LECTURE: Stefano Martinelli Tempesta (Università Statale di Milano), The Wanderings of a Greek Manuscript from Byzantium to Aldus’ Printing House and Beyond: The History of the Aristotle Ambr. B 7 inf., The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), Room 2002, Warburgstraße 26, Hamburg (Germany), Monday, 18 April 2016 at 4 pm.
Between 1495 and 1498 Aldus Manutius, the most important scholarly publisher of the Renaissance, published the first printed edition of Aristotle’ and Theophrastus’ works. Two main principles lie at the heart of this major achievement: colligere and corrigere, i.e. to collect and collate, and, further, to correct.
As Aldus himself says, the aim was to provide the University studiosi with reliable and easily available texts, although the relatively high prices of the books point to an indirect form of availability, e.g. through libraries and teachers.
In order to cast light upon the textual improvements of a scholarly publisher, it is of paramount importance to identify the manuscripts he collected and used for his printed editions: to date, only a part of the manuscript sources that lie behind Aldus’ Aristotle have been recognised.
In an attempt to further clarify such a complex background, I will tell the story of a thirteenth century manuscript of Aristotle’s Physics and On the soul now preserved in the Ambrosiana Library.