618 linda l. carroll
aldus Manutius epitomizes this phase of Venetian publishing, his ele-
gant typefaces and fine paper bearing to the world the works of aristotle,
averroes, and aristophanes; Ovid, Virgil and Cicero; the plays of Plautus
and terence; erasmus’s translations of euripides; the enigmatic Hypnero-
tomachia Poliphili; the works of Petrarch and Pietro bembo; prestigious
(and lucrative) law texts; and religious works commissioned by prelates
as alternatives to popular genres perceived as dangerously eroticizing.
For many of the works, aldus chose the convenient octavo format that
could easily be carried by busy merchants, secretaries, and diplomats. he
induced high-ranking patricians to back his ventures, whose many val-
ues they were quick to recognize in a period in which their profits from
the spice and silk trade were sharply reduced by Portuguese competition.
among books’ numerous sources of profit to patricians was the supplying
of raw materials, especially paper, which they largely controlled. the rela-
tive success of Venetian printing may be measured by the single statistic
that approximately half of the books printed in italy in the 16th century
were printed in Venice.
For publishing to thrive, it had to reach a sufficient public of readers
through extensive distribution networks. Venice and some of its mainland
cities offered not only a large population with a relatively high degree of
literacy but also easy transportation of goods to numerous markets. an
important one consisted of the professors and students at the universities
of Padua, Ferrara, bologna, and others, especially interested in texts of
law and philosophy (medicine was a branch of natural philosophy). the
number of readers and thus profitability would be increased by a uni-
form language used by as extensive a public as possible. this pragmatic
reason, added to the established Venetian interest in tuscan literature,
contributed to the use by Venetian printers of this non-local language.4
it was rendered more glamorous by bembo’s choice of it in his early
asolani (1505), set at the storied court of the Venetian former queen of
Cyprus. the influence of Venetian printers’ use of tuscan was rendered
even greater by the fact that by about 1500 the vast majority of publishing
in the republic had moved to the capital city, with only a few specialized
centers still active on the mainland, such as Padua for university texts or
Piove di sacco for sacred books in hebrew (Venice also had a flourishing
hebrew press). a promising new direction in scholarship is research into
4 see Pasquale sabbatino, La ‘scienza’ della scrittura dal progetto del Bembo al manuale
(Florence, 1986).