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Notes
By the term "basic copy" I designate a particular copy of a particular edition which the printer corrected and then used to set his new edition. I have avoided using "copy-text" to mean "printer's copy," in accordance with the arguments advanced by G. Thomas Tanselle in "The Meaning of Copy-text: a Further Note," Studies in Bibliography, 22 (1970), 191-6. But "copytext," even taken in the strict sense supported by Tanselle, is also applicable to the phenomenon I am describing. For some printers (either alone or with help) functioned also as editors: they chose a particular edition as copy-text ("the text which an editor takes as the basis for his own text," Tanselle, p. 192) and by correcting and amplifying a single example of that edition they formed printer's copy ("the unique document which a printer follows in setting type," Tanselle, p. 192). Though Tanselle speaks of "basic text" as synonymous with "copy-text," it is perhaps useful to distinguish "basic (printer's) copy" from "printer's copy": a "basic copy" of a particular edition, once it has been corrected by marginal or interlinear additions, becomes "printer's copy" for a new edition. In some early editions of the Moria, passages to be added to the basic copy (either from authorial manuscript or from a different edition than the one to which the basic text belongs) were too lengthy to be written in the basic copy itself. In such cases printer's copy was presumably formed by combining the basic copy with parts of a copy from another edition or with passages written on separate sheets.
In their letters to Martin Dorp (1515) in defense of the Moria, both Erasmus (Opus Epistolarum, ed. P. S. and H. M. Allen, 1906-41, II, 94) and St. Thomas More (The Correspondence, ed. Elizabeth Rogers, 1947, p. 66) noted that the Moria had been unusually popular and frequently reprinted. On 13 June 1522 Erasmus wrote that over 20,000 copies had been printed (Opera Omnia, ed. Jean LeClerc, 1703-6, IX, 360 and Opus Epistolarum, IV, 622). No doubt he chose a round number, which may have been rhetorically equivalent to "very many." But if the 1800 copies printed of E846-7 (Opus Epistolarum, II, 64) can be taken as a usual or average number for an edition, Erasmus' estimate was quite conservative, for 24 editions would have produced over twice as many copies as he claims.
I have collated all these editions in the course of preparing an authoritative Latin text for the forthcoming Amsterdam edition of the complete works of Erasmus. All but three of these editions are identified and described by F. Van der Haeghen in Bibliotheca Belgica: Bibilographie générale des Pays-Bas, ed. Marie Therese Lenger, II (1964), E838-E871. It should be noted, however, that Van der Haeghen's E838 and E839 are not separate editions but rather the same sheets differing only in the title-pages and some stop-press corrections. E846 and E847 are also not separate editions. Three editions should be added to Van der Haeghen's list: 1) Thierry Martens' edition printed in January 1512 at Antwerp, Wouter Nijhoff and M. E. Kroneberg, Nederlandsche Bibliographie van 150 tot 1540 (1923-42), No. 831 (I have used a microfilm of the copy in the British Museum); 2) Jehan Lalyseau's edition printed at Paris between July 1512, and c. 1520, of which two copies are known: one in the Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims (A50319/Rés. P. 811), lacking two leaves (Aal and Aa8), and another in the University Library at Louvain (Rés. 3A 20852) which was once in the collection of Henri Omont and which was acquired by the University Library at Louvain in 1948; 3) an edition derived from the preceding edition, of unknown place (Mainz or Cologne?), printer, and date (1520?), a copy of which (perhaps unique) exists in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (no. 542, Rés. Y2. 943).
With the exception of one longer passage which occurs shortly before the change in basic copy and which may have shown the difficulties the printer would face if he tried to go on using the Aldine edition as basic copy.
All five of the Italian editions published during Erasmus' lifetime (E844, E845, E851, E857, E867) are derived from Schürer's 1512 edition, which was merely a reprint of his 1511 edition (E840), so that these Italian editions contain none of the extensive authorial additions and revisions made after 1511.
Incidentally he also tidied up his pages somewhat. His 1522 edition was a page-for-page and line-for-line reprint of his 1521 edition. But some of the pages of his earlier edition had had 28 lines instead of the usual 27. In his reprint Knoblauch regularized the number of lines per page in 13 out of 14 instances. He also found it necessary to gain some space in the last gathering because he wished to print the colophon on the recto of the last page instead of the verso, which was now to be reserved for his own device.
Julien Baudrier in Bibliographie Lyonnaise (Paris, reprinted 1964, VIII, 38) places this undated edition in 1528 or 1529.
Passing over a Venetian italic edition (E867) which, though it was later than Knoblauch's second edition, was far less complete.
Thus, for the first revised edition (E841) Badius used as basic copy the first edition (E838-9), which was wretchedly printed, not Schürer's intermediate edition (E840), which was much tidier and easier to work with but no more authoritative than E838-9. For the second revised edition (E843), Schürer himself used as basic copy the first revised edition (E841) printed by Badius, not one of his own editions (E840 and E842). In such cases, however, the basic copy might well have been chosen by Erasmus himself.
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