Chapter II: Part 2

In 1475, perhaps as an echo of some verses in the “Noua compilatio Decretalium Gregorii IX” of 1473, we find a new phrase tacked on to the “arte impressoria” in an edition of Justinian, noting the fact that though Providence did not consider antiquity worthy of the art, it had been granted to our times (“qua quidem etsi antiquitas diuino non digna est visa indicio, nostra nichilominus tempestate indulta”). In 1476 again Schoeffer advertises that his edition of Justinian’s Institutes was printed “in the noble city of Mainz am Rhein, the inventress and first perfectress of the printing art” (“In nobili urbe Maguncia Rheni, impressorie artis inuentrice elimatriceque prima”), while in the Clementine Constitutions of the same year he substitutes “alumnaque” for “elimatriceque,” presumably in the sense of pupil or practiser, reverting subsequently to “elimatrice.” In 1478 he once more varies the praises of Mainz by calling her “domicilium Minerve firmissimum,” “the most stable home of Minerva.” With this year 1478, which closes the period of Schoeffer’s chief activity, we may bring our survey of his colophons to an end. Thereafter he printed more intermittently, and, if the absence of colophons may be trusted, as I think it may, with less interest in his work. But during these twenty-two years from 1457 to 1478, inclusive, he had made his books bear continual testimony to one great fact, that the art of printing had been invented and brought to perfection in Germany, in the city of Mainz; and in any weighing of the comparative claims that have been advanced on behalf of Germany and Holland, I think that the evidence of Schoeffer’s colophons alone would suffice to give the priority to Germany and Mainz.

Of the clearness and energy of the claim made in these Mainz colophons, we have already given abundant illustration, nor can there be any doubt that it obtained wide publicity. Schoeffer printed at least one advertisement of his books, and he had an agency for their sale in Paris. Besides this, his editions were copied by other printers. So far as publicity could be insured in the fifteenth century, it was insured by Schoeffer, aided by the printer of the “Catholicon,” for the statement that printing was invented at Mainz; and despite the rivalry between city and city, and between country and country, during all the years that this assertion was being repeated in one colophon after another, no printer in any other book ventured to challenge it. No doubt there are facts on the side of Holland which have to be explained as best we may, but in the face of these Mainz colophons the explanation must be of such a kind as to leave undisputed the fact that it was at Mainz that printing with movable types—“mira patronarum formarumque concordia proporcione et modulo”—first became a practicable art. On the other hand, as to the individual inventor of this art the fifteenth-century colophons are absolutely silent. There is nothing in any Mainz colophon answering to the boast of John of Speier at Venice, “primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis,” by which he asserted his individual priority over any other firm. The only statement of the kind is in the extraordinarily crabbed verses added by the corrector Magister Franciscus, after the colophon, to the “Institutiones Justiniani” of 1468, and reprinted in that of 1472, and in the Decretals of 1473, but omitted in 1476. This states that two Johns, both of whom the town of Mainz produced (genuit), were the renowned first stampers of books (librorum insignes protocaragmaticos), and that with them was associated a Peter; and the natural interpretation of these allusions identifies the “protocaragmatici” (though the “proto” may refer to preëminence quite as well as to priority) with Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust, and Peter Schoeffer.

So far as they are intelligible, therefore, these verses in the Institutes of Justinian confirm and extend the evidence of the colophons, and may be cheerfully accepted. Our last colophon in this chapter is not quite in the same case. This famous and ingeniously arranged addendum to the edition of the “Compendium de Origine regum et gentis Francorum” of Johann Tritheim, printed by Johann Schoeffer at Mainz in 1515, is shown as one of our illustrations, but may nevertheless be transcribed here for the sake of expanding its contractions:

Impressum et completum est presens chronicarum opus, anno
domini MDXV. in uigilia Margaretae uirginis. In nobili
famosaque urbe Moguntina, huius artis impressorie inuentrice
prima. Per Ioannem Schöffer, nepotem quondam honesti uiri
Ioannis Fusth, ciuis Moguntini, memorate artis primarii
auctoris. Qui tandem imprimendi artem proprio ingenio
excogitare specularique coepit anno dominice natiuitatis
M.CCCC.L. indictione XIII. Regnante illustrissimo Romanorum
imperatore Frederico III, praesidente sanctae Moguntinae sedi
Reuerendissimo in Christo patre domino Theoderico pincerna de
Erpach, principe electore. Anno autem M.CCCC.LII. perfecit
deduxitque eam (diuina fauente gratia) in opus imprimendi,
opera tamen ac multis necessariis adinuentionibus Petri
Schöffer de Gernsheim ministri suique filii adoptiui, cui etiam
filiam suam Christinam Fusthinn, pro digna laborum multarumque
adinuentionum remuneratione nuptui dedit. Retinuerunt autem
hii duo iam praenominati, Ioannes Fusth et Petrus Schöffer,
hanc artem in secreto (omnibus ministris ac familiaribus eorum,
ne illam quoquo modo manifestarent, iureiurando astrictis)
Quo tandem de anno domini M.CCCCLXII per eosdem familiares
in diuersas terrarum prouincias diuulgata haud parum sumpsit
incrementum.

Cum gratia et priuilegio Caesaree Maiestatis iussu et impensis
honesti Ioannis Haselperg ex Aia maiore Constantiensis
dioecesis.

This may be rendered:

The present historical work has been printed and completed in
the year of the Lord 1515, on the vigil of Margaret, virgin,
in the noble and famous city of Mainz, first inventress of
this printing art, by John Schöffer, grandson of a late worthy
man, John Fust, citizen of Mainz, foremost author of the said
art, who in due course by his own genius began to think out
and investigate the art of printing in the year of the Lord’s
nativity 1450, in the thirteenth indiction, in the reign of
the most illustrious Emperor of the Romans Frederick III,
and when the most reverend father in Christ, Theoderic the
cup-bearer, of Erbach, prince-elector, was presiding over the
sacred see of Mainz, And in the year 1452 perfected and by the
favor of divine grace brought it to the work of printing, by
the help, however, and with many necessary inventions[2] of
Peter Schöffer of Gernsheim, his workman and adoptive son, to
whom also he gave his daughter Christina Fust in marriage as a
worthy reward of his labors and many inventions.[2] And these
two already named, Ioannes Fust and Peter Schöffer, kept this
art secret, all their workmen and servants being bound by an
oath not in any way to reveal it; but at last, from the year of
the Lord 1462, through these same servants being spread abroad
into divers parts of the world, it received no small increase.

With the favor and privilege of the Imperial Majesty and at the
command and expense of the worthy John Haselperg of Reichenau
of the diocese of Constance.

It would be too much to call this colophon untruthful, inasmuch as the term “primarius auctor,” like “protocaragmaticus,” does not necessarily claim primacy in point of time; nevertheless, it certainly suggests this primacy and generally assigns to Fust a more decisive part than we can easily believe that he played. We need not censure too hardly John Schoeffer’s family feeling, even though it led him to ignore Gutenberg in a way which earlier testimony forbids us to believe to be just; but it seems evident that family feeling was so much to the fore as to place this long historical colophon on quite a different footing from that of the earlier ones written by Schoeffer himself.

III

COLOPHONS AT VENICE

While to Mainz belongs the supreme credit of having brought printing to the position of a practical art, the city in which it attained its highest perfection and popularity in the fifteenth century was undoubtedly Venice. The output from the Venetian presses represented some forty per cent. of the entire book production of Italy, and its quality was at least as remarkable as its quantity. It is natural, therefore, to turn from Mainz to Venice in our quest for interesting colophons, as wherever printers did good work and took pride in it we may expect to find correspondingly good colophons. Certainly at Venice we have no ground for disappointment in this respect. The Venetian colophons are plentiful and full of information, though chiefly about the publisher’s side of printing. What makes them a little alarming to the pedestrian editor is that so many of the earliest and most interesting specimens are in verse. The books most favored by the first Venetian printers were editions of the Latin classics and Latin translations of the Greek ones. To see these through the press each printer had to retain the services of a corrector, who filled a position half-way between the modern proof-reader’s and editor’s. The printers, not being able to write Latin themselves with any fluency, naturally left their colophons in the hands of their correctors, and these gentlemen preferred to express themselves in verse. The verse, even allowing for the fact that it is generally intended to be scanned by accent rather than quantity, is often of a kind which would get an English school-boy into considerable trouble; and it would be a nice question as to whether Omnibonus Leonicenus and Raphael Zovenzonius, who wrote it for John and Wendelin of Speier; Antonius Cornazanus, who was in the pay of Jenson; or Valdarfer’s corrector, Lodovicus Carbo, should be held the most successful. Just, however, because its poetic ornaments are commonplace, to render this verse into prose seems more than usually unsportsmanlike. Good poetry can stand the test of prose, and the poetaster meddles with it at his peril, as witness the uniform inferiority of metrical renderings of the Psalms to the prose of the Great Bible or Prayer-Book version. But mediocre poetry when turned into prose becomes simply ridiculous, and so the present translator, without reckoning himself as even a “minimus poeta,” has wrestled manfully with these various verse colophons and “reduced” them, as best he could, into English rhymes, since these, poor as they are, misrepresent the originals less than any attempt he could make in prose. Here, then, without more apology, are the colophons from the earliest Venetian books, which fall into an interesting sequence.

The first printer at Venice, it will be remembered, was John of Speier, who obtained a special privilege for his work which would have cramped the whole craft at Venice had not his death removed the difficulty. In his first book, an edition of Cicero’s “Epistolae ad Familiares,” printed in 1469, the colophon is cast into these verses:

Primus in Adriaca formis impressit aenis
Vrbe Libros Spira genitus de stirpe Iohannes.
In reliquis sit quanta uides spes, lector, habenda,
Quom labor hic primus calami superauerit artem.

M.CCCC.LXVIIII.

In Adria’s town, one John, a son of Speier,
First printed books by means of forms of brass.
And for the future shall not hope rise higher
When the first fruits the penman’s art surpass?

1469.

Of this first Venetian edition of Cicero’s letters we know from a subsequent colophon that only one hundred copies were printed, one twenty-fifth part of the whole edition now being preserved in the four copies at the British Museum. It was obviously sold out very rapidly, and in some three or four months’ time the printer had got out a second edition, to which he added a new colophon.

Hesperiae quondam Germanus quisque[3] libellos
Abstulit: en plures ipse daturus adest.
Namque uir ingenio mirandus et arte Ioannes
Exscribi docuit clarius aere libros.
Spira fauet Venetis: quarto nam mense peregit
Hoc tercentenum bis Ciceronis opus.

M.CCCC.LXVIIII.

From Italy once each German brought a book.
A German now will give more than they took.
For John, a man whom few in skill surpass,
Has shown that books may best be writ with brass.
Speier befriends Venice: twice in four months has he
Printed this Cicero, in hundreds three.

1469.

The puzzle here is to determine how many copies there were of the second edition. Mr. Horatio Brown, in “The Venetian Printing Press” (p. 10), courageously asserts that “the second edition of the _Epistulae_ consisted of six hundred copies, published in two issues of three hundred each; and that the whole six hundred took four months to print.” This is clearly inadmissible, as everything we know of fifteenth-century printing forbids us to suppose that John of Speier kept the whole book standing in type and printed off a second “issue” when he found there was a demand for it. The fourth month must be reckoned from the date of the first edition, and we have to choose, as to the number of copies in the second, between supposing that the three hundred, the “tercentenum opus,” refers to this alone, and that the poet did not intend to make any statement about the number of the first edition at all, or else that the second edition consisted of two hundred copies, and that these, with the hundred of the first, made up a total of three hundred. In either case his language is ambiguous, as the language of poets is apt to be when they try to put arithmetic into verse.

I have followed Mr. Proctor in making the second edition of Cicero’s letters precede the Pliny, but—as, in common with many other students of old books, I am made to feel daily—to be no longer able to go to him for information is a sore hindrance. I should have thought myself that the Pliny, a much larger book, was begun simultaneously with the first edition of Cicero, and that Wendelin’s colophon to the “De Civitate Dei” obliged us to link the Pliny with the first rather than the second edition. Perhaps, however, this arithmetic in verse is once more a little loose. Certainly the Pliny colophon, which is free from figures, is all the better poetry for that reason. It is the book here that speaks:

Quem modo tam rarum cupiens vix lector haberet,
Quique etiam fractus pene legendus eram:
Restituit Venetis me nuper Spira Ioannes:
Exscripsitque libros aere notante meos.
Fessa manus quondam moneo: calamusque quiescat,
Namque labor studio cessit: et ingenio.

M.CCCC.LXVIIII.

I, erst so rare few bookmen could afford me,
And erst so blurred that buyers’ eyes would fail—
To Venice now ’twas John of Speier restored me,
And made recording brass unfold my tale.
Let rest the tired hand, let rest the reed:
Mere toil to zealous wits the prize must cede.

1469.

The aspersion on the scribes was undeserved. If truth be told, either because they used too thin an ink, or else from too slight pressure, the early Venetian printers seldom did full justice to their beautiful types; and though their vellum copies are really fine, those on paper are no easier to read than the average fifteenth-century manuscripts which they imitated. We must, however, forgive John of Speier his little boastings, as this was the last colophon he was to print; and our next, which comes at the end of S. Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei,” contains his epitaph:

Qui docuit Venetos exscribi posse Ioannes
Mense fere trino centena uolumina Plini
Et totidem magni Ciceronis Spira libellos,
Ceperat Aureli: subito sed morte peremptus
Non potuit ceptum Venetis finire uolumen.
Vindelinus adest, eiusdem frater et arte
Non minor, Adriacaque morabitur urbe.

M.CCCC.LXX.

John, who taught Venice there might written be
A hundred Plinys in months barely three,
And of great Cicero as many a book,
Began Augustine, but then death him took,
Nor suffered that he should Venetians bless
Finishing his task. Now Wendelin, no less
With skill equipped, his brother, in his room
Means to take Adria’s city for his home.

1470.

The business which thus passed into his hands was certainly carried on by Wendelin vigorously, for during the next three years he turned out over a dozen folios or large quartos a year. He seems, indeed, to have outrun his resources, for as early as 1471 his colophons tell us that some of his books were financed for him by John of Cologne, and after the summer of 1473 his type passed into the possession of this John and his “very faithful partner, Johann Manthen.” As Wendelin’s name disappears from colophons for three years, it is probable that his services were taken over with his types; in 1470, however, he was his own master and the object of much praise from his colophon-writer. In his Sallust of this year we read:

Quadringenta dedit formata volumina Crispi
Nunc, lector, Venetis Spirea Vindelinus.
Et calamo libros audes spectare notatos
Aere magis quando littera ducta nitet?

To Venice Wendelin, who from Speier comes,
Has given of Sallust twice two hundred tomes.
And who dare glorify the pen-made book,
When so much fairer brass-stamped letters look?

The Livy of the same year ends with a poem of forty-six lines, which praises Wendelin for bravely rescuing such of Livy’s Decads as remained, “saevis velut hostibus acri Bello oppugnatas,” and by multiplying copies saving them from the fate which had befallen the rest. A poem like this, however, must be reckoned rather with congratulatory verses than as a colophon, though the line in these Venetian books is not always easy to draw. Two more of Wendelin’s publications in 1470 may be pressed into our service—a Virgil and a Petrarch. Of these the Virgil ends:

Progenitus Spira formis monumenta Maronis
Hoc Vindelinus scripsit apud Venetos.
Laudent ergo alii Polycletos Parrhasiosue
Et quosuis alios id genus artifices:
Ingenuas quisquis Musarum diligit artes
In primis ipsum laudibus afficiet:
Nec vero tantum quia multa uolumina, quantum
Quod perpulchra simul optimaque exhibeat.

M.CCCC.LXX.

Wendelin of Speier these records of the art
Of Maro now to Venice doth impart.
Let some of Polycletus praise the skill,
Parrhasius, or what sculptor else you will;
Who loves the stainless gifts the Muses give
Will pray that Wendelin’s renown may live;
Not that his volumes make so long a row,
But rather for the grace and skill they show.

1470.

The colophon to the Petrarch claims credit for the restoration of a true text, a point on which the scholars of the Renaissance were as keen, up to their lights, as those of our own day, and which is often emphasized in their laudatory verses as the one supreme merit:

Que fuerant multis quondam confusa tenebris
Petrarce Laure metra sacrata sue,
Christophori et pariter feruens Cyllenia cura
Transcripsit nitido lucidiora die.
Vtque superueniens nequeat corrumpere tempus
En Vindelinus erea plura dedit.

The songs that Petrarch to his Laura made
With many a doubt obscure were overlaid:
Now, by Cristoforo’s and Cyllenio’s care,
Than day itself their text shall shine more fair.
Lest by corrupting time they still be tried,
Wendelin these printed copies multiplied.

In 1471 Wendelin, or his correctors, lest their inspiration should be too hard worked, invented a simple couplet which would apply to any book equally well.

Impressum formis iustoque nitore coruscans
Hoc Vindelinus condidit artis opus.

Printed from forms, with modest splendors bright,
This Wendelin designed to give delight.

This is found in the “Apophthegmata” of Plutarch, the “Memorabilia” of Valerius Maximus, the “Singularia” of Pontanus, the “Aureae Quaestiones” of Bartolus de Saxoferrato, etc.; and must have been a welcome second string in case of need. Nevertheless, when a second edition of Sallust was called for, Wendelin’s private poet was equal to the occasion, producing the quatrain:

Quadringenta iterum formata uolumina nuper
Crispi dedit Venetis Spirea Vindelinus.
Sed meliora quidem lector, mihi crede, secundo
Et reprobata minus antea quam dederat.

The verses are so incredibly bad, not merely in their entire disregard of quantity, but in grammar as well, that it would be pleasant to reproduce the peculiar iniquity which makes their charm. What the writer meant to say was something to the effect that:

Wendelin of Speier to Venice now once more
Of printed Sallusts hath given hundreds four.
But here all’s better, all may trusted be:
This text, good reader, is from errors free.

Faithfully to reëcho the discords of the original is above the present translator’s skill.

As money troubles thickened about him, Wendelin’s colophons became less buoyant and interesting; but in 1473, when the transfer of his business to John of Cologne and Manthen of Gerresheim was impending, we find these verses in one of the huge law-books in which the early printers were so bold in investing their money—the “Lectura Bartoli de Saxoferrato super secunda parte Digesti Veteris”:

Finis. M. cccc. lxxiii.

Non satis est Spire: gratissima carmina Phoebo,
Musarum cantus, historiasque premi.
Omnis habet sua vota liber. Non cessat ab arte.
Has pressit leges, Iustiniane, tuas.
Spira tua est virtus Italas iam nota per urbes,
Ore tuum nomen posteritatis erit.

1473.

’Tis not enough for Speier to print the songs
That Phoebus loves, the Muses’ tales and lays:
Each book is favored. Not for rest he longs,
But thus to print Justinian’s laws essays.
Speier, now Italy’s cities know thy glory,
And future ages shall repeat the story.

When Wendelin resumed business on his own account in 1476, he published very few books; but one of these, the “Divina Commedia” of Dante, printed in that year, has an Italian colophon in the ambitious form of a sonnet:

Finita e lopra del inclito e diuo
Dante alleghieri Fiorentin poeta
La cui anima sancta alberga lieta
Nel ciel seren oue sempre il fia vivo.
Dimola benvenuto mai fia priuo
Deterna fama che sua mansueta
Lyra opero comentando il poeta,
Per cui il texto a noi e intellectiuo.
Christofal Berardi pisaurense detti
Opera e facto indegno correctore
Per quanto intese di quella i subietti.
De Spiera Vendelin fu il stampatore:
Del mille quattrocento e settanta setti
Correuan gli anni del nostro signore.

Here ends the work of Dante, the most high
Florentine poet, famed to every age,
Whose holy soul now finds glad harborage
(Aye may he there abide!) in heaven’s clear sky.
From Benvenuto d’Imola let none try
To wrest the credit due for comment sage
On this great poem, by which every page,
Poet himself, he helps to clarify.
Pesaro’s son, Christoph Berardi hight,
Hath all corrected, though with many a fear
Of lofty themes, hard to pursue aright.
The printer Wendelin, who from Speier came here:
And since Christ’s birth there urges now its flight
The fourteen hundred six and seventieth year.

This putting of dates into verse is sad work. In Jenson’s early colophons, instead of dates (which are added in prose), we have the name of the reigning doge to wrestle with. Thus, in his edition of the “Rhetorica” and “De Inuentione” of Cicero we find the following verse and prose colophon:

Emendata manu sunt exemplaria docta
Omniboni: quem dat utraque lingua patrem.
Haec eadem Ienson Veneta Nicolaus in urbe
Formauit: Mauro sub duce Christoforo.

MARCI TVLLII CICERONIS ORATORIS CLARISSIMI RHETORICORVM LIBER
VLTIMVS FELICITER EXPLICIT.

.M.CCCC.LXX.

Omnibonus with his learned hand hath these
Copies revised, skilled in two languages;
And Nicolas Jenson shaped them by his pains
At Venice, while Cristoforo Moro reigns.

The last book of the Rhetorics of Marcus Tullius Cicero, the
most renowned orator, comes happily to an end. 1470.

So again in an edition, of the same year, of the Letters to Atticus we have a similar colophon, the poetical portion of which might easily have led a reader to believe that he was invited to buy a work by Atticus himself instead of letters mainly addressed to him:

Attice, nunc totus Veneta diffunderis urbe,
Cum quondam fuerit copia rara tui.
Gallicus hoc Ienson Nicolaus muneris orbi
Attulit: ingenio daedalicaque manu.
Christophorus Mauro plenus bonitate fideque
Dux erat: auctorem, lector, opusque tenes.

MARCI T. C. EPISTOLAE AD ATTICVM BRVTVM
et Quintum fratrem, cum ipsius Attici vita feliciter expliciunt.
M.CCCC.LXX.

All Atticus is now in Venice sold,
Though copies were right rare in days of old.
French Nicolas Jenson this good gift has brought,
And all with skill and crafty hand has wrought.
Our doge, Cristoforo Moro, true and kind.
Thus book and author, reader, here you find.

The Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero to Atticus, Brutus, and
his brother Quintus, with the life of the said Atticus, come
happily to an end. 1470.

In the next year we have to deal with the little group of vernacular books printed by Jenson, to one of which the omission of an X from the date in the colophon has given such notoriety. The three which are correctly dated are: (i) “Una opera la quale se chiama Luctus Christianorum ex Passione Christi, zoe pianto de Christiani per la Passione de Christo in forma de Meditatione.”

COLOPHON: A Christi Natiuitate Anno M.CCCCLXXI. Pridie nonas
Apriles a preclarissimo librorum exculptore Nicolao gallico.
Impressa est passio christi dulcissima.

In the year 1471 from Christ’s Nativity, on April 4th, by
the most famous engraver of books, Nicolas Jenson, there was
printed The Most Sweet Passion of Christ.

(ii) “Parole devote de lanima inamorata in Misser Iesu.”

COLOPHON: MCCCCLXXI. Octauo Idus Aprilis: per Nicolaum Ienson
gallicum opusculum hoc feliciter impressum est.

1471, April 6th, by Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, this booklet
was happily printed.

(iii) “Una operetta la quale si chiama Palma Virtutum zioe triumpho de uirtude: la quale da Riegola forma et modo a qualunque stato,” etc.

COLOPHON: Deo Gratias. Amen. Opus Nicolai Ienson Gallici.
M.CCCCLXXI.

Thanks be to God, Amen. The work of Nicolas Jenson, a
Frenchman. 1471.

It will be noticed that the second colophon is shorter than the first, and it should be mentioned that in yet another book of the same kind, the “Gloria Mulierum,” Jenson did not trouble to put his name at all, doubtless thinking, according to the view propounded in our first chapter, that these little vernacular books of devotion would bring him no particular credit. If we look now at the book with the misprinted date, “Una opera la quale si chiama Decor Puellarum, zoe Honore de le Donzelle: la quale da regola forma e modo al stato de le honeste donzelle,” we find this colophon:

Anno a Christi Incarnatione MCCCCLXI per Magistrum Nicolaum
Ienson hoc opus quod Puellarum Decor dicitur feliciter
impressum est. Laus Deo.

In the year from Christ’s Incarnation 1461, by Master Nicolas
Jenson, this book, which is called Maidens’ Honor, was happily
printed. Thanks be to God.

Just as the subjects of all the books are of the same class, and just as they are all printed in the same types and the same size, so we find a general agreement in the colophons (as compared with those used by Jenson in the books issued in 1470), tempered with modifications which seem to fall into an orderly sequence. In subject the “Pianto de Christiani” and “Parole devote de l’anima inamorata” seem to pair best together, and the “Decor Puellarum” (regola de le honeste donzelle) with the “Palma Virtutum” (regola a qualunque persona). The first two are exactly dated within three days of each other, the second pair have only the date of the year. Probably there were two sets of compositors, one of whom printed the first pair, the other the second, and we see them starting by calling Jenson a “most famous engraver of books,” dropping these flowers in the “Decor Puellarum,” and quickly getting down to the curt formula of the “Palma Virtutum.” The typographical evidence, without further corroboration, would entitle us to feel sure that the omission of a second X in the date MCCCCLXI was purely accidental,[4] but it is satisfactory to find that the form of the colophon itself makes it impossible to separate it from its fellows and unreasonable to place it earlier than the fuller and more boastful form used in the “Pianto de Christiani.”

Though the colophons of his vernacular books were thus already tending to curtness in 1471, Jenson still paid some attention to those of his Latin publications. Thus, in an edition of Suetonius’s “Lives of the Caesars” of that year we find the quatrain:

Hoc ego Nicoleos Gallus cognomine Ienson
Impressi: mirae quis neget artis opus?
At tibi dum legitur docili Suetonius ore
Artificis nomen fac, rogo, lector ames.

M.CCCC.LXXI.

Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, I
This book have printed. Who’ll deny
The skill it shows? Then, reader kind,
The while ’tis read please bear in mind
The printer’s name with friendly thought
Who this Suetonius has wrought.

1471.

In the “De Bello Italico aduersus Gotthos” of Leonardo Aretino, printed in the same year, we find this sentiment expressed more concisely in a couplet which could be inserted in any book:

Gallicus hunc librum impressit Nicolaus Ienson.
Artifici grates, optime lector, habe.

Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman, took
The pains to put in print this book.
Then to the craftsman, reader good,
Be pleased to show some gratitude.

Lastly, in this same year, we have two variants of a prose colophon which contains a fine phrase of epigrammatic brevity. In an edition of the “Familiar Letters of Cicero” it runs:

MCCCCLXXI.

Opus praeclarissimum M. T. Ciceronis Epistolarum Familiarium a
Nicolao Ienson Gallico viuentibus necnon et posteris impressum
feliciter finit.

1471.

A very notable book, the Familiar Letters of Marcus Tullius
Cicero, printed by Nicolas Jenson for this and also for future
generations, comes happily to an end.

The phrase, but slightly enlarged, recurs in the “Institutes of Quintilian” of the same year.

Quintilianum eloquentiae fontem ab eruditissimo Omnibono
Leoniceno emendatum M. Nicolaus Ienson Gallicus viuentibus
posterisque miro impressit artificio annis M.CCCC.LXXI Mense
Maii die xxi.

Quintilian, the fountain of eloquence, corrected by the most
learned Omnibonus Leonicenus, was printed by Nicolas Jenson, a
Frenchman, with wonderful craftsmanship, for this and future
generations, in the year 1471, on the 21st day of the month of
May.

After this, until he joined John of Cologne, Jenson’s colophons become short and featureless. Meanwhile, however, a third printer, Christopher Valdarfer of Ratisbon, had set up a press at Venice, and toward the close of 1470 joined in the contest of poetical colophons. His first contribution to it appears to be these three couplets in praise of his edition of Cicero’s “De Oratore”:

ANNO DO. M.CCCC.LXX.

Si quem oratoris perfecti audire iuuabit
Materiam: fons est hoc Ciceronis opus.
Hic tersum eloquium uelut Attica lingua refulget:
Christophori impressus hic liber arte fuit.
Cui stirps Valdarfer patria estque Ratispona tellus.
Hunc emat, orator qui uelit esse, librum.

Who’d know the perfect orator’s stock-in-trade
Only this work of Cicero let him read,
Where polished speech, like Greek, doth light impart,
And all is printed by Cristoforo’s art,
Whose clan’s Valdarfer, Ratisbon his home.
The would-be orator need but buy this tome.

In the following year he issued another volume of Cicero, containing thirty orations, and added to it, doubtless by the hand of “Lodovico Carbo,” his corrector, seven couplets of verse whose phrasing has somehow impelled me to render them into disgracefully jingling rhymes:

Germani ingenii quis non miretur acumen?
Quod uult Germanus protinus efficiet.
Aspice quam mira libros impresserit arte:
Quam subito ueterum tot monumenta dedit
Nomine Christophorus, Valdarfer gentis alumnus,
Ratisponensis gloria magna soli.
Nunc ingens Ciceronis opus causasque forenses,
Quas inter patres dixit et in populo,
Cernis quam recto, quam emendato ordine struxit:
Nulla figura oculis gratior esse potest.
Hoc autem illustri Venetum perfecit in urbe
Praestanti Mauro sub duce Christophoro.
Accipite hunc librum quibus est facundia cordi:
Qui te Marte colet sponte disertus erit.

M.CCCC.LXXI. LODO. CARBO.

Of praising German talent what tongue can ever tire?
For what a German wishes, ’tis done as soon as said.
The skilful printing of this book should cause you to admire.
How quickly, too, are published all these records of the dead.
’Tis Christopher who prints them, of the old Valdarfer stock,
A credit and a glory to the soil of Ratisbon;
Who issues now the speeches of great Cicero _en bloc_,
“To the Senate,” “To the People,” and his Pleadings every one.
You may see the order follows the best editorial school:
No appearance could more justly please the eye.
’Tis printed here in Venice, ’neath the noble Moro’s rule;
Who Cicero reads no other road to eloquence need try.

1471. Lodo. Carbo.

After 1471 Valdarfer moved from Venice to Milan, where books from his press began to appear in 1474. Adam of Ammergau made some original contributions to the poetical tradition, but in his 1472 edition of Cicero’s Orations conveyed, and very clumsily, a couplet from Valdarfer’s edition of the previous year:

Hoc ingens Ciceronis opus, causasque forenses
Quas inter patres dixit et in populo,
Tu quicunque leges, Ambergau natus ahenis
Impressit formis. Ecce magister Adam.

M.CCCC.LXXII.

Who prints you now the speeches of great Cicero _en bloc_,
“To the Senate,” “To the People,” and his Pleadings every one?
Know, reader, that in Ammergau is his ancestral stock;
’Tis Master Adam of that place has this edition done.

1472.

The Venetian verse tradition seems now to have settled down into a convention that a new printer should announce his arrival in Latin elegiacs, but need not continue the practice. Franciscus de Hailbrun complied with it to this extent in some dull lines in an edition of the “Quadragesimale” of Robertus de Licio in 1472; and it is in another edition of the same work that Panzer first records three couplets which, with the addition of a prose sentence, also constant in form, occur in numerous books printed by Bartolommeo de Cremona:

Quem legis impressus dum stabit in aere caracter
Dum non longa dies uel fera fata prement,
Candida perpetue non deerit fama Cremonae.
Phidiacum hinc superat Bartholomeus ebur.
Cedite chalcographi: millesima uestra figura est,
Archetypas fingit solus at iste notas.

M.CCCC.LXXII. NICOLAO TRVNO DVCE VENETIARVM REGNANTE IMPRESSVM
FVIT HOC OPVS FOELICITER.

There is nothing very remarkable in these lines, but they are better than most of those with which I have been wrestling, and shall be dignified, therefore, by being rendered into prose instead of doggerel; for which also there is another reason in the fact that the meaning, just when it becomes interesting, is not as clear as could be wished. The best version I can make is as follows:

While the character which you read shall remain stamped in
brass, while neither length of days nor the cruel fates destroy
it, Cremona shall not lack a continuance of glittering fame. By
this craft Bartolommeo surpasses the ivory of Pheidias. Give
place, ye writers in brass; your number is a thousand, but he
alone fashions the well-known models.

In 1472, when Nicolò Truno was ruling Doge of Venice, this book
was successfully printed.

“Chalcographi,” which I have rendered literally as “writers in brass,” is, of course, no more than “typographers,” which means literally “writers with type.” But what exactly were the “notas archetypas,” the well-known models? And how did Bartolommeo of Cremona use them so as to distinguish himself from other “chalcographi”? For a moment the obvious answer appears to be that Bartolommeo is claiming credit for himself, not as a printer, but as a type-founder. The explanation, however, cannot stand in any sense which would differentiate Bartolommeo from his fellows in the way in which a modern type-founder differs from the printers who buy their types of him. For we know that Bartolommeo was himself a printer; and, on the other hand, it was the rule at this period for every printer to cast his own types, so that in doing this he would not be accomplishing anything exceptional. If he had been a type-seller in the modern fashion, we may be assured that he would have addressed the chalcographers, his presumable customers, much more respectfully. I can only imagine, therefore, that the “notas archetypas” was simply a good font of type which Bartolommeo thought that other printers were likely to copy.

In the editions of Virgil which he printed at Padua in 1472 (unless there is a mistake in the date), and again in 1473, Leonardus Achates announces himself very concisely:

Urbs Basilea mihi, nomen est Leonardus Achates:
Qui tua compressi carmina, diue Maro.

Anno Christi humanati M.CCCC.LXXII. Venet. Duce Nicol. Trono.

Basel I have for my town, for my name Leonardus Achates,
I who have printed thy lays, Virgil, thou poet divine.

In the year of Christ’s taking our manhood 1472. At Venice,
Nicolò Trono being Doge.

The verse tradition was also complied with by Jacobus de Fivizano in a Virgil of 1472, by Jacobus Rubeus in an Ovid of 1474, and by Erhard Ratdolt and his companions on the title-page of the Calendar of Johannes de Monteregio in 1476. Two years later, when printing was becoming so great an industry at Venice that such toys as colophons in verse must have begun to appear a little undignified, an editor in the service of John of Cologne, ordinarily a man of quite commercial colophons, burst out into this song in his praise, at the end (of all places in the world) of the Commentary of Bartolus de Saxoferrato on a section of the Justinian Code:

Sacrarum occiderant immensa uolumina legum,
Proh scelus! et uanos damnabat menda labores,
Tantus in ora hominum calamosque influxerat error.
Nullus erat tantam auderet qui uincere molem,
Et dubium nullus posset qui nauibus equor
Scindere foelici cursu; nulli hec uia uiuo
Insuetumne patebat iter; mortalia nondum.
Ingenia aptarant scribendis legibus era.
Ergo noua est primus celebrandus laude Ioannes
Quem magni genuit preclara Colonia rheni:
Elysiis certe dignus post funera campis
Inuentas propter, iustus si est Iuppiter, artes.
Hic uenetis primus leges impressit in oris
Et canones, nostro grandis prouintia celo,
Quodque hominum generi cunctis uel gentibus unum
Sufficiebat opus: soli hec est palma Ioanni.
Addidit et doctis multum censoribus aurum
Solus matura ut liberarent omnia lance
Peruigiles, magnum emptori et memorabile donum.
Nam uia que erratis fuerat durissima quondam
Nunc facilem cupidis monstrat discentibus arcem.
Emptor habes careant omni qui crimine libri,
Quos securus emas procul et quibus exulat error.
Accipe et Auctori dentur sua premia laudes.

The Volumes of the Sacred Law had died,
So much were they by error damnified;
Which had so deeply steeped each mouth and pen,
To free them seemed too hard for mortal men;
Nor was there one dared hope that he might be
A happy pilot through that doubtful sea.
No feet that unaccustomed road might pass;
None yet for writing laws had moulded brass.
John of Cologne on Rhine, to him we raise,
Earnt by new merits, a new song of praise.
Yes, his invention, if Jove justice yields,
Shall win him when he’s dead Elysian Fields.
To the great profit of our realm, his hands
These laws first printed in Venetian lands;
And from that work which served for all mankind
’Tis given to John alone glory to find.
He, too, alone gave learned men much gold
That they might free each text from errors old,
And in the ready platter place such food
That the blest buyer find there nought but good.
Thus all the road, erst for men’s feet too hard,
Right to the topmost height lies now unbarred.
Buy, then, these flawless books with a light heart;
And, buying, praise the printer for his art.

With these lines, certainly more poetical than those of most verse colophons, we may bring this chapter to a close.

IV

PRINTERS’ COLOPHONS IN OTHER TOWNS

The examples already quoted from books printed at Mainz and Venice will have sufficiently illustrated some of the general features which run through early colophons—the professions of religious thankfulness and devotion, and the desire of the printer to glorify not only the new art but himself as its most expert practitioner. These features will recur in other colophons we shall have occasion to quote, but there is no need to pick out many examples from books printed in other towns specially to illustrate them. The piety of German printers frequently prompted such devout colophons as this which Johann Zainer at Ulm added to his edition of the “Quodlibet” of S. Thomas Aquinas, and the one example may serve for all:

Immensa dei clementia finitur Quodlibet liber sancti Thome
de Aquino ordinis fratrum predicatorum in eiusdem gloriam
compositus. Impressus Ulm per Iohannem czainer de Rutlingen.
Anno domini Millesimo quadringentesimo septuagesimo quinto. Pro
cuius consummatione Rex regum laudetur in secula benedictus.
Amen.

By the unbounded clemency of God there is brought to an end the
book Quodlibet of St. Thomas Aquinas, of the order of Friars
Preachers, composed for the glory of the same. Printed at
Ulm, by Johann Zainer of Reutlingen, in the year of the Lord
fourteen hundred and seventy-five. For the completion of which
may the King of kings, for ever blessed, be praised. Amen.

As to boasting, there is more than enough of it to be found wherever we turn; but it will not be amiss to collect some instances of the special vaunts of the prototypographers,—the men who claimed to have been the first to practise their craft in any particular town,—as these are sometimes of importance in the history of printing. Thus, in the “Lectura super Institutionum libros quatuor” of Angelus de Gambilionibus de Aretio, printed by Joannes de Sidriano of Milan, we have a most precise statement of the day on which the first printed book was finished at Pavia:

Explicit prima pars huius operis revisa per me Angelum de
Gambilionibus de Aretio die xvi octobris ferrarie. 1448. Fuit
hoc opus impressum Papie per Ioannem de Sidriano Medioanensem
[_sic_] huius artis primum artificem qui in urbe ticicensi
[_sic_] huiusmodi notas impresserit et istud pro primo opere
expleuit die xxx mensis octobris 1473.

Here ends the first part of this work revised by me, Angelus de
Gambilionibus of Arezzo, 16th October, 1448, at Ferrara. This
work was printed at Pavia by Joannes de Sidriano of Milan,
the first practiser of this art who printed books of this kind
in the city once called Ticinum, and who finished this as his
first work on the 30th October, 1473.

Equally precise is Bartolommeo de Cividale in the short colophon he adds to his edition of Petrarch’s Trionfi, the first book printed at Lucca:

Impressus Lucae liber est hic: primus ubi artem
De Civitali Bartholomeus init.

Anno mcccclxxvii die xii Maii.

This book was printed at Lucca, where Bartolommeo de Cividale
first inaugurated the art, on May 12, 1477.

In the “Manuale” or “Liber de salute siue de Aspiratione Animae ad Deum” of S. Augustine, printed at Treviso in 1471, we find Gerard de Lisa boasting, with more poetry, but less precision:

Gloria debetur Girardo maxima lixae,
Quem genuit campis Flandria picta suis.
Hic Tarvisina nam primus coepit in urbe
Artifici raros aere notare libros.
Quoque magis faueant excelsi numina regis
Aurelii sacrum nunc manuale dedit.

Gerard de Lisa may great glory claim—
He who from Flanders’ glowing meadows came—
For in Treviso’s town he foremost was
To print rare books by the skilled use of brass.
And that the heavenly powers may more him bless,
Comes Austin’s holy manual from his press.

Curiously enough, a year before Joannes de Sidriano issued the first book at Pavia, printing had been inaugurated at Mantua with another work by the same not very illustrious author—Gambiglioni’s “Tractatus Maleficiorum.” In this Petrus Adam de Michaelibus writes:

Petrus Adam Mantus opus hoc impressit in urbe.
Illic nullus eo scripserat aere prius.

Petrus Adam printed this work in the town of Mantua. None had
written there on brass before him.

All these claims seem sufficiently well established, but that of Filippo of Lavagna in the “De medicina” of Avicenna (translated by Master Gerard of Cremona) is much less tenable. Here he says distinctly at the end of Book II:

Mediolani die xii februarii 1473 per Magistrum Filippum de
Lauagnia huius artis stampandi in hac urbe primum latorem atque
inventorem.

At Milan, on the 12th day of February, 1473, by Maestro Filippo
of Lavagna, the first bearer and inventor of the art of
stamping in this town.

We know that Antonio Zaroto had printed at Milan a “Festus de Verborum significationibus” on the 3d August, 1471, while the earliest date credited to Lavagna is that of his edition of the “Epistolae ad Familiares” of Cicero, 25th March, 1472. It is true that the pretty colophon to his “Miraculi de la Vergene Maria” tells another tale:

Dentro de Milano e doue stato impronta
L’opra beata de miraculi tanti
Di quella che nel Ciel monta e dismonta
Accompagnata con gli angeli e sancti.
Philippo da Lauagna qui vi si conta
E state el maestro de si dolce canti.

Impressum anno Domini MCCCCLXVIIII di xviiii Maii.

Within Milan is where has been printed the blessed work of
so great miracles of Her who ascends and descends in Heaven,
accompanied by the angels and saints. Filippo da Lavagna here
is the speaker, and is become the master of so sweet songs.
Printed in the year of the Lord 1469, on May 19.

But this is another instance of the risks of using Roman numerals (compare the three “1468” colophons cited in Chapter III), since the V in this date is clearly a misprint for a second X, which in some copies correctly takes its place.

A possible explanation of Lavagna’s boast in 1473 lies in the fact that he was by birth a Milanese, while Zaroto came from Parma; so that if we may take the latter half of the colophon to mean “the first man in this town who introduced and discovered this art of printing,” it would be literally correct—that is, if we can be sure that Lavagna was actually a printer at all, a point on which Mr. Proctor was very doubtful. But to raise this question is perhaps only a modern refinement, since without the help of the doctrine _qui facit per alium facit per se_ we must accuse many worthy fifteenth-century tradesmen of lying in their colophons.

Another dubious statement, which may perhaps be explained, was introduced, amid some very vainglorious boasting, in the colophon to the Oxford edition of the Epistles of Phalaris. This runs:

Hoc opusculum in alma vniuersitate Oxonie a natali christiano
Ducentesima et nonagesima et septima Olimpiade foeliciter
impressum est.

Hoc Teodericus Rood quem Collonia misit
Sanguine Germanus nobile pressit opus:
Atque sibi socius Thomas fuit Anglicus Hunte
Dii dent ut Venetos exsuperare queant.
Quam Ienson Venetos docuit vir Gallicus artem
Ingenio didicit terra britanna suo.
Celatos Veneti nobis transmittere libros
Cedite: nos aliis, vendimus, O Veneti.
Que fuerat uobis ars prima nota latini
Est eadem nobis ipsa reperta patres.
Quamuis semotos toto canit orbe Britannos
Virgilius, placet his lingua latina tamen.

This little work was happily printed in the bounteous
University of Oxford in the two hundred and ninety-seventh
Olympiad from the birth of Christ.

This noble work was printed by Theodoric Rood, a German by
blood, sent from Cologne, and an Englishman, Thomas Hunte,
was his partner. The gods grant that they may surpass the
Venetians. The art which the Frenchman Jenson taught the
Venetians, the British land has learnt by its mother-wit.
Cease, Venetians, from sending us the books you engrave: we
are now, O Venetians, selling to others. The art which was
first known to you, O Latin Fathers, has been discovered by us.
Although Virgil sings of the Britons as all a world away, yet
the Latin tongue delights them.

This is certainly not a truthful colophon, for we cannot believe that any foreign students would have sent to Oxford to buy the letters of the pseudo-Phalaris or any other books there printed, while the assertion that Britons learnt printing by their mother-wit accords ill with the fact that Theodoric Rood came from Cologne to practise the art on their behalf. Mr. Horatio Brown, however, perhaps presses the fifth line a little too hard when he asserts that “these verses prove that public opinion abroad assigned the priority of printing in Venice to Jenson.” John of Speier had died so early in his career, and the work of Jenson is to this day so universally recognized as the finest which was produced at Venice, that the Frenchman may fairly be said to have taught the Venetians printing, without claiming for him priority in order of time. It should, perhaps, also be noted that while Hain and Mr. Brown print the important word as _docuit_, Mr. Madan gives it as _decuit_, from which it might be possible to extract the assertion, not that he _taught_ the Venetians the art, but that he _graced_ them with it. It would need, however, a fifteenth-century Orbilius to do justice upon the perpetrator of such vile Latin, while _e_ for _o_ is an easy misprint, and _docuit_ is confirmed by the obvious antithesis of _didicit_ in the next line.

More important, because more detailed than any of the boasts we have yet quoted, are the claims and pleas put forward in the colophons to the edition of the commentary of Servius on Virgil, printed by Bernardo Cennini and his son Domenico, at Florence, in 1471-72. The first of these occurs at the end of the Bucolics, and is repeated, with the substitution of “Georgica” for “volumen hoc primum,” after the Georgics. The second comes at the end of the book.

(1) Ad Lectorem. Florentiae. vii Idus Nouembres. MccccLxxi.
Bernardus Cennius [_sic_], aurifex omnium iudicio
prestantissimus, et Dominicus eius F[ilius] egregiae indolis
adolescens, expressis ante calibe caracteribus, ac deinde fusis
literis, volumen hoc primum impresserunt. Petrus Cenninus,
Bernardi eiusdem F[ilius], quanta potuit cura et diligentia
emendauit ut cernis. Florentinis ingeniis nil ardui est.

(2) Ad Lectorem. Bernardinus Cenninus, aurifex omnium iudicio
praestantissimus, et Dominicus eius F[ilius], optimae indolis
adolescens, impresserunt. Petrus eiusdem Bernardi F[ilius]
emendauit, cum antiquissimis autem multis exemplaribus
contulit. In primisque illi cura fuit, ne quid alienum Seruio
adscriberetur, ne quid recideretur aut deesset, quod Honorati
esse peruetusta exemplaria demonstrarent. Quoniam uero
plerosque iuuat manu propria suoque more Graeca interponere,
eaque in antiquis codicibus perpauca sunt, et accentus quidem
difficillimi imprimendo notari sunt, relinquendum ad id spatia
duxit. Sed cum apud homines perfectum nihil sit, satis uideri
cuique debebit, si hi libri (quod vehementer optamus) prae
aliis emendati reperientur. Absolutum opus Nonis Octobribus. M.
cccc Lxxii. Florentiae.

(1) To the Reader. At Florence, on November 7, 1471, Bernardo
Cennini, by universal allowance a most excellent goldsmith, and
Domenico his son, a youth of remarkable ability, having first
modelled the stamps with compasses, and afterward moulded the
letters, printed this first volume. Pietro Cennini, son of the
aforesaid Bernardo, has corrected it, as you see, with all the
care and diligence he could. To Florentine wits nothing is
difficult.

(2) To the Reader. Bernardino Cennini, by universal allowance
a most excellent goldsmith, and Domenico his son, a youth of
very good ability, have been the printers. Pietro, son of the
aforesaid Bernardo, has acted as corrector and has made a
collation with many very ancient copies. His first anxiety was
that nothing by another hand should be ascribed to Servius,
that nothing which very old copies showed to be the work of
Honoratus should be cut down or omitted. Since it pleases many
readers to insert Greek words with their own hand and in their
own fashion, and these in ancient codices are very few, and the
accents are very difficult to mark in printing, he determined
that spaces should be left for the purpose. But since nothing
of man’s making is perfect, it must needs be accounted enough
if these books (as we earnestly hope) are found exceptionally
correct. The work was finished at Florence on October 5, 1472.

The references to the leaving of blank spaces for the Greek quotations (a common practice of the earliest printers in Italy) and to the trouble caused by the accents are particularly interesting, and by ill luck were not noticed by Mr. Proctor, who would have been delighted to quote them in his admirable monograph on “The Printing of Greek.”

Difficulties were natural in the early days of the art, and must often have beset the path of the wandering printers who passed from town to town, or from monastery to monastery, printing one or two books at each. As late as 1493 one such printer, not yet identified, who started his press at Acqui, though he was engaged on only a humble school-book, the “Doctrinale” of Alexander Gallus, found himself in sore straits owing to the plague raging in the neighboring towns.

Alexandri de villa Dei Doctrinale (Deo laudes) feliciter
explicit. Impressum sat incommode, cum aliquarum rerum, quae
ad hanc artem pertinent, impressori copia fieri non potuerit
in huius artis initio: peste Genuae, Ast, alibique militante.
Emendauit autem hoc ipsum opus Venturinus prior, Grammaticus
eximius, ita diligenter, ut cum antea Doctrinale parum
emendatum in plerisque locis librariorum vitio esse videretur,
nunc illius cura et diligentia adhibita in manus hominum quam
emendatissimum veniat. Imprimentur autem posthac libri alterius
generis litteris, et eleganter arbitror. Nam et fabri et
aliarum rerum, quarum hactenus promptor indigus fuit, illi nunc
Dei munere copia est, qui cuncta disponit pro sue voluntatis
arbitrio. Amen.