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The Society of Jesus engaged with the medium of print almost from its inception and, as in other fields, according to its own way of proceeding. This article studies two aspects of Jesuit engagement with print, using its Italian assistancy as a case study. In the first part, Jesuit attitudes towards printing technology—its dangers and opportunities—are examined, focusing especially on the relationship between Robert Bellarmine and some of his printers. What emerges is an overriding concern for accuracy: the need to disseminate texts without typographical errors in order to avoid misinterpretations and possible accusations of heresy. The second part of the article analyzes one possible solution to this difficulty: Jesuit attempts, at the Roman College and elsewhere, at managing their own printing presses. As these efforts regularly ended in economic failure, they bring into question the traditional view of Jesuits as skilled administrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early modern period, the relentless growth in the copies of printed books and the increasing competition between craftsmen meant that, since the invention of Gutenberg until the 19th century, European bookbinders were forced to look for cheaper and quicker binding techniques. Based on this assumption, the article focuses on some of the bindings of books printed from the middle of the 16th until the middle of the 17th century which belonged to the library of Vilnius Jesuit Academy. This study is part of a broader research on the bindings of the Vilnius Jesuit Academy Library, and the article is limited to two groups of sources: books printed in Italy and books printed in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). The historical bindings are discussed by following the approach targeting the field of decorative arts and material culture studies, which is also well known as the 'archaeology' of the book or the bookbinding. It focuses not only on the decorative features of the cover of the book, but also on the structural features of the bindings which reveal comprehensively the work of the craftsmen of the past. This method of analysis is particularly useful for discussing not only decorated but also undecorated bindings which have so far received very limited attention in the research of the old Lithuanian book. As a result, the research revealed that the modest parchment bindings form nearly a half of all the examined bindings of the collection, and confirm the practical rather than the representational aspect of the Jesuit Library. According to the complexity of the technical execution and the number of operations involved in the process of binding, five binding techniques have been distinguished, ranging from the most complex to the simplest bindings, closely related with a retail bindings. What is more, a consistent number of parchment bindings are denoted by structural features, which is close to the Italian bookbinding tradition. The predominance of the latter in the group of Italian prints makes it possible to consider the possibility of already bound books entering the library of Vilnius Jesuit Academy. Moreover, the research has revealed certain binding features linked to the bookbinding traditions in Italy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I will first provide a brief discussion of the geographical development of how the art of printing transformed Kabbalah from Italian courts to Polish shtetlach , focusing on the relationship between Italy and Poland. I will then move to the theoretical aspect and try to outline the dynamics of kabbalistic thought involved in this phenomenon. From a temporal point of view, the focus is on the sixteenth century, the era in which the crucial transformation of kabbalistic thought into an editorial product takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses printing in Mondovi, Italy during the 16th century with a particular focus on the printers Leonardo Torrentino and his father Lorenzo Torrentino. A brief profile is provided of Lorenzo Torrentino, including printing shop and his son Leonardo's publication of over thirty titles, is provided. The role that the Savoy government played in printing, including Duke Emanuel-Philibert of Savoy's (which was a region of southeastern France and northwestern Italy's) request for Lorenzo Torrentino to start a printing shop in Mondovi, is discussed.

The article presents information on the Bindoni-Pasini press in Venice, Italy. In the sixteenth century, the Bindoni family of printers had a strong presence. Their printing activity can be traced from Alessandro Bindoni in 1506 to his great-grandson, Gasparo Bindoni, who died in 1602. In the sixteenth century, printing was a competitive and thriving business. Initially the press concentrated on printing books on devotion, romances, poetry, and contemporary literature. They shifted to printing intellectual texts for students and merchants after 1540. They printed the second edition of "Missale Romanum Glacoliticum," in 1528. Printing with movable type was only a century old, when the Bindoni-Pasini press was actively involved in printing.

The article discusses the contribution of the Società Tipografica Bolognese through its printing devices in promoting the spread of humanism in Italy during the sixteenth century. The Society was built in July 1572 by twelve aristocratic scholars of Bologna which was devoted to publishing the works of local writers and sticking to high printing standards. With this, the Society's publications are being highly considered for their high print-making quality. The printing device of the Society reflected the devotion and connection of its members to the culture and history of their city. However, having experienced a financial crisis, the Society was limited only to operate for 10 years and although it finally closed in 1581, it left some of the best examples of printing.

Shah Ismail Safavi emerged as the revolutionary leader of a new, Shi'ite movement in western Iran in the early years of the sixteenth century. News of his rise to power reached Western Europe almost immediately and provoked a wide range of responses: some observers hoped he would join the Christian princes of Europe in a new offensive against their common enemy, the Ottoman Turks. Others saw him as an economic and social revolutionary who brought justice to the poor and dispossessed of Persia and whose works might occasion similar reforms in Europe. Yet others saw his rise as a providential event, freighted with apocalyptic significance, or perhaps a divine endorsement of some more particular domestic agenda. Learned humanist observers in Italy and elsewhere found themselves on several sides of the question, expressing first scepticism and then later qualified enthusiasm for this new Islamic prince. The circulation of information about Shah Ismail was fluid, unpredictable, and shaped by local conditions; the printing press also played an important role in transmitting--and transforming--the story of the "Sophy" across Renaissance Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual and physical aspects of the early modern sermon are its most elusive elements, yet they were critically important to early modern preachers, especially in the age of print. This essay surveys various factors that encouraged an increasing emphasis on gesture and performance in the pulpit in the early modern period, particularly religious reform, and asks what influence printed sermons had on oral preaching in Italy from the mid-sixteenth century. It argues that printing gave preachers a forum to regulate the performance of preaching, encouraged them to articulate and promote the continued value of the spoken sermon, and provided a new area where preachers could compete with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses the entry within the British Museum/British Library in London, England referencing the 16th century Italian book "Giardino d ’Amore," by Angelo Ambrogini, or Poliziano. The printing of books in Italy during the 16th century, including by the publisher and bookseller Francesco Leggieri (or Ligieri), is discussed.

Much to the surprise of most scholars of English literature, the Biblioteca Capitolare in Vercelli (Italy), renowned for holding the famous Vercelli Book with Old English poetry, also contains a fifteenth-century prayer book with three specimens of Middle English. This paper offers a brief description of the history, physical make-up, and contents of MS Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare CCXXV together with diplomatic transcripts of the English texts: an indulgence, a poem to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a devotional prayer to Jesus. The manuscript was probably produced in the north of England, but the later Paris provenance of the book could suggest that it influenced the compilation of early printed versions of the Speculum Spiritualium or the Sarum Prymer, printed there in the early sixteenth century for the English market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the era of hand-press printing, variations among the copies of a single edition was the norm rather than the exception. Indeed, no single copy would ever be identical to another, but rather each one would be unique. These differences were due not only to the marks and features that each item acquired after leaving the printing shop, according to the hands through which it passed, but also to the features that accumulated during the printing process itself. These characteristics could be of two kinds: conscious variants, either when the printer made stop-press corrections to typesetting errors or other mistakes that had been missed during proof reading or to add later corrections by the editor or author; unconscious variants when they were the result of unnoticed mistakes made by the printer himself. In the preparation of her dissertation for a degree in Bibliography, the author made a census of the surviving examples of Italian-German lexicons recorded in Italian incunabula production and described them. The conscious and unconscious printing errors collated are analyzed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most interesting features of Renaissance culture in Italy was its obsession with knowledge about other peoples and their customs. This was likely due to more than just intellectual curiosity. You might even call it an anxiety about wanting to know more about the world beyond the Mediterranean so that ''Italians'' could understand better their own place and social identity vis-àà-vis other peoples and places. How, then, did literature about or from distant lands contribute to shaping identity, inform values, and promote collective self-reflection? After briefly discussing the development and the impact of printing in Italy, I will consider the relationship between texts and material formats in Olaus Magnus's Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555), a work that enjoyed a wide circulation and that described the many marvels of a relatively hitherto unknown part of the world, Scandinavia, to Italian readers. I will then briefly discuss two other books, Nicolààs Monardes' popular work, Historia medicinal (1565--1569) and Giambattista della Porta's Magia naturalis (1558) as instances of changing attitudes and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the origin and the development of Libri da compagnia, their relationship with books of hours, and the impact of the advent of printing on this type of book. It is followed by a list of fifteenth- and sixteenth-centuries editions and extant copies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the engravings found in the printings of Bernardus de Prevedariis, the Milanese engraver, in Italy. The Prevedari print receives criticisms because the monumental candelabrum contained the name of Donato Bramante, an Italian architect. In addition, it has been known as the earliest documented print and the largest Italian engraving on a single plate realized during the 15th century. Moreover, the iconographical reading surrounds the mystery of his artwork while the context of his engraving remains unclear.

Focuses on the compositorial practices of a single center of printing in Naples, Italy. Total number of editions published in the seventeenth century; Examination of the preliminary signatures, signature alphabets, signature numeration, position of signatures, number of signed leaves, catchwords, pagination and foliation and dates in imprints of the books; Signature style of the books.

The role of the Venetian republic in the history of intellectual property is not well known although the innovations which were later codified into law by the British Crown, and which are usually regarded as heralding the age of intellectual property, were first developed a century before in Venice. This article explores these precursors to the more commonplace understanding of the origins of intellectual property law, and draws some parallels between the current debates about property in knowledge and the time of its first formal emergence some 500 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on three major exhibitions which illuminated the manuscripts in Italy throughout the summer of 1995. The exhibition presented for the first time in public a selection of 128 illuminated manuscripts and incunabula from the little-known collections of the Biblioteca Civica 'Angelo Mai' at Bergamo and the Biblioteca Civica Queriniana at Brescia. The exhibition was divided chronologically and geographically in twelve sections with examples showing the development of manuscript production across Europe at different periods from the tenth to the sixth.

Focuses on Filippo Marinetti, founder of the Futurist movement in Italy, and his important role in the origins of Italian futurist typography. Literary formula outlined by the 'Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature' of May 11, 1912; Revolution in graphic presentation and visual perception; Marinetti's basic reductionistic Futurist tenets.

The article profiles Domenico Beccafumi, an Italian painter. Giulio Mancini, a Sienese physician, states that Beccafumi had been active as a designer of illustrations for books. However, there is no evidence that will support his statement. The essay of James Haar discusses about the Musical Fortunes of Ariosto in Florentine Society. Although the publication of the book shows the death of Beccafumi on 1551, there can be no doubt that the title page utilizes his figural ideas. Unexplained variations in the scale of the figures might also suggest that individual components were put together by someone of lesser intelligence.

The article offers information related to Smens, a new twice-yearly journal of woodcuts and texts, printed and published by the Nuovo Xilografia at Ozegna and Rivarolo Canavese, Turin, Italy. The journal was launched in July 1997 and carried on by Gianfranco Schialvo and Giovanni Verna. The journal uses the traditional methods, including hot-letterpress and printing from the block in a limited edition of 300, wherein the publishers aim to revive the notion of integrated text and pictures in the tradition of the private press, positively reveling in promoting the hand-made on the threshold of the second millennium.

The article focuses on the discovery of seven plates that described the images engraved during the death of Ludovico Mantegna. The author asserts that the important discovery must deserve enough examination, as its implications could be fundamental to the understanding of the readers of how it prints. The idea of a printmaking workshop started to illustrate a significant sensation. It is expected that the pieces of the Mantegna's possession will create a very good idea of printing to the people in Mantua, Italy.

Purpose: To study the excretion kinetics of urinary toluene, TOL-U, and o-cresol, o-C, following occupational exposure to toluene in order to define the best time for sample collection, to apply a non-invasive approach based on self-collected urine sampling., Methods: Five rotogravure printing workers exposed to uncontrolled levels of toluene collected spot urine samples over three consecutive working days and the following day of rest. In each sample TOL-U and o-C were measured and kinetics of excretion evaluated., Results: Toluene exposure ranged from 48.3 to 75.3 mg/m(3); TOL-U and o-C ranged from 1.4 to 34.6 microg/L and from 0.013 to 1.012 mg/L. A time course trend was obtained: TOL-U and o-C increased during the shift and peaked at the end of exposure and up to 2 h later, respectively; afterwards they rapidly decreased following apparent first order kinetics. Considering TOL-U, the elimination half-life for the first fast phase was 79 (+/-35 standard error) min, and for the second slow phase was 1,320 (+/-1,162) min. For o-C the elimination half-life for the first fast phase was 231 (+/-48) min. Considering a toluene uptake of 86%, TOL-U and o-C excreted in urine were about 0.0067 and 0.18% of the up taken., Conclusion: Our results support the use of end shift TOL-U as a short term biomarker of occupational exposure to toluene and show the feasibility of self-collected urine sampling to investigate the elimination kinetics of industrial toxics in humans.

This study examined occupational risk perception in relation to safety training and injuries. In a printing industry, 350 workers from 6 departments completed a survey. Data analysis showed significant differences in risk perceptions among departments. Differences in risk perception reflected the type of work and the injury incidents in the departments. A structural equation analysis confirmed a model of risk perception on the basis of employees' evaluation of the prevalence and lethalness of hazards as well as the control over hazards they gain from training. The number of injuries sustained was positively related to the perception of risk exposure and negatively related to evaluations about the safety training. The results highlight the importance of training interventions in increasing workers' adoption of safety procedures and prevention of injuries.

Background: Polyfunctional aziridine (PFA) hardener is increasingly used in water-based paints and inks as a replacement for organic solvents. Allergic contact dermatitis, contact urticaria, respiratory allergy in occupationally exposed patients with hypersensitivity to PFA are reported., Objectives: The aim was to study a population of adhesive tape printers for occupational respiratory and skin sensitisation to PFA hardener. Also 2 cases of occupational asthma in workers exposed to PFA in tanneries are reported., Methods: A standard series prick and patch tests was carried out on 15 workers with skin symptoms out of 36 adhesive tape printers exposed to PFA. Prick tests with a 1% PFA water solution and patch tests with a dilution series (0.1-0.32-0.5-1%) of PFA in petrolatum were performed. Lung and nasal provocation tests with PFA hardener were also carried out on 4 subjects with skin and respiratory symptoms., Results: Skin sensitivity to PFA prick tests was demonstrated in 8.3% of the exposed population; 22.2% of the exposed workers suffered from allergic contact dermatitis due to PFA with positive patch tests for this compound. One case of occupational rhinitis due to PFA was diagnosed., Conclusions: PFA is a strong sensitizer and the use of gloves and protective clothing appears to be insufficient to prevent occupational allergic diseases. Elimination of PFA from production processes is desirable.

The efficacy of 4 commercial cleansing products was tested with 3 colouring agents widely used in the dyeing industry in a randomised double blind trail involving 8 workers each time. A between-detergents statistically significant difference was observed; the interaction (detergents x colouring agents) was significant. The efficacy of type A detergent was higher for type I-III dyers, while the efficacy of type C detergent, which widely used was lowest.

A case-control study of 512 male cases of bladder cancer and 596 male hospital controls (all living in the province of Turin, Northern Italy, an area with a high proportion of car workers) has been analyzed for occupations. Relative risks were 1.8 (95% c.l. 0.9-3.6) for the textile industry, 3.8 (1.3-11.5) for the leather industry, 1.8 (0.8-4.0) for printing, 8.8 (2.7-28.6) for dyestuff production, 1.2 (0.6-2.4) for tire production and 2.5 (1.0-6.0) for other rubber goods, 2.0 (0.9-4.5) for brickyards and related activities. A relative risk of 3.1 (0.9-10.5) was found for turners having started work before 1940 and with at least 10 years of activity. For truck drivers the relative risk was 1.2 (0.6-2.5). A job-exposure matrix was developed for the development of new hypotheses; an association with bladder cancer was found for aromatic amines only. The attributable risk percent in the population was estimated as 10%, when only those occupations consistently associated with bladder cancer were considered.

The AA. report a series of practical experiments in the following industries: textiles, ceramics, graphics and heavy industry, in order to demonstrate the necessity and utility of industrial hygiene in which an occupational hazard is not simply identified, but rather an improvement of the work environment is undertaken and the results of such a programme are again controlled and evaluated. The data presented lend themselves to a discussion of a preventive nature since, from a comparison of the data before and after modification, the efficacy of the modification itself is evaluated. The efficacy may vary from simple maintenance of equipment to environmental purification procedures and necessity of applying corrective modifications directly by the raw materials.