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scribes, by semi-professional scribes who occasionally sold a book, and by owners for their own use. Some have suggested that there were far more manuscripts produced by non-professionals than by professionals.35 Even if so, manuscripts were relatively scarce. Toward the end of the fifteenth century it was estimated that the average private library contained fifteen to twenty volumes, mostly manuscripts.36 Reflecting the lower cost of printed books, in 1468, little more than ten years after the introduction of printing, Humanist Giovanni Andrea Bussi, bishop of Aleria, and the chief editor for the printing house of Sweynheym and Pannartz after it moved from Subia- co to Rome, wrote to Pope Paul II: “In our time God gave Christendom a gift which enables even the pauper to acquire books. Prices of books have decreased by eighty percent.” In the same year Bussi, who also served as Pope Paul II’s librarian, wrote in the dedicatory letter of his edition of St. Jerome’s Epistolae, also printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz, that printing was a “divine art” (sancta ars) that offered even the poor the opportunity to read.37
Lower cost meant wider distribution. By printing hundreds of copies at one time, rather than producing a single manuscript copy when ordered, printing also enabled faster distribution of more information. For conve- nient and more rapid transportation of books many printers located their shops in cities or towns on major waterways. No matter how well some of the books were edited and printed, customers were not necessarily easy to find, and the earliest printers had to seek distribution in other cities and towns. As early as March 20, 1472, Sweynheim and Pannartz, who had been printing in Rome for only three years, had Cardinal Bussi petition Pope Sixtus IV to subsidize their edition of Nicolaus de Lyra’s commentary on the Bible. They claimed to have produced 20,475 volumes, but sales did not meet expectations, and they were left with an enormous unsold stock. “Their expenses, they complained, were so heavy and buyers so scarce (ces- santibus emptoribus) they had been reduced to near poverty (pauperes facti sumus),
35 Buehler, op. cit., pp. 22-23.
36 Lefebre & Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800, trans. D. Gerard (1976),
pp. 262-63.
37 Jones, Printing the Classical Text (2004) 6.
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