Byzantine Scholarship in Renaissance Italy - Aldus Advances the Study of Greek

Lascaris, Constantine (1434-1501)

[Ἐρωτήματα (Grammatica Graeca)] and associated texts.

Venice: apud Aldum, mense octobri, 1512.

Price: $20,000.00

Quarto: 21.5 x 15.5 cm. [274], [20] lvs. With blank leaves f10 and &ρ4 present. The final 20 lvs. are the appendix and “introduction to the Hebrew language”. Complete. Collation: αa8.8, bβ810.8, γc8.8, dδ10.8, εe8.8, fζ10.8, gη10.8, θh8.8, iι10.8, χk8.8, lλ10.8, μm8.8, nν6.4, xξ10.8, οy8.8, zπ10.8, &ρ4.4, aa-bb8, [cc]4. For this challenging collation, see Ahmanson-Murphy entry 105 (and Renouard’s note at the foot of this description.)

THIRD ALDINE EDITION. “This edition of 1512 is certainly the third, and later than the one without a date (ca. 1502-3, Renouard p. 262, Ahmanson-Murphy 50), in which we do not find the three treatises on the Greek dialects, added to this one.

A truly fine copy. Bound in 16th c. German blind-stamped pigskin over beveled wooden boards with the original clasps preserved (one clasp with small defect, minor wear to extremities, lightly soiled, small abrasions, rear board peppered with tiny wormholes.) A fine, crisp copy with bright leaves; contemporary manuscript headlines and numbering added (a few small wormholes at end, small nick in margin of final leaf, a little light soiling to first and final leaf). Text in Greek (type 3, second casting) and Latin (R6:90), Hebrew alphabet at end. Aldine device A2 on title page and penultimate leaf of main text (but without “ALDVS” on t.p. version). Provenance: Bundesdenkmalamt Wien (Cultural heritage institute, Vienna, established in 1853).

The treatises on the Greek dialects contain 60 leaves, of which the penultimate is blank; they begin with the signature x, with a kind of title containing an opinion of Aldus, in Latin. On the back of sheet y iiii is another notice in which Aldus complains of the excessive fatigue caused him by the work of his printing press.

The rare third Aldine edition of the important Greek grammar by the Byzantine humanist Constantine Lascaris. This edition pairs Lascaris’ original Greek text, corrected by Lascaris’ pupil Pietro Bembo, with a facing Latin translation (first published in 1480) by the lexicographer Giovanni Crastone (ca. 1420-1498), who had studied Greek in Constantinople.

Lascaris’ grammar was first printed at Milan in 1476 (the first book printed entirely in Greek). The first Aldine appeared in 1495. For his second edition of ca. 1502-3, Aldus added an introduction to the Hebrew language, printed in a large Hebrew type. For this third edition, which reprints the material from the second edition, Aldus has added supporting texts on dialects.

“It should come as no surprise that the first fully Greek printed book to appear in the West was a grammar. The Renaissance was in full bloom, with scholars thirsting for the new knowledge made available with the rediscovery of the Greek classics. Thus, with Constantine Lascaris a new stage began in the resurrection of Hellenic antiquity and in the study of the Greek language.

“Furthermore, as demand rose for Greek writings it was suddenly seen that profits could be made. Aldus inaugurated his printing enterprises with Lascaris's ‘Erotemata’ in 1495. By then the ‘Erotemata’ had already been published (in 1476) and reprinted (in 1480), and was so famous that Aldus would speak of it as the ‘divinum opus’…

“Popular as these early editions were, since they were printed entirely in Greek their usefulness was limited. The need for Latin translations quickly became apparent. Geanakoplos points out that the most widely accepted method of teaching Greek in the period was that of providing students with both Latin and Greek versions of a work in order that they might look to the Latin for the unfamiliar Greek words. [In this edition], the Greek and parallel Latin translations were printed so that they could be bound either one after the other, or as with the BYU [and this] copy, with the Greek and Latin interleaved. Aldus explains in the preface how these interleaved texts can work for the student in the self-instruction of Greek.” (In Aedibus Aldi, The Legacy of Aldus, BYU).

“Constantine Lascaris (1434-1501) was born in Constantinople. After the fall of that city to the Ottoman Turks (1453), Lascaris went to Milan, where he became tutor to the Duke of Milan’s daughter, Ippolita Sforza, and wrote for her his ‘Erotemata’ (1476). He held university chairs at Naples in 1465 and at Messina from 1467 to his death; he tutored the writer Pietro Bembo in 1491–93. A scholarly copyist, Lascaris produced many valuable manuscripts, including collections of the Greek rhetoricians and epistolographers.”(Britannica)

Renouard’s note on the collation:

“A Greek register and a Latin note which immediately precede the Appendix are indispensable guides for collating this book, because of the confusion resulting from the alternate intercalation of Greek and Latin leaves. It should be noted that the Latin leaf hiiii is mistakenly listed as C iiii [corrected by hand in this copy], which has sometimes caused it to be put out of place.”(Renouard).

Renouard, Annales de l'Imprimerie des Alde 58/1; Ahmanson-Murphy (UCLA) 105; Bigliazzi (ed.), Aldo Manuzio tipografo: 1494-1515, 107; In Aedibus Aldi, The Legacy of Aldus, BYU, 2; Edit16 36173