Discours de la servitude volontaire (publié dans) L'Estat de France sous Charles neufiesme
First edition (according to modern research) of one of the foundational literary texts of Western political thought.
This work, says Montaigne, was written “in honor of liberty, against tyrants”.
Precious copy printed on fine paper, preserved in its uniform period bindings of decorated calf, a condition rarely found.
Brown calf, gilt decoration on covers with a border of two gilt fillets, large gilt cornerpieces and a gilt central medallion on a blue background, spine with 4 raised bands, gilt edges.Contemporary binding.
170 x 105 mm.
La Boétie, Etienne de (1530-1563) – Montaigne, Michel de (1533-1592).
“Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.”
(published in) The State of France, under Charles the Ninth. Containing The Most Notable Events carried out & published both by the Catholics and those of the Religion, from the third Edict of Pacification made in the month of August 1570 up to the reign of Henry the Third. Reduced to three volumes, each of which has an index of the principal subjects contained,
Meidelbourg, Henrich Wolf, 1577 (Geneva, Jérôme Commelin and Pierre de Saint-André?, 1576).
First edition of these memoirs in which appeared for the first time theDiscourse on Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie (according to modern research).
Adams, G-905; Barbier, III-198; Brunet III-711-712; Calemard, p. 9, type “b”; Jones, 10-a; Magnien, 15.
It is here preserved in its original period binding of decorated calf, an ideal condition both for Montaigne’s Essais of 1580 and for the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude of 1576-1577.
The three volumes are here in first edition with the homogeneous date of 1577.
This edition with all three volumes dated 1577 is so rare that no bibliographer records it: Tchémerzine is not aware of any copy matching the one described here and does not mention any copies with all three volumes dated 1577:
“The copy in the Lyon library is composed of volume I above, from 1576; the second volume, s.l., is dated m.d.lxxviii (1578), and marked ‘Second Edition’, (7) leaves, 630 leaves, and volume III, s.l., is dated m.d.lxxvii (1577), (1) leaf, 496 leaves, 2 leaves. The Discourse occupies 44 pages.”
Brunet knows only composite copies. As for modern research, it places the original at the date 1577 and thus considers this edition to be the original.
This work, says Montaigne, was written “in honor of liberty, against tyrants.”
These three volumes “published by Protestants” (Brunet) owe their fame to the pages of the “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude” by Etienne de La Boétie included in the third volume (pages 160 to 199).
Durozoir, specialist of the Discourse, places the original at 1578.
“The ‘Discourse on Voluntary Servitude’ was widely circulated in France to incite rebellion. It was first printed in 1578, in the ‘Memoirs of the State of France under Charles IX.” Middlebourg, 1578, in-8, vol. 3; it was then subsequently reprinted separately in 1740, with notes by P. Coste, in the in-4 volume entitled; ‘Supplement to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne’.
Since the 1745 edition of Montaigne’s Essays, it has been inseparable from them. In 1789, it was reproduced in Paris, in modern French, together with the speech of Marius in Sallust (Jugurtha, ch. 85), translated with the intention of shaking royal authority. It was in the same spirit that, in recent years, M. de Lamennais published the treatise “on Servitude” together with a preliminary discourse.
First raised by Étienne de La Boétie, the question of voluntary servitude remains a mystery that many political theories have tried in vain to solve. Today, the original text continues to arouse the interest of political philosophers.
Born in Sarlat on November 1st, 1530 into a family of magistrates, La Boétie belonged to the class of enlightened bourgeois. Posterity generally remembers of him only his friendship, which became emblematic, with another humanist thinker of his time, Michel de Montaigne. But it is precisely the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude that brought the two friends together.
Disturbed by reading this text, Montaigne quickly wished to know its author and met La Boétie in 1557 in Bordeaux, beginning a close friendship that would only end with La Boétie’s death in 1563. It was then that Montaigne took it upon himself to publish the works of his deceased friend, except for the Discourse which he intended to include as the main part of his next work.
Montaigne included this Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, or the Contr’un, in the 27th chapter of his first book (On Friendship). Coste gave it again in his editions of 1739 and 1745, and in the Supplement to the Essays of 1740.
And finally Dr. Payen published it for the first time according to the true text of the author, in 1853, in his Bio-bibliographical Notice on La Boétie.
Simon Goulart, Protestant theologian, poet and French translator, born in Senlis in 1543 and died in Geneva in 1628, was appointed pastor of the Geneva church, became chaplain to Catherine of Navarre and was elected president of the Company of Pastors in place of Théodore de Bèze. His Memoirs appeared anonymously at the false address of Henrich Wolf in Meidelbourg.
This collection is precious. Indeed, it contains the first publication of a fundamental text of French literature, the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude by Etienne de La Boétie, to be found from pages 160 to 199 of the third volume.
This text had circulated in manuscript form among Protestant circles, before two passages, altered and modified, appeared in Latin and French in Le réveil-matin des françois et de leurs voisins by Nicolas Barnaud published in 1574. The definitive and complete version of the text thus appeared in the third volume of Goulart’s Memoirs, and this edition is unanimously considered the original of the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.
Our copy belonged to the collection of Fairfax Murray, whose label it bears on the inside front cover. It is described in his catalog under number 371.
Exceptional complete copy published with the uniform date of 1577 and preserved in its interesting, elegantly decorated period bindings.
Geronimo Marquis d’Adda (bookplate) and Fairfax-Murray (label, no. 371).
