Publishing for the Popes: The Roman Curia and the Use of Printing (1527–1555)

Abstract

This work, a revision of the author’s PhD thesis completed at the University of London, compels us to rethink the idea that the Papacy could only muster weak, sporadic publishing efforts in the 1500s while Luther, Calvin, and other reformers operated a robust publishing campaign powered by the new printing technologies. Sachet brings considerable expertise to this project, including fluency in various modern European languages, previous research on Renaissance book history, and related teaching at the Università degli Studi di Milano. His previous books include The Afterlife of Aldus: Posthumous Fame, Collectors and the Book Trade, co-edited in 2018.Publishing for the Popes is an important contribution to book history and Counter-Reformation history in that it captures the complex relationship between an increasingly powerful governmental institution, the mid-sixteenth-century papacy, and a relatively new medium of communication, printing by means of moveable type. This nexus transpired in Rome, the geographic heart of the Catholic Church, where several attempts were made by the Curia to publish books, often in connection with other Italian printing centers at Venice, Florence, and Bologna.Readers will benefit from having background information about the Papacy’s publishing activities before they dive into this specialized work. The opening chapter posits “whether the attempts made by the Catholic Church in Rome and elsewhere in Italy to harness printing can be treated as evidence of a policy, that is, a line of action pursued with sufficient coherence, despite the frequent changes in leadership” (5). Among his goals, Sachet attempts to “reconstruct the curial experiments with printing . . . all in the service of the papacy and the Catholic struggle against Protestantism” (207). He gives an overview of the key people (including some librarians) and published works resulting from this experiment, and he discusses how the publishing campaign sought to support and equip the Catholic clergy. Early in the book, in chapter 2, Sachet provides an overview of the Catholic Church’s employment of printers in the early decades of the sixteenth century and the purposes of its various printing projects (10).Many of the subsequent chapters outline Cardinal Marcello Cervini’s contribution to the beginnings of the papacy press (Cervini was later elected Pope Marcellus II). Cervini’s career and cultural interests included book collecting and the study of classics, religious literature, and ecclesiastical history (62). Of special interest to LCHS readers, Sachet highlights some of Cervini’s accomplishments as the head of the Vatican Library for several years. He came to be known as a cardinale editore (cardinal editor), and no one exceeded his mammoth book publishing efforts (65), which included ninety printed editions. He established Greek and Latin presses dedicated to publishing the Vatican Library’s holdings in those languages, and he also printed a wealth of institutional materials connected to the papacy, bishops, and several religious orders. As a few examples, Cervini aided the publishing campaigns of Olaus Magnus, the last Catholic archbishop of Uppsala, Sweden, and the Collegio Romano, the official press of the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola. Cervini partnered with publishers not only in Rome but also in Venice, Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Basel in all these efforts. Stories of Cervini’s attempts to navigate financial difficulties and mistrust between printing partners are included. The book also traces the rise of a position called the “stampatore camerale,” the official printer of the Roman Apostolic Chamber.The book offers several tools valuable to book scholars. One of the appendices is a short title catalog, an annotated list of Cervini’s sponsored publications from 1540 onward, including published and unpublished books that appeared after his death. In addition, an assiduously prepared bibliography of more than fifty pages provides an invaluable guide to archival and secondary sources on papacy printing of the Renaissance. The source list includes inventories and catalogs of libraries of the time.In terms of related historiography, Margaret Meserve’s Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome (2021), covering the slightly earlier period of 1470 to 1520, shows how the papacy harnessed printing to excommunicate enemies, pursue diplomatic alliances, condemn heretics, publish indulgences, promote new traditions, and lure pilgrims and their money to the papal city. Papal Bull thus stresses that the papacy was an effective user of printing technology several decades before Luther employed it for the Reformation. Sachet reveals that the papacy persisted in these printing campaigns as it contended with the rise of Protestantism.Publishing for the Popes is an important acquisition for research and theological libraries serving scholars who are interested in studying the papacy and printing industry during the Counter-Reformation, particularly those scholars studying Cervini, the primary figure in initiating that relationship. Sachet implies that he will continue his research of the papacy and its relationship to printing in the second half of the sixteenth century. Library historians can utilize his current book to find out about some of the operations of the Vatican Library, read about the activities of several ecclesiastical and private librarians, and trace some the publishing campaigns that helped to populate the shelves of early modern European libraries.