Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T21:14:53.246Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

News from Negroponte: Politics, Popular Opinion, and Information Exchange in the First Decade of the Italian Press?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Margaret Meserve
Margaret Meserve*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The fall of Negroponte to the Turks in 1470 was one of the first events in European history to be recorded in print. This article examines a little-known cluster of more than a dozen texts published in the months after the colony’s fall by some of the earliest printers to work in Italy. These editions did not “break” the news to the Italian public but rather offered analysis and commentary to an already well-informed readership. Some catered to contemporary demands for vernacular political poetry, while others now reveal the extent to which Italian humanists attached themselves to the printing industry in its earliest years, often with ambiguous results”

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , Summer 2006 , pp. 440 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

For helpful comments, criticisms, and suggestions I thank Jill Kraye, Martin Davies, Anthony Grafton, James Hankins, Mordechai Feingold, John Van Engen, Eileen Reeves, and Robert Goulding. John Goldfinch, Filippo de Vivo, Mary Laven, and Paul Cobb solved tricky questions. I am especially grateful to Peter Stallybrass, who persuaded me to pursue this project at a critical juncture. All translations are my own.

References

Adorisio, M. “Cultura in lingua volgare a Roma fra Quattro e Cinquecento.” In Studi di biblioteconomia e storia del libro in onore di Franceso Barberi, ed. Gregori, Giorgio de and Valenti, Maria, 19–36. Rome, 1976.Google Scholar
Angiolello, Giovanni Maria (Donado da Lezze). Historia turchesca. Ed. Ursu, I.. Bucharest, 1909.Google Scholar
Annales Forolivienses. Ed. Mazzatinti, G.. Città di Castello, 1903.Google Scholar
Babinger, Franz. Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time. Ed. Hickman, William C.. Trans. Mannheim, Ralph. Princeton, 1978.Google Scholar
Berni, Guernerio. Chronicon Eugubinum. Ed. Muratori, Ludovico. Milan, 1723–51.Google Scholar
Bianchi, D. “Vita e passione di Cristo di Antonio Cornazzano.” Bollettino Storico Piacentino 61 (1966): 1-16.Google Scholar
Brockman, Eric. The Two Sieges of Rhodes, 1480 –1522. London, 1969.Google Scholar
Bruni, R. L., and Zancani, Diego. Antonio Cornazzano: La Tradizione Testuale. Florence, 1992.Google Scholar
Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Trans. Middlemore, S. G. C.. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig, ed. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA, 1992.Google Scholar
Canensi, Michele. De vita et pontificatu Pauli II. Ed. Zippel, Giuseppe. Città di Castello, 1904.Google Scholar
Carile, A., ed. Testi inediti e poco noti sulla caduta di Costantinopoli. Bologna, 1983.Google Scholar
Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum. 12 vols. London, 1908–.Google Scholar
Certui Burgio, A. “La Vita e Passione di Cristo di Antonio Cornazzano.” Aurea Parma 65 (1981): 56–71.Google Scholar
Cicogna, E. A. La Presa di Negroponte fatta dai Turchi ai Veneziani nel MCCCCLXX. Venice, 1844.Google Scholar
Conway, Melissa. The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli 1476–84. Florence, 1999.Google Scholar
Copinger, W. A. A Supplement to Hain’s Repertorium Bibliographicum, Part I. London, 1895.Google Scholar
Cornazzano, Antonio. Vita di Cristo. [Venice?], 1472.Google Scholar
Cosenza, Mario. Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Italian Humanists and of the World of Classical Scholarship in Italy. 6 vols. Boston, 1962–67.Google Scholar
Cronaca di Bologna. Ed. Ludovico Muratori. Milan, 1723–51.Google Scholar
Daalman, Henricus, and Steynwech, Henricus. Letter dated Rome, 3 October 1470, in MS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, n.a.l. 546, fols. 171v–172r.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin. Columbus in Italy: An Italian Versification of the Letter on the Discovery of the New World. London, 1991.Google Scholar
Davies, Martin. “Juan de Carvajal and Early Printing: The 43-line Bible and the Sweynheym and Pannartz Aquinas.” The Library, 6th ser., 18 (1996): 193-215.10.1093/library/18.3.193CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dei, Benedetto. La Cronica dall’ anno 1400 all’anno 1500. Ed. Barducci, Roberto. Florence, 1984.Google Scholar
Della Torre, Arnaldo. Paolo Marsi da Pescina: Contributo alla Storia dell’Accademia Pomponiana. Rocca San Casciano, 1903.Google Scholar
De Nigroponti Captione. In Laonicus Chalcondyles, De origine et rebus gestis Turcorum libri decem, ed. Conrad Clauser, 330–32. Basel, 1556.Google Scholar
Diario Ferrarese. Ed. Giuseppe Pardi. Bologna, 1928.Google Scholar
Dooley, Brendan. “News and Doubt in Early Modern Culture: Or, Are We Having a Public Sphere Yet?” In The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Dooley, Brendan and Baron, Sabrina, 275–90. London, 2001.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1979.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, Elizabeth, with Johns, Adrian and Grafton, Anthony. “AHR Forum: How Revolutionary was the Printing Revolution?” American Historical Review 107 (2002): 84–129.Google Scholar
Farenga, Paola. “Indoctis viris … mulierculis quoque ipsis. Cultura in volgare nella stampa romana?” In Scrittura, biblioteche e stampa a Roma, ed. Bianca, Concetta et al., 1:403–15. Vatican City, 1980.Google Scholar
Fieschi, Giorgio. Eubois. Naples, 1470.Google Scholar
Filelfo, Francesco. Epistolarum familiarum libri XXXVII. Venice, 1502.Google Scholar
Fincati, L. “La Perdita di Negroponte (luglio 1470).” Archivio veneto 32, no. 2 (1886): 267–307.Google Scholar
Franzoi, Umberto, and di Stefani, Dina. Le Chiese di Venezia. Venice, 1976.Google Scholar
Fritsen, Angela M. “Testing Auctoritas: The Travels of Paolo Marsi, 1468–69.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 6 (2000): 356-82.10.1007/s12138-000-0002-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerulaitis, Leonardas. Printing and Publishing in Fifteenth-Century Venice. Chicago, 1976.Google Scholar
Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke. 11 vols. Leipzig, 1925–40; Stuttgart, 1971–.Google Scholar
Gli umanisti e la guerra otrantina: Testi dei secoli XV e XVI. Ed. Lucia Gualdo Rosa et al. Bari, 1982.Google Scholar
Anthony, Grafton. “The Importance of Being Printed.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11 (1980): 265-86.Google Scholar
Guerre in ottava rima. Ed. Beer, Marina, Ivaldi, Cristina et al. 4 vols. Ferrara, 1988–89.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Trans. Burger, Thomas. Cambridge, MA, 1989.Google Scholar
Hain, Ludwig. Repertorium bibliographicum. 2 vols. Stuttgart, 1826–38.Google Scholar
Halasz, Alexandra. The Marketplace of Print: Pamphlets and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 1997.10.1017/CBO9780511581892CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hankins, James. “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of Mehmed II.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 111-207.10.2307/1291712CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hess, Andrew C. “The Evolution of the Ottoman Seaborne Empire in the Age of the Oceanic Discoveries, 1453–1525.” American Historical Review 75 (1970): 1892-1919.10.2307/1848022CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hillard, Denise. Bibliothèque Mazarine. Vol. 6 of Catalogues regionaux des incunables des Bibliothèques publiques de France. Paris, 1989.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Rudolf. Printing, Selling, and Reading, 1450 –1550. Wiesbaden, 1967.Google Scholar
Howard, Deborah. Venice and the East: the Impact of the Islamic World on Vene-tian Architecture, 1100 –1500. New Haven, 2000.Google Scholar
Ijsewijn, Josef. “Lo storico e grammatico Matthaeus Herbenus di Maastricht, allievo di Perotti.” Studi umanistici piceni 1 (1981): 93-121.Google Scholar
The Illustrated Incunabula Short-Title Catalogue on CD-ROM. 2nd ed. Reading, 1998.Google Scholar
Infessura, Stefano. Diario della Città di Roma. Ed. Oreste Tommasini. Rome, 1890.Google Scholar
Ivani, Antonio. “La Presa di Negroponte.” In Ivani, Historia de Volaterra calamitate, ed. Mannucci, Francesco Luigi, 39–43. Città di Castello, 1912–13.Google Scholar
Jones, D. R. M. The Siege of Constantinople, 1453: Seven Contemporary Accounts. Amsterdam, 1972.Google Scholar
Kalogeropulo, D. Contribution à la bibliographie de l’île d’Euboea (1471 –1937). Athens, 1937.Google Scholar
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “The Alleged Ritual Murder of Simon of Trent (1475) and its Literary Repercussions: A Bibliographical Study.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 59 (1993): 103-35.10.2307/3622714CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labalme, Patricia. Bernardino Giustiniani: A Venetian of the Quattrocento. Rome, 1969.Google Scholar
Lamentatio Nigripontis. Rome, 1472.Google Scholar
Lenhart, John M. “Pre-Reformation Printed Books: A Study in Statistical and Applied Bibliography.” Franciscan Studies 14 (1935).Google Scholar
Lettera d’un segretario del sig. Sigismondo Malatesta. In Francesco Sansovino, Dell’historia universale dell’origine et impero de Turchi, 2:135. Venice, 1560.Google Scholar
Lowry, Martin. “Diplomacy and the Spread of Printing.” In Bibliography and the Study of 15th-Century Civilisation, ed. Goldfinch, John and Hellinga, Lotte, 124–37. London, 1987.Google Scholar
Lowry, Martin. “Cristoforo Valdarfer tra politici veneziani e cortigiani estensi.” In Il Libro a Corte, ed. Quondam, Amedeo, 273–84. Rome, 1994.Google Scholar
Magistretti, Piero. “Galeazzo Maria Sforza e la caduta di Negroponte.” Archivio storico lombardo 1 (1884): 79-120, 337-56.Google Scholar
Malipiero, Domenico. Annali Veneti dall’anno 1457–1500. Ed. Gar, Tommaso and Sagredo, Agostino. Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. 1, 7.1 (1843).Google Scholar
Manselli, Raoul. “Il cardinale Bessarione contro il pericolo turco e l’Italia.” Miscellanea francescana 73 (1973): 314–26.Google Scholar
Marsi, Paolo. Lamentatio de crudeli Eurapontinae urbis excidio. Rome, 1471.Google Scholar
Martines, Lauro. Strong Words: Writing and Social Strain in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore, 2001.Google Scholar
Medin, Antonio. La Storia della Repubblica di Venezia nella Poesia. Milan, 1904.Google Scholar
Medin, Antonio, and Frati, Ludovico. Lamenti storici del secoli XIV, XV e XVI. 1888. 3 vols. Reprint, Bologna, 1969.Google Scholar
Ménage, Victor Louis. “Eǧriboz.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2:690–91. 2nd ed. Leiden, 1986–.Google Scholar
Meserve, Margaret. Incunabula: The Printing Revolution in Europe. Units 52–53, “Current Affairs.” Reading, 2002.Google Scholar
Meserve, Margaret. “Patronage and Propaganda at the First Paris Press: Guillaume Fichet and the First Edition of Bessarion’s Orations against the Turks.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 97 (2003): 521-88.10.1086/pbsa.97.4.24295683CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meserve, Margaret. “Renaissance Humanists and the Problem of the Crusade.” In Crusading in the Fifteenth Century: Message and Impact, ed. Housley, Norman, 13–38. London, 2004.10.1057/9780230523357_2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, William. The Latins in the Levant: A History of Frankish Greece, 1204–1566. London, 1908.Google Scholar
Mohler, Ludwig. Kardinal Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist, und Staatsmann. 3 vols. Paderborn, 1923–42.Google Scholar
Monfasani, John. “Bessarion Latinus.” Rinascimento, 2nd ser., 21 (1981): 165-209.Google Scholar
Noakes, Susan. “The Development of the Book Market in Late Quattrocento Italy: Printers’ Failures and the Role of the Middlemen.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11 (1981): 23-55.Google Scholar
Oates, J. C. T. A Catalogue of the Fifteenth-Century Printed Books in the University Library Cambridge. Cambridge, 1954.Google Scholar
Pagello, Bartolomeo. De Chalcidis expugna-tione et jactura Christianae reipublicae deploratio. In Poesie inedite di Bartolemeo Pagello, ed. Zorzan, F., 258–63. Tortona, 1894.Google Scholar
Pastor, Ludwig. The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. Trans. Antrobus, Frederick Ignatius. 40 vols. London, 1891–1953.Google Scholar
Pepper, Simon. “The Defence of Venice’s Mainland Greek Colonies.” In War, Culture, and Society in Renaissance Venice: Essays in Honour of John Hale, ed. Chambers, David, Clough, Cecil, and Mallet, Michael, 29–56. London, 1993.Google Scholar
Pertusi, Agostino. La Caduta di Costantinopoli. 2 vols. Verona, 1976.Google Scholar
Petrucci, Armando. “Alle origini del libro moderno: libri da banco, libri da bisaccia, libretti di mano.” In Libri, scrittura e pubblico nel Rinascimento, ed. Petrucci, Armando, 137–56. Rome, 1970.Google Scholar
Piante de Negroponte. In Polidori, (1853), 403–08.Google Scholar
Polidori, Filippo-Luigi. “Due ritmi e una narrazione in prosa di autori con-temporanei intorno alla prese di Negroponte fatta dai Turchi a danno dei Veneziani nel MCCCCLXX.” Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. 1, appendix 9 (1853): 397-440.Google Scholar
Raymond, Joad. The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649. Oxford, 1996.Google Scholar
Raymond, Joad. Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern England. Cambridge, 2003.Google Scholar
Richardson, Brian. Print Culture in the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge, 1994.10.1017/CBO9780511597510CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rossini, Orietta. “Entusiasmi e riserve nei circoli umanistici.” In Gutenberg e Roma, ed. Miglio, Massimo and Rossini, Orietta, 97–112. Naples, 1997.Google Scholar
Rouse, Mary, and Rouse, Richard. Cartolai, Illuminators, and Printers in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Los Angeles, 1988.Google Scholar
Sanuto, Marin. Vite dei dogi. Ed. Monticoli, Giovanni. Città di Castello, 1900–11.Google Scholar
Scapecchi, Piero. “A New Ripoli Incunable and its Consequences for the History of the Ripoli Press.” In Incunabula: Studies in Fifteenth-Century Printed Books Presented to Lotte Hellinga, ed. Davies, Martin, 169–73. London, 1999.Google Scholar
Scholderer, Victor. “Federico de’ Conti and the First Books Printed at Iesi.” In Scholderer, , Fifty Essays in Fifteenth-and Sixteenth-Century Bibliography, 131–34. Amsterdam, 1966.Google Scholar
Schutte, Anne Jacobsen. “Printing, Piety, and the People in Italy: The First Thirty Years.” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 71 (1980): 5-20.Google Scholar
Schwoebel, Robert. The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk. Nieuwkoop, 1967.Google Scholar
Scribner, Robert. For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation. Cambridge, 1981.Google Scholar
Seguin, Jean-Pierre. “L’information à la fin du XVe siècle en France: pièces d’actualité imprimées sous le règne de Charles VIII.” Arts et traditions populaires 4 (1956): 309–30; 5 (1957): 46–74.Google Scholar
Setton, Kenneth M. The Papacy and the Levant, 1204 –1571. 4 vols. Philadelphia, 1976–85.Google Scholar
Sheppard, L. A. “A Fifteenth-Century Humanist, Francesco Filelfo.” The Library, 4th ser., 16 (1935): 1–26.10.1093/library/s4-XVI.1.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simonetta, Marcello. Rinascimento segreto: il mondo del segretario da Petrarca a Machiavelli. Milan, 2004.Google Scholar
Steele, Robert. “What Fifteenth-Century Books are About.” The Library, 2nd ser., 4 (1903): 337–54; 5 (1904): 337–58; 6 (1905): 137–55; 8 (1907): 225–38.10.1093/library/s2-IV.16.337CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stillwell, Margaret. The Beginning of the World of Books, 1450 –1470. New York, 1972.Google Scholar
Trame, Richard H. Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo 1404 –1470: Spanish Diplomat and Champion of the Papacy. Washington, DC, 1958.Google Scholar
Turelli, Elisabetta, ed. Immagini e azione riformatrice: le xilografie degli incunaboli savonaroliani nella Bibliografia Nazionale di Firenze. Florence, 1985.Google Scholar
Voss, Paul. Elizabethan News Pamphlets: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe and the Birth of Journalism. Pittsburgh, 2001.Google Scholar
Walsh, James. A Catalogue of the Fifteenth-Century Printed Books in the Harvard University Library. 5 vols. Binghamton, NY, 1991–97.Google Scholar
Watt, Tessa. Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550 –1640. Cambridge, 1991.Google Scholar
Weiss, Roberto. “Un umanista e curiale del Quattrocento: Giovanni Alvise Toscani.” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 12 (1958): 322–33.Google Scholar