FEMALE PATRONAGE OF BOOK PRINTING IN THE TRANSOTTOMAN CONTEXT
This paper deals with some case studies of female patronage towards the printing houses and printers in the period between the end of the 15th and the end of the 17th centuries in the transottoman context. It was a Greek noble woman Anna Notaras, who initiated a printed edition of the Greek compendium Etymologicum Magnum in Venice (1499). At the end of the 16th century Joseph Nasi’s widow, dona Reyna, actively sponsored book prining in Hebrew and Ladino in Constantinople, founded her own printing house and published a number of important books for Jewish readers. In the middle of the 17th century, princess Helen, wife of the ruler of Wallachia Matthew Basarab, patronised book printing in Wallachia. Of interest are two editions in the Church Slavonic - translation of the Latin treatise Imitatio Christi (1647) and Triodion Pentecostarion (1649) with an epigram, colophon and preface estimating a particular role Helen played in their publication. These examples are meant to show some particular features of the book printing tradition in the Ottoman Empire and beyond its borders. Special attention is payed to the mobility of population (of different ethnical and religious groups), mobile character of printers and their printing presses, and also of printed books that had to be disseminated among different categories of readers - Greek scholars and clerus in diaspora and the Empire, among Sephardic Jews, on the Mount Athos etc. What were specific features of female patronage of early printing? What motivated women, how educated they were, which languages they chose and why, what made some books particularly valuable for them - these are question which are raised in the following paper.