Virgil and the myth of venice books and readers in the italian renaissance

title: author: publisher: isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: ebook isbn13: language: subject publication date: lcc: ddc: subject: Virgil and the Myth of Venice : Books and Readers in the Italian Renaissance Kallendorf, Craig Oxford University Press 019815254X 9780198152545 9780585080307 English Virgil Appreciation Italy Venice, Authors and readers Italy Venice History 16th century, Books and reading Italy Venice History 16th century, Authors and readers Italy Venice History To 1500, Books and reading Italy Venice History To 15 1999 PA6825.K36 1999eb 873/.01 Virgil Appreciation Italy Venice, Authors and readers Italy Venice History 16th century, Books and reading Italy Venice History 16th century, Authors and readers Italy Venice History To 1500, Books and reading Italy Venice History To 15 Page iii Virgil and the Myth of Venice Books and Readers in the Italian Renaissance Craig Kallendorf CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD 1999 Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Craig Kallendorf 1999 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval syste British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Virgil and the myth of Venice: books and readers in the Italian Renaissance/Craig Kallendorf Includes bibliographical references VirgilAppreciationItalyVenice Authors and readers ItalyVeniceHistory16th century Books and readingItaly VeniceHistory16th century Authors and readersItaly VeniceHistoryTo 1500 Books and readingItalyVenice HistoryTo 1500 Latin poetryAppreciationItalyVenice ItalyCivilizationRoman Influences Venice (Italy) Civilization Reader-response criticism 10 Renaissance ItalyVenice I Title PA6825.K36 1998 873'.01-dc21 98-40795 ISBN 0-19-815254-X 10 Typeset by Cambrian Typesetters, Frimley, Surrey Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., Guildford and King's Lynn Page v Preface I am grateful to a number of institutions and individuals for supporting this project in various ways This kind of work cannot be done without travel to the sources and time to write, and I am grateful to the Delmas Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies for funds Additional support came from the Departments of English and of Modern and Classical Languages, and from the College of Liberal Arts, at Texas A&M University, and support of another but equally valuable nature came from the Interlibrary Loan Service at the University's Sterling B Evans Library Among the individuals who have answered my requests for information, read sections of the book, and written letters on my behalf, I would like to single out Lilian Armstrong, Daniel Bornstein, Douglas Brooks, A C de la Mare, Rona Goffen, Paul Grendler, Daniel Javitch, Margaret King, Alexander McKay, Ray Petrillo, Patricia Phillippy, Wayne Rebhorn, Margaret Rosenthal, and Warren Tresidder I am also grateful to Charles Martindale and to three other anonymous readers engaged by Oxford University Press for a number of very helpful suggestions The merits of the following study are due in part to these people, while the shortcomings, of course, are entirely my own Finally, the friendship of Marino and Rosella Zorzi deserves special mention; not only have they provided invaluable scholarly guidance and support, but they have made Venice a place of warm and lasting memories for me In this study, names of scholars and printers generally appear in the form most commonly used today I have preferred a Latin form in discussions of those who wrote in Latin and an Italian form for those who wrote in the volgare, but I have ultimately favoured intelligibility over consistency here Usage of i/j and u/v has been adjusted to modern standards; otherwise my quotations from early texts preserve the original orthography but not the vagaries of Renaissance punctuation and capitalization Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated Page vi Preliminary versions of some material have been published in the Journal of the History of Ideas, Miscellanea Marciana, and the Acta of the Ninth International Congress of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, and I am grateful to the editors of these publications for permission to draw on previous work in the present study Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my wife Hilaire This project came to completion under her watchful eyes, and I am grateful for her love and support C.K Page vii Contents List of Illustrations Introduction viii Morality, Schooling, and the Printed Book in Renaissance Venice 31 Accommodation: The Press and the Schools as Purveyors of Values 31 Resistance and Containment: The Humanist as Pornographer 81 Virgil, Christianity, and the Myth of Venice 91 Accommodation: Virgil as poeta theologus 91 Resistance and Containment: Piety, Censorship, and the 124 Politics of Printing Class, Gender, and the Virgilian Myth 140 Accommodation: Books and Social Unification 140 Resistance and Containment: Challenges of Class and Gender 178 Afterword 205 Appendix 1: Chronology of Latin Editions 213 Appendix 2: Chronology of Italian Editions 218 Appendix 3: The Indices to Moralized Virgilian Passages in Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Aldine 628 222 Select Bibliography 225 Index Locorum 237 General Index 239 Index of Printers 247 Index of Annotated Copies 250 Page viii List of Illustrations Text and commentary from P Virgilii Maronis universum poema (Venice: Petrus Dusinellus, 15856), fo 240v 70 Emblem CXCV, in Andrea Alciati, Emblemata cum commentariis amplissimis (Padua: Petrus Paulus Tozzus, 1621), 828 73 Title-page with censors' notes, Universum poema (Venice: 132 Joannes Maria Bonellus, 1566) Illumination by the Master of the Pico Pliny in Treviso, Biblioteca Comunale copy of Opera omnia ([Venice]: Antonius Bartholomaei, 1476), fo a2r 148 Woodcut of the council of the gods in Opera omnia (Venice: Philippus Pintius, 1505), fo 289r 159 Woodcut of Aeneas arriving in Carthage, Opera (Venice: 160 Cominus de Tridino Montisferrati, 1546), fo 205v Title-page of I sei primi libri del Eneide (Venice: Giovanni 164 Padovano et al., 1544) Title-page of L'Eneide di Virgilio (Venice: Giovanni Battista Ciotti, 1597) 166 Title-page of Il primo libro della Eneida (Padua: Grazioso 170 Percaccino, 1564) 10 Autograph dedication of Giovanni Andrea dell' Anguillara, Il primo libro della Eneida (Padua: Grazioso Percaccino, 172 1564), fo Iv 11 Title-page of Il settimo di Vergilio (Venice: Comin da Trino, 1546) 181 12 Title-page of Il libro ottavo de la Eneide di Vergilio (Venice: Giovanni Antonio and Pietro Nicolini Da Sabbio and 182 Giovanni Francesco Torresano, 1542) Page Introduction The value of a book lies in its being read Without an eye that reads it, a book does not effect the production of ideas, and therefore it is mute.1 This is a book about booksviewed as both carriers of ideas and as material objects, as both records of intellectual and social relationships and as forces that are themselves able to work in history The books under consideration are editions of the Roman poet Virgil132 in Latin, sixty-four in Italianpublished in Venice and the surrounding area between 1470 and 1600 I am less interested in production and distribution than in consumptionspecifically, consumption by readers in the area around Venice during the late Renaissance My argument, stripped of all its accompanying nuance and qualification, is that the poetry of Virgil became a best-seller in Renaissance Venice because it sometimes challenged, but more often confirmed, the specific moral, religious, and social values that these readers brought with them to their books Part of this argument can be made using the methods of traditional intellectual and literary history Much of it, however, cannot, for such standard surveys as Rudolf Pfeiffer's History of Classical Scholarship 130018502 rest on a concept of reading that Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa (Milan, 1980), 399, qtd in Christian Bec, Les Livres des Florentins (14131608), Biblioteca di 'Lettere Italiane', Studi e testi, 29 (Florence, 1984), 145 (Oxford, 1976) In a review of my In Praise of Aeneas: Virgil and Epideictic Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance (Hanover, NH, 1989), Ronald MacDonald observed that in studying the ms culture of Florentine humanism, I did not pay much attention to the social and political concerns of the readers (Speculum, 67 (1992), 1689) The point is well taken, and the present study takes up questions that remained largely unasked in the previous one For a more general treatment of this same problem, see my 'Philology, the Reader, and the Nachleben of Classical Texts', Modern Philology, 92 (1994), 13756 Page separates Greek and Latin texts from the social and political values of those who studied thema concept that many scholars of our day find increasingly outmoded What is more, traditional methods pay far less attention than I feel they should to the physical attributes of the books that readers of the past used, for typeface and page layout have ideological ramifications, and ownership notes and marginalia provide valuable, concrete records of what kinds of people bought specific books and how they understood the books they read Since the methods employed in this study are both indebted to and different from such recent approaches as the history of the book, the sociology of literature, and reader-response criticism, I would like to begin by explaining in fairly general terms how I have tried to contribute toward the writing of a new literary history I shall then turn to the basic ideological framework of Renaissance Venice, the so-called 'myth of Venice', to suggest what readers of this period would have been prepared to see in the books they read Finally, I would like to sketch out the general parameters of Venetian humanism and Virgil's role in it, as preparation for the study that follows Until the 1960s, studying books as physical objects usually meant doing descriptive or analytical bibliography: patiently identifying editions, describing them in terms of collation, typeface, and so forth, and analysing how an understanding of the process of printing could aid in understanding a particular book.3 Traditional bibliography remains essential, of course; indeed, the analysis that follows rests on two such studies of my own.4 Yet beginning in the 1960s, books have been approached in different ways by practitioners of the histoire du livre, the The classic example of this approach in the Anglo-American tradition remains Fredson Bowers, Principles of Bibliographical Description (Winchester, 1987; repr of Princeton, 1949 edn.); see also Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (New York, 1972) A number of issues raised in the following pages are also covered by Deborah Parker, Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance (Durham, NC, 1993), 12430; and William H Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance, Massachusetts Studies in Early Modern Culture (Amherst, Mass., 1995), 549, although these scholars have organized their material somewhat differently to reflect their own approaches Craig Kallendorf, A Bibliography of Venetian Editions of Virgil, 14701599, Biblioteca di bibliografia itahana, 123 (Florence, 1991); and id., A Bibliography of Renaissance Italian Translations of Virgil, Biblioteca di bibliografia italiana, 136 (Florence, 1994) Page history of the book.5 This method took root in such institutions as the École Pratique des Hautes Études and has spread through the works of such scholars as Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, whose L'Apparition du livre has been very influential.6 These studies have brought the book into the range of objects studied by the Annales School of social and economic history, so that requests for permission to print books, inventories of the contents of private libraries, and neglected genres like the bibliothèque bleue have come under systematic analysis Americans like Robert Darnton have been pursuing similar studies,7 So that a significant body of information is now available about the relationship between books and the societies in which they were created By this point, however, the field has reached sufficient maturity that it seems reasonable to follow such distinguished practitioners as Roger Chartier in questioning some of its basic operating principles.8 For one thing, like the Annales School in general, historians of the book tend to favour quantitative analysis: one thinks immediately of Christian Bec's Les Livres des Florentins (14131600), a statistically based study of small- and mediumsized library inventories preserved among the documents relevant to the A basic orientation to this approach and its history may be found in Robert Darnton, 'What is the History of Books?', Daedalus, 111/3 (1982), 6583, repr in Cathy N Davidson (ed.), Reading in America: Literary and Social History (Baltimore, 1989), 2752; John P Feather, 'The Book in History and the History of the Book', in John P Feather and David McKitterick, The History of Books and Libraries: Two Views (Washington, 1986), 116; Cathy N Davidson, 'Toward a History of Books and Readers', American Quarterly, 40/1 (Mar 1988), 717, repr in ead (ed.), Reading in America, 126; and I R Willison, 'Remarks on the History of the Book in Britain as a Field of Study within the Humanities, with a Synopsis and Select List of Current Literature', Library Chronicle, 21/34 (1991), 95145 Darnton, 'What is the History', 2829 Febvre and Martin's book has been translated into English as The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 14501800, trans David Gerard (London, 1990) A good orientation to this approach, its development, and its place in modern French historiography in general may be found by examining Roger Chartier and Daniel Roche, 'Le Livre: Un changement de perspective', in Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Noya (eds.), Faire de l'histoire: Nouveaux objets, vols (Paris, 1974), ii: 11536; and Wallace Kirsop, 'Literary History and Book Trade History: The Lessons of L'Apparition du livre', Australian Journal of French Studies, 16 (1979), 488 Darnton, 'What is the History', 289 Chartier, 'L'Ancien Régime typographique: Reflexions sur quelques travaux récents', Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations, 36 (1981), 191209 A survey of early work with suggestions for future research can also be found in R Birm, 'Livre et société after Ten Years', Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 151 (1976), 287312 Page 246 Vergerio, Pier Paolo 16 n 47, 22, 50 Veronese, Paolo 18 Vespasiano da Bisticci 151 Vickers, Brian 39 Vida, Marco Girolamo 95, 119-24 Vielmo da Monferà 89 Vindelinus de Spira 31 Visconte, Joannes Battista 131 Vittorino da Feltre 199 Vives, Juan Luis 113-14, 138 W Weinberg, Bernard 39 Willichius, Jodocus 131-9 Wilson, Alice 20 Witt, Ronald 105 woodcuts 158-62 Wotton, Sir Henry 83 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 197 n 102 X Xenophon 62 Z Zabughin, Vladimiro 200-1 Zeno, Apostolo 145, 168-9 n 51 Zeno the Stoic 86 Zonarini, Giuliano 100 Zumbini, Bonaventura 21 Page 247 Index of Printers Printers' names are in Latin for Latin editions, and in Italian for translations of Virgil's works n pub.: 1492 edn 63 n 60 A Accolti, Giulio: 1566 edn 171 Achates, Leonardus: 1473 edn 55, 146 1479 edn 90, 93-4 and n 7, 153 Adam de Ambergau: 1471 edn 32, 57, 147 n 18 Arrivabene, Andrea: 1540-1 edn 191 n 80 see also Comin da Trino Arrivabenus, Georgius: 1512 edn 45, 67, 88, 110 B Bartholomaei, Antonius: 1476 edn 48, 146, 148 Bascarini, Nicolò: 1552 edn 171, 173 Blaviis, Bartholomaeus de, see Piasis, Petrus de Bonellus, Joannes Maria: 1558 edn 38, 61 n 57, 89-90 n 113, 110, 113, 131 n 94, 135 1562 edn 89 n 113, 93, 135, 138, 152, 165, 167 1566 edn 93, 94 n 7, 131-2, 135-6, 153 n 29 Bonellus, Joannes Maria, heirs of: 1572 edn 33, 48, 135, 165 1574-5 edn 33, 57, 93, 94 n 7, 135, 149 n 20, 152, 153 C Cavalli, Giorgio: 1566 edn 183 n 69 1568 edn 169 n 52 Cesanus, Bartholomaeus: 1551 edn 135, 162, 1551-2 edn 135 Cieco, Christoforo: 1579 edn 180 Cieco, Christoforo, and Domenico De Franceschi: 1569 edn 180 1570 edn 180 1572 edn 180 Ciotti, Giovanni Battista: 1597 edn 163, 166-8 Comin da Trino: 1546 edn 180-1 see also Cominus de Tridino; Zoppino, Niccolò Comin da Trino, and Niccolò Zoppino: 1540 edn 178, 191 n 80 Comin da Trino, Niccolò Zoppino, and Andrea Arrivabene: 1540 edn 167, 191 n 80 Cominus de Tridino: 1546 edn 55, 93, 160 see also Comin da Trino Cornetti, Giacomo: 1586 edn 169 n 52 D De Franceschi, Domenico, see Cieco, Christoforo De Gregori, Gregorio: 1525 edn 176 see also de Gregoriis, Gregorius de Gregoriis, Gregorius: 1522 edn 45 see also De Gregori, Gregorio; Junta, Lucas Antonius Donnis, Sebastianus a: 1587 edn 195 Dusinellus, Petrus: 1578 edn 49, 89 n 113 1585-6 edn 70, 138, 158 F Farri, Domenico: 1562 edn 169 n 52 Farri, Giovanni, and brothers: 1545 edn (Georg.) 134-5 n 96, 169, 173, 176, 178, 180 Page 248 Farri, Onofrio, and brothers: 1559 edn 169 n 52, 177 Fontaneto, Guglielmus de: 1522 edn 88 G Gherardo, Paulo: 1551 edn 177 Giolito De' Ferrari, Gabriele: 1570 edn 183 n 69 1572 edn 183 Giunta, Bernardo, jun.: 1592 edn 179 Gratia, Alberto di: c.1551 edn 180 Grifi, Giovanni, sen.: 1549 edn 168, 173 Gryphius, Joannes, Minor: 1588 edn 89 n 113, 152, 165 J Jenson, Nicolas: 1475 edn 146 Johannes de Vienna: 1476 edn 55 Junta, Lucas Antonius: 1500 edn 90 1532-3 edn 34, 93, 155 1536-7 edn 44, 91-2, 146, 153 n 29 Junta, Lucas Antonius, and Augustinus de Zanis: 1519 edn 158 Junta, Lucas Antonius, and Gregorius de Gregoriis: 1522 edn 152, 154 Junta, Lucas Antonius, heirs of 1542 edn 152 1543-4 edn 37, 57, 61 n 57, 92-3, 152 1552 edn 145, 152 L Laurentinus, Franciscus: 1566 edn 144, 146 Levilapide, Hermanno: 1476 edn 173 Liga Boaria: c.1488 edn 48, 93, 94 n 7, 143, 146, 195, 200 n 108 M Manutius, Aldus: 1501 edn 46-7, 145-6 1505 edn 47 Manutius, Aldus, and Andreas de Torresanis: 1514 edn 47, 149, 151 n 25, 167 1517 edn (Priapea) 88 Manutius, Aldus, and heirs of Andreas de Torresanis: 1534 edn (Priapea) 88 Manutius, Aldus, sons of 1541 edn 47 Manutius, Aldus, Minor: 1576 edn 150 n 22 1580 edn 150 n 22, 152 1587 edn 150 n 22 Manutius, Paulus: 1553 edn 150 n 22 1555 edn 150 n 22 1558 edn 55, 150 n 22 1560 edn 150 n 22 1563 edn 33, 145, 150 n 22 1565 edn 150 n 22 1570 edn 150 n 22 1573 edn 150 n 22 N Nicolini Da Sabbio, Giovanni Antonio: 1534 edn 165, 169, 175 see also Nicolinis de Sabio, Johannes Antonius Nicolini Da Sabbio, Giovanni Antonio, Pietro Nicolini Da Sabbio, and Giovanni Francesco Torresano: 1542 edn 169, 180, 182 Niccolini Da Sabbio, Pietro, see Nicolini Da Sabbio, Giovanni Antonio; Nicolinis de Sabio, Petrus de Nicolinis de Sabio, Johannes Antonius, and Federicus de Torresanis: 1539 edn 138, 144 see also Nicolini Da Sabbio, Giovanni Antonio Nicolinis de Sabio, Petrus de: 1534 edn 152, 154 P Padovano, Giovanni, Niccolò Zoppino, and Federico Torresano: 1544 edn 163-4, 167-8, 178, 191 n 80 Paganinis, Alexander de: 1515 edn 45, 88 Percaccino, Grazioso: 1564 edn 167-72 Piasis, Petrus de, Bartholomaeus de Blaviis, and Andreas de Torresanis: 1480 edn 94 n Pintius, Aurelius: 1536 edn 153 Pintius, Philippus: 1491-2 edn 94 n 1504 edn 66 Page 249 1505 edn 159 'Printer of Ausonius': 1472 edn 149 n 20 R Rampazetus, Franciscus, and Melchior Sessa: 1555-6 edn 152 Rampazetus, Franciscus, see heirs of, Sessa, Joannes Baptista, and brothers Rampazetus, Franciscus, heirs of, and Melchior Sessa: 1582-3 edn 152 S Scotus, Hieronymus: 1544 edn 94 n 7, 135, 153 n 29 1553 edn 93, 153, 154 1555 edn 135 Sessa, Joannes Baptista, and brothers: 1575-6 edn 153 1576 edn 115 n 60 Sessa, Joannes Baptista, and brothers, and heirs of Franciscus Rampazetus: 1581 edn 94, 154, 167 Sessa, Joannes Baptista, and Joannes Bernardus Sessa: 1597 edn 94 n 7, 115 n 61, 153 Sessa, Joannes Bernardus, see Sessa, Joannes Baptista Sessa, Melchior, scn.: 1543 edn 176 see also Rampazetus, Franciscus; Rampazetus, Franciscus, heirs of Stagninus, Bernardinus: 1507 edn 57, 93, 144-5, 149 n 20, 152, 153 n 29, 154 T Torresanis, Andreas de, see Manutius, Aldus; Piasis, Petrus de Torresanis, Andreas de, heirs of, see Manutius, Aldus, heirs of Torresanis, Federicus de, see Nicolinis de Sabio, Johannes Antonius Torresano, Federico, see Padovano, Giovanni Torresano, Giovanni Francesco, see Nicolini Da Sabbio, Giovanni Antonio Tortis, Baptista de: c 1482 edn 146 1483 edn 145-6, 165 U Ugolini, Paulo: 1593 edn 169 n 52 V Varisco, Giovanni: 1567-8 edn 183 n 69 Vindelinus de Spira: 1470 edn 32, 48 Vitali, Bernardino De: 1532 edn 171 1538 edn 169 Volpini, Domenico, see Zoppino, Niccolò Volpini, Giovanni Antonio, see Zoppino, Niccolò Z Zanis, Augustinus de: 1519 edn 88 see also Junta, Lucas Antonius Zanis, Bartholomaeus de: 1493 edn 155 Zenarus, Damianus: 1587 edn 155 Zoppino, Niccolò: 1528 edn 173 see also Comin da Trino; Padovano, Giovanni Zoppino, Niccolò, Giovanni Antonio and Domenico Volpini, and Comin da Trino: 1539-40 edn 168, 178, 191 n 80 Page 250 Index of Annotated Copies C Chicago Newberry Library WING f ZP 535 / G43 6: 44 n 26 Copenhagen Det Kongelige Bibliotek fo 741-119: 94 n D Darmstadt Landesbibliothek Inc IV.25: 146 F Ferrara Biblioteca Ariostea L.11.11.30: 153 M.I.II.9: 153 n 29 M.5.4.41: 153 n 29 S.20.7: 155, 167 Florence Biblioteca Riccardiana Ed Rara 74: 149 n 20 L London British Library C.19.e.14: 28 Los Angeles University of California at Los Angeles Research Library Spec Coll 115034: 168 Spec Coll 123034: 178 Spec Coll *A1/V819: 94 n Spec Coll Z233/A4V819/1501: 146, 151 n 25 N New York Columbia University Library Lodge 1507/V587: 149 n 20 Lodge 1572/V5873: 48-9 New York Public Library *KB 1541: 47 P Padua Biblioteca Antoniana R.III-.5: 168 R.VII 12: 90 V.VI 15: 91-2, 146 Biblioteca del Museo Civico F.6386: 152 F.7445: 93, 154 F.10008: 152 G.4596: 152 G.8173: 152 I.130: 93, 152-3 n 28 I.413: 152 M.681: 152 M.1881: 154 M.1886: 152-3 Biblioteca Universitaria 64.a.168: 153-4 74.b.142: 153 80.b.45: 138-9 121.c.161: 146 Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France Rès p Yc 1265: 145 n 11 Princeton Princeton University Library VRG 2945 1558q: 131 n 94 R Ravenna Biblioteca Classense 25.4.T.: 171 n 53 Rome Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale 36.12.E-5: 94 n 7, 153 n 29 71.3.E.8: 94 n 7, 153 n 29 T Treviso Biblioteca Comunale II.7.E.1: 89 n 113 IV.67.M.18: 177 n 66 N.1194 (L.2.30.H): 144 N.2162: 152 N 12563 (II.1.B.28): 49, 89 n 113 N.19284 (R.2.23.4): 154 Inc 12113: 146, 148 Inc 13716: 48, 146, 195, 200 n 108 ... Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Virgil and the myth of Venice: books and readers in the Italian Renaissance/ Craig Kallendorf Includes... in readings constitute an informative history What writers thought they were doing in writing texts, or printers and booksellers in designing and publishing them, or readers in making sense of. .. another, since the year was not long after Alaric's invasion of Rome and the month and day were that of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary In either case, however, the citizens of Renaissance Venice