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The presentation of two recent studies which explore the history of printing in Ferrara from the 16th to the 18th century (Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea, Ferrara, 9 November 2022) is the starting point for debating about methodology, especially in relation to the cultural profile of the scholar dedicated to this task: the historian of the book.

We are witnessing a dangerous departure from the history of the book towards sociology, of the bibliography towards the information sciences. Instead, the two disciplines must reclaim their identity. How can they do it? Reconnecting, each in its own way, to the materiality of the book. Intellectual production, in fact, is expressed through the creation of articulated objects (books) which, on paper or through bits (sometimes both together), themselves dictate the conditions for their access.

This article aims to analyze the uses of one's address as a resource. It studies the case of several unrelated individuals who happened to live on the same (short) parisian street at roughly the same time, the end of the XVIIth century. It is possible to know that these men had lived on this street, named «rue Guénégaud» after the minister ot the King (Louis XIV) who had his mansion there and had been responsible for the very existence of the street (built around 1650), because each one of them put his address on his books. One lived for years from private lessons and the sale of his philosophical books, without having ever belonged to any university or scientific institution. The second one was a tailor who wrote the first book with patterns for cutting clothes ever published in France, in 1671. The third one practiced medecine without being a physician and has published a wide variety of books, including the first journal of medecine, the first treatise of forensic medecine and the first directory of useful addresses in Paris. Social and urban historians seldom use Early Modern books in order to study the agency of individual city dwellers. The fact that three random neighbors without any position of power chose to mention the place where one could find their books on those books themselves, beside their publisher's address or not, suggests that this particular address, this particular area, meant something to them, somehow provided means to understand their time and thrive in it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of the Corvinian books is long and controversial. Their traces have been followed all over the world, so that it has been possible to virtually reconstruct a meaningful portion of the extraordinary collection that Matthias Hunyadi put together. Tracking the origin of the seventeen codices which ended up in the Estense Library is quite simple: they were bought in a single lot by the Duke Alfonso II of Este in Venice. However, today there are only fifteen of them, and they were exhibited in Modena in 2002. They are being examined one more time, with the aim to add some new insight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reflection, dedicated to the analysis from a gender perspective of three aspects of the disciplines of the book (profession, semantic cataloging and history of the book), is part of the broader context of critical librarianship, and intends to approach these issues with the awareness that it is an unavoidably unsystematic introduction due to the complexity and breadth of the discussion. However, it was deemed necessary to open a debate or at least ask the question because in Italy these aspects have not yet been dealt with systematically and organically and are discussed marginally and in conflict, without being able to arrive at a synthesis of meaning that accepts and re-elaborate the social processes that have been going on for years and the requests coming from the communities that express a way of being and feeling complementary to the canonical one of the masculine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EMoBookTrade project, funded by the European Research Council and directed by Angela Nuovo, has developed a database on book prices (ca. 1530-1630) and book privileges (Venice, 1469 to 1603). This web application shows that digital humanities can play an innovative role in historical research at the same time respecting traditional scientific methods and the needs of ground-breaking inter-disciplinary research. Indeed, the EMoBookTrade DB takes into account both the representation of different kinds of sources and the processing of data deriving from them. Therefore, thanks to a rigorously designed conceptual model, the front end allows for a simple and straightforward source and data representation together with a complex search engine, the results of which can be downloaded in a CSV format suitable for statistical analyses. This article also aims to propose an ontology of price setting and privilege grants, considered as events concerned with the history of the book and the economic history.

This paper aims to present a brief overview on Emanuele Casamassima and his research on palaeography and the history of the book. The following topics are discussed: - cataloguing manuscripts according to different models (analytical, short, shared descriptions) - restoration of manuscript and printed books - palaeographic doctrines from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance - importance of sixteenth-century Italian writing masters for the study of the history of handwriting - aspects of the history of the handwriting in the late Middle Ages (the writing of Petrarch and Boccaccio; the humanistic graphic reform) - palaeography as a study of graphic structures, with a focus on the cursive tradition, especially during the Roman age (1st-4th centuries) and in the Middle Ages (10th-13th centuries). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The difficulties associated with the creation of a large database of book prices include giving effective answers to questions such as how prices were formed during the various steps of the production process (sedimentation of production costs, costs related to the sale) or what the nature of the assigned value is (estimated in the case of used books, or of stock inventories, or the result of special conditions offered to specific customers, etc.). But first it is necessary to reflect on the interpretation given to the figures provided by the heterogeneous documentation which supports the creation of such a database. The many reference currencies in which these prices are expressed, depending on the monetary area of action of the economic operators (printers, booksellers, customers) are likely to confuse and mislead if their exact meaning is not clearly understood. This problem becomes even more urgent when, for example, the primary sources are the private notes of a collector who recorded how much he had paid for a book, or when two different currencies in place or in time have the same name. This aspect is also crucial in comparing different places and markets. Was the price expressed in money of account or in coined money? In domestic or foreign currency? Is it possible to relate two prices expressed in different currencies? The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore in greater depth some of the economic-monetary aspects of Renaissance Europe in order to help clarify any doubts or misreadings by building a reliable picture of the various types of currency used in Europe between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is an essential step to subsequently address the possibility of comparing prices expressed in different currencies as they emerged on different markets.

Printed advertisements and lists of books for sales were used by publishers and booksellers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively to promote and increase the sale of books in distant markets. This article proposes an overall interpretation of the uses of these catalogues in the trade in books, the purposes they were designed to fulfil, and the reading public(s) they aimed to reach. Specific attention is paid to the book prices which are found in about 30% of the surviving printed catalogues. These represent a reliable testimony to the pricing policies some of the most important publishing firms, and the segments of the market they intended to serve. The catalogues are therefore among the main sources for our understanding of the mechanisms of the early modern book trade and its economic structure.

This article illustrates an early modern sales list of books, the Libri spirituali di stampa of the Venetian Giolito publishing house. This printed list, kept in the Biblioteca Comunale Augusta in Perugia, includes the descriptions of 81 devotional and religious sixteenth century books with their prices expressed in Venetian lire (an account money). The aim of the research is to illustrate the price policy of the Giolito firm between 1587 and 1592, and the segment of the market they intended to serve. For this purpose, on the basis of the books priced, the list has been dated and placed in chronological relation with other already known Giolito sales catalogues. In the second part of the article, average prices per printing sheet are calculated and the relationships between prices and dates, languages and formats are taken into consideration. In the end, the reasons why some few editions were proposed on the market at a higher price are discussed. The list is published in the Appendix.

The article examines some problems of textual history related to the book of 1 Samuel from the point of view of the so-called lower criticism. In particular, on the one hand the importance of the Qumran testimony for a correct evaluation of the LXX tradition is emphasized, and on the other hand the fluidity of the 'biblical' text in the Second Temple period is stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a summary of the conceptual framework within which a study of book prices should take place and the research issues, as well as the methodological problems, which need to be addressed. Although the nature of books as semi-industrial goods puts them in a different class of product as seen from the point of view of a pre-industrial economy, the broad categories of supply and demand have been used to identify a series of factors giving rise to specific research questions which need input from various aspects of economic historical analysis. The history of the book is placed in relation to some classic topics of economic history, in an attempt to place the book trade and the prices of books in the context of a broader historiographical debate. Among available sources for early modern book prices, the inventory of the book shop of Bernardo Giunti (Department of Special Collections, UCLA, Collection 170/622) is evidence of the thriving book market in Venice of the period. The almost 12,000 entries included in the list of books for sale reflect the purposes and aims of the firm. The structure of this document is somewhat complex as it was in continual use for more than twenty years. Over this period time, it appears to have become not merely a catalogue or finding-list of books for the use of the firm’s clerks, but also an important tool for the management of the shop and its stock. Almost every title is priced, making this inventory one of the most extensive and significant sources for the study of book prices in early modern Europe. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement n° 694476).

The Schola medica salernitana was the first and most important medical institution in Europe thanks to which the care and promotion of the human body became a ‘popular’ knowledge to be passed on to future generations. Prevention and psycho-physical well-being had a fundamental importance in the Hippocratica Civitas, so much so as to have led to the compilation of the famous Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum. This paper aims to illustrate the most important and complete collection of editions of the Regimen belonging to Bernardo Altieri, a lawyer and a passionate bibliophile from Salerno. The Altieri Collection brings together precious specimens that tell of the evolution of printing techniques and the printing places that produced them, and are witness to the editorial success that the work encountered before, during and after the Murattian suppression that involved the Schola medica salernitana in 1811. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Study on the use of some codicological techniques spread from the Thirteenth Century as a result of changes in the manufacturing books and of a new way to reading, through the case of the Castilian 13th, 14th and 15th manuscripts in Latin and vernacular, on parchment and on paper. Special attention is paid to the bifolium-signatures and leaf-signatures inside every quire, as well as to the foliation and to other brands of management.