592 margaret l. king
ones that were harmonious with a view of a perfectly ordered cosmos also
consonant with their political ideals.
These patterns continued from the renaissance era into the Baroque,
when official historiography, political theorizing, and scientific dilettan-
tism were still the pursuits of the patriciate. in the meantime, however,
the culture broadened and diversified, exploding into areas where the
patriciate did not dominate, although individual nobles might participate—
in so doing engaging in a counter-cultural resistance to the fortress of
patrician intellectual solidarity. Whereas Venetian culture had been
strictly monitored by elite interests in the earlier period, from about 1500,
Venice resounded with multiple voices and interests. Venice became the
most vibrant and tolerant of the capitals of catholic europe, the site of an
ongoing cultural festival, a “carnival of ideas,” to borrow the term of nicola
Bonazzi,64 to match its unique annual celebration of Carnevale.
among the many changes that took place during the pivotal period
from the late 15th to early 16th century that precipitated this cultural shift,
printing was paramount.65 By the 1470s, nicholas Jenson had established
a press in Venice; over the next 150 years Venice was in the forefront of
printing centers in europe. as elsewhere, the first printing ventures were
reprints of the Bible along with patristic, scholastic, and devotional texts.
in Venice, that pattern changed with the arrival of aldo Manuzio, who
64 From the title of nicola Bonazzi’s work: Il carnevale delle idee: l’antipedanteria nell’età
della stampa, Venice, 1538–1553 (Bologna, 2007).
65 For the origins of printing in Venice, see especially nicholas Barker, Aldus Manutius
and the Development of Greek Script and Type in the Fifteenth Century, 2nd ed. (new York,
1992); carlo dionisotti, Aldo Manuzio: umanista e editore (Milan, 1995); Martin lowry,
Nicholas Jenson and the Rise of Venetian Publishing in Renaissance Europe (oxford, 1991);
lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice
(ithaca, 1979); and neri Pozza, “l’editoria veneziana veneziana da Giovanni da Spira ad
aldo Manuzio: i centri editoriali di terraferma,” in Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 3 (1980):
Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 2, pp. 215–44. Marino Zorzi reviews the
whole course of the Venetian relation to the book from the pre-print period to the late
cinquecento in “dal manoscritto al libro,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 4: Il Rinascimento.
Politica e cultura, ed. Tenenti and Tucci, pp. 817–958; also the relevant sections of Marino
Zorzi, La Libreria di San Marco: libri, lettori, società nella Venezia dei dogi (Milan, 1987). a
useful overview for the period 1500 to the 1570s in iain Fenlon, The Ceremonial City: History,
Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice (new haven, 2007), 232–71. For book circulation
and print culture more generally, see lisa Pon and craig Kallendorf, eds., The Books of
Venice/ Il Libro Veneziano (Venice/new castle, del., 2009); and Bronwen Wilson, The World
in Venice: Print, the City and Early Modern Identity (Toronto, 2005). For the publication
of works by women, see diana M. robin, Publishing Women: Salons, the Presses, and the
Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy (chicago, 2007); and for the world of the
merchant-printers, see claudio di Filippo Bareggi, Il mestiere di scrivere: lavoro intellettuale
e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento (rome, 1988).