Les Gestes De Françoys De Valois Roy De France

2 works in 1 quarto volume of 79 pp., 78 pp., (1) f.

Red morocco, triple gilt fillet border, smooth spine decorated with dotted lines, vertical title in two lines, inner gilt rolls, gilt edges. 18th-century binding.

214 x 150 mm.

First edition, extremely rare and valuable, of the history of Francis I^st composed byEstienne Dolet (1509‑1546).

The French translation is Dolet’s own work.

Etienne Dolet, humanist, printer, philologist, scholar and poet, led a tumultuous, restless, and painful life, constantly disrupted by trials, imprisonments, and sentences which disturbed the relentless work he pursued. Born in Orléans on August 3, 1509, he was to die at the age of 37, burned at the stake in Place Maubert, on the anniversary of his birth, August 3, 1546.

As an author, Etienne Dolet wrote equally well in Latin and French. Within the humanist and literary circles of Lyon, he strove to highlight a community of poets, foremost among whom was Maurice Scève. However, around 1540, a falling-out occurred, after which Etienne Dolet appeared increasingly isolated. In addition, he participated in the debate over language, one of the most significant of his time. Initially a pure Latinist, he gradually became involved in the grand project of the “defense and illustration of the French language,” which inspired the literary world well before Joachim du Bellay.

This is how he embarked on his project of the French Orator, which remained in draft form, which aimed to codify the rules of writing in French.

As a publisher, Etienne Dolet’s choices reflect these intellectual directions. When he published the greatest authors of his time, with François Rabelais and Clément Marot leading the way, it was once again about “defending and illustrating” the French language.

From the 17^th century to the present day, the memory of Etienne Dolet has been kept alive by those who saw in him a free spirit. From the end of the Second Empire, the emerging Freethought movement made him a symbol of its struggle for reason, and against the beliefs and dogmas imposed by the Church and tradition.

The anticlerical and secular Third Republic gave his name to streets and erected statues to him all over France. The most famous is in Place Maubert, Paris. It fascinated Surrealists such as André Breton and Louis Aragon. Other writers placed him in the background of their plays or historical novels.

Dolet published, as early as 1539, a history of Francis I^st in Latin verse. However, since the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts in 1539, French had been the language of law and royal administration; it was above all spoken by an urban elite attached to what remained the king’s language. In the written domain, Latin maintained a predominant position: it was the liturgical language, essential to religious celebrations, but also the scholarly language, that of humanists and scholars who communicated among themselves. It was also the principal literary language; in the 1530s-1540s, writing and composing literary works in French still reflected a modernist attitude. Among such circles, French remained a second language, still fragile, whose usages and orthography were not yet fixed, and which a whole generation of poets sought to “defend and illustrate,” that is, to justify by example as a literary language.

Estienne Dolet therefore decided to translate into French prose this same history of Francis I, which would appear under the title: Les Gestes de Francoys de Valois Roy de France. Lyon, Etienne Dolet, 1540. (Collection Bibliothèque Mazarine, 17519).

Etienne Dolet dedicated this volume to Francis I^st with the idea of suggesting to him that he might become the official historian of his reign. This French prose version enjoyed significant success, with several reprints and expanded editions.

The volume is twice adorned with Etienne Dolet’s printer’s device, depicting a hand emerging from a cloud, splitting with an axe (or adze) a knotted tree trunk lying on the ground. One is accompanied here by a Latin motto: “Durior est spectatae virtutis, quam incognitae conditio.” The other bears the motto: “Scabra et impolita ad amussim dolo, atque perpolio.”

Etienne Dolet thus published here a historical account recounting the exploits of the King from 1515 to 1539. In the dedicatory letter to Francis I^st he recalls his long-standing desire to write history in his honor: “I have always intended, O King most remarkable in every respect, since even my youth I have set myself as the reward of my labors to devote to the greater glory of France all the skills of eloquence I might one day acquire, both by the productivity of my talent and by continual and relentless work”; one again witnesses the transformation of the Orator into Historian; the poet also insists upon the scope of his works.

“In short, Etienne Dolet would have liked to be the historiographer of the kingdom of France. He tried everything to convince the king, but did not succeed, despite the attempt of the Gestes of Francis I^st published in 1540, in which he presented Francis I^st with a sample of his talent. Talent as a storyteller, indeed, more than as a historian, for the fortunes and misfortunes of the kingdom are presented through the colorful figures of mythology, such as Alecto, who comes from the Underworld to help the Constable of Bourbon spread panic among the French soldiers at Pavia, or by means of gentler images, close to familial lyricism, like the sparrow escaping the kite when the historian describes the liberation of the royal children in 1530 and their reunion with their father Francis I^st. The epic tone of the work probably did not conform to the King’s expectations of historiography.”

Catherine Langlois-Pézeret.

In 1538, Étienne Dolet married Louise Giraud, and the same year obtained from the king, thanks to Cardinal de Tournon, the privilege of becoming a printer. He then published, besides his own treatises, a series of works including, among others, pamphlets by Galen, the Surgery of Paul of Aegina, and especially Rabelais’ Gargantua and the works of Marot, with whom he had established friendships around 1534. Dolet’s books are marked with a doloire held by a hand emerging from a cloud, below a green tree trunk with the motto: Scabra et impolita adamussimdolo atque perpolio. The publication of the works of Rabelais and Marot, and the epigrams he himself had dared against the monks, once again attracted the attention of the Church. He completed the damage to his reputation by publishing, one after another, works convicted of heresy, such as the Manual du chevalier chrestien and the Vray Moyen de bien et catholiquement se confesser of Erasmus, the Fontaine de Vye, the Livre de la Compaignie des Pénitens, Bibles, Calvinist books, etc. It was determined to prosecute him, and around the middle of 1542, by order of the grand inquisitor Mathieu Orry, he was arrested and incarcerated in the archbishop’s prison in Lyon. On October 2, he was sentenced to be burned, having been found guilty of heresy and the promoter and defender of heretics and pernicious errors; he was handed over to the secular arm. Étienne Dolet appealed to the Parliament of Paris, was transferred to the Conciergerie in 1543, wrote a petition to the king seeking a pardon, and, strongly defended by Pierre Duchâtel, received letters of mercy on condition that he recant his writings before the bishop of Paris’s official.

Released at the end of 1543, after fifteen months’ imprisonment, he returned to Lyon, showed extreme prudence in his printing business, and refrained from dealing with theology; yet his enemies did not relent. They sent to Paris two bales bearing his name, filled with books from his presses and heretical books printed in Geneva. These bales were seized and Dolet was again imprisoned in Lyon; he managed to deceive his jailers and fled to Piedmont where he remained in hiding for some time, and where he wrote a series of poems in verse to Francis I^st, to the Parliament of Paris, to the Queen of Navarre and other notable figures. But he was imprudent enough to return to France, was arrested and confined to the Conciergerie (1544). After two years of proceedings he was, by Parliament (August 2, 1546), found guilty of blasphemy, sedition and publishing prohibited and damned books, and sentenced to be conducted to Place Mauberti,

“where a gallows shall be erected and placed in a suitable and convenient spot

around which a great fire shall be made, to which, after being raised upon the said gallows, his body shall be thrown

and burned with his books, and his body changed and turned to ashes.”

He was furthermore subjected to extraordinary torture, and his property was confiscated. The sentence was carried out the following day.

Precious volume with extremely generous margins of whichDeschampsmentions only one copy “Yemeniz 500 F Gold” andBrunetonly two copiesLa Vallière and Solar.

Upon the dispersal of this illustrious library, in the year 1860, the present first edition by Estienne Dolet was sold for 20% more than the highly valuable second original edition of Montaigne’s Essais of 1582, now worth €100,000. Both volumes were similarly bound in old red morocco.

Provenance: Edouard Rahir.