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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 March 2021
The early history of printing in Europe is one of great economic and commercial success, but also of significant risks taken by those involved. The supply of paper, essential to the functioning of a press, could cause conflicts and required constantly available capital: the profitability of the book industry depended on the growth of the market. In Venice, anyone could set up as a printer, creating competition that was strongly criticized by printers and booksellers in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. This prompted them to formulate the economic risks they faced in supplica addressed to the Venetian authorities, and to conceptualize the realities of their situation, especially in terms of competition. This word, always used in a pejorative sense, is nevertheless rare in both theoretical and practical documents of the time. However competitive this economic milieu was, it was counterbalanced by the necessity of collaboration, a phenomenon that can be studied through social network analysis. Trust was restored through the constitution of dense collaborative networks, in which competitors became partners. Yet this also enabled some actors to establish strong consortia, leading to the kind of oligopolistic economy typical of industries without state regulation.
This article was translated from the French as part of the project TesTradSHS, financed by the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieure, de la recherche et de l’innovation and coordinated at the Éditions EHESS by Andromeda Tait. It was revised by Catherine Kikuchi, Corrine Taylor, Amanda Haste, Chloe Morgan, and Stephen Sawyer.
1 Cited in Martin Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius: Business and Scholarship in Renaissance Venice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 8.
2 For a classic overview of early European printing and its intellectual implications, see Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
3 On the situation in Lyon, see René Fédou et al., eds., Cinq études lyonnaises (Geneva/Paris: Droz/Minard, 1966); Roger Chartier et al., eds., Nouvelles études lyonnaises (Geneva: Droz, 1969); Guillaume Fau et al., “L’imprimerie à Lyon au xv e siècle: un état des lieux,” Revue française d’histoire du livre 118–21 (2003): 195–275; Ilaria Andreoli, “‘Lyon, nom et marque civile. Qui sème aussi des bons livres l’usage.’ Lyon dans le réseau éditorial européen (xv e–xvi e siècle),” in Lyon vu/e d’ailleurs, 1245–1800. Échanges, compétitions et perceptions, ed. Jean-Louis Gaulin and Susanne Rau (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2009), 109–40; Andreoli, “Ex Officina erasmiana. Vincenzo Valgrisi et l’illustration du livre entre Venise et Lyon à la moitié du xvi e siècle” (PhD diss., Université Lumière Lyon 2/Ca’Foscari, 2006). On Milan, see Teresa Rogledi Manni, La tipografia a Milano nel xv secolo (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1980).
4 Mario Infelise, I libri proibiti. Da Gutenberg all’Encyclopédie (Rome: Laterza, 1999); Infelise, I padroni dei libri. Il controllo sulla stampa nella prima età moderna (Rome: Laterza, 2014).
5 For detailed historiographical and bibliographical overviews regarding different types of privilege relating to printing and bookselling at that time, see Angela Nuovo and Christian Coppens, I Giolito e la stampa nell’Italia del xvi secolo (Geneva: Droz, 2005); Angela Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance [2003], trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
6 Laura Carnelos, “La corporazione e gli esterni. Stampatori e librai a Venezia tra norma e contrafazzione (secoli xvi–xviii),” Società e storia 130 (2010): 657–88, has clearly shown that the creation of a guild did not resolve conflicts between its members and non-members who continued to participate in the production and trade of books in the city.
7 Venice, Museo Correr, Mariegola dell’arte dei depentori, MS 163, fols. 12–13: “l’arte e mestier delle carte et figure stampide”; cited in Franco Brunello, Arti e mestieri a Venezia nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1981), 79.
8 Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia (hereafter ASVe), Arti, b. 312, Marzeri. Mariegola, 1471–1487, fols. 10–14: in 1446, when the mercers extended their profession to a wider range of goods, they wished to include the trade of carta da zugar; cited in Richard MacKenney, “The Guilds of Venice: State and Society in the Longue Durée,” Studi veneziani 34 (1997): 15–43, here p. 32.
9 Richard MacKenney, Tradesmen and Traders: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250–c. 1650 (London: Croom Helm, 1987).
10 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 11, image 113, September 18, 1469.
11 The list of names mentioned in the colophons of the works printed is considered to be a good indication of the number of active workshops at any given time. The data used are taken from the British Library’s Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (hereafter “ISTC”).
12 Catherine Kikuchi, “Des vagabonds des lettres ? Les typographes à Venise aux temps des débuts de l’imprimerie,” in Précarité, instabilité, fragilité au Moyen Âge, ed. Diane Chamboduc de Saint-Pulgent, Aurélie Houdebert, and Cécile Troadec (Paris: Pups, forthcoming).
13 Rosa Salzberg, Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).
14 On the survival rate of the works published, see Xavier Hermand, Ezio Ornato, and Chiara Ruzzier, Les stratégies éditoriales à l’époque de l’incunable. Le cas des anciens Pays-Bas (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012); Jonathan Green, Frank McIntyre, and Paul Needham, “The Shape of Incunable Survival and Statistical Estimation of Lost Editions,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 105, no. 2 (2011): 141–75.
15 One thinks in particular of the writings of Turgot, Smith, or Boisguilbert. See Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (1977; repr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Jean-Yves Grenier, L’économie d’Ancien Régime. Un monde de l’échange et de l’incertitude (Paris: Albin Michel, 1996); Philippe Steiner, “La liberté du commerce: le marché des grains,” Dix-huitième siècle 26, no. 1 (1994): 201–19.
16 Other sources where one might find self-representation by printers (dedications, correspondence, advertising texts, private and notarial documents) do not generally deal with the economic situation of the profession as a whole. Nevertheless, for important works on particular printers and their self-representation, see Martin Lowry, “The Manutius Publicity Campaign,” in Aldus Manutius and Renaissance Culture: Essays in Memory of Franklin D. Murphy, ed. David S. Zeidberg (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1998), 31–46; Lowry, Nicholas Jenson and the Rise of Venetian Publishing in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius; Rosa Salzberg, “Masculine Republics: Establishing Authority in the Early Modern Venetian Printshop,” in Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period: Regulating Selves and Others, ed. Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 47–64.
17 Giacomo Todeschini, Franciscan Wealth: From Voluntary Poverty to Market Society [2004], trans. Donatella Melucci (Saint Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute, 2009); Diego Quaglioni, Giacomo Todeschini, and Gian Maria Varanini, eds., Credito e usura fra teologia, diritto e amministrazione. Linguaggi a confronto, sec. xii–xvi (Rome: École française de Rome, 2005); Giacomo Todeschini, Il prezzo della salvezza. Lessici medievali del pensiero economico (Rome: Nuova Italia scientifica, 1994).
18 In Venice, it is estimated that a press could be bought for between fifteen and thirty ducats; fonts, depending on their quality, would cost between fifteen and a hundred ducats. See Marino Zorzi, “Stampatori tedeschi a Venezia,” in Venezia e la Germania. Arte, politica, commercio, due civiltà a confronto, ed. Gaetano Cozzi et al. (Milan: Electa, 1986), 115–33, here p. 123. As a comparison, for France, see Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, L’apparition du livre (1957; repr. Paris: Albin Michel, 1999), 166–67; Annie Parent-Charon, “Humanisme et typographie. Les ‘Grecs du Roi’ et l’étude du monde antique,” in L’art du livre à l’Imprimerie nationale, ed. Raymond Blanchot et al. (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1973), 55–67.
19 ASVe, Giudici di Petizion, Sentenzia a giustizia, b. 159, fols. 44–47, 1473.
20 Erasmus, Colloques, trans. Étienne Wolff (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1992), 315: “Counting his wife, sons, daughter, son-in-law, workers, and servants, he had about thirty-three mouths to feed at home.”
21 ASVe, Senato, Deliberazioni, Terra, reg. 14, image 224, October 17, 1502. Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius, 100, considers this a reasonable estimate.
22 Rinaldo Fulin, “Documenti per servire alla storia della tipografia veneziana,” Archivio veneto 45, no. 23 (1882): 84–212, here pp. 100–101. For examples from Lyon and Florence, see Febvre and Martin, L’apparition du livre, 169–70; William A. Pettas, “The Cost of Printing a Florentine Incunable,” La bibliofilía 75, no. 1 (1973): 67–85, here p. 69.
23 ASVe, Giudici di petizion, Sentenze a giustizia, b. 159, fols. 44–47, 1473: the printer stresses that his workers could not “live from spirit” alone and that he had to provide them with sufficient “bread, meat, and other food, with a part of their wages too” (unless otherwise stated, translations of Venetian sources are our own). See also Tullia Gasparrini Leporace, “Nuovi documenti sulla tipografia veneziana del Quattrocento,” in Studi bibliografici. Atti del Convegno dedicato alla storia del libro italiano nel v centenario dell’introduzione dell’arte tipografica in Italia (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1967), 25–46.
24 Franco Franceschi, Oltre il “tumulto.” I lavoratori fiorentini dell’arte della lana fra Tre et Quattrocento (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1993), 43–45 and 55–61. Even considering that the ducat in around 1500 was worth one and a half times the value of the Florentine florin in around 1400 (a very broad estimate), the printers’ costs were still much higher.
25 This phenomenon is noted in Edoardo Barbieri, “L’accueil de l’imprimé dans les bibliothèques religieuses italiennes du Quattrocento,” in Le livre voyageur. Constitution et dissémination des collections livresques dans l’Europe moderne (1450–1830), ed. Dominique Bougé-Grandon (Paris: Klincksieck, 2000), 53–91, here pp. 56–57.
26 Pettas, “The Cost of Printing a Florentine Incunable,” 73.
27 For a review of work on these sources, see Angela Nuovo, Il commercio librario nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2003), 25–31. There is, however, a bias in these sources: some works were probably being offered for sale for the second time, since the trade in new and second-hand books took place on the same stalls; see Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, 347. For a study of the catalogues of Aldus Manutius, see Catherine Kikuchi, La Venise des livres, 1469–1530 (Ceyzérieu: Champ Vallon, 2018), 143–44.
28 Cited in Grenier, L’économie d’Ancien Régime, 148.
29 Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, 21–46.
30 Erasmus, The Adages of Erasmus, selected by William Barker (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), adage 2.1.1, p. 145.
31 According to data from the ISTC.
32 Philippe Braunstein, “À l’origine des privilèges d’invention aux xive et xve siècles,” in Les brevets. Leur utilisation en histoire des techniques et de l’économie, ed. François Caron (Paris: Ihmc/Éd. du Cnrs, 1984), 53–60; Giulio Mandich, “Privilegi per novità industriali a Venezia nei secoli xv e xvi,” Atti della deputazione Veneta di storia patria 5 (1963): 14–38; Roberto Berveglieri, Inventori stranieri a Venezia, 1474–1788. Importazione di tecnologia e circolazione di tecnici artigiani intentori. Repertorio (Venice: Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti, 1995).
33 This was the refusal to renew Daniel Bomberg’s privilege for works in Hebrew. It was notified by the Council of Ten and reflected religious circumstances that were problematic for this kind of publication: ASVe, Consiglio dei Dieci, Deliberazioni, Comuni, reg. 1, fol. 76, October 12–16, 1525; filze, no. 3 and no. 7, December 7, 1525; Marin Sanudo, Diarii, ed. Rinaldo Fulin et al. (Venice: Visentini, 1831), 40:56 and 75; 41:56 and 118.
34 There could, however, be a bias in obtaining privileges. Petitioners of Italian origin were more likely to be granted multiple privileges.
35 Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance, 222.
36 Between 1469 and 1530, 267 privileges were granted to 169 different individuals. They are preserved in the following archival collections: ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio; Senato, Deliberazioni, Terra; Consiglio dei Dieci, Deliberazioni; Capi dei Consiglio dei Dieci, Notatorio. This does not take into account the printing authorizations that are also found in these registers.
37 I decided not to undertake a lexicological analysis for several reasons. The texts are written in Latin or Venetian, which makes their combined treatment difficult. The Latin itself is very colloquial and the spelling by no means fixed. Moreover, for the purposes of this study, the precise analysis of terminology is not always useful except in some very specific cases, such as the use of “competition.” This kind of analysis is easily carried out without using quantitative lexicology in the technical sense.
38 It would be interesting to make a comparison with documents from other Venetian trades. However, printing is the only industry for which such a wealth of sources is available; if the contents of these registers is any indication, in years of high demand the granting of privileges for the printing and selling of books could represent one of the principal occupations of some councils.
39 Pierre de Jean Olivi, Traité des contrats, ed. and trans. Sylvain Piron (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012); Sylvain Piron, “Recherches d’histoire intellectuelle des sociétés médiévales” (postdoctoral habilitation thesis, University of Orléans, 2010), vol. 5. See also Todeschini, Franciscan Wealth; Quaglioni, Todeschini, and Varanini, Credito e usura fra teologia, diritto e amministrazione.
40 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 14, image 162, February 16, 1493, request by Simone Bevilacqua: “with very great industry and tremendous work on [his] part, as well as intolerable costs” (“maxima ipsorum industria et labore, nec non impensa intolerabili”).
41 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 17, image 188, June 26, 1514.
42 Sylvain Piron, “L’apparition du resicum en Méditerranée occidentale, xii e–xiii e siècles,” in Pour une histoire culturelle du risque. Genèse, évolution, actualité du concept dans les sociétés occidentales, ed. Emmanuelle Collas-Heddeland et al. (Strasbourg: Éd. Histoire et anthropologie, 2004), 59–76.
43 ASVe, Senato, Deliberazioni, Terra, reg. 25, image 84, April 29, 1528.
44 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 14, image 312, April 18, 1497: “Not wanting, having printed the said work at very great expense and effort, that a competitor should have it reprinted and then sell it for next to nothing, as often happens, which would lead to the ruin and damage of the supplicant.” (“Non volendo, che dapoi che cum grandissima spesa et faticha l’havera facto stampar le dicte opere che qualche altro a concorrentia le fesse restampir et poi le vendesse a vil pretio come molto vole achade, che tornaria a ruina et damno de lui supplicante.”)
45 Some authors have noted the use of this term in privileges at an extremely early stage: Paolo Trovato, Con ogni diligenza corretto. La stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani (1470–1570) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991), 46.
46 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 14, image 275, February 25, 1496: “Fearing, as the supplicant does, that he may be competed with out of envy and that others may profit from his secrets and efforts.” (“Temendo lui supplicante che per invidia non li sia facto concorrentia, et che altri habia el fruto di sui secreti et fatiche.”)
47 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 14, image 276, February 10, 1496: “that others may not compete with him by printing it, and the fruit of his efforts and his very high expenses thereby be taken away from him.” (“Che altri emuloi fazandolo stampar li fesseno concorrentia, e cussi a lui fusse levato el fructo de le fatiche e spexe sue grandissime.”)
48 Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius, 81–82.
49 For example: ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 15, image 165, November 27, 1502.
50 This is the case in the privileges, but also in other documents where testimonies of printers are reported, for example ASVe, Giudici di petizion, Sentenze a giustizia, b. 159, fol. 47, November 6, 1473: “the practices of this art” (“i pratichi de questa arte”); b. 168, fol. 19, June 19, 1478: “some practices of this trade” (“qualche praticha del mestier”).
51 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 14, image 346, March 14, 1498: “per non esser ruinato dalla perfida ravia de la concorrentia consueta fra questa miserabel arte.”
52 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 16, image 18, June 18, 1508: “esso supplicante teme esser e ruinato dala perfida concorrentia, laquale regna in questa povera et miserabel arte, che seria total ruina de casa sua, laqual concorrentia solum mediante lo adviso et benigna gratia di questa Serenissimo et sapientissimo conseglio potra fugera.”
53 ASVe, Collegio, Notatorio, reg. 16, image 214, February 11, 1512.
54 Gérard Sivéry, “La notion économique de l’usure selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue du Nord 356/357 (2004): 697–708. For the Scholastic doctrine on monopolies, see Raymond De Roover, La pensée économique des scolastiques. Doctrines et méthodes (Montreal/Paris: Institut d’études médiévales/J. Vrin, 1971). For Scholastics the place of competition in the just price was the subject of debate, but it seems to have been established as far as the Thomistic school is concerned.
56 The term does not seem to have been used in petitions for invention privileges prior to printing, but this requires further investigation.
57 Matthew Scherman, Familles et travail à Trévise à la fin du Moyen Âge (vers 1434–vers 1509) (Rome: École française de Rome, 2013), 147.
58 Maud Harivel, “Entre justice distributive et corruption: les élections politiques dans la République de Venise (1500–1797)” (PhD diss., University of Bern/Ephe, 2016).
59 Sanudo, Diarii, 15:554 and 25:426.
60 For example, Pincio and Paganini were members of the scuola of San Rocco; the latter was even one of its officers in 1489 and 1498: Cristina Dondi, “Printers and Guilds in Fifteenth-Century Venice,” La bibliofilía 106, no. 3 (2004): 231–65.
61 ASVe, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, Commissaria, b. 6, Commissaria Pietro Francesco Barbarigo, Giornale di Cassa 1499–1511, ed. in Ester Pastorello, “Di Aldo Pio Manuzio: testimonianze e documenti,” La bibliofilía 67 (1965): 163–220, here pp. 189–92.
62 ASVe, Giudici di petizion, Capitoli pubblicati, b. 13, fol. 80, April 11, 1494. For the Gradenigo family, see ASVe, Giudici del Proprio, Lezze, b. 6, fol. 68 sq., September 11, 1522; for the Badoer family, see ASVe, Giudici di petizion, Sentenze a giustizia, b. 194, fol. 38 sq., July 26, 1494.
63 Since is not possible here to give the entire social science bibliography on the subject, I refer the reader to the literature review in Thierry Dutour, “‘Que chacun fache bon ouvrage et loyal.’ La construction et le maintien de la confiance impersonnelle dans la vie sociale à la fin du Moyen Âge (espace francophone, xiii e–xv e siècle),” Quaestiones medii aevi novae 17 (2012): 355–77, here pp. 355–56. See also Dutour, Sous l’empire du bien. “Bonnes gens” et pacte social, xiii e–xv e siècle (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015).
64 François Cusin, “Relations marchandes et esprit d’entreprise: la construction sociale de la confiance,” Interventions économiques 33 (2006): https://interventionseconomiques.revues.org/766.
65 On the issue of trust in economic relations and the labor market, see Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (1985): 481–510. See also Michel Ferrary and Yvon Pesqueux, L’organisation en réseau, mythes et réalités (Paris: Puf, 2004), chap. 2, para. 5.
66 Laurence Buchholzer and Frédérique Lachaud, eds., “Le serment dans les villes du bas Moyen Âge,” special issue, Histoire urbaine 39, no. 1 (2014): 7–27; Claude Gauvard, “Introduction,” in Serment, promesse et engagement: rituels et modalités au Moyen Âge, ed. Françoise Laurent (Montpellier: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, 2008), 13–32; Raymond Verdier, ed., Le serment (Paris: Éd. du Cnrs, 1991); Marie-France Auzépy and Guillaume Saint-Guillain, eds., Oralité et lien social au Moyen Âge (Occident, Byzance, Islam). Parole donnée, foi jurée, serment (Paris: Achcbyz, 2008).
67 See, for example, the contracts of Jacques Le Rouge in 1473: Treviso, Archivio di Stato di Treviso, Notarile, ser. I, b. 1436, November 27 and May 24, 1473, published in Agostino Contò, Calami e torchi. Documenti per la storia del libro nel territorio della Republica di Venezia, sec. xv (Verona: Della Scala, 2003). See also Leonard Wild’s contract with Nicholas of Frankfurt in 1478, published in Fulin, “Documenti per servire alla storia della tipografia veneziana,” doc. 2; and the contract between Annibale Fosio, Marino Saraceno, and Francesco de Madiis in 1486, published in Riccardo Predelli, “Contratto per la stampa di un libro,” Archivio veneto 32, no. 16 (1886): 190–92.
68 Dutour, “‘Que chacun fache bon ouvrage et loyal,’” 366: “The word of the merchants was also [indisputable]. Writings in their hand were guaranteed above all by the honor of their authors.” See also Alessandra Stazzone, “Parole de marchand. Serment promissoire et indices ordaliques dans la définition du ‘bon’ marchand (xiv e siècle),” in Buchholzer and Lachaud, “Le serment dans les villes du bas Moyen Âge,” 105–20.
69 Ferrary and Pesqueux, L’organisation en réseau, chap. 2, paras. 4–5.
70 Gustav Ludwig, “Antonello da Messina und Deutsche und Niederländische Künstler in Venedig,” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 23 (1902): 43–65; Philippe Braunstein, “Les Allemands et la naissance de l’imprimerie vénitienne,” Revue des études italiennes 27, no. 4 (1981): 381–89; Martin Lowry, “Venetian Capital, German Technology and Renaissance Culture in the Later Fifteenth Century,” Renaissance Studies 2, no. 1 (1988): 1–13; Lowry, “The Social World of Nicholas Jenson and John of Cologne,” La bibliofilía 83 (1981): 193–218. Lowry’s work on the economic and social relations of Jenson and Aldus is unparalleled to this day. For a more general view, see Catherine Kikuchi, “Venise et le monde du livre, 1469–1530” (PhD diss., Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2016), chap. 8, pp. 423–98, and chap. 9, pp. 499–550; these two chapters offer an analysis of socialization in Venice and in the book world, and its consequences for the formation of a professional book sector.
71 The information contained in the colophons is collected in the systematic list compiled by Paul Needham, “Venetian Printers and Publishers in the Fifteenth Century,” in Anatomie bibliologiche. Saggi di storia del libro per il centenario de La bibliofilía, ed. Luigi Balsamo and Pierangelo Bellettini (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1999), 157–200. For the sixteenth century, I refer to Fernanda Ascarelli and Marco Menato, La tipografia del ’500 in Italia (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1989); Ester Pastorello, Tipografi, editori, librari a Venezia nel secolo xvi (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1924).
72 I have completed this information where it is known that particular collaborations existed, but have limited these to names that already appear in the colophons of the period studied. I have only considered economic partnerships, not literary collaborations. These relationships have been studied using the methods of social network analysis: see Catherine Kikuchi, “Utiliser les réseaux pour comprendre le développement de l’imprimerie à Venise, 1469–1530,” Essais. Revue interdisciplinaire d’humanités, forthcoming; Kikuchi, “Venise et le monde du livre, 1469–1530,” 139–44, 145–58, and 205–8. Given the difficulty of precisely dating the beginning and end of collaborations, it is assumed that a collaboration existed for the duration of the joint activity of the two stakeholders. The analyses cover long periods, as a synchronous analysis is subject to many hazards. For a seminal work on social network analysis in medieval history, see John F. Padgett and Christopher K. Ansell, “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400–1434,” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 6 (1993): 1259–319; Isabelle Rosé, “Reconstitution, représentation graphique et analyse des réseaux de pouvoir au haut Moyen Âge. Approche des pratiques sociales de l’aristocratie à partir de l’exemple d’Odon de Cluny († 942),” Redes. Revista hispana para el análisis de redes sociales 21, no. 5 (2011): 199–272. A group of doctoral students have also highlighted the use of social networks in history: Nikita Dmitriev, Ségolène Maudet, and Pierre Verschueren, eds., “Analyser des réseaux. Pourquoi? Comment?” thematic dossier, Hypothèses 19, no. 1 (2016): 177–252.
73 A “biconnected component” is a network where the density of links and interactions means that no member is dependent on a single individual for their attachment to the whole.
74 Emmanuel Lazega, “Théorie de la coopération entre concurrents: interdépendances, discipline sociale et processus sociaux,” Le libellio d’Aegis 4, no. 3 (2008): 1–5.
75 Emmanuel Lazega, “Théorie de la coopération entre concurrents: organisations, marchés et analyse de réseaux” in Traité de sociologie économique, ed. Philippe Steiner and François Vatin (Paris: Puf, 2009), 533–71, here p. 538.
76 In terms of network analysis, a k-core is a core whose members are all related to k members of the group, where k is a numerical value. In other words, members of a 4-core have relational links with at least four other members.
77 Lazega, “Théorie de la coopération entre concurrents: organisations, marchés et analyse de réseaux,” 537–38.
78 The question here is complicated, because collaborations were not symmetrical: one person provided the funding, another the material and technical capital. It must be assumed that the printer who collaborated with several publishers was just as central and important as the publisher who provided investment to the community. The balance of power was less favorable to the former, but the fact that they were regularly chosen to produce editions testifies to their key role in a competitive environment. The prestige of certain printer-typesetters meant that this asymmetry did not pose an insurmountable problem.
79 See the study of the archival documents related to the management of Barbarigo’s legacy after his death: ASVe, Procuratori di San Marco de Supra, Commissaria, b. 6, Commissaria Pietro Francesco Barbarigo, Giornale di cassa 1499–1511, ed. in Pastorello, “Di Aldo Pio Manuzio,” 189–92. See also Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius.
80 These were both philosophical works: Duns Scotus on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (ISTC: 00373000) and Dinus de Garbo on Avicenna (ISTC: 00196000).
81 ASVe, Giudici di petizion, Terminazioni, b. 40, fol. 76v, October 29, 1529.
82 On the Giunti family, see William A. Pettas, The Giunti of Florence, A Renaissance Printing and Publishing Family: A History of the Florentine Firm and a Catalogue of the Editions (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press, 2013).
83 According to the works inventoried by the ISTC.
84 According to all indicators of centrality: degree (the number of direct neighbors in the network), proximity (in relation to other nodes in the network), and intermediarity (presence on the paths connecting other nodes to one another).
85 Jean Tirole, Theory of Industrial Organization (Cambridge: Mit, 1988); David Encaoua, “Pouvoir de marché, stratégies et régulation. Les contributions de Jean Tirole, Prix Nobel d’Économie 2014,” Revue d’économie politique 125, no. 1 (2015): 1–76.
86 These issues, which lie well beyond the scope of this study, are nevertheless reflected in the concerns of research projects currently underway. See, for instance, the European Research Council programs conducted respectively by Angela Nuovo and Cristina Dondi: “The Early Modern Book Trade” (Udine/Milan, 2016–2021) aims to systematically study book prices and financial transactions in Europe; “15th Century Book Trade” (Cambridge, 2014–2019) seeks to examine the dissemination of incunabula in Europe based on a material study of surviving copies. On the formation of markets and the social mechanisms that contribute to them, see Sandrine Victor and Juliette Sibon, eds., “Normes et marchés en Occident, xiiie–xve siècle,” special issue, Rives méditéranéennes 55 (2017); Eleonora Canepari, Anne Montenach, and Isabelle Pernin, eds., “Aux marges du marché,” special issue, Rives méditerranéennes 54 (2017).
This is a translation of: Concurrence et collaboration dans le monde du livre vénitien, 1469-début du xvie siècle