Aldus Manutius

Italian scholar

• Born: c. 1450
• Birthplace: Bassiano, Papal States (now in Italy)
• Died: February 6, 1515
• Place of death: Venice, Republic of Venice (now in Italy)

Manutius’s printing company helped to spread the central texts and ideas of Humanism to European readers. Manutius also was the first printer to use the italic font, and he pioneered the use of the pocket-sized book for literary classics, a precursor to the modern paperback.

Early Life

Aldus Manutius (AWL-duhs mah-NYEW-shee-uhs) was born near Rome. Although next to nothing is known about his family, he was certainly educated in some of the most eminent Humanist circles in fifteenth century Rome and Ferrara. Alongside the traditional Latin, he also learned Greek, which was to become the focal point of his printing program.

By the early 1480’s, Aldus had moved into the circle surrounding the great scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and was soon appointed tutor to Pico’s nephews, Alberto and Leonello Pio, the princes of Carpi. In these circles he encountered other significant Humanists and established a range of distinguished contacts and friends that was to serve him well in his later career. In the late 1480’s, some of his poetic compositions were published, dedicated to his royal patrons. In 1493, the established Venetian printer Andrea Torresani, soon to become his business partner, printed an elementary Latin grammar that Aldus had written, which was reprinted by his own press several times.

Probably motivated by the desire to ally his pedagogical ideals to the new power of print, Aldus settled in Venice around 1490. At that time Venice was the biggest center of printing in Europe, less than half a century after the invention of the printing press. Aldus set in motion the printing enterprise that was to produce its first works in 1495. A most important step was the partnership he formed with Torresani (whose daughter Maria he wed around 1505), with the financial backing of the powerful Pierfrancesco Barbarigo, the nephew of the then doge of Venice. Although Aldus put in less capital than his partners, he was the “brains” behind the business. The new company became known as the Aldine Press .

Life’s Work

Manutius’s first dated work was Constantine Lascaris’s Greek grammar Erotemata. Publishing this work, in 1495, was typical of the pedagogical motive that drove Aldus: to help his readers build a firm foundation in the Greek (and Latin) languages from which to pursue their studies in what he called “good letters.” The next few years saw the publication of an ambitious collection of Greek works, most importantly the series of the works of Aristotle (1495-1498), dedicated to the publisher’s old patron, Prince Alberto Pio of Carpi.

In the long, elegant prefaces and dedication letters he appended to a great many of his works from the very first days of his business, Aldus clearly set out his guiding ideals and reported on the progress of his business. Like other Humanists, he believed strongly that most social ills could be remedied by the resurrection and publication of the great works of classical antiquity, particularly Greek. Although classical works had been numerous from the earliest days of Italian printing, Aldus thought his press, armed with the most elegant types and meticulous and learned editors (including himself), could contribute to this process more than any previous printing firm.

Although his focus was on Greek, Aldus also printed a number of Latin and vernacular works in the years to 1500. These included Pietro Bembo’s De Aetna (1496), featuring a newly cut and incredibly influential Roman typeface; Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), a fanciful, lavishly illustrated vernacular work; and the letters of Saint Catherine of Siena in Italian (1500).

Around 1500, probably because of financial demands, Aldus was forced to shift somewhat the emphasis of his printing enterprise from scholarly and Greek works toward more popular and salable texts. In 1501, the press began to issue a new type of book, and a new font type, for which it was to become even more renowned: the pocket-sized octavo editions of classic texts such as Vergil and Cicero, printed in the novel italic font. Significantly, Aldus also chose to present the texts stripped of the marginal commentaries with which they were traditionally burdened, allowing for a smaller, more manageable text. Perfectly suited to the itinerant lifestyle of many European scholars, these works were eagerly embraced. They were more affordable than the expensive and weighty earlier publications and featured works that were established classics, thus finding a ready market.

Although these octavo books cemented the success of the Aldine Press and its fame across Europe, the later years of Aldus’s career were full of travails and disruptions. The times in which he had chosen to found his enterprise, as Aldus often reminded readers, were war-torn and tumultuous ones for Europe. This made the search for ancient manuscripts as sources, as well as the editing, printing, and distribution of these printed books, a difficult task. In 1505, Aldus interrupted his work and left Venice with his new wife, probably to search for manuscripts. He resumed work eighteen months later but abandoned it again from 1509 to 1512, when Venice was engaged in war. From this time until his death in 1515, he worked continuously, although his prefatory letters often lamented the constant stress and toil of trying to run an enterprise such as his own.

The press’s notable publications also include Bembo’s Gli Asolani (1505); the collected Adagia (1500) of the Dutch Humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who stayed for a time in Aldus’s household while his work was prepared for publication; and the works of Plato in Greek (1513), dedicated to Pope Leo X.

Aldus’s prefaces and dedications promoted the ideal of a Republic of Letters linked across Europe by its commitment to learning and literature and linked by the new technology of print; Aldus’s press itself became a focal point for the scholars of his time. A great variety of the most important Italian and European scholars and authors frequented the Aldine circle, helping to edit and track down manuscripts. This learned circle was known as the Aldine Academy, and it was the publisher’s fervent hope for many years that he would be able to found a true educational institution from this nucleus, so that Greek and Latin language and literature could continue to flourish in Europe. Although several eminent potential patrons showed an interest in his project, the dream was never realized. Nevertheless, the printing company established by Aldus was carried on for a century by his heirs, who often harked back to the legacy of their great forebear and proudly adopted his famous emblem of the dolphin and anchor.

Significance

The place of Aldus in printing and intellectual history is justified on a number of fronts. Stylistically, the introduction of the typefaces he oversaw, particularly the italic and the Roman, were much-copied across Europe and have remained standards into the twenty-first century. Likewise, his octavo format, a cheaper, more portable vehicle for popular texts, prefigured the paperback books popularized in the twentieth century.

Setting into print a great number of Greek and Latin (as well as a few vernacular Italian) works for the first time was also critical to the development and dissemination of European scholarship. Aldus’s efforts contributed to the spread of Renaissance-era ideas far beyond the borders of Italy.

Bibliography

Davies, Martin. Aldus Manutius: Printer and Publisher of Renaissance Venice. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999. Useful, succinct account of Aldus’s career, placed in the context of late fifteenth century Italy.

Fletcher, H. George. In Praise of Aldus Manutius: A Quincentenary Exhibition. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library, 1995. A well-illustrated and annotated catalog of a major exhibition of Aldine books that includes a helpful overview of the company’s progress to the late sixteenth century.

Fletcher, H. George. New Aldine Studies: Documentary Essays on the Life and Work of Aldus Manutius. San Francisco, Calif.: Bernard M. Rosenthal, 1988. Draws together the available evidence to fill out the details of Aldus’s life.

Lowry, Martin. The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979. Still the definitive biography of Manutius. Evaluates his work and legacy in the context of the Venetian intellectual and commercial world. Contains tables of his publications and an extensive bibliography.

Zeidberg, David S., ed. Aldus Manutius and Renaissance Culture: Essays in Memory of Franklin D. Murphy. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1994. A collection of scholarship on Aldus, looking at both the stylistic and intellectual aspects of his business.