Volume 2 — CHAPTER I.

PRIVILEGES AND CENSORSHIP IN ITALY.

1498-1798.

THE legislation of the Venetian Republic in regard to privileges, monopolies, and copyrights was more continuous and more important than that of any Italian State. In fact, the enactments of the other States for the supervision of printing and for the encouragement and protection of literary productions were so far similar to those of Venice (upon which many of them had probably been modelled) that the series of Venetian laws can be taken as fairly representative of the general system prevailing in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The requirements of my subject will, therefore, be most conveniently met by confining my record for Italy to a summary of the copyright legislation of Venice, in place of undertaking to give the details for each Italian city in which printing was carried on. For the data of this record I am largely indebted to the scholarly treatise of Horatio F. Brown, on The Venetian Printing Press, to which previous reference has been made.

The action of the Government in regard to the book-trade presents itself in two main divisions: the first including the steps taken to protect and encourage the new art and those concerned in it; and the second, the measures planned to protect the State from certain dangers which it was dreaded might be brought upon it by the operations of the Press. Under the first heading are to be classed monopolies, copyrights, patents, and protection against foreign competition; while under the second come the measures of censorship—religious, moral, and political. The term “privilegii” was applied to all copyrights, patents, monopolies, and special concessions having to do with books and printing.

Between 1469 and 1517, these privilegii were, as a rule, granted by the College or Cabinet of Venice, and their record is to be found in the Minutes of the Cabinet. Occasionally, however, the Senate conferred the privilege, and sometimes a concession was issued under the direction of the chiefs of the Council. While privileges appear to have been freely granted to all bona fide applicants, the Government did not make the securing of a privilege obligatory upon the publisher.

The first kind of privilege was a simple monopoly, under which the Government granted to the beneficiary for a term of years the sole right to print or to sell a whole class of books. The earliest Venetian privilege on record, which is also probably the earliest in Italy, was that of 1469, under which a monopoly was given to John of Speyer, for a period of five years, for the printing of books in Venice. Fortunately for the development in this city of the art of printing and of the business of publishing, John died shortly after securing this monopoly. It was not continued to his heirs, and Jenson, Nicolas of Frankfort, and their associates were left free to push their printing operations as they saw fit.

The second class of privilege was that securing to an author the copyright in his production. This constitutes, of course, a recognition of the existence of literary property and of the rights of literary producers. The earliest record of such a copyright in Venice (and also the earliest for Italy) bears date September 1, 1486. It secures to Mr. Antonio Sabellico, historian to the Republic, for apparently an indefinite term, the sole right to publish, or to authorise the publication of, his Decades rerum Venetarium. The penalty for infringement was five hundred ducats. The words of the concession are worth quoting, as, in securing for the author a literary proprietorship in his work, it established a precedent of great importance:

Quod opus prefatum per Marcum Antonium prefatum dari possit alicui diligenti impressori qui opus illud imprimat suis sumptibus et edat et nemini præter eum liceat opus illud imprimi facere.[144]

In the year 1493, a more formal and explicit recognition of literary proprietorship was given in the privilege granted to Daniele Barbaro, securing to him for ten years a copyright in the work of his deceased brother Hermolao Barbaro, the Castigationes Plinii. In January, 1492, a copyright for an unspecified term was granted to Peter of Ravenna for his work Phœnix or Fœnix. The form used is the same as that of the privilege given to Sabellico. No one is to print the work except under the authority of the author. Klostermann and others have referred to this privilege for Peter’s Phœnix as the earliest instance in Europe of government recognition of an author’s copyright, but, as we have seen, the protection given to Sabellico antedates this by nearly six years.

The third class of privilege is that securing to an editor or publisher a copyright for works not of his own (literary) production, and it is of this class that the instances are the most numerous. The earliest example of a copyright to an editor is that granted, in 1493, to Joannes Nigro for his edition of Haliabas. The formula is the same as that used in the copyrights to authors. In the same year a copyright (also without a term limitation) was given to the printer-publisher Bernadino de Benaliis for the work by Giustiniani, entitled De Origine Urbis Venetiarum.[145]

In connection with this class of copyrights, abuses soon arose. Copyrights were secured by a number of printers, or printer-publishers, for works which they never issued, and which, in not a few cases, they apparently never intended to issue. The possession of these privileges was used to obtain from bona fide publishers purchase moneys for which no service had been rendered either to the community or to the individuals, and when these moneys could not be afforded or were not paid, there resulted a block in publishing undertakings.

The fourth kind of privilege conceded by the Venetian College was of the nature of a patent rather than a copyright. It secured a protection for improvements and developments in the art of printing, or for specific classes of literature. In 1496, for instance, a privilege was given to Aldus by the Venetian Government, for a term of twenty years, for all books that he might print in Greek text. In connection with this copyright, he secured what might be called a patent right for his particular character of Greek type and for his special method of printing. In his petition he represented that in the making of these Greek fonts, he had invested a large part of his resources.

In 1501, Aldus obtained a copyright of ten years for all works printed in the cursive or italic character, of which he claimed the invention, and which possessed the special advantage of compactness. The Greek type was said to have been modelled on the script of Musurus, as the cursive was a fac-simile of the writing of Boccaccio.

In 1498, a monopoly for the term of twenty-five years was granted to Terracina for all books printed in Arabic, Moorish, Syriac, Armenian, Indian, and Barbary. Throughout the sixteenth century, a number of patents were granted for improvements in the art of printing.

The four classes of privileges thus far cited were concerned with the protection of the individual producer against competition within the Venetian State. A fifth kind of privilege had for its purpose the protection of Venetian printing and publishing as a whole against the competition of foreign rivals. The Government of Venice upheld what would now be called a protective system, and it undertook to secure its industries against interference or competition from foreigners.

In the printing privilege granted to John of Speyer, in 1469, provision was made to prohibit the importation of books printed elsewhere, a provision that, if strictly enforced, must have weighed rather heavily upon Venetian scholars and students, and in necessitating the reprinting, for a comparatively small community, of any books required for Venetian readers, must have tended to keep the price of those books high.

In all the privileges subsequently granted appears a provision prohibiting the importation of any foreign edition of the work securing Venetian copyright. Such a prohibition, however, is of course in line with the restrictive and protective features of modern copyright law, and is a very different thing from the attempt made in the edict of 1769, previously quoted, to prevent the importation into Venetian territory of any books printed abroad. The former restriction constitutes an essential feature of any system of copyright, while the latter was a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the theory of “protection to home industries.” In 1519, in a copyright granted to Manenti, physician to the Duke of Urbino, appears the condition that the book securing Venetian copyright must be printed in Venetian territory; and in the copyrights issued thereafter this proviso is seldom omitted. A similar provision finds place in a number of the copyright enactments of later times, the most recent instance being the American law of 1891.

The applications for privileges or copyrights submitted by the printer-publishers were quite frequently accompanied by special reasons why in each particular case such a petition should be granted. Sometimes it was on the ground of the general excellence of their printing and their guaranty that the edition now proposed shall possess special beauty and accuracy of typography; sometimes they engage to secure the highest grade of scholarship for the text revision and for the editorial work; again they will plead poverty or distress, or large families to support, or special need of some kind.

In the year 1493, we have an example of an application for a privilege being accompanied by a certificate from certain competent authorities as to the value and the importance for the community of the work to be published.[146] The applicant was Bernardino de Benaliis, and the publications in question were the works of Beato Lorenzo Giustiniani and of Tartagni da Imola. Benaliis submitted from a number of the doctors in law at the University of Padua certificates as to the value of the book.

Foreigners made a practice of supporting their petitions with letters of commendation, either from the ambassadors of their own states, or of some other of the foreign ambassadors. The applications or petitions were not always granted, and, occasionally, conditions were attached upon which the continued validity of the privilege was made to depend. Such conditions fell into four general divisions, concerned with, first, the quality of the work to be produced, secondly (though infrequently) the speed of its production, thirdly the price at which it was to be sold, and fourthly the rights of the producers, i.e., publishers. As an example of the first kind can be noted the privilege granted to Benaliis, already cited, under which he is bound not to publish the works of Tartagni without those of Giustiniani, nor vice versa, and he must further guarantee to print the volumes in the finest style of typography and with the most correct text.

The privilege given in 1494 for certain books to be issued by Matteo de Codeca, is coupled with the condition that the volumes are to be sold at a “fair price” (pretio honestissimo), and a similar term is used in the privilege given in 1496 to Landriano. In a certain number of the privileges, principally those of earlier date, we find the condition that the works must be published within a year from the date of the application, or must be printed at a certain rate per week.

The College kept no register of the privileges issued by it other than the entries in its minutes, and it happened not infrequently, as the number of petitions increased, that exclusive privileges for the same work were granted to different applicants. Conflicts naturally arose between two publishers claiming control of the same work, but when any cases of the kind were brought up for adjudication, they were decided in favour of the privileges bearing the earliest date, providing always that the condition of publishing within a certain term had been complied with. As a result of these complications, however, the practice came to be adopted of attaching to a privilege a saving clause to the effect that it should be invalid in case any earlier privilege should already have been issued for the same work.

Among other instances of such a proviso, Brown quotes that included in the privilege granted, in 1493, to Calcedonio, which closes thus: declarato, quod hæc gratia intelligatur casu quo opera ipsa sint nova, et aliquis alius jam non cœperit illa imprimere, vel sibi promissum fuerit. Another form, occurring in 1502, was dummodo prius dicta volumina non fuerint impressa.[147]

The Minutes of the College were not open to the inspection of the public, and it appears that no subject indexes were kept of the business transacted, while, as before said, no attempts were made to preserve any list or register of the privileges issued. The printers and publishers had, therefore, no safe means of ascertaining whether or not they were infringing a previous copyright.

The average term of the earlier privileges was ten years. In the latter half of the sixteenth century, however, it became the practice to grant longer terms. There are examples, in 1569, of privileges of twenty years, and, in 1596, of twenty-four and twenty-five years. The terms varied, however, very greatly, and it is difficult to trace the grounds upon which a longer or a shorter time was decided upon. We find instances of one year, five years, ten years, fifteen years, etc.

The copyrights run sometimes from the date of the application and sometimes from that of the publication. After 1505, the practice obtained of granting prolongations of privileges in cases in which good cause had been shown for such prolongation. An instance of such an extension is the case of Leonardo Crasso’s edition of the works of Polifilo, for which, in 1508, a second copyright term of ten years was granted on the ground that the wars had prevented the publisher from getting back his investment. The principal difficulty with these earlier privileges was the absence of any machinery to secure their enforcement or the protection of the owners of the copyrights. Brown says that there is no instance or record of a suit being brought by one printer against another for infringement of copyright. Complaints for infringement were presented from time to time to the College or to the Council of Ten. In 1499, the Council of Ten issued an order to publishers to respect the copyrights granted to Antonio Moretto of Brescia.

In 1495, Biondo and Giambattista secured for ten years a privilege in the Letters of S. Catherine of Siena. The same work was, however, published by Aldus in 1500, five years before Biondo’s privilege had expired. The Letters of Phalaris were published in 1498 by Braccio, and in 1499 by Aldus, and there appears to have been no determination of the question to whom the privilege or copyright belonged. The whole business of copyrights resting upon individual privileges fell into confusion, and the difficulties in the way of protecting literary property must have seriously interfered with the development of publishing undertakings.

It must be remembered also, that these privileges, even if not interfered with, covered the control of but a limited market, that, namely, comprised in the territory of the Venetian Republic. In any other States of Italy, the reprinters were, of course, free to appropriate the results of the enterprise of the Venetian publishers and of their expenditures for manuscripts, editorial service, etc.; while the Venetians had, of course, the same freedom in utilising the works initiated in Rome, Florence, Milan, or Verona. In competing for markets outside of Italy, however, the Venetian publishers had the advantage of the wide commercial connections possessed by their city.

With an entire absence of protection for his literary undertakings outside of his own State, it was, of course, of first importance that, within these limits at least, the publisher should have secured to him the results of his planning, his labours, and his investment. Such security was, however, given but very inadequately by the system of privileges. The penalties attached to infringements hardly acted as deterrents, principally because there was no effective machinery for their enforcement. These penalties comprised the confiscation of the contraband material, with fines varying (for each unauthorised copy of the book) from twenty soldi to one thousand ducats. The latter was the fine prescribed, in 1515, in the case of a piratical edition of Ariosto. The fine, when collected, was usually divided into three parts, one third going to the court, one third to the complainant, and one third to some city charity. Occasionally, though very rarely, there was added to the penalty a sentence of confinement in prison for one or two months. There are one or two instances also of suspension of the offender from the exercise of the art of printing. Complaints concerning infringement could usually be brought before any magistrate of the Republic; but in some cases it was specified in the privilege itself that a trial for its contravention should be held before a special court, such as that of the fiscal procurators, or of the police magistrates. What uniformity of procedure came finally to be established, was due, however, less to the regulations of the law than to the precedents established by the printers and publishers.

Censorship.

—After the earlier measures having for their purpose the encouragement of the new art of printing, the actions of the Government of Venice (as of the other States where the business of publishing became of importance) were more largely concerned with the supervision and regulation of the Press for the safety of the interests of State and Church, than with the protection of literary property.

As in the case of the privileges, the censorship was, for something more than half a century, that is, from 1469 to 1528, carried on without the aid of any general law, and was based simply upon a practice or series of precedents evolved from the individual action taken by the Government in each instance as it arose. The granting of privileges had, as we have seen, been the duty sometimes of the College, sometimes of the Senate. The responsibility concerning censorship rested naturally with the Council of Ten, which in its capacity as a standing committee of safety, assumed a general charge of the morals of the community.

The censorship of the Press in Venice, as elsewhere, was concerned with three aspects of literature: the religious, the moral (which included the political), and the purely literary. Morality was considered from both the public and the private or personal point of view, the former including as its chief consideration the safety of the State.

The operation of the censorship was marked by the presence of an imprimatur or record of authorisations. As has already been noted, applications for a privilege were occasionally accompanied by a certificate or testamur from certain competent authorities, who had examined the work in question and who were willing to certify as to its soundness and importance.

The earliest example of an ecclesiastical testamur printed in a book published in Venice, appears at the beginning of the Nosce Te, issued by Jenson in 1480. The Nosce Te was a book of devotion, written by a Carthusian monk, Giovanni di Dio, and the testamur in this case might, therefore, be interpreted simply as an approval by his ecclesiastical superiors of the work done by him as an ecclesiastic. There is no record that the Nosce Te ever secured a privilege from the Venetian Government, and it seems certain that at the date in question no such testamur was required under the regulations of the secular government.

No further instance of a clerical testamur occurs before 1505, when Jacomo di Penzi, of Lecco, a printer, in applying to the Council for a privilege for certain books he desired to print, states that he has an imprimatur from the Council of Ten, and a testamur from the Patriarch as to the merit of one of the works, the Tre famosissime Questioni, by Zane, Archbishop of Spalato. In the year 1508, we have the first example of an ecclesiastical testamur being required by the Council of Ten, as a condition for their own imprimatur. The work was the Universalis animæ traditionis liber quintus of Gregoriis, and the ecclesiastical censor appointed to examine the work from a theological point of view, reported that he found in it nothing opposed to Catholic verity.

This is the first instance of a religious censorship exercised by the secular government. The case may be considered as fairly indicating the position the Venetian Government proposed to take in regard to the supervision of books touching upon theological matters. The State had a personal interest in protecting the Church against the attacks of books likely to be subversive of the faith, and it was glad to secure the opinion of the Church in regard to the character or tendency of a doubtful work; but it intended to retain in its own hands the final decision as to the permission to print; and it contended that the interests of Church and State could be best protected by the State taking action for both. The conclusion arrived at was, therefore, that there should be religious censorship, but that the censor should act only through powers delegated to him by the secular government.

A case occurring in 1516 shows, however, that this policy speedily became modified. Soardi, a publisher, applied for an imprimatur for certain theological works. The Council of Ten replies that as Soardi has already secured the testamurs of the Patriarch and the Inquisitor, they, quoad se, have no objection to offer, and permittunt fieri quantum præfati Reverendissimus et Inquisitor concessere.[148] Brown accepts this phrase, quoad se, which occurs also in later imprimaturs, as evidence that the Council of Ten had practically resigned the direct control of the religious censorship, and had accepted the Patriarch and the Inquisitor as the proper persons to deal with the responsibility. It is still, however, the secular authority and not the ecclesiastical which grants the imprimatur, and the term permittunt fieri implies that the permit was necessary and could be withheld. In this same year, 1515, a claim was raised by the Papal Government which, later, gave rise to many disputes between the Church and the Republic of Venice, and also between the Church and several other of the States of Italy.

The Holy See assumed the right to grant copyrights and imprimaturs in States other than those of the Church, and to support these monopolies by the threat of spiritual punishments. The earliest instance of such a contention was that of Fra Felice of Prato, a converted Jew, who secured from the Pope, for certain Hebrew books and translations of the same, a copyright which covered not only the States of the Church but all the States of Europe. The punishment of excommunication was threatened against any who refused to recognise this copyright or who committed infringements against it. Fra Felice, desiring to print his book in Venice, and apparently distrusting the adequacy of the Pope’s privilege, applied to the College for a copyright for ten years, which was duly granted to him; while the College of Venice apparently made no comments upon the Papal brief which had also undertaken to give him authority for Venice. Later on, the Venetian Government found occasion to make vigorous protests against similar contentions from Rome.

The second class of censorship, that relating to literary quality, also developed but gradually. The need for some kind of literary supervision is indicated by the publishers themselves, who in their petitions make reference to the misprints and scandalous errors in editions previously produced, and promise that their own editions shall be printed with the utmost care and accuracy.

The earliest instance of the establishment of a literary censorship was in 1503, when the Senate made Marcus Musurus censor of all books printed in Greek. Thirteen years later Musurus was still holding the office.

In 1515, an order was issued by the Council of Ten which established a general censorship for the literature of the Humanities. The order was worded as follows: “In all parts of the world, and in the famous cities not only of Italy but also of barbarous countries, that the honour of the nation may be preserved, it is not allowed to publish works until they shall have been examined by the most learned person available. But in this our city, so famous and so worthy, no thought has as yet been bestowed on this matter, whence it comes to pass that the most incorrect editions which appear before the world are those issued in Venice, to the dishonour of the city. Be it, therefore, charged upon our noble Andrea Navagero to examine all works in Humanity which, for the future, may be printed; and without his signature in the volumes they shall not be printed, under pain of being confiscated and burned, and a fine of three hundred ducats for him who disobeys this order.” This is the first Italian example of a general or prevention censorship, applied to a whole class of literature.[149]

The third kind of censorship concerned itself with the morals of literature, political morality, the attitude of the writer or of the publisher towards the State or rather towards government, and private morality, having to do with the influence of the book upon decency and bonos mores. The Government of Venice was peculiarly sensitive in regard to any criticism, direct or indirect, of its public documents. In 1515, the Council of Ten granted permission to Marino Sanuto, who was engaged in the preparation of a history of the operations of Charles VIII. in Italy, to examine the State Papers of more than two years back, on the condition that the work should, when completed, be submitted for the approval of the Council, before any one else should have seen it. Later in the same year, an imprimatur was granted to Andrea Mocenigo for his history of the League of Cambrai, the work having been examined and approved by the Grand Chancellor, who had the special custody of the State Papers.

The political censorship was apparently more effective than the censorship of morals. It was certainly the case that the imprimatur was given to not a few books of a scandalous character.

In 1527, Alvise Cynthio (or Fabritii) published a work on The Origin of Vulgar Proverbs. He had secured from the Senate a copyright for ten years, which prohibited any one from reprinting the collection unless he should add to the material as many new proverbs as were contained in the original. Cynthio took occasion to say in one of his editorial paragraphs that he intended to show the true character of those who pretended to follow the rule of S. Francis. The Franciscans naturally found objections to the book, and registered a complaint against it on the ground of heresy and indecency.

The Council of Ten issued in January, 1526-1527 a general order, reciting that, owing to the freedom which everyone enjoys in Venice, it sometimes happens that obscene and corrupt works issue from the Press. It is, therefore, decreed that for future publications, the imprimatur of the Council of Ten shall be required, and that before this is given, the work must have been examined by two censors, who shall make a sworn report that its character is satisfactory. This order is of importance as being the first official recognition of the necessity of a moral censorship.

The censors who examined Cynthio’s volume, ordered the author to expunge the obnoxious passages. In the meantime, however, the monks took the matter into their own hands (although they claimed to act with the authority of the Council) and carried off from the printer’s shop all the copies on hand. Cynthio petitioned the Council for their restoration, and the printer put in a claim on his part that the volumes should be replaced in his hands until his printing account had been paid. An order to such effect was given, but apparently only a small portion of the volumes were received, the others having disappeared while in the custody of the monks. Copies of the work have since been extremely rare. The author is reported to have died a violent death.[150]

Up to this time there had been no attempt to formulate a code of laws for the regulation of the Press; such action as had been taken by the Government, had been in the shape of isolated decrees, or special acts prepared to meet specific cases. There was no such thing as preventive legislation; it was always planned either to present a remedy for some immediate difficulty or to repress some specific wrong-doing. The lines upon which the press-code of Venice was finally promulgated had, however, been gradually indicated by the customs and precedents established for particular cases.

Before the period of general legislation, the practice had, as we have seen, been arrived at by securing, first from the College, and later from the Senate, privileges, taking the shape either of monopolies or of copyrights; while for the imprimatur or authority to print, application was made to the Council of Ten. The first law of censorship made such imprimatur obligatory. The censorship of the character of the books thus fell upon the Ten, which retained in its own hands the direct control of the political censorship and delegated to ecclesiastical examiners the task of theological censorship, accepting, as a rule, the report of such examiners as final. When, later, it was found necessary to give consideration not only to the political and theological influence of books, but to their literary quality and their moral character, these divisions of the censorship were also assumed by the Council of Ten.

In 1487, was issued the first Papal Bull having to do with the productions of the printing-press. It was addressed by Pope Innocent VIII. to seven governments as follows: Romana, Curia, Italia, Germania, Francia, Hispania, Anglia, and Scotia. It is entitled: Bulla S. D. N. Innocentii contra Impressores Librorum Rebrobatorum, and was printed in Rome in 1487. The opening paragraph reads: Et ea propter nos qui illius locum tenemus in terris qui ad illuminandum hominum mentes et errorum tenebros exterminandum descendit e coelis (and, therefore, we who hold on earth the place of Him who came down from heaven to enlighten the minds of men and to disperse the darkness of error).

The Bull does not appear to have attracted any special attention in Venice, and the Government of the Republic continued to frame in its own way the regulations for the control of the printers.

The Earliest Legislation in Venice.

—The legislation of the Republic relating to the productions of the printing-press concerned itself with five general purposes: first, the embodiment into law of custom and precedent; second, the protection against outside competition of the book-manufacturing trade of Venice, and the preservation of the excellence of the Venetian Press; third, the protection of the book-buyer against bad workmanship and exorbitant charges; fourth, the protection of the author’s rights; fifth, the institution of a Bureau to administer the Press laws and to regulate the industry.

The legislative bodies of the State were the Senate and the Council of Ten. The earliest legislation for the regulation of the Press (unless we may count as a law the general order of the Ten, previously referred to, establishing a literary censorship for works in Humanity) was a law of the Senate passed August 1, 1517. This law recalled every privilege heretofore granted, placing in the public domain, open for the use of any one, all of the works named in these cancelled privileges.

The purpose of this law was to sweep away a mass of obstruction, and in giving full freedom to printing undertakings, to further the development of Venetian publishing. Among its advocates were many of the printer-publishers, who were willing to lose their property rights in existing copyrights for the sake of getting rid of the evils that had arisen from the accumulation of overlapping privileges, or of privileges which had been secured not for direct use but for obstruction and for sale, and of privileges which on various grounds had not been obtained in good faith. Under the law of 1517, privileges were thereafter to require a two-thirds vote in the Senate and were to be issued only for works which were new or which had not before been printed. (Solum pro libris et operibus novis, numquam antea impressis et non pro aliis.)

The next law, that of 1526, has already been referred to in connection with the case of Cynthio’s Origin of Vulgar Proverbs. It provided that no book should be printed without the imprimatur of the Council, and that this imprimatur should be granted only after the book had been approved by two censors appointed by the Council as free from scandalous or objectionable matter.

In 1533, the question of copyright was again attracting attention. The law of 1517 had not worked well, and abuses had arisen under it. No definition had been given limiting or constructing the term opus novum, and the contention had been made that very slight additions or alterations in a book already published would constitute it a new work within the meaning of the act. It was only necessary for a publisher to make application, under such a contention, for a copyright for a previously unprinted classic, to prevent the work from being printed by any other publisher.

A decree was now issued ordering that a publisher must complete the publication of a work within twelve months from the date of securing his copyright, under pain of the forfeiture of the copyright. A modification was afterwards made under which, if the work was too large to be completed within a year, the copyright could be preserved by the production of not less than one folio a day. If the work were printed out of Venice, the copyright was forfeited. No publisher could apply twice for a copyright for the same work. The matter of prices was also gone into; and publishers were directed to submit to the Bureau of Arts and Industries an advance copy of each new book, which was to be appraised by experts and the price set by them was to be that at which the book should be published. No copies were to be sold at any higher price.

In 1537, a further law was enacted, directed to the protection of the interests of the consumer, and to the wholesome development of the trade of book-manufacturing. The preamble speaks of “the ruinous and disgraceful practices of the Venetian printers,” who used to be the best in the world, and complains that now, for the sake of gain, they use vile paper that will not hold the ink and that cannot be written upon with marginal notes. This blemish cannot be due to any difficulty in securing proper material, as foreign books come to Venice printed on excellent paper.

It is, therefore, ordered that under a penalty of forfeiture of copyright and a fine of one hundred ducats, all copyrighted books must be printed on paper that can be written upon without blotting. This penalty shall be incurred if of any edition five copies blot, and a copy shall be held to be defective if any five leaves in it blot. Pamphlets and books below the value of ten soldi are excepted from the provisions of the law. New books are again defined as works which have never been published before. The execution of the law is given to the Avogadori di Comun, the law officers of the State.[151]

The enactments of 1542-1543 give evidence that the regulations for the supervision of the publishing trade had not yet produced satisfactory results, and that there was no little irritation on the part of the Government at their failure. The Council complains that, contrary to the censorial law of 1526, its imprimatur was not always sought for new publications, and that, as a result of this non-observance, books were being printed and sold which offended the honour of God, were repugnant to the Christian Faith, and were in many instances most licentious. To remedy these evils, it was decreed that the printers of unlicensed books should be fined fifty ducats, in addition to the penalties previously decreed. The booksellers dealing in them were to be fined twenty-five ducats, while those who hawked unlicensed books about the streets were to be flogged from S. Mark’s to the Rialto, and to be imprisoned for six months. A publisher using a false imprint was to be imprisoned for twelve months, and then banished from Venice in perpetuity.

In spite of these severe penalties, the law does not appear to have secured more satisfactory obedience than had been given to the previous decrees. As Brown points out, the law was probably not supported by public opinion.

In 1544, the Commissioners of the University of Padua were constituted the permanent censors of Venetian books submitted for the imprimatur of the Council. The censorship of the Commissioners covered all points excepting those relating to religion or theology, which were still left to be passed upon by ecclesiastical censors.

In 1544-5, the Council of Ten gave attention to the question of the ownership of literary productions. In no one of the several acts that had been passed for the regulation of the Press, had it been made apparent whether literary property was brought into existence as property, by the process of securing the copyright, or whether it existed, ipso facto, in the author of a work. In the latter case, the copyright entry and the issue of the privilege constituted simply an official recognition of the right and not a creation of it. During the half century in which their business had been carried on, the printer-publishers in Venice (in common with those of the rest of Europe) were in the habit of ignoring literary proprietorship altogether, and were accustomed to print any work they pleased, even in direct opposition to the wishes of the author. It became evident that some measure for the protection of the author was necessary, and in the year 1544-5, a decree was issued forbidding anyone to print or to sell a work without having first presented to the Rifformatori (the University Commissioners) documentary proof of the consent of the author or of his representatives.

All books printed without the consent of the author were to be confiscated and burned; the printer was to be fined one ducat for each copy of the book printed, and was to be imprisoned for one month. In 1547, a fresh attempt was made to restrain the sale of blasphemous or obscene books.

One manner in which the law of 1543 had been evaded was by importing books of a character for which an imprimatur in Venice could not have been secured. Brown says that in a number of cases, however, books of a scandalous character, sold as importations, had really been printed in Venice, the foreign imprint being forged. It was now ordered that any one importing scandalous books should pay a fine of fifty ducats, the books themselves being also forfeited.

The Savii Sopra l’Eresia, the three Venetian noblemen who served as assessors to the Holy Office, and who now had in their hands the examination of new publications with reference to matters of religion or doctrine, were charged with the supervision also of imported books. The Lutheran heresy was beginning to be promulgated by means of the Press, and the ecclesiastical authorities were, therefore, especially suspicious of literature coming from Germany.

In 1548, the first catalogue of prohibited books was issued in Venice. The addition to the regular executive of the three Commissioners on Heresy indicates as well a greater activity on the part of the Church in regard to the supervision of literature, as a readiness on the part of the Government to accept this ecclesiastical coöperation as long as, in form at least, the State was recognised as the controlling authority in the matter.

The year 1548-9 marks an era in the history of printing and publishing not only in Venice, but of the world. In that year, under a decree of the Council dated January 18th, the printers, publishers, and booksellers of Venice were organised into a guild. The very natural reason assigned for the formation of such a guild was that the trade in question was the only important trade in the city that was not already so organised. We find, however, as an additional reason, which doubtless acted as an important incentive, the necessity of so organising the business of the production of books that the work of the Commissioners of Heresy in discovering and in punishing the publishers of heretical books, should be facilitated.

The Guild of Printers and Booksellers, 1549-1595.

—The organisation into a guild of the printers and publishers of Venice was an important event in the history of literary property in Italy. This guild was the earliest trade association of book-men in Europe, the decree for its institution bearing date 1548-9, or six years earlier than the charter of Queen Mary of England, under which was incorporated the Stationers’ Company. The publishers of Germany had organised the Frankfort book-fair (in connection with the general Fair) as early as 1500, but this organisation had not yet taken the shape of a guild. The Libraires jurés of Paris, comprising members of the University, organised as a division of the University, and subject to the control of the University authorities, cannot, at least in its earlier stages, be classed as a trade guild.

The Guild of Venice had, as we have seen, been brought into existence not merely for the protection of trade interests, but for the purpose of facilitating the work of the State and of the Church in keeping a close supervision upon all the productions of the Press, and of promptly suppressing those likely to prove pernicious. The regulations framed by the Guild and the enactments secured by it were of service in defining literary property and in protecting copyrights, but this result was rather an incidental than an essential part of its work.

Seventeen years elapsed after the decree of 1548, before the organisation of the corporation was fully completed through the formulation of its by-laws; but from various references during that time, it seems evident that shortly after 1548, an association was in existence with a President and a Council, exercising some general supervision over the printers and publishers. When the Guild was finally organised, it appears to have been a more official and more authoritative body than the London Company of Stationers. Its officers comprised a prior, two councillors, six assessors, a secretary, and a beadle. Membership in the Guild was compulsory upon all master-printers, publishers, and booksellers, and each member was to pay annually the sum of one lira, five soldi. The list of officials included two syndics, one of whom was to be present at each election and to administer the oath of office to the new officers. No member was permitted to decline either nomination or election, under a penalty of ten ducats. No member of the Guild could hold office unless during five years previous he had been a master-printer or had kept a book-shop. The by-laws of the Guild were called Mariegole, a term which is said to come from Matricule, or matriculation books.

The Guild thus constituted, outlived the Government that had created it and many succeeding governments. It even survived the Republic and the period of revolutions and of Napoleonic invasions; and came to a close only with the first decade of the present century, after an existence of more than two hundred and fifty years. The Stationers’ Company of London still exists under that name, but its control over the printing and publishing trades of England disappeared many years before the dissolution of the Guild of Venice.

The Guild appears to have moved but slowly in the work of controlling the printing and the book-trade of the city; it was not until 1571 that it issued a decree (which apparently had the force of a decree of the Council) forbidding anyone not a member of the Guild from setting up a printing-press or opening a book-store. It was also forbidden for anyone to exercise any of the functions of a printer or a bookseller unless he had served a five years’ apprenticeship in Venice. Foreigners who desired to exercise the art of printing, or to carry on the business of bookselling, must first serve five years in some shop in Venice, and after examination and approval by the authorities of the Guild, must pay ten ducats for matriculation. The penalty for infringement of the above decree was fifty ducats.

A protest was made to the Proveditore di Comun concerning the authority of the Guild to make or to enforce any such regulation, but the Proveditore promptly confirmed the action of the Guild, and in so doing confirmed its authority to control the business of printing and book-selling.

This control seems, however, during no period to have been complete. Up to the year 1600, the Guild had at no time contained more than seventy-five members. In 1596, according to the reports of the Rifformatori, there were one hundred and twenty presses at work in Venice, and it was necessary to print one hundred and fifty copies of the Concordat of 1596, in order to distribute them among the booksellers of the city. It is probable, therefore, that the master-printers and book-sellers must together have exceeded seventy-five, and in that case the Guild could not have included them all. While the Guild claimed, as we have seen, full jurisdiction over the printers and booksellers, and claimed also the right to forbid any person to carry on these trades without having obtained a certificate of competence from its own examiners, it is probable that it lacked the power to enforce its authority or to carry into effect its decrees.

The establishment of a system of censorship did not meet all the difficulties in the way of a thorough supervision and regulation of literature. The University Commissioners, to whom had been referred the censorship other than ecclesiastical, were apparently not always able to make examination of all pending publications or did not, at least, always insist upon a personal examination. The publishers began to make a practice (on the ground of lightening the labours of the Commissioners) of having their forthcoming works examined by readers selected by themselves.

On the strength of a favourable report from these friendly examiners, the Commissioners would issue their certificate that the work contained nothing objectionable, and with this testamur the publishers would secure, without further question, the imprimatur of the Ten. Under this procedure a number of objectionable works found their way into print. The Commissioners finally, in 1562, gave orders to their secretary that thereafter no authorisations should be given for any printing whatsoever until the work had been examined and favourably reported upon, first, by the Inquisitor or one of his vicars, or by some person selected by the Tribunal of the Inquisition; second, by the Reader in philosophy or some other public reader; third, by a ducal secretary. The petitioner for a certificate was to bring a testamur signed by each of these, declaring that there was nothing in the book contrary to religion, nothing injurious to morality, and nothing hostile to princes, and that it was worthy to see the light. The testamurs should state the number of leaves in the book and must quote the first and last lines.

After the book had been printed, but before it was issued to the public, a copy was to be submitted to the Rifformatori in order that they might assure themselves that no additions or alterations had been made after the securing of the imprimatur. Each of the three persons who should examine the book was to be paid the sum of one bezzo for each leaf (sheet?). The bezzo was worth the one hundred and sixtieth part of a ducat. All the expenses connected with the three examinations and with the issue of the imprimatur must be borne by the petitioner.

Four years later, in 1566, it was ordered that all persons obtaining licences should, before printing their works, register their licences at the office of the Esecutori contro la Bestemmia, but for such registration there should be no charge. This is the first attempt that was made to institute a complete registry of the publications of Venice. Unfortunately, the law was persistently evaded, and the registers which have come down to us are very incomplete.

The system of censorship, as now completed, proved both cumbersome and irritating, and must have seriously interfered with the development of the publishing business of Venice. It was, however, not quite so exacting as might have been expected from the stringent nature of its provisions, for the reason that these were not and could not be effectively enforced. The Government of Venice lacked the means to enforce its literary regulations, and had no police adequate to the special requirements of these regulations.

While the censorship of the State became more or less nominal, that of the Church was enforced with comparative rigour, and exercised a very material influence on the selection of the literature to be printed. The Church had at hand a very effective machinery for the enforcement of its supervision, as every priest and every friar was ready to act as a policeman for the cause of ecclesiastical control over the Press.

Copyrights in Venice, 1500-1600.

—Up to the middle of the fifteenth century the average term of a copyright had been ten years. From the year 1560, the terms began to increase, until towards the close of the century the average is nineteen years. There are, however, examples of terms as short as one year, and as long as thirty; while it is not easy to trace the grounds for the discrimination. The fines inflicted for contraband publications also varied very considerably. The amounts collected were usually divided into three parts, which were assigned one to the informer, one to the author, and the third, either to the court, the arsenal, or to one of the three asylums. There is record of but one instance during the century of a piratical printer being deprived of his licence to print. It was the case of a copyright granted to Pappa Alesio, of Corfu, the infringer of which was fined two hundred ducats, and ten ducats for each unauthorised copy printed, and was forbidden to print for ten years.[152]

The number of works for which copyright was secured varied very much from year to year. The largest number of entries during the century was one hundred and seventeen in 1561, and the smallest seven, in 1599. The decrease during the last quarter of the century was in part due to the Great Plague.

There were but two instances during the century in which the Senate refused to grant an application for copyright, one of these refusals being for the Lettere Amorose of Pasqualigo. While the greater number of the copyrights were issued in the names of the publishers, there is, after the middle of the sixteenth century, an increasing number of entries in the names of the authors. A copyright was given, in 1515, to Ariosto for his Orlando, to last for his lifetime; and in 1535, a copyright was given to his heirs for a period of ten years for certain of the poet’s works. Copyrights were also issued directly to Tasso, Aretino, Giraldi, and other authors.

The making of maps and charts formed, as was natural in a great centre of commerce, an important feature in the publishing of Venice; while in company with these, there were long lists of works of travel and adventure. Early in the sixteenth century, the production of engravings, on wood and on copper, grew to be a considerable industry. In 1521, a copyright was issued to Castellazzo for certain illustrations for the Pentateuch which he had engraved and for certain others which he had in plan.

During the whole of the century, Venice continued to be the chief publishing centre in Europe for Greek literature, and a place of resort for Greek scholars. Its presses also became noted for the printing of books in Hebrew. This latter industry, however, had to encounter no little opposition on the part of the Government, an opposition in the main due to jealousy of the ecclesiastical censors, who dreaded the heresies that might be hidden in the unknown tongue. The dread was, however, one that might be overcome if the inducement were sufficient. The printer Bomberg, who had been refused a renewal of his ten years’ privilege for his Hebrew publications, made fresh application with successive offers of one hundred, one hundred and fifty, and three hundred ducats, all of which were rejected. A fourth offer of five hundred ducats, however, finally secured the desired privilege. Privileges were granted in 1498, and again early in the sixteenth century, for the printing of works in Arabic and in other Oriental languages, but the total number of Arabic books issued appears to have been small. Beginning with the year 1565, there are from time to time examples of publications in Armenian. The list of musical works produced and copyrighted during the century was large and important.

The Inquisition.

—The first instance of trials undertaken in Venice by the Holy Office for offences committed through the printing-press, was in the year 1547. The list is closed in 1730 with the trial of Giovanni Checcazzi. In the sixteenth century there were one hundred and thirty-two cases; in the seventeenth, fifty-five, and in the eighteenth but four. It is not clear whether the diminished activity of the Inquisition during the later years was due to the increasingly hostile attitude taken by the Government of Venice towards the Church of Rome after 1596, or to the fact that the vigour of the Press prosecutions during the last half of the sixteenth century had effectively stamped out the publication in Venice of heretical and immoral publications. The great activity of these prosecutions between 1549 and 1592, was doubtless due to the dread of the Lutheran heresy, and of its propagation throughout Italy by means of the printing-press.

Heretical books could be presented to the Holy Office by denunciations submitted without signature. If the court held that there was ground for prosecution, the charges were formulated and the accused was directed to appear for his defence within eight days from the publication of the summons. The writers and the printers of heretical books appear to have been considered about equally guilty, while the offence of keeping such books for sale (even though ignorance of their contents could be shown) was also a very grave one. In the great majority of cases, the accused allowed judgment to go by default.

The Index and the Book-Trade.

—It is in connection with the Index Expurgatorius of Pope Clement and the Concordat that the history of publishing in Venice comes for the first time into touch with general history. The claim of the Church to the supervision of all publications soon became involved in the larger question of the relation between Venice and Rome.

Paolo Sarpi, who became the champion of the cause of the independence of the State against ecclesiastical domination, comes into the history of literature as the upholder of the rights of authors and of publishers against the crushing censorship of the Inquisition. The problem presented to the Venetian Government was: whether the Venetian Press, supported in its liberty by the Government, should continue to maintain its character as the freest Press in Europe (and therefore one with the most active production); or whether it should be permitted, for want of the support of the Government, to fall under the repressive influence of the Inquisition and the Index.

The earliest instance of a censorial order on the subject of books in Venetian territory, and also in Italy, is the order issued in 1491 by Franco, Bishop of Treviso and Papal Legate. This decree prohibited anyone from printing, or from causing or permitting to be printed, any books treating of the Catholic faith or of matters ecclesiastical, without the express permission of the Bishop or Vicar-General of the diocese. The Legate proceeded at once to name two works, Rosselli’s Monarchia and Mirandola’s Theses, which were absolutely prohibited, and all existing copies of which were to be burned in the cathedral or in the parish churches within fifteen days from the publication of the decree.[153] There was no charge that these works were in any way immoral or scandalous. They were condemned simply on the ground of the unsoundness of their doctrine. The contention raised in this order on behalf of the Church was far-reaching. If it were heretical to discuss, in a sense at all hostile to the Curia, the relative powers of the Pope and the Emperor, there would be an implied right in the Church to censure and to condemn any political writings in which the authority of the Pope or the responsibilities of the Emperor were referred to.

It became, in fact, the keystone of the ecclesiastical position that in the case of the Church no separation was possible between politics and ecclesiastical dogma. The work which had been condemned to the flames had been dedicated to the Doge Foscari, but the Government appears to have taken no notice of the Bishop’s decree.

In 1544, the University of Paris published a catalogue of books adjudged worthy of censure, and, in 1546, the University of Louvain issued a similar catalogue of books which had been condemned by its Faculty of Theology. The first Italian catalogue or index of censurable books was that of La Casa, printed in Venice, either in 1548 or in 1549. No copy is known to exist, and the precise date is a matter of dispute. La Casa was the Papal Nuncio, and his catalogue may, therefore, be considered as the act of the Holy See, differing in this respect from the black lists issued in Louvain and in Paris.

In 1554, the Inquisition first takes action in regard to books, publishing a catalogue based upon that of La Casa and the Milan Index of Arcimboldi. This catalogue of the Inquisition was largely utilised for the first Index issued from Rome, that of Paul IV. In the year 1558, the Inquisition in Venice issued a decree forbidding importers from taking any books out of bond until they had deposited with the tribunal a full list of the books imported. Such a list rendered, of course, comparatively easy the subsequent seizure in the shops of any works considered heretical or suspicious. As, under the laws of 1562, the Inquisition had secured the right to take part in the censorship required for the imprimaturs, it now possessed supervision over all the literature supplied to the Venetian public.

The first Roman Index was that published in 1559 by Paul IV., under the title of: Index auctorum et librorum qui ab officio sanctæ Romanæ et universalis Inquisitionis caveri ab omnibus et singulis in universa Christiana Republica Mandantur. The Index was divided into three lists: first, the names of those authors each and all of whose works, whether published or to be published, were absolutely prohibited; second, names of writers certain of whose works (the titles of which were given) were prohibited; third, the titles of anonymous books prohibited. At the close of the Index appears a list of sixty-one printers with a prohibition of all works printed by them. In this list there is but one Venetian name, that of Francesco Riccioli. Throughout Italy, the Index was received either coldly or with hostility. The Viceroy of Naples and the Governor of Milan refused to allow it to be published in their dominions. In Venice it appears never to have been in force, while the Government of Florence waited to see what action would be taken in other countries. In Spain, permission to print the Index was refused, and in Paris it was never published.

In the year 1562, the Council of Trent turned its attention to the question of book-trade, and, after a long discussion, appointed a committee of eighteen members to examine into the subject, and to draft a decree, together with a revised Index.

The Tridentine Index is based upon the Index of Paul IV. Both devote almost their entire space to works of heresy, giving but trifling consideration to the question of immoral literature. The Tridentine Index presents ten rules for guidance in the enlargement and continuation of the Index. It introduces also the formula donec corrigatur. This formula signified either a temporary or partial prohibition of a work not absolutely condemned, or a conditional permission for its continued sale, provided that, in all copies of existing editions, the condemned passages were either blotted out or corrected by pen, while in all subsequent editions they were to be omitted or modified. The fifth rule provided that all booksellers must have in their shops a list of the books which they kept on sale, such list being signed by the Inquisitor and the Bishop’s delegate; and they were forbidden to have, to sell, or to distribute any other books than those on said list, under penalty of forfeiture of the books and of such other punishment as might be ordered by the Inquisition. Under the seventh rule, one who had imported books was forbidden to give or to loan them for the reading of another, or to part with them in any way without written permission. The eighth rule provided that heirs were to submit to the authorities a list of books inherited by them, before using or parting with any of them. The ninth rule gave to Bishop and Inquisitors-General the authority to forbid within their diocese or provinces books other than those which appeared in the Index. This Tridentine Index appears to have been recognised at once as the authoritative utterance of the Church on the subject of books, and to have been very generally circulated. It was printed in Venice by the Aldine Press, and it was printed ten times subsequently between 1564 and 1593. The whole position of the censorship of the Press, as well in Venice as in the other publishing centres of Italy, was essentially modified through the publication of the Tridentine Index. The coöperation or approval of the secular authority, which, in Venice at least, had kept in its own hands the nominal control of the censorship, was now disregarded; while the powers of the Inquisition and the range of its detailed supervision were widely extended.

The stringent effects of the Index and the Rules soon made their influence felt upon the publishing and book-selling trade throughout Europe. In 1581, the Dominican Castiglione writes: “The Inquisitors frequently publish orders forbidding the sale of this or that work. The booksellers are no longer willing, therefore, to take the risk of importing books, while they are frequently prevented from selling those already in stock. There must be in Rome at present unsalable books to the amount of several thousand scudi.”

As early, in fact, as 1565, just after the publication of the Index, Josias Simler writes: “A new Index has appeared wherein so many books are condemned that a number of professors in the Italian universities complain they cannot lecture if the edict remains in force. Frankfort and Zurich and other German cities have written to the Senate of Venice, urging it not to accept an edict whereby the book-trade will be ruined.” As a matter of fact, the Italian book-trade with Germany was all but destroyed, while the home book-trade was isolated and gradually starved.

As it was in Venice that the importing as well as the publishing business had been the most important, so it was the Venetian book-trade which now suffered more seriously than that of any other Italian city. The relations of Venice with Germany were particularly close, and the annals of the Frankfort as well as of the Zurich publishers give frequent instances of works of importance being undertaken in coöperation with Houses in Venice, and of the division with such Houses of editions of books which had already been printed.

The Venetian Government, however, accepted in full the authority of the Council of Trent in the matter, and, in 1567, new regulations for the book-trade were drawn up, based upon the ten Tridentine Rules. From this date, the number of Holy Office trials for offences of the Press shows a steady increase. In the year 1571, Pope Pius V. instituted the Congregation of the Index for the purpose of dealing with all questions relating to the examination, prohibition, or expurgation of books; and in the year 1588, Sixtus V. ordered the Congregation to draw up a new and enlarged edition of the Tridentine Index. This contained large additions to the lists of prohibited books, and amplified the ten Rules to twenty-two.

In 1596, appeared the Clementine Index, of Clement VIII., and shortly thereafter, friction arose between Rome and Venice in connection with the supervision of the Press. In 1593, Maximus Margounios, a learned Greek, who was Bishop of Cythera, was resident in Venice, and was engaged in editing numerous Greek works for the Venetian publishers. He had made himself obnoxious to the authorities at Rome for certain heretical utterances, and he was summoned to appear at the Vatican. He declined to leave Venice and the Senate refused to give him up. In July, 1593, Paruta, the Ambassador of Venice at the Vatican, submitted to the Pope a vigorous protest against the publication of the Clementine Index, which was then in readiness, but which the Pope was still keeping under advisement. Paruta set forth before the Pope the various grounds for objection to the proposed Index:

1st. The great commercial importance of the book-trade in Venice, which he represented as exceeding that of any city in Europe;

2d. The contention that the book-trade was in itself worthy of protection and consideration;

3d. That a sufficient censorship was already exercised by the imprimaturs of the Council of Ten, which were not conceded without the testamurs of the examiners, among whom was the Inquisitor;

4th. The fact that the publication of this Index would destroy the property and might cause the ruin of many who, believing it safe as long as they kept within the regulations of the Council of Trent, had published books which were now to be prohibited in the Clementine Index;

5th. That the new Index not only made long additions to the lists of prohibited books, but proposed a radical change in the standard of prohibition. A great number of books were now to be condemned which did not touch at all upon ecclesiastical or religious questions, simply on the ground of some trivial expressions having nothing to do with dogma;

6th. The importance for the Church of keeping the men of learning throughout the world well affected, and the certainty that they would be very much troubled by any measures which interfered with scholarly undertakings and with the distribution of important literature.

Venetian publishers had interested themselves largely in the production of non-religious books, such as editions of the classics, the writings of the poets, and romances, and Paruta was especially anxious to prevent this class of publications from being interfered with, and took pains, therefore, to emphasise that it had no importance for the purposes of the Church. The arguments of Paruta, and similar protests which came to Rome from Germany and from Paris had the effect of convincing the Pope that some modifications in his Index were necessary. The matter remained in abeyance for some four months longer, when the Index was finally printed, but much altered and diminished. Among the omissions from the first lists were the titles of the whole class of non-religious books printed in Venice, in behalf of which Paruta had spoken.

In the year 1594, Clement VIII. granted to a Venetian publisher, Domenico Bassa, a copyright of a very comprehensive character. It covered, in the first place, a specific list of books (which was attached to the order), and, secondly, all other books of which Bassa should issue the first editions, and gave him full control of the same for the term of ten years. Any persons infringing this copyright were to be subjected to fines, confiscation of their books, and excommunication. The privilege covered territory both within and without Italy. The book-trade of Venice petitioned the Government against the continuance of any such privilege, contending that it was calculated to bring immoderate gains to one man, and that if it were fully enforced, the Venetian publishers would be compelled either to emigrate to Rome or to abandon their business. The Venetian Government instructed its Ambassador, Paruta, to protest against this extraordinary monopoly granted to Bassa, as well because of its interference with interests of the home book-trade, as on the broader ground that it was an assault upon the independence of the Republic. He also contended that there was no precedent for the use in purely lay matters of ecclesiastical weapons.

The Pope replied that according to his understanding, the copyright given to Bassa applied only to books in the Vatican library, but that he would refer the matter to the Congregation of the Index.

Paruta reported to his Government that Bassa was bankrupt, and that the Venetian publishers need not fear his competition. It was, further, his impression that Bassa had obtained the privilege principally as a “bluff” to his creditors. The privilege was not recalled, but does not appear ever to have been utilised by Bassa. Much to the discontent of Venice, however, the precedent remained of authority claimed if not exercised by Rome over copyrights throughout Italy. The Clementine Index was published in 1596, and, as finally framed, modified very materially the severe regulations of the Sistine Index of 1590.

Between the years 1564 and 1596, the Inquisitorial censorship of books had been weighing more and more heavily on the publishers and booksellers in Venice and throughout Italy. The Indexes which had appeared since the issue of La Casa’s Catalogue had so increased the number of unpublishable books, many of them forming a large staple in the trade of Venetian publishers, that the interests of these publishers, and particularly their export trade, had suffered severely. The attempt had been made to take away the right of the Venetian printers to print Bibles and missals, and to restrict the printing of such books to Rome. The business was interfered with for a time, but the attempt to stop it altogether was in the end successfully resisted.

In spite of Paruta’s opinion that Venetian interests had been sufficiently consulted, the printers and booksellers at once appealed to the Senate for support against the new Index. The negotiations lasted for some months, but in the end the Pope gave way on the more important points complained of, and a Declaration or Concordat was agreed upon which lessened, as far as Venice was concerned, the stringency of some of the more objectionable features of the Index. When this Concordat had been signed, the Senate authorised the publication of the Index. The most important clause in the Concordat was the seventh, which provided that the right of the Bishops and Inquisitors to prohibit books which are not on the present Index, should refer only to books which attacked religion, or which were printed outside of Venice, or which were issued with a false imprint. This right was to be exercised only on just cause shown, and with the consent of the three lay assessors. This limitation of the ecclesiastical Inquisition to purely religious or theological questions constituted a most valuable precedent in the long fight between the Church and the secular authorities concerning the control of the Press. The fifth clause drew a nice distinction: Printers were forbidden to use lascivious woodcuts, but they might use cuts which were profane without being lascivious.

A few months before the arrangement of the Concordat, and while the settlement was still pending, the Senate had published a decree condemning the practice which had begun to come into vogue among the publishers and printers of Venice of applying to Rome for privileges and monopolies. The Senate announced that any privileges that had been thus obtained must be renounced or they would be disregarded and prohibited, under penalty of a fine of ten ducats, any future attempts to secure, either directly or indirectly, publishing privileges from any authority other than the officials appointed for the purpose by the Government of the Republic.

The Concordat was the last arrangement arrived at between Rome and Venice on the matter of the supervision of the Press until the year 1766. During the century and a half following the date of the Concordat, repeated attempts were made by the Holy See to induce the Venetian Government to authorise the publication of an augmented Index, but the Republic had persistently refused. The list of new prohibitions finally accepted in 1766 was announced as juxta formam concordatorum.

The contest of 1596 gave evidence of a material change in the attitude of Venice towards the Church since the passing of the law of 1562. The tone of the Government had become suspicious and hostile. While it was still ready to leave to the Church the responsibility of supervising matters which were purely theological or dogmatic, it objected decidedly to the attempts made by the Church to extend its control over all classes of literature, and still more to the tendency of the Church to utilise the censorship of literature as a means of asserting its authority over the State as a whole.

The varying phases of the long contest between the Papacy and the other Catholic States of the world, had of necessity an important influence upon the stability and upon the value of literary property, and, in fact, in not a few instances, upon its existence. When the promulgation of a new Index could, without warning, stop the sale and therefore destroy the selling value of a book or of a series of books, the readiness of the publishers to invest capital in literary undertakings must have been not a little hampered, and the possibility of securing from such undertakings any adequate returns for the authors was much lessened.

The efforts of the Church to extend its control over all literature and to enforce a general censorship which should expurgate and, if it seemed necessary, re-shape books in every division of thought, hampered enormously the development of literature and of publishing not only in Italy but in Spain and France. In Germany and in England the Papacy was never permitted to interfere seriously with the production or the distribution of books.

It was not only in Venice and in Florence that the attempts of the Church of Rome to enlarge its control over the Press excited active opposition. King Philip II. had refused to permit the promulgation in Spain of the Tridentine Index and its ten Rules. He wrote to his ambassador at Rome that, “Spain has her own special Index and her own special Rules on the prohibition of books. It cannot be permitted to Rome to place her under general orders. Books which in one country may be innocuous, in another may be dangerous.”

Between 1596 and 1623, the contest of Venice to retain in the hands of its own Government the control of its printing and publishing, continued with varying success. The contention that it endeavoured to establish was that the Holy Office was not and could not be a separate and independent power in the State; but that the Inquisition could take action in Venetian territory (in regard not only to the censorship of books but to matters of any kind) only through the consent of the Government.

The theory was that the Government could delegate some particular function to be performed by an ecclesiastic official, and that (even though such official should be selected by the Church) he would, in fulfilling such function, be an officer of the State. Under such a theory, the idea was preserved of the independence of the State. This view of the organisation of the censorship was preserved under the provisions of the Concordat, and the Concordat soon became, therefore, an object of attack by the Church. The further contention of the Venetians that the duties of the ecclesiastical Inquisitor should be limited to questions of theology and dogma could be more easily evaded by the Church, for it raised the wide question—what is heretical? and what is the limit of dogma?

In the face of many difficulties, however, the Republic succeeded for some years in maintaining its position, and fought hard to protect its book-trade from further burdens. After securing the Concordat from an unwilling Pope, and insisting upon the enforcing of its provisions, it succeeded in absolutely preventing any public and official enlargement of the Index within Venetian territory. It is evident, notwithstanding, that even with the restricted powers conceded by the Concordat, the Index, and the Inquisition were able largely to increase the rigour of their censorship, and the results of their supervision and interference were shown in the very considerable decline in printing and publishing undertakings immediately after 1596. Within a few months of the publication of the Index, and in spite of the protection of the Concordat, the presses of Venice were reduced from one hundred and twenty-five to forty. The copyright entries which, in 1596, had aggregated twenty-four, amounted in 1597 to only seven.

It was evident that the attempts of the Republic to protect publishing undertakings and to further literary production had not been successful, and that the failure was in the main due to the relation of the Venetians to the Church. The effect of the Concordat in lessening the burdens of the censorship under the Index was in great part nullified by the labours of the clergy, who, for the purpose of carrying out the policy of the Church, made full use of the powerful instrumentality of the confessional.

The confessors announced to their penitents that books condemned in Rome were prohibited for believers; and as a rule such books, although not included in any Index accepted by the Republic, could find no sale in Venice. While other causes also contributed to the extinction of the prestige of the Venetian Press, and to the very great decline in its business, the chief responsibility for such decline must rest with the Church for its persistent hostility to the smallest measure of freedom of the Press, and for its insistence upon restrictive measures of censorship which were absolutely incompatible with publishing activity and with literary production.

The Interdict and Fra Paolo Sarpi.

—While the contest between Rome and Venice had turned very largely upon questions connected with the censorship of the Press, many other matters were involved which assumed still larger proportions in the relations between the Church and the Republic.

Between 1605 and 1650, a number of issues were fought over, issues connected sometimes with the control by the State Government of ecclesiastics accused of crimes or misdemeanours, sometimes with the control exercised by the Church over ecclesiastical property within the borders of the Republic, and again with the relations of the Jesuits and Capuchins to the law of the State. Venice was fighting for her civil and secular independence; while the Pope had declared his position when he announced that he would not submit to be Pope everywhere save in Venice. Paul addressed a monitorium to the clergy of Venice, threatening excommunication to the Doge and Senate and interdict upon the Republic. The Doge forbade the publication of the monitorium, and the excommunication and interdict came into operation.

While all the business of the Republic necessarily suffered, its export trade in books was, for a time, brought practically to a standstill. The interdict lasted for a little more than a year, when it was finally removed under a compromise settlement brought about through the French Ambassador.

The most prominent figure in the whole of the struggle of this period between Venice and the Papacy was Fra Paolo Sarpi. Cleric though he were, he contended vigorously that the Church was embarking upon a wrong course, and he held that the State was justified in resisting, in secular matters, ecclesiastical encroachments upon the rights of the sovereign. In the end, notwithstanding some temporary success on the part of the State Governments of Italy, the Papacy succeeded in establishing nearly all of its contentions, including a rigorous censorship of the Press and the resulting limitations in literary activities.

The fight made by Sarpi on behalf of the independence of the State, and particularly of the right of the State to supervise and control its literary productions was, notwithstanding, of first importance for the intellectual activities of Europe. The arguments used in Venice were repeated in Madrid, Paris, Zurich, and Oxford. Time was gained for authors and for printers until, largely by means of the presses which the Church was endeavouring to throttle, the spirit of resistance to the domination of the Papacy and the feeling of national independence against the right of Rome to lay down the law for Europe had gathered so much strength that the claims of the Church were either withdrawn or very much moderated.

In 1602, an instance occurred of censorship on the part of the Church not for the expression of heretical opinions, but for the omission from a work of authority of certain passages which the Church considered to be important. The work was a commentary by Suarez on the Tractate De Censuris of Thomas Aquinas. The permission to the booksellers Ciotto and Franceschi to print the volume was given by the Venetian censorship only on condition of the omission of the passages in question. The Congregation of the Index at Rome thereupon forbade said booksellers to continue the printing of the work (the publication of which was stigmatised as a crimen falsi) under penalty of excommunication.

The omitted passages contained attacks upon the temporal authority of princes. Sarpi pointed out that the formula of the imprimatur was unwisely worded, in that it expressed the “approbation” of the Government for the works issued, thus assuming on the part of the State a practical approval of the doctrines contained in such work. The term should, he suggested, be modified to “with the permission.”

In 1611, Thomas Preston, writing under the nom de plume of Roger Widdrington, published his Apologia Cardinalis Bellarmini, and in 1613, his Disputatio Theologica. Both works were placed on the Index by a special decree of the Congregation, Nisi auctor quam primum se purgaverit.

The Nuncio in Venice begged that the decree might be published and enforced upon Venetian booksellers. The Government, acting under Sarpi’s advice, refused to allow the prohibition to take effect in Venice, on the two grounds that the theological doctrines taught by Widdrington were sound and orthodox, and that his arguments against the pernicious doctrine of the temporal authority of the Pope over princes were eminently worthy of dissemination. It will be noted that the Nuncio had in his application expressly conceded one of the principal contentions of the Republic that no Roman prohibition was valid in Venice until confirmed by the Government.

In 1615, Andrea Morosini completed his History of Venice, in which he had occasion to deal with the question of Interdict. The Venetian Inquisition refused to sign the testamur, which was requisite before the Council of Ten could grant an imprimatur. Paolo Morosini, who was in charge of his brother’s work, appealed to the Senate, and secured a declaration to the effect that the narrative in the History was an exact and trustworthy account, that the Inquisitor drew his authority to act from no other power than the Republic, that that authority extended only to the supervision of books having to do with questions of faith, and that no such questions came into the History. The Government thereupon ordered the immediate publication of the book without the testamur, and with the words superiorum permissu. It is to be noted that the prohibition of Rome probably prevented the sale of the book in Italy outside of Venice, and must, therefore, have materially lessened the prospects of profit for author or publisher.

There were also instances of books which were approved by the Church but the publication of which was considered detrimental to the interests of the State, and their sale in Venice was accordingly prohibited. One book of this class was the Recantation of the Archbishop of Spalato, printed in Rome in 1623, by the Apostolic printers. The Republic objected to the contention of the Archbishop that the Pope had power in things temporal as well as in things spiritual.

A second example is the History of the Council of Trent, by Cardinal Pallavicini, written in answer to Sarpi’s History. Through the Venetian Ambassador at Rome, Pallavicini made application for permission to sell his book in Venice. The application was refused on the ground that the History contained sentiments obnoxious to the Government of the Republic.

In a report written to the Government by Sarpi at this time, he takes the ground that the tendency on the part of the Church during the past few years has produced a whole series of books whose doctrines are entirely subversive of all secular government. They teach that no government but the ecclesiastical has a divine origin; that secular government is a thing profane and tyrannical which God permits to be imposed upon His people as a kind of trial or persecution; that the people are not in conscience bound to obey the secular law or to pay taxes; that the imposts and public subventions are, for the most part, iniquitous and unjust, and that the princes who impose these have in many cases been excommunicated, and that because of such excommunication of princes, death, want, and other public misfortunes have come upon their communities. In short, princes and rulers are held up to view as impious and unjust; subjects may have to obey them perforce, but, in conscience, they are free to do all that in them lies to break their yoke.

Sarpi goes on to point out that the prince who had first perceived the danger was Philip II. of Spain. The only books that he allowed to remain under the censorship of the Inquisition were missals, breviaries, and school-books. The censorship of all other literature was confided to a commission appointed by himself. Sarpi recalls that this had been the course taken also by the Republic, and emphasises the importance on the part of the Republic of retaining in its own hands a similar control of literary censorship. Sarpi closes his report by recommending the establishment of a code of general rules, behind which the ducal secretary can shelter himself from the importunate, the interested, and the over-zealous, and by means of which a consistent censorship policy can be maintained.

While Sarpi’s main purpose was the maintaining the independence of the State against the encroachments of the Papacy, the principles for which he contended were of first importance for the prosperity and, in fact, for the continued existence of the Venetian publishing interest. Unless the burden of Papal censorship could be lessened, literary production in Venice must cease. In the schemes submitted to the Government for a code of general rules by which was to be directed the system of political censorship, Sarpi specified four classes of writers whose books, in his judgment, ought to be placed upon the State Index:

I. Those who attack the Constitution of the Republic and its laws by name; II. Those who attack the laws and constitution adopted by the Republic without naming her; III. Those who, even within the limits of fair controversy, argue against the legislation of the State; IV. Those who attack no laws of the State, but who broadly maintain the absolute and universal superiority of the ecclesiastical over the temporal authority.

Sarpi further contended that “In the correction of books which are open to censure, it is not advisable to follow the practice of the Church in raking through the entrails of an author and altering the sense and the intention of whole passages, so that the writer is made to say the reverse of what he desired to say; first, because all the world stigmatises such action as falsification; secondly, because such conduct would bring upon Venice the infamous charge of castrating books; thirdly, because the Court of Rome assumes for itself the sole right to alter passages in books.” Sarpi concludes his report by submitting ten propositions, upon which he recommends the Government to take action:

I. The Index of 1595, having received the consent of the Prince, the books which appear upon it must remain there. II. For the future, no prohibition is to be permitted unless corroborated by public authority, as agreed upon in the Concordat. III. If ecclesiastics ask civil authorities for support in prohibition of heretical works, it must be granted to them after the works have been examined. IV. Under the title of heresy, dogmatical support of civil authority in its own proper sphere, is not to be included. V. Foreign books inimical to good government are to be absolutely prohibited. VI. In the reprints of books, nothing favourable to good government is to be removed. VII. In issuing these reprints, the old editions, before the ecclesiastical expurgations were made, are to be used. VIII. In printing the Index of 1595, no new names are to be allowed to creep in. IX. The prohibitions of the Inquisitor shall be confined entirely to heretical works. X. The Concordat shall always be printed along with the Index.

As well from these propositions as from the general course of the long controversy, it is evident that Venice was, ostensibly at least, as anxious as the Church could be for the purity of the Press. In fact, judging from the Indexes, this point had not caused the Church any particular anxiety. The unsettled question was, which should exercise the censorship over the offences of libel, scandal, and obscenity—the Church or the State. It was the opinion of Sarpi that all such books should be absolutely prohibited. The risk, as emphasised by Sarpi, was that the Concordat might fall into desuetude, leaving the Venetian Press completely under the control of the Inquisition and deprived of the bulwark which the State had secured for its defence.

The future justified his dread. The heat of the quarrel died away, and the Concordat was substantially forgotten. The Inquisition secured full control of the censorship. The Press of Venice came under the influence of the Index and the Rules. Its losses were greater than those of the other Presses that the Council of Trent had undertaken to regulate, for the reason that it had so much more to lose. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Venetian Printing-Press, although not destroyed, ceases to hold preëminence in Europe.

In 1601, the Senate took serious alarm at the emigration of the publishers and the printers. The latter took with them even the materials of their trade, their type, presses, and ink. A drastic law was at once passed making it illegal for any printer to leave Venice without the written authority of the Government, and prescribing severe penalties for any who undertook to sell for export the materials and instruments used in printing. This measure, severe as it was, appears not to have proved effective in checking the decline of printing, and, in 1603, the Senate undertook a general reform of the art. The new regulations included the following provisions:

None but official proof-readers were to be employed by the printers. These proof-readers were to be appointed by the Rifformatori. The manuscript copy and proofs were to be preserved as evidence that no alterations had been made after the examination for the imprimatur. A fine of twenty-five ducats was to be imposed upon every printer who should place the name Venetia on books not printed in Venice.

Terms of copyright were fixed as follows:

In the case of first editions for which the necessary testamur and imprimatur had been secured, the publisher or printer securing the first registry was to have a copyright for twenty years.

For books printed in Italy but not in Venice, the publisher who should secure a Venetian registry with the Guild was to have a copyright for ten years. A similar copyright was given for the reissue of books that had not been printed in Venice during the preceding twenty years. For new editions of books which had not been printed in Venice during the preceding ten years, a copyright of five years was to be conceded. All terms of copyright depended upon the condition that the printing was begun at once and was continued at the rate of not less than half a folio a day. There was a long list of regulations concerning the standard and quality of the paper, ink, and type. Books which were found after publication to be badly printed or full of typographical errors were to forfeit their copyright.

The measure was a comprehensive one, and ought to have proved of service in restoring the quality of Venetian editions if its provisions could have been enforced. There appears, however, to have been a lack of adequate machinery for such enforcement.

It was evidently intended that the Guild should become a sort of Stationers’ Hall for the registration of copyrights. No such register is now in existence, and there is some doubt as to its ever having actually been created.

In 1614, a new office was created in addition to the number already charged with the supervision of the Press. The incumbent was called the Superintendent of the Press, and his special duty appears to have been the passing upon the printers’ “copy” before this was put into the hands of the typesetters. In 1653, a fresh attempt was made to strengthen the Guild of Printers, for the purpose as well of improving the quality of Venetian printing, as of checking the increasing importations of foreign books. The tax on imported books was raised to eight ducats ($18) per hundred pounds.

In 1671, there were increasing complaints concerning the bad workmanship and inaccurate typography of Venetian editions, and also as to the non-delivery of the copyright copies for the libraries of S. Mark and of Padua. The failure to secure obedience to the various provisions of the press-law is not to be wondered at when we remember how complex these provisions were, and that there was practically no police machinery to utilise for their enforcement.

At the close of the seventeenth century, the following processes had to be gone through with before a book could be published: testamur from the Inquisitor; testamur from the ducal secretary; certificate from the Rifformatori of the University of Padua; imprimatur from the Chiefs of the Ten; revision by the Superintendent of the Press; revision by the public proof-reader; collation of the original text with the text as printed by the secretary to the Rifformatori; certificate from the librarian of S. Mark that a copy had been deposited in the library; examination by experts appointed by the Proveditori to establish the market price of the book.