Erhard Ratdolt’s Edition of Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera: A New Editorial Model in Venice?

Abstract

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to investigate the construction process of Sacrobosco’sTractatusas a successful venture in the early publishing market and the seminal role of some of its editions. Venice is a good case study since Venetian printers regularly printed the early editions of theSphaeraand fashioned the way the text was laid in print. In 1478, in the context of aggressive competition with Erhard Ratdolt, Franz Renner chose a traditional conceptual approach to the text and printed it in a new formal adaptation. Ratdolt responded by emphasizing the importance of the illustrations and by printing Sacrobosco’s treatise with other texts from contemporary scholars Georg Peuerbach and Regiomontanus. His editions could be found across Europe. His choices also inserted Sacrobosco’s thirteenth-century treatise into contemporary academic debates. Finally, Ratdolt’s edition set a formal standard, completed with Santritter’s 1488 edition, and copied in Venice and across Europe. In the following years, many Venetian printers copied the publishing solution developed by Ratdolt and fully realized it in Johann Lucilius Santritter’s 1488 edition in an environment of harsh competition. However, other models were developed and coexisted in Venice, probably targeting different audiences and different reading practices.