Aldus Manutius
Aldus Pius Manutius was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and preservation of Greek manuscripts mark him as an innovative publisher of his age dedicated to the editions he produced. Aldus Manutius introduced the small portable book format with his enchiridia, which revolutionized personal reading and are the predecessor of the modern paperback book. He also helped to standardize use of punctuation including the comma and the semicolon.
Manutius wanted to produce Greek texts for his readers because he believed that works by Aristotle or Aristophanes in their original Greek form were pure and unadulterated by translation. Before Manutius, publishers rarely printed volumes in Greek, mainly due to the complexity of providing a standardized Greek typeface. Manutius published rare manuscripts in their original Greek and Latin forms. He commissioned the creation of typefaces in Greek and Latin resembling the humanist handwriting of his time, typefaces that are the first known precursor of italic type. As the Aldine Press grew in popularity, Manutius's innovations were quickly copied across Italy despite his efforts to prevent the piracy of Aldine editions.
Because of the Aldine Press's growing reputation for meticulous, accurate publications, Dutch philosopher Erasmus sought out Manutius to publish his translations of Iphigenia in Aulis.
In his youth, Manutius studied in Rome to become a humanist scholar. He was friends with Giovanni Pico and tutored Pico's nephews, the lords of Carpi, Alberto and Leonello Pio. While a tutor, Manutius published two works for his pupils and their mother. In his late thirties or early forties, Manutius settled in Venice to become a print publisher. He met Andrea Torresano in Venice and the two co-founded the Aldine Press.
Manutius is also known as "Aldus Manutius the Elder" to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius the Younger.
File:Caxton 1.jpg|thumb|386x386px|Aldus Manutius, pictured with William Caxton, at Pequot Library, Southport on Tiffany Glass panel
Early life
Aldus Manutius was born close to Rome in Bassiano between 1449 and 1452. He grew up in a wealthy family during the Italian Renaissance and in his youth was sent to Rome to become a humanist scholar. In Rome, he studied Latin under and attended lectures by in the early 1470s. From 1475 to 1478, Manutius studied Greek in Ferrara with Battista Guarino as his teacher.Most of Manutius's early life is rather unknown. According to John Addington Symonds, writing in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Manutius was granted citizenship of the town of Carpi on 8 March 1480 where he owned local property, and in 1482 he travelled to Mirandola for a time with his longtime friend and fellow student, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, where he stayed two years to study Greek literature. Pico recommended Manutius to become the tutor of his nephews, Alberto and Leonello Pio, princes of the town of Carpi. In Carpi, Manutius shared a close bond with his student, Alberto Pio. At the end of the 1480s, Manutius published two works addressed to his two pupils and their mother, Caterina Pico—both works were published in Venice by Baptista de Tortis: Musarum Panagyris with its Epistola Catherinae Piae and the Paraenesis.
Giovanni Pico and Alberto Pio's families funded the starting costs of Manutius's printing press and gave him lands in Carpi. Manutius determined that Venice was the best location for his work, settling there in 1490. In Venice, Manutius began gathering publishing contracts, at which point he met Andrea Torresano, who was also engaged in print publishing. Torresano and Manutius became lifelong business partners, and for their first contract together Manutius hired Torresano to print the first edition of his Latin grammar book the Institutiones grammaticae, published on 9 March 1493.
Aldine Press
The Aldine Press, established in 1494, had its first publication in March 1495: Erotemata cum interpretatione Latina by Constantine Lascaris. Andrea Torresano and Pier Francesco Barbarigo, nephew of the Doge, Agostino Barbarigo, each held fifty per cent of the press. From Torresano's fifty per cent, Manutius was given one-fifth, but accounts are unclear as to whether Manutius's one-fifth refers to ten per cent of the Aldine Press or ownership exclusively to one-fifth of Torresano's share.File:Aldo Manuzio Aristotele.jpg|thumb|right|260px|Aristotle printed by Aldus Manutius, 1495–98 ; shown here is the first page of the Posterior Analytics|alt=a leaf from Aristotle, printed by Manutius
The press's first great achievement was a five-volume folio edition of Aristotle. Manutius started the first volume of his Aristotle edition in 1495. Four more volumes were published together in 1497 and 1498. The Aldine Press produced nine comedies of Aristophanes in 1498, and Pietro Bembo edited Petrarch's poems that Manutius published in July 1501. In addition to editing Greek manuscripts, Manutius corrected and improved texts originally published in Florence, Rome, and Milan.
The Second Italian War suspended the press for a time. During that time, Desiderius Erasmus asked Manutius to publish his translations of Hecuba and Iphigenia in Aulis through the Aldine Press. Erasmus's original letter to Manutius inquires about the printer's proposed plans: a Greek Plato and a polyglot bible. Through correspondence, the two came to an agreement. In December 1507, the Aldine Press published Iphigenia in Aulis in an 80-page octavo with Erasmus's translation from Greek into Latin. With the success and accuracy of their first collaboration, Manutius agreed to publish the expanded version of the Adagiorum collectanea Erasmus was working on. Erasmus travelled to Venice, where he spent his first ten months working at the Aldine Press. He lived in Manutius and Torresano's home, where he shared a room with Girolamo Aleandro. His research using Manutius's resources and Greek scholars enabled him to expand his collection of proverbs from 819 entries to 3,260 entries. The Aldine press published this newly expanded collection of proverbs, Adagiorum Chiliades, in 1508. After the publication of Adagiorum Chiliades, Erasmus helped Manutius proofread a Greek edition of Plutarch's Moralia along with many other Aldine Press publications.
Manutius relied on Marcus Musurus, Ioannis Grigoropoulos, and other Greek collaborators to translate for the Aldine Press. He published an edition of minor Greek orators and the lesser works of Plutarch. Printing work halted again while the League of Cambrai tried to lessen Venice's influence. Manutius reappeared in 1513 with an edition of Plato that he dedicated to Pope Leo X in a preface that compares the miseries of warfare and the woes of Italy with the sublime and tranquil objects of the student's life.
With the Aldine Press's increasing popularity, people would come to visit the shop, interrupting Manutius's work. Manutius put up a sign that read, "Whoever you are, Aldus asks you again and again what it is you want from him. State your business briefly and then immediately go away."
Manutius strove for excellence in typography and book design while publishing lower-cost editions. This was carried out under continual difficulties, including problems arising from strikes among his workmen, unauthorized use of Manutius's materials by rivals, and frequent interruptions by war.
Greek classics
Before Manutius, there were fewer than ten Greek titles in print, most of which had to be imported from the Accursius Press of Milan. Only four Italian towns were authorized to produce Greek publications: Milan, Venice, Vicenza, and Florence, and they only published works by Theocritus, Isocrates, and Homer. Venetian printer John Speyer produced Greek passages but required the minimal Greek letters to be left blank and later filled in by hand.Manutius desired to "inspire and refine his readers by inundating them with Greek." He originally came to Venice because of its many Greek resources; Venice held Greek manuscripts from the time of Constantinople and was home to a large cluster of Greek scholars who travelled there from Crete. Venice was also where Cardinal Bessarion, in 1468, donated his large Greek manuscript collection. To preserve ancient Greek literature, the Aldine Press commissioned a typeface based on classical Greek manuscripts so that readers could experience the original Greek text more authentically.
While publishing Greek manuscripts, Manutius founded the New Academy, a group of Hellenist scholars, in 1502 to promote Greek studies. Symonds writes that the New Academy's "rules were written in Greek, its members spoke Greek, their names were Hellenized, and their official titles were Greek." Members of the New Academy included Desiderius Erasmus, Pietro Bembo, and Scipio Fortiguerra. Martin Lowry, Manutius' biographer, has a different view, regarding the New Academy as a hopeful dream rather than an organized institute.
Manutius spoke Greek in his household and employed thirty Greek speakers at the Aldine Press. Greek speakers from Crete prepared and proofed manuscripts and their calligraphy was a model for the casts used for Greek type. Instructions for typesetters and binders were written in Greek, and the prefaces to Manutius's editions were also in Greek. Manutius printed editions of Hero and Leander by Musaeus Grammaticus, the Galeomyomachia, and the Greek Psalter. He called these "Precursors of the Greek Library" because they served as guides to the Greek language. Under Manutius's supervision, the Aldine Press published 75 texts by Classical Greek and Byzantine authors.