The focus of MedPub’s research was on individual authors and their publishing networks. Some 60 authors were studied, ranging from anonymous writers of the eleventh century to such celebrated Renaissance authors as Boccaccio. The literary genres include historiography, letter collections, poetry, theology, commentary, geography, hagiography, liturgy, and translations. Furthermore, our Database of Medieval Publishing introduces some 4,000 individuals involved in the publication of new authorial works, a corpus in which practically all fields of medieval Latin literature are represented.
The main question we posed ourselves was how did different publishing cultures emerge, function, and get reshaped. This was studied especially in the geographical contexts of France, England, Italy, and Denmark. In this last, a new authorial culture was formed virtually from scratch and developed in stages, initially shaped mainly by institutional needs and subsequently also by mounting literary ambitions. Our studies operating in Anglo-Norman spheres emphasized how individuals and institutions collaborated in the circulation of new writings, and how success in dissemination relied on authorial efforts to that effect. Several of our studies demonstrate that whatever the geographical, chronological or literary context, promotion by influential third parties could make a difference. The papacy boasted a particularly wide and long-standing application to the promotion of texts. While precedents from the patristic period were formative, papal support was especially welcome if the published text was potentially susceptible to doctrinal censure. Complex operations devised by affected authors and their supporters are witness to this anxiety.
The late medieval increase in channels of communication benefitted authors who enjoyed institutional support and could use distribution networks offered by, say, a religious order. They could find audiences across the Latin West with an efficiency that was rare in the high medieval period. Urbanization also had pertinent side-effects, to which literary careers in Renaissance Italy testify. It became increasingly natural for authors to seek sponsorship from secular parties, including civic bodies. Even so, the traditional ecclesiastical setups for the distribution and preservation of books remained instrumental even for lay authors.
These and other results have been disseminated in our conferences and publications. Our peer-reviewed research is available in an open access form. Our database is accessible at dmpn.helsinki.fi.
