The complexities of the pre-print publishing landscape are brought vividly to life in this important book. The essays it contains offer insightful and, in places, agenda-setting contributions to the fields of historiography, book history, and publishing studies. Chiefly the product of a colloquium held in 2020 at the University of Helsinki under the auspices of two major projects (Medieval Publishing from c. 1000 to 1500, funded by the European Research Council, and Authorial Publishing in Early Medieval Europe, funded by the Academy of Finland), the volume is ably edited by Samu Niskanen with the assistance of Valentina Rovere. The book as a whole seeks to unravel the meaning and the practice of the act of publication in a culture dominated by slow, individual hand-copying, navigating the nebulous territory that lies between authorship and reception. More generally, the book seeks to convince the reader of the existence of medieval publishing as a phenomenon, arguing for it as constituting an ongoing process rather than a single event.
The book’s structure is broadly pragmatic and coherent, comprising a set of case studies, arranged chronologically, that reflect the diverse geographies and genres that delineate this timeframe, ranging from the religious texts of Carolingian monasteries to the more secular narratives that emerged in the later medieval and early modern period. In his introduction, Niskanen sensitively sets the scene for the subsequent discourse on medieval publishing, emphasising its status as more than a mechanical process and pointing to the evidence of both prefatory texts and manuscripts more generally to illuminate how publishing during this period was conventionally intertwined with the societal, theological, and philosophical frameworks that surrounded authors and their texts. The essays that follow support this argument.
Jesse Keskiaho’s essay, “Publications and Confidential Exchanges: Carolingian Treatises on the Soul,” bridges the delicate relationship between manuscript culture and esoteric knowledge dissemination, showing the ways in which ninth-century authors looked to control the circulation of their commentaries. Next, in his essay “Contextualising the Publication of Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum,” Lauri Leinonen uses the dedication of Dudo’s work as a lens for understanding how audiences could be obtained for a work through the careful selection of a dedicatee, thus underscoring that publishing was a social act that could involve third parties beyond author and audience. Tuomas Heikkilä’s study on the life and miracles of St. Symeon of Trier then illustrates the notion of publishing as an iterative process by probing its textual tradition and the clear authorial expectation that the work should be continued at a later date. Continuing the theme of later edition and emendation, James Willoughby’s examination of Ralph of Coggeshall’s chronicle takes us to Angevin England and navigates the treacherous waters of identifying autographs and presentation copies. Willoughby deftly shows that it is sometimes possible to make such identifications and, in this case, such an enquiry enables him to reveal Ralph of Coggeshall’s acts of self-censorship in the latter stages of his life. Jakub Kujawiński’s exceptionally substantial contribution moves us to the world of Nicholas Trevet's commentaries, once again underlining the variety of parties that it took to make publication a success. This is a fascinating piece, albeit perhaps disproportionately long by comparison with the other contributions.
Subsequent essays by Luca Azzetta, Marco Petoletti, and Valentina Rovere delve into individual textual traditions. Azzetta’s study of errors in archetypes in Dante’s works shows that knowledge of their initial publication is crucial if we are to appreciate Dante’s authorial voice, while Petoletti’s exploration of Petrarch’s urge to reconsider the expression of his De vita solitaria later in life returns us to the notion of publishing as process. This idea is then taken a step further by Rovere’s demonstration of the impact of the death of an author on the publication of a text, taking Boccaccio’s testament as an act of authorial publishing in itself for the prescriptions it includes for the ongoing care and treatment of his works.
The final chapters of the book take us towards the print era, showcasing the mixed economy of manuscripts and printed books that would endure for some considerable time, thus firmly rejecting the lazy assumption that print put paid to manuscript overnight. Outi Merisalo encapsulates this phenomenon well by setting out the case of Jacopo du Poggio Bracciolini who oversaw the production of a lavish manuscript copy of his father’s work at the same time as being in touch with the publisher of its incarnation in print. Similarly, Giovanna Murano’s examination of Francesco Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia shows that while the advantages of print for dissemination were being recognised within a century, for certain purposes, such as providing an outlet to operations of lesser means, manuscript remained a viable medium. Jaakko Tahkokallio’s contribution closes the volume, taking a theoretical bird’s eye view that operates almost as an epilogue for the volume at large. He argues, from his perspective as a historian, that we should treat the phenomenon of pre-modern publishing in the same way as we would any other matter or topic of historical significance: in relation to socio-political and intellectual agendas of the time or, put another way, as a response and reaction to, as well as a provocation for, significant contemporary events.
Whilst I might quibble that a thematic rather than a chronological organisation of this volume would have served it better (something that Niskanen implicitly acknowledges in his introduction by grouping the essays in precisely this way), overall this volume presents a vital exploration of publication in manuscript culture, one which renders visible the dynamics between medieval authors, texts, and audiences. This book is essential reading; for too long the term “publishing” had been a dirty word in relation to manuscript culture, with it being only a recent phenomenon that proper debate on the subject has taken place (the charge being led, of course, by Niskanen and his collaborators). This book compellingly demonstrates why the application of this terminology presents an important opportunity, through which we can glean a far better understanding of the ways in which authors of the Middle Ages expected, and hoped for, their works to be read, treated and, in due course, developed.