Thanks to Valentina Sebastiani, Johann Froben has received his due. His, of course, is a household name in Renaissance studies, owing to his reputation as the consummately skilled printer of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Yet little is known about the astute businessman who “was able to transform Erasmus's admirable productivity into a business opportunity that engaged all of Europe” (2). Sebastiani's meticulous research sheds light on Froben's career as no scholar has done before. She prefaces an expansive bibliography of Froben's output with a substantial introductory essay that serves as a business history of the celebrated printer.
Handwritten annotations and a funerary epitaph provide the evidence with which Sebastiani connects Froben's rise to prominence to three important printers: Anton Koberger in Nuremberg and Johann Petri and Johann Amerbach in Basel. Froben may have briefly been an apprentice to Koberger; Petri, a fellow Franconian, recommended Froben to Amerbach. Between 1496 and 1500, Froben printed three books in partnership with each of his two senior colleagues in Basel. From them he learned not only the skills of the printer's craft but also the way in which they “conducted business dealings with publishers and book merchants to ensure a wide circulation to their jointly [sic] publications” (38). In partnership with Petri and Amerbach, and in his bid in 1513 to attract the attention of Erasmus, Froben took “unscrupulous advantage of the ease with which the books of other printers and publishers could be reprinted, to the detriment of their profits” (52–53).
Froben understood the marketing advantages of format. His first publication (1491) was a Bible in octavo, the first Bible printed in this small format. This “graphic innovation” (21) came with an explanation that promoted its purchase. Froben's “pocket Bible” (21) may owe its format to the Basel theologian Johann Heynlin, who took a keen interest in the graphic design of books. Sebastiani pronounces the 1491 Bible an “editorial success” (20) since more than 275 libraries own a copy. Froben began by printing bibles, an exegetical handbook, legal texts, and collections of sermons. Most of these incunabula appeared in a small format.
The key to Froben's lasting success was his ability to win and retain Erasmus's business. Sebastiani deftly describes the symbolic “message of the title-page border” (41) of Froben's pirated edition (1513) of Erasmus's Adages. It told Erasmus to seize the “opportune moment” (40) by publishing his books with Froben's press. In 1519, Froben produced a “pioneering publication” (67), a pamphlet of his printed output that confined itself to Erasmus's works. Its “true novelty” (67) was to advertise several forthcoming titles by Erasmus, whetting appetites for Erasmus printed by Froben.
Sebastiani's massive catalogue of 329 titles printed between 1491 and 1527 by Froben on his own or in partnership with other printers (89–706) represents a vast improvement on the bibliography of Charles Heckethorn with its 256 titles (Heckethorn, The Printers of Basle in the XV. & XVI. Centuries [1897], 91–111). She analyzes the publications in accordance with the following usual rubrics: title page, author(s), editor(s), contributor(s), illustrator, contents, imprint, colophon, physical description, references (e.g., in GW, VD16, and USTC), visual material, paratextual material, consulted copies, other locations. In the case of the first volume of Erasmus's edition of Jerome (1516), she corrects the embarrassing typographical error “ACVRATISSIMA” on the title page to read “EX ACCVRATISSIMA OFFICINA FROBENIANA” (no. 47, 221). Where data is available, Sebastiani lists the copy price but leaves to the reader the determination of the economic value of “5 flor.” (179), “8 d.” (210), “viij lb.” (516), “20 solid.” (533). In the notes, she often indicates if a title is a reprint or revised edition and alerts readers to Froben's practice of simultaneously printing the same title in a larger and smaller octavo format, such as in editions of Erasmus's Paraphrases (no. 165, 438; no. 166, 439; no. 167, 440; no. 168, 441; no. 242, 580; no. 243, 582; no. 262, 610; no. 263, 612). We learn that three copies of Erasmus's Novum Testamentum Omne (1519) “were printed on parchment,” information taken from Allen's edition of the humanist's correspondence (no. 126, 376). Froben yielded to Erasmus's threat in 1519 to cut ties with him if he continued to publish Lutheran books. Yet, as Sebastiani's catalogue reveals, in 1527 Froben printed Philip Melanchthon's Aritculi de Quibus Egerunt Visitatores in Regione Saxionae (no. 328, 704–05), the Visitation Articles to guide the investigation of church affairs in Lutheran Saxony.
Book historians will immediately appreciate Sebastiani's accomplishment. Her catalogue represents a valuable bibliographical tool for research. It will serve as vade mecum for an important study of the business of printing in the Renaissance that remains to be written.
