Autori vari - Oracoli cioè Sentenze et Documenti - 1574

The Work
Oracoli, cioè Sentenze, et Documenti nobili, & illustri is a selection of classical wisdom, printed in 1574 in Venice by Giacomo Vidali. The full title announces the book’s program: it gathers sententiae (sentences) and exemplary passages from the principal Jewish, Greek, and Latin authors of antiquity, intended “for the adornment and preservation of civil and Christian life.” The volume is closed with a selection from the apophthegms of Plutarch — short, concise maxims of princes, soldiers, and philosophers, collected by Plutarch himself in his Moralia and in the Renaissance exceptionally popular as a handbook for rhetoric, education, and statecraft.

The copy appeared in 32° format (a small pocket size of only 11 × 8 cm), with 16 unnumbered leaves plus 344 numbered pages. This small format was typical of the so‑called libri da bisaccia — books to carry in the pocket or travel bag, meant to be consulted daily. The nineteenth‑century half‑leather binding with rich gold-tooled spine is a later addition, characteristic of Ottocento collectors who wanted to bring their cinquecentine to a suitably preserved condition.

The content: a mirror for princes and citizens
The work is listed as Aa. Vv. (autori vari) — a collection without a single author. That is no accident: in the second half of the sixteenth century the genre of the sentenza anthology was at its peak in Italy. Scholars such as Paolo Manuzio and, earlier, Erasmus of Rotterdam (Adagia, 1500; Apophthegmata, 1531) had elevated the gathering of wisdom-sayings from classical sources to a literary form in itself. These compilations were read by humanists, courtiers, lawyers, and clergy as practical guides to eloquence and moral conduct — a kind of encyclopedia of citeable wisdom.

The choice to crown the work with the “flowers” (i fiori) of Plutarch’s apophthegmata is telling. Plutarch (c. 46–127 CE) was in the Renaissance one of the most-read authors from antiquity; his Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum were originally addressed to Emperor Trajan and remain a key source for the myth of Sparta and the exempla virtutis of the ancient world.

The publisher: Giacomo Vidali in Venice
Giacomo Vidali was a Venetian printer active in the 1570s and 1580s. He belonged to an exceptionally dense typographic community: Venice was in the sixteenth century the undisputed center of European book printing. Almost half of all active printers in Italy (about 438 of a total of 1,650 from 1465–1600) were based in the lagoon city. Alongside big names like Aldus Manutius, the Giunti, and Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari, many smaller printers such as Vidali operated, often specializing in cheap, portable editions for a wide readership.
Vidali’s output fits within what historians call the “splintering” (polverizzazione) of the Venetian book market: small workshops focused on religious works, vernacular classics, and educational compilations. It was precisely these smaller printers who spread humanist culture far beyond the elites, with pocket-size editions that were affordable and marketable.

The significance of this book
Three reasons make this edition notable:
1. It is a cinquecentina — a sixteenth‑century printed book — and thus by definition bibliographically valuable. Every surviving copy from 1574 is a tangible witness to the first century of the printing press.
2. It documents the Renaissance practice of the florilegium, in which ancient wisdom was selected, arranged, and “curved” to be usable for a Catholic society after the Council of Trent. The subtitle — “for the adornment and preservation of civil and Christian life” — shows how pagan classics were put to service in the Counter-Reformation educational culture.
3. It is a striking example of Plutarch’s influence on European thinking. From Montaigne to Shakespeare, and later to Winston Churchill, generations of writers and statesmen drew from the same apophthegmata that Vidali placed within easy reach of the Venetian reader in 1574.