A MYSTERIOUS ITALIAN NEWSLETTER OF 1517

D. E. RHODES

^MYSTERIOUS ' seems to be the most appropriate word to describe a newsletter, printedon only two leaves in quarto, and purchased by the Department of Printed Books of theBritish Library in August 1981, since it has taken a year of continuous research andpuzzled contemplation to reach a conclusion as to the place where it was printed and theidentity of the printer. The result, which fortunately is quite decisive, comes as a greatsurprise, since it shows that such newsletters, describing as they do local events, were notnecessarily printed anywhere near where they were written. We cannot know where theywere sent in manuscript; in the present case it turns out that the piece was printed somehundreds of miles away from its place of composition, and we shall never know why thisparticular printer chanced upon the text and decided to print it so far away from the citynamed in its title, which is Copia delle stupende 7 horri- \\ bile cose che ne boschi diBergamo sono \\ a questigiorni apparse. The letter ends on 2^: *Data in Castello de Villa chiaI ra adi. xxiii. di Dicebre. || M.ccccc.xvii.'

The title and the explicit are printed in a Gothic type measuring approximately 150 mmover twenty lines, while the text is in a type of 103G. There are thirty-three lines to a fullpage, measuring 168 x 102 mm. On i'' below the title is a woodcut, 98 x 69 mm, showing abattle scene. The text begins with a woodcut initial I, 46 x 50 mm, white on a blackbackground, with a design including two eagle heads (fig. i). At the end is a woodcut suncontaining a human face (fig. 2). The newsletter describes the frightening events in thewoods outside Bergamo, where battalions of armed troops suddenly appeared as if fromnowhere. The letter is dated 23 December 1517 from the castle of Villa Chiara, whichbelonged to the celebrated family of Martinengo, in the countryside between Brescia andBergamo. Sander describes this newsletter, and another one written with a different textbut on the same subject, both of them anonymously printed. Of the second text I cannot atpresent locate a copy.^ Of the newsletter now acquired by the British Library two othercopies have been located in Italy, and so the piece has been described at various times,while the bibliographers describing it have come to a remarkable variety of conclusionsabout its typographical origins.

Firstly, Carlo Pasero found a copy in the very rich private library of Ugo da Como atLonato, near Brescia. Pasero described it in detail, remarking that the woodcut is in theLombard-Brescian style, Vivace nel movimento, ma mediocre di fattura', and he added

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Fig. I. Gopia delle stupende et horribile cose che ne boschi di Bergamo sono a questi giorni apparse(1517). C.127.C.21, leaf I recto

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Fig. 2. Copia delle stupende et horrtbile cose che ne hoschi di Bergamo sono a questi gtorm apparse(1517). C.127.C.21, leaf 2 verso

not very helpfully: 'sembra risalire ai primi anni del secolo e probabilmente orno molticonsimili foglietti volanti, anche se di diverso stampatore'.^

Pasero could not have been more mistaken in describing the style of the woodcut asLombard-Brescian. He did not know that the eminent English authority A. W. Pollard(at that time Keeper of the Department of Printed Books at the British Museum), whorarely made a mistake of any kind, had already, nearly twenty years previously, declaredthe same woodcut to be in the Florentine style, which it is. Pasero might have added, butdid not, that there was no printing in Brescia between the sack of that city in 1512 and15 21, and that he himself had not come across the same woodcut or initial while preparinghis book Le xilografie dei libri bresciani dal 1483 alia seconda metd del XVI secolo (Brescia,1928).

Clearly, the newsletter was not printed either in Brescia or in Bergamo, where noprinting is known to have taken place until after 1550.

Having proved that the pamphlet could not have been printed at Brescia or Bergamo, itwas most logical that one should look for a likely printer in the nearest large printingcentre, namely Milan. But there is no Milanese printer of the period whose types fitthe newsletter; and I always agreed with Pollard that the woodcut is in the Florentinestyle, however unlikely it might seem that so ephemeral and local a piece should findits way as far as Florence to be printed. Indeed, Max Sander in 1942 suggested eitherFlorence or Siena as the place of printing. He went further, and added that the woodcuthad been used in the famous illustrated edition of Luigi Pulci, Morgante maggiore,printed at Florence by Antonio Tubini for Piero Pacini on 22 January 1500, of whichonly two copies are recorded, one at Berlin (probably now destroyed) and one in

Vienna.-'I knew that no recorded printer in Florence between 1510 and 1520 had types

corresponding with the two types of our newsletter; and I had never seen the woodcutinitial I in a Florentine book. But Sander's suggestions were not quite as fantastic as theyat first appeared. He quotes the Dyson Perrins catalogue; and it was in fact whilecataloguing the Italian books in the private collection of Charles William Dyson Perrins(1864-1958) that A. W. Pollard had come across a copy of our newsletter, which hecatalogued as printed at Florence, with a query.''•

Most recently, a copy has been found by Dr Sandal in the Biblioteca Civica at Bergamoand has been entered in his bibliography of sixteenth-century Milanese printing with thenote: 'Lo studio dei caratteri di questi due foglietti e della silografia ci portano ad attribuirhcon sicurezza a Milano (a differenza di altri che scorgono lo stile silografico dell'Italiacentrale) e dubitativamente al Minuziano.'^

But neither Alessandro Minuziano nor any other Milanese printer of the period hadthese types or this woodcut or this initial; and after lengthy correspondence, as well aspersonal meetings with Dr Sandal, both he and I have agreed that his attribution to Milanwas mistaken.

Such was the state of my researches on this most elusive printer when one day m July1982, as so often happens in bibhography as in other fields of research, the answer

suddenly came while I was looking for something quite different connected with anotherproblem in anonymous Italian printing.

First I found the same woodcut sun on the last page of Petrarch, Elsecreto, printed bySimeone di Niccolo dei Nardi at Siena on 17 September 1517 (Isaac 13952, fig. 3): thevery same year as the newsletter. Then I found the same woodcut initial I on leaf A4^of Ludovicus Burghesius, Repetitio super legem primam ff. de tudiciis, also printed bySimeone Nardi on 21 December 1516 (Isaac 13951, fig. 4).^

The larger of the two types of the newsletter is Isaac's type 156G of Simeone Nardi,whereas the text type, 103G, is new to the recorded corpus of that printer, who normallyemployed a small roman of 85 mm as his text type.

There can now be no doubt that the Bergamo newsletter was printed by Simeone diNiccolo dei Nardi at Siena. ̂ No explanation of how and why it found its way to Sienareadily suggests itself.

The first book printed by Simeone is also the first Sienese book to contain woodcuts.This is Lanzilotto Politi, La sconficta di Monte Aperto^ dated 28 April 1502 (Isaac 13947).^Thereafter Simeone continued to work in his native city until 1539, sometimes incollaboration with Giovanni di Alessandro Landi. For the most part Simeone's outputconsisted of historical and devotional works by local authors, the bulkiest and mostimpressive being one of the earliest, which is full of exquisite woodcut initials: thecollected works of Agostino Dati of 27 October 1503. He also printed a number of smallplays, notably by the prolific local author Pietro Antonio dello Stricca Legacci. Only oneother book printed anonymously, and acquired by the British Library in recent years, hasbeen attributed to Simeone Nardi on typographical grounds. This is Antonius Cataneus,De naturali intellectus ordine^ Undated, but printed £:.i52o. It is not certain whether thisauthor is the same man as Jacomo Antonio Cataneo, bookseller, for whom Simeone Nardiprinted Raimondo da Capua, Vita miracolosa della seraphica S. Catherina da Siena., in

1524-Nowhere in the known corpus of works printed by Simeone do we find another example

of a newsletter, or indeed of any book dealing with local affairs outside Tuscany.^ Thenewsletter here discussed certainly seems to be a strange exception. Yet typographycannot lie.

The discovery hitherto of two anonymously printed works coming from the press ofSimeone di Niccolo dei Nardi places him in the same category as other printers of theperiod up and down Italy, a percentage of whose productions invariably turns out tohave been printed without imprint. There is no obvious reason for this; but when, asin this case, so unexpected a result comes from intense typographical research, the resultis more than a compensation for the patience which has to be put into it: it becomesa great pleasure.

The number of books in the British Library printed by Simeone di Niccolo dei Nardinow stands at thirteen.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the British Library also possesses (in a tract-volumeacquired in 1903) a tract of four leaves with the following title: Littera de le marauigliose

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Fig. 3. Petrarch, El secreto (Siena, 1517). G.10210, leaf k4 verso

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CAVR.EA AC PER.VTILIS /REPBTinO DOMINI LVDOVICI BVUGHfiMI i)EN3iNSlS .1 . V . SCOLAR.IS CLARIS/

SuVll lVRE CONSVLTl DOMINI SIMQNIS BVR.GHESII FILII SVPER. .L.

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didls & non de iudido:& lie potius in numero pm/rait 5 in numero fingulari. 4£ ^ecniido etJamquot modlscapiaturiudicium • Refpondco ad pri /mum / fie dico q> Idco didtu eft deiudidis ftr non de iudicio:(]uia tria lunt ludicia ul'quatuor, Qu^da funtludida iingularia ut rd ueudicatio ut in ,$. Ii minus

Fig. 4. Ludovicus Burghesius, Repetitio super legem primam .ff. de mdiciis (Siena, 1516).Q.ci.zz, leaf A4 recto

hattaglie apparse nouamente in Bergamasca. On the second leaf is the name of the author:'Bartholomeo de Villa chiara AI suo Charissimo Misser Honofrio Bonnuncio Veronese.'

Bartolommeo was no doubt a member of the Martinengo clan. He dates his accountfrom the castle on the same day as our newsletter: 23 December 1517. His tract has noimprint, but has been (correctly, I believe) attributed to the press of Gabriele da Bologna atRome. It is a completely different text from the newsletter, but describes the same events.Its printing history again emphasizes the fact that such small, ephemeral pieces could, anddid, travel long distances to be printed. There is no evidence that Bartolommeo was alsothe author of the newsletter. He was, however, moved on a later occasion to write furtherreminiscences in verse of the terrible events of 1517 in Lombardy.

1 Max Sander, Le Livre d figures italien depuis 146Jjusqua 1S30, tome i (Milan, 1942), nos. 910 and911. See also pi. 707.

2 Carlo Pasero, 'Nuovi studi xilografici e biblio-grafici bresciani', La Bibliofilia., xxxi (1930), pp.231-8. See p. 234, no. ii.

3 M, Sander, op. cit., no. 6028. I am very grateful toDr Otto Mazal, Director of the National Libraryof Austria, for kindly informing me that thiswoodcut does not in fact appear in the Morganteof 1500. Sander was misinformed. The woodcutis, however, certainly in the Florentine style, andimitates those of the Pulci. It may have been cutin Florence, although used in Siena.

4 [A. W. Pollard], Italian Book Itlustratiom andEarly Printing. A Catalogue of Books in theLibrary ofC. W. Dyson Perrins (London, BernardQuaritch, 1914), p. 182, no. 222.

5 Ennio Sandal, Editon e tipografi a Milano nelCmquecentc, vol. 2 (Baden-Baden, 1978), p. 43,no. 219. The copy now in Bergamo is also listed inL. Chiodi (ed.), Le cinquecentine della BibliotecaCivica 'A. Mai' di Bergamo (Bergomum., annoIxvii, fasc. i-iv) (Bergamo, 1973), p. 47, with noattribution of place of printing.

6 Frank Isaac, An Index to the Early Printed Booksin the British Museum. Part II. MDI-MDXX.Section ti. Italy (London, Bernard Quaritch,1938), p. 126.

7 For the only monograph devoted to this printer,inadequate and incomplete as it is, see FabioIacometti, *I1 primo stampatore senese: Simonedi Niccolo di Nardo', in La Diana., rassegna d''artee vita senese., anno i, fasc. iii (iii, trimestre 1926),

pp. 184-202. By 'the first Sienese printer',Iacometti means the first printer who was anative Italian. Printing began in Siena in 1484,but all the incunable printers in the town wereGermans. The early books printed there werealmost exclusively legal texts. I have listedseventy-one Sienese incunabula in my article'The Incunabula of Siena', in D. E. Rhodes(ed.). Essays in Honour of Victor Scholderer(Mainz, Karl Pressler Verlag, 1970), pp. 337-48.Iacometti restricted his researches on Simeoneto the holdings of the Biblioteca Comunale ofSiena, as he admits himself. Thus he has nomention of the Burghesius, which is presumablynot in tbat library. Cf. F. J. Norton, ItalianPrinters., 1501-1520 (London, 1958), p, 113:'Iacometti prints documents and describes forty-seven works by Symeon, of which thirty-five areearlier than 1521. The list could be considerablyextended.'

8 D. E. Rhodes, art. cit., p. 337.9 Perhaps we should not, after all, feel so surprised

that a newsletter dealing with events at or nearBergamo should have been printed at Siena,when we note that this same story was eventranslated into French, and published (probablyin Paris) without imprint. There is a copy of theFrench version in the Grenville Library at theBritish Library, the printer of which has notyet been identified. But although this Frenchpamphlet declares itself translated from theItalian, it does not appear to be a literaltranslation of either of the two versions listed bySander.

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