The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  Wendelin had risen.

  Jenson spoke softly but clearly: ‘I have wished you no harm, you know.’

  Wendelin nodded. He could see that now, looking at Jenson.

  ‘Nor your wife, nor your son, nor all these men. I’ve been talking with Paola, your sister-in-law, and she has encouraged me to think that what I wish with all my heart may – may not be repulsive to you.’

  Wendelin found his voice at last.

  ‘Will you sit?’ he asked, courteously. But Jenson took small steps closer to him till he stood at Johann’s old chair. He put his hand on the back of it, seemingly exhausted by the effort of reaching it under the eyes of all Wendelin’s men.

  He stammered: ‘I congratulate you. You published Catullus. I could never dare to do it.

  ‘Yet if I had helped you …’

  He drooped and wiped his brow. ‘I’m losing my way. I am not much used to such …’

  Wendelin murmured gently, ‘There’s no hurry.’

  Jenson made a visible effort to rally himself. Finally, he said: ‘It’s simple as this. I admire your work. You are the only printer in Venice I respect. I would wish to be partners with you. Will you think on it, at least?’

  There was silence in the room.

  Jenson repeated. ‘Will you think on it, at least?’

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to express my most affectionate thanks to my editor Jill Foulston, and my admiration for her deft and graceful way of unlocking what was imprisoned inside the original manuscript. Warm thanks in this regard, and in so many other ways, are also very much due to my agent, Victoria Hobbs at A.M. Heath.

  I’m grateful to Simon P. Oakes, for his invaluable advice with background to the German community in Venice. I would like to thank Alan Morrison for translating archival records of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi; Jelena Brayovic and my father Vladimir Albert Lovric for their help with the Serbo-Croatian proverbs and curses. For examining various historical details in my manuscript, I thank Rabbi Paul Roberts, Howard Fitzpatrick of Venice Art, and most particularly Martin Lowry, who was astonishingly generous with his time and own research archives. For help with the typographical history, I thank Peter Fraterdeus, Laurence Penney and Lilian Armstrong; for checking my accounts of Catullus and ancient Rome, Peter Wiseman and Llewelyn Morgan.

  I am grateful to Ornella Tarantola for checking my Italian translations and the Italianness of my characters, and to Wendy Oliver and Susannah Rickards for their help in refining the text.

  With thanks also to the staff at the British and the London Libraries and the Marciana Library in Venice and the National Gallery in London.

  This book was written with the help of a research grant from London Arts for which I am most grateful.

  I also acknowledge the extraordinary generosity of the academics and curators in Germany who gave freely of their time and expertise to help me track down what precious little is known about Wendelin and Johann von Speyer. I was able to reconstruct part of Wendelin’s life and work with the help of Hannelore Müller at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Hartmut Harthausen of the Pfälzische Landesbibliothek in Speyer, Cornelia Ewigleben of the Historischen Museum der Pfälz, and particularly Katrin Hopstock of the Stadtarchiv Speyer. Above all, the fondest thanks to the superb town guide, Irmtrud Dorweiler, who showed me all the sights of Speyer, and cheerfully submitted to all my strange inquisitions. It was only when she checked the last draft of the novel that I felt confident that I had, with her vital help, recreated in Wendelin a real citizen of Speyer in the late Middle Ages.

  And in Venice warmest thanks again to Sergio and Roberta Grandesso, this time for all the prosecco, and to Graziella, Emilio and Valentina Scarpa, for many more 6 a.m. ottimi cappucci poca schiuma (‘tipo Michelle) at the bar da Gino at San Vio, without which this book would never have met its deadlines; speaking of which, by the time The Floating Book is published Valentina will have given birth to twins who were not dreamt of when this book was conceived.

  Author’s note

  The characters who are invented in this story are Sosia, Rabino, Bruno, Morto, Gentilia, Ianno, Padre Pio; also this particular Nicolò Malipiero.

  The following characters really existed: Gaius Valerius Catullus and his brother Lucius, Gaius Julius Caesar, Clodia Metelli (Lesbia), and her brother Publius Clodius Pulcher, Felice Feliciano, Johann and Wendelin Heynrici von Speyer (though their actual surname is open to doubt), Paola di Messina and her father, Domenico Zorzi, Caterina di Colonna at the Sturion, Giovanni Dario, Gerolamo Squarzafico, Giovanni Bellini, Fra Filippo de Strata and his campaign against the printers (though not specifically against Catullus), Nicolas Jenson.

  It is known that Wendelin married a Venetian girl, but the identity and personality of Lussièta are invented.

  The poems of Catullus were indeed recovered from a corn or wine measure in Verona. From that point onwards the trail forks many ways. From that first manuscript, known as the Veronensis, the local scribe made a single copy, known to the scholars as A. Immediately thereafter the original Veronensis disappeared. Two more copies were made from A, the manuscripts now known as O and X. But as soon as A had been reproduced, it too became lost. X came into the hands of Gasparo dei Broaspini, of Verona, who lent it to the Florentine scholar Coluccio Salutati. In this way X bred the copy R, which is to be found at the Vatican, and, in 1375, the copy G which is now in Paris. Many Renaissance scribes were given access to them. From the Vatican R and the Parisian G came a hundred manuscripts, and it is one of these I have attributed to Domenico Zorzi.

  The first modern edition of Catullus was printed in Venice in 1472 by Wendelin von Speyer. He included in the book Tibullus, Propertius and Statius, though I have assumed his motive for doing so. This editio princeps does not appear to have been reprinted. The second edition of Catullus, including hundreds of needful corrections made by Francesco Puteolano, was printed in Parma by Stefano Corallo. Many more refinements were made to the text over the next thirty years, with poems that had run together separated and missing lines restored.

  The Catullus poems are my own translations, made with the invaluable help of Nikiforos Doxiadis Mardas. Where possible, I take on trust that the emotional truth of poetry reflects the poet’s personality and preoccupations. Scholars continue to debate the true identity of his Lesbia: there are several contenders. I have styled Catullus’ brother Lucius a soldier, but he might equally have followed the family tradition of provincial tax farming. Troad was a peaceable outpost of the empire at that time. Lucius’ death could be dated as late as 56 BC. His grave, as a prosperous Roman citizen, would probably not have been lost.

  The wax devotio figure described in the book is of a type known in ancient Rome. Clodia’s virtual trial by Cicero is as recorded in his Pro Caelio. Catullus may have attended, but it’s also possible he was still in Bithynia at the time. The date of his death is probably 54 BC. I have supposed that he died of tuberculosis, which was rife in ancient Rome. In its prolonged state this disease causes a mind-wandering fever with diurnal peaks, common at dusk, hence the frequent alleged association with eroticism. One of his bitterly humorous poems refers to a severe cough.

  Wendelin and Johann von Speyer were the first German printers to come to Venice (though not to Italy: Sweynheim and Pannartz went to Subiaco first, in 1465, then Rome in 1468).

  It is not known exactly when and where the Speyers set up their printing works. A document relating to the betrothal of Johann’s daughter in 1477 opens the possibility that they arrived in Venice well before 1468. Certainly they would have been involved with the Fondaco dei Tedeschi at Rialto (now Venice’s main Post Office). The original building was burnt down in 1505 and quickly rebuilt as it stands today, although in its early days the façade of the new structure was decorated with frescoes by Giorgione and Titian, alas long since eaten away by the moist breath of the Grand Canal.

  De Strata’s sermons are based on several known ones and his poem against the printers (in fac
t written after the date of this story). His fate in Rovigo is imagined. In 1492 Filippo de Strata sent what he called a hundred and thirty-four verses in heroic metre’ to the newly elected patriarch Tomaso Donato, and asked him ‘to spread many copies of my words abroad through the printers, so that Your Grace will enjoy the fame you deserve’.

  The currency crisis and persecution of the printers reflect real events in Venice in 1472. The tomb of Doge Nicolò Tron at the Frari bears an inscription paying tribute to his actions at that time.

  The trial of Sosia Simeon is based on an actual case brought before the Venetian Avogadori in the 1480s: that of a Greek woman, Gratiosa, accused of seducing a Venetian nobleman with witchcraft. The judgement of the court and the punishment were as those handed down to Sosia in this book.

  Jews, apart from doctors, were expelled from Venice from 1397 until the early sixteenth century, though the Jewish population in Mestre is thought to have been large, and a chronicle of 1483 records the presence of a fine synagogue there. Businessmen might enter Venice herself on two-week permits, were obliged to wear yellow circles sewn on their cloaks and possibly also yellow skullcaps, and their activities were limited to dealing in used clothes and money lending. Jews were occasionally accused of ritual murders, requiring the drinking of children’s blood. Two cases of infanticide in the Veneto were blamed on the Jews for this reason. However, there was probably no more discrimination against the Jews than any other foreign race or religion in Venice. Sosia’s maltreatment at the hands of the Venetian state is therefore as much to do with her foreign birth and low status as her race.

  Jews were known to live in Serbia and Macedonia since early times but they were not recognised as a community there until 1492, after the mass exodus from Spain. The perception of Sosia as a Serbian Jew therefore reflects a purely Venetian point of view.

  Giovanni Dario, born in Crete in 1414, was sent on diplomatic missions to the court of the Ottoman Sultan, and is thought to have arranged the 1479-80 residence of Gentile Bellini in Constantinople. Dario started rebuilding his house on the Grand Canal in 1486, between sojourns in the East. The new palazzo incorporated part of the original Gothic foundations. His daughter Marietta did marry a member of the illustrious Barbaro family but not till 1493. It is in fact to the new building that the famous curse still clings. Dario’s daughter was the first victim, dying of a broken heart after her father and husband were ruined. Financial scandals, murders and suicides have continued up until the present day. The building, near the Salute end, remains unoccupied and still anathematised by most Venetians at the time of writing. But photographs of the interior show a house of exquisite beauty with a heavy oriental influence. The cabinet is invented, as are the roach and Damascus Plague.

  The Sturion was there in those times, though known as the Sturgeon. An inn called the Sturion still offers accommodation at Rialto.

  The nunnery of Sant’ Angelo di Contorta really existed. The Pope closed it down in 1474 after too many cases of fornication by its nuns – fifty-two in the fifteenth century alone. The nunnery was to be absorbed by the more virtuous establishment of Santa Croce on the nearby island of Guidecca. But the noblemen who had sent their daughters to Sant’ Angelo and endowed it with gifts, were unhappy with this edict, and a typically Venetian compromise was reached. The nuns who still lived in Sant’ Angelo were permitted to stay there until their deaths, though no new nuns were to be admitted. Thus prosecutions for sex crimes continued even until 1518, only decreasing gradually as the inhabitants presumably grew too old to be sexually attractive to their former patrons. Finally the last nun died and the convent closed its doors in 1555, when it was turned into a powder magazine. One day in 1589 the powder was accidentally ignited and the convent was destroyed completely in a vast explosion, leaving no trace whatsoever apart from the stain of its reputation in the legal annals of Venice.

  Pero Tafur, a Spanish traveller in Venice, recorded the plague of baby corpses in the lagoon when he visited in 1436.

  The spells and talismans researched by Gentilia reflect evidence presented in contemporary witchcraft trials. The ghosts described by Lussièta are still said to haunt Venice today. The triaca was indeed the drug of choice for Venetians, a picturesque concoction of amber, herbs and eastern spices, probably as harmless as it was useless. The free-ranging Tantony pigs were in fact deprived of their freedom in Venice by special decree in 1409.

  Wendelin and Lussièta’s journey back to Germany is imagined, though based as much as possible on early accounts of such travels. The cat-headed dragon of the Alps is cited and delightfully illustrated in several early guidebooks. Wheeled traffic did not come to the Alps until 1775. The Inn of the Red Bears still offers hospitality in Freiburg. Evidence of early Renaissance life in Speyer is fragmentary: the French systematically torched Speyer in 1689, and Napoleon later looted what was left of the town archives, carrying off 160 boxes of precious papers that were never seen again. However, it remains a handsome and comfortable little town, still dominated by its immense cathedral, very close to Little Heavens Alley and not far from the well-preserved Jewish bath.

  Whatever sexually transmitted disease Sosia contracted and spread, it is unlikely to have been modern syphilis. The arrival of the ‘mai franzoso/napoletano’ is usually associated with the return of Columbus’ sailors from the New World. Certainly most authorities cite the mid-1490s as the moment from which western Europe became infected. However, many venereal diseases, including gonorrhoea, were already rife at the time this book is set.

  The words of Lussièta’s mock-Sposalizio are based on Giovanni Gabrieli’s madrigal Udite, chiari e generosi figli.

  The accounts of early printing techniques are as accurate as I could make them. Watermarks on the papers used by Wendelin von Speyer include scissors, scales, winged lion, bull’s head with a crown, lily, dragon and castle. Jenson was indeed interested in small formats very early. His chosen title was the Officiettum, a little service book usually of the prayers to the Madonna. Three versions are recorded, the earliest in 1474, later than I have portrayed here. They were printed in sedecimo, and they were hardly cheap, priced between half a lira and a lira. But they were aimed at both priests and laymen, and they really would have fitted into a sleeve.

  Giovanni Bellini’s allegories painted on wood, including the painting I have suggested as a likeness of Sosia, are sometimes dated around 1480 but scholars have differing views. These tiny, exquisite paintings have recently been restored to their original colours and may be seen at the Accademia Gallery in Venice,

  Felice Feliciano, born in 1433, was the link between the printers and the painters of Venice. The scribe’s personality does appear to have been an extraordinary one. Martin Lowry, in his marvellous biography of Nicolas Jenson, sees in Felice’s style a contrived perversity that carries a distant whiff of Beardsley and Baudelaire’.

  Felice was a frequent visitor to Venice, and a close friend of Andrea Mantegna, the brother-in-law and intimate of the Bellini brothers. Lussièta’s description of Catullus’s lakeside home in Sirmione is based on Felice’s account of the romantic excursion he and Andrea Mantegna made there in 1464. Several of his beautiful manuscripts have survived, including some letters to Domenico Zorzi, one of which amusingly describes his dream about a floating egg and an angry devil who warns him to desist from eating beans. Felice tried to set up a printing works of his own in 1475-6 but it appears to have failed. He died in 1479, having bankrupted himself with experiments in alchemy.

  The Bellini brothers were definitely involved with the German community in Venice. Both brothers served as sensali in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, as did Titian some time later. It is my belief that it is more than coincidence that the techniques of oil painting and printing came to flower in Venice at exactly the same time. It is tempting to imagine, as I have done, a shy friendship between Bellini and Wendelin, their worlds of art and ink linked through marriage (Johann and Paola) and Felice Feliciano. Giovanni Bellini’s aff
inity with the northern sensibility is clearly evident in his work. Moreover, he was the only Venetian painter to develop an amicable relationship with Albrecht Dürer when the great German artist came to Venice in 1505. Perhaps his friendly contact with the early printers predisposed him to be more tolerant than his fellow-Venetians?

  After the events of 1472, the Speyer-Colonia-Manthen partnership continued to battle out the Venetian market with Jenson. After Johann di Colonia died, Paola di Messina soon married again. Husband number four was Reynaldus of Nymegen, also a master printer, in September 1480.

  But Wendelin himself gradually disappeared from view. By 1475 it seems that his entire editorial team was at Jenson’s disposal. In 1476 Wendelin appeared to try to set up again but the enterprise lasted only a few months. He was last heard of in 1477 and afterwards there is silence. It is even possible that he returned to Speyer at this point.

  Some writers have theorised that Nicolas Jenson worked for Wendelin and Johann von Speyer until the latter’s death, when he seized his opportunity to strike out alone, but I believe that he arrived in Venice with fully-formed ambitions of his own.

  Venetian printing was changed for ever by a particularly virulent plague in 1478. Of the twenty-two firms active at the outset of that year only eleven remained when the disease slackened its grip. At that point some of the old rivals amalgamated … Jenson and Johann di Colonia (Paola von Speyer’s third husband) fused as a single company. But Johann di Colonia died in 1480 and Jenson soon afterwards. My final scene, in which Jenson visits the stamperia von Speyer, is wishfully imagined.

  Wendelin was right: Jenson did indeed become something of a cult, not unlike his indirect heir Aldus Manutius, whose Aldine Press would become the most famous of the Renaissance period. (The first Aldine edition of Catullus, incidentally, was printed in 1502, and the run was an astonishing 3000 copies.)