Markers of social status in Polish printers' signatures (1501-1545)

Abstract

The article raises the problem of status representation in the signatures of book printers of the Kingdom of Poland. First of all, the study concerns the identified features in the publications of I. Vietor and J. Haller; to a lesser extent - S. Giber, K. Hochfeder, F. Ungler and M. Scharfenberg. Although the publisher's signature form did not undergo significant changes during the 1st half of the 16th century, we find specific markers of social status among the listed printers. These markers are not characteristic of previous and subsequent Polish book publishers, but are characteristic, firstly, of a certain circle of printers outside the Kingdom of Poland, and secondly, of the social environment that existed at that time, in which certain epithets conveyed information about a person’s place in the hierarchy. The focus on the readership demand of intellectuals and connections with the University of Krakow were also reflected in the publishing signatures: printers classified their activities in the field of sciences and arts ("ars"), and also presented themselves in terms accepted in the scientific community ("egregius vir", "spectabilis vir dominus"). This part of the self-representation of entrepreneurs once again testifies to their involvement in the structure of European humanist printers, who, like their Polish colleagues, sought to declare in their signatures their connections with the scientific community and Renaissance culture. At the same time, the appearance of the epithets identified in the structure of the publisher's signature has not only a linguistic connection, but also a chronological one: the concepts under study disappear in the middle of the 16th century from Polish publications and is reduced to a minimum in publications of other European lands.