Aldus Manutius Sets His Text

One of the great watersheds of world history was the recent conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Much more than the military and naval battles that overtook this now diminished city-state with its environs, this grand city had once been the great capital of the great Eastern Empire of Rome. As part of that grand edifice, along with the great churches and convents that the capital had supported for over a thousand years, were its books. And for a time, as important as these books were, were those who knew what was in which of them.

There were few readers of ancient Greek outside of Greek monasteries, and no systematic way of disseminating this knowledge (until the spread of the printing press over the next few generations). It fell to people like Cardinal Nicenas, known as Bessarion, to carry these Greek texts, and by virtue of their foresight then became of central importance to the transmission of so many of the various documents of the wider western civilization. And often by precarious boat. He at least knew what he was bringing in the decades before the final battles.

By the time the great capital fell, he was already living in Italy. In 1468, Bessarion gave a great gift of many such documents to the city of Venice. It took nearly fifty years for the city to find the time and money to properly house them with attendant losses in her wet climate. But Aldo Manutius found time for some specific items to publish.

Another of these transmitters of crucial import was Constantine Lascaris. Born to a noble family in Constantinople, he escaped to Rhodes in 1453. Later he managed to find patronage under Francesco Sforza in Milan. There Lascaris must have spent ten years or so at the court in Milan, hired on to teach Greek to the famous leader's clever daughter, Ippolita. These must have been the happiest of sad circumstances for him in Milan compared with the lives of multitudes that could escape the city of his birth or, find rest and welcome elsewhere. Thousands had left and thousands remained in Constantinople. When the great Sforza died in 1466 , through the help of Bessarion himself, a 'chair' was found for Lascaris in Messina. He would stay there in Sicily teaching Greek to the monks of St Basil (and others along the way) until his death from the plague in 1501.

Lascaris wrote a grammar for Greek while in Milan, and later saw it published in 1476. This grammar Aldo Maunzio knew had seen additional versions (1480 in Milan and, out of Verona in 1489, 1491), before he built his press in Venice. He aimed to press one with more recent corrections and much additional material. Manutius says he received such a version personally corrected by Lascaris himself from Pietro Bembo and Angelo Gabriele who, he says, had studied under the great teacher while in Messina. But the process for Manuzio was much more than finding a good recent and corrected manuscript. It took years for him to set it all up.

His motivations for the project can be seen clearly in the order that he accomplished things. First the mechanics, the press itself, the letters carved, the weights and levers calibrated. These and the ink and paper all had to be paid for. Then the first work to appear was a Latin grammar in spring of 1493. This Aldo dedicated to a former student of his, Alberto Pio. More on him later. In addition to this former student turned benefactor, another patron was Lorenzo Maioli. Later, Marcus Musurus, another like Lascaris (also a Greek refugee), would become central to the circle of production at the Aldine press.

Next in the series after the Latin was the Greek grammar. This, based on that by Constantine Lascaris, appeared finally two years later, in March of 1495. After this the series of works of Aristotle began appearing, and still more. But by then, Venice and Italy had been transformed by war. It was on everybody's mind. In an era full of recurring war, recurring plague, recurring controversy and upset, the view into another age, for Aldus, could bring a measure of clarity. As well as an income and association with important people. But the wars that would sweep across Italy over the next twenty years would continually beset and trouble him.

In this very first of publications, Manuzio saw fit to complain about them, resorting to his knowledge base. The production was of enormous expense, partly due to the wars themselves, because,

"God is angry at our misdeeds, and look as if they will soon upset or indeed shatter the whole world, on account of the multifarious crimes of humanity, far more numerous and serious than those which were once the reason for an angry God to submerge and destroy in a flood the whole human race. How very true, Valerius Maximus [1st c. CE], is that remark of yours, a golden saying which deserves to be quoted: "With slow steps divine anger moves to punish, and it compensates for its slow pace by the gravity of the punishment." There is a well known proverb in the vernacular: "Ancient misdeed, recent punishment."... would that we were human in reality as well as in name, not just in name but in practice to be counted among the animals. Cicero says, "Some people are men not in reality but in name." ... God will bring these matters also to an end." i,1

Showing a strong faith in righteous retribution of a vengeful God, Manutius also reaches back to the time of Christ to prove the ancients as well had stern warnings for current affairs.
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Manutius, Aldus: The Greek Classics ed. & trans. by N.G. Wilson, for The I Tatti Renaissance Library (ITRI); by The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2016