[Illustration: SÉBASTIEN NIVELLE.
S N
HONORA PATREM TVVM, ET MATREM TVAM.
VT SIS LONGÆVVS SVPER TERRAM. EXOD. 20.]
On the opposite page we reproduce the Mark Nivelle used for the books
which he produced alone.
After Paris, the next most important town in France, so far as printers
and their Marks are concerned, is Lyons. The first book printed in this
city is presumed to be “Cardinalis Lotharii Tractatus quinque,”
“Lugduni, Bartholomæus Buyerius,” 1473 (in quarto). The same printer
also published the first French translation of the Bible, by Julian
Macho and Pierre Ferget, which was executed between 1473 and 1474, from
which date the art of printing in Lyons increased by leaps and bounds.
Panzer notices over 250 works executed (by nearly forty printers) here
during the quarter of a century which followed. The most notable among
these is perhaps Josse Bade, to whom we have already referred. The
former of the two “honestes homes Michelet topie de pymont: & Iaques
heremberck dalemaigne,” possessed a Mark which may be regarded as one of
the earliest, if not actually the first, employed at Lyons. Topie and
Heremberk printed the first edition of the “Chronique Scandaleuse,”
about 1488, and Breydenbach’s “Voyage à Jerusalem,” of about the same
period--the latter of which contains the first examples of copper-plate
engraving in France, the panorama of Venice alone being sixty-four
inches in length. Contemporary with these, Johannes or Jehan Treschel
deserves notice not only as an eminent printer, but also as the
father-in-law of one still more eminent--Bade. Treschel’s illustrated
edition of Terence, 1493, is described as forming “the most striking and
artistic work of illustration produced by the early French school.” The
most generally known of all the Lyonese printers is Etienne Dolet, who,
born at Orleans in 1509, distinguished himself not only as a printer,
but as a Latin scholar, a poet, and an orator; he was burnt as an
atheist in August, 1546. Dolet, as Mr. Chancellor Christie tells us in
his exhaustive monograph, adopted a Mark and motto which are to be found
in all or nearly all the productions of his press. The Mark and the
motto are equally allusive: the former is an axe of the kind known as
_doloire_, held in a hand which is issuing out of a cloud. Below is a
portion of a trunk of a tree; it is usually surrounded by the motto,
“Scabra et impolita ad amussim dolo atque perfolia”; it is often also
surrounded by an ornamental woodcut border, as in the accompanying
illustration; and in some cases the words “scabra dolo” are printed on
the axe.
[Illustration: MERLIN, DESBOYS AND NIVELLE.
HOMO NASCITVR AD LABOREM
VADE PIGER AD FORMICAM
PROVENIET TEMPVS MESSIONIS
NON ODERIS LABORIOSA OPERA]
[Illustration: M. TOPIE.]
[Illustration: J. TRESCHEL.