Ideas

by Peter Watson

  Before the introduction of paper, vellum books were expensive but not that expensive. Claims by some modern scholars that as many as a thousand animal skins were needed for each book are wide of the mark. If the average area of a skin was about half a square metre, it would make, roughly, twelve to fifteen pages of 24 × 16 cm, meaning that ten to twelve skins were needed for a 150-page book. It was still a lot. As the appetite for reading grew, as the universities became more popular, and more populous, so the demand for books rose and, as edition sizes increased, vellum or parchment books became less and less practicable.110 In each university town a guild of scriveners or stationers was formed, which joined the scribes or copyists and the booksellers together and they often became quasi-official adjuncts to the university, with the right to be tried by university courts (this was partly to do with the fact that the university authorities insisted on inspecting texts for doctrinal accuracy).111 The system was fairly efficient more than two thousand copies of Aristotle’s works have come down to us from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It also suggests that a new reading public emerged in the thirteenth century.

  Paper was in widespread use, at least in Italy, by the fourteenth century. Papermaking factories were generally upstream from towns, because the water was cleaner, and it was now that rag-and-bone men became familiar (it was a lucrative trade) and when even old rope became valuable (hence the phrase ‘money for old rope’). Papermakers’ guilds were formed from the turn of the fifteenth century and they too, like scriveners and booksellers, had a close association with the universities.112

  The ‘discovery’ of printing in the West depended on three innovations: movable type cast in metal; a fat-based ink; the press. Among the precursors we may mention the goldsmiths, who knew how to make stamps which were used to ornament the leather covers of books; pewter makers, who had die stamps, and thirteenth-century metal founders, who knew how to use punches engraved in relief to produce clay moulds from whose hollow matrices they made the relief inscriptions on crests.113 And of course the production of coins had used dies struck by a hammer. The principles of printing were there for everyone to see.

  With this as background, we may move on to the famous lawsuit which took place in Strasbourg in 1439. The somewhat enigmatic documents which have survived indicate that a certain Johann Gensfleisch, also known as Gutenberg, a goldsmith, had entered into a partnership with three others, Hans Riff, Andreas Dritzehn and Andreas Heilmann, whereby he was perfecting a number of secret processes and they were supporting him financially. The lawsuit arose after Dritzehn died and his heirs wanted to take his place. These secret processes included the polishing of precious stones, the manufacture of mirrors and a new art which involved the use of a press, some ‘pieces’ or Stücke, either separate or cast together, some forms made of lead, and finally ‘things related to the action of the press’. Gutenberg was not the only one experimenting with printing. Another goldsmith, Procopius Waldvogel of Prague, entered into an agreement with the citizens of Avignon in the mid-1440s to construct some ‘iron forms pertinent to writing’. This too is enigmatic and the first undisputed mention of printing is found in the Cologne Chronicle of 1499, where the writer says he has been in touch with one Ulrich Zell, the first printer in Cologne, who was in touch with Schoeffer, one of Gutenberg’s partners. He wrote: ‘The noble art of printing was first invented at Mainz in Germany. It came to us in the Year of Our Lord 1440 and from then until 1450 the art and all that is connected with it was being continually improved Although the art was discovered in Mainz, as we have said, the first trials were carried out in Holland in a Donatus printed there before that time. The commencement of the art dates from these books; actually it is now much more authoritative and delicate than it was in its first manner.’ This controversy, as to whether Holland or Mainz was the site of the first printing, has never been satisfactorily resolved.114 But Mainz was without question the cradle of the first printing industry.

  Gutenberg appears to have returned to Mainz from Strasbourg in the late 1440s, where he teamed up with Johann Fust, a rich citizen who was his new backer, and Peter Schoeffer, an erstwhile student at the University of Paris who may have been a copyist before he turned printer. All seems to have gone well until 1455, when Fust and Gutenberg fell out and there was another lawsuit. Gutenberg lost, had to repay the interest on his loan, and what remained of the capital, and Fust and Schoeffer went on without him. On 14 October 1457, the first printed book that can be dated came from the new press. This was the so-called Mainz Psalter, the first product of a business that was to flourish for more than a hundred years. Lucien Febvre judges that the Psalter was of such a quality that it cannot have been the first attempt, and it is now more or less agreed among historians that other presses were in operation between 1450 and 1455 producing many books on a commercial scale–grammars, calendars, Missals, the famous 42-line and 36-line three-volume Bibles.115 Gutenberg later got into debt but after that he was ennobled by the archbishop elector of Mainz, for personal services–so perhaps he installed a printing press. There was no uniformity in letter formation and none was agreed until the eighteenth century in the French Enlightenment, when a standard measure, ‘the point’, was adopted. This was the size of the king’s foot and is still in use today. 116

  At the time printing came in, four types of script were popular. These were ‘black letter’ gothic, favoured by scholars, a larger gothic, less rounded with more straight uprights, a ‘bastard gothic’, used in luxury books, and ‘littera antique’, the roman script used by the humanists. Inspired by the Carolingian miniscule, this was made fashionable by Petrarch. It was also associated with a cursive script, the Cancelleresca, based on the handwriting popular in the Vatican Chancellery which was the origin of italic. Roman script was also made popular by Petrarch, who was an enthusiastic calligrapher; he and others wanted to give to classical texts many newly discovered a physical appearance closer to their original look.117 But the triumph of roman and italic had a great deal to do with the famous Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. He had roman type, and italic, cut in 1501 by Francesco Griffo after a cancelleria script, which dramatically shortened the space which text occupied. These Venetian types were quickly adopted in Germany and France and soon became standard. For a while the universities continued to stick with gothic but in the vernacular literatures roman was preferred. From the middle of the sixteenth century, however, roman encroached more and more on the scholars’ domain. Aldus also introduced pagination, though that didn’t become customary until the second quarter of the sixteenth century.

  With printing, books ceased to be precious objects. In owning books, readers wanted to be able to carry texts with them on journeys, and so they were produced in smaller and smaller sizes. Quarto books (folded once, to provide four pages) and octavo (folded twice, to produce eight) were printed from the beginning but again it was Aldus who, anxious to ease the reading of classical authors, launched his famous ‘portable’ collection, a format which was widely taken up by others. By the sixteenth century, therefore, the book business was divided into ponderous learned tomes intended for libraries and smaller literary or polemical works designed for the general public.118

  It was in the nature of publishing that daring books would sell better because of the scandals they caused, with the result that the early publishers often sheltered writers suspected of heresy. Since they were the first people to read new manuscripts, publishers naturally kept abreast of fresh ideas and frequently were the first to be convinced by new arguments. In this way, printers were among the first converts to Protestantism. But they were also the most vulnerable to victimisation they had the plant, and their names were on the title-pages of their books. It was only too easy for the Inquisition to argue that the easiest way to root out heresy was to close down the presses that were disseminating these ideas. As a result, in the early sixteenth century many printers were forced to flee France in particular to avoid spies, informers and censors. A
ugereau was just one publisher burned at the stake. Étienne Dolet was the best-known ‘martyr of the book’, a writer-turned-bookseller-and-printer, who worked for Gryphe as well as writing his own books and carrying on a dispute with Erasmus. But in 1542 he published several suspect religious works and when the authorities, alarmed, searched his premises they found a copy of a book by Calvin. Dolet was burned at the stake in August 1544, along with his books.

  To begin with, in the early days of printing, authors were not paid by publishers. They received several free copies of their works and would send them to rich patrons, with elaborate dedications, in the hope of receiving payment in that way. As often as not this worked and ‘as few authors starved as later’. Some authors were forced to agree with their publishers to buy so many copies of their own books, as did the author Serianus who in 1572 bought 186 copies (out of an edition of 300) of his Commentarii in Levitici Librum.119 By the end of the sixteenth, and certainly by the start of the seventeenth century, however, the modern practice had been introduced, of authors selling their manuscripts to publishers. As reading became more common, and more and more copies of books were sold, advances went up and by the seventeenth century they could be considerable (reaching, in France for example, tens of thousands of francs).120 Copyright was introduced around the middle of the seventeenth century, beginning in England.121 Edition sizes were small by modern standards as few as a hundred copies in some cases. Bibles might be issued in editions of 930, or 1,000, but these were very large edition sizes and publishers who risked this often got into financial difficulties.122 As technology improved, however, the cost of producing books dropped and it became safer to publish more copies by the latter half of the sixteenth century edition sizes of 2,000 and more were common. Nicholas Clénard’s Greek grammar of 1564 and his edition of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, published in 15661567, were both released in edition sizes of 2,500. Some Bibles in Holland reached 3,000–4,000 copies.123

  The absence of a copyright law in the early years meant that pirated editions of many books were widely available. When attempts were made to stop the practice, with action by kings or parliaments, who tried to close down pirate publishers, this succeeded only in driving the pirate business underground. It was made worse by the attempts, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, to censor books. As early as 1475 the University of Cologne received a licence from the pope to censor printers, publishers and even readers of condemned books.124 Many bishops tried to exercise the same power. In 1501 Pope Alexander VI published his bull Inter multiplices, which forbade the printing of any book in Germany without the permission of the ecclesiastical powers. At the Lateran Council of 1515 this power was extended to all Christendom and came under the Holy Office and the Inquisitor General. Censorship, of course, only makes the censored books more attractive, at least to some people, and in the course of the sixteenth century there was a rapid increase in the number of banned books and it became necessary to institute the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which had to be continually updated. The first list of forbidden books for the entire Catholic church was issued in 1559 by Pope Paul IV and, though it was taken seriously, it soon became clear that in many areas (such as Florence, not so very far from Rome) if it were implemented in full it would destroy the newly-flourishing book trade. As a result, in many places it was never enforced in more than a token way. For example, the Inquisition’s delegate in Florence agreed that books needed by lawyers, physicians and philosophers should be exempt.125 The French tried a different system: each book published needed a licence from the king in advance. This too drove publishing underground as most publishers flouted the law and ‘banned’ books continued to circulate more or less everywhere with ease.126

  There is no question but that printing caught on very quickly, which tends to confirm that pre-print books were far from unknown among many people. It has been calculated that no fewer than 20 million books were printed before 1500.127 Although to begin with the market was chiefly among universities and other academically-minded souls, books soon reached out to the general public. An entirely new literature grew up to reflect and encourage popular piety the cult of the Virgin, for example, was still extremely popular and works celebrating the life and virtues of the Mother of God were very popular, as were works on the saints. Coinciding with the growth of humanism (see the next chapter), printing helped promote a new interest in antiquity. There was also an enormous increase in the number of grammars available, and in the chivalric romances of the earlier Middle Ages. But science and mathematics evoked great interest too, especially the scientists and mathematicians of antiquity. Astrology and travel were also popular.

  The arrival of printing, therefore, did not so much change the shape of the culture as make it far more readily available to many more people (as was to be expected). The further changes it brought about had more to do with, for example, standards of accuracy (in setting up type for the classics, scholars wanted to use the best examples available), in the propagation of the Reformation (considered in Chapter 22) and in the triumph of humanism. Printing made far more people familiar with classical i.e., pagan authors, and far more aware of purely literary and stylistic qualities (as opposed to doctrinal matters), contributing further to the secularisation of life. To become a homo trilinguis, to know Greek, Latin and Hebrew, was the aim of many humanists and here printing helped.128 But by no means everyone was trilingual and another effect of the printed book was that, in stimulating a taste among the general public for the classics, it also stimulated a taste for the classics translated into the vernacular. These translations often played a more vital role than the originals in the diffusion of ideas and knowledge.129 In the same vein, the vernacular translations also promoted an interest in national languages, a process that began in Italy but went furthest in France where, in 1539, the Ordonnances of Villers-Cotterêts made French the official language in the courts of justice. Latin as the international language did not finally die until the seventeenth century and by then national literatures were well on the way to splitting the book market.

  A final impact of printing was on spelling, which now became fixed, corresponding less and less to pronunciation. In other words, spelling paid more respect to the etymology of words.130 This too was reinforced by the development of national languages. It became noticeable that, after 1530, Latin began to lose ground. For example, in Paris, out of the 88 titles produced in 1501 only 8 were in French; but by 1530, when 456 titles were published, 121 were in the vernacular, a rise from 9 per cent to 26 per cent. This is not surprising–many readers were bourgeois merchants, newly prosperous, who had no ambitions to be homo trilinguis, but the process was further accelerated in some countries by the Reformation, with its anti-Rome bias, and championing of local cultures. Luther, with the aid of the press, played a decisive role in the evolution of the German language.

  And of course, eventually, the Bible–not to mention the Book of Common Prayer–was printed in the vernacular languages, making the scriptures accessible as they had never been before. We shall be discussing the consequences of this throughout the rest of the book, but for now we may say that, by and large, printing fixed the vernacular languages. It was thanks to the process of translation that many languages had been enriched by foreign words and expressions, but now spelling and usage were stabilised. Printers deliberately introduced uniformity into the language, as these examples, taken from a translation of Ariosto, show:

  Manuscript

  Printed text

  bee

  be

  on

  one

  greef

  grief

  thease

  these

  noorse

  nurse

  servaunt

  servant131

  The death of Latin was slow. Descartes wrote the Discours de la Méthode in French but his correspondence was usually in Latin. It was still imperative to write in Latin if one wanted to address a European audience. Latin did n
ot finally succumb until the seventeenth century, after which French became the language of science, philosophy and diplomacy, when every educated European had to know French and when books in French were sold all over Europe.132

  Printing thus began the destruction of the unified Latin culture of Europe, the culture that had helped propel Europe ahead of India, China and the Arab world, and it also marked the origins of a culture belonging to the masses. It was a change of seismic proportions. But it would take centuries before these lineaments became visible.

  18

  The Arrival of the Secular:

  Capitalism, Humanism, Individualism

  To Chapter 18 Notes and References

  Jan van Eyck’s double portrait known as The Arnolfini Marriage painted in 1434, is deservedly celebrated as a magnificent example of early Renaissance Flemish art. It shows the Italian merchant Giovanni Arnolfini and his new bride Giovanna Cenami, standing in a room of their house, tenderly holding hands. With fine brushwork and subtle lighting effects, the picture cleverly captures the pious, serene and yet slightly self-satisfied expressions of the bourgeois newly-weds–it is a striking psychological study. Yet it is also something else entirely. The painting invites the viewer to concentrate on the extraordinary range of possessions with which the newly-weds are blessed. There is the Oriental rug on the floor, woven in small, intricate lozenges; there is the high-backed chair, covered in cloth and embellished with carved pommels; there is the red-canopied bed, the convex Venetian mirror, its ornate frame inset with miniature enamels showing scenes from Christ’s passion–all this beneath a shiny brass chandelier twisted into intricate floral patterns. Both figures are dressed lavishly, too, with fur-lined sleeves and hems to their tunics, and with complicated stitching and folding in Giovanna’s headdress. Finally, on the floor lies a pair of wooden pattens, a form of thick-soled clog which shows that the Arnolfinis could afford to rise above the mud of the city streets. As the historian Lisa Jardine has remarked, this is not just a record of a pair of individuals–it is a celebration of ownership. ‘We are expected to take an interest in all this profusion of detail as a guarantee of the importance of the sitter, not as a record of a particular Flemish interior…The composition is a tribute to the mental landscape of the successful merchant–his urge to have and to hold.’1