The Epitome Dionis is the last work printed by Robert in Paris prior to his removal to Geneva. Before giving the titles of the more important issues of his Press in Geneva, it is desirable to go back in the narrative for a few years, and in outlining some of the events in the long contest between the private publisher and the divines of the Sorbonne, to indicate some of the causes which brought about the transfer of the great publishing establishment from Paris, at that time the most noteworthy and possibly the greatest city in Europe, to the quiet little town on Lake Geneva.
We have seen that the work of the enterprising and scholarly publisher was regarded with intelligent and appreciative interest by King Francis I., and that while the King had in various ways furthered the undertakings of Estienne, his most important service had been rendered in utilising the royal influence to protect the printer against the divines of the Sorbonne. The title of “Printer to the King,” while fully deserved, of course, on other grounds, was given to Robert with the special purpose of securing for him an additional safeguard against the assaults of the theological censors. These theological censors were irate at the assumption by the publisher, acting as his own editor, of the right to correct the text of Scripture, and to add marginal commentaries, while they were also indignant at what they considered an unwarrantable interference on the part of the King with the old-time right of the Theological Faculty of the University to exercise a censorship control over all theological and religious publications emanating from the French Press.
The interest of Francis in scholarship and the influence of Budæus and other scholars led him to initiate or to accept the scheme of a Royal College, to be devoted more particularly to instruction in the ancient languages. It was a part of the plan that Erasmus should be called from his peaceful retreat in the house of his friend Froben, the publisher of Basel, to the headship of the new college. The Emperor (Charles V.) put an end to the negotiation, however, by forbidding Erasmus to leave the territory of the empire, and by threatening him, in the event of his disobedience, with the stoppage of his pension. It is interesting to think of the most Catholic Emperor on the one hand, and the “eldest son of the Church” on the other, contending for the services of the scholar whose writings had been condemned in Rome as heretical, and were prohibited in Spain, and who could not at this time obtain from the Paris University a printing privilege. The college failed to secure Erasmus, and failed also, at least during the lifetime of Francis, to secure the buildings that the King had planned for it, but its professorships were finally endowed in 1539. The authorities of the University were, with hardly an exception, bitterly opposed to the new foundation, and the considerations they presented against the plan were substantially the same as those which were from year to year being urged by the same group of divines against the printing and the distribution of “pagan,” i. e. classic, literature, and of works undertaking to criticise and to correct texts which had been accepted and approved by the Church. The argument of the University against the new college was presented before the Parliament of Paris (that is to say, the High Court of the capital) by M. Gaillard. He urged that “to propagate the knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew languages would operate to the absolute destruction of all religion.” “Were these professors theologians,” he asked, “that they should pretend to explain the Bible? Were not indeed the very Bibles of which they made use in large printed in Germany, the region of heresy? Or at least were they not indebted for them to the Jews?” The new professors made their rejoinder through Marillac, whose arguments covered, it will be noted, the points raised by Estienne in defence of his annotated editions of the Scriptures. “We make no pretensions,” said the professors, “to the name or the function of theologians. It is as philologists or grammarians only that we undertake to explain the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. If you, who are criticising our teachings, possess any knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, you are at liberty to attend our lectures and, if you find any heresy in our instruction, to denounce us. If, however, you are yet ignorant of both Greek and Hebrew, on what grounds can you base your fitness as censors or your claims to forbid us to teach in these tongues? In teaching Greek, it is for us to decide what literature is best suited for our purpose. In teaching Hebrew, if, for various reasons, we find the Hebrew Scriptures best adapted for our classes, what right have you to complain? What other Hebrew book, indeed, would you select for us?” It is to be borne in mind that for the texts used for these lectures, the professors of the Collége Royal were largely dependent upon the presses of Estienne, and that in defending their right to teach Greek and Hebrew, they were also contending for his right to print and to sell the books required.
Impressed by these reasonings, and influenced also, of course, by the authority of the King, who had accepted for himself the responsibility for the scheme of instruction in his new college, the Parliament studiously avoided any decision in the controversy. This was, under the circumstances, a substantial victory for the defendants, and the Collége Royal not only maintained its ground, but continued to increase in importance and in influence.[14]
Maittaire quotes, in this connection, the testimony of Conrad Heresbach, a learned jurisconsult, who says that (in 1540) he heard a monk speaking thus from the pulpit: “A new language has been discovered which they call Greek. Against this you must be carefully on your guard, for it is the infant tongue of all heresies. There is a book written in that language called the New Testament. It is un livre plein de ronces et de vipères. As to the Hebrew tongue, it is well known that all who learn it presently become Jews.”
In the edition of Horace prepared by Lambinus, the editor says, in the epistle dedicatory addressed to Charles IX.: “The University of Paris was then [in the time of Francis] equally destitute of sound philosophy and of elegant learning. The poets, historians, and philosophers of ancient Greece were scarcely known by name, and ... scarcely a single professor was acquainted with even the rudiments of Greek or Hebrew, or was capable of teaching Latin in its genuine purity.” Erasmus writes, in 1529, to some friends in the Collége Royal, encouraging them to persevere in their efforts to raise the standard of liberal scholarship in France, and referring to the progress of the College of Louvain, which had recently been instituted through the munificence of Busleiden, a simple canon of Brussels, and for the general organisation of which Erasmus was largely responsible. The original purpose of the college (which became, in the next century, a headquarters for Catholic theology) was the prosecution of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.
It was in connection with the Collége Royal, and as, in fact, an essential part of his great scheme for the development of higher education, that King Francis instituted the Imprimerie Royale, with its appendage of Typographus Regius, an arrangement which was at the time unprecedented in the annals of literature. “By an apparatus which nothing less than princely munificence could have provided,” says Greswell, “the admirable productions of classic genius and taste, and particularly those of Greece, were now to be given to the public with a beauty of characters and an exquisiteness of technical perfection to which no typographer had ever yet attained or even in imagination aspired.”[15]
The fonts of Greek type which came later to be known as Characteres Regii, were cast under the direction of Claude Garamond, from designs furnished by Angelus Vergetius, of Candia, whose Greek penmanship was so singularly beautiful as to have been selected as the pattern for Garamond to follow. Vergetius was appointed by the King to a post in the new college, as the King’s Escrivain en Grecque, with a stipend equal to that of the professors.
As has already been noted, the distinction of Regius in Græcis Typographus, was first conferred on Neobarius, who received an annual stipend of one hundred gold crowns. Neobarius died before the organisation of the Imprimerie was completed, and the first of the King’s printers to assume the direction of the royal establishment and to make use of the new Greek fonts was Robert Estienne, who, both by technical knowledge as a printer and by his attainments as a scholar, was exceptionally fitted to carry out the large schemes the King had in mind, and who, in fact, was only too eager to supplement these with still larger schemes of his own. It was equally fortunate that the most enterprising and most scholarly printer-publisher in Europe should have been able to secure the all important co-operation of the resources and influence of an enlightened and ambitious monarch, and that the King should have had at hand for the first direction of his novel undertaking, a man possessing for the task such exceptional qualifications. Francis was the only ruler of the time in Europe who gave any important co-operation to the encouragement of literature and to the development of the still new art of printing and book-making, and, as far as intelligent literary interest is concerned, we must, to find any such distinctive service on the part of a monarch, go back to Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the third century B.C. Francis had a personal interest also in the process of printing, and took pleasure in inspecting from time to time the work in his Imprimerie. Maittaire relates that, calling one day at the officina of Estienne, the King found Robert engaged in correcting a proof, and would not permit the printer to interrupt his work, but waited until this was finished.
It was Francis who instituted the office of Librarian to the King, Bibliothécaire du Roy, a post which was first held by the great scholar Budæus. In connection with the great development in the art of printing which took place during his reign and of which a full measure of the credit must be ascribed to the King, there arose a large interest in artistic bindings. The fashion of a taste for books set by the King was naturally taken up by many of the noblemen, who began to form libraries of handsomely printed and choicely bound books. One of the most zealous collectors of the time was Grolier de Servier, Vicomte d’Aguisy, who was for some years Ambassador of France at the Court of Rome. His library was said to have contained no less than three thousand volumes, an enormous collection for the sixteenth century, and the greater portion of these were elaborately and tastefully bound. The name of Grolier has ever since been held in honour by admirers of artistic book-making, and, in connection with the establishment in New York of a Grolier Club of book-collectors, is assured of preservation in appreciative memory.
In 1546, the continued antagonism of the Sorbonne to the publishing undertakings of Estienne, brought the divines into direct conflict with the authority of the King. In presenting to the King this year a copy of his fine edition of Eusebius, Robert wrote to Du Chastel, Bishop of Mascon, complaining that the divines were privately soliciting an interdict of the latest issue of his annotated Bible, and declared his willingness to submit the work, together with the censure of the Faculty, to any competent theologians whom the King might select. The King found this proposal satisfactory, and instructed the Bishop to transmit his royal mandate to the Doctors of the Sorbonne to institute an examination of Robert’s Bible, to prepare a list of the alleged errors, and to submit this list to him. They promised compliance, but, in spite of a second mandate, no such list was prepared. It is probable that they did not possess the requisite scholarship for the purpose, while it is also evident that what they objected to was not an incidental error, but the whole spirit and character of the undertaking. In the meantime, they induced the theologians of Louvain to procure the insertion of Robert’s Bible in an index expurgatorius which was at that time in preparation in Louvain. Du Chastel was directed to address a third injunction to the divines, and the King forbade the printing (at least in France) of the catalogue of Louvain. Finally, the Faculty submitted a list of fifteen passages which they claimed to contain dangerous heresies. The King ordered these to be examined by the Bishop of Mascon and the Chancellor of the University, whose report was favourable to Robert, and who pointed out that the divines had not properly understood either the text or the notes. The King issued a Brief with the royal seal affixed, ordering the divines to complete their list of censuræ, or to withdraw their strictures upon the book, strictures which, for a work of this character, naturally interfered with the sale. The divines persisted in their contumacy, while Robert, trusting in the support of the King, went on with the printing and sale of his Bibles. In March, 1547, King Francis died. His death was a serious misfortune not only to Estienne but to the cause of liberal scholarship and literary production in France.
Francis was at the time of his death in his fifty-third year and had reigned for nearly thirty-three years. As before pointed out, no other monarch of Europe had done so much for scholarly literature. In Italy, valuable co-operation was given by certain of the princes and individual noblemen, while in Germany, the earlier printer-publishers were dependent rather upon the scholarly men of the middle classes and upon wealthy towns-people than upon princes or nobles. The same year, 1547, saw the death of Henry VIII. (who will in our memories always be associated with Francis on account of the famous meeting on the Field of the Cloth of Gold), of Vatablus, the learned Paris professor of Greek, and of Beatus Rhenanus, scholar, humanist, and friend of Erasmus and Froben. Luther, whose life-work had, in addition to the great results usually connected with it, exercised such a wide-spread influence on the production and distribution of literature, had passed away the year preceding.
Du Verdier (himself a Catholic) expresses the opinion “that the Lutheran heresy, and the controversies to which it gave rise, conspired greatly to the development of literature.” The advocates of the Reformation showed themselves to be persons of great intellectual ability and profound research in sacred and classical literature, of which they made in their writings a great use. The severe ridicule that they brought upon the ignorance and barbarism of their opponents finally aroused the Catholic doctors to similar scholarly researches, and to call in the aid of erudition, which they had previously imagined to be some species of heresy.[16]
The famous Marguerite de Valois, sister of King Francis, was prominent both as an authoress and as a protectress of literature, and her influence was always ready in behalf of the undertakings of Estienne. Pierre du Chastel, who had been an instructor of Marguerite, and who was one of the few Greek scholars of the kingdom, was also a serviceable friend to Estienne. Du Chastel had succeeded in securing a patron for the unfortunate Dolet after his first heretical offences (an interposition which brought upon Du Chastel himself the suspicion of the orthodox), and he had also obtained from the King a pardon for the Waldenses. In neither case did it prove possible to secure a lasting protection. Dolet was burned a few years later, while the persecution of the Waldenses was also renewed with fresh bitterness after the death of Francis. Dolet was a scholar who, having studied jurisprudence and, later, served as instructor, finally became a printer. He devoted himself particularly to the study of the writings of Cicero, and published a Commentaria Linguæ Latinæ and also the Formulæ Latinarum locutionum illustriorum. Niceron says that he was the author of not less than twenty-four separate works. He was imprisoned on various occasions for his freedom of speech on religious subjects, and was finally burned as a heretic in 1546. His heresy was evidently not of the kind to secure the sympathy of Calvin, who referred to him as an “impious wretch.”
Henry II., who, in 1547, succeeded to the throne of France, while not possessing the distinctive interest in literature which had characterised his father Francis, was, nevertheless, at least at the outset, favourably disposed towards the men of letters with whom Francis had come into personal relations, and he was prepared to carry out the engagements into which his father had entered concerning the printing-office and type-foundry. He also took up the issue that had been raised between his father and the divines of the Sorbonne. In the first year of his reign, he commanded the divines forthwith to complete their list of censuræ, and threatened, in the event of further contumacy, severe measures for their chastisement. This produced an engagement on their part that by the following All Saints’ Day should finally be made public the long-promised schedules of all the errors and heresies discovered by them in the several Bibles of Robert Estienne. On the day specified, however, in place of the promised censuræ, the divines presented simply a fresh petition that the sale of the Bibles might be interdicted, on the general ground that their editor was a sacramentarian, and that he had spoken of the souls of men as mortal. The petition received no attention, and after some months’ further delay, ten divines presented themselves at the palace at Fontainebleau, with a list of forty-five objectionable articles or passages. The presentation was made before the King’s Council, with which were sitting several cardinals and bishops. The printer was heard in his own defence, and the matter was then taken into consideration by the Council. The prelates decided that in forty of the passages specified there was no just ground for criticism. The remaining five were liable to objection, but might be satisfactorily explained. The contending parties were then recalled before the Council, and the divines were rebuked for their groundless interference, and were forbidden to arrogate to themselves in future the jus censorium, which was declared to belong to the bishop only. Enraged and disappointed, the deputies returned to Paris, and there, by some special management, they succeeded in procuring an order for a temporary suspension of the sale of Robert’s Bibles. Later, as a result, apparently, of some vacillation on the part of the King, they secured also a royal mandate that the case should be submitted for the examination of certain judges whose office it was to take cognisance of matters of heresy. After an anxious contest extending over eight months, Robert finally succeeded in securing a counter mandate cancelling the foregoing order, and confining the jurisdiction of the affair to the Privy Council. This served to protect him for a brief period.
I have given the account of this contest with some detail because it was the first case in France that had come to a formal trial, in which publications were charged with heresy, and because also the animus shown by the ecclesiastics of the Sorbonne emphasised the divergence of the University from the interests of literature and of critical scholarship, and foreshadowed the transfer of literary and publishing activity from Paris to Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries. In 1548, King Henry was intent on passing the Alps, and began his expedition from Troyes. The absence of the Court, and the necessity, in connection with his contest with the Sorbonne, of pursuing its movements, gave occasion to Robert to visit Lyons, and in this journey he is supposed to have performed the task of subdividing into verses the chapters of the New Testament. A great part of this labour he is said to have performed on horseback.[17] The invention, if it may be so described, proved a convenience and found general acceptation, and has been followed in all later editions of the Testament.
In the same year, the divines completed a second series of one hundred and seven “articles” or charges of heresy against Robert’s Bibles, and through the influence of the King’s confessor, the vacillating monarch was induced to issue a new mandate prohibiting the sale of the Bibles. Robert now declared to his friend Du Chastel his intention of abandoning his native country, and the King, persuaded by the Bishop that this would be a serious misfortune for France, finally, after a delay of some months, issued a new brevet of protection for his printer. In 1550, fresh attempts were made by the divines to secure the complete suppression of the Bibles, the sales of which had of necessity already been materially interfered with. On this occasion, Du Chastel, who was looking forward to a cardinal’s hat, finally abandoned his advocacy of Estienne. Robert secured an interview with the divines, and presenting a copy of the latest issue of the New Testament complained of, he requested, as before, a specific statement of the charges. The two divines who acted as spokesmen, were, according to Robert’s report, evidently ignorant of Greek. They demanded, however, that the original “copy” or manuscript should be placed before them. He replied that the original was not one manuscript only, but fifteen, the several texts of which had been with great diligence collated and the result printed with all possible fidelity. After some weeks of further “consideration,” the divines finally gave their decision, to the effect that this edition of the New Testament could not be permitted to be sold. Robert requested that a copy of this decision, together with a specification of the grounds on which it had been based, should be presented to the King, but this the divines refused to do. Robert thereupon presented to the King a handsomely bound copy of this new impression of the Testament, and when he had received the royal acknowledgment of the receipt of this copy, he felt himself to be sufficiently assured of protection to be able to proceed with his sales. The divines were indignant that a mere typographer should presume thus to act in defiance of a decretum theologicum, but the royal weathercock being for the moment set fair in the direction of a liberal standard of Scriptural interpretation, they were helpless to stop the sales of the book to the general public, although they were still able to prevent its acceptance within the precincts of the University.
While Estienne had thus far been able to secure a successful result in each one of his several contests with the Sorbonne, these contests had been for him not only anxious and troublesome in themselves, but seriously hampering to his business undertakings. It had also been made clear to him that the new monarch could not be depended upon for any such intelligent understanding of literary and scholarly requirements as had been shown by King Francis, and that his policy in the control of the royal Press, or in the assertion of the authority of the Crown over final censorship of publication, was certain to vacillate from month to month according to the personal, political, or ecclesiastical influences that might for the moment be brought to bear.
It was manifestly impossible to carry on with any sufficient assurance as to the future a publishing business involving the planning of large undertakings, unless some consistent and intelligent policy of censorship could be depended upon. The enmity of the Sorbonne appeared to be persistent and irremediable. The irritable suspicions of the divines concerning the heretical character of texts printed in Greek could hardly be removed as long as these divines remained ignorant of Greek. As Robert was not prepared, under the behests of such ignorant censorship, to discontinue his scholarly publishing undertakings, there remained for him no resource but to abandon Paris, and to transfer his business to some city where the censorship would be either less rigorous or more intelligent.
The removal of the business to Geneva took place early in 1552. The Swiss capital, while at the time a town of but moderate population, presented certain special advantages, which could at the time have been found in no other city out of France, for carrying on a publishing business of the character of Robert’s. The sharp contests of the Reformation, turning as they did largely upon intellectual issues, such as the history of the Church, and the exegesis of the Scriptures and of the writings of the Fathers, had developed no little intellectual activity throughout Europe. Geneva had become the most important centre for the production of the dogmatic and controversial literature of the Protestants, or at least of the Calvinists. Its University, which dated from 1368, and had been reorganised by Calvin in 1539, was already a place of resort for students and scholars from all parts of Europe who were interested in the doctrines of the Reformers, or who were attracted by the commanding personality of Calvin, while the Swiss printers had established channels of distribution for their books not only through Germany and the Low Countries, but even in far off England. The distribution in France of the publications from Geneva, even for books of accepted orthodoxy, was very much restricted and hampered by the regulations of the University, which had been framed for the purpose of keeping the sale of the books in France in the hands of the French dealers. Heretical works, under which were classed all the writings of the Protestants, were, of course, prohibited altogether. It was not possible, however, through any amount of restriction or prohibition, to prevent the Geneva printers from making sale of their works across the easily reached frontiers, and in fact the forbidden French territory formed a most important part of their market.
Robert Estienne had not thus far classed himself with the Protestants, but the persistent and ignorant hostility shown by the Catholics of the Paris University to his efforts in behalf of scholarly literature, and the fact that the principal interest in his undertakings had come from the liberals and the Reformers, had doubtless had the effect of bringing him into close sympathy with the Protestants, and particularly with the followers of Calvin. In 1552, at the time of Robert’s arrival in Geneva, Calvin was probably at the height of his influence. Servetus, whose medical treatises had been published in Paris, printed at Vienne, in 1553, his Christianity Restored, the work which was the more immediate cause of his persecution. Escaping from the French Inquisition, Servetus took refuge in Geneva, and there, in the latter part of 1553, was burned at the stake, under the instructions of Calvin. To a man like Robert Estienne, who was seeking for a place where the production of good literature could be carried on freed from the blighting interference of ecclesiastical bigotry, the death of Servetus may well have served as a warning that Protestant Geneva was no more ready than was Catholic Paris to tolerate free speech or a free press.
Robert had found it necessary, in order to gain time to prepare for his escape, to temporise with his censors, and to go through the form of submitting to their authority. Their indignation when they found that he had given them the slip was very keen, and according to Beza, the divines went to the point of burning him in effigy.[18] At the time of Estienne’s arrival in Geneva, Switzerland had become a place of refuge for Protestant heretics from various parts of Europe, and the exiles were chiefly attracted either to Zurich, as the headquarters of the followers of Zwingli, or to Geneva, as the home of Calvin. A little later, the groups in those cities from Italy, France, and South Germany were added to by a number of divines and scholars from England, whence they had been driven by the persecution under Queen Mary. Among the sojourners from Italy were Lelius and Faustus Socinus (uncle and nephew) from Siena, whose name afterwards gave a designation to the group of Arians known as Socinians. The nephew was, later, active in diffusing Socinianism in Poland, where, however, it failed to secure any lasting foundation. The inscription on his tomb, in Warsaw, is said to read as follows:
One may recall in this connection the description given by Lowell of that later vigorous Protestant, Theodore Parker: “He was so ultra-Cinian, he shocked the Socinians.”
There came also from Italy, Bernardus Ochinus, of Siena, and the more famous Peter Martyr (Vermilius), from Florence, the latter having, however, more recently been lecturing in Oxford, where he had been suspended from his lectureship on the accession of Queen Mary. A companion to Martyr was John Jewell, also from Oxford, who, later, became a bishop. Names like the above will give an impression of the character of the circle in which Estienne now found himself. It was not only for the scholar a personal gratification to be thrown into association with intellectual leaders skilled in critical and theological learning, but it must also have been of no little service for the reorganisation of his publishing business to have at hand a group of advisers and of editors who would have a keen personal interest in a large proportion at least of his scholarly undertakings.
The following titles of the more important publications issued by Robert after the establishment of the Geneva Press will give an impression of the general direction taken by his business.
It is somewhat to be wondered at that Robert, fresh from harassing persecution in Paris, should have been willing to place his imprint upon this argument of Calvin as to the rightfulness of the punishment of Servetus, and upon the companion treatise which the zeal of Beza had prompted him to compose in defence of the right of the civil magistrate to punish heretics. Assuming that by this time Estienne had thrown in his lot entirely with the Calvinists, it is nevertheless to be borne in mind that the record and the utterances of the man had heretofore shown him to be a consistent advocate of intellectual liberty. Even after his sojourn in Geneva, there is on record no utterance of Robert’s which is not in accord with this view of his own personal predilections. Robert had, moreover, always taken such high ground as to publishing responsibility, that he cannot escape being held accountable for the approval implied in the association of his imprint with these zealous defences of an act that must always remain a serious blot on the history of Protestantism.
The Institutes is the great work of Calvin, and is possibly the most important intellectual production of the Reformation. This edition of Robert Estienne’s contained the final revision of the author, and was given by the author to the public as the édition définitive. The publication of this authoritative edition of a book which belongs to the distinctive literature not only of the sixteenth century but of the world’s history, was a fitting undertaking with which to close the labours of the great publisher.
Robert Estienne died in the latter part of this year 1559, having continued actively engaged in the work of his printing-office until within a few weeks of his death. In the same year occurred the death of Henry II., the French King, which was occasioned by a wound received in a tournament. By Robert’s will, the bulk of his property, including the printing-office and publishing business in Geneva, was left to his son Henry, who had for some years been actively associated in its management, and who had inherited a full measure of his father’s scholarly interests and business capacity. The second son, Robert, who had remained in Paris as a printer, was, according to Maittaire, disinherited, possibly because he had thrown in his lot with the extreme Catholics of the Sorbonne.
Thuanus ascribes to Robert Estienne the praise of excelling in judgment and in technical skill and elegance such masters of the typographical art as Aldus and Froben. Without lessening the praise justly belonging to Estienne, it must be remembered in any comparison of his publications with those of Aldus, that the work of the latter was carried on fifty years earlier, when it was necessary to do much more creative work in organising book-making appliances, and when the difficulties in the way of distributing books were still greater than those with which Estienne had to contend. Thuanus is on firmer ground when he asserts that more real lustre and glory were reflected upon the reign of Francis I. by the genius and exertions of this single individual than by all the achievements of that monarch, whether in peace or in war. Scævola Sammasthanus speaks of Estienne as Typographus solertissimus et splendidissimus, and Gesner, in inscribing to him the fifth book of his Pandects, terms him entre les Imprimeurs et Libraires ce qu’est le soleil entre les étoiles.
The exceptional personal erudition of Robert Estienne, the distinctive importance of his publishing undertakings, the zeal evinced by him from the beginning of his career for the advancement of learning and for critical scholarship, and the courageous fight made by him against the assumption of the bigoted divines of the Sorbonne of the right to exercise censorship over a literature of the very language of which they were for the most part ignorant, constitute the grounds for my selection of him as the most worthy representative of the printer-publishers of France of the sixteenth century, and for presenting with some little detail the chief incidents of his career. While the early memoirs give pretty full information concerning the literary side of Estienne’s publishing undertakings and present also the history of his long series of contests in behalf of the freedom of the Press, the records of the business details of his enterprises are scanty and inadequate. We have no such information as has been preserved in the account books of Aldus, Koberger, and Plantin, showing the cost of the production of his books, or the amounts paid to editors and authors. The extent of the financial aid extended to Robert by the wise liberality of King Francis is also not clearly specified, although we can realise how important in many ways this royal assistance must have been, and especially in connection with the use of the great fonts of Greek type for the making of which the King had paid. We know that he was the only one of the pioneer printers who secured any intelligent and effective co-operation from a royal treasury, and we know also that important as this co-operation was, it was in the end more than offset by the disastrous antagonism of the ecclesiastics of the Sorbonne, whose persistency finally triumphed over both king and printer.
Information is also wanting as to the channels which were available for the distribution of the books when made, and concerning the methods employed for their sale. It is, in fact, very difficult to understand how, during a period of frequent war, when communications were irregular and travel was difficult not only between France and the adjoining states, but throughout the kingdom itself, it could have proved practicable to secure a remunerative sale for costly works of such special character as the majority of those issued by Estienne. The difficulty must have been considerable even in making known to scholars throughout Europe the fact of the publication of the books, and after the orders were received, there remained the task of making the deliveries and of collecting the payments. It is further to be borne in mind that the adverse influence of the divines of the Sorbonne must have hampered materially the demand from university and ecclesiastical centres for the editions of the Scriptures and for all the works possessing any theological character, while it was the case that of the Bibles at least, the sale was absolutely blocked for several long periods. Notwithstanding all the difficulties and obstacles, Estienne must have succeeded in building up throughout Europe a remunerative demand for his publications, for at the time of his migration from France he was reputed to be a man of means, and even after all the losses and expenses attending the sudden closing of his concern in Paris and its re-establishment in Geneva, he was able, a few years later, to leave to his son a business on an assured foundation, and resources for carrying it on. An important part of these resources consisted in a great collection of texts, both printed and in manuscript, and in a comprehensive and valuable library. The career of Robert Estienne was assuredly both distinctive and honourable, and the services rendered by him to the cause of scholarly literature fairly entitle him to the name of the Aldus of France.
Some years after Robert’s death, the charge was made by some of his old-time opponents that he had wrongfully carried away to Geneva certain of the matrices of the Greek type which belonged to the Imprimerie Royale of Paris, and of which he had the use as Printer to the King. According to Le Clerc, Robert took with him not the matrices, but the punches (les poinçons des matrices) of certain of the Greek fonts which had been made for the Imprimerie Royale, but this theory does not accord with the final history. It seems certainly to have been the case that the type used by Robert’s son Henry for Greek books issued by him in Geneva after the death of his father, was identical with that of the royal Greek characters which had been made for King Francis under Robert’s supervision. Greswell is of opinion that the charge was well founded, but he points out certain considerations which probably influenced Robert’s action, and which seemed to him (as they seemed to Maittaire) to constitute, in some measure at least, a justification for such action. Robert left Paris hurriedly, and it could in any case have been no easy task to arrange for the transportation of the material of his printing-office and publishing concern without attracting the attention of his enemies in the Sorbonne.
1. If information had been given to King Henry concerning the preparations of the printer, the removal would doubtless have been forbidden. If Robert had taken pains to deposit the matrices in the chamber of accounts (where the punches of the three fonts were preserved in boxes lined with velvet),[21] he would at once have betrayed his plans for removal.
2. The removal of this set of matrices does not appear to have excited any sensation whatsoever, either at the time of Robert’s departure or at any later period; nor do we hear of any impediment being caused through the want of them to the business of the future Impressores Regii.
3. At the time of Robert’s departure, the royal treasury was greatly in arrears to Robert, not merely for the King’s promised remuneration of his losses, which the malevolence of the divines had intercepted, but also for the stipend due to him as regius typographus. He may, therefore, have believed himself to be warranted in retaining the set of matrices either as an offset or as a pledge.[22]
4. Chevillier, and others of the authorities of the time, writing from the Catholic point of view, while very indignant with Robert for having induced two monarchs to give to him, “an outrageous Calvinist heretic,” the post of royal printer, make no mention of this accusation, while they would certainly have been very ready, if they had before them any evidence of such a theft, to include it among the sins of the heretical printer.
M. de Guignes finds evidence that under the reign of Louis XIII. certain of the divines of the Sorbonne, who had in preparation a new edition of the Greek Fathers, presented a petition to that prince requesting that the Greek matrices might be repurchased from Geneva, and that, in consequence of this petition, the King, in May, 1619, directed the sum of three thousand livres to be paid for them to Paul Estienne, the grandson of Robert, and that the matrices were brought back to the royal printing-house.
In the same essay, M. de Guignes mentions that in the year 1700, the University of Cambridge requested the Government (that of Louis XIV.) to favour it with a cast or font of the Greek characters of Francis I., then known by the name of “the King’s Greek.” The matter was referred to the French Academy, which expressed its willingness to send the font, under the condition that in all works in which the characters were used, there should be placed at the bottom of the title-page, after the usual subscription Typis Academicis, the words Characteribus Græcis e Typographeo regio Parisiensi. To this stipulation, however, the curators of the Cambridge University
Press were not willing to consent, and the negotiation therefore fell through. The incident indicates that after the lapse of a century and a half, the Greek type planned by Estienne was still considered to excel fonts of later workmanship.