Quest For Manciolino: Printers Conclusion
In case you are new here, and haven’t been following along, we’ve been examining the life of Antonio Manciolino through the peripheral figures that are known to have been in his life in some capacity. This quest to understand Manciolino first took us to Mainz where Johannes Gutenberg’s innovative inks and tooled copper letters were invented, before being dispersed into the greater European landscape by political refugees of the Mainz Diocesan Feud. Two of those exiles from Mainz, Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz, were the first to bring Gutenberg’s new technology into Italy, their legacy helped build a vibrant printing industry in Rome, an industry that fostered the career of Stephano Guillery, and helped him become one of the Official Printers of the Papal Curia. It was at the height of Guillery’s career that one, Antonio Francesco Manciolino, darkened his doorstep, and signed a contract to print a fencing treatise titled, Trattato Sull’Arte Gladiatoria, on 14 November 1519. While no known copies of this text exist in the public purview, the swordsman—Manciolino, would present his schermo in ink once again in 1531, this time under the purview of the eccentric counter culturalist, Nicolò d’Aristotile d’Rossi, known as ‘lo Zoppino’. Nicolò published a small, 63-page, octavo format book for Manciolino, titled Opera Nova, Per Imparare a Combattere, & Schermire d’ogni Sorte Armi. You can read about those stories here:
The Quest for Manciolino — Introduction
The Quest for Manciolino: Printers Part 1
The Quest For Manciolino: Printers Part 2
The Quest for Manciolino: Printers Part 3
Quest for Manciolino: Printers Conclusion
The question remains, what do the lives of these printers tell us about the life of Antonio Manciolino?
The first and most obvious deduction is that Antonio Manciolino spent a considerable amount of time in Rome. His contract with Stephano Guillery, whether it amounted to anything or not, likely puts Manciolino in Rome in 1519. A tradesman like Guillery certainly traveled for business, and would’ve had ample contacts in Bologna, which was a subject state of the Holy See—like Ludovico Varathema—however, even at the height of his ventures his shop was a family run operation, and probably required him to stay in Rome as much as possible, especially once he became an official printer of the Papal Curia. Manciolino follows up his contract with Guillery by finding a patron in Don Luis Fernández de Córdoba between 1521-1523. At the time Fernández de Córdoba had been appointed as the ambassador of Pope Adrian VI, he’d just returned from an expedition in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and spent most of his time between Rome and Naples (Specifically Sessa) until his death in 1526. These two data points serve to suggest that Manciolino had continued work in Rome, had a residence in Rome, or frequently traveled to Rome. With both his patron and early printer in Rome, it's a small leap to draw this conclusion, simply put, there was a lot of printing going on in the city of Bologna, as we saw in the early life of Nicoló lo Zoppino, the Bazalieri family was firmly entrenched in the city, and had both prodigious and prestigious output of content, so if Manciolino had localized interest in having his work published there was no need to look outside of Bologna.
Alternatively, one can posit that Manciolino had friends or connections in Bologna, perhaps in the Spanish wing of the Alma mater Studiorum Uiversità di Bologna, or even the German wing of the university—which leads to interesting parallels as Marozzo is known to have spent time teaching fencing to German students in his early days as an instructor1—or from the local Bishopric that could’ve potentially brought him under the influence of the Imperial Ambassador to the Pope and the official printer of the Curia. While all of those alternatives represent reasonable possibilities, the most likely scenario is that Manciolino was in Rome between 1519-1523. It’s even possible that Manciolino alludes to this in his text:
“I do not think anyone can be so silly as to claim that my students are learning the very art that is in me; rather, they are learning its effigy. Likewise, nobody can say that the pilgrim returning from Rome is actually carrying that physical city in his memory (how could its walls even fit inside his head?). Rather, the pilgrim will be carrying an image: and just by meditating on such image, he will be able to see Rome as if he were there—even as he walks the streets of Bologna.” (Leoni)
What Manciolino might have been doing in Rome, and who his patron Don Luis Fernández de Córdoba was, will be discussed in greater detail in part two of this series.
The next matter that needs to be sequestered from the lives of his printers is who Manciolino’s audience was. The cost for a copy of his first print run was 1 ducat, which from a bullion value is worth about $220 today (that’s not to say the value translates) while other estimates have its value around $155; both values are by no means an entirely prohibitive price for a book at the time. Unfortunately we have no details about the contents of this original publication other than the title, so it’s hard to compare key traits like length, number of images, and production quality (paper thickness, texture, ect.) with the extant publication printed by Nicolò lo Zoppino in 1531. What we do know is that the extant copy was 63 pages long, printed in octavo format, with 9 woodcut images (the 9th being Zoppino’s signature). Octavo format was a relatively cheap way to print, where one sheet of paper could produce 16 pages of a book, 8 recto and 8 verso, a 63 page book would require 4 pages of print quality paper to produce. This style of printing pioneered by Aldo Manuzio, in Venice, provided massive cost saving measures which allowed for cheaper publication, and was a particular favorite of Nicolò lo Zoppino. Paper was the most expensive part of the book making process1 and amounted to about 60-65% of the price of a book in the 16th Century.2 For example, a contemporary 43 page quatro formated book sold for 1 lira, if we use that as our guide post—while an inexact science—we can estimate the following:
1 lira = 20 soldi
20 soldi / 6 pages means each page is about 3.33 soldi per page for complete production (ie. ink, labor, binding, ect.). If we take the average percent cost of paper as the gross estimate of 65%, then each paper cost about 2.17 soldi per page.
So, the paper cost was 8.68 soldi for Manciolino’s Opera Nova, and if we assume a similar labor cost and profit margin, his book probably sold for around 13.32 Venetian soldi.
Marianna Birnbaum estimates that in 1529, 1 Ducat was equal to 7 lira and 10 soldi, so 150 soldi equaled one ducat.2 That means Manciolino's publication with Niccoló lo Zoppino was 1/10th of the cost of the 1519 publication contract price he agreed to with Stefano Guillery.
The question is why?
There are a few possibilities we can explore here. The first mostly likely scenario is that Manciolino was aging, and wanted to either share what he knew with the broader world, or was looking to cash-in to ease his final years. Guido Antonio di Luca was in Bologna between 1496 and 1514 (the year of his death), his role as instructor of the Bentivogleschi ended in 1506, when Pope Julius II removed them from power in Bologna, Achille Marozzo and Guido Rangoni were 12 and 11 respectively when di Luca arrived in Bologna, so if we use the age of 12 as the start of training, and at least ten years for sufficient competency, then we can assume if Manciolino was under di Lucas tutelage that he was between 40-47 years old when he published his Opera Nova. That means he would've been 28-35 when he first approached Stefano Guillery.
Speculation on the age and motivation of the author aside, one fact that becomes clear through the disparity of cost between Manciolino's first attempted print run, and his extant publication, is that his intended audience changed. While the cost of printing as a whole decreased in the twelve years between his first attempt and his last attempt to publish, the format and publisher—Nicoló lo Zoppino—indicate that Manciolino intended to reach a broader audience with his work. Nicoló was known for printing in the vernacular, deliberately subverting the ecclesiastic and academic languages of Greek and Latin, that characterized a lot of early print. As a publisher, Nicoló started his career with the Bazalieri family, and worked closely with Giovanni Filoteo Achillini, a presumed courtier of the Bentivoglio, on the Works of Serafino Aquilano. Achillini was a champion of the Italian language, and was heavily criticized by Pietro Bembo for his attempts to copy the poetic stylings of Dante Alighieri. It's still unclear what the totality of the Achillini families influence was on the course of the development of the Bolognese fencing tradition, but as more evidence comes to light, like Alessandro Achillini’s protege Lodovico Boccadiferro’s presence in Angelo Viggiani’s lo Schermo teaching Aristotelian kinesis, Giovanni Filoteo Achillini's assalti in his work Viridario, Achille Marozzo’s presumed use of nominalism, and Antonio Manciolino's illustrative introductions which echo the mythological language in Achillini’s Viridario, and his own Aristotelian pontifications; all point to a common thread.
Strictly regarding the cost of publication, Guillery was known for printing in folio format, so a 63 page book—if Manciolino's manuscript in 1519 echoed his last in 1531 (highly doubtful)—would have cost four times as much to produce. While 1 ducat wasn't a prohibitive cost, it would sanction the title of luxury item in 16th century Italy. As one ducat could represent a significant portion of the annual wage of some laborers, whereas our rough estimation of 13.32 soldi, would've been more accessible to a broader audience.
The question becomes, why the shift? What happened between Manciolino’s first attempt to publish with Stefano Guillery in 1519, and his extant publication with Nicoló lo Zoppino in 1531? What changed? To answer that we’ll examine the life of Antonio Manciolino’s patron, Don Luis Fernández de Córdoba, in part two of this series.
Works Cited:
Ceresa, Massimo. Biographical Dictionary of Italians, Volume 61: Stefano Guillery. 2004. Treccani.it. https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/stefano-guillery_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/. Accessed 27 April 2023.
Voet, Leon. 1969-1972. The Golden Compasses. A history and evaluation of the printing and publishing activities of the Officina Plantiniana at Antwerp in two volumes. Amsterdam: Vangendt & co.
Birnbaum, M. D. 2003. Money, Prices, Values. In The Long Journey of Gracia Mendes. Central European University Press. Retrieved from http://books.openedition.org/ceup/2142
Gelli, Jacopo. Nedo NADI - * - Italian Encyclopedia. 1936. Treccani.it. Accessed 29 September 2023. https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/scherma_%28Enciclopedia-Italiana%29/.
Leoni, Tom. “The Complete Renaissance Swordsman: Antonio Manciolino's Opera Nova (1531)” Freelance Academy Press. 27 May 2015. (pg. 191)
Gelli, Jacopo: Having achieved great fame as "master general of the Alemanna Nation" (association of German students in Bologna), in 1536 Marozzo entrusted the printing of his Opera Nova called Duello to a Bergoli priest from Modena, accompanied by numerous woodcuts.
Birnbaum, M. D. 2003. Money, Prices, Values. In The Long Journey of Gracia Mendes. Central European University Press: The value of currency fluctuated: between 1517 and 1594 the relationship between the ducat and the lira changed considerably. As the following chart shows:
1517 ducat (always 100 soldi)= 6 lire 10 soldi
1520 ducat= 6 lire 16 soldi
1529 ducat = 7 lire 10 soldi
1562 ducat = 8 lire
1573 ducat = 8 lire 12 soldi
1594 ducat = 10 lire 4 soldi