Censoring Petrarch: the response of 16th-century Venetian printers to the Roman Index
Petrarch: the Father of Humanism
Given his poetic success and literary influence in Italy, Petrarch seems an unlikely author to be prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. During this period, Petrarch's poems were included amongst those banned works that were placed on the Roman Index. A unique feature of one codex held in the CRRS, an edition of Petrarch's poetry published in 1557, demonstrates how censorship was organized and carried out in the sixteenth century as well as how owners interacted with copies of the prohibited texts. Inside this copy of Il Petrarca, we find four pages of poetry that have been removed, rewritten by hand, and glued back into the book. Extant copies of Petrarch's works would suggest that the Church's efforts to censor Petrarch were successful while also causing opposition.1 This particular book of Petrarch's poetry, published by a prominent Venetian printer named Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, substantiates the claim by demonstrating three unique responses to censorship: from the printer, the censor, and the reader.
The Index of Prohibited Books
The invention of the printing press gradually changed the nature of publishing in Europe, but as books became easier and cheaper to produce, they also became more of a concern for the Church. Information and ideas could now circulate without regulation by authorities, triggering the Catholic Church to publish an Index of Prohibited Books. As Protestant Reformers increasingly produced polemics against the Church, Catholic authorities enacted tighter restrictions on what could and could not be published. Petrarch’s sonnets, along with other vernacular authors such as Boccaccio and Ariosto, had been under scrutiny early on because of their works' secular content, but the prohibition of Petrarch's sonnets was determined by Counter-Reformation politics. His Babylonian sonnets, a group of three poems that criticized the Avignon Papacy, were initially banned because they were included in a prohibited Protestant work. In 1557, Pier Paolo Vergerio wrote Alcuni importanti luochi, an attack against the Church that emphasized those three sonnets from Petrarch.2 In 1559, the book was placed on the Index and it is likely at this point that the censorship of Petrarch became a priority for the Church. There is no doubt that Petrarch’s Babylonian sonnets were being censored and removed beginning in the 1550s, but interestingly, Petrarch was never listed on the Index until 1590, suggesting the complexity in understanding the Index and prohibitions of authors and texts for scholars.3 Censorship laws, too, were ambiguous and could be generally interpreted in many forms. As a result, there are examples of printers and censors responding differently to the censorship of Petrarch, choosing to understand the laws in terms of their own business or beliefs. It was only after thirty years that Petrarch's three poems along with a fourth were finally listed on the Index in 1590 but subsequently removed in 1596.4
Although the poet’s entire work was never banned, Gabriel Giolito decided to stop printing Petrarch in 1560.5 Giolito’s contributions to the world of printing are preserved in the various vernacular works from his press, marketed at lower to middle-class men and women. Between 1544 and 1560, he published 24 editions of Il Petrarca, indicating the success of the book within his markets and the strategy of his printing house. Nevertheless, Giolito was quick to comply with the new moral climate of printing once the Indexes began being published in Italy. In 1542, he published his final edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron, and in 1560, Petrarch’s Il Petrarca and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.6 Giolito’s response to censorship seems to indicate the prospect of losing business or privileges associated with printing banned works. It may also suggest Giolito’s markets as being within Italy, where the ability of the Church to censor was higher than other cities in Northern Europe. In this particular codex, it is clear that Giolito did not remove the pages of banned poetry himself, since it was published in 1557. But years later, a censor likely did remove them, leading to the new, rewritten pages of poetry.
Responding to Censorship Laws
Because the edition was published in 1557, Giolito had no reason to remove the poems from his book. We know that Giolito interpreted censorship laws by removing Petrarch's works completely from his press, despite only three poems being banned. As mentioned, however, the ways in which these censorship laws were interpreted varied depending on the printer.
The printer Giorgio Angelieri did not include the Babylonian sonnets in his 1586 edition of Il Petrarca, but in their place, he left empty pages with the poem’s respective numbering and the note, ‘qui mancano tre sonnetti’ (three sonnets are missing here). Angelieri boldly supplied the reader with both the knowledge that something was missing as well as the space to write in the missing poems. Alessandro Griffio’s approach was to do the opposite: he completely removed any trace of the poems from his 1582 edition, both in the index and in the collection.
Giolito’s edition is different because it was published much earlier; however, it is likely that the censorship of its content occurred around the same time as Angelieri and Griffio’s decisions were made for their print run of Petrarca.
The codex with rewritten pages is certainly unique compared to other forms of censorship in the sixteenth century. It is likely that the removal of the pages by an owner or censor happened around 1590, when Sonnet 114 was also placed on the Index. The glue residue on the pages as well as the position of the page (slightly slanted) in the quire suggests that the handwritten pages were glued down onto the leftover page that was cut from the book. Giolito did not leave blank pages like Angelieri; something evident in the fact that the handwritten text includes two poems that were not banned, but simply on the front page of one of the banned poems, and were therefore removed incidentally. It is more likely that all four poems were removed at the same time by the same censor instead of the book being censored twice, at some point in the 1560s and one more in 1593. It is also clear that the owner disagreed with the censorship and had access to these removed pages, either through another copy of the same edition or circulating pages of the poems.
The Impact of the Index on Publication
Before 1560, Giolito’s sales were overwhelmingly associated with vernacular works, especially Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Petrarch’s Canzoniere. In the very early years of the ban, Giolito seems to have found little reason for the censorship to disturb his success. But after 1560, there was a shift in the production of his printing house from vernacular to religious texts that aligned with the shift in the religious attitudes of the late sixteenth century. Giolito belonged to that group of Venetian printers who avoided secular vernacular literature under the new censorship laws; he stopped printing the works that gave him his reputation and turned to devotional texts. The shift in Giolito’s printing strategies from the earlier decades of his career to after 1560 demonstrates the impact of the Index on print book culture throughout Italy. Scholars often highlight the inconsistency and inefficiency of the censorship laws, but here is an example of a printer whose business decisions were directly impacted by the prohibition of specific works. Giolito’s response to the prohibition differs from Angelieri’s and Griffio’s since his production of problematic texts ceased completely, suggesting his desire to avoid any troubling encounters with Rome. The 1557 Petrarca codex is an incredible source in the study of sixteenth-century print and the prohibition of certain works. Petrarca survived the censorship of its content, even after the removal of its pages, but Giolito’s press did not: his sons took over after his death, but the printing house closed in 1606.
By: Chiara Campagnaro
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1Peter Stallybrass, “Petrarch and Babylon: Censoring and Uncensoring the Rime, 1559–1651.” In For the Sake of Learning, 18 (2016): 586.
2Jennifer Helm, Poetry and Censorship in Counter-Reformation Italy, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 306.
3 Helm, Poetry and Censorship, 306.
4 Helm, Poetry and Censorship, 306.
5Angela Nuovo, and Chr. Coppens, I Giolito e la stampa: nell’Italia del XVI secolo, (Genève: Droz, 2005) 457.
6Angela Nuovo, and Chr. Coppens, I Giolito e la stampa: nell’Italia del XVI secolo, (Genève: Droz, 2005) 457.