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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MAL-MAR |
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MANUTIUS , the Latin name of an Italian family (Mannucci, Manuzio), famous in the history of printing as organizers of the Aldine press. 1. ALDUS MANUTIUS (1450-1515). Teobaldo Mannucci, better known as Aldo Manuzio, the founder of the Aldine press, was born in 1450 at Sermoneta in the Papal States. He received a scholar's training, studying Latin at Rome under Gaspariiio da Verona, and Greek at Ferrara under Guarino da Verona. In 1482 he went to reside at Mirandola with his old friend and fellow-student, the illustrious Giovanni Pico. There he stayed two years, prosecuting his studies in Greek literature. Before Pico removed to Florence, he procured for Aldo the post of tutor to his nephews Alberto and Lionello Pio, princes of Carpi. Alberto Pio supplied Aldo with funds for starting his printing press, and gave him lands at Carpi. It was Aldo's ambition to secure the literature of Greece from further accident by committing its chief
At Venice Aldo gathered an army of Greek scholars and compositors around him. His trade was carried on by Greeks, and Greek was the language of his household. Instructions to type-setters and binders were given in Greek. The prefacest.to his editions were written in Greek. Greeks from Crete collated MSS., read proofs, and gave models of calligraphy for casts of Greek type. Not counting the craftsmen employed in merely manual
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Francia the painter.Aldo's enthusiasm for Greek literature was not confined to the printing-room. Whatever the students of this century may think of his scholarship, they must allow that only vast erudition and thorough familiarity with the Greek language could have enabled him to accomplish what he did. In his own days Aldo's learning won the hearty acknowledgment of ripe scholars. To his fellow workers he was uniformly generous, free from jealousy, and prodigal of praise. While aiming at that excellence of typography which renders his editions the treasures of the book-collector, he strove at the same time to make them cheap. We may perhaps roughly estimate the current price of his pocket series of Greek, Latin and Italian classics, begun in 15o1, at 2S. per volume of our present money. The five volumes of the Aristotle cost about a8. His great undertaking was carried on under continual difficulties, arising from strikes among his workmen, the piracies of rivals, and the interruptions of war. When he died, bequeathing Greek literature as an inalienable possession to the world, he was a poor man. In order to promote Greek studies, Aldo founded an academy of Hellenists in 1500 under the title of the New Academy. Its rules were written in Greek. Its members were obliged to speak Greek. Their names were Hellenized, and their official titles were Greek. The biographies of all the famous men who were enrolled in this academy must be sought in the pages of Didot's Alde Manuce. It is enough here to mention that they included Erasmus and the English Linacre. In 1499 Aldo married Maria, daughter of Andrea Torresano of Asola. Andrea had already bought the press established by Nicholas Jenson at Venice. Therefore Aldo's marriage combined two important publishing firms. Henceforth the names Aldus and Asolanus were associated on the title pages of the Aldine publications; and after Aldo's death in 1515, Andrea and his two sons carried on the business during the minority of Aldo's children. The device of the dolphin and the anchor, and the motto festina lente, which indicated quickness combined with firmness in the execution of a great scheme , were never wholly abandoned by the Aldines until the expiration of their firm in the third generation.2. PAULUS MANUTIUS (15121574). By his marriage with Maria Torresano, Aldo had three sons, the youngest of whom, Paolo, was born in 1512. He had the misfortune to lose his father at the age of two. After this event his grandfather and two uncles, the three Asolani, carried on the Aldine press, while Paolo prosecuted his early studies at Venice. Excessive application hurt his health, which remained weak during the rest :of his life. At the age of twenty-one he had acquired a solid reputation for scholarship and learning. In 1533 Paolo undertook the conduct of his father's business, which had latterly been much neglected by his uncles. In the interregnum between Aldo's death and Paolo's succession (15141533) the Asolani continued to issue books, the best of which were Latin classics. But, though their publications count a large number of first editions, and some are works of considerable magnitude, they were not brought out with the scholarly perfection at which Aldo aimed. The Asolani attempted to perform the whole duties of editing, and to reserve all its honours for themselves, dispensing with the service of competent collaborators. The result was that some of their editions, especially their Aeschylus of 1518, are singularly bad. Paolo determined to restore the glories of the house, and in 1540 he separated from his uncles. The field of Greek literature having been well-nigh exhausted, he devoted himself principally to the Latin classics. He was a passionate Ciceronian, and perhaps his chief
Paolo married Caterina Odoni in 1546. She brought him three sons and one daughter. His eldest son, the younger Aldus, succeeded him in the management of the Venetian printing house when his father settled at Rome in 1561. Paolo had never been a strong man, and his health was overtaxed with studies and commercial worries. Yet he lived into his sixty-second year, and died at Rome in 1594. 3. ALDUS MANUTIUS, JUNIOR (15471597). The younger Aldo born in the year after his father Paolo's marriage, proved what is called an infant prodigy. When he was nine years old his name was placed upon the title page of the famous Eleganze della lingua Toscana .e Latina
inscriptions , and in 1575 he completed his labours in the same field by the publication of an Epitome orthographiae. Whether Aldo was the sole composer of the work on spelling, in its first edition, may be doubted; but he appropriated the subject and made it his own. Probably his greatest service to scholarship is this analysis of the principles of orthography in Latin.Aldo remained at Venice, studying literature and superintending the Aldine press. In 1572 he married Francesca Lucrezia daughter of Bartolommeo Giunta, and great-grandchild of the first Giunta, who founded the famous printing house in Venice. This was an alliance which augured well of the Giunta for the future of the Aldines, especially as Aldo had recently found time to publish a new revised edition of Velleius Paterculus. Two years later the death of his father at Rome placed Aldo at the head of the firm. In concert with the Giunta, he now edited an extensive collection of Italian letters, and in 1576 he published his commentary upon the Ars poetica of Horace. About the same time, that is to say, about the year 1576, he was appointed professor of literature to the Cancelleria at Venice. The Aldine press continued through this period to issue books, but none of signal merit; and in 1585 Aldo determined to quit his native city for Bologna, where he occupied the chair of eloquence for a few months. In 1587 he left Bologna for Pisa, and there, in his quality of professor, he made the curious mistake of printing Alberti's comedy Philodoxius as a work of the classic Lepidus. Sixtus V. drew him in 1588 from Tuscany to Rome; and at Rome he hoped to make a permanent settlement as lecturer. But his public lessons were ill attended, and he soon fell back upon his old vocation of publisher under the patronage of a new pope, Clement VIII. In 1597 he died, leaving children, but none who cared or had capacity to carry on the Aldine press. Aldo himself, though a precocious student, a scholar of no mean ability, and a publisher of some distinction, was the least remarkable of the three men who gave books to the public under the old Aldine ensign . This does not of necessity mean that we should adopt Scaliger's critique of the younger Aldo without reservation. Scaliger called him " a poverty-stricken talent, slow in operation; his work is very commonplace; he aped his father." What is true in this remark lies partly in the fact that scholarship in Aldo's days had flown beyondthe Alps, where a new growth of erudition, on a basis different from that of the Italian Renaissance, had begun. See Renouard's Annales de l'imprimerie des Aldes (Paris, 1834) Didot's Aide Manuce (Paris, 1873) ; Omont's Catalogue of Aldine publications (Paris, 1892). (J. A. S.) End of Article: MANUTIUS If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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