Autori vari - Oracoli cioè Sentenze et Documenti - 1574

The work
Oracles, that is Sentences, and Documents noble and illustrious is a bouquet of classical wisdom, printed in 1574 in Venice by Giacomo Vidali. The full title announces the book’s program: it gathers sentences (sentenze) 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 concluded with a selection from Plutarch’s apothegms — short, concise sayings of rulers, generals, and philosophers, gathered by Plutarch himself in his Moralia and unusually popular in the Renaissance 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 size was typical for the so‑called libri da bisaccia — books to carry in the pocket or travel bag, intended for daily consultation. The nineteenth‑century half-leather binding with richly gilt spine decoration is a later addition, characteristic of collectors from the Eighteenth Century who wanted to bring their cinquecentines to a fitting condition.

The contents: a mirror for princes and citizens
The work is listed as Aa. Vv. (autori vari) — a compilation without a single author. That is no accident: in the second half of the sixteenth century the genre of the florilegium of sentences in Italy reached its pinnacle. Scholars such as Paolo Manuzio and, earlier, Erasmus of Rotterdam (Adagia, 1500; Apophthegmata, 1531) had raised the collection of classical wisdom-maxims to a literary form in itself. These compilations were read by humanists, courtiers, lawyers, and clergy as practical guides to oratory 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 highly telling. Plutarch (c. 46–127 AD) was, in the Renaissance, one of the most read authors from antiquity; his Apophthegmata Regum et Imperatorum was originally dedicated to Emperor Trajan and remains 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 printing houses active in Italy (about 438 out of 1,650 in the period 1465–1600) were located in the lagoon city. Alongside big names like Aldus Manutius, the Giunti, and Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari, countless smaller printers like Vidali operated, often specializing in cheap, portable editions for a wide reading public.
Vidali’s production fits within what historians call the “splintering” (polverizzazione) of the Venetian book market: small workshops focused on religious works, vernacular classics, and compilations for education and foundation. It was precisely these smaller printers who spread the humanist culture far beyond the elites, with pocket-format editions that were affordable and marketable.

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