Printing and Publishing (from ca. 1500)

Issu d’un colloque organisé en septembre 2020 ce volume part de la nécessité de faire dialoguer histoire de la théologie et histoire des savoirs. Il se concentre plus particulièrement sur les lieux académiques de la production de la théologie sur son rapport à d’autres disciplines et son séquençage en sous-disciplines sur sa circulation dans des espaces plus vastes et sur le rapport aux éditeurs. Les 16 contributions ici rassemblées rompent avec l’écriture classique de l’histoire de la théologie qui est restée à grande distance des questions et des méthodes de l’histoire des savoirs ils rompent également avec la réticence des historiens des savoirs à appréhender l’objet-théologie malgré son importance dans les universités européennes des deux derniers siècles. Ce volume s’inscrit dans un agenda renouvelé d’historicisation des conditions et de la production des savoirs théologiques dans le monde catholique depuis les restaurations européennes du 19e siècle jusqu’à Vatican II.

Vita et miracula s. Symeonis Treverensis (BHL 7963-7964) is a hagiographic composite text written by various authors and released in several versions. Symeon died in the summer of 1035. The first version vita and miracula were composed within months in order to be sent to the pope who quickly canonized him. The author was Eberwinus abbot of no fewer than three monasteries who had known Symeon in person. For as long as Eberwinus lived probably until c. 1040 he was undoubtedly in charge of polishing the text of the vita and adding new contents to the miracula. His successor as author identified by a single manuscript was Warnerus schoolmaster of the collegiate church of St Symeon. Several additions to the miracula were made the last one by an anonymous writer probably at St Symeon’s in 1086. A very complex manuscript transmission ensued characterized by several releases. This chapter maps relationships between all fifty-eight hitherto known extant witnesses. In addition to traditional textual criticism the examination is based on computational analysis with various algorithms applied. The result is a well-grounded hypothetical stemma a point of reference for our historical enquiry into the publication and reception of St Symeon’s vita and miracula. The textual history provides insights into how a saintly cult might be built in the high Middle Ages.

After Boccaccio’s death in 1375 his library was taken to the convent of Santo Spirito in Florence. The move was prescribed by his testament drafted over a year earlier. Boccaccio’s books first passed into the hands of Martino da Signa Augustinian friar of Santo Spirito and subsequently its prior. This chapter investigates how the testament effected primary circulation for Boccaccio’s works in particular those in Latin. Their earliest known erudite readers were men of letters who belonged to the so-called “circolo di Santo Spirito”. They turned to Martino to obtain copies made directly from Boccaccio’s originals. Florentine laymen and religious were involved including the jurist Lorenzo di Antonio Ridolfi (1363-1443) the Chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1332-1406) the notary and poet Domenico Silvestri (1335-1411) the poet Cino Rinuccini (1350-1417) the Dominican friar Zenobi Guasconi (1325-1383) and the Franciscan friar Tedaldo della Casa (1330- 1409). While motivated to acquire copies of Boccaccio’s works for a variety of reasons each man was somehow connected to Martino da Signa. The manuscript evidence provides fresh insights into this nexus and its contribution to Boccaccio’s posthumous recognition as a Latin author. Assessed from this perspective his testament emerges as an effective instrument for publishing post mortem.

This chapter examines what the publishing of theological texts meant in the Carolingian period focusing on treatises on the nature and origin of the soul. Not everyone was supposed to publicly disseminate their theological writings and successful publishing required connections to those in authority. The texts examined were written for different audiences and for different purposes educational and controversial. Several of these treatises are connected to discussions in the 850s about the soul. Their analysis demonstrates how thinking about whether or in what sense they were published deepens our understanding of the nature of those discussions.

Several of Dante’s works got into circulation only after his death often derived from an original not prepared for publication and thus introducing errors and lacunae. This applies to De vulgari eloquentia Convivio and Epistola a Cangrande. This chapter first introduces the case of the two former works both uncompleted treatises and then focuses on Epistola a Cangrande. The analysis of the direct tradition the reconstruction of the archetype and insights provided by the indirect tradition up to the sixteenth century suggest that Dante wrote the Epistola towards the end of his sojourn at Verona but that he never sent it to the addressee. Descending from an original not intended for publication the archetype was a severely corrupt text something that undermines the opinion that the letter was a forgery made in north-eastern Italy as has been proposed in the past. In contrast study of the manuscripts demonstrates that dissemination began at Florence after Dante’s death where the poet’s sons brought their father’s other writings the Epistola among them.

This chapter discusses the publication of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum. The focus is the author’s relationship with his commissioners who were Dukes Richard I and Richard II of Normandy and Count Rolf of Ivry and his dedicatee Bishop Adalbero of Laon. Archbishop Robert of Rouen also played a significant role in the publication as is evident from the numerous poems by which he is addressed at key junctures in the work. It is proposed that Dudo’s choice of dedicatee reflected his objective of reaching his wider target audience namely the classrooms of Normandy and France and that this aspect is also evident in the work’s contents. Building on the evidence of the manuscripts the paper proposes that explanatory rubrics accompanying the verses in Historia Normannorum were directed towards that same end of gaining school readerships. The extant manuscripts which include neither authorial nor primary copies suggest that Dudo’s publication plan proved successful only in part. The work was circulated in Norman monasteries and cathedrals and thus contributed to the establishment shaping and preservation of memories of the duchy’s past one of Dudo’s other main objectives. Yet the absence of pertinent evidence implies that the intended penetration into schools in France was not accomplished at least for a significant while. The identification of Historia Normannorum’s publication context helps us more accurately to appreciate Dudo’s authorial intention and voice.

Louis Mink (1921-1983) was an American philosopher who contributed greatly to historical theory. In two seminal essays published in 1960 and 1970 Mink presented three different modes of understanding - theoretical categoreal and configurational - each of which he saw as typical of although not exclusive to a specific scholarly field or tradition. According to Mink the theoretical mode is the classical approach of the natural sciences with physics as a paradigmatic example; the categoreal mode is the home domain of philosophy; and history operates principally in the configurational mode. This methodological essay uses Mink’s categories to analyze previous research into the history of manuscript publishing arguing that all three have been applied to the topic. While all three approaches have contributed to our understanding of the phenomenon it is argued that theoretical and categoreal approaches yield too specific results and cannot therefore open up very promising avenues for further research. The most fruitful access to the subject in that respect must be the configurational mode. Finally drawing on parallels from the historiography of the printed book this essay makes the case for not looking at the history of manuscript publishing in isolation from other historical phenomena. To cast new and interesting light on the past such research needs to consider publishing in relation to social political and ideological developments a suggestion which circles back to Mink’s view of historical research as ultimately configurational scholarship.

Poggio Bracciolini’s (1380-1459) eldest son Jacopo (1442-1478) was not only an author in Latin and the vernacular but also an accomplished scribe. A staunch republican he was executed in the aftermath of the failed Pazzi conspiracy against Medici rule in 1478. His most important project was the Latin edition (1472) and vernacular translation (by 1474) of his father’s last incomplete work Historiae Florentini populi an alternative history of Florence. Half of Poggio’s unfinished Latin text is transmitted in a modest paper draft from c. 1500. Jacopo rearranged and completed all of the text in refined Humanist Latin and dedicated it to Frederick of Montefeltro then count of Urbino. Jacopo’s edition is transmitted in copies of the fifteenth century the luxurious dedication copy in parchment (Vat. lat. 491) carefully supervised by Jacopo and another luxury manuscript both probably produced in the bottega of Vespasiano da Bisticci; and in the sixteenth century by two much more modest paper manuscripts. Jacopo’s publishing project also covered the dissemination of the work in his own vernacular version in a few luxury manuscripts and in print. While the Latin text was only finally printed in 1715 by G. B. Recanati the vernacular version Istoria fiorentina appeared in 1476 financed by Girolamo di Carlo Strozzi (1441/2-1481/2) and printed at the Venetian printing house of Jacques Le Rouge in 1476. The print ensured the success of the vernacular text well beyond Jacopo’s political disgrace in 1478.

Desde 1469 año en el que vio la luz la editio princeps del Bellum Ciuile en Roma el poema de Lucano se imprimió íntegramente en diecisiete ocasiones en el siglo XV y en dieciocho en los primeros veinte años del siglo XVI. Así su difusión y lectura durante el Renacimiento fue profusa. En muy poco tiempo los ejemplares impresos procedentes de diferentes talleres de imprenta europeos sobre todo italianos circularon por la Península Ibérica.

En el presente volumen se aborda en primer lugar el estudio filológico del texto transmitido por las ediciones incunables y postincunables del Bellum Ciuile. Durante estos primeros años de tradición impresa se establecieron diferentes formas textuales del poemay finalmente se configuró la vulgata del texto. El análisis filológico del texto de Lucano transmitido en estas ediciones incunables y postincunables ha permitido precisar las relaciones de filiación entre ediciones reconocer las diferentes familias textuales que convivieron en los primeros años de tradición impresa y dar los primeros pasos en la descripción de su relación con la tradición manuscrita así como en la identificación de la intervención de los editores sobre el texto. Todo ello contribuye desde el estudio de una tradición determinada al conocimiento del trabajo editorial realizado en el Renacimiento sobre textos latinos antiguos.

Igualmente se presenta el corpus de ejemplares conservados en bibliotecas españolas atendiendo a las huellas de lectura y a los poseedores que han dejado su rastro en este valioso patrimonio bibliográfico del que somos herederos.