There are some occasions during the fifteenth century in which the interplay of content, print publishing and manuscript production can give us some valuable insights into the print–manuscript nexus. This is the case in the career of the Italian Franciscan Laurentius Guglielmus Traversagnus, or Lorenzo Traversagni, also known in Germany as Laurentius Saphonensis or Zaphonensis (from his birthplace in Saona, modern Savona, Italy).

The Historical Background

Laurentius Traversagnus was born in Savona, Italy, in 1425, and entered the Franciscan order at the age of twenty. He studied at Padua with Francesco della Rovere, later to become Pope Sixtus IV. He was at Vienna from 1450 to 1459, where he composed a letter-writing manual, Modus conficiendi epistolas, later to prove very popular in print. He also wrote several theological works at different times in his career, but I am interested here mainly in the manuscript/print history of his three rhetorical texts, the only ones printed.

In 1460 he was at the University of Toulouse offering lectures on rhetoric and moral philosophy. While there he copied out several major works of Boethius, Alain de Lille and Hildebert of Lavedin, each signed and dated precisely between 9 May 1460 and 21 January 1461. These copies survive in Cambridge University Library, MS Add. 8957.

Then after brief stays in Genoa and Savona he went to Cambridge in 1476 to lecture again on rhetoric and Aristotle’s Ethics. In 1477 he was in London, but returned to Cambridge in 1478 to lecture on rhetoric and on Saint Augustine’s City of God. While at Cambridge he composed a work titled Margarita eloquentiae sive rhetorica nova. His colophon dates its completion as 6 July 1478. It was printed by William Caxton at Westminster in the same year. This is an important work in the history of rhetoric, but from the manuscript point of view it is especially significant in that the autograph manuscript used by Caxton has not only survived but, as Lotte Hellinga has pointed out, bears printer’s marks. She also notes that this is the only manuscript printed by Caxton which does bear printers’ marks. (See fig. 1.)