LYONS
By its geographical situation, by its proximity to Basle, by its
condition as a free town, and through the fairs that attracted within
its walls the merchants from other parts of France, as well as from
Germany, Italy, and Holland, Lyons became at once a typographical
centre of the first importance, even preceding Paris as regards book
illustration. In 1473 Barthelemy Buyer, a rich Lyons merchant, founded
the first press with the help of William Leroy, publishing first the
_Compendium_ of Lotharius, then _La Legende Dorée_, six months before
the appearance of the _Chroniques de Saint Denis_ at Paris. Ornamental
letters occur for the first time in the _Mirouer Hystorial_.[31] The
specimens given were used by Leroy in 1479, and are known as _lettres
tourneures fleuronnées_. On the title-page of the _Prestre Jehan_ of
the same publisher is a historiated P showing the three companions
travelling in the land of Prester John, arriving before a castle of
the ‘paynims.’ The text begins with a smaller initial, also a P with
a serpent’s head which forms part of the alphabet of the _Statuta
Lugdunensia_, and takes the place of the larger initial on the
title-page of a later edition. The initials of the _Statuta Synodalia_
are very much like those occurring in the _Quatre Fils Aymon_ and
in the _Dechier de Nobles Hommes et Femmes_, a translation of the
_De casibus illustrium virorum_ of Boccaccio (Mathieu Husz and Jean
Schabeler, 1483), and, although differently treated, the same subjects,
grotesque profiles, are to be found in the first Paris letters of Dupré
and Vérard. For the other letters of these early alphabets, of which
specimens are not given here, the reader is referred to Claudin’s
great work on the History of Printing in France, unfortunately left
incomplete by the death of the author, but of which the third volume,
the first of the two intended to relate to Lyons, is finished.
[31] Mr. Pollard speaks of an edition of ‘Beaudoin, Comte de
Flandres,’ of 1478, with rude printed initials.
It is chiefly in the French books of this period that we meet with
those large calligraphic initials for title-pages, generally taking
the form of the letter L in the style of the tenth century, which are
said by Claudin to be known as _lettres de forme, dites cadeaux_. The
two largest are to be found in the _Mer des Histoires_, printed first
by Le Rouge in 1488, the initials of which were copied by Dupré in
1491. They exceed the dimensions of this page, and are consequently
too tall for reproduction here. M. Thierry Poux in his _Origines de
l’Imprimerie en France_, and Claudin (_op. cit._), have given good
copies. They represent knights in armour, probably St. George or St.
Michael spearing the dragon, with different accessory ornaments along
the margin.
The most common of all these initials is the one which occurs on
the title-page of the _Doctrinal de Sapience_, and of this we have
preferred the Geneva copy. The French composition which is known as
the January and May L, and is much more insipid, would appear to have
been most popular, recurring in a great many books both of Paris and
Lyons. Another L frequently seen, of which Mr. Pollard in his _Early
Illustrated Books_ gives a copy, was first used for the _Livre du
Faulcon_; the top of the letter curves down to end in the head of some
imaginary bird, between the two grotesque profiles. In some books this
part has been removed, the letter presenting the appearance of having
been cut down.
Of our selections, the L with two heads on the left and a collection of
dragons on the right, one of which is disgorging a fool complete with
cap, bells, and _marotte_, is from the title-page of a Melusine, but
is met with in other books. The letter with the two heads, a monkey and
two birds, which occurs also in other publications, was taken from the
_Somme Rurale_ of Pierre Boutellier. The L with only one human head
and a bird separated by the head and neck of an imaginary reptile can
be seen in _Demandes d’Amour_, _Le Cordial_, _Les Quinze_, _Joies de
Marriage_, _Le Doctrinal des Femmes mariées_. As to the initial with
Eve, it is to be found on the title-page of the _Livre des Marchands_,
of the _Legende Dorée_, as well as on some others.
As a last example of these large calligraphic letters, we give the
large L with three profiles.
In an entirely different style is a magnificent Q on a black ground,
representing St. George and the Dragon, from an edition of the _Mer des
Hystoires_ by Michel Topie, without doubt one of the most effective
of the Lyons initials. There is a well-cut A at the commencement of
Breidenbach’s _Sainct voyage de la cité de Hierusalem_, which Claudin
attributes to Gaspard Ortuin. This book contains the first specimens of
Arabic characters printed in France.
We now come to a series of letters from the missal of Pierre Hongre of
1500, some of which had been used in the missal of Uzès, published by
Jean Neumeister and Michel Topie in 1497. This lending or hiring of
typographical ornaments was very common amongst Lyons printers, as can
be seen by a comparison of the books of different publishers, and as is
proved by an agreement of the time, between Michel Topie and an Angevin
printer, discovered by the Abbé Requin amongst some old notarial deeds.
The letters of Pierre Hongre’s missal represent, as usual, Biblical
scenes, and although of an archaic type, the attitudes are true, and
they are animated by a sincere and artistic sentiment. The subjects of
the different letters speak for themselves. The T, as usual, is the
sacrifice of Abraham; the C the martyrdom of St. Stephen; the D the
Nativity, etc.
Many of these are to be found afterwards in other missals, such as the
missals _Narbone_, _Aquensis_, _Matisconensis_, etc.
The historiated initials from the Saccon Missal, also of 1500, all of
the same type, are interesting from the fact that we are able to give
the name of the engraver. In our collection of cut initials there is,
amongst others, the S with several personages, and from the same book
from which it is taken, and in the same type as on the verso of this
initial, is a ‘dixit’ of five lines which speaks for itself:--
‘Petrus Bertorius edidit
Lambertus Campester illustravit
Joannes Cobergerus erogavit expensis
Jacobus Sacconius expressit
Amor veritatis persuasit.’
Good missal initials are to be found also in the _Missale secundum
ordinem Carthusiensem_ of Simon Bevilaqua, 1517, such as the C (saints
with a palm-leaf), and the D (the Good Shepherd). The _Missale secundum
ordinem fratrum predicatorum_ of Moylin, 1515, has also interesting
ornamental letters.
Of the two large A’s, one is from a missal, the other from a _Catalogus
Sanctorum_ of Saccon. The G and the smaller P are both from Lyons
missals.
The three little pictures, one of which represents the expulsion
of a devil, the two others the Apostles in a boat, are in reality
ornamental initials with the letter, an I, in the right border, and
belong to a volume of homilies printed by J. Poullet in 1505, in which
every paragraph begins with the same letter. The fourth is one of
those little cuts that are sometimes used in missals in the place of
pictorial initials, and which, according to Dibdin, are to be classed
with initials.
It is not often that we meet with complete alphabets from single
books, except in the case of works arranged by alphabetical order and
dictionaries. Such is the case with the _Catholicon_, of which J.
Wolff published an edition in 1503. Unfortunately the alphabet is not
uniform, either in size, style, or subject, and some of the letters
are of minor interest. We have selected the most curious and most
uncommon. The four initials of the same kind, the halberdier U, the
standard-bearer O, the page P, and the king D, are sometimes found
in other volumes--in the _Aureum Opus_, for example. It is from the
prologue of an edition of this work, printed for Gueynard in 1505 by
De Vingle, that we have taken the very interesting Q of St. Jerome,
which is also the subject of the first initial in the Saluzzo edition.
We only know of one other letter of this size in the style of the
_Catalogus_ series. As can be seen from our reproduction, it represents
the Virgin, and is to be found at the beginning of a very rare and
curious plaquette entitled ‘Plusieurs gentillesses pour faire en toutes
bonnes compaignies. Et aussi plusieurs bonnes et utiles receptes
esprouvées par Maistre Symon de Millan. On les vend a Lyon en la maison
de feu Barnabé Chaussard.’
The two curious L’s are from the title-page and from the beginning of
one of the chapters of a Lyons _Proprietaire_, wanting the last page,
but of which we have not seen any other copy. The L with a profile and
crowned lion is from the title-page. The other letters, D, H, M, are
from the treatise on men and women at the end of the volume, arranged
according to the signs of the Zodiac. The M shows the author meditating
the effect of his opening remarks. The D and the H are at the beginning
of a paragraph referring to Virgo and the Gemini respectively.
The two large letters C and D, representing the Viaticum and the
Nativity, with the seven smaller ones, are to be found in an edition
of the _Regimen Sanitatis_, with comments by Magnini, attributed by
Claudin, on the strength of an initial on the title-page with a bird,
to Fradin, 1505. This is no doubt correct, for the large C (a priest
carrying the host), with several of the smaller letters, is to be found
in an undoubted edition by that printer of Platina’s _De Honestate
Voluptate_ of 1505.[32]
[32] The G, C, and I, with profiles and grotesques, were used two
years before in a Lyons edition of the _Rommant de la Rose_, by G.
Balsarin, 1503.
From a technical point of view, from the elegance of the design and the
delicacy of the execution, the series taken from works by Blanchard
and others, with masters and scholars in costumes of the time of Louis
XII., is particularly interesting, the S with pope and cardinals being
quite remarkable.
The children’s alphabet was used by Fradin and four or five different
printers, perhaps by more. A certain number of children’s letters, but
enlarged to the size of the initials of Cologne of Albert Dürer, are in
the _Graduale Viennense_ of 1534. One of them, the R, is a coarse copy
of the same Dürer letter, and has been given under Cologne for the sake
of comparison. The others, eleven in number, although not exact copies
of the smaller letters, are very much like our smaller reproductions
and are treated in the same manner, but the best proofs we have seen of
the specimens we give are in a copy on vellum of the Narbonne Missal of
Fradin of 1528, from which the P with the Nativity, the smaller P with
a saint about to be beheaded, and the R with Death, are also taken.
There is a very similar set in the German Psalter of Nuremberg, printed
by J. Petreius in 1525.
The F with a portrait of St. Ambrose is from a translation of St.
Jerome by Erasmus, of whom an excellent portrait is also seen in
another initial.
Two of the most characteristic sets of Lyons letters are those taken
from the _Biblia cum Summariis et cum Concordantiis_, printed by John
Moylin for Stephen Gueynard in 1516, and from the _Catalogus Sanctorum_
of Saccon of 1514. The Bible letters represent necessarily scenes in
Scripture history, often being inspired by the initials in the Bibles
of Nuremberg and Augsburg.
The initials used in the different books of Lives of the Saints, the
chief of which were the _Golden Legend_, the _Catalogus Sanctorum_, and
the _Lives of the Holy Fathers_, are miniature pictures, and, although
of small size, they contain quite as many details as the larger
engravings that illustrate some of the more pretentious editions. It
may be noted that when there are historiated letters, there are no
pictures properly so called, but, as the numerous editions testify,
those with pictorial initials, which the unlearned were able to
understand, as well as the illustrations proper, were amongst the most
popular of the publications of the beginning of the sixteenth century.
In an edition of the _Golden Legend_ now before us, printed in 1514 for
Martin Boillon, by Gilbert de Villiers, the same year as the _Catalogus
Sanctorum_ of Saccon, of which we give the letters, the text begins
with a large A, representing the Advent of Christ, of the same size
as the Bible initials. A little further on, another A stands for St.
Andrew with his cross. Next comes an N, for the patron of children, St.
Nicholas, who is depicted with three of them apparently in a pickle
tub. As the letters nearly always correspond to the saint’s name,
the historiated initials, for those who knew their alphabets, were
even more useful than the large engravings, which required for their
comprehension a competent knowledge of the attributes of the saints.
Proceeding further, an N with an ass, a cow, a child in a cradle, and
a star, stands for the Nativity. Saint John the Evangelist has an I,
with his eagle. Another I, with three soldiers, one of them stabbing
a child, and a woman with another child on her lap, represents the
Massacre of the Innocents, and both for composition and execution it is
superior to the larger cuts of the illustrated volumes.
St. Paul the Hermit, and St. Remy, may be recognised by the bird which
is bringing them a ring. The M with a naked saint shows St. Macarius
in the desert, where for killing a gnat ‘nudus sex mensibus in deserto
mansit et inde a scabronibus totus laceratus exivit.’ The first letter,
with the saint kneeling down, and a soldier about to wield an immense
sword, is an F, for St. Fabian, and this subject with variations
recurs frequently, St. Longinus, St. Gregory, and many others being
so represented. In the B of St. Basil we see for the first time the
Father of Evil in the shape of a dog-faced monkey, so often depicted
both in the architecture and in book ornamentation of the period. He
is disputing with St. Basil about the kneeling child, but of course
gets the worst of the argument. The same B does for St. Benedict; the
A with two devils with hair standing on end is for St. Amandus. The
same initial does for St. Ambrosius. George of England is shown on
horseback with the slaughtered dragon. An S, with a number of people
lying down, is for the seven sleepers. In another S, what looks like
a crowd of students illustrates the section ‘De septem fratribus
qui fuerunt filii beati felicitatis’; St. Christine is looking at
what appears to be a house on fire. The M of St. Macarius recurs
to illustrate the nakedness of St. Mamertinus, who is left in that
condition by robbers, and the N of the Nativity does again for the
Nativity of the Virgin.
The two medical saints, St. Cosmo and St. Damian, are shown together
as usual in a C, one of them holding in his hand a flask of special
shape. Of the remainder, the most interesting are the M of St. Michael
the Archangel, who is attacking with his sword a devil with horns and
a very pointed nose; St. Denis, who is carrying his head in his hand;
a P, for the ten thousand martyrs, two of whom are shown with swords
coming through their bodies from underneath, just as in one of the
Schott initials of Strasburg. In the initial for the eleven thousand
Virgins, one girl is about to be beheaded whilst two others are
looking on. St. Eustace is at his anvil, with fire and bellows in the
background. St. Martin is shown, with his cloak, on horseback, and St.
Elizabeth of Hungary with a castle in the background. The last with a
pictorial initial is St. Bernardinus, to whom the Virgin and Child are
appearing in a vision.
There is another edition of the _Catalogus Sanctorum_ with only one
large introductory initial, but in which the different chapters are
preceded by little woodcuts. In one of these, which is repeated several
times, the saint is shown with an instrument for execution on the same
principle as the modern guillotine. Of Saccon’s many other alphabets
the two outline initials, two Q’s, one a monkey riding a monster, the
other an owl, five other letters with heads, and the little black
animal letters, must serve as examples.
The L with two peasants looking at an angel in the clouds is to be
found in a Bible and on the title-page of a _Liber Cathonis_.
An amusing little set comes from a printer whose name is unknown to
us, the book being entitled _Morale Reductorium Petri Berthorii_. The C
is probably a convent cellarer, whilst the N is a study in contemporary
costume, and remarkable for the number of details that have been
condensed into so small a space.
The C with the Crucifixion is an example of the extraordinary
incongruity that is sometimes seen between ornaments and text. In a
book of devotions we sometimes meet with the most scabrous subjects;
here the reverse is the case, this reproduction, whatever may have been
its origin, being taken from a military treatise published by Jacques
Modernes, _Vallo, Du Faict de la Guerre et Art militaire_. The other
letters in the work are from worn-out blocks from the stock of Saccon.
Although of later date than the majority of our reproductions, our
remaining initials are so frequently found in Lyons books that they are
representative, as it were, of Lyons ornamentation.
There are several different-sized alphabets of philosophers, but the
one given is by far the best in execution. Our reproductions are as
good as possible, but the proofs in the original are of a greyish
colour which, taken together with the clear way in which they are
printed, is most ornamental.
The mythological letters are from a book of Italian poetry, ‘Stampato
in Lione, per Jacopo Fabio. Appresso Bastiano di Bartholomeo Honorati,
1556,’ and, with the exception of the S, which is signed with the
initials H F (Hans Frank), the other letters are attributed to the
Petit Bernard. The three large _lettres parlantes_, D for Diana, etc.,
are from Lyons impressions of about the same time.