Lyon
Edward Worth owned a number of publications by some of the most important printers and booksellers of sixteenth-century Lyon. His collection of works from Lyon demonstrates the challenges and temptations faced by printers and booksellers in a city that was both physically and religiously closer to Geneva than it was to Paris. The Lyonnais printers and booksellers adopted various strategies to deal with the challenging times in which they lived. One might say that the Vincent dynasty tried to have their cake and eat it by fleeing to Geneva but continuing to trade from Lyon. Others, such as Macé Bonhomme (fl. 1536-69), Guillaume Rouillé (1518?-89), and Antonius Gryphius (1527-99), of the House of the Gryphon chose to stay in the city, attempting to weather the religious storm.
Macé Bonhomme (fl. 1536-69)
Guillaume Rondelet, Gulielmi Rondeletii doctoris medici et medicinae in schola Monspeliensi professoris regii Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus verae piscium effigies expressae sunt (Lyon, 1554), title page device of Macé Bonhomme.
Bonhomme’s printing of Guillaume Rondelet’s Libri de piscibus (Lyon, 1554) was a seminal moment in the history of ichthyology. This heavily illustrated text by Guillaume Rondelet (1507-66), proved to be a treasure trove for all subsequent early modern natural historians and its impact can clearly be seen in Ulisse Aldrovandi’s disquisitions on fish. The printing of Libri de piscibus also served to put its printer on the map, for the book made Macé Bonhomme famous following its publication in 1554. As may seen above, the title page of the work bears his printer’s device, which, as Vingtrinier notes, depicts ‘Perseus presenting the head of Medusa, which he has just cut off’.[1] Bonhomme retained this ornate device for much of his working life. Indeed, it proved more stable than the printer himself, for Bonhomme was a printer who was often on the move, and used several addresses. However, undoubtedly his most important address was at the sign of the ‘Clés d’or’ in Lyon.
Bonhomme had been born in Paris but by 1541 he moved to Lyon to settle there. It is possible that he worked in the firms of Antoine I Vincent (d. 1568) or Jacques Giunta (1487-1546), before borrowing money from them to start his own career. He did not stay in Lyon for long, leaving for Vienne before moving to Avignon to open a bookshop there (which he left in the hands of his brother Barthélémy (d. 1557)).[2] He returned to Lyon in 1542, when the tensions with the journeymen printers’ strikes were over.[3] Ten years later, he opened a printing firm in Avignon, which was again run by his brother. Macé thus followed the strategic pattern of other booksellers and printers (such as the Petits, the Angeliers and the Marnefs), who decided to open branches in other French cities, the only difference being that he had less money to invest in his ventures. For the most part, he stayed in Lyon and worked with other important members of the Lyon book trade: the Portonariis and Guillaume Rouillé (1518?-89). [4] Like Jean de Tournes (1504-64), Bonhomme also played a role in promoting Hebraism in Lyon, even though he was not one of the most influential printers in the Rhône city’s book market. Both men contributed to the democratisation of the language in the second half of the sixteenth century.[5]
Guillaume Rondelet, Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus verae piscium effigies expressae sunt (Lyon, 1554), i, p. 128.
As Emeline Huguet emphasises, the printing of the Libri de piscibus was Bonhomme’s chief claim to fame.[6] This masterpiece has been described as one of the most beautiful books on the subject at the time of its publication, and the clarity of its illustrations was renowned. Bonhomme printed a French version of the book in 1558, using the same woodcuts. He was able to produce this heavily illustrated text because he had the financial backing of Barthélemy Molin (fl. 1560-66?), a printer and publisher from Lyon. This pooling of resources was a common practice when it came to printing a very expensive book.[7]
Though best known for his Latin and French editions of Libri de piscibus, Bonhomme also made a name for himself with other publications such as his 1547 Emblemata of Andrea Alciati (1492-1550), and his 1556 printing of the Trois premiers livres de la metamorphose by Ovid (43 B.C.-17/18 A.D.). Though Worth did not collect either work he was clearly attracted to Bonhomme’s output and, apart from his copy of Rondelet’s book on fish, he also acquired a number of other works printed by Bonhomme. The earliest was the undated Itinerarium provinciarum Antonini Augusti. Vibius Sequester De fluminu, & aliarum rerum nominibus in ordinem elementorum digestis. P. Victor De regionibus urbis Romae. Dionysius Afer De situ orbis which he printed for the Vincent firm c. 1536. Worth no doubt had a professional interest in two works printed by Bonhomme in 1552: Guillaume Du Puis’ De medicamentorum quomodocunque purgantium facultatibus, nusquam anteà neque dictis, neque per ordinem digestis libri duo (Lyon, 1552) and Bartholomeo Viotti a Clivolo’s De balneorum naturalium viribus libri quatuor: quorum argumentum proxime` sequentes pagellæ indicabunt (Lyon, 1552); while he may well have viewed his copy of Bonhomme’s edition of François Bossuet’s De natura aquatilium carmen (Lyon, 1558) as a companion text to Rondelet’s masterpiece.
Guillaume Rouillé (1518?-89)
‘In Virtute et Fortuna‘ of ‘In Virtue and Fortune’.
Cristóbal de Vega, Christophori a Vega … Opera, nempe, Liber de arte medendi. Commentar. in libru Galeni De differentiis febrium. Commentarius de urinis. Commentaria in lib. Aphorismorum Hippocratis. Prognosticorum Hippocratis è Graeco in Latinum versio … (Lyon, 1576), title page device of Guillaume Rouillé.
One of Bonhomme’s collaborators was Guillaume Rouillé (1518?-89), a printer and bookseller from Lyon who, like so many others before him, has been given different names by historians: ‘Guillaume Roville’ or ‘Rouville’ (by Vingtrinier) and ‘Guillaume Roville’ or ‘Rouillé’ (by Renouard).[8] However, while his name provokes debate, his printer’s device is less ambiguous. Vingtrinier describes the above device as ‘an eagle with outstretched wings, standing on a globe supported by a column, towards which two twisted serpents are raised’.[9] On either side is his motto ‘In Virtute et Fortuna’ – which according to Vingtrinier owed much to the device of the father of his first wife, Sebastianus Gryphius (1493?-1556), the founder of the House of the Gryphon. However, just as there are variants of his name, Rouillé also used variants of a coat of arms, along with another motto: ‘Rem maximam sibi promittit prudentia’.[10]
Guillaume Rouillé was born in Tours, near Loches, around 1518 and died in Lyon in 1589. He was active from 1549 to 1570. He initially worked in Paris and then moved to Lyon, where he opened a bookshop and soon added a printing press. Vingtrinier suggests that Rouillé’s brilliant career enabled him to marry the daughter of Sebastianus Gryphius, one of the greatest printers and booksellers in Lyon in the sixteenth century, but this is contested.[11] In 1544 he married for a second time, this time to the daughter of the Italian bookseller Dominique de Portonariis (1520-61), with whom he had four daughters. His third marriage was to Claudine Revel.[12] Rouillé lived in the Rue Mercière, under the sign of the ‘Ecu de Venise’, and used the signs of ‘L’Ange’, the ‘Toison d’Or’ and the ‘Phénix’. It is possible that he had a shop in Paris run by Gaultier de Roville (fl. 1562-69), who was also from Loches and who is thought to have been his nephew.[13] Rouillé was a ‘conseiller de ville’ or ‘échevin’ of Lyon in 1568-1569, 1573-1574 and 1578-1579. The ‘échevin’ were elected for two years by the citizens of Lyon; they were twelve until the Edict of Chauny, issued by Henri IV (1553-1610) in 1595, and after this date, they were four. They were assisted by assemblies made up of the town’s notables and masters of trade, and together they administered the municipality, headed by a ‘prévôt des marchands’.[14]
Edward Worth clearly thought highly of him as a printer for he acquired a number of his publications: the Epitome omnium rerum et sententiarum, quae annotatu dignae in Commentariis Galeni in Hippocratem extant, per Andream Lacuná … in elenchum minimè poenitendum digesta. Cui accessere nonnulla Galeni Enantiomata … (Lyon, 1554) by the Spanish humanist and botanist Andrès de Laguna (1499-1559); the Discours sur la castrametation et discipline militaire des Romains, escript par … Guillaume du Choul …, Des bains et antiques exercitations Grecques et Romaines. De la religion des anciens Romains (Lyon, 1556), by Guillaume du Choul, a sixteenth-century collector of coins and medals from Lyon; his 1558 edition of Il Petrarca: con dichiarazioni non piu stampate: insieme alcune belle Annotazioni, tratte dalle dottissime prose di Monsignor Bembo, cose sommamente utili, a ci di rimare leggiadramente, & senza volere i segi dell Petrarca passare, si prende cura: e piu` una conserua di tutte le sue rime ridotte sotto le cinque lettere vocali (Lyon, 1558), by the famous Florentine humanist Francesco Petrarca (1304-74); Petri Gyllii De Bosporo Thracio libri III and Petri Gyllii De topographia Constantinopoleos, et de illius antiquitatibus libri quatuor (Lyon, 1562) by Pierre Gilles (1490-1555); and finally Christophori a Vega … Opera, nempe, Liber de arte medendi. Commentar. in libru Galeni De differentiis fevrium. (Lyon, 1576) … by Cristóbal de Vega (1510?-73?), a Spanish humanist, who was a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Alcalá and physician to Carlos, Prince of Asturias (1545-68).[15] This corpus highlights the breath of Rouillé’s output and his interest in producing works by Spanish and Italian authors (in both Latin and in the vernacular for he printed around fifteen works in Spanish and almost 160 in Italian). It likewise demonstrates Worth’s interest in rare titles, such as the works of Andrès de Laguna and Guillaume du Choul, and, of course, in medical works such as that by Cristóbal de Vega.
Vingtrinier describes Rouillé in the following terms: ‘He was not only an excellent printer, a skilful trader, a first-rate administrator and a pious citizen, but he was also kind, charitable and generous, as his will proves’.[16] One could add that, like so many printers and booksellers based in sixteenth-century Lyon, he sought to develop a wide network, especially with colleagues in Italy and Spain. By doing so he was able to make his business flourish during a time of great conflict in Lyon.
Sources
Bibliothèque de Genève, Bibliographical database of books published in Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, and Morges in the 15th and 16th centuries, GLN 15-16.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Catalogue général.
Claudin, Anatole, Histoire de l’imprimerie en France au XVe et au XVIe siècle, 4v. (Paris, 1900-14).
Decourt, George, ‘Famille Vincent (1499-1567)’, Musée du diocèse de Lyon.
Droz, Eugénie, ‘Antoine Vincent: La propagande protestante par le psautier’, in Berthoud, Gérald, Georgette de Groër & Delio Cantimori (eds), Aspect de la propagande religieuse (Geneva, 1957).
Fargeix, Caroline, ‘Trahir la ville, trahir le consulat : le respect de leur serment par les consuls lyonnais du XVe siècle’, in Myriam Soria & Maïté Billoré (eds), La trahison au Moyen Âge : De la monstruosité au crime politique (Ve-XVe siècle) (Rennes, 2010), pp 273-280.
Hernández González, Justo P., ‘Cristóbal de Vega’, Real Academia de la Historia, Diccionario Biográfico electrónico.
Huguet, Emeline, Macé Bonhomme, un imprimeur lyonnais du XVIe siècle, Master’s degree Year 1 dissertation, ENSSIB – École nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques (Villeurbanne, 2013).
Jocteur Montrozier, Yves & Monique Hulvey, Préface, in Lyse Schwarzfuchs (ed.), L’hébreu dans le livre lyonnais au xvie siècle: Inventaire chronologique (Lyon, 2008), pp 9-12.
Lecocq Micheline, Simon Vincent, libraire éditeur à Lyon de 1499 à 1532, PhD thesis, Université Jean Monnet (Saint-Étienne, 1983).
Letricot, Rosemonde, ‘Les échevins et prévôts des marchands dans le paysage institutionnel lyonnais (1680-1740)’, in Henri Bresc (ed.), Réseaux politiques et économiques (Paris, 2016), pp 205-216.
Régnier-Roux, Daniel, ‘Notes sur les dernières années de Jacques Besson (1534?-1573?)’, Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance, 77 (2013), 199-213.
Renouard, Philippe, Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer & Brigitte Moreau (eds), Répertoire des imprimeurs parisiens: libraires, fondeurs de caractères et correcteurs d’imprimerie: depuis l’introduction de l’imprimerie à Paris (1470) jusqu’à la fin du seizième siècle … (Paris, 1965).
Vingtrinier, Aimé, Histoire de l’imprimerie à Lyon, de l’origine jusqu’à nos jours (Lyon, 1894).
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[1] Vingtrinier, Aimé, Histoire de l’imprimerie à Lyon, de l’origine jusqu’à nos jours (Lyon, 1894), pp 223-224.
[2] Huguet, Emeline, Macé Bonhomme, un imprimeur lyonnais du XVIe siècle, Master’s degree Year 1 dissertation, ENSSIB – École nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques (Villeurbanne, 2013), p. 13.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid, p. 14.
[5] Jocteur Montrozier, Yves & Monique Hulvey, Préface, in Lyse Schwarzfuchs (ed.), L’hébreu dans le livre lyonnais au xvie siècle: Inventaire chronologique (Lyon, 2008), para. 5.
[6] Huguet, Macé Bonhomme, un imprimeur lyonnais du XVIe siècle, p. 34.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Vingtrinier, Aimé, Histoire de l’imprimerie à Lyon, de l’origine jusqu’à nos jours, p. 230 ; Renouard, Philippe, Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer & Brigitte Moreau (eds), Répertoire des imprimeurs parisiens: libraires, fondeurs de caractères et correcteurs d’imprimerie: depuis l’introduction de l’imprimerie à Paris (1470) jusqu’à la fin du seizième siècle … (Paris, 1965), p. 165.
[9] Vingtrinier, Aimé, Histoire de l’imprimerie à Lyon, de l’origine jusqu’à nos jours, p. 234.
[10] Ibid., p. 234.
[11] Ibid., pp 232-233.
[12] Ibid., p. 237.
[13] Renouard et al. (eds), Répertoire des imprimeurs parisiens, p. 165.
[14] Letricot, Rosemonde, ‘Les échevins et prévôts des marchands dans le paysage institutionnel lyonnais (1680-1740)‘, in Henri Bresc (ed.), Réseaux politiques et économiques (Paris, 2016), para. 9.
[15] Hernández González, Justo P., ‘Cristóbal de Vega’, Real Academia de la Historia, Diccionario Biográfico electrónico.
[16] Vingtrinier, Histoire de l’imprimerie à Lyon, de l’origine jusqu’à nos jours, p. 234.