Cristina DONDI
Lincoln College,
Oxford
Early Printed
Books of Hours:
the bespoke trade in Venice,
a commercial business in Paris
Books, Religion,
and Medieval Literacy
APICES Session, 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo, 6-9 May 2004
E do not usually associate Venetian printers with books for ordinary rather than scholarly readers, the kind generally prepared for local consumption. Indeed their large output and extensive trade in classical, legal, theological, and also liturgical texts was truly international. However, there is one type of book, regarded as the very exemplar of mass production, that gives us an insight into the interaction of Venetian printers with the local community: and this is the book of hours.
This text was among the most frequently printed works in the fifteenth century, together with schoolbooks such as Donatus or Alexander de Villa Dei and liturgical books, especially breviaries and missals. The Incunable Short-Title Catalogue (ISTC) currently records some 422 distinct editions of books of hours. This is at the high end of the scale. Of other much printed texts the breviaries were numerous with 444 editions, missals with 371; impressive was also the output of grammatical works, such as Donatus, Ars minor (410) and Alexander's Doctrinale (375). These texts however reflected institutional demands, and can be regarded as technical, or functional, if not compulsory, in a way the hours were not. The Ars minor and the Doctrinale were needed for teaching in a period of increasing literacy, while missals and breviaries were the necessity of every church and every member of a religious order. Their content was fixed, if we allow of course for liturgical diversity within the same text structure and for the different geographic appeal of the two and many more grammatical texts. The book of hours was the first book whose success reflects the taste and piety of an ever-widening range of social groups.
My interest in books of hours lies in understanding how printers and publishers met and stimulated the demand of the public for this type of book. Even before this, by looking at the dynamics of production, distribution, and use of this eventually very popular book I have been trying to figure out the circumstances surrounding the production of the earliest exemplars.
What we can recognize as the publishing
success, or best-seller, of the fifteenth century, had a relatively modest start.
The printing of books of Hours began in a fairly small way in Italy.
After the first isolated example
of hours for the use of Rome printed in Rome in [circa 1473] {1},
the first dated edition is that of Nicolaus Jenson, printed in Venice in 1474,
the first of five different editions issued in the two years 1474 and 1475 {2}.
All Jenson's editions (except one) {3}
present the same calendar: it is Roman based, with a core of Venetian saints
only partly shared by the hagiographic tradition of St Mark, with the addition
of a very distinctive large group of Oriental and southern Italian saints, unusual
enough to suggest, in my opinion, the use as printer's copy of a calendar in
use in a specific church at present not yet identified, one among the many parishes
or religious institutions of the city {4}.
A further clue to the identification comes from the Augustinian character of
the calendar, which includes an entry for Monica (4 May), mother of St Augustine,
and a number of entries which derive from the sanctoral of the canons of the
Lateran {5}.
The peculiarity of this calendar has allowed me to identify where Jenson's editions
were used as exemplar by other printers, something that was happening very early,
in Milan, Naples, Ferrara {6},
Paris, and Valencia {7}.
How did it happen, then, that Venice,
leader in the production of liturgical texts for the entire European market,
with the cosmopolitan character of its book-trade, lost the international market
of the books of hours?
The answer lies, I believe, in the
fact that, for the early Italian (or more exactly Venetian) printers, hours
were not a wide market, and were not even perceived as a title worth offering
to an international market: they were produced to satisfy local communities.
The fact that different Venetian calendars were used by other Venetian printers,
who over the next few years went into the production of hours, suggests to me
either that they were working on commission, or at least that printers were
using as printer's copies manuscripts chosen from different religious institutions
in the city: parishes, monasteries, convents, even perhaps private citizens
(though in this case the calendar would likely be a reflection of their parish
tradition). Commissions to reproduce manuscript exemplars for specific communities
would explain the great diversity of the hagiographical selection that we find
in the calendars of the Venetian editions, and at the same time the restricted,
local, market of the Venetian output. This may also explain why in Venice the
printing of hours was not seen as a viable commercial enterprise from the beginning.
Production of this type of book in
France began rather later, in about 1485, but by the turn of the century some
255 editions had been printed by Parisian printers against the 36 editions printed
in Venice alone or the total of 58 editions printed in Italy, and by the end
of the fifteenth century Parisian hours were already circulating in Italy, as
the substantial number surviving in Italian provincial libraries seems to indicate.
Under the influence of the Parisian
hours the contents of the Italian hours expanded in their textual complexity
and improved in quality with the adoption of illustration {8}:
eventually, though, the overwhelming Parisian production of hours appears to
have inhibited the Italian one.
It is clear even from the poor rate
of survival that the market for these Italian books was local; and given the
misfortunes of Venetian book collections, had copies circulated abroad at an
early stage, they would probably have had more chance of survival. Still today
they are found principally in Italian libraries: eight copies remain in Venice,
mainly from the collection of Emmanuele Cicogna (1789-1868) who was purchasing
from local book-dealers, 29 in other Italian libraries. Abroad, they can be
found in collections that were formed with books coming from Italy at different
stages: Giacomo Soranzo (1686-1761); Louis César de La Baume le Blanc,
duc de la Vallière (1708-1780); Justin MacCarthy Reagh (1744-1811) (from
the Loménie de Brienne (1727-1794) and Maffeo Pinelli (1735-1785) collections);
Dimitrij Petrovich count Boutourlin (1763-1829); George John 2nd Earl Spencer
(1758-1834); Victor Masséna Prince d'Essling (1799-1863); Ambroise Firmin-Didot
(1790-1876); Charles Louis de Bourbon comte de Villafranca (1799-1883); William
Horatio Crawford (1815-1888); Tammaro de Marinis (1878-1969); Philip Hofer (1898-1984).
With few exceptions {9},
surviving copies show evidence of early Italian use, either in the decoration,
manuscript notes, binding, or earlier ownership. Among manuscript annotations
there is no trace of French use. Occasional Spanish use (in the Neapolitan editions),
is explicable within the Italian political situation of the time. Therefore,
the evidence surfacing from distribution and early use points towards local
consumption.
This does not however answer questions
about production. What is behind the initial production of printed books of
hours? Can we infer what prompted it?
This question has to be investigated
with relation to the Italian and the French production if we want to understand
the reason of their diversity.
Emmanuele Cicogna, Horatio Brown, and more recently Martin Lowry brought to
the attention of the public the fact that Nicolaus Jenson and John of Cologne
belonged to the confraternity, or Scuola, of San Girolamo in Venice {10}.
The main purpose for joining a confraternity
was that of attaining a spiritual benefit, by showing devotion to a certain
saint, by attending masses, processions, and funeral vigils, and of mutual support.
Among the members listed in the still
surviving manuscript statutes of the scuola, known as mariegola (from the Lat.
matricula) {11},
"Nicolo xanson stampador s. Saluador", is clearly identifiable, and
so is the other early printer active in Venice in the 1470s and '80s, John of
Cologne ["Çuan da Cologna stampador s. paternia[n]"], recently
identified with Johannes Helman, a great Cologne merchant who between 1470 and
1478 was delivering to Cologne 37.4% of the total amount of paper imported by
that city {12}.
We also find Raffael Zovenzonius (1434-c.1485), ["Raffael Zouenzonio fo
de mis[ser] Romeo s. Bo[r]t[olami]o"], the Istrian humanist who worked
as corrector and editor for Vindelinus de Spira, John of Cologne, and Jenson
during the period 1470-72 {13}.
Other printers also listed as such, 'stampador', are "Cristofalo renordi"
and Giovanni Bianco; both are unknown to us, probably employed in printing workshops
in the 1470s, the time when the membership list was composed.
Jenson is listed as from the parish
of San Salvador, sestiere of San Marco; we cannot tell for certain whether San
Salvador is where he was living or working. Generally the mariegole are assumed
to be simply stating the parish of residence, but we should not forget, on one
hand, that San Salvador was and is a central area of Venice where many shops
were located and, on the other, that in Jenson's will he is said to be living
in the parish of San Canzian, sestiere of Cannaregio {14}.
Whatever his connextion with San Salvador, it should be pointed out that there
were three other confraternities associated with that same church: the scuole
of San Leonardo, of Santa Maria nuova and of San Nicolò {15}.
John of Cologne is listed as from
San Paternian, in sestiere of San Marco, where there was no scuola attached
to the parish itself, but it was surrounded by the many confraternities of sestiere
of San Marco, while Zovenzonius is listed as from the parish of San Bartolomeo,
sestiere of San Marco, where also there was a scuola, that of San Mattia.
Now, it is generally remarked that
membership of a scuola in Venice bears little connextion with parish affiliation,
indeed in every given scuola members are found to be coming from all different
parishes. None the less it is a matter of fact that the highest percentage of
members for every given school was made up of inhabitants of the same parish
where the scuola was located. For this reason it is particularly interesting
to notice where individuals chose to belong to scuole in other neighbourhoods,
let alone parishes, and why.
It seems that for the three members
whose collaboration in later years was to become so influential for the Venetian
book trade, the choice of San Girolamo was deliberate. Why so?
The Scuola di San Girolamo had been
founded in 1367 in sestiere of Cannaregio, attached to the convent of the same
name run by Augustinian nuns, within the parish of San Marcuola (a contracted
form of SS. Hermagoras and Fortunatus) {16}.
The convent of San Girolamo was adjacent to the area known from at least the
fourteenth century as the Ghetto.
This is the very area where the foundries
were, and it is surely no coincidence that among members coming from a large
variety of professions, a number of them were metal workers, either goldsmiths,
jewellers, workers in the mint.
Martin Lowry seemed to believe that
Jenson, in possession of the tools and tecnique to cut and cast his own types,
would not have needed outside help. But that he owned all the necessary tools
it is said in his will, at the end of his life. It seems to me that the choice
of San Girolamo points towards the desire to mix within an environment which
would have been able to provide help, if needed. The second noticeable characteristic
among this scuola is the substantial number of foreigners, from Bruges, Antwerp,
Augsburg, active in Venice as merchants at the Fòndaco dei tedeschi:
they include members of some of the greatest German mercantile families, such
as Welser and Stameler of Augsburg Paumgartner of Nuremberg. Finally, the membership
list includes booksellers such as Alexandro Calcedonia liberer; Polo dai libri
in San Salvador, Jenson's parish; Symon da Fiorenza libraro.
An investigation conducted on similar
documents, still extant, belonging to other confraternities has shown that no
printers or booksellers are listed among their members and that the foreign
component is also much more limited. Certainly in the 1470s, while many scuole
were active, it is in this one that we find the two Venetian proto-typographers
in the company of booksellers and northern European traders.
It should be seen as no coincidence
that Jenson printed between 1471 and 1476 devotional literature in vernacular
and between 1474 and 1475 hundreds of books of hours. A genre that he will leave
behind in later years. What I am suggesting here is that Jenson might well have
joined that specific confraternity very early after his arrival in Venice, in
a desire to find support for his activities and possibly even customers. In
fact it seems to me a likely possibility that the printing of the first Venetian
hours was requested or inspired to Jenson by his confraternity: a book of hours,
inclusive of the office of the dead, is a very fitting type of book for members
of pious confraternities.
A tangible element in support of
this hypothesis is the Augustinian aspect of his calendars. As a Frenchman he
should have been rather familiar with this kind of devotional book and aware
of its popularity, at least in his country of origin. The format and lay-out
of his first editions, on the other hand, seem to reflect the Italian style
of manuscript books of hours circulating at that period, where priority is given
to the portable pocket size and consequent relative simplicity of contents and
decoration {17}.
Certainly practically all editions of hours printed by Jenson are in 16°,
a format widely associated with Jenson's hours. These small formats will continue
to be the characteristic of books of hours printed in Italy. The adoption of
the small format can be taken as further evidence of Jenson's attention and
response to the local demand for this kind of book. When asked to produce small
books for private devotion by his own scuola and later by other local institutions,
it must not have occurred to Jenson that such books might have an international
circulation.
We should also remember that Hours were never popular books in Italy during
the period preceding the introduction of printing. The survey that a young French
scholar is conducting on manuscript books of Hours clearly shows that there
are today 1307 books of hours in France against 199 in Italy.
This case of printing for guilds would not be an isolated case: from the Incunable Short-Title Catalogue can be extracted similar evidence.
This as far as the initial Venetian
production is concerned, but what about Paris? The larger evidence available
to us (the many editions surviving in many more copies than the Italian ones)
depicts a very different picture. Like in Italy the early editions rely on the
manuscripts exemplars circulating at the time, however the Parisian ones presented
very different characteristics. As a consequence, the earliest editions of Hours
printed in Paris, dating to c. 1485, are more sophisticated in content, use
more the vernacular language, are much larger generally in size (smallest size
is 8°, never a 16°), and present borders decorated by using woodcuts,
first with only floral or grotesque decoration, then, from 1489 onwards, these
borders host parallel narrative text, an ingenious innovation of the Parisian
printers, well studied by Mary Beth Winn {18}.
Their calendars, however, are much more homogeneous, basically all the same.
The variation in the contents therefore is more likely to be attributed to the
Parisian printers and publishers, eager to offer to their market innovative
products, than to specific commission, as in the Venice cases.
But the Parisian editions are many
and their classification and cataloguing presently in an appalling state: until
the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke will have published
its survey of the incunable Hours, in the making for the last five years, it
will be quite difficult to apply to the Parisian printed Hours the systematic
approach that has allowed us to clarify the historical circumstances surrounding
the publication of the Venetian hours: hopefully rescue is in sight.