The Price of Any Book Sold in Venice 1484-1488

The ledger of the Venetian bookseller Francesco De Madiis, known as the Zornale (1484-88), which is currently being studied by Cristina Dondi and Neil Harris, offers a unique insight into the market value of the earliest printed books, of any sort. The essay offers the analysis of a variety of subjects, prices, sales, customers, and comparison with the cost of living in Renaissance Venice, the largest place of production and distribution in 15th-century Europe. The focus is first and foremost on the cheapest and most popular items, a production and trade enabled by the new technology.


Introduction
The fall in book prices stimulated by the new printing technology was gradual, as can be ascertained by the surviving evidence: first, the purchase notes written inside the books by the early owners, then documentary evidence of various kinds which attests to actual transactions (booksellers' records), or more indirect references, such as mentions in letters or legal documents.
The essays in this part of the volume provide the evidence of a progressive reduction in the price of printed books, from the new specimens of the 1460s, still as expensive as manuscripts, to the first drop in the 1470s. A subsequent, very noticeable, decrease in price during the 1480s continues, on a substantial level, in the 1490s. The drop in price coincides with the growth of demand for printed books, and with the increase in production and its diversification, but most of all, with the development and refinement of distribution capacities which establish an international market for the new business.
The transition from a known market to an unknown one was a key stepping stone in this new business. The much repeated crisis of overproduction of 1472 should more correctly be seen as a phase in the new enterprising activities when mass production was not yet supported by a trade network which could reach unknown customers outside the immediate circle of the producer, the possible financial backer or patron, and the local seller of books, the stationer. 1 Having had the enjoyable experience of perusing all the papers in this volume ahead of their publication, I have noticed how, on the one hand, the contributors have been furnishing very sound evidence about the increasing affordability of printed books; on the other, in some cases, however, they seem almost to disbelieve the evidence, or to consider it perhaps as insufficiently credible, since it appears to go against the trend of what has been written by economic historians, who up to now have consistently asserted that early printed books were expensive and remained a luxury commodity for a privileged few. Such has been the mantra, even though little or no financial data have been produced to support the claim, whether specific in its reference to the years in question, or on a wider scale and more comparative, of the kind and extent discussed in this volume and soon to appear online for anyone to use. Yet again, only by bringing together the evidence into one single, searchable place will we resolve this impasse and enable a proper assessment to be made of the economic and social impact of the appearance of early printed books in European society.
As a step towards this goal, I will offer here some clear examples of the fall in prices over forty years, before focusing on my main documentary source, the Zornale of the Venetian bookseller Francesco de Madiis, who sold around 25,000 copies of printed books in slightly less than four years, between May 1484 and January 1488. 2 Printed books in the 1460s were indeed still expensive, as expensive as their manuscript counterparts. A copy of the Rationale divinorum officiorum printed in Mainz in 1459 and purchased in 1461 by the Benedictines of S. Giorgio Maggiore of Venice cost 18 ducats (that is 1240 soldi). 3 While acknowledging the impressive nature of a distribution channel that conveyed the volume from Mainz to Venice in only a couple of years after publication, 18 ducats for one in folio volume of 160 leaves is very expensive. It is almost double the amount of money paid for the most expensive, and largest, set of books recorded in the Zornale, 26 years later: a set of the Glossa ordinaria in six in folio volumes for a total of 1628 leaves, that is ten times the number of leaves, which sold in 1487 for 10 ducats (but were printed on paper). Indeed several copies of the Rationale, in an edition printed in Venice in 1482, comprising 202 leaves, are sold in the Zornale for £ 2 s 10, that is 50 soldi. 4 These books testify to a fall in price from 1240 to 50 soldi over a period of 26 years.
Another bulky Medieval text, which swiftly made its way into the new medium, the Catholicon, in a copy printed on parchment, in Augsburg in 1469, was purchased by the Augustinians of Passau in the same year for 48 Rhenish Florins: Anno domini Millesimo cccc° lxvii[i]j°. Conparatus est jste Katholicon. tempore Johannis Hachinger huius ecclesie [Passau, St. Nikola, ats, lire, and soldi. According to the exchange rate in the 1472-1508 period, the gold ducat was calculated as the equivalent of 6 lire and 4 soldi, or, more simply, 124 soldi. The lira, for which we employ the £ symbol, was the equivalent of 20 soldi. The Zornale does not record prices involving the fourth and smallest coin of the time, the piccolo or denaro, 12 of which made up a soldo; Papadopoli Aldobrandini, Le monete di Venezia, 2: 8-9; Spufford,Handbook of Medieval Exchange,Lane,Mueller,Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice,1: 617 ( The value of the Rhenish Florin was slightly lower than the Venetian ducat at the time in question but the price was still the equivalent of several hundreds soldi. Twenty years on, copies of the same work printed in Venice in 1484 are sold in the Zornale for 40 soldi. 13 In 1997 Martin Davies made an important point about prices in the 1460s: "it looks as if the earliest market in printed books was rather more stable and rational than has been credited". 14 Böninger and Peric, in this volume, provide evidence of prices dropping during the 1470s, the latter explicitly in comparison with some prices in the Zornale. For the mid-1480s the de Madiis ledger provides a very large body of evidence of the substantial reduc- to appear by the date of the entry in the ledger, this is the most likely candidate. A total of ten copies are recorded in the initial stock in trade of Francesco de Madiis, with another bound copy among the "libri ligati". Some 139 copies are sold in the Zornale, from an initial price of £ 3 (60 soldi) then stabilizing at £ 2 (40 soldi), and 70 soldi when sold bound. tion in prices, though even these still appear expensive in comparison with the continuous decrease of the 1490s, in conjunction with the expansion of production, as shown by Gatti, also in this volume.
A copy of the Missal for the use of Würzburg printed by George Reyser in 1481 was purchased locally, the same year, for 18 Florins. The high price included the fact that the copy was printed on parchment and had rubrication, illumination, and binding: "1481 Johannes Kewsch vicarius in ecclesia Herbipolensi hunc librum comparauit propriis expensis et pro omnibus scilicet pergameno impressura Rubricacione illuminaturum(?) et ligatione xviii florenis 1481". 15 A copy of the same Missal, printed again in 1499 by Reyser was purchased locally, two years later, in 1501, for 5 Florins. In this case we have no information about the cost of the finishing touches, although the book is still today in a contemporary binding produced locally: "Anno Domini MDI Ego Georgius Raßmann hujus veri possessor hunc librum comparavi pro florenis V". 16 Did the fall in prices continue? Evidence for the following century will have to be gathered for scholars to answer this question adequately. 17 There are two important points which need to be taken into consideration when using books in socio-historical studies.
First, unlike most traded commodities, not all books are the same: books always reflect the market or user they were intended for. If these users belong to different segments of society, in the 5th century as in the 15th century, that has to be taken into account. The texts of the classics sold in the document analysed by Paola Pinelli in this volume could not have been afforded by ordinary shopkeepers or labourers, but neither would they have wanted them. Historical perspective and a sound understanding of the transmission of knowledge in written form, of book production and consumption, and of library history, should guide researchers to understand that in a climate of change, of the creation of a new commodity and a new market and of the expansion of literacy, over 500 years ago ordinary shopkeepers and labourers would have sought first of all a primer! And indeed the Zornale proves that this is what was consistently purchased in Venice in the mid 1480s. Demand and supply made these books, and ones like them, affordable.
Another approach which has stymied a broader comprehension of the place of books in the early modern economy is the custom of converting fluctuating monetary values into the more stable silver equivalent. While undoubtedly correct, this equivalent should be accompanied by the conversion into Venetian soldi, as the EMO Booktrade project has done, and preferably also by looser, more general comparisons with the cost of living. What we lose in precision we gain in understanding.
A book in the manuscript period was mostly unattainable for ordinary people in a way that early printed books were not; of course mastri and balie could not afford Justianian, but why should they want to anyway? Psalterioli, Donati, Books of Hours, secular literature were attainable, and the fact that these types of books were printed and purchased in droves tells us that they reached their market, one which was already expanding in the 15th century and was substantially enhanced by the printing press. The evidence is in the account book of Francesco de Madiis, the Zornale. Neil Harris and myself have described this extraordinary source in some detail in previous publications; therefore I will provide here only the essential elements about the document and its background which are needed to understand the figures that I will be providing. 18 The shop operated a retail rather than wholesale business. This is made clear by the fact that the majority of sales are of individual books, which are most often sold singly. When customers' names are mentioned, they are a combination of people in the trade and ordinary people, on occasion individuals of high social standing. 19 The range of books traded suggests that de Madiis's bookshop was a rather large operation, where editions of best-selling works produced by some of the major printers and publishers of Venice were distinguished by the name of the same expressed in familiar terms: the Missals of Nicolò, that is Nicolaus de Frankfordia, the Breviaries 18 Dondi, Harris, "Oil and Green Ginger"; "Best Selling Titles"; "Exporting Books from Milan to Venice"; "I romanzi cavallereschi". Also Mansutti in this volume. of messer Francesco, that is Francesco Renner who italianised his name as Fontana, and so on. No single sheets, paper, or writing material is listed in this ledger, though this is the kind of material booksellers also used to sell. It is likely therefore that separate records were kept for non-printed material on sale in the shop.
The accounting practice, which we can see evolving in the first few pages of the ledger, suggests that this is the first record devoted to printed books of this particular business. The sheer quantity of the sales of the printed books made it necessary to compile a dedicated ledger.
Some 11,100 entries are listed in the Zornale, arranged according to the day of sale. Each entry consists of an edition with an author and/or a title, and sometimes with the addition of the name of the printer or publisher. Each entry/edition was sold in one or more copies; the total number of copies sold, as recorded in the ledger, comes to around 25,000. Frequently groups of entries are bracketed together as a bulk sale with a collective price, therefore the total number of sales are 6,950. Some 4,165 entries are sold as part of a bulk sale.
Of the 6,950 sales recorded in the Zornale, some 5,915, the vast majority, were sold for less than one ducat. Just over 1,000 sales cost more than one ducat; they are mostly bulk sales, that is groups of two or more cheaper editions sold together.
An initial impression of the monetary range related to the sale of early printed books comes from a breakdown of the overall sales into price categories: under 10 soldi, 10 soldi, between 11 and 19 soldi, between 20 and 59 soldi (1 to 3 lire), between 60 and 123 soldi (3 to 6 lire), over 124 soldi (one ducat or above).
Around 1,160 sales sold for 10 soldi or under; of these, 600 are sales between 1 and 9 soldi, 560 are sales of 10 soldi.
Some 875 were sold for between 11 and 19 soldi. Some 2,346 are sales between 20 and 59 soldi, that is 1 to 3 lire. Some 1,535 are sales between 60 and 123 soldi, that is 3 to 6 lire. Finally, 974 are sales above 124 soldi, that is 1 ducat. 20 It is very important to understand what these editions are in each different price category, and to place the range of books offered by this Venetian bookselling outlet within the wider context of what was being produced and made available in Venice and in Italy during the period covered by the Zornale, that is until January 1488. 21 20 43 sales still need sorting, of which 12 are below 3 soldi, 8 are below 10 soldi, 16 are below 1 ducat, and 7 are above the ducat. We have provisionally counted and identified 688 editions in the Zornale. The entries never identify an explicit edition in a purely bibliographical fashion. In many instances, however, only one imprint is possible; in others we initially applied the principle of the "Venetian edition closest in time", unless there were reasons for thinking otherwise; 22 if there is no plausible Venetian edition, we identify as the nearest in time from the centre geographically nearest to Venice, two criteria that sometimes enter into conflict; when no Italian edition is plausible, we look abroad. For some categories of titles, most importantly texts for worship, school books and chivalric texts, a very high percentage of editions has been totally destroyed, and in these instances our identifications are largely hypothetical. With these premises, the geographical mapping of the places of production presents a majority of Venetian editions (454). Other places of production represented in the ledger include Milan (55), Pavia (34) (1), as well as a few non-Italian editions, from Cologne (7), Basel (9), and Reutlingen (1), making a total of 234 non-Venetian editions in multiple copies, whose presence in Venice is evidence of their national and international trade.
Some 1,435 editions had been printed in Venice by the end of 1487, out of a total of 3,788 editions printed in the city up to 1500. 23 Some 4,769 editions were printed in Italy by the end of 1487, out of a total of 10,489 printed in the country up to 1500.
This means that the Zornale records the trade and sale of roughly a third of the production of the city known to us today, or one sixth of the entire production of the Italian peninsula.

2
The Most Expensive Books The number of sales superior to a ducat is small and relates mostly to bulk sales, for which the individual prices have to be calculated on the basis of single sales elsewhere. Among the individual editions which certainly cost more than one ducat we find bulky, multi-volume, publications in the fields of law, 22 A major case in point are the many editions of the law coming from Milan, partly discussed in Dondi, Harris, "Exporting Books from Milan to Venice".
23 Advanced search in ISTC: "not printed after" 1488. In consideration of the fact that the Zornale does not include single sheets, and that the number of editions dated to 'c. 1500' in ISTC is noticeable, the wide representation of editions in the ledger is even more remarkable. philosophy, theology, together with editions of the Bible, accompanied by commentaries. First and foremost, the Glossa ordinaria.
On 17 May 1484 a "glosa ordinaria" is listed in the stock and it is disposed of only four days later for 10 ducats (1,240 soldi).
The price of this extensive commentary on Roman Civil Law might have been a bit steep at 10 ducats, but it consisted of over 1,500 leaves (1,628 to be precise) in six large in folio volumes. 24 For the same amount of money one could probably buy a lifetime's supply of leather boots. 25 3 The 'Middle of the Road' Books What were the works that sold at the middle price range of one to three lire, that is between 20 and 60 soldi? Mischino, Antonina defecerunt, Lucano, Peregrinationes Ierusalem, Esopo istoriato, Dinus de regulis iuris, Paulus Orosius… Basically, just about anything pertaining to the classics, philosophy, theology, popular literature, devotional works, liturgy, medicine, and education when printed on parchment, for example Donato in carta bona.
Among the best sellers, 933 copies of Breviaries and Diurnals and 246 Bibles were sold for 60 soldi, the amount needed to purchase a barrel of wine -enough for one person for two months -and a well- gistro senza numero, c. 104 dx, 10 ottobre 1457: "Per fatura de 1 per de stivali al [unread] d. 0:24"; the expenses registered by Sanudo are expressed in ducats and soldi, but the entry about the boots was apparently recorded in silver grossi, one ducat being the equivalent of 24 silver grossi (my thanks to Isabella Cecchini). Cf. also Cecchini in this volume. 20 • From the Corpus Iuris to 'psalterioli da puti', on Parchment, Bound, Gilt...

Studi di storia 13 587
Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500, 577-600 fed goose; or the equivalent of six pieces of green ginger. 26 272 copies of Missals were sold for 40 soldi, that is the amount necessary to buy enough bread for a person for a month. 27 Finally, 68 copies of Petrarch were sold at 50 soldi each, the average salary for two days of the work of a master builder. From the research of Susan Connell we know that 15 soldi was the daily wage of an ordinary builder in Venice in this period, and that 28 soldi was the daily wage of a master builder. 28 4 The Cheapest and Best Selling Books In the Zornale are listed about 1,160 sales of books whose price is 10 soldi or less, that is below the daily wage of an unskilled labourer, or the cost of two chickens. These are also the books that represent the highest number of sales in the ledger: 29

Psalteriolo de puti
Here the reference is to one or probably several lost editions, since the Zornale alone sells a total of 659 copies, at a price varying from four soldi right down to one, in the case of a large bulk purchase. In the whole of the Zornale, indeed, the single best-selling title is this simplified version of the psalter, whose primary purpose was as a basic learning tool for children. It opened with the letters of the alphabet and they were followed by a sequence of common prayers and catechetical instructions, such as Paternoster, Ave Maria, Credo, Salve Regina, Decem praecepta, Virtutes septem, and a selection of psalms and Gospel readings, such as Psalms [109][110][111][112][113]116,114,Magnificat,Canticum Simeonis ("Nunc dimittis"), Psalm 129 ("De profundis"), the beginning of the gospel of St. John. 31 If the amounts recorded by de Madiis are anything of a guide, the Venetian presses must have churned out thousands of copies, probably tens of thousands, maybe even more, of this simple book. Today only one single copy -in the Staatsbibliothek at Munich -produced previous to the end of 1487 survives. It is undated, but is signed by Erhard Ratdolt, and is attributed by the repertories to 1486. 32 Another was printed in Venice by Johannes Hamman in 1494, also surviving in a single copy once in the library at Dresden, and at present in Moscow, Russian State Library. 33 The simple content structure of this type of work no doubt derived from the medieval manuscript tradition and took many forms in different languages. Even in the 17th century in England the contents of hornbooks are recognisably similar and these books are today equally rare. 34

Studi di storia 13 589
Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500, 577-600 A number of Books of Hours are specifically listed with the name of their printer, Jacobus Britannicus, Antonius de Stanchis de Valentia, and Petrus de Plasiis: none of these editions survive. Two other editions, by the Compagnia and by Boninus de Boninis in Verona, still survive today, each in a single copy. 36 Donado / Donati da puti Donatus Twenty copies are recorded in the first year stock in trade, some on parchment and some bound. One copy on parchment is sold on 3 June 1484 for £ 2, while two -again on parchment -are sold at the slightly discounted price of £ 3 s 10 on 12 June. Two copies of "donati da puti" on paper are sold on 23 June for 6 soldi and afterwards the price seems to stabilise at 5 soldi, the price of a kilo of beef, or 100 squid, or the payment for a haircut. A total of 258 copies are sold, so it is possible that these belonged to multiple editions. Six copies are recorded in the initial stock in trade. 252 copies of the grammar of Guarino Veronese are also sold for 4 soldi each. 37 The opening of the edition has: "Incipit liber primus Johannis Gerson cancellarij parisiensis. De imitatione Christi et de contemptu omnium vanitatum mundi"; and the colophon: "Johannis Gerson cancellarij parisiensis de contemptu mundi devotum et vtile opusculum finit M.ccc.lxxxii...". 32 copies in stock. 135 copies are sold, initially at 10 soldi, dropping to 8 soldi by the end of 1484 and even 6 soldi in 1488. Bonaventura, S. [pseudo; Johannes de Caulibus] Twenty copies are in stock during the first year. 103 copies are sold, generally at the price of 10 soldi, in later years dropping to 8 soldi.

Meditatione de la pasione
Overall, the affordable strong sellers listed in the Appendix are represented by five works of grammar and five of devotional literature, four works of lay literature, two works of logic, astrology, rhetoric and geography respectively, and individual works of liturgy, pastoral theology, history, and physics. Six of them are classical works, eleven medieval and nine either humanist or contemporary. Most editions are in quarto format (20) , four are in folio, one in octavo, and one in 16 o .
In the Zornale, books printed on parchment generally cost six times as much as copies of the same edition printed on paper. It should be noted, however, how few books printed on parchment are sold by this shop: only 77 books are recorded as being "in carta bona", out of the 25,000 copies recorded. We find 27 copies of Donatus, 25 of Books of Hours, 13 copies of the small Psalter (Psalteriolo), seven Missals, two Benedictine Diurnals, two Breviaries, and -the one important exception -a copy of Dante. Books bound generally cost double the price of those sold unbound. 39 In the Zornale, the type of book which best represents the variation in price determined by the different support, as well as the expensive hand-finishing, is the Book of Hours, as outlined in a previous article. 40 It will be helpful to reproduce the data in that earlier article in this context:

Conclusion
The Zornale is the largest single surviving set of prices for objects sold over the counter for the whole of the 15th century and, as such, it is a source of immense value, not just for bibliographers and book historians, but also for economic historians and historians in the widest sense of the word. While it is not possible to compare these 15th-century prices with today's ones, it is both possible and necessary to make the effort to understand them.
The Rialto outlet of Francesco de Madiis was by no means the only book selling shop in Venice. To what extent is it representative of the category and of the book trade as a whole? It is impossible to say with any certainty, though the transactions involving other booksellers discussed in this volume may suggest that the size of the business of this bookshop was somewhat above average. On the other hand, the scale of the Venetian trade, as witnessed by what is clearly the fraction that does survive today, was enormous. The sheer wealth generated is shown by the fact that the Venetian printers and publishers, many of whom supplied the Rialto shop, took over the running of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco only a few years after its foundation. As today, a seat on the board of an important charity was not obtained without becoming a major benefactor. 41 20 • From the Corpus Iuris to 'psalterioli da puti', on Parchment, Bound, Gilt...

Studi di storia 13 593
Printing R-Evolution and Society 1450-1500, 577-600 Part of the long-term project plan is to make the spreadsheets with the entire transcription, identification, and classification of the Zornale available to everyone. They will consist of an entry number, a computer friendly date, the day of the week (an item of information that the original does not include), the number of books bought every day, the date as it appears in the ledger (i.e. more veneto, with the start of a new year on 1 March), the different degrees of identification (certain, probable, possible) of editions; the edition's ISTC and GW numbers; standard author and title. Further, they will provide a transcription of the text as written in the Zornale, the number of copies sold, the price, subdivided in ducats, lire, and soldi, the overall price in soldi, the price per copy (when multiple copies are sold), the hypothetical value (when part of a bulk sale), whether a book is bound, or is part of a group sale, the number of books sold in each sale. Whether a book is additionally described as printed on parchment, with woodcut illustration, with hand-decoration, or gold-tooled. The name of the printer and of the purchaser, when mentioned; and the bibliographical identification, including format, number of leaves, and sheet-size. Finally, its subject, time period, 42 and the time which has elapsed between its publication and its appearance in the ledger.
This benchmark will help anybody researching any work printed in the late 15th century to understand its economic value; it will also provide economic historians with the good quality, comprehensive, measurable, sets of data that they can crunch according to their own practices. Data which cannot, and should not, be ignored any longer.

Identification
Copies sold