Details
BIBLE -- NEW TESTAMENT, French: Le nouueau testament. "Turin: pour Francoys Cavillon" [Lyons: François Carcan (and Claude Neurry), ca. 1525].
4 parts in one volume. Large 16° (120 x 81mm). Title in red with woodcut arms in red and black of Savoy, repeated in black on a8r, title of part 2 within a woodcut border, Cavillon's device on last page, woodcut initials, some historiated, and a few small woodcuts in the text. (Short tear in lower margin of title-page, light waterstaining at the end.) 19th-century vellum. Provenance: Soeur Denise Guiot (contemporary signature on title-page and at end).
AN EXTREMELY RARE AND EARLY EDITION OF LEFÈVRE'S TRANSLATION INTO FRENCH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. The imprint, stating that the book was printed by François Cavillon at Turin, is false. The book is now assigned to Lyons and the printer François Carcan, who used the same device and was active between 1523 and 1529. Lefèvre's New Testament served as the basis for all French versions for the rest of the century. It was proscribed upon first publication in 1523, although it continued to be printed in Protestant outposts, such as Antwerp, Basel, Neuchatel and, as here, at Lyons. Turin, a city within French influence but outside direct French control, was frequently used as a place either for printing piracies or as a fictitious imprint for surreptitious printing throughout the 16th century. Earlier bibliographers (Van Eys, Bibliographie du Nouveau Testament en français, no.10) believed that this edition, printed at Turin, was thus destined for the proto-protestant communities of Vaud and the Valais, where French-language editions of the Bible had circulated in manuscript already in the 15th century.
Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples (1455-1537) began his academic life as a classicist, mathematician and philosopher, but from about 1510 devoted himself, for the rest of his life, to studying, and translating, the Bible. On frequent occasions he was arraigned before the Sorbonne for heresy and each time was protected by François I. His other patron was Marguerite de Navarre in whose realm he died in 1537.
ONE OF ONLY FOUR KNOWN COPIES; no perfect copy is in France. The others are at Munich, University Library; Nice, Bibliothèque Municipale; Paris, Bibliothèque de Protestante Français (imperfect). Another copy, formerly at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, is now lost. See B.T. Chambers, Bibliography of French Bibles, 15th- and 16th-century French Language Editions, Geneva, 1983, no.41; N. Weiss and O. Douen, "Lefèvre d'Étaples, sa profession de foi et son N.T.," Bulletin du Protestantisme Français, 1896, pp.159-68. Baudrier III, 88; Bersano, Le cinquentine piemontesi, I, 106.
4 parts in one volume. Large 16° (120 x 81mm). Title in red with woodcut arms in red and black of Savoy, repeated in black on a8r, title of part 2 within a woodcut border, Cavillon's device on last page, woodcut initials, some historiated, and a few small woodcuts in the text. (Short tear in lower margin of title-page, light waterstaining at the end.) 19th-century vellum. Provenance: Soeur Denise Guiot (contemporary signature on title-page and at end).
AN EXTREMELY RARE AND EARLY EDITION OF LEFÈVRE'S TRANSLATION INTO FRENCH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. The imprint, stating that the book was printed by François Cavillon at Turin, is false. The book is now assigned to Lyons and the printer François Carcan, who used the same device and was active between 1523 and 1529. Lefèvre's New Testament served as the basis for all French versions for the rest of the century. It was proscribed upon first publication in 1523, although it continued to be printed in Protestant outposts, such as Antwerp, Basel, Neuchatel and, as here, at Lyons. Turin, a city within French influence but outside direct French control, was frequently used as a place either for printing piracies or as a fictitious imprint for surreptitious printing throughout the 16th century. Earlier bibliographers (Van Eys, Bibliographie du Nouveau Testament en français, no.10) believed that this edition, printed at Turin, was thus destined for the proto-protestant communities of Vaud and the Valais, where French-language editions of the Bible had circulated in manuscript already in the 15th century.
Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples (1455-1537) began his academic life as a classicist, mathematician and philosopher, but from about 1510 devoted himself, for the rest of his life, to studying, and translating, the Bible. On frequent occasions he was arraigned before the Sorbonne for heresy and each time was protected by François I. His other patron was Marguerite de Navarre in whose realm he died in 1537.
ONE OF ONLY FOUR KNOWN COPIES; no perfect copy is in France. The others are at Munich, University Library; Nice, Bibliothèque Municipale; Paris, Bibliothèque de Protestante Français (imperfect). Another copy, formerly at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, is now lost. See B.T. Chambers, Bibliography of French Bibles, 15th- and 16th-century French Language Editions, Geneva, 1983, no.41; N. Weiss and O. Douen, "Lefèvre d'Étaples, sa profession de foi et son N.T.," Bulletin du Protestantisme Français, 1896, pp.159-68. Baudrier III, 88; Bersano, Le cinquentine piemontesi, I, 106.