CHAPTER IV.

LIBRARIES AND THE BOOK TRADE. VESPASIANO DA BISTICCI.

WHILE such a busy life was developed under the influence and continual

encouragement of Cosimo de’ Medici, the two great collections had

originated through him which at that time supplied a centre for

literary work, and now have combined their most important contents in

the same locality and form the most considerable part of the celebrated

library to which (as to a sanctuary of the literature of antiquity

and the Renaissance) learned men of all countries continually direct

their steps. In the days of his exile, Cosimo, in conjunction with his

brother, by the erection of the library-hall of San Giorgio Maggiore

at Venice,[382] had bequeathed to a foreign city where he found eager

fellow-labourers—especially one, Francesco Barbaro—a monument of his

gratitude and munificence. Should he not do the same, and even more,

for his native city? In San Marco he would not only found a monument

of his piety but of his love of knowledge. In the third dormitory of

the convent we see two cells which, according to tradition, Cosimo

retained for his own use when he resided here in pious intercourse with

St. Antoninus and his holy companions, and where, as the inscription

says, Pope Eugenius IV. spent the night after having been present

at the consecration of the church on the day of Epiphany, 1442. Fra

Angelico painted the Epiphany here, and later the cell was adorned with

an excellent portrait of Cosimo by the hand of Jacopo da Pontormo. The

library-hall makes the greatest impression. It is more than fifty yards

long by ten yards broad, and has along its whole length a double row

of eleven slender columns supporting the roof, and at the end a square

space shut off by transverse walls, from the large windows of which

the inmates formerly looked over broad quiet gardens, now turned into

streets.[383] On the narrow outer side of this hall we see the Medicean

arms with the balls as they were before the alterations made by King

Louis XI. On the book-shelves, now set up along the rows of columns,

lie more than eighty choir-books—partly belonging to the convent of

San Marco, partly to other convents and churches—with miniatures from

the hands of celebrated artists of the fifteenth century.

While the building was in progress Niccolò Niccoli died in 1437.

The wish he had always cherished of seeing his valuable collection

of books useful to the community, as he had always placed them at

the disposal of his friends, was fulfilled. In his will he directed

that a commission of sixteen members should dispose of his literary

property so that it might best serve the community. Ambrogio

Traversari, Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Carlo Marsuppini,

Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Giannozzo Manetti, and Francesco

Sacchetti, were among these sixteen.[384] As Cosimo de’ Medici, who

had long supported Niccoli, undertook to satisfy his creditors, the

disposal of the property was referred to him. The entire value of the

manuscripts, about 800 in number, was estimated at 6,000 gold florins,

a considerable sum which yet hardly corresponded with their real value

at that time. When in 1441 the hall was finished, 400 manuscripts were

laid out on sixty-four long reading-desks such as we still see in the

Laurentian library, all inscribed with Niccoli’s name.[385] At Cosimo’s

request Tommaso of Sarzana made regulations for the arrangement of the

books,—rules which then served for the Fiesolan library, for that at

Urbino, and that of the Sforzas of Pesaro.[386] ‘Whoever has to arrange

a library,’ remarks Vespasiano in Pope Nicolas V.’s life, ‘cannot

dispense with that inventory written by Tommaso’s own hand.’

Of the remains of Niccoli’s manuscripts Cosimo retained a part

to increase the literary treasures of his house, which, enlarged

by his sons and grandsons, formed the nucleus of the subsequent

Medicean-Laurentian library. He divided others among his friends. But

he continually thought of filling up the vacancies in the collection of

San Marco, for which he made purchases and copies. A part of Coluccio

Salutati’s books had gone thither with Niccoli’s library; Cosimo bought

and presented it with another part,[387] as well as manuscripts of

Filippo di Ser Ugolini, one of the cleverest and best-informed men in

the public service of the State.[388] Vespasiano and the Dominican Fra

Giuliano Lapaccini were especially occupied in Lucca and Siena with

purchasing and copying. Cosimo, so variously occupied, had ordered

that one of the monks of San Marco should send in the receipt to his

bank in order to receive the necessary sums. Death alone prevented him

from making this library complete according to the requirements of the

times; Biondio Flavio, the Roman annalist and antiquary, declared that,

as it was, it was the finest of the age. In 1453 the hall and a part of

the books were seriously damaged by an earthquake, but were restored by

Cosimo and his son Piero.

This one collection, however, was not sufficient for the active and

liberal man. When he rebuilt the abbey of Fiesole, he determined to

furnish this also with literary treasures. Vespasiano, whom he employed

in this, describes how it was done.[389] ‘When I was in his chamber

one morning, he asked what means I could suggest for forming this

library? I answered that it was impossible to procure it by purchase,

as the requisite books could not be collected. He answered, And how

are they otherwise to be obtained? On my answering that new copies

must be made, he asked further if I would undertake such copies? I

declared myself ready to do so. Thereupon he empowered me to begin

the work, the execution of which he left to me. The payments would be

made by his bank on presentation of the receipts by the prior of the

abbey. So I went to work; and as he wished it to be done as speedily as

possible, and there was no want of money, I engaged in a short time 45

copyists, and furnished 200 volumes in 22 months. The arrangement was

the excellent one suggested by Pope Nicolas, which was used in his own

library. As all the works were not to be found at Florence, we sent to

Milan, Bologna, and other places. Thus Cosimo saw this collection and

an inventory of it finished, and had great pleasure in it, while he

rejoiced at the speed with which it had been completed.’ The present

Medicean-Laurentian library preserves, beside the literary treasures

of the Medici house, the principal part of the collections made by

Cosimo. In 1783 the manuscripts from the dissolved abbey of Fiesole,

223 in number, were added to the Laurentiana, and in 1808 those of San

Marco. The latter, at the time of the abolition of clerical orders by

the Napoleonic government, amounted to about a thousand, many of which

have, however, been lost, and others returned to their former place at

the restoration of 1814.[390] As with the collection of the Dominican

convent, Cosimo and his sons and grandsons continued to increase that

of Fiesole by new acquisitions and presents. The magniloquence of the

inscriptions of many of the volumes, in which the regular clergy of

the abbey praise the liberality of their patrons, may be carried too

far. Nevertheless it is pleasing to meet with these proofs of the

affectionate interest taken by the men in whose hands the guidance

of the State lay in the institutions connected with ecclesiastical

foundations, and through them profitable to the whole community. They

are proofs, too, of an intimate intercourse between the clergy and

laity which was advantageous to both.[391]

When Federigo of Montefeltro founded the celebrated library of

Urbino, for which from thirty to forty copyists were fully employed

in different towns, so that the copies alone are said to have cost

nearly thirty thousand gold florins; a library, the beautiful hall

of which, in the noble ducal palace, is described to us by Bernardo

Baldi[392] and its wealth by Vespasiano[393]—the library of San Marco

was of great use to him. ‘Illustrious lord and brother,’ he wrote on

January 23, 1473, to Cosimo’s grandson,[394] ‘I have already requested

your Magnificence to charge the brethren of San Marco to deliver to

Vespasiano any of their books which he may require for the use of

the copyists employed for me in your city. I now repeat the request

that it may please you to give these orders, that for my sake they

may be obliging to Vespasiano, whereby your Magnificence would do me

a great favour.’ From this letter, and that addressed to Lorenzo by

the brethren of the convent, in which they sign themselves as ‘Custos

librorum bibliothecæ vestræ in Sto. Marco,’[395] we see that the family

reserved a certain right of possession for themselves.

Vespasiano da Bisticci, to whom we owe so many valuable data for the

history of his times, is the worthiest representative of the book

trade, as it was developed about the middle of the fifteenth century in

consequence of the great discoveries then made and increased literary

activity. His intimate intercourse with popes, princes, prelates, and

great lords, and the numerous and important commissions entrusted to

him, prove his excellence and the high respect he enjoyed. The contents

and tone of his biographies and character sketches, exceeding a hundred

in number, are most valuable for a knowledge of the literary as well as

the moral and general culture of the times. He displays a warm heart

and excellent feeling, nor is his correct judgment weakened by his

benevolence. People of high position were in intimate correspondence

with him; Giannozzo Manetti, Donato Acciaiuoli, Niccolò Perotti, &c.,

for whom he purchased books, while, beside the Medici and the Duke of

Urbino, Pope Nicolas V. employed him in the foundation of the Vatican.

‘I accept,’ thus Manetti[396] writes to him on one occasion, ‘your

offer respecting the books you heard of—the Bible, and “Lives of the

Fathers.” Send them me, I beg, and it will give me much pleasure. But

that you do not mention the “Avicenna” seems a bad sign for medicine.

Try to procure it for me, for I need it. In case you succeed in

finding a “Paulus Orosius,” and Euclid’s Geometry, do the same.’ He

did not pursue his business mechanically. When employed in arranging

the Urbino library he used, for comparison, beside the inventories of

the Vaticana and San Marco, those of Pavia and Oxford.[397] In the

number of new manuscripts which he caused to be prepared, there was

unavoidably a great deal of carelessness. Angelo Poliziano complains

once in the dictata composed in 1481 for Piero de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s

son, of the incorrectness of the Urbino manuscripts;[398] a complaint

which Bottari made, in the last century, in reference to the codex of

Virgil belonging to the time of Vespasiano. But it would be unjust

to lay the blame of this on him. Down to his latest years he was

continually employed by Cosimo’s son and grandson, and seems to have

been considered the first literary connoisseur in Florence. When an old

man, in 1487 and 1490, he presented several books to the library of San

Marco, of which he had himself witnessed the origin.[399]

This man, to whom we are indebted in a variety of ways, belonged to

a burgher family of mediocre means, residing at the little village

of Sta. Lucia, near Bisticci in the upper valley of the Arno, and

was born in Florence in 1421.[400] He had evidently attained by

business practice a certain literary cultivation (which is shown in

his writings, and, with the hearty interest of the author in person

and things, makes us easily forget his deficiencies of style), and he

witnessed the most brilliant epoch of the Italian book trade, in which

one library arose after another and the treasures of antiquity were

speedily multiplied; an epoch in which numerous practised copyists

worked in Florence for natives and strangers. Here, as elsewhere,

many foreigners pursued the same calling; French, German, and Dutch,

ecclesiastics and laymen, associated themselves with the Italians, and

sometimes settled entirely in Italy. The beauty and regularity of the

writing, the richness of the miniatures, the fineness and smoothness

of the parchments, the value of the niellos adorning the bindings,

explain why, long after the discovery of the art of printing by types,

manuscripts such as these retained the favour of those who did not fear

expense. The codex of the Divine Comedy which Cristofo degli Amerighi

of Pesaro, Podestà of Florence in 1457, caused to be executed here

for his wife in that year, and which is now in the National library,

is a splendid specimen of the luxury in books at that time.[401]

The regularity of the writing on the finest parchment is such that

at first we are rather reminded of mechanical reproduction than of

penmanship. That those who belonged neither to the learned class nor

to the special trade of copyists were occasionally employed in it, is

shown by the manuscript found in the Laurentian library of the Divine

Comedy, which an Umbrian soldier, Gasparo di Tommaso of Montone, wrote

in ‘semi-Gothic characters’ in 1456 at Ferrara, where he was in the

service of the Podestà.[402]

The prices of books still remained very high, which was unavoidable

considering it was a question of new copies, and the price depended on

the rate of pay of the copyists. In older books their rarity, state

of preservation, &c., had of course to be considered. About 1430

Traversari informs Leonardo Giustiniani that he has found a skilful

man to copy Livy, &c., for thirty gold florins yearly salary and

comfortable board and lodging.[403] About 1442 Poggio sold two volumes

of the letters of St. Jerome to Lionello of Este for a hundred gold

florins. The marquis, a generous and munificent master, found the price

extravagant, and regarded the surplus pay as a present to Poggio, who

considered, however, that the present was too small for a prince, and

that he should receive it as a pledge of future liberality.[404] Even

persons like Poggio paid a good deal; twenty-five golden florins for

a copy of the Bible that was not even complete, ten for a Lactantius,

and seven for some tragedies. Piero de’ Medici obtained a Cornelius

Celsus for twenty gold florins; the price was pretty high, Giannozzo

Manetti thought, but it was a fine and beautiful manuscript.[405] In

the years 1470-72 Vespasiano furnished Cardinal Bessarion with a copy

of the works of St. Augustine for the price of 500 gold florins.[406]

The constant commissions from abroad, especially from King Matthias

Corvinus, Alessandro Sforza, the Earl of Worcester, &c.,[407]

necessarily had an influence on the prices, and it may be easily

understood how the whole business was restricted to a few persons by

the extravagant cost of the books. Just when manuscript copies were at

their dearest, printing by types began. Vespasiano da Bisticci died

fully twenty-six years after the first book had been printed at the

Florentine press;[408] but in his writings, which certainly extended

to the year 1482, we only find one mention of the new discovery, which

so quickly produced the greatest revolution in the field where he had

worked so honourably. This mention is characteristic enough. ‘In this

library,’ we read in the description of the treasures collected by the

Duke of Urbino,[409] ‘all the volumes are of the most faultless beauty,

written by hand, with elegant miniatures, and all on parchment. There

are no printed books among them; the duke would have been ashamed to

have them.’