Mining Library Treasures

Due to the invention of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg (1397 – 1468) in the middle of the fifteenth century, the book production increased considerably. Together with Germany and France, Italy formed the centre of book production in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. In Italy, 12.500 books were printed in the fifteenth century and this number increased significantly in the next era to 65.000 books. Venice was the printing town in this period for Italy; she established herself for both the printing of books as well as the book trade.

Because of this new mass production of books, the need arose to organise the book production in a manageable way, both from the perspective of the printer as well as from the Venetian state. Since Venice was the printing hub, they were at the forefront of regulations for printing and copyright. These regulations mainly existed of the permitting of privileges to printers. A privilege was the granting of copyright, which gave a special concession or right to produce and reproduce specified works in printed form for a specified period.

Since the printing of books required rather large investments, one can imagine printers felt the need to protect their rights and product. Certainly, because the investment could only be profitable, if the book sold well and the change of this logically increased with limited rivalry.

The turning point of 1517

In the second decade of the sixteenth century, the privilege system became quite uncontrollable. The granted privileges were recorded by the Venetian College, and several aspects like the duration, for what it had been granted and for whom were written down. However, it seems that the College had no convenient way of checking all these privileges, which imaginably caused several problems. For example, this made it difficult to check if a book already had a privilege or that the specified time period was expired. But the main problems were the sheer number of privilege that had been granted and the possibility that a book had a printing privilege, but was never actually printed. This could be because the printer failed to do so, which in the end causes unnecessary stagnation of the book market.  

To resolve these problems, a new law was established on August first, 1517 which stated that I) all old privileges were withdrawn, that II) new privilege could only be granted by the Senate and that III) these new privileges could only be granted for new works or never before published works.

Besides the Venetian privilege, Italy also had a papal privilege. In comparison with the Venetian privilege, the papal one gave more extensive protection and used firmer penalties. Besides the above-mentioned reasons for the new privilege law in Venice the extend of the papal privilege could be a reason Venice updated the legalisation of privileges. The papal privilege could be granted to works printed outside of the Papal States, whereas the Venetian privilege was initially restricted to books that were printed in Venice. Though the Venetian senate soon realised this affected their international book trade market and expanded the privilege to works printed outside of Venice.

It seems logically that these privileges were in competition with each other, but this is surprisingly not the case. Printers just applied for both options, probably to increase their chances of successfully publishing the book.

Michele Tramezzino and Giovanni Varisco

One of the printers who received such privileges was Michele Tramezzino (1526 – 1582). He started printing in Rome, but soon after that moved to Venice. From the end of the 1540s, Tramezzino was interested in printing books and prints on both ancient and modern Rome. On July 30, 1548 he received a privilege from the Venetian senate for ten years to print Lucio Fauno’s (? – 1552) Delle antichità della citta di Roma (1548) (see fig. 1). Besides the Venetian privilege, Tramezzino also gained a Papal privilege from Pope Paul III (1468 – 1549) for the same book. He was one of the printers who actively made use of the privilege system and obtained a whopping 73 privileges between the years 1525 and 1550. Besides Delle antichità della citta di Roma, he published numerous other works such as prints from the Italian painter and architecture Pirro Ligorio (1510 – 1585) for which he also gained several privileges.

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Giovanni Varisco (? – 1597) was a contemporary of Tramezzino and was a publisher who stood at the head of the Varisco family. From his inheritance, which were divide between his two male children, we can see that the family was a larger player in the Italian book trade at the time. The family owned a house and a shop in Venice, shops and book warehouses in Naples, Lanciano, and Recanati, and two warehouses near the monastery of Santo Stefano. Varisco also gained privilege for several of his works. For instance, for Le antichità della città di Roma (1569) (see fig. 2)with comments of Tommaso Porcacchi (1530 – 1585).

Although privileges could be useful this does not mean that only books with privilege were brought onto the market. Le cose maravigliose de l'alma città di Roma (1566) (see fig. 3) also printed by Varisco three years earlier than the other book, is printed without a privilege.

Printing the privilege

Off course a privilege is inadequate when nobody knows you own the rights to the book.  The most common way to spread the word that you gained a privilege as printer was by printing the privilege in the book. This could be either the entire privilege or a short resume of it. The obtained privileges by Tramezzino for the Delle antichità della citta di Roma can be read in the front of the book; both of them are printed in full before the actual text of the book. Although Tramezzino printed his privileges in whole in the book, it was not necessary to do so. For instance, Varisco just mentions his privilege for the book on the title-page with no extra information in the next few pages. Apparently, it was enough to just mention the privilege and because of the mostly standardised way privileges were formed people would understand the content and the consequences of violating them.

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Typically, the privileges mention what will happen if some violates them. For example, the Venetian privilege for Tramezzino mentions that if someone prints this specific work they have to pay a fine “di pagare ducati cento” (see fig. 4).

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As mentioned before the papal privilege was much stricter than the Venetian one. One of the punishments for violating the privilege was the possibility of automatic excommunication “Excommunicationis latae sentential” (see fig. 5). Excommunication was not an unusual punishment in the sixteenth century, but definitely harsher than ‘just’ paying a fine.

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The privilege system changed the book trade in the sixteenth century, but also enabled several publishers to effectively make use of these legislations and consequently become a key player in the publishing business of Italy and abroad.