Gerardus De Lisa

15th Century Renaissance Man

Gerardus De Lisa was a Renaissance man and an early 15th century printer. He printed about twenty books in Treviso between 1471 and 1476.

Like all but a few printers, these men mixed printing with other forms of livelihood. Indeed, to judge by the output and expressions used in legal documents to describe their activities, printing was only a minor part of their lives. For example, Gerardus de Lisa moved south from Ghent, and by 1462 was a schoolmaster at Treviso. In 1471 he printed the first edition of a pseudo-Augustine Manuale. But in Treviso, he was working in the shadow of the much more powerful printers and booksellers of Venice, he removed in 1477—8, before moving on briefly to print in Udine and Cividale and then coming back to Treviso.

Here is his boast, written as a colophon, or an inscription placed at the end of the manuscript:

He died, precentor of the cathedral at Aquileia in 1499, having been by turn schoolmaster, bookseller, printer, choirmaster, musician and debt collector.


Sources:


An Essay on Colophons With Specimens and Translations By Alfred William Pollard, Richard Garnett, Caxton Club, De Vinne Press, Pforzheimer Bruce Rogers Collection (Library of Congress)

A FLEMING IN VENETIA: GERARDUS DE LISA, PRINTER, BOOKSELLER, SCHOOLMASTER, AND MUSICIAN, Library, 1929; s4-X: 253 - 273, Victor Scholderer Oxford Journal
F we can imagine Gerardus de Lisa still con-cerning himself with......