's translation of the Pimander, see Walker, Ancient Theology, pp. 6 7 - 9 .

" 3 See above, pp. 190-9, for reference to Seznec's interpretation. 3 M

Shumaker, The Occult Sciences, p. 204.

285

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o f facing reality or o f separating fact f r o m fantasy. A common effort to defend Western science and rationality links the nineteenth-century Swiss professor combatting romantic medievalism and the twentiethcentury American professor objecting to the content o f occult bookstores proliferating on campuses today. One wonders h o w much their vision o f an easily deluded 'medieval' m i n d owes to encounters w i t h the y o u t h culture o f their o w n age. The question seems w o r t h posing i f only because i t helps to draw attention to the difference between the modern retreat f r o m reason and attitudes expressed in a pre-scientific age. However much one is opposed (as I am) to the anti-scientific posture o f many literati today, one is also obliged ( i f only in one's interest) to grant respectful consideration to the w o r k o f mature scholars w h o lacked the advantages hindsight confers. Concern w i t h the occult was far f r o m being anti-scientific in the late quattrocento and cinquecento. Indeed a fairly plausible case has been made that it contributed much to later Cartesian and Newtonian conceptual schemes. W i t h o u t passing j u d g m e n t on the merits o f this case, the fact that it can be made does at least point to significant differences between the occult sciences o f the Renaissance and those o f today. N o t even the handsomely illustrated expensive volumes o f the Bollingen Press can be said to contribute in any way to modern astronomy, physics or chemistry. 375

One o f the many merits o f Frances Yates' w o r k is that such significant differences are made clear. The alert scientific curiosity, philological grounding and intellectual discipline o f the Renaissance magus that she depicts contrasts sharply w i t h later science-baiting dabblers in the occult. B u t even Yates expresses occasional m i l d surprise at the failure < f Renaissance scholars to discriminate between disparate textual tradit i o n s - a t the way Marsiglio Ficino, for example, 'happily combined the Summa o f Thomas Aquinas w i t h his o w n brand o f Platonic theology.' ' T h e Renaissance occult philosopher,' she observes, 'had a great gift for ignoring differences and seeing only resemblances.' I t is precisely this 'great gift' which leads Shumaker to write somewhat condescendingly o f a culture still given to 'syncretism and superstition' and to invoke 'the desire o f the human mind to reduce psychic conflict 376

J " Apart from Yates' Bruno, and Rosicrucian Enlightenment, see csp. McGuire and Rattansi, 'Newton,' and Pagel, Paracelsus. For critique, see Hesse, 'Hermcticism and Historiography,' and Westman, 'Magical Reform.' Further discussion and references arc given in chap. 8, 3 7 6 n. 15 and n. 16, volume 11 below. Yates, Art of Memory, p. 168. 286

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by modifying discrete bits o f information so that they no longer exist in tension.' 377

Before concluding that Renaissance syncretism served as a k i n d o f mental balm 'designed to reduce psychic conflict' i t seems w o r t h giving more thought to different procedures for transmitting 'discrete bits o f information.' For objective as w e l l as for subjective reasons, they appeared in a different guise to earlier scholars f r o m the w a y they look to us n o w . B y the fifteenth century many ancient records had evaporated into tantalizing fragments and glyphs. They hinted at resemblances w h i c h were only later shown to be false. A t the same time, many differences now familiar to us had been obscured. Lines between pagan error and Christian truth, drawn sharply by Augustine, had been erased and retraced so frequently that they had become increasingly blurred. T h e distance between Athens and Jerusalem was often discussed b u t never clearly fixed; texts f r o m Alexandria could be located almost anywhere in between. T h e reconstruction o f diverse ancient civilizations had n o t yet arrived at a point where Egyptian, Persian, Hellenic and Hellenistic could be clearly distinguished one f r o m another. Whereas w e instinctively place ancient records and unfamiliar scripts i n the separate contexts o f diverse ancient cultures, Renaissance scholars, w h o were more familiar w i t h memory theatres than w i t h maps and textbooks, i n stinctively sought a single context. They were accustomed to think o f monotheism as the oldest religion and o f one Ur-language as preceding a later confusion o f tongues. Whereas w e see them handling materials drawn f r o m disparate schools and cultures, they saw themselves as t r y i n g to reassemble portions o f a single corpus w h i c h had been broken up. N o r was this belief unreasonable, requiring a leap o f faith. Behind the vestiges o f ancient records w h i c h remained, certain uniformities could be glimpsed. After all, letter-number codes, incantations, pictograms and lines o f verse had been used t o record and transmit useful d a t a . That they m i g h t provide a clue t o uniform movement i n the heavens 378

379

377 Shumaker, The Occult Sciences, pp. 2 0 8 ; 235.

A useful general discussion of belief in an Ur-sprache is given by Steiner, After Babel. See esp. chap. 2. 379 See e.g., above account (chap. 2, n. 255) of contraction 'Amen' in Finegan, Handbook of

3 7 8

Biblical

Chronology,

p. 37. When Shumaker, The Occult

Sciences, p. 254 comments on a

'remarkable failure' to recognize that poetry is metaphorical rather than factual he overlooks the many fact-bearing functions performed by rhyme and verse before printing.

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or the mastery o f natural forces on earth was not an unreasonable hypothesis. L o n g before Ficino's day, ancient glyphs were seen to emanate from the same 'Logos' which had presided over creation and had taught A d a m the names and properties o f all t h i n g s . This belief was enriched w i t h new content when whole systems o f knowledge, detached f r o m their actual historical context, began to re-enter the West after the eleventh century. Imported f r o m Islam and Byzantium, texts by Euclid, Archimedes, Galen, Aristotle, and the like confronted the separate groups w h o tried to master them w i t h staggering testimony o f immense technical sophistication. Even now, the degree to which the Almagest or the Digest depended upon unusual facilities for p r o longed cooperative ventures in record-keeping and research goes overlooked. That ancient giants could take advantage o f certain exceptional libraries and abundant scribal labor was even less obvious to earlier scholars. B y the seventeenth century when Francis Bacon sought to dispel the awe still engendered by the ancients, he suggested (ironically overlooking the changes i n communications) that they had simply ' thought i t superfluous and troublesome to publish their notes, minutes and commonplaces, and therefore followed the example o f builders w h o removed the scaffolding and ladders when the building is finished.' In prior centuries, such structures seemed to have sprung abruptly into existence, like the fabled codes o f Lycurgus or the goddess o f wisdom herself. They had been contrived by ancient seers w h o seemed to require neither scaffolding nor ladders and w h o must have had special access to supernatural aid. 380

381

382

Thus it seemed plausible that the same God w h o had handed the Tablets to Moses and the same grace which had granted some pagan poets prophetic powers to anticipate the Incarnation, had also endowed ancient philosophers w i t h uncanny insights into the secrets o f nature. Ancient texts were greeted w i t h excitement and scanned for possible hidden meanings. The Bible itself was probed w i t h cabalistic codeGeorge Boas, Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, p. 22. Hieroglyphics were still being regarded as emanating from the Logos by clergymen in the seventeenth century, according to Gombrich, 'Icones Symbolicac,' p. 183. They were thought to have been invented by Hermes and to conceal theological truths by some sixteenth-century Frenchmen. Walker, 'The Prisca Thcologica in France,' p. 232. 381 When Shumaker, The Occult Sciences, p. 205, suggests that the intellectual superiority which was attributed to the ancient giants came as an afterthought - tacked on to legends of their unusual longevity and size - he seems to me to stress rhc least important features most of all. 3 8 ! Francis Bacon, Aphorism no. 125, Novum Organum. 3 8 0

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books on hand. O r t h o d o x limits had been strained by the reception o f Aristotle surrounded by Arabic and Hebrew commentaries. These limits snapped when the new presses released the turbulent * turgid flood.' Eventually Christian doctrine was purified ; and after the Church split apart more sharply defined limits were set by Catholic and Protestant alike. The study o f 'magia and cabala' was gradually detached f r o m scholarly research. B y n o w , the detachment is so complete that it is difficult for us to imagine h o w the study o f dusty records and dead languages could have ever caused such a stir. Modern historians w h o w o r k i n the field o f Renaissance studies find it necessary to remind their readers that a 'sense o f r e v i v i f i c a t i o n . . . accompanied the effort to interpret the original sources.' I t is difficult for us to recapture this sense because the meaning o f the t e r m 'original source' (or, for that matter, ' p r i m a r y source') has long since been emptied o f its inspirational associations. W h e n deciphering an ancient inscription, a modern philologist or archeologist is more apt to anticipate finding a merchant's bill o f lading or even a grocery list than a clue to the secrets G o d entrusted to Adam. Awesome powers are still associated w i t h decoding the B o o k o f Nature, to be sure, but the key is not sought by studying Linear B or the Dead Sea Scrolls. 383

' H o w . . .could a critical theory like that o f close imitation secure a strong hold on intelligent people or h o w could there have been such extravagant and servile worship o f men w h o had lived many ages before?' asks a scholar w h o is trying to explain the defense o f the 'Ancients' after the battle o f books had commenced. His inadequate answer is that the classical 'decay o f nature' theme simply lingered on. I think i t more likely that this theme was transformed after i t had been detached f r o m the conditions o f scribal culture. A l t h o u g h i t was p r o pelled by print, i t lost its relevance to the l i v i n g experience o f literate élites and became ever more artificial and c o n v e n t i o n a l . Before printing, however, no artifice was required to sustain the belief that loss and corruption came w i t h the passage o f time. As long as ancient learning had to be transmitted by hand-copied texts, i t was more likely 384

385

3 8 3

Gilmore, World of Humanism, p. 199.

Richard Foster Jones, Ancients and Modems, p. 4 9 . s At least it became more artificial down to the mid-nineteenth century. Thereafter the old decay-of-nature theme was filled with new content by philosophers of history who invoked the second law of thermodynamics while experiencing new pressures produced by an unprecedented and continuing communications overload. For further speculation on this matter, see my essay, 'Clio and Chronos,' pp. 3 6 - 6 5 (esp. p. 5 7 ) .

3 8 4 3fi

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to be blurred or blotted out than to be augmented and improved over the course o f centuries. ' T h e ascription o f "exact and absolute k n o w ledge o f all naturall things'' to the earliest writers' is especially puzzling, i n Shumaker's view, ' because the sources o f the prestige are never dilated upon sufficiently to satisfy m y curiosity.. , ' T h e assumption that 'the ancientest must needs be the right, as nearer the Fountain the purer the streams and the errors sprang up as the ages succeeded' conformed so completely w i t h the experience o f learned men throughout the age o f scribes that i t was simply taken for granted. Only after that age came to an end w o u l d the superior position o f the ancients require a defense. 3 8 6

387

Whereas a succession o f scribal copies o f an Alexandrian text led to an ever more diffuse and corrupted textual tradition, successive printed editions o f sixteenth-century reference works became easier to use and more useful. As previous comments suggest, the data contained in early editions were supplemented, clarified, codified, and surpassed by later ones. A first edition, to be sure, became increasingly valuable to the antiquarian or bibliophile. B u t i t was discarded i n favor o f the latest edition or most up-to-date w o r k by professional groups, w h o relied on such works i n the practice o f their c r a f t . A n updated technical literature, moreover, enabled young men, in certain fields o f study, to circumvent master-disciple relationships and to surpass their elders at the same time. Isaac N e w t o n was still in his twenties when he mastered available mathematical treatises, beginning w i t h Euclid and ending w i t h an updated edition o f Descartes. I n thus climbing ' o n the shoulders o f giants' he was not re-enacting the experience o f twelfth-century scholars for w h o m the retrieval o f Euclid's theorems (and o f Aristotle's natural philosophy) had been a major feat. 388

W e are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants. Thanks to them, we see farther than they, busying ourselves with the treatises of ancients we take their choice thoughts, buried by age and the neglect of men and raise them . . .from death to renewed l i f e . 389

Peter o f Blois is thus cited by M . D . Chenu to demonstrate medieval awareness o f the 'progress o f civilization.' The passage does suggest w h y medievalists question the distinctiveness o f those themes o f secular 3 8 6

3 8 7 3 8 8 3 8 9

Shumaker, Tlie Occult Sciences, p. 255.

Cited by R. E . Burns, book review, American Historical Review (1968), p. 181. See chap. 2, section 4 , above. Citation from Peter of Blois by Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, p. 290.

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rebirth w h i c h are attributed to the early Italian Renaissance. B u t i t also points to a way o f thinking about the advancement o f learning w h i c h had ceased t o be taken for granted by Newton's day. W h e n seventeenthcentury virtuosi 'busied themselves w i t h the treatises o f the ancients,' it was not t o preserve them by slavish copying, to transmit them b y delivering lectures, to emend them b y judicious editing, or to gather choice passages for new compendia. I t was rather to f i n d out what had been done i n order to surpass i t - to go beyond the limits prior generations had set. W i t h fixity came cumulative cognitive advance w h i c h called into question traditional concepts pertaining to g r o w t h and decay. In a celebrated passage Francis Bacon played w i t h the paradox: Antiquttas saeculi juvenilis mundi: Just as we look for greater knowledge of human things and riper judgement in the old man than in the y o u n g . . . so in like manner from our own age... much more might be fairly expected than from ancient times inasmuch as it is a more advanced age o f the world and stored and stocked w i t h infinite experiments and observations.. . 3 9 0

For scribal scholars the longer-lived age was more likely to suffer f r o m loss o f memory and senility than to be endowed w i t h an increased stock o f knowledge. N o t only could more be learned f r o m retrieving an early manuscript than f r o m procuring a recent copy but the finding o f lost texts was the chief means o f achieving a breakthrough in almost any field. I n this regard i t is misleading to invoke an 'eager desire to increase knowledge* and 'an active impatience w i t h all its hindrances' as 'causes' o f the 'revolt f r o m the ancients.' A similar desire to i n crease knowledge had been manifested for centuries before Francis Bacon's day but methods o f obtaining the desired goal were necessarily quite different before printing. Neither an ' irrational hatred o f novelty * nor *an equally irrational love for the o l d and the tried* had entered into the reverence for antiquity manifested during the age o f scribes. O n the contrary, energies were expended o n the retrieval o f ancient texts because they held the promise o f finding so much that still seemed new and untried. 391

there had been a great deal o f technological progress throughout the Middle Ages.. . i t is puzzling that its psychological effects seem to have been very 3 0 0

M I

Citation from Francis Bacon in R. F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns, p. 40. For similar views expressed earlier by Bruno, see citation in Butterfield, The Statecraft of MachiaveUi, pp. 37-46. R. F.Jones, Ancients and Moderns,

p. 145. 391

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REORIENTED

slight before the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. It certainly generated no diffused concept o f technical progress... an inventor was... a person who found something which had been lost, not one who devised a new solution unknown to previous generations. 392

W h a t had been ' u n k n o w n to previous generations' was so obscured before printing that finding 'something which had been lost' was often equivalent to devising 'a new solution.' I f early modern scientists 'represented their contributions as the mere restoration o f ancient wisdom, lost since the Fall and surviving only in coterie circles' i t was not necessarily because 'they wanted to conceal the fact o f innovation.' Rather they were living in an era when the process o f innovation was just beginning to be detached f r o m renovation and just beginning to assume the meaning assigned to i t today. Because the 'mere restoration o f ancient w i s d o m ' has by n o w been completely drained o f its inspirational content, we are likely to overlook its many contributions to cognitive advance in an early age. W e are also likely to misinterpret the effect o f attributing superior feats i n all fields to the ancients. Far f r o m hindering innovation, belief in prior superlative performance encouraged emulators to reach beyond their normal grasp. The notion that supreme mastery o f a given art had been obtained under divine dispensation in an earlier golden age linked imitation to inspiration. M u c h as a new f o r m o f music-drama, the opera, was created as a way o f resurrecting Greek drama, so too new ocean routes were developed while searching for fountains o f y o u t h and cities o f gold. Even the ' i n v e n t i o n ' o f central perspective may have been sparked by efforts to reconstruct lost illustrations to an ancient Alexandrian text. O n l y after ancient texts had been more permanently fixed to printed pages w o u l d the study o f 'dead' letters or the search for primary sources seem incompatible w i t h the release o f creative energies or the claim to be specially inspired. 'Back to the classics' and 'back to nature' are n o w seen as t w o separate themes w h i c h the humanists managed to intertwine; when Giotto w o n praise f r o m Boccaccio and the painter's capacity to render lifelike forms was celebrated as part o f the revival. ' T h e inclusion o f painting in the theory o f r e v i v a l . . .resulted.. . i n a kind o f bifurcation.. . T o Petrarch's principal theme, "back to the classics," Boccaccio... opposed as a counterpoint, the theme, "back to n a t u r e " ; and the 3 9 i

Thomas, Religion

and the Decline of Magic, p. 430.

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interweaving o f these t w o themes was to play a decisive role i n humanist t h o u g h t . . .' 1 think these slogans have been coined too recently, however, to convey scribal themes accurately. 'Back to the classics' evokes games o f books and authors which scribal scholars could not play, and bound volumes arrayed on bookshelves i n a format they never saw. 'Back to nature' also has anachronistic, post-romantic overtones and points to later divisions between academician and artist, pedant and poet. 393

I n Boccaccio's words as cited by Panofsky: ' G i o t t o brought the art o f painting' not back to nature but 'back f r o m the grave.' This theme was scarcely 'opposed as a counterpoint' to that favored by Petrarch. Arts and letters (as quattrocento literati never seemed to tire o f saying) had been reborn together and had begun to flourish together just as they had i n the days o f Pliny and C i c e r o . Insofar as praise was given to the Florentine painter for simulating nature, i t was because Pliny had thus described the praise given to painters i n a n t i q u i t y rather than because some new naturalistic theme was being introduced. I n other words, the t w o slogans were still fused. N o bifurcation took place. The recovery o f lost arts was f i r m l y linked to the retrieval o f old books. Thus when Ghiberti deplored the destruction o f antiquities by zealots he had i n m i n d book-burnings as w e l l as iconoclasm: ' . . . thus were destroyed not only statues and paintings, but the books and commentaries and handbooks and rules on w h i c h men relied for their training i n this great and excellent and gentle a r t . . . ' F r o m the viewpoint o f quattrocento artists and writers, removing distortion f r o m images was naturally related to removing corruption f r o m texts. Retrieving the writings o f the ancients went together w i t h the idea o f restoring forms to their natural state. 394

395

39 6

B y recognizing that veneration for the ancients took a different f o r m i n the age o f scribes f r o m the one i t took later on, we may be in a better position to understand changing views o f the Renaissance itself. 393 Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 19. That Boccaccio was actually reweaving a theme he derived from Dante, when he praised Giotto, is noted on p. 13. «•* A discussion of how art history was patterned by Renaissance humanists on models furnished by Aristotle, Cicero and Pliny is in Gombrich, Norm and Form, pp. 100-1. Also pp. 1-10. For the most illuminating recent full-length treatment see two books by Baxandall, Giotto and Painting and Experience

in 15th Century

Italy.

" s Petrarch's copy of Pliny's Natural History was heavily annotated especially at passages concerning Apelles, according to Baxandall, Giotto, pp. 6 2 - 3 . 3 0 6 Cited in Chabod, Machiavelll, p. 153.

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W i t h this change of emphasis from things religious to things secular, the significance of the old metaphor became reversed: Antiquity, so long considered as a 'Dark Age' now became a time of 'light' which had to be restored: the era following Antiquity, on the other hand was submerged in obscurity. 397

Those w h o first celebrated a rebirth o f ancient arts and letters, however, were not necessarily registering a shift o f emphasis f r o m religious to secular concerns. The ' metaphor o f light and darkness' did not necessarily 'lose its original religious value as i t came to have a literary c o n n o t a t i o n . ' I n early fourteenth-century A v i g n o n the application o f luminary metaphors to recent recovery o f ancient texts was not peculiar to the Florentine poet. Clerical compilers o f preachers' manuals - o f the very compendia Petrarch disliked - used the same metaphor, and w i t h a 'literary' c o n n o t a t i o n . " As for the special interest o f the early humanists in the restoration o f the classical canons i n achieving eloquence in speech or symmetry and natural proportions i n art; i t may be misconstrued i f taken as pointing away f r o m 'things religious to things secular.' Even the rejection o f Gothic styles as barbaric and corrupt m i g h t well indicate spiritual aspirations in an age when the very heavens - the abode o f God and His angels - were believed to be fashioned along classical lines. Here i t is useful to recall a point made earlier - one that believers in a unified Zeitgeist neglect: Grecian heavens had been recovered in the age o f the Gothic cathedral and scholastic p h i l o s o p h y . The domes and the circular floor plans o f Renaissance churches echoed a divine order envisioned in Aquinas' age. 358

3

400

Post-romantic generations find i t natural to relate the summas o f schoolmen, medieval Latin and Gothic cathedrals w i t h Christian faith; but early humanists were unaware that stained glass, pointed arches, or Church Latin reflected the 'Genie d u Christianisme'. They saw nothing edifying in scholastic glosses or stone gargoyles. Artifacts produced between the fall o f Rome and the Black Death had not been Mommscn, 'Petrarch's Conception,' p. 228. This influential article is acknowledged by Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. io, n. 1 as the basis for his own similar interpretation. 3 9 8 Franco Simone is thus cited by Mommsen, 'Petrarch's Conception,' p. 227. 3 " See discussion by Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, 'The Texts Called Lumen Animc,' csp. pp. 12, 22. One of these compilations was sponsored by an Avignon Pope during the period of Petrarch's residence there. On the role of Avignon in the Petrarchan revival and Petrarch's distate for florilcgia and compendia, sec Simone, Tiie French Renaissance, chap. 1, esp. p. 47. * M Sec reference to Lovejoy's interpretation, above, p. 215. 3 9 7

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classified - let alone viewed as tokens o f a distinctive Christian culture. Garbled syntax and grotesque imagery simply testified to the havoc wrought by heathen hordes. Panofsky refers to Petrarch's 'almost heretical notion o f the Christian M i d d l e Ages as a period o f darkness.' Whereas Gibbon did link the triumph o f Christianity to that o f barbarism, i t seems likely that Petrarch d i d not and that the notion o f a 'Christian M i d d l e Ages' was foreign to his thought. That Christian truths had been obscured by barbarism was not an 'almost heretical notion' and was more compatible w i t h Petrarch's o u t l o o k . Vandalism, like plague and war, still signified God's w r a t h for the early humanists. The tower o f Babel, the confusion o f tongues, the loss and corruption o f texts went together w i t h other catastrophes. All pointed to a withdrawal o f divine guidance. 401

402

403

W h a t did Petrarch mean to say by using this w o r d 'tenebrae?' asks Mommsen. He is referring to Petrarch's letter to Agapito Colonna where the poet excuses himself for failing to mention the Colonna family. After citing Petrarch's comment: ' I did not wish for the sake o f so few famous names to guide m y pen so far and through such darkness. Therefore.. .1 have determined to f i x a l i m i t to m y history long before this century,' Mommsen poses the question: What did Petrarch mean to say by using this w o r d ' tenebrae' ? In his opinion was this period dark simply because the lack o f sources prevented the historian shedding light on it? Or was it dark because the 'lamps had gone out all over Europe' for a time of more than a thousand years? W i t h this alternative we come to the crucial point in the interpretation of Petrarch's conception o f history. For the acceptance o f the second assumption would mean that Petrarch passed a very definite judgement o f value upon the long era in question. 404

Before accepting the second assumption (and marvelling at the way Petrarch anticipated Sir Edward Grey) one m i g h t pause longer over the first alternative - i f only to wonder w h y i t is so casually dismissed. * » Panofsky, 'Erasmus and the Visual Arts,* p. 2 0 1 . On Panofsky's neo-Hegelian desire to demonstrate the organic unity of the Christian, Gothic and scholastic middle ages, see perceptive comment by Gombrich, In Search of Cultural History, p. 2 8 . 4 0 1 That Petrarch sought to corroborate Christian truths in returning to pure classical sources and never imagined that classical and Christian truths might diverge is stressed by Simone, French Renaissance,

p. 4 7 .

Did the Black Death, which was associated with a decline of learning in prefaces to the charters of Perugia, Siena, Pavia and other city states, contribute to the sense of a recent dark age among the early humanists? See Campbell, The Black Death, pp. 1 4 9 , 1 6 1 . * ° * Mommsen, 'Petrarch's Conception,' p. 395.

w

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A 'lack o f sources,' which is treated by Mommsen as a trivial excuse, was probably o f crucial concern to a scribal scholar. I t also appears to be less an alternative than a complement to the second assumption. W o u l d not regret over barbarian invasions be complementary to regret over a dearth o f usable records? As an earlier discussion has suggested, the sheer difficulty o f unravelling the tangled chronicles o f barbarian kingdoms should not be underestimated. Petrarch's dark age, Hanna Gray has suggested, was not completely devoid o f talented or noble men b u t did lack the eloquence needed to preserve the memory o f such m e n . A loss o f eloquence meant an impairment o f the collective memory. I t led to a prolonged 'slumber o f forgetfulness,' as Petrarch put it. O f course, a negative value-judgment was entailed i n assigning darkness to the age. B u t this negative judgment was passed on a millennium that was relatively blank as w e l l as black - not filled w i t h the specific Christian significance assigned to i t later on. 405

4 0 6

'This slumber o f forgetfulness w i l l not last forever. After the darkness has been dispelled, our grandsons w i l l be able to walk back into the pure radiance o f the p a s t . ' W h e n Petrarch wrote this celebrated passage, he was probably not attributing a ' g l o o m y ignorance' to Christian culture after the conversion o f Constantine, but rather evoking a loss o f memory which scribal scholars attributed to a fall f r o m g r a c e . W h e n he expressed hope that darkness w o u l d be dispelled and former radiance restored, was he 'transferring to the state o f intellectual culture' a metaphor previously applied to "the state o f the s o u l ? ' I t seems more likely that he coupled soul w i t h intellect, thought o f knowledge as a f o r m o f recalling what was imprinted on the soul, regarded divine w i s d o m as the source o f all radiance and attributed what he admired about antiquity to inspiration f r o m this source. That he was preoccupied, as a poet and scholar, w i t h the loss o f classical texts - particularly those relating to the ars memorandi and rules o f rhetoric - seems very probable. That he objected to florilegia and glosses and sought a return to ' p u r e ' sources is evident. That he 407

408

400

* 0 i See reference to Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini above, n. 6 8 . * o i Gray, 'Renaissance Humanism,' p. 503. 4 0 7 Citation from Petrarch in Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, p. 10. 408 On Petrarch's concern with the ars memorandi, and how this concern linked him with Aquinas see Yates, Art of Memory, pp. 109-13. How preoccupation with loss of memory (which loomed large in all scribal endeavors) may have entered into early humanist ideas about a revival and also into their 'pursuit of eloquence,' as described by Hanna Gray is worth further thought. Eloquence was regarded as a 'fixative' by the Christian humanists according to Rice, 'The Humanist Idea,' p. 130. 4 M Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences, pp. 10-11.

296

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hoped true eloquence and Roman glory could be revived is also quite clear. B u t I cannot see w h y i t is necessary t o assume that he was effecting a 'complete reversal o f accepted values* or revolutionizing the interpretation o f history when he contrasted recent darkness w i t h past radiance. I n medieval monasteries, where the love o f learning went together w i t h the desire for God, distinctions between sacred and profane had long been blurred b y a complex system o f correspondences between earthly and heavenly kingdoms and by the use o f historic personages as mnemonic devices to reinforce Christian t r u t h s . Even i n the most orthodox religious circles, the concept o f antiquity contained too many Christian ancestors and prophets - was too well illuminated b y ' the light f r o m the East' and too richly embroidered b y a l l e g o r y - t o be simply described as a 'dark age.' A t the time Petrarch was w r i t i n g , i t was difficult to distinguish between pagan poets i n the guise o f Christian prophets and church fathers i n the guise o f men o f letters. B o t h demonstrated mastery o f Latin prose-styles; b o t h seemed by their eloquence to have been specially i n s p i r e d . I t is not entirely clear just where Petrarch placed the onset o f darkness ( w i t h the conversion o f Constantine or the accession o f barbarian emperors) but wherever he placed it, pagan prophecy had already been fulfilled and the Incarnation had occurred. Petrarch's golden age included witnesses, apostles and martyrs to the true faith. I t encompassed the crucifixion and resurrection. Surely no traditional values had to be reversed i n order to describe this interval as bright; only impious men could describe i t as dark. Similarly, Petrarch's program o f purifying Latin and reviving Greek went together w i t h reverence for Gospel truths and patristic teachings - as later Christian humanists w o u l d spell out. 410

411

T o be sure, Jerome had w o r r i e d about being a better Ciceronian than he was a Christian and this same concern seems to have troubled Petrarch and Boccaccio-as i t did Erasmus later o n . I f they were 4 1 2

* 1 0 That antiquity was not viewed as a dark age by monastic scholars is documented by Leclercq, The Love of Learning, passim. How the memory arts were used for didactic Christian purposes (including memorizing sermons) is shown by Yates, Art of Memory, pp. 5 5 - 7 , 8 5 . The use of figures such as Plato and Aristotle to stand for groups of things to be memorized is discussed on p. 250. * " That the Church fathers were considered as classical men of letters is spelled out by Rice, 'The Humanist Idea,' p. 130. An example of the way lines drawn by Augustine between pagan and Christian were blurred by a fourteenth-century Dominican commenting on the City of Cod is noted by Smalley, English

412 s

ee

Friars,

pp. 61-3.

description of Boccaccio's crisis of conscience in Meiss, Painting in Florence, chap, 7 .

297

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REORIENTED

troubled, however, this was not because values had been reversed but because a traditional ambivalence, which had always marked the vocation o f Christian scholars, was still being manifested. The point is that the 'dark ages' as perceived by the humanists had obscured the w i s d o m o f Ciceronian and Christian alike. The words o f apostles and disciples had been garbled along w i t h those o f senators and sages; patristic texts disfigured along w i t h pagan ones. Even the human f o r m , molded b y the Creator, had been twisted out o f shape b y graceless clumsy hands - so that the miracle o f Incarnation itself was obscured. T h e urge to penetrate Gothic darkness was, i n short, still n o t detached f r o m the hope o f coming closer to Christian truth. 413

414

the whole idea o f the Italian 'rinascita* is inseparably connected with the notion o f the preceding era as an age of obscurity. The people living in that 'renascence' thought o f it as a time o f revolution. They wanted to break away from the medieval past and all its traditions and they were convinced that they had effected such a break.. . 4 I S

Significantly enough, most o f the terms used i n this citation, insofar as they were current during the q u a t t r o c e n t o have shifted their meaning since then. The wish ' t o break away f r o m the medieval past and all its traditions' no longer conveys a desire to master Latin grammar, read the Church fathers, or restore texts and images to their original state. Revolution (as many studies note) also means something quite different to us than i t d i d to Machiavelli and Copernicus. The idea o f a 'rinascita' was similarly affected. ' W h i l e the humanists' antiquity and the philosoph.es' antiquity were not the same, they were k i n ' writes Peter Gay; 'the first was to the second as an illuminated manu416

4 . 4

4 . 5 4 1 6

It seems likely that some of the concern expressed by quattrocento humanists about the wrecking of ancient Roman culture reflected dismay about the 'burning of vanities' by zealots in Florence. An illuminated manuscript of Petrarch's own works went up in flames on one such occasion in the 1490s. Wardrop, Script of Humanism, p. 9, n. 1 . That a shift from a 'spiritual and abstract' concern with the Logos or Godhead to a more 'naturalistic' concern with the in carnation can be detected in medieval art is discussed by Kitzinger's review of Ladner's Ad Imaginem Dei: The Image of Man in Medieval Art. Sec also Trinkaus' In Our Image and Likeness, for evidence concerning the way Italian humanists tended to humanize God while deifying man. This movement which occurred within the context of scribal culture was amplified, reinforced and turned in new directions in the context of print culture. Mommsen, 'Petrarch's Conception,' p. 2 4 1 . The phrase 'medieval past' seems somewhat anachronistic, implying as it does a safely distant closed chapter rather than the disorder of recent times. Insofar as the early humanists wrote about a medium aevum it was to characterize the saecula recentiora and the culture of the moderni.

See perceptive comment by Trinkaus, 'Humanism, Religion, Society.. .Recent Studies,' p. 684.

298

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script is to a printed book - an ancestor, a little archaic perhaps but manifestly w i t h i n the same f a m i l y . ' That a process o f transmission had been transformed when the bookhand was replaced by the very similar looking typeface is concealed by this k i n d o f simile. W h e n Petrarch hoped that his descendants m i g h t w a l k back i n t o the 'pure radiance' o f the past, his outlook was oriented i n an opposite direction f r o m that o f Condorcet. Insofar as the Enlightenment may be regarded as an heir o f the Renaissance, the notion o f a movement away f r o m darkness toward radiance has been preserved. B u t when the direction o f the movement was reversed (so that i t pointed toward a clear l i g h t o f reason that grew ever brighter and away f r o m the pristine sources o f ancient wisdom), its implications were transformed as well. The advancement o f disciplines was detached f r o m the recovery o f ancient learning. Inspiration was set against imitation, moderns against ancients; and the early humanists, themselves, increasingly appeared i n a Janus-like guise, looking hopefully i n t w o opposite directions at once. 4 1 7

This is not to deny that the early Italian humanists made much o f the notion o f belonging to a new time.' M y point is, rather, that this n o t i o n was fundamentally reoriented after i t had been introduced, so that an imaginative leap is required for modern scholars to get at its original context. Although intuition or a 'feel for the times' is helpful i n making such a leap, i t is even more useful to be able to gauge the objective dimensions o f the gap that must be bridged. Indiscriminate use o f the term 'Renaissance'- w h i c h was employed by scribal scholars to describe their cultural revival and later extended t o cover changes associated w i t h printing, Protestantism and the Copernican Revolution seems to be singularly unhelpful for this purpose. 'The breadth o f the gulf w h i c h separates the age o f manuscripts f r o m the age o f p r i n t is not always nor fully realized by those w h o read and criticize medieval l i t e r a t u r e , ' notes Chaytor. The remark can be applied much more widely outside Chaytor's o w n field, but i t does seem particularly cogent to Renaissance studies. For i n this field, where the g u l f must be constantly traversed, its dimensions are still unfathomed and its very existence almost completely concealed. 1

418

T o return to a remark cited at the beginning o f this chapter: I agree that 'something i m p o r t a n t and revolutionary occurred' between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries; b u t disagree w i t h the suggestion Gay,

Enlightenment,

i, 259.

4 1 8

299

Chaytor, From Script to Print, p. 1.

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

that ' w e might as well go on calling that something the Renaissance.' Instead I propose that we break w i t h precedents set b y Michelet and Burckhardt and distinguish between the disparate developments n o w covered by the same l a b e l . It makes sense to employ the term Renaissance when referring to a two-phased cultural movement which was initiated by Italian, literati and artists in the age o f scribes and expanded to encompass many regions and fields o f study in the age o f print. B u t needless confusion is engendered when the same term is also used to cover the ensemble o f changes which were ushered i n b y print. N o t only is a major communications revolution obscured b y this practice; but so, too, is the reorientation o f the cultural movement. I t becomes difficult to guard against prematurely endowing the Petrarchan revival w i t h the attributes o f print culture. A later sense o f antiquity 'as a totality cut o f f f r o m the present' is thus confusingly coupled w i t h an early sense o f antiquity o n the verge o f being reborn. 419

420

In an interesting comment which prepares the w a y for m y next chapter, Peter Burke points out that the demand o f early sixteenthcentury reformers to return to early Christian practices had both an historical and an 'unhistorical' aspect. The demand illustrates a 'new sense o f history' Burke asserts, ' f o r i t implies an awareness that the Church had changed over time. O f course the reformers also thought that i t w o u l d be possible to go back to the primitive Church, a view we might find "unhistorical" - but that is a separate p o i n t . ' When these t w o separate points are not kept separate, paradoxical hybrid 421

* 1 9 See citation from Warnke's review, above, p. 165. 4 1 0 In using the term 'Renaissance* to cover an epoch which featured 'the discovery of che world and of man,' Michelet did not merely precede Burckhardt {as is noted by Simone, The French Renaissance,

pp. 33-4;

112-13 and W . K. Ferguson, Renaissance in Historical

Thought, pp. 177¬

8 ) . He also combined the practices of Gabriel Naudc, who applied the term to a phase of French culture, with those of Condorcet, who dropped the term from his scheme of world history. Michelet thus renamed Condorcct's 8th period - which ran from the invention of printing to the age of Bacon, Galileo, Descartes. See Michckt, Histoire de France vu, introduction, chaps. 7 and 37. (Michclet's profession of faith as the son of a printer, pp. 294-5, links him to Condorcet whose 'hymn to print' is in the opening sections of the 'Huitième Periode' of the Esquisse, pp. 177-83.) While repeating Michclet's phrases, and continuing to point to the same era (of Galileo et al.) Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance, took an opposite tack, completely by-passing printing while remaining in Italy. He started with the Petrarchan rinascita, drew heavily on the memoirs of the ins. bookdcaler, Vcspasiano da Bisticci {who scorned the new presses) and credited to Italian native genius all the discoveries encompassed by Michelct's 'Renaissance.' (The distracting effect of this 'primacy of Italy' thesis upon the history of science is noted in chap. 5, volume n below.) Thus Burckhardt did not merely restore to the Italian movement a label which French historians had, in a sense, misappropriated. He also fused the scribal rinascita in Italy with all the developments in world history that Condorcet had launched with printing. 4 1 1

Burke, Renaissance

Sense of the Past, p. 4 0 .

300

A CLASSICAL

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REORIENTED

constructs are created - such as the notion o f a 'permanent Renaissance.' A rebirth w h i c h is permanent is a contradiction i n terms. L i v i n g things are perishable; only dead ones can be embalmed and indefinitely preserved. The idea o f permanent post-mortem, w h i c h (alas) may be compatible w i t h modern academic history, is at odds w i t h the sense o f quickening manifested i n the cultural movement called the Renaissance. Please note that this p o i n t is intended to apply to both phases o f the cultural movement - to the age o f Erasmus as w e l l as that o f Petrarch. In terms o f the scheme tried out i n this chapter, the communications shift does not coincide w i t h the beginning o f a modern historical consciousness but rather precedes i t by a century or more. The past could not be set at a fixed distance until a uniform spatial and temporal framework had been constructed. This d i d not occur until the age o f Mercator, Ortelius, Scaliger and Gesner - that is until after the first century o f printing. B y then, as an earlier citation f r o m M y r o n G i l more suggests, the Renaissance was over. As w i t h most vital movements, i t proved to be impermanent after all. B y prolonging a process o f retrieval while draining i t o f its inspirational significance, the preservative powers o f print seem to have had a negative and largely deadening effect. F r o m the viewpoint o f romantic critics o f modern culture at all events, the academic historian appears to be a bloodless desiccated creature i n comparison w i t h the Renaissance M a n . Yet i t must be remembered that early humanists, f r o m Petrarch to Valla, owe their still vital reputation as culture-heroes to the prosaic print-made knowledge industry. They w o u l d not n o w be heralded as founding fathers o f historical scholarship i f it were n o t for the new forms o f continuity and incremental change w h i c h came after their w o r k was done. Earlier scholars had been less fortunate. Perhaps a counterfactual proposition should be entertained to b r i n g out the significance o f the accident o f t i m i n g w h i c h produced the t w o phased cultural movement n o w called the Renaissance. I n view o f the thriving manuscript book trade in thirteenth-century university towns, it is at least conceivable that movable type (had i t been developed b y a goldsmith at the time) m i g h t have been welcomed by the teaching and preaching orders and by medieval merchants i n the age o f I n n o cent I I I . I t is also possible that the invention m i g h t have been delayed until the early sixteenth century and thus come after the French inva30L

CLASSICAL

AND

CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

sions o f Italy, the sack o f Rome and the dispersal o f Greek refugee colonies. I n either case i t seems likely that a different k i n d o f cultural movement - one w h i c h owed less to the native genius, civic loyalties, mercantile activities and Mediterranean traditions o f quattrocento Italians - w o u l d n o w be heralded as supplying the 'first-born sons o f modern Europe.' Had printing not come until the sixteenth century the Italian revival m i g h t w e l l have resembled the so-called ' p r o t o humanïst' movemént o f the twelfth century. Instead o f a gradual loss o f vitality, there w o u l d have been swift death - even before a full flowering could occur. I t also should be noted (no longer i n a counter-factual vein) that the full flowering o f high Renaissance culture in cinquecento Italy owed much to early printers - especially to those in Venice where not only Greek and Hebrew publishing but vernacular translations, new compositions i n the 'lingua volgare,' the arts o f woodcut and engraving, and the first Grub Street sub-culture, also thrived. In this light, emphasis on the devitalizing and negative effects o f the new medium needs to be balanced by considering its stimulating effect on inventive and imaginative faculties and its contributions to a heightened sense o f individuality and personality - a sense w h i c h continues to distinguish Western civilization f r o m other civilizations even n o w . One more observation is i n order before m o v i n g on to the next chapter. I t w o u l d be a mistake to assume (as media analysts sometimes do) that the advent o f printing affected all vital movements i n the same way. As our brief indulgence i n counter-factual speculation suggests, the regional location o f the movement, the specific content o f the textual tradition, and above all the 'accident' o f timing have to be taken into account. Under the aegis o f the early presses, a classical revival in Italy was reoriented. Under the same auspices, German Protestantism was born.

302

4 THE SCRIPTURAL T R A D I T I O N RECAST: R E S E T T I N G T H E STAGE FOR T H E R E F O R M A T I O N

I.

INTRODUCTION

Between 1517 and 1520, Luther's thirty publications probably sold well over 300,000 copies... Altogether in relation to the spread of religious ideas it seems difficult to exaggerate the significance o f the Press, without which a revolution o f this magnitude could scarcely have been consummated. Unlike the Wycliffite and Waldensian heresies, Lutheranism was from the first the child of the printed book, and through this vehicle Luther was able to make exact, standardized and ineradicable impressions on the mind o f Europe. For the first time i n human history a great reading public judged the validity o f revolutionary ideas through a mass-medium which used the vernacular languages together w i t h the arts of the journalist and the cartoonist.. . l

As this citation suggests, the impact o f print, w h i c h is often overlooked in discussions o f the Renaissance, is less likely to go unnoted i n Reformation studies. I n this latter field, historians confront a movement that was shaped at the very outset (and i n large part ushered in) by the new powers o f the press. ' T h e Reformation was the first religious movement,' i t has been said, ' w h i c h had the aid o f the printing press.* Even before Luther however, Western Christendom had already called on printers to help w i t h the crusade against the Turks. Church officials had already hailed the new technology as a gift from God - as a p r o vidential invention w h i c h proved Western superiority over ignorant infidel forces. 2

3

Although the anti-Turkish crusade was thus the 'first religious movement* to make use o f print, Protestantism surely was the first fully t o 1 3

a Dickens, Reformation and society, p. 5 1 . Louise Holbora, 'Printing,* p. 1. Geoffroy Atkinson, Les Nouveaux Horizons, p. 5 7 . See also Bohnstedt, The Infidel Scourge of

God.

CLASSICAL

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CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

exploit its potential as a mass medium. I t was also the first movement o f any kind, religious or secular, to use the new presses for overt p r o paganda and agitation against an established institution. B y pamphleteering directed at arousing popular support and aimed at readers who were unversed in Latin, the reformers unwittingly pioneered as revolutionaries and rabble rousers. They also left 'ineradicable impressions' in the f o r m o f broadsides and caricatures. Designed to catch the attention and arouse the passions o f sixteenth-century readers, their antipapist cartoons still have a strong impact when encountered in history books today. B y its very nature then, the exploitation o f the new medium by Protestants is highly visible to modern scholars. Moreover the reformers were aware that the printing press was useful to their cause and they acknowledged its importance in their writings. The theme o f printing as p r o o f o f spiritual and cultural superiority, first sounded by Rome in its crusade against 'illiterate' Turks, was taken over by German humanists t r y i n g to counter Italian claims. Gutenberg had already j o i n e d Arminius as a native culture-hero before he gained added stature for providing Lutheran preachers and princes and knights w i t h their most effective weapon in their gallant struggle against popes. Luther, himself, described printing as 'God's highest and extremest act o f grace, whereby the business o f the Gospel is driven forward. I t was typical o f the Protestant outlook that he also regarded it as 'the last flame before the extinction o f the w o r l d . ' Others w h o did not share his religious outlook m i g h t regard man's future on earth as being indefinitely extended and could thus associate printing w i t h progressive enlightenment. Luther believed, on the contrary, that the f o r w a r d movement o f history was soon to be terminated by the day o f judgment. M a n y later Protestants, like early humanists, still looked back and not ahead when seeking to overcome Gothic darkness and move t o w a r d an age o f light. W h e n John Foxe heralded 'the excellent arte o f printing most happily o f late found out. . .to the singular benefite o f Christe's C h u r c h ' he was thinking about the restoration o f ' t h e lost light o f knowledge to these blynde times' and ' the reneuing o f holsome and auncient writers whose doinges and teachinges otherwise had lyen in o b l i v i o n . ' 4

1

5

6

* Spitz, The Religious Renaissance, pp. 84-5. See also Hajo Holbom, XJlrich von Hutten, p. 42. s Luther's remarks cited by Black, 'The Printed Bible,' p. 432. 6 John Foxe, preface to a collection of Protestant texts (1572) cited by Aston, 'Lollardy.'p. 169. See also Aston, 'John Wycliffe's Reformation Reputation,' pp. 23-52, for account of how Foxe

304

THE

SCRIPTURAL TRADITION

RECAST

Nevertheless the epoch-making role assigned printing i n Protestant schemes marked a departure f r o m previous historiography. F r o m Luther on, the sense o f a special blessing conferred o n the German nation was associated w i t h Gutenberg's invention, w h i c h emancipated the Germans f r o m bondage to Rome and brought the light o f true religion to a God-fearing people. The mid-century German historian, Johann Sleidan developed this theme i n an Address to the Estates of the Empire o f 1542, a polemic which was republished more than once. As i f to offer proof that God has chosen us to accomplish a special mission, there was invented in our land a marvelous new and subtle art, the art o f printing. This opened German eyes even as it is now bringing enlightenment to other countries. Each man became eager for knowledge, not without feeling a sense o f amazement at his former blindness. 7

The same theme was taken over b y the Marian exiles and exploited in a manner that suited Elizabethan statecraft. B y associating printing w i t h the providential mission o f a prospering expansive realm, the English Protestants pointed the w a y to later trends - to revolutionary messianism i n the O l d W o r l d and Manifest Destiny i n the N e w . . .the art o f Printing w i l l so spread knowledge, that the c o m m o n people, k n o w i n g their o w n rights and liberties w i l l not be governed by w a y o f oppression and so, little b y little, all kingdoms w i l l be like to Macaría.. . ' Protestant divines diverged f r o m Enlightened philo¬ sophes on many issues. B u t both viewed printing as a providential device which ended forever a priestly monopoly o f learning, overcame ignorance and superstition, pushed back the evil forces commanded b y Italian popes, and, i n general, brought Western Europe out o f the dark ages. 8

0

followed 'where John Bale had led* and of early use of'luminary metaphors' by eulogists of Wycliffe. A reference to the 'cleare light which God hath now reveiled' accompanies the translators* preface to the Geneva Bible and represents their recognition of the work of the first generation of scholar-printers on biblical texts. Lloyd Berry, introduction, The Geneva Bible, pp. 1 0 - 1 1 .

Cited by Gerald Strauss, 'The Course of German History,' p. 684. The theme of Germany opening her eyes after the scholastics had wrapped religion in darkness was already sounded by Ulrich von Hurten during the pre-Luthcran controversy over Reuchlin and the 'obscure men.* See passage cited by Overfield, 'A New Look at the Reuchlin Affair,' p. 205. 8 Gabriel Plattes, 'A Description of the Famous Kingdoms of Macaría* (1641) in Webster, Samuel Hartlib, p. 89. Compared with Luther's 'last flame' before the end of the world, this interpretation provides a fine example of the movement from millennium to utopia, described by Ernest Tuvcson, and recently documented by Webster, Tlie Great Instauration, chap. 1. (That Gabriel Plattes rather than Samuel Hartlib was the author of 'Macarla' is noted by Webster on p. 47.) ' Foxe*s world-historical scheme which stresses printing is discussed by W . Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought, pp. 54; 97. References linking papal control of the 'kingdom

7

CLASSICAL

ANDCHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

The Lord began to work for His Church not with sword and target to subdue His exalted adversary, but with printing, writing and reading.. .How many presses there be in the world, so many block-houses there be against the high castle of St. Angelo, so that either the pope must abolish knowledge and printing or printing must at length root him o u t . 10

Printing and Protestantism seem to go together naturally as printing and the Renaissance do not, partly because vestiges o f early historical schemes are carried over into present accounts. The new presses were not developed until after Petrarch's death and had no bearing on early concepts o f a 'rinascita'; whereas they were in full operation before Luther was b o r n and d i d enter into his views o f a religious reformation. I n the latter case, moreover, they affected events as well as ideas and actually presided over the initial act o f revolt. W h e n Luther proposed debate over his Ninety-Five Theses his action was not in and o f itself revolutionary. I t was entirely conventional for professors o f theology to hold disputations over an issue such as indulgences and 'church doors were the customary place for medieval p u b l i c i t y . ' B u t these particular theses did not stay tacked to the church door ( i f indeed they were ever really placed t h e r e ) . T o a sixteenth-century Lutheran chronicler, ' i t almost appeared as i f the angels themselves had been their messengers and brought them before the eyes o f all the people.' Luther himself expressed puzzlement, when addressing Pope Leo X six months after the initial event: 11

12

13

It is a mystery to me how my theses, more so than my other writings, indeed, those o f other professors were spread to so many places. They were meant exclusively for our academic circle here...They were written in such a of darkness' with unenlightened superstitions about 'fairies, ghosts, and spirits' may be found in Hobbcs' Leviathan, 10

1 1

I a

13

as noted by Willey, The Seventeenth

Century Background, p. 90.

Cited from Foxe's Book of Martyrs by Hallcr, The Elect Nation, p. n o . See also pertinent citation and discussion in Heath, The English Parish Clergy, p. 193. G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe, p. 15.

Iserloh, The Theses Were Not Posted does not prove the event did not occur but shows there is no reliable contemporary evidence that it did occur. Heinrich Grimm, 'Luther's "Ablassthesen, 1 " pp. 139-50, believes a hand-copied text was nailed on the church door but in mid-Novcmbcr rather than October 31. Harold J.Grimm, 'Introduction to Ninety-Five Theses', Career of the Reformer 1, 22-3 states that the text was printed before being nailed. That the last word on whether the Theses were nailed or mailed has not been spoken is noted by McNally, 'The Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther,' p. 4 6 m . I imagine the same point applies to whether they were first duplicated by hand or in print. The literature cited in Heinrich Grimm's article should be consulted in any case. Myconius, selection from Historia Reformationis, brand, p. 4 7 .

306

The Reformation,

cd. and tr. Hans Hillcr-

THE SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

language that the common people could hardly understand them. T h e y . . . use academic categories... According to a m o d e m scholar, i t is s t i l l ' one o f the mysteries o f Reformation history h o w this proposal for academic disputation, written i n Latin, could have kindled such enthusiastic support and thereby have such far-reaching i m p a c t . ' 15

Precisely when were Luther's theses first printed outside Wittenberg ? Just w h o was responsible for their being translated into German at first and then into other vernaculars? H o w d i d i t happen that, soon after being printed i n a handful o f towns, such as Nuremberg, Leipzig and Basel, copies were multiplied i n such quantities and distributed so widely that the Theses w o n top billing throughout central Europe competing for space w i t h news o f the Turkish threat in print shop, book stall and country f a i r ? These questions cannot be answered i n detail here. I have posed them simply to direct attention to the important intermediate stages between the academic proposal and the popular acclaim. The mystery, i n other words, is primarily the result o f skipping over the process whereby a message ostensibly directed at a few could be made accessible to the many. I f we want to dispel i t , instead o f j u m p i n g directly f r o m church door to public clamor, we should move more cautiously, a step at a time, looking at the activities o f the printers, translators, and distributors, w h o acted as agents o f the change. Probably w e ought to pause w i t h particular care over the interval i n December 1517 when three separate editions were printed almost simultaneously by printers located i n three separate t o w n s . 16

17

18

Luther, letter May 30, 1518 in Hillerbrand, ed. The Reformation, p. 54. That 'Luther took no steps to spread his theses among the people...' and ' General dissemination was not in Luther's mind when he posted the theses,' is asserted by Bainton, Here I Stand, pp. 63-4. I s Hillerbrand, ed. The Reformation, p. 32. 16 The rapid distribution of news about Luther's protest is brought out by Hillerbrand, 'Spread of the Protestant Reformation,' and Kortepeter, 'German Zeitung Literature,* p. 115. " According to Harold J. Grimm, 'Introduction to Ninety-Five Theses,' pp. 22-3, and Schwei¬ bert, Luther and Hii Times, p . 315, the first printing was done by Johann GrUnenberg of "Wittenberg. Heinrich Grimm, 'Luther's "Ablassthesen," 1 p. 142 disagrees, stating that there was no suitable Wittenberg printer so that Luther had to turn to the Leipzig shop of Jacob Thanncr. His low opinion of GrUnenberg's presswork and suitability runs counter to that offered by Grossman, 'Wittenberg Printing.' For data on the printer; Johannes RhauGrunenberg, active in Wittenberg 1508-25, see Benzing, Buckdrucker-lexicon des 16Jahrhunderts (Deutsches Sptachgebiet), p. 181. There is agreement, at all events that three separate printers: Holzel of Nuremberg, Thanner (or Herbipolensis) of Leipzig and Petri of Basel had issued editions by December, 1517. 14

18

The likelihood that a 'single directing hand' guided this triple publication is noted by Heinrich Grimm, 'Luther's "Ablassthesen,"' p. 145. The important role played by the 'Sodalitas

307

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

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REORIENTED

It is possible that Luther helped his friends on this occasion. His surprise at the interest he aroused may have entailed self-deception. One o f his letters, written i n March 1518, reveals his anxious ambivalence over the question o f publicity. Although he 'had no wish nor plan to publicize these Theses,' he wrote, he was w i l l i n g to have his friends do the j o b for h i m and left i t to them to decide whether the Theses were to be 'suppressed or spread outside.' Given this choice, did he doubt h o w his friends w o u l d choose? ' I t is out o f the question,' writes Heinrich G r i m m , 'for Luther not to have k n o w n o f the publication o f his theses or for them to have been published against his w i l l . ' Although Wittenberg was not yet a major printing center, Brother M a r t i n was well acquainted w i t h the new powers o f the press. He had already acquired experience editing texts i n Latin and German for printers. H e had already demonstrated sensitivity to diverse German book markets and discovered that vernacular works appealed to a diversified clientele. 19

2 0

21

In addition to investigating just h o w the message was spread, we also need to look more carefully at the so-called 'academic circle' to which it was first addressed. I n this regard, the conventional medieval format o f the invitation to debate the Theses was somewhat deceptive. B y 1517, the audience for learned disputation had been extended - far beyond earshot o f pulpit or lectern. P re-Reformation controversies had already seen scholars, such as Peter o f Ravenna, 'consciously appealing over the heads o f . . .university authorities to general educated opinion through published tracts.' T h e educated elite w h o could understand Latin and theological debate was no longer composed only o f church22

19

1 0

21

12

Staupicziana * in Nuremberg - especially by Chriscoph Scheurl and Kaspar Nutzel - in getting the Theses printed, in German as well as Latin, is noted by several authorities. Sec Bcbb, 'The Lawyers,' p. 59; also, Gerald Strauss, Nuremberg, pp. 10b ff. Letter to Scheurl, March 5, 1518, cited by Schwcibert, 'The Theses and Wittenberg,' p. 142, n. 55¬ Heinrich Grimm, 'Luther's "Ablassthcscn,"' p. 144. Luther's expressions of disapproval and surprise excluded the printing of the Leipzig version, according to Grimm and were directed only at the Basel and Nuremberg editions. Since Petri in Basel received his copy from Wittenberg friends of Luther and the Staupitz circle sponsored the Nuremberg version Luther's reaction still strikes me as disingenuous. (It is hard to reconcile Grimm's argument here with his reference to a 'single directing hand' noted above, n. 18.) In a letter of May 6 , 1517, Luther wrote to Scheurl saying that he was aiming his German translation of the penitential psalms at 'rude Saxons' not at cultivated Nurembcrgcrs and was dismayed that Die Sicbcn Busspsalinen was being read by the latter. Grossman, 'Wittenberg Printing,' p. 73. For other data, sec rest of Grossman's article. Nauert, 'The Clash of Humanists,' p. 7. Sec also same author's 'Peter of Ravenna.* {The transformation of intra-univcrsity disputes into more public forms of controversy is well described on p. 639.)

308

THE SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

men and professors. The scholar-printer w h o presided over the new centers o f erudition was usually a layman and rarely had a university degree. Although i t was closer to commercial crossroads than to cloistered precincts, the printer's workshop attracted the most learned and disputatious scholars o f the day. His products made i t possible for academic disputation to be followed f r o m afar. Whether or not the Theses were actually tacked on the door o f the castle church i n W i t t e n berg on A l l Hallows Eve, they were initially read b y a small group o f learned laymen w h o were less likely to gather on the church steps than in urban workshops where t o w n and g o w n met to exchange gossip and news, peer over editors' shoulders, check copy and read p r o o f . There, also, new schemes for promoting bestsellers were being tried out. Given access to presses and booksellers' routes i n the early sixteenth century, i t required only a small f o l l o w i n g in a handful o f towns to create an unprecedented stir. 23

A letter f r o m Beatus Rhenanus to Z w i n g l i i n 1519 suggests h o w the tactics employed by the small Latin-reading audience, w h o m Luther addressed, m i g h t produce distant repercussions i n a short time. ' H e w i l l sell more o f Luther's tracts i f he has no other to offer,' Z w i n g l i was told by Beatus i n a letter recommending a book peddler. The peddler should go f r o m t o w n to t o w n , village to village, house to house, offering nothing but Luther's writings for sale. 'This w i l l virtually force the people to buy them, w h i c h w o u l d not be the case i f there were a wide selection.' The linking o f concern about salvation w i t h shrewd business tactics and a so-called 'hard-sell' seems to have been no less pronounced i n the early sixteenth century than among Bible salesmen today. Deliberate exploitation o f the new medium helps to explain the paradox, w h i c h is noted in many Reformation studies, that a return to early Christian Church traditions somehow served to usher i n modern times. 24

'Rarely has one invention had more decisive influence than that o f printing on the Reformation.' Luther 'had invited a public disputation and nobody had come to dispute.' Then ' b y a stroke o f magic he found A good view of Erasmus at work in Frobcn's press room in Basel surrounded by a boisterous group who read what he set down and responded to it on the spot is offered by Tracy, 'Erasmus,' p. 288. 2 * Letter ofjune 2,1519 from Beatus to Zwingli in Hillerbrand, ed. The Reformation, p. 125. (See also pp. I23ff. for correspondence pertaining to distribution of Ninety-Five Theses.) On Zwingli's organizing colportage of Luther's books and for other relevant data, see Hillerbrand, 'Spread of the Protestant Reformation,' p. 274. 23

309

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REORIENTED

himself addressing the whole w o r l d . ' Here is an example o f revolutionary causation where normally useful distinctions between precondition and precipitant are difficult to m a i n t a i n . For there seems to be general agreement that Luther's act in 1517 did precipitate the Protestant Revolt. October 31 'continues to be celebrated i n Lutheran countries as the anniversary o f the Reformation and justly so. The controversy over indulgences brought together the man and the occasion: i t signalled the end o f the medieval C h u r c h . ' T o understand h o w Luther's Theses served as such a signal, we cannot afford t o stand at the door o f the Castle Church i n Wittenberg looking for something tacked there. I f we stay at the Wittenberg church w i t h Luther w e w i l l miss seeing the historical significance o f the event. As Maurice Gravier pointed out, i t was largely because traditional forms o f theological disputation had been transformed by entirely new publicity techniques that the act o f the German m o n k had such a far-reaching effect. 2 5

26

27

28

The theses,.. were said to be known throughout Germany in a fortnight and throughout Europe in a m o n t h . . .Printing was recognized as a new power and publicity came into its own. In doing for Luther what the copyists had done for Wycliffe, the printing presses transformed the field of communications and fathered an international revolt. It was a revolution. 39

The advent o f printing was an important precondition for the Protestant Reformation taken as a whole; for w i t h o u t i t one could not implement a 'priesthood o f all believers.' A t the same time, however, the new medium also acted as a precipitant. I t provided 'the stroke o f magic' by which an obscure theologian i n Wittenberg managed to shake Saint Peter's throne. I n this respect, the contrast drawn by several authorities between the fate o f Luther w h o had the new vehicle at his disposal and that o f earlier heretics w h o d i d not is w o r t h more extended discussion. According to Dickens, Lollardy 'could become no more than an abortive Reform a t i o n ' partly because ' i t lacked access to the printing press until after 1530.' One wonders whether the same thing could be said about 30

31

I S 2 7 1 9

3 0

3 1

Rupp, Luther's

Progress, p. 54.

1 6

G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe, p. 1$. Aston, The Fifteenth Century, p. 7 6 .

Stone, Social Change, p. xxii discusses this distinction. 2 8

Gravier, Luther et L'Opinion

Publique, p. 19.

That Hus and Wycliffe were separated from Luther by a technical discovery as well as by time, circumstances and conviction is noted by Aston, The Fifteenth Century, p. 50. Apart from citations given above, see also more extended treatment in Dickens, The English Reformation, chap. 2 and pertinent discussion by Henri Hauser, La Naissance du Protestantisme, pp. 5iff. Dickens, English

Reformation,

p. 37.

310

THE

SCRIPTURAL TRADITION

RECAST

Waldensians or Hussites. John Foxe had n o doubts that i t could: 'although through m i g h t be stopped the m o u t h o f John Huss,' he wrote, ' G o d hath opened the press to preach, whose voice the Pope is never able to stop w i t h all the puissance o f his triple c r o w n . ' Protestant polemics however are far f r o m offering adequate guidance. Just h o w did the advent o f printing actually affect the heresies that were current during the later middle ages ? The problem calls for much more thought and study than can be given here. Previous discussion o f the problem o f the Renaissance, however, points to a line o f analysis that might be w o r t h pursuing further. I t may be helpful, i n other words, to keep typographical f i x i t y i n m i n d when comparing the sixteenthcentury upheaval w i t h previous religious developments. Thus medieval heresies can be distinguished f r o m the Protestant Revolt i n much the same manner as medieval revivals f r o m the Italian Renaissance. I n both instances, localized transitory effects were superseded b y widespread permanent ones. I n both, lines were traced back as w e l l as forward, so that culture heroes and heresiarchs gained increased stature as founding fathers o f movements that expanded continuously over the course o f time. Partly because religious dissent was implemented b y print, i t could leave a much more indelible and far-reaching impression than dissent had ever left before. 32

33

34

For example, there had been many schisms w i t h i n the Western Church. Popes had often been at odds w i t h emperors and kings; w i t h 32

33

Cited from a nineteenth-century edition of the Book of Martyrs by D. M . Loades, in 'The Theory and Practice of Censorship,' p. 14.6. According to Leff, Heresy 1, 4 7 , the heresies were defined within the context of a Catholic Church that was co-extensive with Western Christendom and could only exist within that context. After the Protestant revolt, they came to an end, almost by definition, along with the medieval church. Just how they 'passed into the Reformation,' however, is left open by Leff. The Lollard revival, undertaken by Foxe and others who fully exploited print, retrieved texts and wrote eulogies has been examined by Dickens, Aston and others. How the Waldensians (by contributing to the printing of Olivetan's French translation of the Bible, for example) entered into Calvinist developments might be worth more study. That early waves of Protestantism in southern France came to regions already penetrated by Waldensian propaganda and vernacular Bibles and psalters is noted by LeRoy Ladurie, Les Paysans 1,334. (The section of this work entitled 'Les Chemins de L'Ecriture,' pp. 333-56 is full of relevant data.) A program for studying the effect of print oh Italian heresies is outlined by de Frede, 'Per la Storia.' See Gravier, Luther et L'Opinion Publique, p. 22 and p. 220, n. t6 for comments on Hussite survival and revival in central Europe.

+ This line of analysis was already set forth at the 1962 Colloquede Royaumont by Mandrou, 'La Transmission de l'Hérésie.' Mandrou's discussion of the role played by printing in transmitting heresies across space and over time and his analysis of the genres of printed matter: learned tomes, pamphlets, placards used by sixteenth-century heresiarchs deserves to be better known. I owe thanks to J . B. Ross for bringing this highly relevant contribution to my attention and regret that I was unaware of it until after this chapter was written.

3

3II

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

church councils, and w i t h rival claimants to the throne. B u t no episode that occurred f r o m Canossa to Constance - not even a contest between three rival popes - shattered the unity o f the Church as decisively or permanently as d i d the contested divorce case o f a sixteenth-century English k i n g . ' The f i r s t . . . campaign ever mounted b y any government in any state in Europe' to exploit fully the propaganda potential o f the press was that conducted by Thomas C r o m w e l l to back up the actions o f Henry V I I I . The English minister proved to be as skillful as Luther's German friends i n mobilizing propagandists and attracting a large public by vernacular translations. The output o f polemical tracts to sway opinion i n favor o f an anti-papist royal action had occurred before printing, as the campaigns mounted b y the councillors o f Philip the Fair may suggest. B u t scribal campaigns had had a shorter waveresonance and produced more transitory effects. W h e n implemented b y print, divisions once traced were etched ever more deeply and could not be easily erased. 3 5

36

Sixteenth-century heresy and schism shattered Christendom so c o m pletely that even after religious warfare had ended, ecumenical movements led by men o f good w i l l could n o t p u t all the pieces together again. N o t only were there too many splinter groups, separatists, and independent sects w h o regarded a central Church government as incompatible w i t h true faith; but the main lines o f cleavage had been extended across continents and carried overseas along w i t h Bibles and breviaries. Colonists w h o crossed a great ocean to arrive safely i n the new w o r l d offered prayers to the same God, much as had medieval pilgrims or crusaders. B u t the sign o f the cross had become divisive. There was no longer any one language to serve for common prayer. The forms o f worship shared b y congregations i n N e w England markedly diverged f r o m those o f fellow Christians w h o attended mass i n the Baroque churches o f N e w Spain. W i t h i n a few generations, the gap between Protestant and Catholic had widened sufficiently to give rise to contrasting literary cultures and life-styles. L o n g after theology 37

as Geoffrey Elton, Policy and Police, p. 206. (See also pp. I 7 i f f . for extended discussion and relevant references.) Many other studies note the exploitation of print by Cromwell and his coterie and describe how they promoted vernacular Bibles as well as various tracts. 3 6 For useful data on just how a given political argument was propagated by being dictated to a group of copyists, see Willard, 'The Manuscripts,* pp. 274-7. 1 7 For further discussion of Protestant-Catholic cultural divergence centered on disparate reactions to printing, see pp. 4ooff., and discussion of scientific publication in chap. 8, volume 11 below.

312

THE SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

had ceased to provoke wars, Christians on both continents were separated f r o m each other by invisible barriers that are still w i t h us today. 2.

THE END

ORTHODOX

OF T H E M E D I E V A L CHRISTIANITY

CHURCH:

TRANSFORMED

The lasting establishment o f anti-papist churches, and the continuous propagation o f heterodox faiths was o f enormous consequence to Western civilization. B u t the impact o f print on Western Christendom was by no means confined to the implementation o f protest or the perpetuation o f heterodoxy. O r t h o d o x beliefs and institutions were also affected i n ways that should be taken into account. The invention of the printing press made it possible, for the first time in Christian history, to insist upon uniformity in worship. Hitherto the liturgical texts could be produced only in manuscript, and local variations were inevitably admitted and indeed tolerated. But now printed editions were produced w i t h uniform texts and rubrics. Since the Latin language was retained as the medium o f worship in all western countries o f the Roman obedience, the same texts could be recited and the same ceremonies performed, in the same way, throughout the Catholic world. A t the same time all spontaneous growth and change and adaptation of the liturgy was prevented, and the worship o f the Roman Catholic Church fossilized. 38

This picture o f complete uniformity, needless to say, oversimplifies the 'spotted actuality/ As noted above, kings were just as eager as popes to take advantage o f printing. Erastian as well as ultramontane tendencies were reinforced. N o t precisely the same texts but slightly different ones were recited i n churches located w i t h i n the dominions o f the Spanish monarch Philip I I . Nevertheless, i n comparison w i t h earlier times, one may say that Catholic liturgy was standardized and fixed for the first time i n a more or less permanent m o l d - at least one that held good for roughly four hundred years. 3 9

N o r was liturgy the only field i n w h i c h printing enabled orthodox churchmen to implement long existing goals. Repeated efforts to ensure that priests mastered the rudiments o f Latin, that parish registers were kept i n order, that various instructions o f popes and councils were carried out i n scattered dioceses had met w i t h uneven success during the medieval millennium. Printing made i t possible to move ahead 3 8 19

Daniélou, A. H. Conratin and John Kent, Historical Theology, p. 233. See reference to actions of Philip II and Plantin as described by Kingdon, on p. 118 above.

3Ï3

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

and consolidate gains o n all these f r o n t s . I n this sense the Catholic reformation - as distinct f r o m the Counter-Reformation - owed much to the powers o f the press. N o t only was the Roman Church able to implement long delayed internal reforms and institute more rigorous training o f the clergy, i t was also able to fulfil its apostolic functions more successfully. The thesis recently propounded by Jean Delumeau: that missionary movements w i t h i n sixteenth-century Europe were required b y the survival o f paganism - even at that late date - and that a Christianization o f Europeans accompanied efforts to convert heathen overseas; this thesis also may be usefully related to the communications shift. That the barbarian peoples o f Europe were still not fully Christianized, despite all the efforts made by the medieval Church, becomes more plausible when the limits o f scribal culture have been taken into account. I n this respect, Reformation studies, while they do make r o o m for printing, almost always say too little and bring the topic i n too late. I t is w i t h regard to the spread o f Luther's ideas that the author o f the citation at the head o f this chapter finds i t 'difficult to exaggerate the significance o f the Press.' I t is almost always when discussing the dissemination o f Protestant tracts that historians pause over printing at all. 40

41

Actually, church traditions were already being affected by the advent o f printing, w e l l before M a r t i n Luther had come o f age. W h e n fixed i n a new format and presented i n a new way, orthodox views were inevitably transformed. The doctrines o f Thomas Aquinas, for example, acquired a new lease on life after appearing i n p r i n t and becoming the subject o f a deliberate revival - even before w i n n i n g official approval at the Council o f T r e n t . Acceptance o f Aristotle's cosmology had 42

«° Binz, Vie Religieuse i, 338-56, offers a close-up view of the problems of implementing reforms in one diocese and points to the specific advantages which came after printing - especially after 'Guy de MontrocherV (or Guido de Monte Rocherii) Manipulus Curatorum could be purchased instead of having to be copied out by parish priests. ** See e.g., Delumeau, Le Catholicisme, pp. 227-92. Delumeau's thesis is sharply contrasted with that of O'Connell, The Counter Reformation by Eric Cochrane, book review, American Historical Review (1977), 7, p. 88. The views of both authors seem to me to become compatible when the effects of printing are taken into account. 4 1 The Thomist Summa failed to supplant Peter Lombard's Sentences for three hundred years after its composition and became the textbook par excellence only in the sixteenth century according to Knowles, The Evolution

of Medieval

Thought, p. 182. Kristeller, Le

Thomisme,

pp. 36-9 sees a 'second period in the history of Thomism opening in the latefifteenthcentury when the Summa begins to replace the Sentences among German Dominicans.' This period culminates in the adoption of the Summa by the Jesuits and by the fathers at Trent. Is it possible that the Sentences came under attack from all sides partly because they were better suited to the needs of scribal culture than of print?

314

THE

SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

caused some difficulty among faculties o f theology i n the thirteenth century. Rejection o f the same cosmology w o u l d cause even more trouble after the scholastic synthesis had been fixed i n a more p e r m a nent mold. Mysticism, like scholasticism, was also transformed when spiritual exercises moved out o f the cloisters. 'Meditative forms o f mental prayer' became subject to rulebooks issued in uniform editions. Attempts to inspire lay devotion, previously characteristic o f a localized movement, such as the Northern 'devotio moderna', became much more widespread. I n Southern Europe, friars began to address the lay public through printing as w e l l as preaching, and devotional works were turned out i n large editions aimed less at monks than at w o r l d l y men: 43

Alongside the immense output of hagiographical and other books catering for the more popular cults, there grew throughout the early and middle decades of the sixteenth century an extensive literature dealing w i t h the interior life and intended for the use of people i n the world as distinct from the cloister. These range from simple primers to sophisticated guides, mostly by members of religious orders. 44

That this movement preceded attempts to counteract Protestant heresy is suggested by the dramatic 'sudden flaring' i n Spain around 1500. Even before the Ninety-Five Theses had provoked a reaction, a' literary mass-movement* was already under way w h i c h w o u l d result i n the output o f some three thousand Spanish works before the vogue declined i n die late seventeenth century. The 'spiritual energy' associated w i t h the Spanish revival was carried over into Italy and France by publishers w h o found i t profitable to cater to the new v o g u e . Sermon literature also underwent significant changes as pulpit oratory became increasingly affected b y the new powers o f the press. The living w o r d was threatened by some o f these changes. Pedantic handbooks for preachers set forth rigid rules governing pulpit oratory. A revival o f classical rhetoric, initially sparked by an ardent pursuit o f eloquence and later animated b y geniune Christian zeal was drained 45

46

« Evennett, The Spirit, pp. 32-4. ** Dickens, The Counter-Reformation, p. z8. See also p. 19 for reference to the Thomist Revival which began in the 1490s. * s Dickens, Counter-Reformation, pp. 2 5 - 6 . The stream of Spanish mystical publication was temporarily blocked in the 1550s by the Erastian policy of Philip II. See Martin, Livre a Paris 1, 17-20.

* & Evennett, The Spirit, pp. 17-19. A similar phenomenon is evident in the printing of Lulhst texts which started in the 1480s in Spain and moved by 1510 to France. Victor, 'The Revival of Lullism,' pp. 530-1.

315

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

o f vitality when transmuted into printed regulations. The new rule books, i t has been suggested, ultimately killed off flexible medieval Latin speech. O n the other hand, lively sermons designed to keep congregations awake proved especially w e l l suited to the new mass medium. W h e n the Carthusian prior, Werner Rolevinck, wrote that he was having a sermon printed to 'communicate' w i t h more people, he was simply providing a model for many priests, not comparing a hearing to a reading p u b l i c . As a Carthusian, Rolevinck belonged t o an order which had to 'preach w i t h its hands.' B u t there were many others whose actual performances were transmuted into print. The most gifted preachers, such as Savonarola or Geiler v o n Keysersberg, were able to send their messages f r o m beyond the grave, as editions o f their collected sermons continued to be published long after their deaths. 47

48

Ultimately, gifted boys w h o m i g h t have become preachers simply became publicists instead. ' T h e preaching o f sermons is speaking t o a few o f mankind,' remarked Daniel Defoe, 'printing books is talking to the whole w o r l d . ' As an English journalist, a dissenter and a pioneering novelist, Defoe presents many contrasts w i t h the Christian humanists o f the early sixteenth century. Yet Erasmus sounded a similar theme. W h e n he was attempting t o w i n the favor o f a lay patron, he compared those w h o preached obscure sermons and were heard in one or t w o churches w i t h his o w n books which were 'read i n every country i n the w o r l d . ' 4 9

5 0

In thus celebrating the carrying power o f their publications, both Defoe and Erasmus were actually ringing variations o n an old scribal theme. Praise for the apostolate of the pen.. .is met with at every period and.. .had been developed perhaps for the fust time by Cassiodorus. Alcuin took it up in a poem which was inscribed over the entrance to the scriptorium at Fulda. Peter the Venerable was thinking o f it when he spoke o f the solitary... cloistered life: 'He cannot take up the plow? Then let him take up the pen . . .He will preach without opening his mouth; without breaking silence he 47 See e.g. discussion by Rickard, La Langue Francaise, p. 2 of De Corrupti

*B

+' Cited from The Storm (1704) by Watt, The Rise of the Novel, p. 103. i 0

Sermonis

Emendatione

(1530) by Mathurin Cordicr. This is not clear from the citation and comment offered by Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 8. On Rolcvinck's collaboration with a Cologne printer, see Marks'The Significance of FifteenthCentury Hand Corrections,' and chap. 1, n. 38 above. Cited by Harbison, Christian

Scholar, p. 80.

316

THE

SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

will make the Lord's teaching resound in the ears of the nations; and without leaving his cloister he will journey far over land and sea.' 51

Thus monastic scriptoria supplied the topos w h i c h lay publicists adapted to new ends. Once harnessed to the press the 'apostolate o f the pen* - like Erasmus h i m s e l f - left the monastery for the w o r l d . B y the nineteenth century, 'glad tidings* w o u l d be almost drowned out by the flood o f news f r o m other quarters. Yet even then Christian missionaries continued to set up print shops i n remote parts o f the w o r l d to turn out gospels and psalters as had been done in Mainz four hundred years earlier. 52

The notion o f an 'apostolate o f the pen' points to the high value assigned to the written w o r d as a means o f accomplishing the Church's mission o n earth. As later discussion suggests, this made Christianity peculiarly vulnerable to the shift f r o m pen t o press. I t also helps to account for the rapid expansion o f the infant industry. The enthusiastic welcome given to the press by the fifteenth-century Roman Church, not only for its help in the anti-Turkish crusade but also for domestic purposes ought to be noted i n connection w i t h the prelude to Protestantism. I n hailing printing as God's highest act o f grace, Luther was elaborating o n a theme w h i c h found favor n o t only among other monks but also among prelates and popes. The very phrase 'divine art' was attributed to a cardinal (Nicholas o f Cusa) by a churchman w h o was later made bishop (Gianandrea de' Bussi, Bishop o f Aleria). Even the censorship edicts issued by archbishops and popes f r o m the 1480s down through 1515 hail the invention as divinely inspired and elaborate on its advantages before going o n to note the need to curtail its abuses. N o t only d i d the Church legitimate the art o f printing, i t provided a large and lucrative market for the infant industry. T h e p o o f priest needed books even more urgently than d i d the prosperous layman. For fifty years before the Protestant Revolt, churchmen i n most regions welcomed an invention w h i c h served both. 53

Although the H o l y Ghost through printing had opened up hidden treasures o f wisdom, wrote a Nuremberg priest i n 1510, yet learned Lcdcrcq, The Love of Learning, p. 128. On Luther's use. of this theme and the question of preaching versus printing, see below, pp. 3 7 3 - 4 . " See e.g. accounts offered by Khan, 'The Early Bengali Printed Books'; Bamett, 'Silent Evangelism'; McDonald, 'The Modernizing of Communication.' See also Boxer et al. Exotic Printing, 1972 for useful survey of relevant presses. " See e.g. texts and references cited by Hirsch, 'Bulla Super Impressione Librorum, 1515.* S I

317

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

confessors had not yet produced vernacular guides for lay sinners. Instead lay readers were being offered silly rhymes and secular guidebooks as i f law-suits were more important than sacred things. T o counter this trend, the priest wrote, he was offering his manual o f instruction: Peycht Spigel der Sunder. He thus unwittingly offered a preview o f behavior which was soon to be described as Protestant. A conservative religious impulse to counterbalance secular distractions and guide sinners toward salvation resulted in action which was not conservative at all - that is, i n the output o f materials which were aimed at religious self-help. T h e role o f the confessor and the sacrament o f confession became more problematic than had been the case when there were no books to intervene between sinner and priest. A t the same time, the role o f the confessor was also becoming subject to more rigorous impersonal standards while the output o f manuals directed at priests classifying categories o f sins and listing penalties and pardons made visible the complexities and contradictions i n orthodox doctrines, posing problems that seemed insoluble w i t h o u t advanced training i n casuistry. The contrast between the simplicity o f Christ's o w n teachings and the complex rigmarole o f officially approved doctrines became sharper and more dismaying to those w h o felt a genuine religious vocation. For even while ecclesiastical rules and regulations were being more rigorously enforced and more rigidly fixed, the Imitation of Christ was being printed i n all tongues, and the Bible was being promoted as a bestseller for the first time. 54

55

Thus although the new presses did much to invigorate religious piety and zeal, they also had the unfortunate consequence o f setting churchmen at odds w i t h each other. T h e same winds o f change which favored lay evangelism and vernacular sermons also threatened prerogatives long held and cherished by conservative prelates. The question o f whether one should encourage or block the new forces which were unleashed became a bone o f contention w i t h i n every church. Conflict was further aggravated by problems o f exegesis which were S4 Cited by Tcntlcr, Sin and Confession, p. 2 1 . ss As a 200-pagc manual the Peycht Spigel was not well designed for easy reading. A shorter printed guide - written in simple Latin rather than in the vernacular - the Manual for Parish Priests is also discussed by Tcntlcr, Sin and Confession who suggests that it actually touched the lives of more laymen than the Peycht Spigel. Since the latter was aimed at by-passing priests, its implications were more revolutionary nevertheless. Other aspects of printed confessional literature arc discussed by Ozmcnt, The Reformation in the Cities, pp. 2 2 - 8 . He emphasizes the use of picture books to dramatize penalties for sinning in a manner that offended the Reformers. 3I8

THE SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

posed b y copy-editing and w h i c h set o f f furious and interminable disputes between biblical scholars and theologians. I n view o f the carnage which ensued, i t is difficult to imagine h o w anyone could regard the more efficient duplication o f religious texts as an unmixed blessing. Heralded on all sides as a 'peaceful art/ Gutenberg's invention probably contributed more to destroying Christian concord and inflaming religious warfare than any o f the so-called arts o f war ever did. M u c h o f the religious turbulence o f the early modern era, I think, may be traced to the fact that the writings o f church fathers and the scriptures themselves could n o t continue to be transmitted i n traditional ways. As a sacred heritage, Christianity could be protected against most forms o f change. As a heritage that was transmitted b y texts and that involved the 'spreading o f glad tidings,' Christianity was peculiarly vulnerable to the revolutionary effects o f typography. Processing texts i n new workshops was, t o be sure, a peaceful activity undertaken b y pacific urban craftsmen and merchants. Nevertheless, i t brought into focus many troublesome issues w h i c h had always been blurred, or glossed over, before. Oral testimony, for example, could be distinguished much more clearly f r o m written testimony when poets no longer composed their works i n the course o f chanting or reciting them and when giving dictation or reading out loud became detached f r o m the publication o f a given w o r k . Accordingly, questions were more likely to arise about the transmission o f the teaching that came f r o m the lips o f Christ or f r o m the dictation o f the H o l y Spirit to the Apostles. "Was the Gospel meant t o be 'passed o n b y telling others o f the presence* ? Was the W o r d affected b y being silently transmitted and the presence experienced b y the solitary Biblereader? Was all o f the Christian heritage set d o w n i n w r i t t e n f o r m 5 6

57

58

* 6 Apart from standard references, such as Crosby, 'Oral Delivery'; Root, 'Publication before Printing,' and Chaytor, From Script to Print, passim, see also interesting account of Boccaccio being paid by Florentines to read Dante's Commedia out loud every day (save for holidays) during the year 1373, 'Boccaccio's Dante,' p. 909. Diverse rules governing oral and written discourse had, of course, been debated by classical philosophers (see e.g. citations in Trimpi, 'The Meaning of Ut Pictura Poesis'). But the distinction surely became sharper when publication no longer required giving dictation or reading out loud. 5 7 Preus, The Inspiration of Scripture, pp. 5 ff. and Tavard, Holy Writ, p. 3 offer pertinent data. Teeple, 'The Oral Tradition' shows the issue is still controversial. s 8 It is intriguing to note that the Lutherans held the 'essence' of scripture to be unaffected by the means used to transmit it (see Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, pp. 17-18). McLuhan's insistence that the medium is as significant as the message seems more compatible with Catholic than Protestant doctrines. The providential nature of scribal culture - which was perfectly designed to ensure the 'maximum presence through history' of the divine W o r d - i s underlined by Ong, TJie Presence of the Word, pp.

190-1.

319

CLASSICAL

A N D

CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

and contained solely in scripture? Was not some o f i t also preserved ' i n the unwritten traditions which the Apostles received f r o m Christ's lips or which, under the inspiration o f the H o l y Spirit, were by them, as it were, passed d o w n to us f r o m hand to h a n d ' ? Was it meant to be made directly available to all men i n accordance w i t h the mission to spread glad tidings? O r was it rather to be expounded to the laity only after passing through the hands o f priests, as had become customary over the course o f centuries? B u t how could the traditional mediating role o f the priesthood be maintained w i t h o u t a struggle when lay grammarians and philologists had been summoned by scholar-printers to help w i t h the task o f editing old texts? The priest might claim the sacred office o f mediating between God and man, but when it came to scriptural exegesis many editors and publishers were in agreement w i t h Roger Bacon and Lorenzo Valla. They felt that Greek and Hebrew scholars were better equipped for the task. 59

60

The scholar-printer, w h o was often more erudite than the university theologian o f his day, was much less likely to defer to clerical judgment than the scribe or copyist had been. As a layman he owed loyalty to princes and magistrates. The ruling o f churchmen, unless backed by lay officials, seemed less compelling to h i m than the rules o f evidence, and he reserved his most scornful epithets for the grammar o f schoolmen and the learning o f monks. His viewpoint was shared, moreover, by most o f the editors, translators and authors w h o m he gathered in his workshop. ' f show how in some places Hilary has been mistaken. So o f Augustine and Thomas Aquinas,' wrote Erasmus concerning his edition o f the N e w Testament in a letter o f 1516. 'They were men o f the highest w o r t h , but they were m e n . ' Along w i t h the new learning and erudition came new forms o f intellectual property rights and eponymous authorship. The reputation o f church fathers or angelic doctors was diminished not merely because they were found to have made grammatical errors but also because they were, in retrospect, cast in the role o f 61

5 9

1 , 0

6 1

D r a f t o f Decree o n the Acceptance o f the H o l y Scriptures and the A p o s t o l i c T r a d i t i o n s , M a r c h 22, 1545, i n J e d i n , A History of the Council of Trent 11, 74. A n cariy example is offered b y J o h n o f Piacenza, editor o f a Psaltcrium Craecum cum Versione Latind, p r i n t e d i n Sept. 1481, whose preface consisted o f a letter to the Bishop o f Bergamo defending a c r i t i c a l approach t o the b i b l i c a l text against the v i e w s o f ' i g n o r a n t ' m e n w h o believed scripture s h o u l d n o t be subject t o the g r a m m a t i c a l rules. B o t f i e l d , ed. Praefationes, p p . 13-14. Erasmus' letter t o H e n r y B u l l o c k , i n The Portable Renaissance Reader, p. 405.

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men o f letters. Defoe envisaged H o m e r not only as a plagiarist but also as an entrepreneur w h o hired hacks t o turn out ballads i n his name. "When the collective authority associated w i t h the 'auctores' o f medieval clerks was replaced b y more individualized concepts o f authorship, ancient prophets and sages dwindled i n stature. As fallible individuals, prone to human error, apparently guilty o f plagiarism on many counts, old giants began to look more like modern dwarfs. The ancients were men like ourselves, said Bude, and often wrote about things they little understood. According to Ramus, all that Aristotle said was f o r g e d . The anti-Aristotelian movement formed part o f a more general repudiation o f the ancients w h i c h had Christian as well as classical implications. 62

63

64

B y the seventeenth century an inexorable advance i n trilingual studies made i t difficult t o ignore discrepancies i n scriptural texts. Scriptural authorship itself became problematic. The same techniques that were used b y a Greek scholar like Casaubon t o show that the 'forged book o f Hermes' actually dated f r o m the post-Christian era were used b y Hebrew scholars to show that the Pentateuch could not have been written b y Moses. Moses m i g h t have founded the archives from which the first books o f the O l d Testament were based, according to Richard Simon, but later groups o f annalists and archivists were responsible for the actual composition o f the Pentateuch. The very idea o f casting i n the role o f an archivist the prophet w h o was once believed t o have received the T e n Commandments f r o m God o n Sinai suggests h o w the mythopoeic scribal vision o f the past was deflated b y the habits o f m i n d w h i c h were engendered b y reading proof and checking copy. 65

Richard Simon.. .first clearly recognized the complicated process of revision and change to which the sacred text had been exposed from the time of its composition until recently. The canonical books of the Old Testament, he said, had been handed on from generation to generation by a guild of scribes who had constantly... altered them. He thought that in the course of time, the loose sheets on which the text was written became m i x e d . . . such a process would destroy the theory of the verbal inspiration of the text.. . 6 6

6 3 Watt, The Rise of the Novel, pp. 2 4 0 - 1 . Kinser, 'Ideas of Temporal Change,' p. 738. *+ Cited by Baker, The Wars of Truth, p. 93. 6 s Barnes, Jean he Clere, p. 111. For evidence that U.S. Baptists still insist that the Pentateuch was composed by a single hand, identified with Moses, see The New York Times (Thurs., June 4, 1970), pp. 1,9¬ 6 1

6 6

Preserved Smith, Origins of Modern Culture 1543-1657, p. 255.

321

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B u t i t was not only an enhanced awareness o f the process o f scribal transmission which helped to undermine confidence in a direct revelation f r o m on high. I t was also the increasing difficulty o f reconciling older ideas o f divine inspiration w i t h new methods o f literary composition. Compositions by singers o f songs or tellers o f tales thus had a natural affinity w i t h belief in revelation and inspiration. 'Goldenvoiced' orators and bards striking their lyres were in some ways akin to actors or instrumentalists today. They relied on well trained memories and on skills developed through exercise and drill. But they also achieved some o f their most memorable effects, much like modern preachers, trial lawyers, or jazz trumpeters, by leaving r o o m for spontaneous improvisation. They allowed 'the spirit to move t h e m ' and let themselves be 'carried away' - sometimes to the point o f 'divine madness' or ' f r e n z y . ' O f course not all authors were bards in the age o f scribes and there were scribal poets w h o did not compose before an audience. Moreover the hand press lent itself to more flexible uses than is often recognized. One gains the impression that Erasmus managed to compose certain satires fairly spontaneously and directly, surrounded by friends w h o peered over his shoulder as he corrected copy and actually handled pieces o f type. Nevertheless, it seems fair to say that opportunities for spontaneous improvisation were curtailed once authors began to compose w i t h the new presses in mind. N o t only was the act o f w r i t i n g more likely to be detached from performing before a live audience, but all works, however composed, had to go through additional stages o f copy-editing after the printer replaced the scribe. A last minute change-of-phrase or spur-of-the-moment addition, which seemed to come as an act o f grace to the hard-pressed bard, was likely to be viewed as a troublesome extravagance by the hard-pressed editor or printer. As creative activities in general and literary compositions i n particular became less impulsive and more responsive to the demands o f the new medium, standards o f excellence shifted accordingly. A m o n g editors, translators and critics, true eloquence became less and less associated w i t h 'inspired' improvisation, more and more w i t h obedience to the rules o f rhetoric reflected in carefully polished, flawless prose. B u t the more men o f letters came to take such standards for granted, the more early scriptural texts, which presumably reflected 67

b l

On the effect of the disappearance of a live audience, sec Bronson, 'The Writer.' On problems associated with the Platonic doctrine of inspiration, sec Trimpi, 'The Meaning of Ut Pictura Poesis*; Tigerstadt, 'Furor Pocticus.'

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the pristine perfection o f a divine o r d e r , appeared t o be strangely flawed. ' T o find solecisms, barbarisms and poor Greek i n the speeches and writings o f the holy apostles, is to reflect on the H o l y Ghost w h o spoke through t h e m . . . ' noted a reproof issued against an audacious German scholar b y the theological faculty o f W i t t e n b e r g . Given the belief that true eloquence was a token o f divine inspiration, Biblical scholars faced a painful predicament: either they had t o conceal all the discrepancies and lapses they uncovered, or else they cast doubt o n the divine authorship o f the scriptures. However individual scholars resolved the conflict, polemicists made sure that the reading public was kept informed. T h e failure o f prophets and apostles to live up to the standards followed by even mediocre scholars and authors was broadcast i n all regions where the Inquisition was n o t feared. 68

69

70

He finds so many mistakes and so many errours at the beginning o f Genesis, that he gives you to guess his meaning, though he will not speak it, to be that the Jewish religion is little else than a forgery and that it has but small evidence of a Revelation from God Almighty. 71

This accusation was directed at an English apostate b y a pious Protestant i n an era when 'the road to preferment lay as much through polemics as through political subservience. T h e cleric w h o d i d not publish was likely to perish i n some remote village and he had every reason to be grateful* to writings w h i c h gave h i m a chance to display 'pious i n d i g n a t i o n . ' 72

Indignation o f a different k i n d was soon displayed b y anti-clerical French philosophes w h o were no less persuaded that they had to publish or perish. As expert polemicists they effectively countered pious p r o His belief in the true eloquence of Gospel writers was important in Lorenzo Valla's effort to reclaim the New Testament from corruption and also animated Erasmus' attempt to continue Valla's work. Gray, 'Valla's Encomium,' pp. 49-50. 6 ' Reproof issued to Joachim Jungius (1587-1657) cited by Preserved Smith, Origins of Modern Culture, p. 263. That seventeenth-century Lutheran dogmatists viewed it as blasphemy to suggest that solecisms or barbarisms marred scriptural versions is noted by Preus, Inspiration 6 8

of Scripture, pp. 6 4 - 6 . 7 0

An amusing example of present-day irreverence, based on applying modern concepts of authorship to the scriptures, is offered by a graffito (reported in Time, April 13, 1970, p. 6 1 ) : ' G O D IS N O T D E A D ! H E IS A L I V E A N D A U T O G R A P H I N G BIBLES T O D A Y A T B R E N T A N O ' s ( l I O St. S u b ¬

way station, New York City).' The same issue (p. 58) reports that a computer study of the Book of Isaiah gives odds of 1 to 100,000 against one prophet having authored the entire text. 7 1

Citation from Thomas Bambridge, An Answer to a Book Entituled Reason and Authority in L . I. Bredvold, The Intellectual

"

Milieu

of John Dryden,

Gay, introduction to Deism, p. 9.

323

p. 96.

(1687),

CLASSICAL

AND

CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

testations by adapting theological disputes to their o w n ends. Whenever attribution seemed doubtful and documentary evidence confused, they did not hesitate to believe the worst and to assume that forgers and counterfeiters had been at w o r k . As authors in an age o f print, they did not make allowance for the conditions o f scribal culture. Forced themselves to obey rules pertaining to intellectual property, they were naturally irritated at the negligence o f earlier writers. Engaged in a lifc-and-death struggle w i t h living priests and monks, they were in no frame o f m i n d to be generous about dead ones. The somewhat hesitant tone o f biblical scholars and English deists was abandoned by eighteenth-century freethinkers. They took the offensive, went straight to the jugular, and attacked the central miracle o f Christianity at its source: The evangelists contradict each other about the length of Jesus's life, about the miracles, about the day of the last supper, about that of his death... in a word about almost all the facts. The Christians of the early centuries made forty-nine Gospels which all contradict one another...in the end, they picked the four.. .which remain to us.. .They imagine the Trinity, and to make it credible they falsify the earliest Gospel. They add a passage about this Trinity; just as they falsify the historian Josephus to have him say a word about Jesus.. .They.. .make up Sybilline verses.. .Apostolic canons, Apostles' Creeds.. .there is not a trick, a fraud, an imposture that the Nazarcnes do not bring into p l a y . . . O miserable deceivers... what proof do you have that these apostles wrote what has been put over their names? I f it was possible to make up canons, could one not make up gospels? Do you not yourselves recognize forgeries ?... There is not a single contemporary historian who even mentions Jesus and his apostles. Admit that you support lies by lies.. . 7 3

W i t h this explicit statement that the central miracle o f the Christian faith was nothing more than deliberate trickery, practiced by forgers and impostors - a pack o f tricks played on the dead to enslave men's minds - we reach a critical point in the history o f Western Christendom, where men cease to attribute evil to witches and demons and start blaming wicked priests instead. 74

73 74

Excerpts from Voltaire's 'Sermon of the Fifty,' in Gay, Deism, pp. 154-6. O f course Protestants had also attacked priests as confidence men (sec discussion of Tyndalc by Dickens, English Reformation, p. 7 3 ) , but in order to uphold scriptural faith against ecclesiastical hierarchies. Voltaire's cynical view of sacred history gives a new twist to the pyrrhonist arguments of Catholic apologists who tried to bolster faith by attacking reason and who opposed Protestant reliance on the scriptures. A paranoid Jesuit priest, Jean Hardouin, may have helped pave the way for Voltaire (who was educated at a Jesuit college) by questioning

324

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RECAST

M a n y troublesome questions concerning scriptural composition and authorship were new and came after print. There were also several long-standing chronic problems that printing rendered more acute. The question o f lay Bible-reading, for example, had provoked occasional disturbances throughout the middle ages. B u t these episodes had been sporadic and localized, capable o f being handled o n a haphazard piecemeal basis and attributed to a m i n o r i t y o f trouble-makers. N o t only had the issue been handled differently during the early Christian era than later o n ; but different approaches were used i n different regions during the later middle ages. Thus the Brethren o f the C o m m o n Life seem to have encouraged lay evangelism w i t h o u t encountering much opposition i n the Netherlands during the late fourteenth century, even while rebellion and repression, over much the same issue, was occurring across the channel where Lollard martyrs were being made. After i t became possible (and, indeed, profitable) to boost Bible sales, the issue forced itself upon all churchmen and statesmen i n a much more urgent and acute f o r m . Policy decisions had to be made o n an either-or basis; there was n o way o f avoiding taking a stand; pressures on both sides became more intense and compromise almost impossible. In this regard, Bible printing helps to cast light on the phenomenon which has been w e l l described by Eugene Rice: The medieval Church was more ecumenical, more genially encompassing, more permissive doctrinally than t h e . . . sixteenth century... churches... There was more room in it for doctrinal maneuver.. .for disagreement and debate among the orthodox... All the bits and pieces that were to make up the sixteenth-century theologies o f Protestantism and Catholicism were in solution in medieval thought. What so dramatically happened during the age of Reformation is that they crystallized into two distinct and opposed systems, each more exclusive, more consistent, and more rigid than the medieval tradition from which they both d e r i v e d . . . 75

Although the shift f r o m script t o print is not mentioned in the passage, I think i t helps t o account for the developments that are therein described. Given the possibility o f fully implementing o l d evangelical

7S

the validity of all scriptural texts dating before the fourteenth century. He claimed they were all forged by 'atheistical monks.' See Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers, p. 66. Hardouin's 'pathological' suspicions did not stop short with sacred texts. His study of'hard' evidence supplied by coins led him to conclude that almost all ancient texts had been forged by a gang of fourteenth-century Italians. See Momigliano, 'Ancient History,' p. 16. Rice, The Foundations, p. 143. See also remarks of Blunt, Artistic Theory, pp. 108-9 o n the 'surprisingly broad-minded' attitude toward heretical paintings taken by the Church before the Counter-Reformation.

325

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goals, given the pressure to expand markets for books, new policy decisions had to be made, and made on an either-or basis. One could defend priestly prerogatives or encourage lay Bible-reading; one m i g h t even, like Henry V I I I , first do one and then the other; but one could not, for very long, countenance both policies at once. Doctrines that could co-exist more or less peacefully because full implementation was lacking, thus came into sharp conflict after printers had set to work. W i t h typographical fixity, moreover, positions once taken were more difficult to reverse. Battles o f books prolonged polarization, and pamphlet wars quickened the process. Where Lutherans and Anglicans pioneered, Catholic authorities soon followed. I t was from a new Catholic congregation, which was established at Rome in 1622, and provided w i t h its o w n printing office, that the term 'propaganda' emerged. Polemical disputes developed a m o m e n t u m o f their o w n ; passions were enflamed as Protestant and Papist saw the devil at w o r k in the enemy camp. It soon became impossible to play d o w n provocative issues; too many pens were being employed i n playing them up. 76

Moderates trapped i n the withering crossfire were rapidly deprived o f any middle ground on w h i c h to stand. Those w h o relied solely on scripture d i d n o t stop short o f casting doubt on the legitimacy o f priestly authority and church tradkio. Embattled Papists d i d not hesitate to attack bibliolatry. Skillful Jesuits questioned grounds for authenticating scriptural texts. They exploited sceptical arguments i n order to undermine confidence i n the Book and strengthen faith i n the C h u r c h . According to one angry Huguenot, they went so far i n their desperate defense o f ' t h e authoritie o f unwritten traditions' as to defame the sacred scriptures ' b y calling i t the booke o f heretikes, the blacke Gospell, I n k e - D i v i n i t i e . . .the apple o f D i s c o r d . . . ' I n fact, the printed Bible did prove to be 'an apple o f discord,' even w i t h i n the Protestant camp. For Gospel writers had failed to anticipate doctrines 77

7 S

7 6

Activities of the 'Tipografía délia Congrcgazionc de Propaganda Fide' (established in 1Ó26) arc outlined by Steinberg, Five Hundred Years, p. 234, who notes how the French revolutionaries destroyed the Roman office and transferred its impressive equipment to the Imprimerie Nationale. O n the secularization of the term ' propaganda,* during the same interval, see Leith, Media and Revolution,

7 7

Inspiration 7 8

pp. 1 1 - 2 1 .

The arguments of the early seventeenth-century French Jesuit, François Véron (1575-1625) were particularly persuasive on this point. Sec Popkin, The History of Skepticism. Also Prcus, of Scripture,

pp. 1370".; Bredvold, Intellectual Milieu,

pp. 78ff.

Cited by Bredvold, Intellectual Milieu, p. 77 from a refutation by Tillcnus (published in 1606) of a French bishop's arguments upholding unwritten tradition and questioning scripture.

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RECAST

formulated at the Council o f Nicea. Trinitarians w h o pitted the Bible against Church tradition were forced onto shaky grounds. sola scriptura was.. .the harbinger not o f peace but o f a sword; and a sword of such sharpness as to pierce.. .the joints and marrow o f Protestantism. Welcomed first as a.. .defense against.. .Rome.. .and Trent.. . i t was now suffering an assault from the rear at the hands o f Socinius and his followers . . . Socinian views... offered an obvious and tempting target for Roman Catholic polemic against Protestantism i n general... It became evident that 'The Bible Only' was an insecure basis even for so fundamental a tenet of orthodoxy as the doctrine of the T r i n i t y . 79

Between Protestant attacks on church authority and unwritten tradition, and Catholic efforts to undermine sole reliance on scripture, little was left. Efforts to restore or to preserve the traditional faith thus only sharpened tools o f analysis that helped, i n the end, to subvert it. That a clash o f warring faiths eventually dethroned theology and undermined confidence i n Christianity itself has often been noted. M y point is not that disputes between rival churches paved the way for later views but rather that printing (by revolutionizing all processes o f transmission) made i t necessary for churchmen to depart f r o m earlier views and set them at odds w i t h each other. Given the shift f r o m script to print, i t was quite impossible to preserve the status quo, and hence some k i n d o f disruption was inevitable. A specific illustration o f this point is provided by the status o f H o l y W r i t itself. T o preserve the Vulgate i n the age o f scribes meant securing the text against corruption by copyists. T o this end, churchmen enlisted aid f r o m the most learned men o f the day, encouraged study o f Greek and Hebrew and sponsored frequent review and emendation. T o preserve the Vulgate i n the age o f printers, however, meant to defend Jerome's translation against new revised versions; hence to side w i t h obscurantists against biblical scholars, to discourage emendation based on new findings and to insist on the authenticity o f an obviously corrupted text. This last position became official Catholic policy after the Council o f Trent. B u t i t had already become a bone o f contention between theologians in the early sixteenth century. Thus Caspar Schatzgeyer directed a pamphleteering campaign against his former friend, Osiander, i n 1525 over the issue, holding that the Vulgate had "

Sykcs, 'The Religion of the Protestants,' pp. 178-9.

327

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REORIENTED

been perfected and not polluted over the course o f the centuries it had served the C h u r c h . In the thirteenth century, theologians at the University o f Paris had sponsored correction o f the Vulgate and given their assent to the issue o f an emended exemplar. I n the sixteenth century, the same faculty at the same institution censured a scholar-printer w h o was engaged in just the same sort o f w o r k . Robert Estienne's apparatus o f notes, indices, and comments grew larger w i t h each o f his successive editions o f the Vulgate and the alarm o f Sorbonnistes increased accordingly. 80

81

he was a layman working without their control, and yet he was correcting the received contemporary version of the Vulgate by pointing t o . . .variants from earlier sources and adding.. .interpretative notes.. .One example o f the censures to which his Bible was exposed.. .may suffice:.. .Annotation: 'L'Eglise c'est à dire a l'assemblée publique.' Censure: 'Ceste proposition... favorise à l'erreur des Vauldois et Vicléfistes: et aussi elle derogue à la puissance des prélats de l'Eglise' 82

I n the end, Estiennc left France for Geneva i n time to escape the Edict o f Châteaubriant which expressly forbade 'the printing or selling o f books, commentaries, scholia, annotations, tables, indexes, or summaries o f H o l y Scripture and the Christian religion written during the past forty years.' Clerical controls imposed from any one center were incapable o f containing the sixteenth-century book-trade and forty years o f biblical scholarship could not be effectively blotted out. The attempt was made, nevertheless. The Edict o f Châteaubriant was only one o f a series o f similar measures taken by Catholic officials i n Europe to protect the Vulgate against the new biblical scholarship. These defensive measures culminated i n the edict o f 1592 i n which the postTridentine papacy turned to the version revised under Pope Clement V I I I and proclaimed i t 'authentic' U n l i k e Estienne's version, the Clementine Vulgate contained no variant readings and was pro83

8 0 8 1

Nyhus, "Caspar Schatzgcyer.* The polemic against Osiandcr is discussed on p. 201. Smallcy, The Study of the Bible,

p. 366; Samuel Berger, Histoire

de la Vulgate, p. 329; and

Branner, 'The Soissons Bible PaintShop,' all convey an impression of the 'emended' Paris version that is more favorable than that given by Loewe, 'The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate,' pp. I34ff. Loewe holds that this 'heavily interpolated and corrupt version' was 'in one sense specially edited or officially sponsored' but was simply the result of enterprising Paris stationers who went in for irresponsible copying on a large scale (p. 147). According to Sutclirfc, 'Jerome,' pp. ooff. the term textus vulgalus was often applied to the thirteenth-century Paris recension but the term Vulgate does not become a standard tenu for Jerome's translation until the sixteenth century. During the middle ages it might refer to the earlier version in Old 8 1 Latin as well as to Jerome's. Basil Hall, 'Biblical Scholarship,' p. 67. 8 3

Black, 'The Printed Bible,' p. 438.

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tected by a series o f bulls from further revision making 'new critical w o r k . . .difficult for Catholics' until the nineteenth c e n t u r y . 84

The policy o f sixteenth-century Catholics w i t h regard to biblical scholarship was thus markedly different f r o m that w h i c h had been pursued i n the thirteenth century. A patristic tradition o f scholarship inherited f r o m Jerome was not merely abandoned or allowed to lapse. I t was taken up b y lay scholars and blocked by Catholic clergymen w h o were driven to this action less by Protestants than b y print. M o r e over, Jerome had deployed his learning i n order to convert the scriptures o f his day into a language better understood by his contemporaries. T o authorize only the Vulgate after new vernaculars had superseded Latin also went against precedents set by Church fathers and against an apostolic mission derived f r o m Christ himself. Indeed the chief spokesman for the anti-vernacular position at Trent questioned the value o f f o l l o w i n g ancient customs and argued that changing times called for changing policies. 85

Even when assuming a conservative posture, then, sixteenth-century churchmen could not avoid being innovators - as the Index, the I m p r i matur and many Jesuit policies suggest. N o r should one exclude Lutheran policies when making this point. Actually one m i g h t argue that the position o f most churchmen was basically conservative during the first century after printing. They m i g h t press for reform or for preserving the status quo; they m i g h t seek to restore early Christian customs or be eager to prolong late medieval ones. Whatever they advocated, a basic change had occurred i n the circumstances they faced. A n y position a given churchman m i g h t take o n questions pertaining to the Gospel was bound to mark a departure f r o m precedent because the terms o f all such questions had changed along w i t h the format o f the Gospel itself. 3- G O S P E L THE

TRUTHS

VULGATE IN

RECAST: PRINT

' I t is not sufficiently emphasized that the printing o f vernacular bibles . . . l o n g preceded the Reformation in several countries.' Partly 86

* Basil Hall, 'Biblical Scholarship,' p. 6 9 . Loewe, 'The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate,' p. 152 describes the Clementine version as being based on the corrupt Paris version of the thirteenth century (see n. 81 above). 8 s See citation from Alphonse de Castro, De Justa Haeriticortim Pttmtiotte (Salamanca, 1547) in 8 6 Cavallera, 'La Bible en Languc Vulgaire,' p. 55. Black, 'The Printed Bible,' p. 423.

8

329

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AND CHRISTIAN

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REORIENTED

because i t is conventional to begin w i t h Luther rather than Gutenberg, most studies o f the Reformation rarely pause to note that a new means o f editing and spreading the Gospel was an important antecedent o f the division o f Christendom. W e are told much about the role o f print i n the spread o f Protestantism, little about its prior role in the spread o f Bibles. There are some Catholic scholars, to be sure, w h o take note o f pre-Lutheran Bible-printing when defending the Church against Protestant attacks. Daniel-Rops, for example, somewhat sarcastically, repudiates the notion that the Bible ' which ought to have been found i n the hands o f all pious men day and night was lying hidden under the benches between the seats and the dust, fallen into universal oblivion.' Between the invention o f the printing press and 1520, he says, 'one hundred and fifty-six Latin editions o f the Bible had been published, together w i t h seventeen German translations, not to mention the manuscript copies which have been estimated at more than a h u n d r e d . ' B u t the significance o f duplicating Bibles at this new rapid rate remains to be explored. 87

There are remarkably few discussions, i f any, o f h o w the new mode o f book production affected a biblical faith. The issue has cropped up in one instance, but in an inverted f o r m : the effect o f a scriptural faith on printing industries, rather than the effect o f print o n a scriptural faith, has provoked some disagreement. Thus Robert Kingdon suggests (correctly, I think) that reliance o n sacred scripture as an ultimate source o f truth was an important factor in the development and expansion o f printing industries in die W e s t . This thesis is questioned by Lawrence Stone w h o argues that the Koran has served Islam much as the Bible served medieval Christianity w i t h o u t generating comparable pressures. The 'critical element,' Stone thinks, was 88

not so much Christianity as Protestantism. In the early sixteenth century the Catholics were fearful o f heresy because o f Bible study whereas the Reformers were fearful of superstition because of lack of Bible study. But this new Protestant demand for familiarity w i t h a book was made upon a society where there was no popular tradition of oral memorizing and recitation of the sacred text, since it was in a dead language. 89

8 7

8 8 8 9

Daniel-Rops, The Protestant Reformation,

p. 47.

Kingdon, 'Patronage, Piety, and Printing,' p. 26. Stone, 'Literacy and Education,' p. 77. The importance of the premium Protestants placed on literacy is also noted by George Foster, Traditional Cultures, p. 146. For discussion of the Protestant emphasis on literacy as an important variable in the early-modern era, see Pp. 414-15, 421-6 below.

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. In m y view, the 'new Protestant demand' was a by-product o f older evangelical drives that could be fully implemented for the first time. The same point applies to biblical humanism, w h i c h received a new impetus after typefonts could be cast. Dissension generated by biblical scholars w h o feared 'superstition* more than 'heresy' not only predated the Lutheran revolt but was never precisely congruent w i t h CatholicProtestant polarities. Beginning w i t h the outbreak o f several preReformation controversies, a continuous battle o f books was fought over the extent to w h i c h trilingual studies should be encouraged and scholarly disciplines be brought to bear o n the received text o f the day. This struggle, w h i c h was spearheaded by editions issued by scholarprinters, cut across confessional lines. I t divided Catholic scholars f r o m Catholic theologians and forced divisions among Protestants as well. Thus disputes over the Hebrew studies o f Pellican and Reuchlin i n Germany; over Lefevre d'Etaples' analysis o f the 'three Marys' i n France; or over the introduction o f Greek studies into English universities found Catholics quarreling among themselves. Scholars w h o joined forces over the issue o f Bible studes, moreover, were divided by the Lutheran revolt. M o r e died as a Catholic m a r t y r ; Melanchthon, as a Protestant Church father. Erasmus ran into opposition f r o m Lutherans and Catholics alike. The same point applies to debates p r o voked in Spain by w o r k o n the Complutensian P o l y g l o t . Robert Estienne was forced to leave Paris for Geneva, but Cardinal Ximenes completed his scholarly biblical editions while remaining at the Spanish university o f Alcala. Although decisions taken at Trent wounded Catholic biblical scholarship severely, later scholars continued to face dogmatic opposition f r o m b o t h camps. 90

91

The question of which was the true text of the Bible was central to sixteenthcentury theological disputes. Both Catholics and Protestants believed in its infallibility. The crucial question was which was the correct text of Revelation. In the opinion of reactionary scholastics, the Hebrew text of the Old Testament had been falsified by rabbis. They based their opinion on the fact that the masoretic points, indicating vowel sounds, were added to the original text by Jewish scholars... Moreover they believed in a special grace granted to Saint Jerome for his translation.. . I n addition there was an ' ° Richard Cameron, 'The Attack on the Biblical Work of Lefevre d'Etaples"; Harbison, Christian Scholar, pp. 8 8 - 9 ; Hufstader, 'Lefevre d'Etaples'; McConica, English Humanists, p. 217; Nauert, 'Peter of Ravenna,' and 'Clash of Humanists and Scholastics'; Nyhus, 91 'Caspar Schatzgeyer.' Basil Hall, 'The Trilingual College.'

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emotional protest based on the anti-Semitism rife in Spain which opposed the use of Jewish sources. 91

The 'reactionary scholastics' referred to in this passage were Spanish Catholics w h o condemned a supplementary treatise added to Planting A n t w e r p Polyglot. This treatise explained problems associated w i t h translating f r o m the Hebrew and had already alarmed friendly censors in Louvain w h o advised its author to cut i t out. I f the faithful were to learn that a 'literal' translation from Hebrew could be one o f several possibilities because this language lacks vowels and several literal meanings could be taken from a single word, the authority o f the Vulgate would be entirely undermined. In fact, the censors' fears were justified, for this very treatise was to be censured severely in Rome. 93

I n the end the alarming treatise was issued from the Leiden press o f Plantin's Protestant son-in-law, Raphelengius. I t appeared as a separate w o r k under the title o f Antiquitates judakae in 1 5 9 3 . 94

Given this particular example, one m i g h t be tempted to contrast the benighted censors o f Catholic Spain, Rome and Louvain w i t h the enlightened Protestants o f Leiden w h o allowed the scholarly supplement to appear. Y e t the supplementary treatise had been written by an eminent Spanish Catholic churchman, and when a later Protestant scholar pursued the same line o f research, Protestant reaction was strongly hostile f r o m the first. Theories about the transcription o f Hebrew scriptures, proposed b y the French Protestant scholar Louis Cappel, were not only refuted by English Puritans but more solemnly repudiated by an official Protestant assemblage: the Consensus Helveticus o f 1674. I n view o f Protestant leanings toward literalism, the refutation o f Cappel is not surprising. B u t i t suggests h o w easily the usual formula could be reversed, making the Reformers appear more fearful than the Catholics o f too much Bible study. T h e French Catholic priest, Richard Simon, did indeed try to exploit this reverse formula; 95

' * Rekcrs, Benito Arias Montana,

p. 25.

«

Rckcrs, Benito Arias Montana,

p. 52.

»+ Rekers, Benito Arias Montana, p. 03, n. 1. For further data on Raphelengius' relations to both Plantin and Montano sec pp. oj-fi; r z i . Rckcrs' monograph supplies evidence that Montano, the Spanish Catholic churchman sent by Philip I I to supervise Plantin's work, got caught up in a heterodox network in the course of working in Antwerp with Plantin and ended by creating a subversive 'cell' in the Escorial itself. Sec below, pp. 443-4. fl

s Louis Cappel's The Mystery of the Vowel Points Revealed (Arcanum Punctalionum Rcvelatum)

was,

like Montano's earlier treatise, published at Leiden (in [624). See Preserved Smith, Origins of Modern Culture, pp. 2 5 0 - 1 ; Barnes, Jctm Le Clerc, p . 26. Controversy over vowel points during the seventeenth century is discussed by Preus, Inspiration of Scripture, pp. 141IT.

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coupling an attack o n Protestants and Socinians w i t h an analysis o f all the 'caprices o f copyists* w h i c h made reliance o n scripture less dependable than reliance on the Church. B u t French Catholics under Bossuet were no more tolerant o f the Oratorian priest Simon than the Swiss Reformers had been o f the Protestant scholar Cappel. 90

In addition to the opposition various projects aroused, the patronage given to biblical scholars also suggests that divisions over Bible study cut across confessional lines. Polyglot publication programs were sponsored b y Catholic authorities i n Spain and i n France. O n the other hand, the pursuit o f Oriental studies and trilingual scholarship was propelled more vigorously b y Protestant presses i n Holland than by any Catholic firms, as the D u t c h editions o f Montano's, Cappel's and Simon's treatises may suggest. Here, as w i t h pro-Copernican treatises, the existence o f a relatively free press rather than o f a particular confession may have been strategic. 07

98

A t all events, i t does seem necessary to distinguish between Bible study i n the sense o f scholarly exegesis and Bible study i n the sense o f lay Bible reading. I n this latter field, Protestant-Catholic contrasts d i d become extremely important. I t was printing, to be sure, that made i t possible fully to implement long-lived evangelical aims. Nevertheless, Protestant doctrines w h i c h stressed Bible-reading as necessary f o r salvation d i d generate unusual pressures t o w a r d literacy; while the Catholic refusal after Trent to authorize alternatives to the Latin Vulgate w o r k e d i n the opposite direction. Indeed a modern English Jesuit seems to approve o f the conventional formula when discussing the eighteenth-century condemnation o f Jansenism. The Church, he 9 6

9 7

9 3

Whereas Sykes, 'Religion of Protestants,' notes Simon's expulsion from his Order; F.J. Crchan, 'The Bible in the Roman Catholic Church,' pp. 218-20, has Simon merely leaving the Oratory in 1678. O n implications of Simon's work, see also Preserved Smith, Origins of Modern Culture, pp. 254-6. Hazard, L a Crise I , 243-64. The publication of Simon's later critical edition of the New Testament (1702) precipitated a fateful struggle between the Gallican Church led by Bossuet and royal officials headed by Pontchartrain over the right to censor religious works which resulted in a stunning defeat for the Archbishop, Sec recent account by Woodbridge, 'Censure Royale ct Censure Episcopale.' Hendricks, 'Profitless Printing.' See also Martin, Livre a Paris I , 9 ; Kingdon, 'Christopher Plantin and His Backers,' pp. 311, 314-15; B. Hall, 'Biblical Scholarship,' p. 54. Sec Martin, Livre a Paris 11, 894. For discussion of scientific publication programs, see chap. 8, below. A vigorous polemic against oriental studies pursued by Dutch biblical scholars was conducted by the French Catholic virtuoso, Friar Merscnne, as is noted by Brihier, 'The Formation of our History,' p. 161. One gains the impression that biblical research entailing Hebrew and Oriental languages was propelled more rapidly by Protestant than by Catholic scholars during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries despite Catholic polyglots of the earlier epoch and the remarkable erudition displayed by the Bollandists and Jesuits such as Athanasius Kirchner, later on.

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says, 'held i t was safer to have less Scripture-reading than more heresy.' H e hastens to add, 'There was no desire to h o l d back the spread o f education.'" O f course not. I n the opinion o f Protestants, however, the unwanted result was nonetheless obtained: ' T h e struggle against analphabetism was almost invariably.. .the struggle against the papist church where the priest reads for a l l . ' 1 0 0

The rest o f Stone's argument: that unusual pressure toward literacy was also generated by a sacred book which did not lend itself to oral transmission, as d i d the Koran, points to a problem i n comparative religions that is w o r t h further exploration. One may want to question parts o f the argument by doubting whether Latin was really dead i n the late middle ages, by objecting that vernacular versions o f scripture circulated in manuscript f o r m , or by noting that Christians had occasionally resorted to oral transmission. B u t one must still agree that the basic contrast w i t h the Koran holds good. The w r i t t e n text o f their sacred book was o f strategic significance even for early Christians. Christian insistence on circulating written versions o f the Bible had indeed helped to reshape the very format o f the ancient book by encouraging the shift f r o m roll to c o d e x . 101

102

This unusual prolonged reliance on written rather than oral transmission meant that the Christian religion was especially vulnerable to changes ushered by print. '"With us the natural seat o f the book is something material such as paper which may or may not be committed to memory. W i t h the Arab, i t is memory which may or may not be committed to w r i t i n g . ' Manuscripts were much more likely than were memories to be affected by a new mode o f book production. 1 0 3

°« Crehan, 'The Bible in the Catholic Church,' p. 223. 1 0 0 Henri Hauser, Naissance du Protestantisme, p. 58. See also Droz, 'Bibles Françaises,' pp. 210-15. 1 0 1 That Latin was not a 'dead language' during the middle ages is stressed by Auerbach.L/rerdry Language, p. 269. It was still a 'living tongue,' used for ordinary conversation in some sixteenth-century households, such as that of the Esticnnes. Sec p. 447 below. The so-called 'Gothic' vernacular owed its alphabet to a scriptural translation by Ulfilas and there were many medieval versions made in more modem vernacular tongues for early printers to duplicate. See n. 148 below. The 'oral memorizing' tradition was strong enough to preserve memory of Old Latin passages among the copyists of early mss. of Jerome's version. See Loewe, 'The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate,'p. 104. It was also used by the Waldensians to teach scriptures to unlettered followers. , o a

1 0 3

According to Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome, p. 120, the dominance

of the vellum book over the papyrus roll corresponds almost exactly with the Christian millennium: 400-1400. He also assigns importance to Constantine's conversion and the great demand for Bibles created throughout the Empire (pp. 113-15). Reichman, 'The Book Trade of the Roman Empire,' p. 55, asserts that the parchment codex was developed by the Roman book industry but did not become ubiquitous until used for the Christian Bible. Gandz, 'The Dawn of Literature,' p. 495.

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RECAST

O n the other hand, while oral recitation remained important for transmission, the Koran had been committed to w r i t i n g and islam was served by scribes. A further consideration is w o r t h pondering: Christendom was not only more committed to an 'apostolate o f the p e n ' ; i t was also much less reluctant to accept the substitution o f press for pen. The same thing, curiously enough, can be said o f Judaism. B y 1494. the Jews had already set up a press i n Istanbul for Hebrew printing. A m o n g Ottomans, i t was regarded as a sin to print religious books. 104

The hybrid, Judeo-Christian character o f Biblical texts points to yet another issue that needs exploring. Compared w i t h the more h o m o geneous Koran, the diversity o f ingredients contained in the Bible, the sheer number o f dissimilar materials drawn f r o m different places, eras, and linguistic groups, is particularly striking. Apart f r o m all the centuries and cultures spanned by both testaments taken together, portions o f each, taken separately, still show a remarkably variegated texture. Is there anything i n the Koran to equal the cultural complexity o f the Septuagint, a Greek version o f the Hebrew O l d Testament made in Egypt? Is there any equivalent o f the mixture i n the N e w Testament o f Aramaic sermons w i t h Greek epistles ? The Koran comes closer to resembling a single prophetic book o f the O l d Testament, but even then i t seems more homogeneous. The Book o f Isaiah, for example, was composed over several centuries whereas the compilation o f Mohammed's sayings occurred over the course o f a few decades. O f course, the Prophet drew heavily on the Jewish scriptures himself. B u t all o f the Koran's varied ingredients were filtered through one m i n d , articulated i n one tongue, and shaped i n terms o f a single lifespan. However controversial the Arabic textual tradition, i t can be traced back to a few manuscripts made i n one language i n one region a few decades after Mohammed's death. W h a t a contrast is offered by the numerous prophets, annalists, and Gospel writers, languages and folkways, centuries and regions encompassed by the B i b l e ! H o w much more intricate the puzzles offered by its texts, h o w much more difficult it is to determine their provenance, h o w much farther back i n time and further afield must one go to retrieve and decipher t h e m ! Reverence for a sacred book inspired the search, and a new l 0

* Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire,

335

p.

174.

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technology made it possible. The richly variegated contents o f the Bible were strategic, nevertheless, in determining the course taken by Western scholars. As soon as they were equipped, they embarked on a never-ending, seemingly impossible, quest which m i g h t be described as ' q u i x o t i c / or perhaps as 'Faustian.' Whatever their goal - whether they sought the date o f Creation, the name o f the fruit w h i c h led to Adam's fall, the location o f Ararat or the actual year o f the birth o f the Savior h i m s e l f - Western scholars were fated always to fall short o f obtaining i t . Neverthleess, a remarkable impetus was given to erudite studies o f all kinds as exotic territory was explored, strange languages mastered and archeological data stored. 1 0 5

Research inspired by the scriptures, indeed, set the pattern followed by Western scholarship in general. A comparison o f h o w the Bible was handled before and after print helps to illuminate the basic shift which affected all forms o f knowledge. The sacred book had been laboriously transmitted (much as had Roman law, the Aristotelian corpus or Ptolemy's Almagest) by dint o f ' s l a v i s h ' copying and w i t h the aid o f diverse memory arts, f r o m generation to generation, throughout the age o f scribes. I n the hands o f scholar-printers, however, i t became the focus o f an open-ended process o f investigation, w i t h researchers pressing against continuously receding frontiers. The transmission o f a single closed system - a body o f inherited lore - gave way to the steady accumulation o f data w h i c h enabled each generation to probe deeper into the past and advance beyond the position o f its predecessor - in knowledge o f this w o r l d , albeit not o f the next. H o w attempts to edit the Bible in the scholar-printer's workshop led to a rapid accumulation o f findings is suggested by the output o f Robert Estienne, w h o began by compiling an index to the Vulgate and ended w i t h pioneering w o r k i n lexicography. Between 1500 and 1800 more than seventy lexicons devoted solely to Hebrew w o u l d be issued. I n the second half o f the sixteenth century, Plantin set out to produce a slightly revised edition o f the Complutensian Polyglot o f 1517-22. H e ended b y publishing a monumental new w o r k containing five volumes o f text and three o f reference materials, w h i c h included 106

107

, o s

The Faustian metaphor seems particularly apt in view of Sir Thomas Browne's attribution to Satan of all the troublesome factual questions pertaining to the Ark, the Golden Calf, manna, etc. which tantalized him and his contemporaries. See Willcy, The Seventeenth Century Background,

1 0 7

pp. S7-S.

1 0 6

Stames, Robert Estienne*s Influence, pp. 13, 17, 33.

D. R.Jones, 'Aids to the Study of the Bible,' appendix I , 524.

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RECAST

grammars and dictionaries for the Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac languages. Further expansion came w i t h the Paris polyglot edition o f 1645 and the climax came i n mid-seventeenth-century England. The London 'Polyglotte' o f 1657 was announced by aprospectus w h i c h boasted o f its superiority to all prior editions (in terms w h i c h were later echoed by Bishop Sprat i n his praise o f the Royal S o c i e t y ) . Its contents suggest h o w much territory had been conquered after t w o centuries o f printing. I t presented texts i n 'Hebrew, Samaritan, Septuagint Greek, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, Persian and Vulgate L a t i n ' thus adding t o the stock o f typefonts used b y Western scholars for oriental studies. Its elaborate appendices showed h o w Bible-printing spurred the modern knowledge industry. They comprised 108

100

a vast apparatus including a table o f ancient chronology prepared by Louis Gappel, descriptions and maps of the Holy Land and of Jerusalem; plans of the temple; treatises on Hebrew coins, on weights and measures, on the origin of language and of the alphabet, on the Hebrew idiom; an historical account of the chief editions and principal versions of the Scriptures; a table of variant readings, w i t h an essay on the integrity and authority o f the original texts and other matter. 110

This 'vast apparatus* demonstrates h o w texts attributed t o Moses forced scholars t o reach further back and wander farther afield than texts attributed to Mohammed. Obviously scriptural texts were more vulnerable than the Koran to questions provoked b y new forms o f authorship and intellectual property r i g h t s . Problems arising f r o m words and phrases w h i c h shifted their meanings i n the course o f translation were also much more troublesome for Western scholars than for those o f Islam - as one can see from the number o f languages and tables o f variants i n polyglot Bibles. Increasingly the words o f God seemed subject t o perplexing flux. N o sooner had one generation o f scholar-printers become confident that they had produced 'reasonably authenticated' and 'reasonably authoritative versions o f the Hebrew and Greek texts o f the O l d and N e w Testaments* than another polyglot 111

iofi V O C E , The Golden 100

Compasses

i , 60.

Hendricks, pp. 110-13 describes this prospectus. O n its resemblance to Bishop Sprat's apologia, sec p. 695, volume n below. For data on Paris polyglot of 164.5 see Martin, LiVre a Paris 1,100. On all editions sec also Darlowe and Moule, Historical Catalogue.

no p r e S erved Smith, Origins of Modem Culture, p. 2 5 1 . 1 1 1

After studying distinctions between ' Q ' and ' M ' utilized for the Gospel of Matthew, it even becomes difficult to assign the Sermon on the Mount to any one author. See 'The Man Behind the Sermon,' Times Literary

Supplement

337

(Feb. 27, 1964). P- 175-

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

publication project was launched and confidence again slipped away. Protestants m i g h t scoff at the obstinate obscurantists w h o proclaimed the Clementine Vulgate authentic. B u t sooner or later they themselves deemed i t necessary to agree upon one 'textus receptus' - a term first employed not b y a church synod, but by the Leiden branch o f the D u t c h publishing firm o f Elsevier, as a b l u r b . 1 1 2

I t may be partly because the words o f their God gave rise to so many variants and translation problems after the advent o f printing, that learned men i n Western Christendom became increasingly attracted by His w o r k s . B y tracing the scriptures to their true Hebrew and Greek sources, argued the young Philip Melanchthon (in his inaugural lecture as Professor o f Greek at Wittenberg) their 'true meaning w i l l light up for us as the midday s u n . ' The more Greek and Hebrew studies p r o gressed, however, the more wrangling there was over the meaning o f words and phrases. The quibbles o f schoolmen about the nature o f angels were no more destructive o f piety than learned disputes between biblical scholars. I t was all very well for Richard Bentley to argue that 113

114

far from leading to uncertainty and justifying Pyrrhonism, a large number of manuscripts containing a large number o f variant readings provided a surer means o f reconstructing an original text than a single manuscript. ' I f there had been but one manuscript of the Greek Testament at the restoration o f learning about two centuries ago,' he asked ' . . .would the text be in a better condition then, than now we have 30,000 (variant readings) F' * 11

Thousands o f variant readings, however enlightening, could not make things as clear as Melanchthon's midday sun. The ceaseless accumulation o f scriptural commentaries resulted i n 1 1 1

SeeB. Hall, 'Biblical Scholarship,' p. 63; Bouyer, 'Erasmus in Relation to the Medieval Biblical Tradition,'p. 499; and Metzger, The Text of the New Testament, pp. 102-3 for relevant data. It is not entirely clear which Greek text of the New Testament, one of Erasmus' editions or the emended version of Beza and Estiennc, was accepted in the late sixteenth century as the 'textus receptus.' The term was first used in a blurb put out by the Elsevier press in Leiden to advertise the merits (of the Beza-Estienne version according to Hall) of Erasmus' version according to Metzger. Seejarrott, 'Erasmus's Biblical Humanism,' p. 121, n. 14. According to Kenney, The Classical Text, pp. 59-69, Daniel Hcinsius was the scholarly editor, serving the Elscvicrs, who applied the term to the 1633 edition of Erasmus'version. Kenney underlines the need for a base text from which departures can be noted.

The juxtaposition of'the book of God's word* and the 'book of God's works* occurs in many texts - and goes back to medieval sermon literature. Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning (1605), Book 1 : ' T o the Kings,' offers one of many examples. For further discussion of this topos see first section of the next chapter, volume 11 below. "+ Cited in Hillcrbrand, cd. The Reformation, pp. 59-60. 1 1 3

"

s

In his riposte to Anthony Collins, Remarks upon a.. .Discourse of Free Thinking by Gossman, Medievalism, pp. 2 2 7 - 8 .

338

(1713} cited

THE

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TRADITION

RECAST

the gradual decay *of the ordinary Christian's sense that he can read the Bible for himself without an interpreter and discover its unambiguous meaning... The Bible came to be regarded as a book for experts requiring an elaborate training in linguistic and historic disciplines before i t could be properly understood.. . I I 6

As long as book production depended on scribal labor, no permanent remedy could be found for the corruption that provoked the young Melanchthon's scorn. I t was not uncommon for the O l d Testament to be preceded by a life o f Alexander the Great i n manuscript B i b l e s . Extracts f r o m the N e w Testament were often mixed w i t h other matter, especially i n handbooks f o r teachers and preachers. T h e tendency for a compendium such as the Sentences to replace the actual scriptures themselves had aroused objections f r o m at least one thirteenthcentury schoolman, namely Roger B a c o n . B u t here as elsewhere, the Franciscan scholar was w e l l 'ahead o f his times.' M u c h as was the case w i t h the glosses that veiled the Corpus Juris, the text o f Jerome's translation was buried 'fathoms deep' under layers o f c o m m e n t . 117

118

110

Scribal transmission not only threatened t o bury the Vulgate but i t also concealed the full complexity o f the textual tradition that lay beneath Jerome's version. I n this regard the pollution o f pure streams went together w i t h a k i n d o f ignorance that engendered bliss. The very idea o f going back t o Greek and Hebrew texts was 'revolutionary' i n the sixteenth c e n t u r y , even though i t had been advocated intermittently by biblical scholars ever since Jerome. T o preserve the Vulgate from the persistent threat o f corruption and to locate the texts that were needed for emending portions o f the corrupted versions usually exhausted the resources o f those exceptional centers where scribal scholars engaged i n research. The thousands o f variants available to Bentley might be compared w i t h the complete absence o f any manuscript at all which confronted John the Scot - as he searched in vain for a copy o f the Septuagint to help h i m w i t h his l a b o r s . Alcuin's slender k n o w ledge o f Greek and complete ignorance o f Hebrew d i d not equip h i m very w e l l for the emendations he u n d e r t o o k . Moreover, when the 120

121

122

1 1 6

Alan Richardson, 'The Rise of Modern Biblical Scholarship,' p. 3 0 1 .

" 7 Délaissé, A Century of Dutch Manuscript 1 1 8

I W 1 1 1

Illumination,

p. 16.

Aidan (Cardinal Gasquet), 'Roger Bacon and the Latin Vulgate.'

Harbison, Christian Scholar, p. 5 9 . Schwarz, Principles and Problems, pp. ix-x. Smallcy, Study of the Bible, p. 44. See also Smalley, English

Friars,

Loewe, 'The Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate,' p. 134.

339

p. 56.

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AND CHRISTIAN

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REORIENTED

dearth o f linguistic aids and texts was partly overcome and schools o f exegesis formed around manuscript collections, their labors were fated to resemble those o f Sisyphus. Scribal Bible study, as pursued i n Antioch and later by the Victorines, was undertaken w i t h o u t k n o w ledge o f previous accomplishments; whatever was found by one school could n o t be passed on to the n e x t . 123

Thus, although Greek and Hebrew studies were supported in theory during the middle ages they could not be pursued very far in fact. The idea o f a trilingual Bible was 'as o l d as O r i g e n ' and some fragments o f late medieval efforts have been f o u n d . Yet when Aldus Manutius set about procuring types for producing such a Bible i n 1498, the p r o ject still could be described as a 'complete n o v e l t y . ' Similarly, the idea o f providing multilingual studies at universities had been approved and new chairs decreed b y a Church Council at Vienne i n 1311. The permanent establishment o f chairs i n Greek and Hebrew at colleges throughout Europe, however, had to wait for the permanent recovery o f ancient languages b y the W e s t . After the new lectureships had been founded and the collaboration o f heterodox Greeks and Jews had been enlisted, trilingual studies came under a new vigorous attack. Theologians at the older universities soon began to defend the Vulgate and forget the Council o f Vienne. T h e Sorbonne tried to suppress lectureships as w e l l as scholarly editions; despite the protection o f Cardinal Ximenes, scholars w h o contributed to the Complutensian Polyglot were persecuted b y the I n q u i s i t i o n . Everywhere the very same scholarly programs, w h i c h had been supported b y earlier church authorities, were attacked as subversive b y later authorities. For the most part, the obscurantists were fearful that contact w i t h infidel scholars and texts w o u l d prove subversive, and lead to apostasy and heresy. T h e contaminating effect o f studying Talmudic materials was 1 2 4

125

1 2 6

127

1 2 3

1 2 4

1 I S 1 2 6

Smalley. Study of the Bible, p. 357.

Part of a Greek column survives from a trilingual Bible proposed by the Latin Archbishop of Thebes in Boetia (1336-85) but the project was 'without perceptible influence' according to Singer, 'Hebrew Scholarship,' p. 301. Morison, 'The Learned Press as an Institution,' p. 154. Sec preceding chapter for discussion of contribution of typography to this permanent recovery. Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi, pp. 88-9, discusses the multilingual decree passed by the Council of Vienne in 1311 and reasserted at BiscL as evidence of influence exerted by Raymond Lull. Although he attributes later implementation to other factors than print he notes that the Vienne decrees themselves became more available, because the Constitittiones Clementinas were frequently reprinted from 1460 on. B. Hall, 'Trilingual College," pp. 115-16.

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RECAST

particularly feared. I n the long r u n , subversion came from other quarters. Even when Christian scholars remained unshaken i n their true faith, their search for pure sources led to complications that were unforeseen. The pursuit increased rather than diminished perplexity about the D i v i n e W o r d . I t could be argued, indeed, that the peaceloving Christian humanist w h o abhorred theological disputes disturbed the o l d order by his quiet Bible study just as effectively as d i d the noisiest most militant Protestant or Papist pamphleteer 128

Early i n 1517, when Erasmus was envisaging the dawn o f a new golden age, and w r i t i n g about a conspiracy to revive the best learning, he was confident that he and his friends were merely doing for their age 'what Jerome had done for h i m : restoring and purifying the Christian t r a d i t i o n . ' I t was not merely his failure to anticipate the outbreak o f a 'monkish quarrel' set o f f by a stubborn Wittenberg theologian that makes Erasmus* optimism seem ironic i n retrospect. It was also his blindness about his o w n historical role. Despite his close collaboration w i t h printers (or, perhaps, just because he was so close that perspective was lacking) he d i d not take full stock o f the new powers he commanded; powers that had not been envisaged by Church fathers and that he wielded most skillfully before Luther turned them to other ends. I n this regard i t may be a mistake to take Erasmus' selfestimate at face value, to f o l l o w his lead too faithfully and make too much o f his sense o f affinity w i t h Saint Jerome. 'Spiritual affmities' between the scholarly humanist and early Christian saint should not be ignored; b u t the material distance between Jerome's study and Froben's workshop must be brought into the picture as well. This distance has to be correctly assessed i f w e want to place the Reformation i n its appropriate historical s e t t i n g . Humanists and Reformers looked back to Church fathers for guidance. They were faithful to earlier Christian traditions and consciously engaged i n tasks o f restoration. 120

130

" B See problems posed for Pcllican when trying to obtain a copy of the Talmud and a Talmudic lexicon at a Dominican chapterhouse in Ratisbon. Copying the text was forbidden on the grounds that the copyist might be injured by exposure to the infidel work. Nyhus, 'Caspar Schatzgeyer,'pp. 188-9. Grendler, 'The Roman Inquisition, * pp. 52-3 describes the order to burn all Talmuds in Italy in 1553 and how compliance by the Venetians led to a ten year hiatus in Jewish publishing in Venice. » Harbison, Christian Scholar, p. 95. Sec p. 144 above for citation concerning Erasmus' 'conspiracy.' I J 0 The popular engraving by Wolfgang Stuber portraying Luther in the position assigned by Dilrer to 'Saint Jerome in his Study' (see frontispiece to Bluhm, Martin Luther, Creative Translator) is also full of historic irony. Like Erasmus, Stuber, DUrer and Luther, all owed their historical stature to a medium which was never envisaged by the early Christian saint. , l

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They were unwitting innovators nevertheless. The means they employed to achieve their goal o f ' r e f o r m a t i o ' were radically new, and this made all the difference in the end. The disruptive effect o f pressures generated in new workshops becomes even more apparent when we turn from the question o f h o w the Gospel should be studied to the equally controversial issue o f h o w i t should be spread. Here again, the golden age o f Christian humanism was necessarily short-lived, and sharp division among churchmen i m possible to prevent. Erasmus had expressed a sense o f evangelical mission forcefully in his famous 'paraclesis' or introduction to the N e w Testament : I wish that every woman would read the Gospel and the Epistles o f Paul... I wish these were translated into each and every language.. .read and understood not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens... I hope the farmer may sing snatches of Scripture at his plough, that the weaver may hum b i t s . . . to the tune o f his shuttle, that the traveller may lighten.. .his journey with stories from Scripture.. . I 3 1

B y producing his French translation o f the N e w Testament, Lefèvre d'Etaples acted in accordance w i t h Erasmus* words. Lefèvre himself remained w i t h i n the Catholic fold; but his French Bible did not. I t went on the Index and circulated widely only after passing through Calvinist hands. Those w h o tried only to follow the Church fathers by making vernacular scriptures available were fated to outdistance them in an age o f print. Bible translators in the post-Gutenberg era found themselves breaking new paths for Erastian princes and Protestant rebels - even while claiming, w i t h justice it seems, that precedents set b y the Church fathers were on their side. 132

W h e n Erasmus talked hopefully o f versions in Celtic or Turkish, he could claim that he was merely following earlier leads. The very term, Vulgate, reminds us that Jerome had converted the scriptures o f his day into a vulgar tongue. Similarly, the numerous ancient languages that had to be mastered to edit later polyglots - Syriac, Ethiopian, Persian and the l i k e - s h o w that vernacular translations had been encouraged by the early Church. Even before the new art o f printing had become k n o w n , argued a Huguenot pamphleteer o f 1554, the Apostles had 1 3 1

Harbison, Christian Scholar, p. 101.

u î Droz, 'Bibles Françaises,' p. 211 discusses editions of Lcfèvre's version from the first printing in 1523 (by Robert Esticnnc's stepfather, Simon dc Colines) to its appearance on the Index of 1569.

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'imprinted' the Gospels o n the hearts and souls o f their audience aided by the Grace o f the H o l y Spirit and using a language the people could understand. Errors came not f r o m reading the Bible i n French b u t f r o m learned theologians w h o read Latin - like the Pope ! Whereas the anti-vernacular party at Trent had difficulty finding historical arguments to support their cause and had to stretch the evidence at every point, evangelical reformers could turn to the past w i t h confidence. Saint Paul was o n their side and could be cited against the actions o f Pope Paul I I . Even today, Protestant historians w h o deal w i t h the question approach early Church practices confidently and find clear and certain precedents at hand. Ever since the Council o f Trent, however, Catholics tend to be much more equivocal. 1 3 3

1 3 4

135

Place every book of Scripture in the hands of children is an instruction o f the fourth-century Apostolic Constitution.. .Besides being read in church, the Bible is distributed by sales says Augustine.. .The principle is plain: in the formative years of the Christian Church, the Bible was available in the vernacular.. .the laity: men, women, and children were expected to hear it read in church and to read it for themselves at h o m e . 136

'The principle is plain' to the Regius Professor at O x f o r d . I t was plain to the Erasmians w h o upheld i t at Trent. B u t post-Tridentine Catholic scholars are likely to argue that early Church policy was, i n fact, quite obscure. This division o f opinion, interestingly enough, follows the same lines as debates held at Trent. The vernacular translation movement went together w i t h a belief that Gospel truths were so simple that they could be understood by ordinary men. T h e only role 137

« 3 Droz, ' Bibles Françaises,* pp. 214-15. This pamphlet, first published in 1554 went through many editions according to Droz. 13 « See remark: 'Popes err; St. Paul does not,' made by the Cardinal of Trent at the Session of March 17, 1546, Cavallera, 'La Bible en Langue Vulgaire,' p. 4 1 . On divisions at Trent over vernacular translation see also Herman A. P. Schmidt, Liturgie et Langue Vulgaire, pp. 8 5 C ; Droz, 'Bibles Françaises,' p. 209; Jedin, History of the Council of Trent 11, 67fF. The latter repeatedly describes this issue as 'burning.' It did, indeed, lead to the burning of men as well as of books. " s Equivocation is particularly marked in discussion by Crehan, 'The Bible in the Catholic Church," pp. I99ff. 1 3 6 Greenslade,'Epilogue,'pp. 4 9 0 - 1 . 137 Thus Schmidt, Liturgie et Langue Vulgaire argues that Protestants are indulging in anachronisms when pointing to patristic acceptance of vernaculars because antiquity had no sense of 'linguistic principles,' pp. 1796*". Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi, pp. 241-2 notes that Postel's eagerness to spread the work in all possible tongues moved him away from a Catholic stress on the 'sacerdotal custody of sacred truth' and toward a Protestant position. (It also brought him into the orbit of Plantin's heterodox circle.) Postel thus applauded St Jerome, was fond of citing early Christian translations into Armenian, Coptic and other tongues and got into trouble for saying mass in French.

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o f the pastor was to convey God's w o r d as clearly as possible. Bibles should be stripped o f extravagant glosses, laid bare i n unadorned guise, and presented i n everyday language. Once plain texts, plain speaking and open books were associated w i t h Protestant doctrine, Catholic reaction took the contrary path justifying mystification, elitism and censorship. The use o f Latin was defended not only because i t was a time honored ecclesiastical practice, but also because i t was esoteric and kept mysteries veiled f r o m the p r o f a n e . T h e power o f the press could be used to improve clerical education but had to be controlled by clerical censors to foster lay obedience. 138

130

A deliberate cultivation o f mystery, an insistence on withholding pearls o f wisdom f r o m the swinish multitude and more emphatic distinctions between educated clergy and uninformed laity characterized the anti-vernacular arguments made at Trent. 'After reading the decrees o f A p r i l 8, 1546, one may understand h o w and w h y innumerable Catholics are, even today, almost totally ignorant about the B i b l e . ' Even where vernacular translation was allowed, i n lands held b y Protestant rulers, Catholic Bibles were marked by Latinate expressions and elaborate glosses. ' I t was only the plain text that was thought harmful,' notes a Catholic scholar about his church's policy i n E n g l a n d . T o regard the plain text as harmful in lay hands, however, meant to encourage obfuscation and to deny to laymen the most direct access to the divine W o r d . This fearful approach to spreading the Gospel led, i n turn, to much hedging about patristic precedents. 140

141

It is often noted that Protestant policies followed patterns set by early church assemblies more closely than d i d those o f Catholic reformers. I t cannot be too often stressed, however, that Catholic postTridentine policies were different from those pursued b y the medieval "

8

1 3 9

1 4 0

Schmidt, Liturgie et Langue Vulgaire, pp. 130-4, gives an account of debates at Trent which shows how the elitist and authoritarian position of the anti-vernacular party extended to a defense of Latin literature as elevated and noble as against low, base vulgar tongues. R. F.Jones, The Triumph, pp. 6 j f f . describes English Catholic disdain for 'Unlearned. . . riffcranc' and their use of the 'pearls before swine' argument. How this same argument was used by the chief spokesman for the anti-vernacular cause at Trent is described by Cavaliers, ' La Bible en Langue Vulgaire,' p. 46. Schmidt, Liturgie et Langue Vulgaire, p. 177, reveals stress on lay obligations of obedience, respect and devotion which contrasts with the Protestant goal of educated laymen. Droz, 'Bibles Françaises,' p. 2 t o . Crehan, 'The Bible in the Catholic Church,' p. 223. Craig Thompson, TJie Bible in English, pp. 12-13, comments on the difficult Latinate English and the preface warning against indiscriminate Bible-reading which made the Catholic (Rheims-Douai) version different from Protestant ones. For complaints by English Protestants about Papist obfuscation, even in vernacular translations, see R. F.Jones, Triumph, pp. 113-14.

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church. The clergy appeared somewhat more elitist and their doctrines somewhat more esoteric i n the middle ages than during the later Roman empire, to be sure. B u t such changes may be attributed to the same kind o f factors w h i c h led to linguistic drift, the emergence o f new vernaculars, and the development o f canon law. A quasi-monopoly o f learning by the Church and a sharp separation between clergy and laity as belonging to different orders resulted, that is, more f r o m historical circumstances than f r o m a deliberate policy. I t was a formidable task to preserve the Christian faith by scribal transmission for more than a millennium, even while coping w i t h successive waves o f barbarian invasions. I t was difficult enough to provide every region w i t h a steady supply o f priests w h o could read some Latin and w h o were adequately trained to handle routine tasks. Additional demands for lay education had to be met on an irregular, haphazard basis. The cause o f lay evangelism, in other words, was pursued intermittently after the collapse o f imperial Rome, largely because there was no other way o f pursuing this cause until after the advent o f printing. Nevertheless, those w h o pressed the cause o f lay evangelism in the sixteenth century d i d not always have to reach back to the early Church for precedents. Protestant scholars, w h o stress persecution o f Lollards and Hussites, often leave the mistaken impression that Counter-Reformation policies were typical o f the medieval Church and that the latter consistently deprived the laity o f access to 'Christian records.' As noted above, however, the position o f the Church on vernacular Bibles was more flexible and less consistent before the sixteenth century than afterwards. W h e n one remembers, for example, that a French translation o f the Bible had appeared under the sponsorship o f the University o f Paris in 1235, Lefevre d'Etaples' w o r k appears somewhat more traditional and less p i o n e e r i n g . Even closer to the lives o f many reformers were the Brethren o f the C o m m o n Life, whose efforts at lay evangelism had not been proscribed. 142

143

Gerhard Groóte, the founder o f the order, had been an ardent biblio' * z Sec e.g. Dcanesly, The Lollard Bible, p . z. The tendency to overstress religious monopoly and persecution of dissidents by the medieval church goes back to early eulogists of Wycliffc who was portrayed as a martyr although he died a natural death. See Aston, 'Wycliffc's Reformation Reputation,' p. 38. ' « Robson, 'Vernacular Scriptures in France,' p. 4 5 1 , notes that French vernacular Bibles were neither prohibited nor licenced in fourteenth-century northern France in contrast with England. He also suggests that the chief original contribution made by Lcfevre's translation was the elimination of glosses (p. 437).

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phile. H e 'had pressed the b o o k ' into the service o f his movement from its s t a r t , and his movement combined a somewhat unconventional drive for lay literacy w i t h more customary monastic devotions. Book provisions and schooling sponsored by the Brethren were thus not exclusively designed for the benefit o f the clergy. Even the more learned branch o f the order, the scholarly houses o f the Windesheim congregation, contributed to the output o f vernacular sermons and tracts. s Like the Imitation of Christ, composed by one or more o f their copyists, the Brethren's primers and prayer books flowed w i t h unusual continuity f r o m o l d scriptoria and new presses a l i k e . The young Erasmus himself had profited thereby. 144

I4

146

The devotio moderna, as promulgated by Groote's order in the Netherlands, was only one indication o f the way lay evangelism flourished i n the later middle ages. Perhaps ecclesiastical Rome provides the most striking example o f late medieval permissiveness in contrast w i t h postmedieval restrictions. The church in Italy 'showed no hostility to the translation o f the Bible and placed no serious obstacle in the way o f rendering i t t o the people in their o w n language.' Here, as elsewhere, it is useful to place the issue i n a wider comparative perspective than that familiar to Anglo-Americans w h o take the persecution o f Lollards to be the rule. B y the fifteenth century, there were numerous versions o f vernacular Bibles, especially in German and Italian, but also in many other tongues, to suggest the wide latitude allowed to local initiative by church policy during the later middle ages. 147

148

Efforts to control o r curtail the output o f vernacular Bibles and prayer books continued to vary in accord w i t h local decisions after the advent o f printing. The output o f printed Bibles and prayer books, 1 4 4

Post, The Modem Devotion,

pp. o8ff.

i 4 s Verwey, 'The Netherlands Book.' p. 7. The Gothic script used by one of the Brethren's copyists left a lasting mark on Dutch Bible-printing {p. 15). That Groote's order influenced many scriptural translations into southern Dutch and low German is noted by Lockwood, 'Vernacular Scriptures,' pp. 431 ff. »* Sheppard, 'Printing at Dcventer' points out that the first printer at Deventcr lived with the rector of the school there (pp. 116-17). The installation of new presses by the orders founded by Groóte is discussed in many studies. Sec Verwey, 'Netherlands Book,' and chap. 1, n. 39, above, for references. 1 4 7 Kcnelm Foster, 'Vernacular Scriptures in Italy,' p. 465. 1 4 8 A number of editions in German, Saxon, French, Italian, Spanish, Bohemian, Dutch are mentioned by Steele, 'What 15th Century Books Arc About,' p. 340. A chronology of editions of vernacular Bibles printed in Europe between 1466 and 1552 is offered by Hirsch, Printing, Selling, pp. 92-3. The absence of any clear, uniform Church policy on vernacular translation before Trent is also noted by Jcdin, History of the Council of Trent n, 67. On mss. versions, sec K. Foster 'Vernacular Scriptures in Italy,' pp. 338-491.

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however, posed n e w problems, and new forms o f censorship were devised to cope w i t h them. T h e first landmark came in 1485 from the same region as the Gutenberg Bible. W i t h a statement w h i c h specifically mentioned the. divine art,' complained about its misuse and noted the heed to protect the p u r i t y o f divine books from being converted into 'incorrect and vulgar German,' the archbishop o f Mainz issued an edict requiring the licensing o f all German vernacular translations. There followed a series o f papal bulls and edicts w h i c h indicated a g r o w i n g concern about the dangers posed b y print, particularly w i t h i n the Empire. These measures culminated in the sweeping censorship decree issued by Leo X f o l l o w i n g the M a y 4 session o f the Lateran Council o f 1

140

I5-I5:

It may have been under the influence of the Reuchlin controversy (and now not directed against any particular territory or town) that Leo X ordered censorship to be applied to all translations from Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Ghaldaic into Latin and from Latin into the vernacular. The regulations were to be enforced by bishops, their delegates or the inquisitores haereticae pravitatis. The decree bemoaned the fact that readers were supplied by printers with books.. .which promote errors i n faith as well as in daily life.. .The Pope saw acute danger that the evil 'may grow from day to day' (as indeed it d i d ) . . . ' s 0

The Roman Church had thus moved against Bible-printing and developed new forms o f censorship backed b y the Inquisition even before Luther's revolt. T h e imperial and papal edicts o f 1520, w h i c h were aimed'at arresting the spread o f Protestant heresy, singled o u t Lutheran tracts rather than scriptural translations for prohibition. B u t o f course the Lutheran heresy also entailed the output o f unauthorized biblical editions and vernacular translations. Earlier local measures were soon polarized along Protestant-Catholic lines. Separate edicts, directed against n e w editions and translations o f the Bible, had been issued i n the Empire, i n France and i n Spain b y the mid-sixteenth » ' An English translation of parts of this edict is given by Hirsch, 'Pre-Reformation Censorship,' p. 102. It is the first landmark only with regard to censoring vernacular Bibles. An earlier censorship trial centering on a different 'misuse' of the 'new art* comes in Cologne in 1478 (where precursors of the 'nihil obstat' and 'imprimatur' also first appear). The Mainz edict is often misdated i 4 8 6 and 1487; it was reissued in both years. In addition to 'PreReformation censorship,' and summary offered in Printing, Selling, pp. 8 7 - 9 1 , Hirsch gives guidance to literature and early church edicts in 'Bulla Super Impresstone Librorum.' The need for a solid, impartial study of Church censorship policies noted in 1906 by G . H . Putnam, Censorship 1, vii, is still clear. O f the two standard works on the Index, Reusch's Der Index der Verbotenen Bikher is essentially a catalogue and Hilgers' Der Index der Verbotenen Biicher is an apologia. Hirsch, Printing, Selling, p. 9 0 .

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century; they were followed by a series o f far-reaching, long-lasting measures taken by the Counter-Reformation Papacy. Thus the first Papal Index o f 1559 under Paul I V repeated earlier prohibitions, and Bible-reading as well as Bible-printing was singled out for censorship in the list o f t e n general rules, first promulgated i n the 1564 Index o f Pius I V and reiterated i n all later l i s t s . 151

152

B y implementing these measures, the post-Tridentine Church put an end to serious Bible translations b y Catholics i n Italy for the next t w o hundred years. Significant repercussions resulted f r o m this reversal o f previous trends. Venetian printers were especially hard h i t by the new prohibition imposed on some o f their bestselling w a r e s . The cause o f lay evangelism i n Italy was thereafter linked to a clandestine b o o k - t r a d e . Beyond the Alps, the situation was more confused. Erastian rulers i n Catholic lands saw to i t that Tridentine decrees were not enacted everywhere. T h e Catholic clergy i n Protestant regions wanted t o counter heretical translations w i t h versions o f their o w n . Catholic Bible translation, while never officially sponsored and often regarded w i t h suspicion, d i d n o t entirely cease i n every region. Division o f opinion had been so troublesome at Trent, moreover, that equivocation was required, some r o o m for local option was left, and it is still difficult to find out precisely what the Council meant b y 'declaring the Vulgate a u t h e n t i c . ' 153

154

155

156

Nevertheless, guidelines set b y Rome, upholding the Vulgate and Church Latin, generally prevailed throughout Catholic territories. Thus during the second century o f printing, vernacular Bibles were rarely sponsored b y Catholic rulers. ' T h e Roman Church d i d n o t publish vernacular versions save i n countries where she was threatened , S I

Imperial and national edicts aimed against printing vernacular Bibles are noted in various articles in T7ie Cambridge History

of the Bible vol. 3- See pp. 113, 125, 4 3 0 - 1 . The persistent

opposition of the Sorbonne, beginning in 1487, to French vernacular versions is noted by Rickard, La Langue Française, pp. 9 - 1 0 . 1 S 2

1 5 4

Putnam, Censorship 1, 176-7; 182-9. See also discussion of ten rules by Jackson, 'Printed Books,' pp. 4 5 - 6 . Kcnclm Foster,'Italian Versions,'p. 112. The lasting effect of this prohibition is conveyed by an interview with the Italian director of a film on the Bible: 'Five years ago, I had never read the Bible, because in Italy we learn everything about religion from the priests," said Diño dc Laurentüs as cited by Lillian Ross, ' Our Far-Flung Correspondents," p. 197. See dc Frcde, 'Per la Storia...,' pp. 175-7; Grendlcr, The Roman Inquisition,

passim.

McNair, Peter Martyr in Italy, passim, supplies much relevant data, as docs Grcndler. is6 geee .g, F.J. Crehan, 'The Bible in the Catholic Church,' p. 204. On the 'supple formula' devised by clever councillors, who were inspired by the 'Holy Ghost,' according to a modem Jesuit, sec Schmidt, Liturgie et Langue Vulgaire, pp. 8 2 ; 95. Varying interpretations of the formula given by earlier Catholic scholars are noted by Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers, p. 64.

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by Protestant translations and w i t h the sole aim o f replacing these translations w i t h a text adapted to Catholic d o g m a s . ' Publication o f vernacular Bibles in Catholic regions moreover often led to persecution and imprisonment. Vernacular versions were generally handled under foreign or heterodox auspices. Spanish translations were thus printed i n London, Geneva, Basel, Amsterdam and o n a Jewish press i n Ferrara; the Protestant Giovanni D i o d a t i had his celebrated Italian translation printed i n Geneva; French translations o f scripture were 'almost always produced abroad' or else produced clandestinely b y Lyons publishers w h o resorted to false addresses. Even the A n g l o Catholic (Rheims-Douai) version was produced outside England. I t seems characteristic that one project for a vernacular French version (which was temporarily authorized under Louis X I I I ) resulted only i n arousing a successful opposition movement w h i c h was climaxed b y a book entitled: ' T h e Sanctuary Closed to the Profane or the Bible Prohibited to t h e . V u l g a r . ' 157

158

150

In marked contrast to Catholic policy, vernacular Bibles, prayer books and catechisms were adopted b y all reforming churches. Sooner or later, scriptural translations were officially authorized by all rulers w h o broke w i t h Rome, and thus entered into the mainstream o f national literary cultures i n Protestant lands. Late medieval currents i n England and i n France were significantly reversed by these developments. At the same time that French Bibles and Psalters were being banned b y the edicts o f Valois courts, English translations, w h i c h had been p r o scribed since the Lollards, were gaining official approval under C r o m well and Cranmer. The timing o f the reversal was crucial. For after printing, primers, catechisms, and school books o f all kinds could be made more uniform, and national characters began to be cast into more permanent molds. 160

I n England, the c r o w n p u t its stamp o f approval, n o t only 1 5 7 Victor Baroni, L a Contre Réforme devant la Bible, introduction, article oc. " 5 8 s Droz, 'Bibles Françaises,' p. 2 1 1 . (The intriguing case of René Benoist's French version, which was condemned after getting permission to be printed in Paris in 1566 and was reissued by Plantin with the approval of Philip II is described on p. 2 2 2 . See also Black, 'The Printed Bible,' pp. 4 4 7 - 8 ; Martin, Livre à Paris 1 , 1 0 2 . ) ee

« 9

Le Sanctuaire Fermé au Prophane

ou la Bible défendue au Vulgaire by the royal confessor, Le

Maire, is discussed by Martin, Livre à Paris n, * Saycc, 'French Versions,' p. 114. On mass distribution of psalters in France during 1561-2, see Kingdon, 'Patronage, Piety and Printing,' pp. 28-30. For a glimpse of militant psalm-singing journeymen in the streets of Lyons, sec Natalie Z. Davis, 'The Protestant Printing Workers,' pp. 252-7. 171 Cited by McManners, The French Revolution, p. 105. 1 7 3 On the dissenting tradition that entered into English Jacobinism and the competing sects and chapels to which English nonconformist artisans belonged, sec E . P. Thompson, Tfie Making of the English Working Class, p. 5 1 . Sec also discussion of reading public of Bunyan, Defoe and Milton by Q. D. Leavis, Fiction and the Reading Public, pp. 97-118.

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This brief look at later developments is offered merely to suggest that sixteenth-century division over the question o f Bible translation had long-range implications, and the relationship between Protestantism and nationalism m i g h t be clarified i f they were explored. I n v i e w o f their far-reaching consequences, one may agree w i t h Dickens that the decisions made at Trent 'have attracted too little attention': the divided Fathers failed.. .to establish any priority for Biblical studies or . . .to encourage the laity to read the Scriptures, or to prepare the Scripturally-oriented catechism for laymen which the humanist group h a d . . . planned. This great refusal of 1546 had permanent effects... A t no stage did the spirit of Erasmus and Lefebvre suffer a more catastrophic defeat and in no field did the fear of Protestantism leave deeper marks upon the development of Catholic religion. 173

Something that ran even deeper than fear o f Protestantism was also at stake i n the 'great refusal o f 1546.' The decision to stand by the Vulgate, to veil Gospel texts, and stress lay obedience over lay education was certainly framed as a reaction to the Protestant threat. Fear o f the spread o f Lutheran heresy undoubtedly loomed large i n the debates. Actions taken by Catholic churchmen, however, were also designed to counteract forces w h i c h had begun to subvert the medieval church before Luther was b o r n and w h i c h continued to menace Roman Catholicism long after Protestant zeal had e b b e d . 174

I t was printing, not Protestantism, w h i c h outmoded the medieval Vulgate and introduced a new drive to tap mass markets. Regardless o f what happened in Wittenberg or Zürich, regardless o f other issues taken up at T r e n t ; sooner or later the Church w o u l d have had to come to terms w i t h the effect o n the Bible o f copy-editing and trilingual scholarship on the one hand and expanding book-markets o n the other. Whether or not the Lutheran heresy spread, whether or not clerical abuses were reformed, the forces released by print, w h i c h pointed to Dickens, The Counter Reformation, p. t i j . This (Protestant) interpretation is quite different from the (Catholic) one given by F.J. Crchan, 'The Bible in the Catholic Church,' p. 203. The latter asserts that 'the Christian humanists at the Council' 'swept aside* conservative arguments in arranging for lectureships in Scripture and says nothing about other issues. I 7 * That the suppression of Protestantism by the Roman Curia was incidental to the containment of other more basic and more long-range forces is also argued by Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense, pp. 293-s. Whereas he associates the threat with 'Renaissance values' and sees Rome's 'primary adversaries.. .symbolized by Florence and Venice rather than by Wittenberg and Geneva,' (p. 294) I think the threat was posed by forces unleashed by print. In my view, both Venice and Geneva, as important printing centers, represented 'primary adversaries' of sixteenth-century Rome. The role of Genevan presses in stirring French opinion against Rome is well documented by Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars, pp. 93-129. 173

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more democratic and national forms o f worship, w o u l d have had to be contained or permitted t o r u n their course. The argument that Catholic policies no less than Protestant ones reflected adaptation to 'modernizing' forces in the sixteenth century, needs to be qualified b y considering the divergence over lay Biblereading. According to Evennett, for example, Gutenberg's invention 'cut both ways' b y helping Loyola as well as Luther and b y spurring a Catholic revival even while spreading Lutheran t r a c t s . O f course it is true that many Catholic teachers and preachers were w e l l served by early printers; although, even here, Protestants seemed to have an early e d g e . ' D u r i n g the decade after 1517, one finds a chorus o f complaints suggesting that the new m e d i u m did not 'cut both ways' but was, on the contrary, biased against the traditional faith. 175

76

Scholars complained that the whole book market was devoted to books by Luther and his followers and that nobody wished to print anything for the pope or any material which would offend Luther... Catholic polemsts and authors had a difficult time finding printers and publishers for their manuscripts. . .Georg Witzel from Mainz, a Catholic convert from Lutheranism, complained that the printer had kept his manuscript for a whole year with promises. ' I f I were a Lutheran,' he said, 'there would be no difficulty, but as a Catholic I am writing in v a i n . ' 177

B y the second half o f the sixteenth century, however, the postTridentine Church had successfully mobilized printers for its counteroffensive. T h e Catholic Reformation o f the sixteenth century, as Evennett suggests, used printing for proselytizing just as the Protestant churches did. Catholic firms made profits by serving the Roman church. They produced breviaries and devotional works for priests on far flung missions; school books for seminaries run by new orders; devotional literature for pious laymen, and tracts w h i c h could later be used by the seventeenth-century office o f the Propaganda. Furthermore, in England, after the Anglicans gained the upper hand, Catholic printers proved as skillful as their Puritan counterparts i n handling problems posed by the surreptitious printing and the clandestine marketing o f books. 178

, 7 S

Evennett, Tiie Spirit,

1 7 6

For data on the pro-Lutheran, anti-Catholic bias of German printers, sec Gravier, Luther et

1 7 7

Louise Holborn, 'Printing and the Growth,' p. 11.

1 7 8

Sec e.g., Allison and Rogers, A Catalogue of Catholic

L*Opinion

p. 25.

Publique, pp. 20, 7 2 - 4 , 2 5 1 .

354

Books.

THE SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

I f one confines the scope o f inquiry to the mere spreading o f books and tracts, then, one may be inclined to argue that the new medium was exploited in much the same way by Catholics and Protestants alike. But, as I have argued throughout this book, new functions performed by printing went beyond spreading tracts. Catholic policies framed at Trent were aimed at holding these new functions in check. B y rejecting vernacular versions o f the Bible, b y stressing lay obedience and imposing restrictions on lay reading, b y developing new machinery such as the Index and Imprimatur to channel the flow o f literature along narrowly prescribed lines, the post-Tridentine papacy proved to be anything but accommodating. I t assumed an unyielding posture that grew ever more r i g i d over the course o f time. Decisions made at Trent were merely the first i n a series o f rear-guard actions designed to contain the new forces Gutenberg's invention had released. The long war between the Roman Church and the printing press continued for the next four centuries and has not completely ended yet. The Syllabus of Errors in the mid-nineteenth century showed h o w little r o o m was left for maneuver after four hundred y e a r s . Even after Vatican I I , a c o m plete cessation o f hostilities between popes and printers' devils is still not clearly i n s i g h t . 179

180

As these remarks suggest, the fate o f the medieval Vulgate was closely intertwined w i t h that o f the medieval church. B y examining the effects o f print on Jerome's version one m i g h t also illuminate the forces that disrupted Latin C h r i s t e n d o m . Once again I must offer a sketchy summary o f a topic that deserves more extended treatment by suggesting that printing subjected the Vulgate to a two-pronged attack. It was threatened by Greek and Hebrew studies on the one hand, and by vernacular translation on the other. Accordingly, the authority o f the medieval clergy was undercut on t w o levels: by lay erudition on the part o f a scholarly élite and by lay Bible-reading among the public at large. O n the elite level, laymen became more erudite than church181

" « It seems altogether fitting that the chief objection posed by the papacy to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 was to the clause proclaiming freedom of the press, 1 B 0 See e.g. 'Pontiff says Media Lead Youth Astray,' The Washington Post (Tuesday, May 5 , 1970), p. A 1 4 . The headline sums up Pope Paul VI's message for 'World Social Communications Day.' 1 8 1 The fate of the medieval Corpus Juris (also described as the 'legal Vulgate') seems to me to be similar to that of Jerome's version of the Scriptures. (See remarks, pp. 103-4, above.) That the twelfth-century 'glossa ordinaria' on Scripture is akin to the Bolognese glosses on the Corpus Juris, is evident in Milburn, 1 The People's Bible,' p. 294. It would be useful to study the impact of print on the medieval legal textual tradition as well as on the medieval scriptural one.

355

CLASSICAL

AND

CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

men; grammar and philology challenged the reign o f theology; Greek and Hebrew studies forced their way into the schools. O n the popular level, ordinary men and women began to k n o w their scripture as w e l l as most parish priests; markets for vernacular catechisms and prayer books expanded; Church Latin no longer served as a sacred language which unified all o f Western Christendom. Distrusted as an inferior translation by humanist scholars, Jerome's version was also discarded as too esoteric by evangelical reformers. These t w o levels were not entirely discrete, o f course, and were actually linked in many different ways. For one thing, Erasmian scholarship and Lutheran heresy were coupled by the opposition they p r o voked. Biblical scholarship and vernacular translatioi thus came under a common prohibition when the Vulgate was proclaimed authentic. For another thing, they were coupled by all w h o tried to re-do the w o r k o f Saint Jerome. A conscientious translator required access to scholarly editions and some command o f trilingual skills. A Tyndale or a Luther necessarily took advantage o f the output o f a scholar-printer such as Robert Estienne; while scholar and translator could easily be combined in one person-as was the case w i t h Lefévre d'Etaples, Finally the two-pronged attack was mounted f r o m one and the same location - that is, f r o m the newly established printer's workshop. The new impetus given scholarship by compilers o f lexicons and reference guides went together w i t h a new interest in tapping mass markets and promoting bestsellers. Robert Estienne w o r k i n g on his successive editions to the distress o f Sorbonnistes provides one illustration o f the disruptive effects o f sixteenth-century Bible printing. Richard Grafton, pestering Thomas C r o m w e l l to order the placing o f the M a t t h e w Bible i n every parish church and abbey, provides a n o t h e r . 182

183

Although they were coupled i n various ways, there are good reasons nonetheless for considering the t w o prongs o f the attack separately. There is n o need to dwell on the distinctions that arc inherent in m y reference to t w o levels - that is, distinctions based on social stratification and market definition. The fact that scholarly editions circulated among a select readership and vernacular translation was aimed at a mass 1 8 1

183

For data on uses made of printed reference guides and typographical resources by biblical translators such as Luther and Lcfevrc, sec Bluhm, 'The Sources of Luther's September Testament.' On persistent pressure to obtain government sponsorship of English Bibles, sec Dickens, Thomas Cromwell,

p.

115.

356

THE

SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

audience, i n other words, seems too obvious t o call f o r extended discussion. There are other mstinctions, however, w h i c h seem less obvious and need more attention. For example, the approaches o f scholars and evangelists t o the sacred W o r d d i d n o t always converge and were sometimes at odds. Jerome and Augustine had themselves disagreed over Bible translation and i n the sixteenth century, o l d arguments flared anew. A t first, Luther felt indebted t o Erasmus and his Greek edition, b u t later he came to believe that a mere grammarian and historian concerned to get at the literal meaning and historical context o f a sacred writing could do positive h a r m . . .Luther thought o f himself as a theologian rather than as a grammarian. I f he were asked to define the function and scope o f Christian scholarship, i t was clear where he would look for guidance.. .'Jerome is a babbler like Erasmus. Augustine... is the best theologian since the apostles.. . ' l 8 +

Luther attacked Erasmus f o r being more o f a grammarian than a theologian. F r o m a different standpoint, Thomas M o r e attacked Lutheran translators such as Tyndale, and objected to placing vernacular scriptures instead o f Latin grammars i n schoolboy hands. M o r e stood w i t h Erasmus and against obscurantists i n w o r k i n g to introduce Greek studies into English universities. B u t he parted company w i t h the author o f the 'paraclesis' over the question o f lay evangelism. 185

Moreover, Renaissance princes tended t o share More's position. As patrons o f learning they sponsored scholarly editions but exhibited more caution about vernacular translation. T h e latter issue was much more politically explosive and complicated delicate negotiations over church affairs. Catholic kings m i g h t act as d i d Philip I I b y sponsoring polyglot Bibles and b y providing local clergy w i t h special breviaries and missals. But they stopped short o f substituting vernaculars f o r Church Latin o r o f displacing the Vulgate. The tortuous policy o f Henry V I I I illustrates rather w e l l the half-Catholic, half-Protestant position o f the schismatic T u d o r k i n g . H e began b y persecuting Tyndale and other Lutheran translators; then encouraged C r o m w e l l t o turn loose his coterie o f publicists and printers against the Pope; then accused his minister o f , s

* Harbison, Christian Scholar, p. I to. Sec also discussion of different 'philological' and 'inspirational' approaches to scriptural translation problems, represented by Jerome and Augustine in Schwarz, Principles

l 8 s

and Problems, pp. 16, 2 7 - 9 , 37, 4 0 .

Deanesly, The Lollard Bibie, p. 12, and Wood, The Reformation and English

Education,

pp. 229¬

30, both discuss differences between Erasmus and More. Devereux, 'English Translators,' pp. 4.7 ff. also mentions Tyndale's sly dig at More for failing to follow Erasmus' 'paraclesis.*

357

CLASSICAL

AND

CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

having false books translated into the mother t o n g u e . I n 1543 the government seemed to grant w i t h one hand what i t w i t h d r e w w i t h the other: 186

an Act o f 1543 prohibited the use of Tyndale or any other annotated Bible in English and forbade unlicensed persons to read or expound the Bible to others in any church or open assembly.. .Yet in 1543 Convocation ordered that the Bible should be read through in English, chapter by chapter every Sunday and Holy Day after Te Dettm and Magnificat.™ 7

There was no logical contradiction; but the t w o acts worked at crosspurposes, nevertheless. Prohibiting the use o f annotated English Bibles, forbidding unlicensed persons to read or expound scripture and placing Bible-reading out o f bounds for ' w o m e n , artificers, apprentices, journeymen, yeomen, husbandmen and l a b o r e r s ' were not logically incompatible w i t h ordering the clergy to read f r o m an English Bible in church. B u t i f one wanted to keep English Bibles f r o m lay readers i t was probably unwise to tantalize congregations by letting them hear a chapter per week. Appetites are usually whetted by being t o l d about forbidden fruit. The actions o f 1543 probably w o r k e d together to i n crease the market for English Bibles. After Henry's death, o f course, the prohibitions were abandoned and a less ambivalent royal policy was pursued. Despite a sharp setback under M a r y T u d o r ^ and intermittent reactions against Puritan zealots, the Englishing o f the Bible moved ahead under royal auspices, reaching a triumphant conclusion under James I . W i t h the Authorized Version, the English joined other Protestant nations to become a 'people o f the Book.' 188

18

Once a vernacular version was officially authorized, the Bible was 'nationalized,' so to speak, i n a way that divided Protestant churches and reinforced extant linguistic frontiers. Translation o f the Bible into the vernacular languages lent them a new dignity and frequently became the starting point for the development o f national languages and literatures. The literature was made accessible to the l8fl

Henry's abruptly changing policy is well described by Devcrcux, 'English Translators,' pp. 50-3¬

1 8 7 1 8 8

Grccnslade, 'English Versions,' p. 153, n. 1. Categories of those forbidden to read by the act of 1543 arc taken from Bennett, Books and Readers 1475-155?, p. 27-

l 8 s

How the pace of Bible-printing accelerated under Edward VI and came 'almost to a standstill" under Mary Tudor is described by Bennett, Books and Readers 1558-1603, p. 141. The English experience during this brief interval offers a miniature model of what happened elsewhere when Protestant and Catholic rulers were enthroned.

358

THE

SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

people at the very time that the invention of printing made the production of books easier and cheaper. 150

As this chapter indicates, I think i t more than a mere coincidence that "these developments occurred 'at the very t i m e ' book-production costs were lowered b y printing. Nevertheless, Kohn's suggestion that the vernaculars were dignified b y their association w i t h the sacred book contains a valuable insight. A n d so does his observation that 'Latin was dethroned at the very moment w h e n . . . i t had started to become the universal language for a g r o w i n g class o f educated m e n . . . * Thus K o h n shows w h y i t is necessary to keep the t w o prongs o f the attack on the Vulgate separate; for vernacular translations, by reinforcing linguistic barriers, ran countef to the cosmopolitan fellowship encouraged by biblical scholarship. 1 0 1

Although the authority o f Jerome's version was undermined b y Greek and Hebrew studies, the sense o f belonging to the same C o m m o n wealth o f Learning remained strong among Christian scholars i n all lands. A network o f correspondence and the actual wanderings o f scholars thus helped to preserve ties between Catholic Louvain and Protestant Leiden during the religious wars. Collaboration o n Plantin's polyglot Bible pulled together scholars o f diverse faiths f r o m different r e a l m s . Even after Christianity was regarded as divisive and French had displaced Latin as the international language, a common grounding in the same classical education and a shared interest in trilingual studies helped to unify the Republic o f Letters. This cosmopolitan Republic, moreover, seemed to g r o w more expansive i n its sympathies as the centuries wore on. Even i n the sixteenth century, collaboration w i t h heterodox enclaves o f Jews and Greeks had encouraged an ecumenical and tolerant spirit, particularly among scholar-printers w h o often provided r o o m and board in exchange for foreign aid and were, thus, quite literally 'at home' w i t h travellers f r o m strange l a n d s . W o r k on polyglot Bible editions encouraged scholars t o look beyond 192

"o Kohn, Nationalism, p. 14. >»i Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, p. 143; also pp. 618-20 where data are given on formation of literary languages such as Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slovenian, etc. The importance of Bible translation in the development of Scandinavian literary languages, including Finnish, is noted by Dickens, Reformation and Society, pp. 9 0 - 1 . See also Steinberg, Five Hundred pp. 120-6. w

"

J

Years,

See discussion of travels and conversions of Justus Lipsius, who spent twelve years in Leiden before moving to Louvain, in Martin, Litre a Paris 1, 23-4. The polyglot households of scholar-printers are discussed below, pp. 446-8.

359

CXASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

the horizons o f Western Christendom toward exotic cultures and distant realms. Vernacular Bible translation, while i t owed much to trilingual studies, had precisely the opposite effect. I t led to the typical Protestant amalgam o f biblical fundamentalism and insular patriotism. Sixteenth-century vernacular translation movements also had antiintellectual implications w h i c h w o r k e d at cross-purposes w i t h the aims o f classical scholars. O f course, this was not true o f the group which produced the Geneva Bible in the 1550s or o f the committee w h i c h labored over the K i n g James translation. Authoritative translations could not be produced save by erudite scholars, w h o were i n debted to polyglot Bibles and trilingual studies. There were many publicists, however, w h o championed the cause o f Englishing the Bible b y roundly condemning erudition and p e d a n t r y . Several special studies have revealed the complex interplay o f diverse elements (ranging f r o m court councillors, Puritan pressure groups, and the Inns o f C o u r t to London theatres and the Elizabethan Grub Street) w h i c h resulted in the Englishing o f law and letters during the sixteenth century. Under the aegis o f patrons like the Earl o f Leicester, corps o f translators labored to convert useful and edifying works o f every kind into the mother tongue. The missionary zeal o f lay evangelists, w h o objected to withholding Gospel truths f r o m any man, was completely compatible w i t h the new m o v e m e n t . ' L o t h he and other printers be to printe any Lattin booke bicause they w i l l not heare be uttered and for that Bookcs printed i n Englande be i n suspition a b r o a d . ' Thus Archbishop Parker wrote i n 1572 about John Day's reluctance to carry 194

195

1 9 6

197

198

I M

Berry, The Geneva Bible, pp. i o - i i discusses the Hebrew and Greek studies of the Marian exiles who were in close contact with scholar-printers in Geneva, Strasbourg, etc. On the King James committee, see facsimiles of the notes of John Bois, tr. and cd. by "Ward Allen, Translating for Kingjames,

passim.

" s See e.g. Thomas Bccon's defense of the English Bible and his native tongue as conveyed by R. F. Jones, Triumph, p. 6 1 . 1 5 6 In addition to R. F.Jones' Triumph on the English movement, see Ebcl, 'Translation and Cultural Nationalism'; Graham, ' " O u r Tongue Matcrnall,'" pp. 58-98; Rosenberg, Leicester. A comparative study of sixteenth-century translation movements (perhaps based on translators' prefaces to diverse works) would be useful, judging by data sampled in scattered articles: e.g. Grendlcr, 'Francesco Sansovino,' p. 141; Bcardslcy, 'The Classics and Their Spanish Translators,' pp. 3ff.; Rickard, La Langue Française, passim; Gerald Strauss, 'The Course of German History.' 1 5 7

The first printed book on the art of translation was by the French Huguenot printer and martyr, Etienne Dolet, La Manière de bien Traduire d'une Langue à L'Autre Printing, Selling, p. 133.

1 9 8

(1540). Sec Hirsch,

Letter of Archbishop Parker to Cecil, 1572, cited by Oastlcr,Jo/in Day, p. 19.

360

THE SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

oiit a commission f o r h i m - a commission that D a y d i d undertake, •after compensation had been arranged. D a y was n o t at all reluctant, needless to say, to undertake printing the ' A B C w i t h the Little Catechism' and the 'Psalms i n M e t r e ' - t h e t w o most lucrative privileges available to printers i n Elizabethan England. B u t he reserved his wholehearted enthusiasm for the p r o m o t i o n o f the Protestant cause. Profits made from his monopoly o f the t w o elementary texts were ploughed back into his major publication program w h i c h entailed issuing the tracts and sermons o f Marian martyrs and returned exiles and w h i c h culminated i n the successive editions o f the ever expanding Book of Martyrs, whose author he kept i n his e m p l o y . That D a y was also the printer for the first English translation o f Euclid, the celebrated version by Henry Billingsley w h i c h contained an equally famous preface b y John Dee, and that he also printed Dee's Perfecte Arte of Navigation, was probably not due to the printer's i n i t i a t i v e . Vernacular technical literature and translations o f Euclid were however quite i n keeping w i t h the publication programs o f other early printers w h o hired translators in order to supply the g r o w i n g demand. 1 9 9

200

Protestant objections t o veiling Gospel truths were adopted b y the translators and used for more secular ends. For example, they argued that the liberal arts and sciences should n o t be 'hidden i n Greke or Latin tongue* but made familiar to the 'vulgare people.' I n ' b l u n t and rude English,' they set o u t ' t o please ten thousand laymen' instead o f 'ten able clerkes.' They sought to close the gap not so much between priest and laity as between academic or professional elites and ' c o m m o n ' readers w h o were variously described as ' unskilful!, ' 'unletterecT and 'unacquainted w i t h the latine t o u n g e . ' I n this w a y , they linked the lay evangelism o f Protestants w i t h the cause o f so-called popularizers w h o campaigned against academic monopolies and professional 201

202

"99 Oastler, J M » Day, p. i s ; Haller, The Elect Nation, pp. 114-17. Oastlcr corrects Haller's view that Parker was a special patron of Day. 100 Oastlcr.Jo/iM Day, p. 16. (Dee's preface to Billingsley is assigned great significance by Frances Yates in her theory about the Globe theatre.) 1 0 1 Thomas Norton, The Ordinall oj Alchemy (1477) cited by R. F.Jones, Triumph, p. s, n. 8. Î O î Altick, The English Common Reader, p. 18. Sec also Caxton's reference to 'rude and unconnyngc men' cited by Bennett, Books and Readers, i$7*-* Sec warning given by Green, 'The Bible in Sixteenth Century,' p. 120. 1 1 5 Grecnsladc, 'Epilogue,' p. 485.

364

THE

SCRIPTURAL TRADITION

RECAST

*of gkss windows, wall-paintings, church portals, miracle plays, and the like, were o f little help. Biblical anecdotes and biblical imagery i n truded themselves into 'every nook and cranny' o f medieval life. B u t by a seeming paradox, w e l l described by Southern, the medieval Bible made its w a y ' i n t o every corner and turn o f speech at the very moment when the amount o f the Bible w h i c h was read i n church was falling away r a p i d l y . ' The ' interjection o f special lessons for a large number o f saints' days' had already produced a state o f affairs i n the twelfth century that w o u l d give rise to the indignation expressed i n the preface, attributed to Cranmer, o f the Elizabethan B o o k o f C o m m o n Prayer: 216

this godly and decent order o f the ancient fathers.. .hath been so altered, broken and neglected by planting i n uncertain stories, legends, responds, verses, vain repetitions, commemorations and synodals that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four Chapters were read out, all the rest went unread. 217

Popular preaching styles developed b y the new mendicant orders helped to make matters worse. Congregations were captivated b y colorful anecdotes designed to keep them awake. Writers like Chaucer, and later Rabelais, were provided w i t h a rich fund o f anecdotal material t o draw on. B u t scripture was also m i x e d w i t h more foreign matter than b e f o r e . I f the laity rarely saw Bibles, the clergy, w h o were familiar w i t h Peter Lombard's Sentences and preachers* manuals, were not much better o f f . The idea that preachers should take their sermons directly f r o m scripture, far f r o m being 'obsolescent' i n the age o f Erasmus, was just beginning t o come into its o w n . T h e same point applies to lay conduct - to the new dogged insistence on sticking w i d i the Gospel and taking the Bible as one's only guide. 218

2 1 0

A variety o f social and psychological consequences resulted from the new possibility o f substituting Bible-reading for participation i n traditional ceremonies - such as that o f the mass. The slogan: 'sola scriptura,' as Bernd Moeller says, was equivocal. I t could be used i n an inclusive sense to mean ' n o t w i t h o u t scripture' or assigned the meaning 1 1 6 1 1 7

Southern, TJie Making of the Middle Ages, p. 217. Preface to The Book of Common Prayer (1559) edited by John Booty, pp. 14-15.

Smalley, English Friars and Owst, Literature and Pulpit provide samples of anecdotal material employed by English friars. Krailsheimer, Rabelais and the Franciscans, does the same for the Franciscans in France and Italy. " The 'rarity of Bibles' in clerical possession before the Reformation and 'the rare use made of them,' even in the services by English parish priests is noted by Heath, English Parish Clergy,

1 , 8

l

pp- 74-5-

365

CLASSICAL

AND CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

that Luther gave i t : ' w i t h scripture a l o n e . ' W h e n taken in this latter sense, Bible-reading m i g h t take precedence over all other experiences to a degree and w i t h an intensity that was unprecedented i n earlier; times. The idea o f seeking the 'real presence' by reading scripture, i t ; has been suggested, meant 'internalizing observance which formerly had been acted out publicly in sacraments and ceremonies.' In view" o f the many new public ceremonies involving prayer meetings and j o i n t singing o f psalms that were developed b y Protestants who rejected the mass, the point should not be pressed too far. W h e n the art o f preaching was overhauled by the Reformers, i t was invigorated not weakened. 220

221

Nevertheless the act o f putting Bibles in Everyman's hand d i d encourage a perpetual splintering o f congregations and a new tendency toward religious self-help. I t posed new questions concerning church attendance and group observance that had not been posed before. Stubbornly dogmatic and even obsessive religious attitudes were fostered among the new sects w h o elevated the infallible scripture to a more lofty position than Catholics ever elevated their popes. A n introverted spiritual life developed among solitary readers w h o received silent guidance f r o m repeatedly re-reading the same book on their o w n . In speaking o f the self-taught preachers and religious fanatics w h o were common i n Bunyan's day, Delaney comments, 'Scripture had an inordinately strong influence on half-educated men o f this k i n d because they read little else.' This still seems t o be true, and i t should be remembered that fundamentalist sects, like Gideon Bibles, have not ceased to proliferate in the present century. This is not the place to elaborate on the emergence o f fundamentalism which, strictly speaking, was a nineteenth-century not a sixteenth-century development. I simply want to underline that biblical literalism, far f r o m dying out in the age o f Erasmus, was just beginning t o assume its modern f o r m . The rich and variegated communal religious experiences o f the middle ages provided a different basis f o r t h e ' c o m m o n culture' o f Western man than d i d the new reliance o n Bible-reading. Open books, in some instances, led to closed minds. 222

The impact o f printing on the Western scriptural faith thus pointed in t w o quite opposite directions - toward 'Erasmian' trends and u l t i 1 1 0

1 1 2

M O C U C T , imperii)' Ci'iiej, p. 29. Dclany, British Autobiography, p. 29.

2 1 1

366

Dclany, British Autobiography,

p. 34.

THE

SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

mately higher criticism and modernism, and t o w a r d more rigid orthodoxy culminating i n literal fundamentalism and Bible Belts. Vernacular Bible translation took advantage o f humanist scholarship only i n order to undermine i t by fostering patriotic and populist tendencies. I t has t o be distinguished f r o m scholarly attacks on the Vulgate because i t was connected w i t h so many non-scholarly antiintellectual trends. Moreover, i t coincided, as scholarly editions and 'profidess polyglots' d i d not, w i t h the profit-making drives o f early printers. N o t all printers were scholars, n o r were all o f them pious, but they had to make profits to stay i n business at all. The Bible had always presented itself to devout readers as a holy book and to theologians as a guide to the science o f God. I t was only after the m i d fifteenth century, however, that i t came to be viewed as a potential bestseller and could even be promoted among laymen o n occasion as entertaining reading to help pass t i m e . 223

2 2 4

4. R E S E T T I N G

THE STAGE FOR THE

PROTESTANT

REFORMATION

As these remarks suggest, I think printers d i d more than enable broadsides and tracts to be spread b y heretics w h o had not commanded such organs o f publicity before. Before the first Lutheran tract had been written - let alone printed and spread - scholars were being provided w i t h Greek and Hebrew texts; vernacular Bibles i n diverse languages and editions were being placed at the disposal o f all. Reuchlin's r u d i ments o f Hebrew and Erasmus' Greek N e w Testament were b o t h i n Luther's hands before the Ninety-Five Theses were composed. Even before Luther arrived at the University o f Wittenberg, the University library had acquired the most refined tools o f scholarship available i n 225

1 2 3

1 1 4

1 1 5

Problems posed for scholar-printers who wanted to do more than turn out a pirated edition of a New Testament are noted by Black, 'The Printed Bible,' p. 4 3 1 . But losses and risks incurred from scholarly publication programs could be compensated for by winning rich and powerful patrons who were often more helpful to a given firm than quick profits. See examples given by Hendricks,'Profitless Printing.' How the London Polyghtte was supported by subscribers is noted by Sarah Clapp, 'The Subscription Enterprises of John Ogilby and Richard Blowe.' Black, 'The Printed Bible,' p. 423 cites a preface to a French Bible of 1510 which equates the work with 'a good tale' which could help pass time. In addition to Reuchlin's De Rudimentis Hebraicis, Luther also had a copy of a Hebrew Bible (first published by the Soncino press in 1488) in a Brescian edition of 1494 according to Box, 'Hebrew Studies,' p. 322. O n his use of Reuchlin's work see Kooiman, Luther and the Bible, p. 74. His eager reception and 'almost instantaneous use' of Erasmus' Greek New Testament

367

CLASSICAL

AND

CHRISTIAN

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REORIENTED

the early sixteenth century. N e w acquisitions had been obtained on the advice o f the greatest scholar-printer o f the d a y . Bibles had been translated into German and printed before Luther was born. The position o f the Church and the quality o f Christian faith was already i n the process o f being transformed by the shift f r o m script to print before the Protestant revolt had begun. 226

Luther's Theses received top billing in their day and are still making headlines i n our history books. The indulgences and Bibles that came f r o m a Mainz workshop have seemed less newsworthy all along. Nevertheless, Bibles were being rapidly duplicated before Protestant tracts were. The dissemination o f glad tidings by print preceded and helped to precipitate the Lutheran revolt. I n dealing w i t h that revolt it is conventional to postpone mention o f printing until after theories o f causation have been debated and we come to the question o f results ('of consummation' as Dickens says). Socio-economic and political factors are discussed; theological issues and ecclesiastical abuses are explored. Charismatic leaders are analyzed and, in recent years, psychoanalyzed as well. B u t the new presses are rarely allowed to go into operation until after Luther has arrived at the Church door. I n this way, debates about the Reformation tend to conceal the changes w r o u g h t by printing, much as do debates about the Renaissance. I n both instances, the function o f the new technology is drastically restricted. I t is given no part i n shaping new views but only seen to diffuse them after they have been formed. Since the classical revival did begin under scribal auspices, it is understandable that Renaissance scholars postpone discussion o f the new presses and are prone to underestimate their role. I t is not as easy to explain w h y Reformation studies place first things last, given the interval between Gutenberg and Luther. One answer may be found i n the way Renaissance and Reformation are currently defined and related to each other. Insofar as scribal ideas o f a 'rinascita' are carried over into the concept o f a 'reformatio,' the advent o f printing (which could scarcely be foreseen

"

6

is noted by Bluhm, Martin Luther, pp. x-xi. How Erasmus was prodded by Froben to get this latter work done to meet a publication deadline and how he complained that the work was "precipitated rather than edited'is noted by Jarrott, 'Erasmus' Biblical Humanism,'pp. 120-1. Jarrott also notes how Erasmus improved his fourth edition of 1527 after studying the Complutensian Polyglot, There is still much uncertainly as to which edition of Erasmus' Greek New Testament, which German vernacular^Bibles and which editions of the Latin Vulgate Luther consulted when in the Wartburg. Clearly he was better equipped by printers than he would have been by scribes during this interval of enforced isolation. See chap. 3, n. 159 above.

368

THE SCRIPTURAL

TRADITION

RECAST

in Petrarch's day) is likely t o be omitted i n discussion o f the latter term- Debates about h o w to distinguish properly between Italian and Northern, Classical and Christian, quattrocento and cinquecento humanism are sufficiently absorbing to leave little r o o m for discussion of differences between manuscript Bibles and printed ones. I n most accounts, at any rate, the movement o f humanism from Italy t o the N o r t h and the shift from a * classical' to a 'Christian renaissance' take precedence over the shift from script to print. Thus, arguments over setting the stage properly for Luther's appearance divert the spotlight of^history from the presses o f Mainz, Strasbourg and other German towns. The printer is left to slip into place behind the scenes, so to speak. He installs his machinery and goes into production so inconspicuously that his output goes unnoted until Lutherans enlist h i m i n their cause. Almost any description o f pre-Reformation developments w o u l d serve to illustrate this point. The Cambridge History of the Bible, for example, sets the stage w i t h Lefévre d'Etaples's familiar celebration o f the religious renewal w h i c h began i n the West * about the time C o n stantinople was captured by the enemies o f Christ/ Then comes a discussion o f the hopeful outlook o f the Christian humanists: This is something new and fundamental to the cultural world o f the early sixteenth century: it cannot be set down as merely a further stage in the development of humanist studies which had begun in the fourteenth century or earlier. There was a preparatio evangélica in the first quarter of the sixteenth century for i t was then and not before that there appeared in combination the achievements o f the humanist scholar-printers; the fruits o f intensive study in the grammar and syntax o f the three languages; and the energy provided by the economic development and regional patriotism of the cities where bonae Htterae flourished... Further, it was in this period that was felt the full force o f . . .an insistent demand... for a well grounded knowledge o f the Bible.. .coming not only from a scholarly priest like Lefevre, but also from the educated l a i t y . . . An attempt to meet this increasing demand can be seen in the large number of vernacular translations from the Vulgate in Germany and France in the later fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries. 227

In many ways, this passage provides welcome support for m y views, for the advent o f printing seems to underlie almost all the developments 3 1 7

Basil Hall, 'Biblical Scholarship,* pp. 3 8 - 9 .

CLASSICAL

AND

CHRISTIAN

TRADITIONS

REORIENTED

that are mentioned. B u t this is by no means clear f r o m the passage as it stands. W e are not reminded, for example, that the event Lefevre used to date the renewal - 'about the time Constantinople was captured' - coincided w i t h the advent o f printing. W e are not encouraged to connect the more forceful insistent demand for well-grounded knowledge o f the Bible w i t h the increased output that was made possible by Gutenberg's invention. The large number o f vernacular translations is not related to new profit-drives o f book producers. The achievements o f the 'humanist scholar-printers' are treated as discrete f r o m such related developments as the systematic pursuit o f trilingual studies, increased lay erudition, and the new burst o f cultural energy combined w i t h patriotic zeal that was manifested in urban centers where printing industries took their start. Because the effects o f the typographical revolution are muffled in treatments o f the preparatio evangelica, its contribution to the Reformation cannot be properly assessed. Once printers have been restricted to the function o f spreading Lutheran tracts, they w i l l play at best a supporting role in the drama. In specialized studies it is not unusual to find that their part has been cut out altogether. A detailed account o f h o w the Reformation came to Strasbourg helps to illustrate this point. I t shows that most o f the pro-Lutheran tracts which were printed in Strasbourg appeared only after the actual conversion o f townsmen had already begun, thus suggesting that 'the publishers mirrored the Reform rather than influenced i t . ' Accordingly, the 'act o f preaching' is stressed and the role o f print played d o w n in a way that leads a reviewer to remark, ' I t was not the printed page but the spoken words o f the Strasbourg reformers - Bucer, Hedio, Capito and Z c l l - w h i c h converted people to the Book and to the founding o f parish schools.' The conclusion that effective preaching played the key role in the conversion seems inescapable, for most townsmen could not read and could only be reached by the 'spoken word.'" 2 2 8

229

0

Yet it is also possible to argue that the publishers played a less passive role provided one looks beyond the spread o f Lutheran tracts. Preaching and conversion came in 1 5 2 0 - 2 , as end-products o f a process that had long been under way. Strasbourg was one o f the cities, mentioned by C h r i s m a n , Strasbourg and the Reform, chap. 7, pp. 98-117. Sec also appendix A - i . N . Z . Davis, r e v i e w article, Journal of Modern History (1968), p. 589. J ° C h r i s m a n , Strasbourg, p. s Tedeschi, 'Horentine Documents,* pp. 579-605. 1 0 6 Grendler, 'The Roman Inquisition,' pp. 48-66. (This article summarizes the findings which are now spelled out in more detail in Grendler's book, by the same title.)

67I

THE

BOOK

OF NATURE

TRANSFORMED

Italian virtuosi, in sixteenth-century Venice at least, seem to have kept in touch with innovative literature from abroad. Later Venetian literati contributed much to pro-republican and anti-papist propaganda and also to the prolonged struggle for a free press. But what about the access of virtuosi and literati to funds for publication programs and to printers and patrons willing to risk carrying them out? Because this question is rarely posed, the most telling blows to early-modern science dealt by clerical censorship are often overlooked. Instead of pointing to the clear and present threats posed by the decree of 1616 and the trial of 1633, careful distinctions are drawn between different theological positions taken by churchmen on the two occasions. These theological subtleties, however intrinsically interesting, still strike me as being somewhat beside the point.107 The decree of 1616 described the doctrine of Copernicus as contrary to Scripture and therefore not to be defended or held. Nevertheless, we are told, the Copernican theory could still be presented as an hypothesis (albeit as an indefensible and absurd one). Moreover, 'if there were any Catholic astronomers who had no doubt that the Copernican system was true' they did not have to violate their inner conviction of certitude. The decree requiring 'interior assent' came from a fallible authority and those who had no doubt 'were excused.'108 Interior assent could be withheld. But what about external dissent? On the strategic issue of publication, recent Catholic apologists have singularly little to say. Catholic scientists who had no inner doubts (and were certain that Copernicus was right) were still expected to remain silent, or pay a high price for failure to prove their case. At least this conclusion seems to follow from Galileo's trial. Galileo had.. .openly disobeyed the express prohibitions against his theory and plainly failed in his attempt to prove the Copernican astronomy. Still it is hard to see the logic of the sentence. There was no reason to condemn the Dialogue outright. It... defended the new astronomy as true on physical grounds. If this was objectionable, Galileo's book, like Copernicus' De Revolutiotiibus, should have been suspended until corrected and made more hypothetical. As for Galileo personally the most that should have been given 107

1 0 8

See for example, Langford, Galileo, Science, pp. 98-104. For a good summary of literature on the diverse theological and philosophical positions that arc entailed, see Nelson, "The Early Modem Revolution' pp. 1-40 (see esp. bibliography and appendices). Nelson does more to bring out the revised opinions of Cardinal Bellarmine's biographer, Father Brodrick, than other authorities do. Langford, Galileo,

Science, p. 103, n. 50.

672

SPONSORSHIP A N D CENSORSHIP

him was a penance for disobeying Bellarmine's admonition.. .As for the decree of the Index, it was aimed at books, not authors.109 Obviously the prelates who presided over the condemnation of 1633 did not view the issues in quite the same light as does a modern Catholic scholar such as Langford. Although the latter contends that the case of Galileo is too often lifted out of its historical context, his difficulty in understanding 'the logic of the sentence* suggests an incomplete success in reconstructing the mentality of seventeenthcentury churchmen. At all events, any decree that was aimed at books was bound to hit printers and authors as well. Whatever interpretation is placed on the edicts of 1616 and 1633, it can scarcely be doubted that they had an inhibiting effect on scientific publication programs in Catholic lands. When it asserted that the old world-system had to be maintained as long as the new one was inadequately proved, and when it forbade further 'attempts to demonstrate' that the new system was 'true in fact'110 the Church was not encouraging suspension of judgment or urging further investigation of the matter. The condemnations not only curtailed scientific publication programs, they also did much to block 'thought experiments' based on envisaging the Copernican scheme as physically real. Poor Borelli! He was truly on the road to the great discovery... He renounced all theory beyond the brute, experimental fact and by this very means barred the road to progress. Hooke and Newton had more courage. It is the intellectual audacity of Newton just as much as his genius which permitted him to overcome the obstacles that stopped Borelli . . . 1 1 1 When comparing Hooke and Newton with Borelli, one cannot afford to confine the terms of discussion to 'internal' factors alone. Of course, the state of the art and the special talents of the gifted puzzle-solvers have to be considered. But one must also give due weight to unevenly distributed 'external' forces. Otherwise an unfair comparison will result. Borelli may or may not have been less courageous and less audacious than Newton. Surely he had fewer incentives to spur him on and more formidable obstacles to surmount. Insofar as anti-Copernican edicts might be taken as a challenge to come up with more adequate proof of heliocentric schemes, they were much more likely to be taken in this way by Protestant than by Catholv

> Langford, Galileo,

1 1 1

Science, pp. 1 5 0 - 1 .

Koyre\ La Revolution

Astronomique,

1 , 0

Langford, Galileo,

p. 506 (translation mine).

673

Science, pp. 9 8 - 9 .

THE

BOOK

OF N A T U R E

TRANSFORMED

lie scientists. Ramus had taken Osiander's preface as a challenge. His; open letter to Europe's astronomers helped to spur Kepler on. But when Galileo failed to come up with certain proof, the case was closed - at least as far as papal writ could reach. It is difficult to envisage a : member of an Italian scientific society acting as Halley did, urging ! Newton to overcome his hesitations and to bring his grand design to ; completion, and then supervising its publication and assuring it* favorable publicity. Friends of Catholic virtuosi were more likely to dissuade them from taking the condemned theory too seriously. Even without friends to dissuade them, devout Catholics would feel qualms about moving ahead on their own. Thus members of the Cimento devoted themselves to careful laboratory experiments while avoiding large-scale theories and holding thought-experiments in check. Tt is dangerous to make original conjectures, so look again before giving it to a printer,' ran a note found among the papers of those responsible for preparing the Saggi for publication in Italy. 112 The fear of publishing subversive subjectmatter led to excluding from the Saggi potentially interesting investigations and discussions of comets. Not only cosmology but also astronomy represented a potentially dangerous field after 1633. Even Borelli, who chafed at anonymity and eventually left Tuscany in order to publish on his own, resorted to a pseudonym when publishing one treatise on comets and masked the Copernican implications of a passage before releasing his Theoricas Mediceorutn Planetarum. The defense of plainspeaking by spokesmen for the Royal Society such as Sprat was not aimed only at excluding poets, rhetoricians and fabulists from the Commonwealth of Learning. It had positive as well as negative aspects. It reflected a recognition that 'Aesopian' language, when effective enough to fool censors, often deceived fellow scientists and sometimes inhibited clear thinking by oneself. Perhaps enough has been said to suggest that the picture of flourishing Italian scientific activity drawn by several authorities needs to be qualified. Even though the Cimento was founded and did important 113

1 1 1

Middlcton, The Experimenters,

I I J

Settle, "Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso, 1608-1679,' Dictionary

p. 72. of Scientific

Biography

11, 306-14.

Although he did win patronage and publication support from Queen Christina after her conversion to Catholicism, Borelli's career ended badly-as a poverty-stricken political suspect teaching elementary mathematics in Rome. Settle's description of the setbacks suffered by seventeenth-century Italian science (p. 306) should be contrasted with the bland dismissal by other authorities of the impact of the anti-Copernican decrees.

674

SPONSORSHIP AND

CENSORSHIP

work, its own scientific publication program was crippled; others in Italy had suffered damaging blows. But then Italian technical publication had already experienced many set-backs in the past. A recent account of the fate of the mid-sixteenth-century Accademia Venetiana is instructive in this respect. The Accademia had an ambitious program to 're-establish Venice's reputation as the leading publishing center.' It planned to enlist the aid of Paul Manutius' publishing firm and to issue editions of many important scientific works. Founded in 1557, the Accademia was incapable of meeting the high costs entailed in securing supplies of paper, the services of printers, editors, and rentals of bookshops and went bankrupt in 1561. 1 1 4 Given the pressure being exerted from the Papacy in the 1550s to control printingfirmsand bring Venetian censorship in line with the Index; given the difficulties experienced by Venetian bookmen sternrning from official policies during subsequent decades, it would seem the founders of Accademia had chosen the wrong time for launching their ambitious project. But when one surveys developments over the course of the next century, it seems that the time never did come when Italian publication outlets were free of theriskof being abruptly closed off In this regard, the stage is set just as awkwardly for Galileo's trial as for other major historical events. The placing of De Revoluttonibus on the Index by the decree of 1616, and the prohibition of the hettera by Paolo Antonio Foscarini (a sixty-four page treatise published in 1615 by a Carmelite friar, which argued that the Copernican theory was physically plausible and theologically sound) are discussed in many studies. The hard lesson learned by Foscarini's printer, Lazaro Scoriggio, however, is rarely taken into account. 'By the beginning of February 1616 Galileo.. .felt.. .victory was in sight. He wrote to secure permission . . . for a visit to Naples, probably to see Foscarini and if possible Campanella and to organize the campaign in favor of Copernicus.. , ' n s On March 5 the decree pertaining to Copernican doctrines was officially published. Foscarini's Lettera, which sought to reconcile Copernican views with Scripture, was 'altogether prohibited and condemned.' De Revolutionibus, however, was merely 'suspended until it be corrected.' The distinction between the prohibition of the theologi« * Rose, 'The Accademia Venetiana.' In his Italian Renaissance of Mathematics, Rose has a chapter on Bernardino BalcU (d. 1617) who set out to be the Vasari of mathematicians, collected 200 or so 'Lives' but failed to get his Vite de' Matematici into print. I I S

Drake, Discoveries

and Opinions,

pp. 218-20.

675

THE

BOOK

OF NATURE

TRANSFORMED

cal argument and the suspension of the astronomical treatise is frequently stressed by Catholic apologists and by others who try to soften the effect of the blow. Thus Langford suggests that it was 'not really a serious setback to progress in astronomy' and Koestler argues that, despite the mistaken impression of'the man in the street,' the 'effect of the decree on scientific discussion and research was to leave things almost exactly where they had been.'116 Neither notes, that in 1617, one year after the decree, the Amsterdam printing firm (run by the noted Dutch astronomer, globe-maker and map-publisher, Willem Janszoon Blaeu) brought out a third edition of De Revolutionibus. Perhaps Blaeu, like many of his competitors was hoping to trade on the advantages of being listed on the Index. Perhaps he had laid plans for a 1617 publication date long before. Whatever the case, Blaeu's edition appeared at a time when scientific publication programs bearing on physics and astronomy were being caught up in a familiar pattern one that had already affected Erasmus, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Luther, and Machiavelli. New opportunities to profit from banned titles were extended to Protestant firms. At the same time new risks and uncertainties were posed for scientific publishers in Catholic lands. Virtuosi engaged in scientific research were not unaffected by this turn of events. A member of the Lincei resigned, accusing Galileo of upholding forbidden views.118 Galileo withdrew his plan to visit Naples ostensibly because of 'bad roads.' As Drake suggests, after March 5, 1616, the 'road to Naples was.. .bad.. .in more than one sense.' 'The printer who had published Foscarini's book there was soon to be imprisoned and the author died that same year under obscure circumstances.'110 The road to Naples never did improve, so far as scientific publication programs were concerned. Very much like Luther during the decade after 1517, Galileo during the decade after 1633 could count on the support of numerous publishers, printers, and booksellers to render papal actions ineffective even while they made profits on the side. The fate of the banned Dialogue demonstrated once again the advantage that accrued to Protestant publishers from purveying titles listed on the Index, and the attraction 117

1 1 6

1 1 7

Longford, Galileo,

Science, pp. 5 8 - 9 ; Koestler, The Sleepwalkers,

p. 458.

The editor of this edition which bore the title Astrotwmia Instaiirata was Nicolas Miiller, a professor of mathematics at Groningen. According to various authorities, Miiller was not a Copemican himself but his corrections made the third edition an improvement over the 1 1 8 previous versions. Omstein, Role of Scientific Societies, p. 7 6 .

" » Drake, Discoveries

and Opinions,

pp. 219-20.

676

SPONSORSHIP AND

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exerted even by fairly recondite scientific treatises that were designated as forbidden fruit.120 According to de Santillana's colorful account, the black market profits made by the Dialogue were high: priests, monks, prelates even, vie with each other in buying up copies of the Dialogue on the black market... the black market price of the book rises from the original half-scudo to four and six scudi [almost a hundred dollars in American currency] all over Italy.121 Galileo's Dialogue on Two World Systems was such a provocative and polemical treatise, however, it almost seemed to court censorship in a way that is quite atypical of most serious scientific work. The same thing cannot be said of his later treatise which helped to found classical physics: the Discourses on Two New Sciences. No great cosmic or philosophical questions intrude into this unimpassioned treatise.. .it is about as controversial and stirring as some freshman lecture on mechanics, of which indeed, it is the ultimate source. The crowning irony of Galileo's career is that the failure of the great Dialogues should be so much more interesting than the success of the unobjectionable Discourses. 122

It is hard to think of a better example of the kind of'pure science' that is naturally placed 'au-dessus de la mêlée' than the 'ultimate source' of a ' freshman lecture on mechanics.' Yet the dull 'unobjectionable' Discourses were also caught up in the fray. They were not deemed unobjectionable by those who kept Galileo under house arrest; their success was not uninteresting when one considers the means by which it was brought out. Given an ageing but resolute political prisoner, whose captors had forbidden him to publish or even write anything ever again; a Dutch printer's visit to Italy and the smuggling of a manuscript in a diplomat's pouch, the ingredients do not lack interest. They could be woven into a narrative involving considerable suspense. 1 1 0

1 X 1

A key figure in the English exploitation of the publicity value of Galileo's being on the Index was Thomas Salusbury who (copying a procedure used for expurgated passages in Scripture by Bodley's Librarian, Thomas James) translated the treatises (and expurgated passages from works designated as forbidden in the Indexes of 1616 and 1619) and published them by popular subscription soon after the Restoration of 1660. See Stimson, The Gradual Acceptance, p. 90. According to Nicolson, 'English Almanachs,'pp. 22-3, Salisbury's English translations from the Italian and Latin versions of Galileo's works were advertised by Vincent Wing, the almanac publisher, whose work was annotated by Newton. Since the latter came into contact with Galileo's work through the Salusbury translation, the propagandist accomplished 1 1 1 a useful task. de Santillana, Tiie Crime of Galileo, p . 325. Giliispie, The Edge of Objectivity,

p. 52.

677

THE

BOOK OF NATURE

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The book was completed in 1636 when Galileo was seventy-two. As he could not hope for an imprimatur in Italy, the manuscript was smuggled out to Leiden and published by the Elseviers. But it could also have been printed in Vienna where it was licensed, probably with imperial consent, by the Jesuit Father Paulus.123 One wonders what grounds there are for Koestler's optimism concerning possible Viennese publication, in view of the risk of reprisals Viennese printers would have to run. There were, after all, many powerful officiais in Vienna who disapproved of the licensing and viewed any support of Galileo as a subversive act. Koestler's account, here as elsewhere, seems to underrate the forces of reaction and needs to be balanced against evidence supplied by other accounts. as soon as the Discourses on Two New Sciences is licensed in Olmutz by the bishop and then in Vienna, obviously under direct imperial orders by the Jesuit Father Paulus, the other Jesuits start in hot pursuit after the book. T have not been able' writes Galileo.. .in 1639, 'to obtain a single copy of my new dialogue.. .Yet I know that they circulated through all the northern countries. The copies lost must be those which, as soon as they arrived in Prague were immediately bought up by the Jesuit fathers so that not even the Emperor was able to get one.' The charitable explanation would be that they knew what they were doing. Someone at least may have understood that Galileo's work in dynamics went on quiedy establishing the foundations of the system that he had been forbidden to defend. But they were like that gallant man of whom Milton speaks who thought to pound in the crows by shutting the park gate.124 When considering factors that affected the quiet establishment of the foundations of modern science, the difference between getting published by the Elseviers in Holland and being licensed by Father Paulus in Vienna is worth keeping in-mind. ' Fortunate Newton ! ' Einstein exclaimed, ' Happy childhood of science ! To him nature was an open book whose letters he could read without effort.' As the case of'poor Borelli' may suggest, Newton was fortunate not only in being a genius who was born in therightcentury. He was lucky to be born in the right country as well. After the advent of printing, all talents alike had been freed from certain previous limits set by hand-copying and memory work. But unevenly distributed 1 1 3

Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, p . 494. For account of complex negotiations between Galileo and François de Noailles which disguised the handing of the Discourses over to Louis Elsevier, see Costabel and Lcmer, pp. 18-20. * de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo, p . 326. lx

678

SPONSORSHIP AND

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literacy rates governed access to the new form of public knowledge and even among literate élites incentives, penalties and rewards varied in accordance with divergent policies pursued by varying régimes. 'Sir Isaac,' wrote his nephew, Conduitt, 'had the happiness of being born in a land of liberty where he could speak his mind - not afraid of Inquisition as Galileo... not obliged as Descartes was to go into a strange country and to say he proved transubstantiation by his philosophy.' There is a certain irony here, for Newton was much more averse to 'speaking his mind' than was Galileo. Even in the Principia, he told a friend, he intentionally wrote in 'a cryptic and complicated manner to discourage ignorant quibblers.'125 Like Copernicus, he was by nature secretive and inclined toward the old esoteric scribal tradition. All the more reason to give credit to the enthusiastic sponsors of scientific publication who encouraged these reticent geniuses to expose their writings to many eyes. In analyzing the remarkable cluster of talents that marked the century of genius, consideration of random elements supplied by a gene pool may be usefully supplemented by closer study of specific historical determinants.120 The Académie des Sciences, writes Charles Gillispie, was a better-designed and more professional organization than the Royal Society. But this admirable design was frustrated by the waywardness of genetics. The scientific minds which matured in France under Louis XIV were far less fertile than those of the generation of Descartes and Pascal, far less productive than the cluster of English genius which crowded in upon the Royal Society in Newton's time.127 In addition to the 'waywardness of genetics,' one ought to consider the exodus of Huguenot printers and paper-makers, and the press policies adopted by both King and Académie. Did they not help to set back scientific productivity? Neither Descartes nor Pascal had felt free of constraint. During the last third of the century the odds were, if anything, stacked even higher against virtuosi seeking publication outlets in France. Manuscripts containing ample evidence of ' fertile minds' tended to pile up in Paris convents as they did in Naples and " s Manuel, Portrait, pp. 267. 365. I Î 6 s ee cogent remarks by Merton, Science, Technology, chap. 9 . Merton's treatment of social interaction and communication on pp. 220-4 needs to be supplemented in my view by further consideration of the consequences of printing. ' « Gillispie, Edge of Objectivity,

p. 112.

679

THE

BOOK OF NATURE

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Rome.128 Even closet philosophers taking up residence abroad were necessarily sensitive to decisions made by censors in Rome; although they were often indifferent to the nature of the political regime and welcomed patronage from all quarters, including Catholic prelates, aristocrats or kings. In this regard, it seems necessary to qualify the usual description of science as an enterprise that was especially characteristic of bourgeois capitalism, sober Puritans and a 'rising middle class.*120 One may grant that a deeper social penetration of literacy encouraged the tapping of more talents and more chance for useful feedback. One may grant also that expanding mercantile enterprise was linked to the expansion of data collection. One may grant finally that many major scientific publication programs were launched by prospering firms such as those of the Estiennes, Oporinus, Plantin, the Elseviers and the Blaeus - few of whom were orthodox Catholics, all of whom were sober businessmen and profit-driving entrepreneurs. Nevertheless the support of royal, aristocratic and clerical patrons was also of great importance both to the early printers and to the virtuosi they served. Mechanical toys and ingenious gadgeteers had long been welcome at different courts. Mathematical wizardry along with botanical gardens and zoos continued toflourishunder princely protection (as the names of Leibniz and Gauss may suggest). The rulers of several minor principalities on the fringes of the large Bourbon realm were often more helpful to the cosmopolitan French language press than were the entrepreneurs who monopolized the French book-trade in Paris. Despite the combination of Puritan attacks on Charles I and Laud with attacks on Ptolemaic and Galenic theories, the connection between early-modern political revolutions and scientific ones is tenuous at best. When Galileo appealed over the heads ofLatin-writing professors to the lay vernacular I l B

, M

According to Sauvy, Livres saisis à Paris, 1678-1701 was the most rigorous period of press censorship during the Ancien Régime. Martin, Livre à Paris 11, chap, iv also contains relevant data. Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution, chap. 1 describes the adverse policy of anonymity and other difficulties which inhibited publication down to 1699. The visit to Charles Plumier in his Paris convent in 1698 by the English zoologist, Martin Lister, seems similar to visits by English virtuosi to Severino and other members of the Investiganti in Naples earlier in the century. Friar Plumier (who belonged to the same order as Mersenne) had trouble finding a publisher for his work on American voyages and left masses of unpublished manuscripts at his death. See Whitmore, The Order of Minims, pp. 186-97. Whitmore also notes difficulties with publication experienced by the Académie des Sciences, its inability to get any copies of the Philosophical Transactions sent to it during war time, and the damaging effects of excluding friars, such as Plumier, from membership (pp. 109; 189-90). See e.g. Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity,

pp. 114-15.

680

SPONSORSHIP AND CENSORSHIP

reading public, he was not enlisting the support of commoners against aristocrats. On the contrary, he repeatedly solicited help from princely patrons to free him from clerkly academic chores and, not incidentally, to protect him from the enemies his publications might provoke.130 The need for official protection and for official approval of publication programs probably contributed to the movement to purify science of associations with sorcery and magic. Calvinist disapproval of magic, along with prayers for intercession by supernatural powers, has been plausibly related to this movement by followers of Max "Weber. But Anglican and Catholic campaigns against witches and sorcerers also need to be taken into account. When searching for connections between 'religion and the decline of magic,' pressures exerted by censorship deserve consideration. Concern about censorship probably encouraged Catholic virtuosi to press the cause of mechanism especially hard. Mersenne, Gassendi and Descartes thus cast the soul out of nature with particular zeal. When royal controls over printing were swept away during the Commonwealth, however, the more radical English Puritans sided with the Paracelsians and believers in the occult. 131 As was the case with the Mesmerists in eighteenth-century France, these English revolutionaries contributed little if anything to the 'disenchantment of the world.' Even after the Restoration, the 'new philosophy' that was promoted by the Protestant Royal Society was somewhat less mechanistic than the Catholic Cartesian version. Newtonian theories left more leeway for attractive and repulsive forces and more room for Nature's God to behave in mysterious ways.132 It was undoubtedly easier for English authorities - whether Puritan, Anglican or both - to regard scientific pursuits as innocuous than was the case in realms where clandestine book routes carried lectures on physics along with all kinds of subversive stuff. Although French Cartesians went further in purging science of magic and tried hard to stay clear of theological debate, they were less successful in neutralizing the new vocation than were the turncoat Puritans who became bishops "o See e.g. Galileo's complaints to his prospective Medici patron about his teaching chores and his statement, ' I should like my books (dedicated always to my lord) to become my source of income' in his 'Letters on Sunspots,' Drake, Discoveries and Opinions, p. 62. 1 1 1

See Debus, Science and Education;

Webster, Tlie Great Instauration,

and two essays by Rattansi:

'Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution,' p. 28, 'The Social Interpretation of Science.'pp. 1-33. i n v/cstfall, 'Newton and the Hermetic Tradition,' passim, discusses the non-mechanistic elements in Newton's ideas of force. Bunt, Metaphysical Foundations and Koyre, From the Closed World deal with neo-Platonic concepts associated with 'action at a distance' and 'absolute space.'

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under the restored Stuart king. In the 'English rehearsal for the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, only one feature was missing. There was no hostility to Christianity.'133 There was also less trouble with clerical censors. Indeed, after the Glorious Revolution, freedom of the press came to England for good. Across the Channel in France, as Voltaire noted, things were ordered differently. Programs associated with the advancement of learning, the spread of literacy and instruction in 'popular mechanics' were not neutral or peaceful in the Bourbon realm. To appreciate the difference one need only compare the quiet reception of Chambers' Cyclopedia in England with what happened to the project to translate it into French. At all events, the description of science as a neutral, value-free enterprise 'au-dessus de la mêlée' was developed by men who were far from neutral on issues pertaining to press censorship and who were committed to achieving a free trade in ideas.13* Did this commitment disguise an ulterior motive associated with the vested interests of a 'capitalistic bourgeoisie'? It may be easier to agree that it constituted an accurate appraisal by virtuosi of conditions that were essential for their work. On this one issue the currently unfashionable and undeniably oldfashioned 'Whig interpretation of history' may still have a useful message to convey. Milton's plea for the 'liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing* and his comments in Areopagitica about visiting Galileo 'grown old as a prisoner of the Inquisition for thinking in Astronomy otherwise than the Dominican licensers thought' ought not to be lightly dismissed as nothing but anti-Papist propaganda - although it certainly was that. Granted that the case of Galileo was exploited to the hilt by Protestant publicists and pamphleteers such as Milton himself, it was not merely used to link science with Protestantism. It disclosed a link that had been forged ever since printing industries had begun toflourishin Wittenberg and Geneva and had begun to decline in Venice and Lyons. The continuous operation of printing firms beyond the reach of Rome was of vital concern to Western European scientists. The case of Galileo simply drove this lesson further home. 1 3 3

,3

Gillispie, Edge of Objectivity,

p. 1 1 4 .

* In his History of The Royal Society, part 2, p. 6 4 , Sprat expressed the desire of the virtuosi to make the Society 'the general Banck and Freeport of the World.'

682

CONCLUSION: SCRIPTURE A N D N A T U R E TRANSFORMED The elements which go into the making of 'modernity* may be seen... first.. .in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some historians attributed the change to the liberation of men's minds during the Renaissance and the Reformation. Today many historians would be more likely to stress the conservatism of these two movements... Their emphasis tends instead to fall on...' the Scientific Revolution.' By this is meant above all the imaginative achievements associated with the names of Copernicus, Galileo and Newton.. ."Within the space of a century and a half a revolution had occurred in the way in which men regarded the universe. Most of this was made possible by the application of mathematics to the problems of the natural world... All this is by now well known... though many of the details are still to be worked out'., .What is not clear is how it all came about.. This book has been aimed at developing a new strategy for handling the issues posed by the above citation. It seems futile to argue over 'the elements which go into the making of modernity,' for 'modernity' itself is always in flux; always subject to definitions which have to be changed in order to keep up with changing times. As the age of Planck and Einstein recedes into the past,' achievements associated with Copernicus, Galileo and Newton' will probably come to share the fate of the achievements of earlier Renassiance humanists and Protestant reformers. Indeed recent interpretations of Copernicus show that his work is already coming to seem more and more conservative; less and less associated with emancipation from traditional modes of thought. Pointing early-modern science toward an elusive modernity leads to invidious comparisons between 'liberating' later movements and 1

Kearney, introduction, Origins of the Scientific

683

Revolution,

p. xi.

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earlier 'conservative' ones and brings us no closer to understanding 'how it all came about.' To ask historians to search for elements which entered into the making of an indefinite 'modernity' seems somewhat futile. To consider the effects of a definite communications shift which entered into each of the movements under discussion seems more promising. Among other advantages this approach offers a chance to uncover relationships which debates over modernity only serve to conceal. Thus one may avoid entanglement in arguments over whether the first-born sons of modern Europe were to be found among the humanists of Renaissance Italy, or whether we must wait for the Pope to be defied by Luther, or for the Calvinists to turn Geneva into a Protestant Rome; or whether genuine modernity came with the scientific revolution or should be postponed even further until industrialization. Energies can be directed toward the more constructive task of discerning, in each of the contested movements, features which were not present in earlier epochs and which altered the textual traditions upon which each movement relied. By setting aside the quest for theoretical 'modernizing' processes and focusing attention on the paradoxical consequences of a real duplicating process, it should be possible to handle periodization problems more deftly. We may see how movements aimed at returning to a golden past (whether classical or early Christian) were reoriented in a manner that pointed away from their initial goal and how the very process of recovering long-lost texts carried successive generations ever farther away from the experience of the Church Fathers and of the poets and orators of antiquity. We may also see how lay humanists, priests and natural philosophers alike shared the common experience of acquiring new means to achieve old ends and that this experience led in turn to a division of opinion and ultimately to a reassessment of inherited views. To adopt this strategy does not make it possible to provide a complete answer to questions of'how it all came about' but does open the way to supplying more adequate answers than have been offered up to now. Thus we would be in a better position to explain why long-lived scientific theories were deemed less acceptable even before new observations, new experiments, or new instruments had been made. 684

CONCLUSION

It is one of the paradoxes of the whole story with which we have to deal that the most sensational step leading to the scientific revolution in astronomy was taken long before the discovery of the telescope - even before... improvement... in observations made with the naked eye.. .William Harvey... carried out his revolutionary work before any serviceable kind of microscope had become available.. .even Galileo discusses the ordinary phenomena of everyday life[and].. .plays with pellets on inclined planes in a manner that had long been customary...1 Current efforts to account for this seeming paradox do not take us very far. We are asked to guess about a transformation that took 'place inside the minds of the scientists themselves/ when they 'put on new thinking caps' to gaze at the unchanging heavens. Yet the technical literature upon which astronomers relied had undergone change even before the 'new thinking caps' were put on. More careful consideration of the shift that altered the output and intake of this literature would help to explain the timing of the 'sensational step' and also help us analyze its relationship to other 'modernizing' trends. When considering Copernicus' intellectual environment, changes wrought by printing deserve a more central place. Present tactics either encourage us to wander too far afield compiling lists of everything that happened and marvelling at the general turbulence of the times, or else trap us into prolonging old debates - between Platonists and Aristotelians, scholastics and humanists; Catholics and Protestants, Anglicans and Puritans, even, on occasion, between Italians, Germans, Danes and Poles. By placing more emphasis on the shift from script to print, many diverse trends may be accommodated without resort to an indiscriminate melange and in a way that avoids prolongation of intellectual feuds. The sixteenth-century astronomer may be seen to owe something to the neo-Platonists and to the Renaissance Aristotelians; to his masters in Catholic Poland and Italy and to a disciple from Protestant Wittenberg later on; to calculations made by ancient Alexandrians, observations made by medieval Arabs and to a trigonometry text compiled in Nuremberg around the time he was born. We are less likely to set Plato against Aristotle or any one textual tradition against another when we appreciate the significance of setting many disparate texts side by side. The character of Copernicus' studies and of the currents of thought which influenced him are certainly 2

Butterfield, Origins of Modem

685

Science, p. i .

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worth studying. But this investigation should not divert us from recognizing the novelty of being able to assemble diverse records and reference guides, and of being able to study them without having to transcribe them at the same time. If we want to explain heightened awareness of anomalies or discontent with inherited schemes then it seems especially important to emphasize the wider range of readingmatter that was being surveyed at one time by a single pair of eyes. Similarly in seeking to explain why naked-eye observation produced unprecedented results, it is worth paying more attention to the increased output of materials relating to comets and conjunctions and the increased number of simultaneous observations made of single celestial events. Nor should we neglect to note how stars which faded from the heavens (and brief landfalls made on distant shores) could be fixed permanently in precise locations after printed maps began to replace hand-copied ones. Although inferior maps continued to be duplicated and many map-publishers perpetuated errors for a century and more, a process of transmission had been fundamentally reoriented when this replacement occurred. Analogies with inertial motion do not apply to this sort of reversal. When considering a shift in direction it is misleading to draw analogies with uniform motion in a straight line. Since corrupt data were duplicated and thus perpetuated by print, one may say that scribal corruption was prolonged for some time. But one must also take into account that an age-old process of corruption was being decisively arrested and was eventually reversed. With proper supervision, fresh data could at long last be duplicated without being blurred or blotted out over the course of time. By making more room for new features introduced by typography we would also be better situated to explain the timing of'the application of mathematics to the problems of the natural world.' By considering the difficulties faced by astronomers, assayers, surveyors, merchants, mint masters and all others who tried to use the language of number in the age of scribes, and by recognizing how new incentives encouraged instrument-makers and reckon-masters to publicize their wares, the victories won by quantitative analysis could be better explained. By paying more attention to the duplication of pictorial statements, we might see more clearly why the life sciences no less than the physical ones were placed on a new footing and how the authority of Pliny, no less than that of Galen and Ptolemy, was undermined. 686

CONCLUSION

Even while acknowledging the importance of the empirical movement and of the slogan 'from books to nature* it should be noted that dissatisfaction with literature inherited from scribes coincided with the development of new forms of data collection. The advent of prmting made it possible for more of nature to be put into books: Here as elsewhere, claims made for the significance of particular developments in special fields such as Renaissance art or Renaissance Aristotelianism need to be coupled with more consideration of how separate developments (the separate talents of painters and physicians, for example) could be coordinated and combined. "When Agricola and Vesalius hired illustrators to render 'veins' or 'vessels' for their texts, they were launching an unprecedented enterprise and not simply continuing trends that manuscript illuminators had begun. The advantages of issuing identical images bearing identical labels to scattered observers who could feed back information to publishers enabled astronomers, geographers, botanists and zoologists to expand data pools far beyond all previous limits-even those set by the exceptional resources of the long-lasting Alexandrian Museum. Old limits set by the pillars of Hercules and the outermost sphere of the Grecian heavens were incapable of containing findings registered in ever expanding editions of atlases and sky maps. The closed world of the ancients was opened, vast expanses of space (and later of rime) previously associated with divine mysteries became subject to human calculation and exploration. The same cumulative cognitive advance which excited cosmological speculation also led to new concepts of knowledge. The closed sphere or single corpus, passed down from generation to generation, was replaced by an open-ended investigatory process pressing against ever advancing frontiers. In attempting to explain 'how it all came about,' finally, new elements involving coordination and cooperation deserve not only more attention but also a more central place. When searching for the nurseries of a new philosophy, it seems unprofitable to linger too long in any one region, university, court or town - or focus too much attention on any one special skill or special scientific field. Certain universities, ateliers or lay academies may be singled out for special contributions. But the chief new feature that needs further attention is the simultaneous tapping of many varied talents at the same time. As the chief sponsors of field trips, open letters, advertisements for instruments and 687

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techriical handbooks of all kinds, early printers ought to receive as much attention as is currently given to special occupational groups such as Paduan professors, Wittenberg botanists or quattrocento artistengineers. Publication programs launched from urban workshops in many regions made it possible to coordinate scattered efforts and to expand the scope of investigations until (like the Blaeu Grand Atlas) they became truly world-wide. Attempts to account for the rapid growth and expansion of scientific enterprise during the century of genius may be handled in much the same manner as treatments of nurseries, seed-beds and births. In explaining the ' acceleration of scientific advance,' there is much disagreement over whether to stress the role played by individual genius, the internal evolution of a speculative tradition, a new alliance between intellectuals and artisans, or a host of concurrent socio-economic or religious changes affecting the 'environment against which these discoveries took place.'3 To say that argument over such issues is pointless, because all these 'factors' were at work, still leaves open the question of how and why they became operative when they did. Unless some new strategy is devised to handle this question, the old argument will break out once again. Since it perpetually revolves about the same issues, diminishing returns soon set in. One advantage of bringing printing into the discussion is that it enables us to tackle the open question directly without prolonging the same controversy ad infinitum. As previous remarks suggest, the effects produced by printing may be plausibly related to an increased incidence of creative acts, to internally transformed speculative traditions, to exchanges between intellectuals and artisans, and indeed to each of the contested factors in current disputes. Thus we need not invoke some sort of' mutation in the human gene pool' to explain an entire 'century of genius' nor do we need to deny that random motives (both personal and playful) entered into the successful puzzle-solving of the age. Without detracting from the strong personal flavor of each separate creative act, we may also make room for the new print technology which made food for thought much more abundant and allowed mental energies to be more efficiently used. A similar approach would also take us further toward bridging the false dichotomy between the life of science and that of society at large. 3

Kearney, 'Puritanism, Capitalism and the Scientific Revolution,' p. Sr.

688

CONCLUSION

Changes wrought by printing had a more immediate effect on cerebral activities and on the learned professions than did many other kinds of 'external' events. Previous relations between masters and disciples were altered. Students who took full advantage of technical texts which served as silent instructors were less likely to defer to traditional authority and more receptive to innovating trends. Young minds provided with updated editions, especially of mathematical texts, began to surpass not only their own elders but the wisdom of ancients as well. Methods of measurement, records of observations and all forms of data collection were affected by printing. So too were the careers that could be pursued by teachers and preachers, physicians and surgeons, reckon-masters and artist-engineers. 'It is easy to agree with.. .contentions that a neat separation of internal and external factors is out of the question... but, as G. R, Elton wrote several years ago, there is work to be done rather than called for.'4 Before work can be done, however, some promising avenues of inquiry have to be opened up and more attention given to the presence of new workshops alongside older lecture halls. Printed materials should be allowed to affect thought-patterns, facilitate problem-solving, and, in general, penetrate the 'life of the mind.' Printers themselves must be allowed to work with Latin-writing professors as well as with vernacular-writing publicists and pamphleteers. In other words, the divisions that are often assumed to separate scholars from craftsmen, universities from urban workshops need to be reappraised. This point applies to theories which internalize scientific problemsolving to the extent of ignoring the communications revolution and neglecting its possible relevance to the lectures and studies of learned men. It also applies to theories which deny that churchmen and schoolmen are capable of launching innovating trends. In this respect, Marxist theories of class struggle seem to be more of a hindrance than a help. To set an avant garde of early capitalists against a rear guard of Latinreading clerks does little to clarify medieval developments and much to conceal the new interchanges that came after print shops spread. There are perfectly good reasons for associating printers with merchants and capitalists. There are none for detaching them from association with professors and friars - especially in the age of scholarprinters, when close collaboration was the rule, indeed preachers and * 'Toward a New History,' Times Literary

689

Supplement.

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teachers often turned to new forms of publicity with less conflict than did artisans accustomed to preserving trade secrets. Early printers were invited to set up presses in monasteries and colleges, while schoolmasters and tutors were much in demand as editors and translators. The formation of lay cultural centers outside universities and of the vernacular translation movement was of major significance. But no less significant were changes that affected university faculties and students seeking professional degrees. When Latin-writing professional elites are insulated from the effects of the new technology, internal divisions within the scholarly community become more puzzling than they need be and a rare opportunity to watch 'external' forces enter into the 'internai' life of science is lost. These points carry beyond the specialfieldof the history of science to the more general problem of relating socio-economic and political developments to intellectual and cultural ones. Attention focused on a communications shift encourages us to relate mind to society and at the same time to avoid forcing connections between economic class and intellectual superstructure, in order to fit a prefabricated scheme. Plausible relationships can be traced by taking into account the connecting links provided by a new communications network which coordinated diverse intellectual activities while producing tangible commodities to be marketed for profit. Since their commodities were sponsored and censored by officials as well as consumed by literate groups, the activities of early printers provide a natural connection between the movement of ideas, economic developments and affairs of church and state. The policies pursued by/merchant publishers offer a useful corrective to the conventional wisdom which opposes 'forward-looking' centralizing rulers and nation-building statesmen to 'backward* petty principalities and late medieval walled city states. The printing industries represented a 'forward-looking,' large-scale enterprise which flourished better in small loosely federated realms than in well consolidated larger ones. Printers also injected into diverse Protestant literary cultures foreign secular ingredients which will appear anomalous unless the peculiar workings of a censored book-trade are taken into account. When tracing the movement of ideas from Catholic South to Protestant North, factors which led to the prior movement of printing industries ought to be given due weight. How the center of 690

CONCLUSION

gravity of the Republic of Letters shifted from sixteenth-century Venice to late seventeenth-century Amsterdam warrants special consideration in any social history of ideas. When searching for the 'seedplots of EnHghtenment thought' the modus operandi of the more celebrated master printers (such as Aldus Manutius, Robert Estienne, Oporinus, Plantin) deserves a closer look and so too does the relatively aristocratic nature of their clientèle. As Martin Lowry's forthcoming biography of Aldus points out; when the Venetian printer discarded the large folio in favor of a smaller octavo format he was aiming at serving the convenience of scholar-diplomats and patrician councillors of state. He was not thinking, somewhat absurdly, of tapping popular markets with texts devoted to classical Greek works. From the Aldine octavo of the 1500s to the Elsevier duodecimo of the 1630s the circulation of convenient pocket-sized editions altered circumstances within the Commonwealth of Learning, first of all. Before assuming that an altered world view implies the rise of a new class, it seems worth devoting more thought to intellectual regroupment among Latin-reading élites. By this means we may also rectify an imbalance created by current emphasis on popularizing trends and mass movements. In this age when the paperback book is probably doing more to change the process of science education than all the new teaching methods, it should not be difficult to appreciate the intimate connection between the printer's craft and that of science... If science helped give birth to the printed book, it was clearly the printed book that sent science from its medieval habits straight into the boiling scientific revolution.. .It was of course the rapid dissemination of knowledge to whole new classes that created the modern new attitudes to both science and religion at the end of thefifteenthcentury.5 This statement may have some validity with regard to the religious Reformation, but does not seem to apply to early-modern science. Mentelin's German Bible appeared in 1460, and forty years of vernacular Bible-printing (along with the increased output of other devotional literature) need to be considered when setting the stage for the Lutheran Revolt. But despite the early date of Regiomontanus* Nuremberg press (1474), the end of thefifteenthcentury still seems much too early to think of scientific knowledge being 'rapidly disseminated to whole new classes' by means of the printed word. Even later on, as we have s Price, 'The Book as a Scientific Instrument,' pp. 102-4. 69I

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noted, Latin treatises by Copernicus, Harvey and Kepler were not cUsseminated in the same manner as Lutheran Bibles, broadsides and tracts. Bestsellerdom was reserved for prognostications and Sacrobosco's Sphaera. In 1500, Latin-learning was still restricted, scientific translation movements were just getting under way, the corrupted materials which were being duplicated had not yet been sorted out. To jump from 'the birth of the printed book' to the creation of'modern new attitudes* so precipitously and by means of popularization raises doubts about assigning any significance to the advent of printing for scientific change. The precipitous jump also detaches the Reformation from the Copernican Revolution, while reinforcing the view that mobilization of'whole new classes* is the only conceivable motor of major historical change. The evangelical impulse which powered early presses had the most rapid spectacular consequences and provoked mass participation of new kinds. But this should not divert attention from more subtle yet equally irreversible transformations which altered the world view of Latinreading élites. Several new features other than dissemination which were introduced by printing entered into the scientific revolution and played an essential part in the religious reformation as well. In relating the two movements we need to consider the way old attitudes were being implemented within learned communities, before expecting new attitudes to be created, let alone knowledge to be disseminated to whole new classes. Even when dealing with evangelical trends, this approach has merit. Earlier attitudes exhibited by Lollards, Waldensians, Hussites and the Brethren of the Common Life were being newly implemented by printing before full-fledged Protestant doctrines were born. In setting the stage for the Reformation, moreover, some attention must be given to those many pre-Reformation controversies which had less to do with vernacular translation than with trilingual studies and learned exegesis of Latin texts. In the scholar-printer's workshop, editors of patristic and of Alexandrian texts had a common point of encounter. More attention to changes affecting textual transmission among learned élites should bring us closer to understanding how different strands of early-modern intellectual history may be related to each other. In particular, it may help to clarify the relationship between religious and scientific change. Thus we may see that the fate of texts inherited from Aristotle,

693

CONCLUSION

Galen and Ptolemy had much in common with that of texts inherited from Saint Jerome. Just as scribal scholars had all they could do to emend Saint Jerome's version and to protect it from further corruption, so too did medieval astronomers labor to preserve and emend Ptolemy's Great Composition. Much as trilingual studies, repeatedly called for, did not get launched until after the advent of printing; so too was reform of the Julian calendar frequently requested and never obtained. After the advent of printing, Jerome's version was protected from further corruption only to be threatened by the annotations of scholars who had acquired mastery of Hebrew and Greek. Similarly, Ptolemy's work was no sooner emended and purified than it too came under attack. As the 'second Ptolemy/ Copernicus (despite his personal distance from print shops) was cast in much the same role as was Erasmus who had set out to re-do the work of Saint Jerome. Both men set out to fulfill traditional programs: to emend the Bible and reform the Church; to emend the Almagest and help with calendar reform; but both used means that were untraditional and this propelled their work in an unconventional direction, so that they broke new paths in the very act of seeking to achieve old goals. The new issues posed by sixteenth-century path-breaking works also led natural philosophers and theologians to divide along similar lines. Conservatives within both groups were placed in the awkward position of departing from precedents even while defending the status quo. Defenders of Aristotle and Galen who sought to fine professors for departing from fixed texts resembled those defenders of Jerome's translation who censored scholars for annotating scriptural editions. At the same time many churchmen and lay professors were attracted by new opportunities extended by printers to reach a wider audience, win new patrons and achieve celebrity. Members of both groups contributed their services as editors, translators, and authors to popular as well as to scholarly trends. Theologians who argued for a priesthood of all believers and translated Bibles were in much the same position as the friars, physicians and schoolmasters who compiled craft manuals and translated mathematical and medical texts. The vernacular translation movement not only enabled evangelists to bring the Gospel to Everyman but also tapped a vast reservoir of latent scientific talent by eliciting contributions from reckon-masters, instrument-makers and artist-engineers. Protestant encouragement of lay reading and self-help «93

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was especially favorable for interchanges between readers and publishers - which led to the quiet displacement of ancient authorities, such as Pliny, and to expansive data collection of a new kind. Finally the same censorship policies and élitist tendencies that discouraged Catholic Bible-printers eventually closed down scientific publication outlets in Catholic lands. But although Protestant exploitation of printing linked the Reformation to early-modern science in diverse ways, and although scientific publication was increasingly taken over by Protestant printing firms, evangelists and virtuosi were still using the new powers of print for fundamentally different ends. The latter aimed not at spreading God's words but at deciphering His handiwork. The only way to 'open' the book of nature to public inspection required (paradoxically) a preliminary encoding of data into ever more sophisticated equations, diagrams, models and charts. For virtuosi the uses of publicity were much more problematic than for evangelists. The case of Galileo may be misleading in this regard. Exploiting his flair for publicity and gifts as a polemicist, he did act as a proselytizer for the Copernican cause. Catholic friars such as Bruno, Campanella and Foscarini also exhibited a kind of evangelical zeal in the same cause. So, too, did Rheticus, in his master's behalf. Nevertheless the downfall of Ptolemy, Galen and Aristotle did not come about as a result of cartoons and pamphleteering. Scientific change follows a different pattern than religious revivals. Publication was indispensable for anyone seeking to make a scientific contribution but the kind of publicity which made for bestsellerdom was often undesirable. Even now, reputable scientists fear the sensational coverage which comes from premature exposure of their views. Early-modern virtuosi had even better reasons for such fears. Many Copernicans (including Copernicus himself) took advantage of printed materials while shrinking from publicity. Many Puritan publicists and disciples of Francis Bacon proselytized on behalf of a 'new science' without favoring or even comprehending the technical Latin treatises which marked significant advance. Visionary schemes for promoting useful knowledge, belief in science for the citizen and mathematics for the millions did, to be sure, enter into the views of the group responsible for launching the Transactions of the Royal Society. Nevertheless, contributions to this pioneering scientific journal were of significance insofar as they accomplished the 694

CONCLUSION

purpose Oldenburg conveyed in his letter to Malpighi: to 'bring out the opinion of all the learned.' To make possible consensual validation by trained observers, experimenters and mathematicians entailed a different use of the press than efforts to spread glad tidings to all men. Eventually, access to scientific journals and societies was shut to all save a professionally trained élite. The rise of modern science entailed the discrediting, not only of Aristotelians, Galenists or Ptolemaists but also of selt-proclaimed healers, 'empirics' and miracle workers who attacked book learning while publicizing themselves. From Paracelsus through Mesmer and on to the present, the press has lent itself to the purposes of pseudo-scientists as well as those of real scientists, and it is not always easy to tell the two groups apart. Distinguishing between scientific journals and sensational journalism is relatively simple at present. But during the early years of the Royal Society when sightings of monsters and marvels were still being credited and recorded, the two genres were easily confused. Confusion was further compounded by the workings of the Index which lumped dull treatises on physics with more sensational forbidden tracts and transformed advocacy of Copernicanism into a patriotic Protestant cause. Thus an English Paracelsian did notfindit incongruous to place the secretive Latin-writing Catholic Copernicus in the company of Lutheran reformers for having 'brought Ptolemeus' Rules Astronomicall and Tables of Motions' to 'their former puritie.' His argument suggests that Protestants linked the fate of the Vulgate with that of the Almagest - along lines which are by now familiar to the readers of this book. Much as the Protestants had purified Scripture, he said, ' by expelling the clowdes of Romish religion which had darkened the trueth of the worde of God,' so too Copernicus had purified tables which had become corrupted 'by a long excesse of time.'6 Copernicus was thus cast in much the same conservative role as the editor of the London 'Polyglotte' who claimed in his Prospectus to have freed the Scriptures 'from error, from the negligence of scribes, the injury of times, the wilful corruption of sectaries and heretics.'7 This relatively 6

7

Cited by Allen Debus, The English Paracelsians, p. 5 9 , from a treatise by *R. Bostocke Esq.,' London, 1585. Although Bostocke's comment seems to be pointed at the Prutenic Tables which were compiled by Erasmus Reinhold who used calculations in Copernicus' De Revolutionibus but rejected the geokinctic hypothesis, it probably implied, in the author's mind, support of the latter hypothesis. Brian Walton's Prospectus for the London 'Polyglotte ' of 1657 is cited by Hendricks, 'Profitless Printing.'

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conservative Erasmian theme with its emphasis on emendation and purification also lent itself to the purposes of those who sought to legitimize the Royal Society, as is suggested by the often-cited comment from Bishop Sprat's History of the Royal Society. The Royal Society and the Anglican Church, the Bishop said, 'both may lay equal claim to the word Reformation,1 the one having compassed it in Religion, the other purposing it in Philosophy.. .They both have taken a like course to bring this about each of them passing by the corrupt copies and referring themselves to the perfect originals for their instruction; the one to Scripture the other to the huge Volume of Creatures...8 It seems significant that when such remarks are cited by historians they are not seen to relate to the shift from script to print (despite the reference to the passing by of'corrupt copies') but are used instead to reiterate the Bishop's three-hundred-year-old claim that the Reformation and the scientific revolution are somehow connected. As long as printing is left out of account this thesis seems destined to engender an inconclusive debate. To leave printing out of the picture is not only to conceal significant links but also to overlook equally important disjunctions. Scriptural and scientific traditions had taken a 'like course' in the age of scribes. By the time of the Reformation, however, they had come to a parting of the ways. Even while providing both biblical scholars and natural philosophers with new means of achieving longlived goals, the new technology had driven a wedge between the two groups and was propelling them in different directions. Until the advent of printing, scientific inquiries about 'how the heavens go' were linked with religious concerns about 'how to go to heaven.' Erasmus and Copernicus had shared a common interest in deciphering ancient place names and dating old records. Insofar as the movable holy festival of Easter posed problems, astronomers were needed to help the Church commemorate Gospel truths. After the advent of printing, however, the study of celestial mechanics was propelled in new directions and soon reached levels of sophistication that left calendrical problems and ancient schemes of reckoning far behind. The need to master philology or learn Greek became ever more 8

Sprat, History of the Royal Society, part 3, section 23, p. 371. This citation appears in works by S. F. Mason, D . S. Kemsley, R. Hooykaas and others mentioned in chap. 8 above.

696

CONCLUSION

important for Bible study and ever less so for nature study. Indeed, difficulties engendered by diverse Greek and Arabic expressions, by medieval Latin abbreviations, by confusion between Roman letters and numbers, by neologisms, copyists' errors and the like were so successfully overcome that modern scholars are frequently absent-minded about the limitations on progress in the mathematical sciences which scribal procedures imposed.9 From Roger Bacon's day to that of Francis Bacon, mastery of geometry, astronomy or optics had gone together with the retrieval of ancient texts and pursuit of Greek studies. But by the seventeenth century, Nature's language was being emancipated from the old confusion of tongues. Diverse names for flora and fauna became less confusing when placed beneath identical pictures. Constellations and landmasses could be located without recourse to uncertain etymologies, once placed on uniform maps and globes. Logarithm tables and slide rules provided common measures for surveyors in different lands. "Whereas the Vulgate was followed by a succession of polyglot editions and multiplying variants; the downfall of the Almagest paved the way for the formulation by Newton of a few elegant simple universal laws. The development of neutral pictorial and mathematical vocabularies made possible a large-scale pooling of talents for analyzing data, and led to the eventual achievement of a consensus that cut across all the old frontiers. Vesalius' recourse to pictorial statements like Galileo's preference for circles and triangles suggests why it is unwise to dwell too long on whether treatises were written in the vernacular or in Latin, and why parallels between evangelical reformers and early-modern scientists should not be pressed too far. Many proponents of the new philosophy favored plain speaking and opposed mystification just as did evangelical reformers. Nevertheless the language employed by new astronomers and anatomists was still incomprehensible to the untutored layman and did not resemble anything spoken by the man in the street. For the most part, it was an unspoken language quite unlike that favored by 9

Such absent-mindedness is reinforced by modern editions such as the splendid volume on medieval manuscript versions of Archimedes by Clagett, Archimedes where the author has taken pains to exclude 'corrupt and senseless readings,' to reconstruct diagrams where figures were obscure and incorrect, to convert a mixture of Roman numerals and rhetorical expressions into consistently used Indo-Arabic numerals, etc. (pp. xv, 3 6 - 7 ) ; in short: to eliminate just those aspects of major technical works which gave the most trouble before print. O n confusion over terms such as cipher and zero which came from the same Arabic word, see Dantzig, Number, p. 32.

697

THE

BOOK

OF NATURE

TRANSFORMED

Protestants who preserved links between pulpit and press in seeking to spread the "Word. Recourse to 'silent instructors' conveying precisely detailed non-phonetic messages helped to free technical literature from semantic snares. 'The reign of words' had ended, noted Fontenelle in 1733, 'things' were now in demand. Two hundred years earlier, verbal dispute was already being abandoned in favor of visual demonstration. I dare affirm a man shall more profit in one week byfiguresand charts well and perfectly made than he shall by the only reading or hearing the rules of that science by the space of half a year at the least. So wrote Thomas Elyot in 1531, in the course of recommending courses in drawing to educators.10 Publication before printing had often entailed giving dictation or reading aloud. In contrast to scribal culture which had fostered 'hearing the rules of a given science,' print culture made possible the simultaneous distribution of 'well madefiguresand charts.' In this way, it not only transformed communications within the Commonwealth of Learning, but laid the basis for new confidence in human capacity to arrive at certain knowledge of the 'laws of Nature and of Nature's God.' What threatened the very foundations of the Church was the new concept of truth proclaimed by Galileo. Alongside the truth of revelation comes now an independent and original truth of nature. This truth is revealed not in God's words but in his work ; it is not based on the testimony of Scripture or tradition but is visible to us at all times. But it is understandable only to those who know nature's handwriting and can decipher her text. The truth of nature cannot be expressed in mere words.. .[but],. .in mathematical constructions,figuresand numbers. And in these symbols nature presents itself in perfect form and clarity. Revelation by means of the sacred word can never achieve.. .such precision, for words are always.. .ambiguous... Their meaning must always be given them by man... In nature... the whole plan of the universe lies before us.1 ' This famous passage brilliantly describes a major intellectual transformation but stops short of explaining why it happened when it did. Cassirer's description needs to be supplemented by noting that 'mathematical constructions, figures and numbers' had not always presented themselves 'in perfect form and clarity.' 'To discover the truth of 1 0

Cited from Boke called the Gouverneur

I I

Cassirer, TJie Philosophy

(1531) by Watson, The Beginning of Teaching, p. 136.

of the Enlightenment,

p. 43.

698

THE

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TRANSFORMED

divine will, not only fell short of their objective. In the end, they made it seem more elusive than before. It is surely one of the ironies of the history of Western civilization that Bible studies aimed at penetrating Gothic darkness in order to recover pure Christian truth - aimed, that is, at removing glosses and commentaries in order to lay bare the pure 'plain' text-ended by interposing an impenetrable thicket of recondite annotation between Bible-reader and Holy Book. In his inaugural lecture at Wittenberg, the young Philip Melanchthon scornfully referred to the neglect of Greek studies by angelic doctors, to the superficial glosses of ignorant scribes and to the soiling of sacred Scriptures with foreign matter. He called for a return to the 'pure' Greek and Hebrew sources.15 But the more trilingual studies progressed, the more scholars wrangled over the meaning of words and phrases and even over the placement of vowel points. The very waters from which the Latinists drank became roiled and muddy as debates among scholars were prolonged. Hobbes and Spinoza both plunged into Bible study and found in the sharp clarity of Euclidean proofs a refreshing contrast to the murky ambiguities of scriptural texts. Sir William Petty protested against teaching boys' hard Hebrew words in the Bible' and contrasted the profitable 'study of things to a Rabble of Words.'16 We have already encountered Sir Thomas Browne's preference for 'Archimedes who speaketh exactly' as against 'the sacred text which speaketh largely.' Robert Boyle might endow a lecture series to reconcile scriptural revelation with the mathematical principles of natural philosophy; Isaac Newton might struggle to prove Old Testament tales conformed to a chronology that meshed with celestial clockwork. God's 'two books,' nevertheless, had come to a parting of the ways. One day in the eighteenth century, some Swedish scientists discovered a certain alteration in the shores of the Baltic.. .the theologians of Stockholm made representations to the Government that ' this remark of the... scientists, not being consistent with Genesis must be condemned.' To whom reply was made that God had made both the Baltic and Genesis... if there was any contradiction between the two works, the error must lie in the copies we have of the book than in the Baltic Sea of which we have the original.17 Melanchthon's lecture is cited in Hillerbrand (ed), The Reformation, 16 Petty's comments, are cited by Jones, Ancients and Moderns, p. 91. " Arthur "Wilson, Diderot, p. 143. 15

700

pp. 39-00.

CONCLUSION

Thus the effect of printing on Bible study was in marked contrast with its effect on nature study. This contrast is concealed when one places an exclusive emphasis on popularizing themes, and couples the spread of vernacular Bibles with that of technical texts. It is also obscured by the anti-papist propaganda which linked the emendation of the Almagest with that of the Vulgate. Corruption by copyists had provided churchmen and astronomers with a common enemy; but once this enemy was vanquished, former collaborators took divergent paths. To observe this divergence requires studying internal transformations within a Commonwealth of Learning where Latin Bibles had long been studied although full polyglot editions had not been seen. In addition to new problems posed for this community by polyglot versions of sacred words, old limits set on data collection and new advantages provided by printed tables, charts and maps also need to be taken into account. One may then set the stage for Enlightenment thought without resorting to vague concepts such as 'modernity' or becoming entangled in debates over bourgeois ideology. At least in my view the changes wrought by printing provide the most plausible point of departure for explaining how confidence shifted from divine revelation to mathematical reasoning and man-made maps. The fact that religious and scientific traditions were affected by printing in markedly different ways points to the complex and contradictory nature of the communications shift, and suggests the futility of trying to encapsulate its consequences in any one formula. "When considering Protestant iconoclasm or increased Bible-reading, it may seem useful to envisage a movement going from 'image to word'; but one must be prepared to use the reverse formula 'word to image' when setting the stage for the rise of modern science. In the latter case, printing reduced translation problems, transcended linguistic divisions and helped to bridge earlier divisions between university lectures and artisan crafts. In religious affairs, however, the communications shift had a divisive effect; permanently fragmenting "Western Christendom along both geographic and sociological lines. Not only were Catholic regions set off from Protestant ones but within different regions religious experience was also internally bifurcated. Loss of confidence in God's words among cosmopolitan élites was coupled with enhanced opportunities for evangelists and priests to spread glad tidings and rekindle faith. Enlightened deists who adhered to the 'Laws of Nature and Nature's 701

THE BOOK

OF NATURE

TRANSFORMED

God' were thus placed at a distance from enthusiasts who were caught up in successive waves of religious revivals. In all regions the ebb andflowof religious devotion affected diverse social strata at different times. But the Bible became 'the treasure of the humble,' with unpredictable consequences only in Protestant realms. Among Protestants, the universalistic impulse to spread the Gospel far and wide had special paradoxical results. Vernacular Bibles authorized by Protestant rulers helped to Balkanize Christendom and to nationalize what had previously been a more cosmopolitan sacred book. Bible-reading householders acquired an enhanced sense of spiritual dignity and individual worth. An 'inner light' kindled by the printed word became the basis for the shared mystical experiences of separate sects. Yet even while spiritual life was being enriched, it was also being tarnished by commercial drives. Where indulgence sellers were discredited, Bible salesmen multiplied. In print shops especially, old missionary impulses were combined with the demands imposed by an expanding capitalist enterprise. In the early-modern print shop, however, several other impulses also converged. Was the driving power of capitalism stronger than the longlived drive for fame? Both together surely were stronger than either one alone. Did not the presses also offer rulers a way of extending their charisma and furnish significant help to impersonal bureaucrats as well? Among map-publishers, reckon-masters and artisans, as we have seen, printing acted by a kind of marvelous alchemy to transmute private interest into public good. It also catered to the vanity of pedants, artists and literati. When dealing with the new powers of the press, one may make a sound case for a multivariable explanation even while stressing the significance of the single innovation. The mixture of many motives provided a more powerful impetus than any single motive (whether that of profit-seeking capitalist or Christian evangelist) could have provided by itself. In this sense the use of early presses by Western Europeans was 'over-determined.' The convergence of different impulses proved irresistible, producing a massive irreversible cultural 'change of phase'. The early presses which were first established between 1460 and 1480 were powered by many different forces which had been incubating in the age of scribes. In a different cultural context, the same technology might have been used for different ends (as was the case in China and 702

CONCLUSION

Korea) or it might have been unwelcome and not been used at all (as was the case in many regions outside Europe where Western missionary presses were thefirstto be installed). In this light one may agree with authorities who hold that the duplicating process which was developed infifteenth-centuryMainz, was in itself oi no more consequence than any other inanimate tool. Unless it had been deemed useful to human agents it would never have been put into operation in fifteenth-century European towns. Under different circumstances, moreover, it might have been welcomed and put to entirely different uses - monopolized by priests and rulers, for example, and withheld from free-wheeling urban entrepreneurs. Such counter-factual speculation is useful for suggesting the importance of institutional context when considering technological innovation. Yet the fact remains that once presses were established in numerous European towns, the transforming powers of print did begin to take effect. The new shops themselves interacted with the urban élites who received them in a manner that produced occupational mutations and intellectual regroupment. Here again, one may agree that even when acting as agents of change, early printers could be effective only in combination with other forces. Indeed, the very fact that they functioned as catalysts and as coordinators was of special significance. However much one may wish to stress reciprocal interaction and avoid a simplistic 'impact' model; one must leave room for the special features which distinguish the advent of printing from other innovations. One cannot treat printing as just one among many elements in a complex causal nexus for the communications shift transformed the nature of the causal nexus itself. It is of special historical significance because it produced fundamental alterations in prevailing patterns of continuity and change. On this point one must take strong exception to the views expressed by humanists who carry their hostility to technology so far as to deprecate the very tool which is most indispensable to the practice of their own crafts. The powers which shape men's lives may be expressed in books and type, but by and of itself printing.. .is only a tool, an instrument, and the multiplication of tools and instruments does not of itself affect intellectual and spiritual life.18 1 8

Archer Taylor, 'The Influence of Printing," p. 13.

703

THE BOOK

OF N A T U R E

TRANSFORMED

Intellectual and spiritual life, far from remaining unaffected, were profoundly transformed by the multiplication of new tools for duplicating books in fifteenth-century Europe. The communications shift altered the way Western Christians viewed their sacred book and die natural world. It made the words of God appear more multiform and His handiwork more uniform. The printing press laid the basis for both literal fundamentalism and for modern science. It remains indispensable for humanistic scholarship. It is still responsible for our museum-without-walls. SOME FINAL

REMARKS

This book has stopped short in the age of the wooden hand press. It has barely touched on the industrialization of paper-making and the harnessing of iron presses to steam. Nothing has been said about the railway tracks and telegraph wires which linked European capitals in the mid-nineteenth century, or about the Linotype and Monotype machines which went together with mass literacy and tabloid journalism. The typewriter, the telephone, and a vast variety of more recent media have been entirely ignored. Too much territory has been traversed too rapidly as it is. Because contrary views have been expressed, however, it is necessary to point out that the process that began in the mid-fifteenth century has not ceased to gather momentum in the age of the computer print-out and the television guide. Indeed the later phases of an on-going communications revolution seem altogether relevant to what is happening within our homes, universities, or cities at present. In particular, they are relevant to apocalyptic pronouncements about contemporary Western culture delivered by modern intellectuals and literati. Since the advent of movable type, an enhanced capacity to store and retrieve, preserve and transmit has kept pace with an enhanced capacity to create and destroy, to innovate or outmode. The somewhat chaotic appearance of modern Western culture owes as much, if not more, to the duplicative powers of print as it does to the harnessing of new powers in the past century. It may yet be possible to view recent developments in historical perspective provided one takes into account neglected aspects of a massive and decisive cultural 'change of phase' that occurred five centuries ago. 704

CONCLUSION

Some of the unanticipated consequences that came in the wake of Gutenberg's invention are now available for retrospective analysis certainly more than could be seen in Bacon's day. Others are still unfolding, however, and these unanticipated consequences are, by definition, impossible to gauge at present. Few, if any, of the changes we have outlined could have been predicted. Even with hindsight they are difficult to describe. Clearly, more study is needed, if only to counteract premature leaps in the dark. A continuous accumulation of printed materials has certain disadvantages. (The voracious appetite of Chronos was feared in the past. A monstrous capacity to disgorge poses more of a threat at present.) But the capacity to scan accumulated records also confers certain modest advantages. We may examine how our predecessors read various portents and auguries and compare their prophecies with what actually occurred. We may thus discern over the past century or so a tendency to write off by premature obituaries the very problems that successive generations have had to confront. This impulse to end tales that are still unfolding owes much to the prolongation of nineteenth-century historical schemes, especially those of Hegel and Marx which point logical dialectical conflicts toward logical dialectical ends. The possibility of an indefinite prolongation of fundamentally contradictory trends is not allowed for in these grand designs. Yet we still seem to be experiencing the contradictory effects of a process which fanned the flames of religious zeal and bigotry while fostering a new concern for ecumenical concord and toleration; which fixed linguistic and national divisions more permanently while creating a cosmopolitan Commonwealth ofLearning and extending communications networks which encompassed the entire world. At the very least, this book may have indicated the premature character of prevailing grand designs and of the fashionable trend-spotting that extrapolates from them. For the full dimensions of the gulf that separates the age of scribes from that of printers have yet to be fully probed. The unevenly phased continuous process of recovery and innovation that began in the second half of thefifteenthcentury remains to be described. To draw any further conclusions about the force, effect, or consequences of the advent of printing on the basis of these chapters would also be premature. My conjectures have been based on uneven knowledge of pertinent data, much of it drawn from unreliable general accounts, and all of it relevant to very few regions. Too many gaps have 705

THE BOOK

OF N A T U R E

TRANSFORMED

been filled in by logical inference. To set forth views that may be invalid can be justified when it paves the way for more educated guesswork based on more empirical evidence. A more troublesome issue is posed by speculations that resist invalidation because imponderables are involved. However many crude generalizations may be discarded or refined, there seems to be no way of excluding such imponderables when dealing with this particular topic. One might conceivably measure the varying output of different kinds of printed materials, analyze their contents, examine their distribution, estimate their rate of consumption. There is no way of measuring what may be 'read into* any given text or to assess the effect of' action at a distance' without resorting to speculation. No one may claim to read the minds of other readers without leaving room for uncertainty; it is even more difficult to read the minds of those who have long since gone to their graves. Imponderables of this kind have, however, to be included in any effort to find out how things happened as they did. When silent, invisible interactions are ignored because they defy precise analysis, more mysterious spirits, ethics, and isms are likely to take their place. There are advantages in defining margins of uncertainty with some precision and thereby holding conspiratorial myth-makers at bay. 'He would be a bold man' says Somervell in discussing certain popular nineteenth-century English novelists, who would deny them 'an influence on general elections.'19 Historians who exclude reading habits and belles lettres from their work appear to be cautiously avoiding intractable data wherefirmconclusions are impossible. Yet it may be rash, not cautious, to base analyses on 'hard facts' while leaving 'soft' or 'mushy'/ issues to others. Possibly such issues appear softer and mushier than need be because most practitioners of Ideen¬ geschichte, literary historians, and belles lettrists, have inherited avenerable tradition of proud ignorance of matters material, mechanical, or commercial. It is futile to condemn intellectual divisions of labor. The 'universal bibliography' compiled by Conrad Gesner in the sixteenth century was not only thefirstof its kind. It was also the last attempt by a single scholar to achieve comprehensive coverage of every work in print. Increasing specialization is inevitable, given an expanding knowledge industry. Granted that intensive cultivation of different fields must be separately undertaken, there is still no warrant for Somervell, English

706

Thought, p. 8 .

CONCLUSION

allocating all the 'hard* facts to somefields;all the 'soft' ones to others. Specialists must reckon with both, whatever historical changes they may choose to explore. Those who are concerned with the 'shaping of the modern mind' might profitably focus more attention on data-processing within early workshops where laboratories of advanced erudition were maintained and where tangible commodities were produced and distributed in measurable quantities. Despite invented accommodation addresses, most publications may be placed and dated with a fair degree of accuracy. Their contents may be tabulated and analyzed. Shifting centers of production and distribution networks may also be located on real maps. Studies pertaining to the 'social history of ideas' and comparative studies of many other kinds would probably be illuminated by more precise analysis of these matters. Those who are concerned with the shaping of modern society - with political economy, legal institutions, or affairs of church and state - however, have to deal with issues that cannot be handled by rigorous quantitative analysis. For they are confronted by the more indirect effects of the consumption of printed materials. Problematic issues pertaining to literacy, bookreading, and new mental habits cannot be avoided when dealing with 'rationalization,' 'modernization,' 'centralization,' elite regroupment, religious divisions, upward mobility, rising expectations, or entrepreneurial organization. While changes affecting paper production, credit or contracts may be related fairly directly to the expansion of printing industries, the same is not true of changes associated with class consciousness or, indeed, any form of group identity. Scepticism is called for about theories pertaining to a meeting of minds or a touching of hearts. Such theories must nonetheless be framed in order to come to terms with changes that affected consciousness and identity and hence necessarily engaged human thoughts and feelings. Thus a salutary inversion of customary alignments might result from exploring the consequences that came in the wake of the printing press. A greater respect for hard facts and material technologies among humanist scholars and intellectual historians; more appreciation of the role played by imponderables and the reality of intangible phenomena among those who investigate socio-economic, political, or institutional changes could, conceivably, lead to more fruitful collaboration between groups of specialists. 707

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TRANSFORMED

Many advantages would, I believe, be gained by following Bacon's advice. Of them all none seems more important than seeing how many of the facts of life that are presently being kept apart actually belong together.

708

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL I N D E X

Given the survey o f relevant literature in the first chapter o f this book and the space devoted to historiography in other sections, it seemed redundant to supply a biblio­ graphical essay. A conventional comprehensive bibliography was also ruled out on the grounds that more than a hundred pages o f book titles constituted an inefficient use of space. This index w i l l enable readers to retrieve full titles o f all the works cited in the footnotes while displaying the full range of studies used for m y book. Important works that were consulted but are not cited İn specific footnotes have been listed without entries. Readers who want to keep up w i t h the most recent work should note that 1976 is m y cut-off date and should consult the special periodicals cited in chapter 1 (note 2) volume I , where notices o f relevant new studies are to be found.

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass., 1918). x, Adamson, J . W . The Illiterate Anglo Saxon and Other Essays (Cambridge, 1956). Con­

sulted but not cited. 'The Extent o f Literacy i n England in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Notes and Conjectures,' The Library, 4th ser. x (1929) 163-93. 62. Adelmann, Howard B. Introduction to The Embryological Treatises of Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente (Ithaca, New York, 1943). 476, 562, 573-4. Marcello

Malpighi

and the Evolution

of Embryology

(5 vol. Ithaca, New

York,

1967). «4-5. Adhémar, J. 'L'Estampe et la Transmission des Formes Maniéristes,* Le Triomphe iu Maniérisme Européen (Amsterdam, 1955). 82. Africa, Thomas. 'Copernicus' Relation to Arİstarchus and Pythagoras,' Isis 52 (1961) 403-9- 577Aidan, Francis (Cardinal Gasquet). 'Roger Bacon and the Latin Vulgate,' Roger Bacon Essays, ed. A. G. Little (Oxford, 1914) 89-99. 339« Aiton, E.J. 'Essay Review,' History of Science 11 (1973) 217-30. 638. 'Essay Review,' Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 1 (1970-^71) 265-73.55' Allen, P. S. The Age of Erasmus (Oxford, 1914). 19,175. Erasmus: Lectures and Wayfaring

Sketches (London, 1934). 81.

709

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDEX

'Erasmus* Relations w i t h his Printers,' Transactions of the Bibliographical Society x m

(Oct. 1913-March 1915) 297-323. 401. Allen, W a r d , tx. and ed. Translating for

King James : Notes Made by a Translator of the

King James Bible (Vanderbilt University Press, 1969). 360. Allison, A . F.andRogers.D. M.A Catalogueof or Secretly in England,

Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad

1558-1640 (London, 1964). 354.

Altick, R. The English Common

Reader. A Social History of the Mass Reading

1800-1900 (Chicago, 1963). 65,130-1,134.149»

Public

I53> 361, 3^4» 422.

Ames, Joseph. See Thomas F. Dibdin. Arber, Agnes. 'From Medieval Herbalism to the Birth o f Modern Botany,' Science, Medicine,

and History. Essays ...In Honor of Charles Singer, ed. E. A . Underwood

(2 vol. Oxford, 1953) i , 317-36. 266, 487. Archer, Peter, S J . The Christian

Calendar and the Gregorian Reform (New York, 1941).

6x0. Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood:

A Social History of Family Life, tr. R. Baldick

(New York, 1962). 431-2. L'Enfant

et La Vie Familiale sous L'Ancien

Régime (Paris, 1973). 431.

Armstrong, Elizabeth. Robert Estienne, Royal Printer (Cambridge, 1954). 75, 87, 387,

399, 401, 411» 442, 447Arnold, Klaus, ed. and introduction to Johannes Trithemius, In Praise of Scribes - De Laude Scriptorum, tr. R. Behrendt (Lawrence, Kansas, 1974). 14-15, 94-5» 97» 200. See also Johannes Trithemius.

Artz, Frederick. The Development

of Technical Education in France,

1500-1850 (Cam-

bridge, Mass., 1966). 351.

Askew, Pamela. 'A Melancholy Astronomer by Giovanni Serodine,' The Art Bulletin XLvn (March 1965) 121-8. 577Aston, Margaret. The Fifteenth Century:

The Prospect of Europe (London, 1968). 310.

"The Fiery Trigon Conjunction: A n Elizabethan Astrological Prediction,' Isis 61 (1970) 159-87.619. 'John WyclifFe's Reformation Reputation,' Past andPresent 30 (April 1965) 23-52.

304» 345'LoIIardy and the Reformation: Survival or Revival?' History x u x (1964) 149-70. 304. Review article, Shakespeare Studies rv (1968) 388. 415. Atkinson, Geoffroy. Les Nouveaux

Horizons

de la Renaissance Française (Paris, 1935).

303. Auerbach, Erich. Literary Language and its public

in late Latin Antiquity

and in the

Middle Ages, tr. R. Manheim (New York, 1965). 334> 'The Author and his Ghosts,' Times Literary Supplement (Sept. 22, 1972) 1121.122. Axtell, J . L. 'Locke's Review o f the Principia'

Notes and Records of the Royal

Society

of London, x x (1965) 152-61. 638. Bachman, A . Censorship in France from 1715 to 1750 (New York, 1934). 145. Bacon, Francis. Francis Bacon. A Selection of His Works, ed. S. Warhaft (College

Classics in English, ed. H . Northrop Frye) (Toronto, 1965). 455. Bagrow, Leo. History of Cartography, rev. and ed. R. A. Skelton (Cambridge, Mass.,

1964)- 53» 469» 512, 514-

710

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDBX

Baiîey, John E. 'Dee and Trithemius' Steganography,' Notes and Queries (May 24, 1879), 5th ser. X T , 401-2, 422-3. 96,137. Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin

Luther (New York, 1950). 307.

'Interpretations o f the Reformation,' The American Historical Review L X V I (Oct. 1900) 74-84. 378. 'Man, God and Church/ The Renaissance : Six Essays (New York, 1962) 77-96.238. Review, The Journal of Modern History 43 (June 1971) 309-10. 445. Baker, Herschel. The Wars of Truth (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). 321. Baldwin, T . W . William Shakespere's Small Latine & Lesse Greeke (2 vol. Urbana, 111.,

1944). 350. Barber, Elinor. The Bourgeoisie in Eighteenth Century France (Princeton, 1955). 539« Barnes, Annie. Jean Le Clerc et la République des Lettres (Paris, 1938). 137, 321» 3 3 , 420, 647. Barnett, S. W . 'Silent Evangelism: Presbyterians and the Mission Press i n China, 1807-1860,*/tJHrrwi of Presbyterian History 49 (Winter 1971) 287-302. 317. 2

Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian

Renaissance (rev. edn, 1 vol. Princeton,

New Jersey, 1966). 185. 'The Querelle o f the Ancients and Moderns as a Problem for Renaissance Scholarship,' Journal

of the History of Ideas x x (Jan. 1959) 3-22.123,185.

'Toward a More Positive Evaluation o f the Fifteenth Century Renaissance,' Journal of the History of Ideas rv (Jan. 1943) 21-49. 251, 521, 526.

Baroni, Victor. La Contre Réforme devant la Bible (Thèse de Doctorat) (Lausanne, 1943)- 349Baroque and Rococo Pictorial Imagery : The 1758-1760

Hertel edition of Ripa's

Iconologia,

ed. E. A. Moser (New York, 1971)- 662. Basalla, George, ed. and introduction. The Rise of Modern Science: External or Internal

Factors? (Lexington, Mass., 1968). 459« Bataillon, Marcel. Erasme et L'Espagne,

Recherches sur l'Histoire

Spirituelle

du

XVIe

Siècle (Paris, 1937) chap. x i . Consulted but not cited. Etudes sur le Portugal au Temps de l'Humanisme

(Coimbra, 1952)- Consulted but

not cited. 'Philippe Galle et Arias Montano,' Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance n (1942) 132-60. 20. Bate, W . Jackson. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (Cambridge, Mass., 1970). 192. 'Battle o f the Senses,' Times Literary

Supplement (March

1, 1963) 156. 40.

Baumann, F. E. 'Mutianus Rufus and Natural Religion: A Test Case,' Renaissance Quarterly x x r x (1976) 567-98. 273. Baxandall, Michael. Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery

of Pictorial Composition 1350-1450 (Oxford, 1971)- 232, 293, 604.

Painting and Experience in 15th Century Italy (Oxford, 1972). 293.

Beardsley, Theodore S. 'The Classics and Their Spanish Translators i n the Sixteenth Century,' Renaissance and Reformation v m (Toronto, 1971) 2-9. 360, 408. Beaujouan, Guy. 'Motives and Opportunities for Science in the Medieval University,' Scientific

Change: Symposium

on the History

of Science, ed. A. C. Crombie

(New York, 1963) 219-36. 382, 537. Beazley, C. R. The Dawn of Modern Geography (3 vol. Oxford, 1906). 516. Bebb, P. N . 'The Lawyers, D r . Christoph Scheurl and the Reformation in Niirnberg, '

711

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDEX

The Social History of the Reformation (Festschrift for Harold Grimm) ed. L. P. Buck and J. W . Zophy (Columbus, Ohio, 1972) 52-73. 308, 404. Bee,

Christian. Les Marchands Ecrivains;

Affaires et Humanisme

à Florence

1375-1434

(Paris, 1967). 62. Bedini, S. A. 'The Instruments of Galileo,' Galileo, Man of Science, ed. Eman M c M u l l i n (New York, 1967) 256-92. 525. Bedini, S. A. and Maddison, F. R. 'Mechanical Universe,' Transactions of the American Philosophical

Society 56 (Oct. 1966) 3-67.

589.

Ben-David, Joseph. 'The Scientific Role; The Conditions o f Its Establishment i n Europe' (1st pub. in Minerva

rv (1965) 15-20), Western Civilization:

Recent

Interpretations, ed. C. D . Hamilton (2 vol. Chicago, 1973) 556-78. 654-5» 666. Benesch, Otto. The Art of the Renaissance in Northern Europe (rev. edn, London, 1965). 589. Benjamin, F. S. and Toomer, C. J. Campanus of Novara and Medieval Planetary

Theory

(Madison, Wis., 1971). 4*5» 5*2, 536. Bennett, H . S. English Books and Readers 1475-1557 (Cambridge, 1952). 62, 104-5, 127,130» 139» 358, 361. English Books and Readers 1558-1603

(Cambridge, 1965). 358.

'The Production and Dissemination o f Vernacular Manuscripts i n the Fifteenth Century,' The Library, 5th ser. 1 (1947) 167-78.11. Benton, John, ed. and introduction. Self and Society in Medieval of Abbot Guibert of Nogent (io64?-c.

France: The

Memoirs

1125) (New York, 1970). 236.

Benzing, Josef. Buchdrucker-Lexicon des 16 Jahrhunderts (Deutsches Sprachgebiet) (Frankfurt, 1952). 99, 206, 307, 371, 617. Berelson, Bernard and Janowitz, Morris. Reader in Public Opinion and Communication (Glencoe, Al., 1953). 8. Bergendorff, C. See Luther. Luther's Works. Berger, Samuel. Histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du Moyen

Age (Paris,

1893). 328. Berkvens-Stevelinck, Christiane. 'Prosper Marchand, Auteur et Editeur,' Quaerendo v (1975) 218-34.143Berry, B. M . 'The First English Pediatricians and Tudor Attitudes toward Childhood,' Journal of the History of Ideas x x x v (1974) 561-77. 431Berry, Lloyd, introduction. The Geneva Bible : A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition (Madison, Wis., 1969). 305, 360, 364, 415. Berry, W . T. and Poole, H . W . Annals of Printing:

A Chronological Encyclopaedia from

Earliest Times to 1950 (London, 1966), 4. Besson, Jacques. A Titeatre of Machines (1579) ed. Alexander G. Keller (New York, 1965). 240, 262, 557Besterman, Theodore. The Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography (Oxford, 1936). 94,98. Bevan, E. R. and Singer, Charles, eds. The Legacy of Israel (Oxford, 1927). Includes articles by Box, G. H . ; Singer, Charles. Bietenholz, P. G. Basle and France in the Sixteenth Printers

in their contacts with

Francophone

Century: Culture

The Basle Humanists

and

(University of Toronto

Press, 1971). 187» 399» 405» 407, 419» 441-2, 44«, 540Billanovich, R. 'Petrarch and the Textual Tradition o f Livy,' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes xrv (1951) 137-208. Consulted but not cited.

712

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDEX

Binz, Louis. Vie Religieuse et Réforme Ecclésiastique dans le diocèse de Genève pendant le

(1378-1450) (2 vol. Geneva,

Grand Schisme et la Crise Conciliaire

1973). 314.

B i m , Raymond. 'Livre et Société After Ten Years: Formation o f a discipline,' Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century cti-cxv (1976) 287-312. 29,146.

'Le Journal des Savants sous L'Ancien Régime,' Journal des Savants (1965) 15-35. 120, 643'Pierre Rousseau and the Philosophes o f Bouillon,' Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century xxrx, ed. T . Besterman (Geneva, 1964). 145. Bissels, Paul. Humanismus

und Buchdruck:

Vorreden Humanistischer

Drucke

in Köln

(Nieuwkoop, 1965). 206. Black, M . H . 'The Printed Bible,' Cambridge History

of the Bible, V o l . 3. The West

from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed. S. L. Greenslade (Cambridge, 19Ö3)

408-75.11, 80-1,106, 206, 304, 328-9, 349, 367, 377» 4 " . 'The Typography o f Luther's Bible and its Influence,' Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (1969) 110-13. 206. 5th ser. xrv (1959) 300-2.

Review o f Steinberg's Five Hundred Years, The Library,

80, 206. Blades, W i l l i a m . The Life and Typography Connection with Colard Mansion,

Blaeu, W . J . The Light of Navigation:

of William

Caxton...

with Evidence of His

The Printer at Bruges (2 vol. London, 1861). 38.

Facsimile o f 1612 Edition, ed. and introduction

by R. A . Skelton (London, 1964). 480-1. Blagden, C. The Stationers Company, A History 1403-1959 (London, 19Ö0). 120. Blake, N . F. Caxton and His World (London, 1969). 38, 375, 383. Caxton:

England's First Publisher (London, 1975), 112.

Bland, David. A History of Book Illustration Blau, J . The Christian

(2nd edn, Berkeley, 19Ö9)- 85-6.

Interpretation of Cabala in the Renaissance (New York, 1944)-

278. Blench, J. W . Preaching in England in the late Fifteenth and Sixteenth of English

Sermons

1450-c. 1600 (Oxford, 1964). 426.

Centuries:

Bloch, Eileen. 'Erasmus and the Froben Press: the Making o f an Editor,' Quarterly x x x v (April 1965) 109-20. Consulted but not cited.

A Study

Library

Bloch, Marc. The Historian's Craft, tr. P. Putnam (New York, 1964). xv. Bluhm, Heinz. Martin Luther, Creative Translator (St Louis, Mo., 1965). 341, 368. 'The Sources of Luther's September Testament: Galatians,' Luther for an Ecumenical

Age: Essays, ed. Carl S. Meyer (St Louis, Mo., 1967) 144-71. 356. Blumenthal, Joseph. Introduction. Art of the Printed Book 1455-1955 (New York, 1973)- 48. Blunt, Anthony. Artistic 232, 254, 325.

Theory in Italy

1450-1600

Boas, George, ed. and tr. The Hieroglyphics

of Horapollo

(ist edn 1940, Oxford, 1966). (Bollingen Series, xxm)

(New York, 1950). 279, 288. Boas, Marie. The Scientific Renaissance (New York, 1962). 220, 265, 468-9, 494, 499»

502, 509, 530, 5*7, 569, 574, 585, 614, 620, 625. Boase, T . R. 'Vasari: the Man and the Book.* (Mellon lectures given at the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.) 233Bober, Harry. Review o f The Güttingen Model Book, ed. H . Lehmann-Haupt, Speculum

XLix (April 1974) 354-8. 54, 65, 82. 'Boccaccio's Dante,' Times Literary Supplement (Nov. 4, 19Ö5) 969. 319.

713

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDEX

Bohnstedt, J. W . The Infidel Scourge of Cod. Transactions o f the American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia, 1968). 303. Bolgar, R. R. The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries : From the Carolingian Age to the

End of the Renaissance (New York, 1964). 181, 212, 217, 222, 224, 244, 272. ed. Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 500-1500 (Cambridge, 1971). Includes article by Gerlo, A . ed. Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500-1700 ^Cambridge, 1976). Includes article by Oestreich, G. Bollème, Genevieve. Les Almanacks populaires aux XVIIe

et XVIIIe

siècles (Paris,

1969). 38Ö. Bonelli Righini, M . L. and Shea, W . R., eds. Reason, Experiment and Mysticism in the Scientific Revolution (New York, 1975). 641. Includes articles by Debus, A . ; Hall, A . R. ; Rossi, P. The Book of Common Prayer (1559) ed. John Booty (Charlottesville, Va., 1976). 365. Borchardt, F. 'Etymology in Tradition and in the Northern Renaissance,' Journal of the History of Ideas x x r x (July-Sept. 1968) 415-29. 277. Bosanquet, E. F. English

Printed Almanacks

and Prognostications,

A

Bibliographical

History to the Year 1600 (London, 1917). 386, 608, 618-19. 'English Seventeenth-Century Almanacks/ The Library, 4th ser. X (1930) 361-97. 386. Bossy, John. 'The Counter Reformation and the People o f Catholic Europe/ Past and Present 47 (May 1970) 51-70. 426. Botein, Stephen. 'Meet Mechanics and an Open Press/ Perspectives in American History i x (1975) 127-225. 381. Botfield, Beriah, ed. Praefationes et Epistolae Editionibus

Principus

Auctorum

Vetewm

(Cambridge, 1861). 20, 320, 392. Boiiard, Michel de. 'Encyclopédies Médiévales, Sur la "Connaissance de la Nature et du Monde" au Moyen Age,' Revue des Questions Historiques 58 (1930) 258-305. 513Boulding, Kenneth. The Image (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1961). 81, 479. Boumans, René. 'The Religious Views o f Abraham Ortelius,' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes x v n (July-Dec. 1954) 374-7. 448. Bouwsma, W i l l i a m . Concordia ^Mundi: The Career and Thought of Guillaume

( 1510-1581) (Cambridge,

Postel

Mass., 1957). 340, 343, 448.

Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty:

Renaissance Values in the Age of the

Counter Reformation (Berkeley, 1968). 353, 413. 'Venice, Spain and the Papacy: Paolo Sarpi and the Renaissance Tradition/ The Late Italian Renaissance 1525-1630, ed. Eric Cochrane (New York, 1970) 353-77-412-13. Bouyer, Louis. 'Erasmus i n Relation to the Medieval Biblical Tradition/ Cambridge History

of the Bible, V o l . 2. The West from the Fathers to the Reformation,

ed.

G. W . H . Lampe (Cambridge, 1969) 492-505. 338. Box, G. H . 'Hebrew Studies i n the Reformation Period and After/ The Legacy of Israel, ed. E. R. Bevan and Charles Singer (Oxford, 1927) 315-75.224,367,447. Boxer, C. R., etal Exotic Printing and the Expansion of Europe, 1402-1840, catalogue o f Exhibition, Lilly Library, Indiana University, 1972. 317. Boyd,Julian. 'These Precious Monuments o f . . . Our History,' The American Archivist x x n , 2 (1959) 175-6. 116.

7H

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDEX

Boyer, Carl. History of Mathematics (New York, 1968). 620. 'Galileo's Place i n the History of Mathematics,' Galileo, Man of Science, ed. Eman McMullin (New York, 1967) 232-55. 525. Brann, Noel. 'The Shift from Mystical to Magical Theology in the Abbot Trithemius.' Paper given May 5,1976, n t h Conference on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, Mich.). 95. Branner, Robert. 'Manuscript Makers i n Mid-thirteenth Century Paris,' The Art Bulletin xxvni (March 1966) 65-7.11,13, 46. 'The Soissons Bible Paintshop i n Thirteenth-Century Paris,' Speculum X L I V (Jan. 1969) 13-34. 11» 13, 40. 328. Braudel, Fernand. Capitalism and Material Life,

1400-1800, tr. M . Kochon (ist Fr. edn

1967, New York, 1974). 27. Bredvold, L, I . The Intellectual

Milieu

of John

Dryden

(Ann Arbor, 1956), 323,

326, Bréhier, Émile. 'The Formation of our History of Philosophy,' Philosophy and History : The Ernst Cassirer Festschrift, ed. R. Klibansky and H . J. Paton (rev. edn,

New

York, 1963) 159-73. 333. Bremme, H . J . Buchdrucker und Buchhändler zur Zeit der Glaubenskämpfe: Genfer Druckgeschichte,

1565-1580 (Geneva, 1969).

Studien

zur

4"-

Bridenbaugh, Carl. 'The Great Mutation,' The American Historical Review L X V H I (Jan. 1963) 315-31- ix» 3Ö4Briel, J. G. C. A. See Kingdon, R. M . Brinton, Crane. The Anatomy of Revolution (New York, 1938). 136. Brockbank, W i l l i a m . 'Sovereign Remedies: A Critical Depreciation of the Seventeenth Century London Pharmacopoeia,' Medical History v m (1964) 1-13. 539» 656. Bronowski Jacob and Mazlish, Bruce. The Western Intellectual Tradition : From Leonardo

to Hegel (New York, i960). 649. Bronson, Bernard. 'The Writer,' Man

Versus Society in Eighteenth Century

Britain,

ed. J. L. Clifford'(Cambridge, 1968) 102-32. 322. Brown, Harcourt. Scientific Organizations

in tytk Century France 1620-1680

(New

York, 1934). 643. Brown, Irene Q. 'Philippe Ariès on Education and Society i n Seventeenth and EighteCTm Century Fi^œ,'Hisiory < ^ Brown, Lloyd. The Story of Maps (Boston, 1959). " O , 479, 482, 517. Browne, Sir Thomas. The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Norman Endicott (New York, 1967). 18, 471» 483. Brun, Robert. Le Livre Français Illustré de la Renaissance (Paris, 1969). 544. Buck, L. P. and Zophy, J. W . , eds. The Social History of the Reformation (Festschrift for Harold Grimm) (Columbus, Ohio, 1972). Includes articles by Bebb, P. N . ; Cole, R.; Dannenfeldt, Karl. Bühler, Curt. The Fifteenth

Century

Book,

the Scribes,

the Printers,

the Decorators

(Philadelphia, i960). 6,14,19, 49-51» 72, 83,139» 206, 250, 586. Fifteenth Century Books and the Twentieth Century: An Address and a Catalogue of an

Exhibition The

at the Grolier Club {April-June 1952) (New York, 1952). 167-8.

University and the Press in 15th Century Bologna, Texts and Studies in the

History o f Medieval Education, vol. v n (South Bend, Indiana, 1958). 56. Review article. The Library, 5th ser. v m (1953) 53-6. 38.

715

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDEX

'Roman Type and Roman Printing i n the Fifteenth Century,' Bibliotheca Docet: Festgabe für Carl Wehmer, ed. S.Joost (Amsterdam, 1963) 1 0 1 - 1 0 . 204-5. 'A Typographical Error i n the Editio Princeps o f Euclid,' Gutenberg-Jahrbuch (19Ö6) 102-4. 588.

Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization

of the Renaissance in Italy, tr. S. G. C. Middlemore,

ed. B. Nelson and C. Trinkaus ( 2 vol. New York, 1 9 5 8 ) . 45, 48, 221, 226, 228, 237-8, 243, 300, 488-91, 494Burke, Peter. Culture and Society in Renaissance Italy 1420-1540 (London, 1 9 7 2 ) . 45,88. Introduction, A New Kind of History and Other Essays from the Writings of

Luden

Fehvre (New York, 1 9 7 3 ) . 4 1 . The Renaissance (Problems and Perspectives in History, ed. H . F. Kearney) (London, 1 9 6 4 ) . 177.

,

The Renaissance Sense of the Past (Documents of Modem History, ed. A . G. Dickens and A . Davies) (New York, 1970). 257, 300.

'Fanfare for Princes,' Times Literary Supplement (Sept.

10, 1 9 7 6 ) .

133.

Bums, Howard. 'Quattrocento Architecture and the Antique,' Classical Influences on European Culture A.D.

500-1500,

ed. R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge,

1971) 2 6 9 - 8 9 .

83Bums, R. E. Book review. American Historical Review t x x i v (Oct. 1968) 181. 290. Burrow, John. 'The Medieval Compendium,' Times Literary Supplement (May 2 1 , 1976) 615.122. Burtt, E. A . The Metaphysical

Foundations

of Modem

Science (ist edn 1 9 3 2 , rev. edn,

New York, 1955). 592, 681.

Butler, Pierce. The Origin of Printing in Europe (Chicago, " 9 , 163» 375Butterfield, Herbert. The Origins of Modern Science 1951)- 496. 503, 637» 646, # 3 . 685. The Statecraft of Machiavelli

1940).

6,17, 89, 95-6,113,

1300-1800 (rev.

edn, New York,

(New Y o r k , i 9 6 0 ) . 291.

Butterworth, C. The English Primers

(1529-1545) (Philadelphia,

Cajori, Florian. A History of Mathematics (New York,

1919).

1953).

350.

583.

See also Newton, Isaac. Cambridge History of the Bible (3' vol. Cambridge, 1 9 6 3 - 7 0 ) . V o l . 2 . The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. G. W . H . Lampe (Cambridge, 1 9 6 9 ) . Vol. 3 . The Westfront

the Reformation to die Present Day, ed. S. L. Greenslade (Cambridge,

Includes articles by Black, M . H . ; Bouyer, Louis; Crehan, F. J.; Fenn, Eric; Foster, Kenelm; Greenslade, S. L.: Hall, Basil; Jones, D . R.; Lockwood, W . B . ; Locwc, R.; Milburn, R. L. P.; Richardson, A . ; Robson, C. A . ; Sayce, R. A . ; SutclifFe, E. F.; Sykes, N . 1963).

Cambridge Modern History,

New ( 1 4 vol. Cambridge, 1 9 5 7 - 7 9 ) . V o l . 1. The

Renais-

1403-1520, ed. G. R. Potter (Cambridge, 1957). Vol. n. The Reformation, 1520-59, ed. G. R. Elton (Cambridge, 1 9 5 8 ) . Includes articles by Hall, A . R.;

sance,

Hay, Denys; Weiss, R. Cameron, Kenneth W . Book review. Renaissance Quarterly x x i v (Winter 1971) 555. 376. Cameron, Richard. 'The Attack on the Biblical W o r k o f Leffevre d'Etaples

(1514¬

1 5 2 1 ) , ' Church History x x x v m (1969) 9 - 2 4 . 331.

Campbell, Anna M . The Black Death and Men of Learning (New York,

716

1966).

295.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDEX

Cardano, G. The Great Art, tr. and ed. T . R. Witmer (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). 548» 552Carter, Charles Howard, ed. From the Renaissance to the Counter Reformation. Essays in

Honor of Garrett Mattingly (New York, 1965). Includes articles by Hale, J. R.; Hay, Denys; H i l l , Christopher; Kristeller, P. O.; Smolar, F . ] . ; Strauss, G. Carter, Harry. A View of Early Typography up to about 1600 (Oxford, 1969). 55, 203, 205^. Carter, Harry and Vervliet, H . D . L. Civilité Types (Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, N e w Ser. xrv) (Oxford, 1966). 202, 205-6. Carter, J. W , and Muir, P. H . , eds. Printing and the Mind of Man (London, 1967). 375Carter, T . F. and Goodrich, C. L. The Invention

of Printing

in China and Its Spread

Westward (1st edn 1925, New York, 1955). 27, 376. Caspar, Max. Kepler, tr. C. Doris Hellman (London, 1948, rev. edn 1959). 582,626-7, 639, 654. Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, tr. F. Koelln and J. Pettegrove (Princeton, 1951). 698. 'On the Originality o f the Renaissance, 'Journal ofthe History of Ideas rv(Jan. 1943)

49-56. 229, 230. Castiglioni, A . A History of Medicine, tr. E. B. Krumbhaar (rev. edn, New York, 1958). 616. Cavallera, Ferdinand. 'La Bible en Langue Vulgaire au Concile de Trente: IVe Session,' Mélanges E . Podechard(Lyon, 1945) 37-56. 329, 343-4Chabod, Frederico. Machiaveîli and the Renaissance, t r . David Moore, introduction, A. P. d'Entrèves (New York, 1965). 185, 293. Chalotais, Louis René de Caradeuc de la. Essay on National Education, or Plan of Studies

for the Young, tr. H . R. Clark (London, 1934). 351. Chambers, G. K. 'Sir Thomas Browne, True Scientist/ Osiris n (1936) 28-79- 458Chambers, R. "W. 'The Lost Literature o f Medieval England/ The Library, 4th ser. v (1925) 293-321-115. Chariton, Kenneth. Education in Renaissance England(London, Chartier, R., Compère, M . M . , Julia, D . L'Education

1965). 243, 383, 425.

en France du XVIe

au

XVIIIe

Siècle (Paris, 1976). 350, 414, 430. Chastel, André. 'What is Mannerism?' Art News (Dec. 1965), 64. 82. Chaucer, G. The Equatorie of the Planetis, ed. Derek de Solla Price (Cambridge, 1955). 277» 465. Chaunu, Pierre. 'Sur la Fin des Sorciers au XVTIe Siècle/ Annales: Economies Sociétés Civilisations xxnr (July-Aug. 1969) 895-911- 434Chaytor, H . J. From Script to Print (Cambridge, 1945). 10,121,171, 227, 299, 319. Chenu, M . D . Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century, ed. and tr. J. Taylor and

Lester Little (Chicago, 1968). 184-5, 251,200, 379Chester, Alan G. 'The New Learning: A Semantic Note/ Studies in the Renaissance n (i955) 139-47-174. Chrisman, M i r i a m Usher. Strasbourg and the Reform : A Study in the Process of Change

(New Haven, 1967). 370-3. Christianson, John. 'Astronomy and Printing/ paper presented at Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, October 26, 1972, Concordia Seminary, St Louis, M o . 599. 625.

717

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

INDEX

'Tycho Brahe at the University o f Copenhagen 1550-1562/ Isis 58 (1967) 198-203. 533-4* 'Tycho Brahe's Facts o f Life, ' Fund og Forskning i Det Kongelige Bibîioteks 17 (1970). 624. Cipolla, Carlo M . Before the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1976). 244, 554. Literacy and Development in the West (London, 1969). 61, 414.

'The Diffusion o f Innovations i n Early Modern Europe/ Comparative Studies in Society and History 14 ( i 9 7 ) 46-5 - 5832

2

Clagett, Marshall. Archimedes in the Middle Ages I : The Arabo-Latin

Tradition (Madison,

Wis., 1964). 471, 497, 697. ed. Critical

Problems in the History of Science (Proceedings o f the Institute o f the

History of Science, Sept. 1957) (Madison, Wis., 1959). Includes articles by Crombie, A. C ; Santillana, G. de; Hall, A. R.; Nagel, E. Greek Science in Antiquity (London, 1957). 611. The

Science of Mechanics in the Middle

Ages (Madison, Wis., 1959). 497, 522,

541. Clagett, M . and Moody, E., eds. The Medieval

Science of Weights (Madison, Wis.,

1952). 497Clair, Colin. Christopher Plantin (London, i960). 100. 'Willem Silvius,' The Library 5th ser. xrv (1959) 192-205. 96. Clapham, Michael. 'Printing/ A History

of Technology n From the Renaissance to the

Industrial Revolution, ed. Charles Singer.E.J. Holmyard,A.R. Hall and Trevor Williams (4 vol. Oxford, 1957) 377-4"- 21, 31, 45, 273, 376". Clapp, Sarah L. C. 'The Beginnings o f Subscription i n the Seventeenth Century/ Modern Philology x x r x (1931) 199-224. Consulted but not cited. 'The Subscription Enterprises o f John Ogilby and Richard Bldwe/ Modern Philology XXXI (May 1933) 365-79. 367. Clapp, V . W . 'The Story o f Permanent Durable Book Paper, 1115-1970/ Scholarly Publishing,

A Journalfor

Clark, Sir George N . Early

Authors and Publishers n(Toronto, 1971) 108 ff. 14,115. Modern

Europe from about 1450 to about 1720 (revised

excerpt from The European Inheritance, ed. E. Barker and P. Vaucher) (Oxford Paperbacks University Series no. 4) (Oxford, 1966). 169. The Seventeenth Century (rev. edn, Oxford, 1947). 29, 460. Clarke, Edwin. Review, Medical History v m (1964), 380-3. 502, 573. Clifton, Robin. 'The Popular Fear of Catholics i n England/ Past and Present 52 (Aug. 1971) 23-55. 427. Clough, C. H . Machiavelli Researches (Naples, 1967). 100. Introduction. The Discourses of Niccolà Machiavelli, tr. Leslie J. Walker (2 vol. London, 1965). 100. Cochin, Augustin. Les Sociétés de Pensée et la Révolution en Bretagne 1788-1789 (2 v o l . Paris, 1925). 149. Cochrane, Eric. Book review. The American Historical Review 82 (Feb. 1977) 88. 314. 'Science and Humanism in the Italian Renaissance,' American Historical Review 81 (Dec. 1976) 1039-57- 526. Cochrane, J. A. Dr. Johnson's Printer: Cohen, Gustave. Ecrivains

The Life of William Strahan (London, 1964). 112.

Français en Hollande dans la Première Moitié du XVIIe

(Paris, 1920). 647. Cohen, I . Bernard. Introduction to Newton's 'Principia

718

1

(Cambridge, 1971). 638.

Siècle

BIBLIOGRAPH!CAL

INDEX

'Diagrams and Illustrations i n relation to Scientific Ideas, Before and After the Invention of Printing,' the first of three lectures i n a series: Words, Images, Ideas, A. S. W . Rosenbach Lectures i n Bibliography (University o f Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, November 27,1973). 536. Review o f Whiteside ed.

The

Mathematical

Papers of Isaac Newton,

Scientific

American (Jan. 19Ö8) 139-44- 245« 555« Ö33' Cohn, Norman. Warrant for Genocide (New York, 1969). 150. Cole, Richard G. 'The Dynamics o f Printing i n the Sixteenth Century,' The Social History of the Reformation (Festschrift for Harold J. Grimm) ed. L. P. Buck and J. W . Zophy (Columbus, Ohio, 1972) 93-105.133. Colie, Rosalie. Paradoxia Epidemica,

The Renaissance

Tradition of Paradox (Princeton,

1966). 230. Book review. Renaissance Quarterly x x v i (Spring 1973) 75.144. Collins, Philip. 'The Fiction Market,' Times Literary Supplement (April 20,1977) 537. 157. Compère, M . M . See Charrier, R. Condorcet. Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique

des Progrès de l'Esprit

Humain (2nd edn,

Paris, 1866). 300. Contratin, A. H . See Daniélou, J. Copernicus. Three Copernican Treatises, tr. and ed. Edward Rosen (ist edn 1939, 3rd edn, N e w York, 1971). 523, 577» 579-8i» 583» 617, 621, 650-2. Coser, Lewis A . Men of Ideas: A Sociologist's View (New York, 1965). 153,155. Costabel.P. and Lerner, M.P.,eds. Les Nouvelles Pensées de Galilée par Marin

Mersenne

(2 vol. Paris, 1973). 645. Cowley, John. 'The Abridgement o f Statutes,' The Library, 4th ser. x n (Sept. 1931) 125-73.105. Craig, Hardin. 'The Genevan Bible as a Political Document,' The Pacific Historical Review v u (1968) 40-9. 364. Craig, John. Mathematical Principles of Christian Theology (London, 1690) tr. from Latin in History and Theory Beiheft 4 (1963). 79.

Crehan, F. J . , S.J. 'The Bible i n the Roman Catholic Church from Trent to the Present Day,' Cambridge History of the Bible V o l . 3 The Westfrom the Reformation

to the Present Day, ed. S. L. Greenslade (Cambridge, 1963) 199-237- 333-4» 343-4, 348» 353, 426. 'Indulgences,' A Catholic Dictionary of Theology (3 vol. London, 1971) nr 84-90. 375Crombie, A . C. Augustine

to Galileo,

I952)- 495, 498» 501» 'Commentary,' Critical

The History of Science A.D.

400-1650

(London,

53 V-ivin s pupil Strudinus m the 1 1 8 0 . - t . ' p i i i is\ I F v rh \ n r w rn fitui nf C ill L I

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