Pietro Perna was an Italian printer, the leading printer of Late Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

, the Erasmian crossroads between Italian Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...

 and the Protestant Reformation

Protestant Reformation

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

. His books promoted the Italian heretical thinkers at the origins of Socinianism

Socinianism

Socinianism is a system of Christian doctrine named for Fausto Sozzini , which was developed among the Polish Brethren in the Minor Reformed Church of Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries and embraced also by the Unitarian Church of Transylvania during the same period...

 and the theory of Tolerance

Toleration

Toleration is "the practice of deliberately allowing or permitting a thing of which one disapproves. One can meaningfully speak of tolerating, ie of allowing or permitting, only if one is in a position to disallow”. It has also been defined as "to bear or endure" or "to nourish, sustain or preserve"...

. He was a major publisher of Protestant historians like Flacius Illyricus and David Chytraeus

David Chytraeus

David Chytraeus or Chyträus was a German Lutheran theologian and historian.His real surname was Kochhafe, which in Classical Greek is χυτρα, from where he derived the Latinized pseudonym "Chyträus".Chytraeus was professor of the University of Rostock and one of the co-authors of the Formula of...

 and promoted the ars historica

Ars historica

Ars Historica was a genre of humanist historiography in the later Renaissance. It produced a small library of treatises underscoring the stylistic aspects of writing history as a work of art, but also introducing the contributions of philology and textual criticism in its precepts and...

 treatises of the period, notably the 18 authores de historia in Artis Historicae Penus

Artis Historicae Penus

thumb|rightArtis Historicae Penus is a compilation of 18 ars historica works brought out in 1579 by the late Renaissance Basel printer Pietro Perna. This compendium in octavo appeared in 2 volumes with a copious index. A third volume adds the final work by Antonio Riccoboni, often missing in...

 (1579).

A native of Lucca

Lucca

Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plainnear the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Lucca...

 and a Dominican

Dominican Order

The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

, he arrived in Basel in 1544 as a disciple of the reformer Pietro Martire Vermigli

Pietro Martire Vermigli

Peter Martyr Vermigli , sometimes simply Peter Martyr, was an Italian theologian of the Reformation period.-Life:...

 and with the help of Pietro Carnesecchi

Pietro Carnesecchi

Pietro Carnesecchi was an Italian humanist.-Biography:Born in Florence, he was the son of a da Andrea Carnesecchi, a merchant who under the patronage of the Medici, and especially of Giulio de' Medici as Pope Clement VII, rapidly rose to high office at the papal court.He came into touch with the...

. As a printer he started as an assistant to the renowned Johannes Oporinus

Johannes Oporinus

Johannes Oporinus was a humanist printer in Basel, the son of the painter Hans Herbst- Life :...

 and set up a press of his own in 1558. As a bookseller and apprentice printer he established a network of Italian connections that helped him act as a go between and publisher of Italian reformed thinkers and writers, such as Vermigli, Pier Paolo Vergerio

Pier Paolo Vergerio

Pier Paolo Vergerio was an Italian religious reformer.-Life:He was born at Capodistria , then part of the Venetian Republic and studied jurisprudence in Padua, where he delivered lectures in 1522. He also practiced law in Verona, Padua, and Venice...

, Jacopo Aconcio, Bernardino Ochino

Bernardino Ochino

Bernardino Ochino was an Italian Reformer.-Biography:Bernardino Ochino was born in Siena son of the barber Domenico Ochino, and at the age of 7 or 8 around 1504 was entrusted to the Minorite order of Franciscan Friars, then from 1510 he studied medicine at Perugia.-1534, transfer to the...

, Lelio Sozzini, Sebastian Castellio

Sebastian Castellio

Sebastian Castellio was a French preacher and theologian; and one of the first Reformed Christian proponents of religious toleration, freedom of conscience and thought....

, Celio Secondo Curione

Celio Secondo Curione

Celio Secondo Curione was an Italian humanist, grammarian and suspected antitrinitarian.thumb|160px|Celio Secondo Curione-Works :* Pasquillus ecstaticus et Marphorius. Basel, 1544....

, etc. He published the editio princeps

Editio princeps

In classical scholarship, editio princeps is a term of art. It means, roughly, the first printed edition of a work that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand....

 of the original Greek text of the Enneads

Enneads

The Six Enneads, sometimes abbreviated to The Enneads or Enneads , is the collection of writings of Plotinus, edited and compiled by his student Porphyry . Plotinus was a student of Ammonius Saccas and they were founders of Neoplatonism...

 of Plotinus

Plotinus

Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...

. He produced important editions of Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...

 and Bodin

Bodin

Bodin is a parish and former municipality in Nordland county, Norway.-History:Bodin was established as a municipality January 1, 1838 . Some smaller parts of the municipality were transferred to the town of Bodø January 1, 1901 and July 1, 1938...

, Guicciardini and Lodovico Castelvetro

Lodovico Castelvetro

Lodovico Castelvetro was an important figure in the development of neo-classicism, especially in drama. It was his reading of Aristotle that led to a widespread adoption of a tight version of the Three Unities, as a dramatic standard....

. He published works of Paracelsus

Paracelsus

Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....

 and various Paracelsians but also served as the chief printer of Paracelsus's leading critic Thomas Erastus

Thomas Erastus

Thomas Erastus was a Swiss physician and theologian best known for a posthumously published work in which he argued that the sins of Christians should be punished by the state, and not by the church withholding the sacraments...

. In 1570 Perna sent the artist Tobias Stimmer

Tobias Stimmer

Tobias Stimmer was a Swiss painter and illustrator. His most famous work is the paintings on the Strasbourg astronomical clock. He died in Strasbourg....

 to Como to copy the famous collection of historical portraits in the Giovio Collection. Stimmer's distinctive woodcuts decorate numerous editions of Paolo Giovio

Paolo Giovio

thumb|Paolo Giovio.thumb|Monument to Paolo Giovo by [[Francesco da Sangallo]], in [[San Lorenzo di Firenze|San Lorenzo]] Basilica, [[Florence]].Paolo Giovio was an Italian physician, historian and biographer, and prelate.He is chiefly known as the author of a celebrated work of...

, brought out by Perna and Heinrich Petri. The Basel doctor and polymath Theodor Zwinger

Theodor Zwinger

Theodor Zwinger the Elder was a Swiss physician and humanist scholar. He made significant contributions to the emerging genres of reference and travel literature...

was his close collaborator. Perna died of the plague and was buried in St. Peter's Church.

External links

• Griechischer Geist aus Basler Pressen