• Marriott Library
  • About
  • Links We Like

OPEN BOOK

~ News from the Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

OPEN BOOK

Tag Archives: tragedies

Book of the Week — Tablettes De La Vie et De La Mort

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the Week — Tablettes De La Vie et De La Mort

Tags

attorney, bibliophile, ceremonies, Christine A. Jones, Eugène Paillet, fidelity, fleurs de lys, French, Greek, Hebrew, Jean Thomas, Jesuits, judge, King Henri IV of France, Latin, law, Louis XIII, Lyon, Montauban, morocco, ornaments, Paris, Penard Fernández, Pierre Mathieu, quatrains, reception, religion, royal, Royal Historiographer, Société des Amis du Livre, The University of Utah, Toulouse, tragedies, translation, Valence, war, World Languages and Cultures

PQ1820-M28-T11-1629-Cover
“It seems that from a King, the Majesty fades
Without many servants trailing his royalty
It may be grand to engage them in spades
But it is a great pain to depend on their loyalty.”

Tablettes de la vie et de la mort
Pierre Mathieu (1593-1621)
A Paris: Iean Petit-Paz, rue S. Iacques, à l’eseu de Venise, près les Mathurins, MDCXXIX (1629) avec privilege dv Roy
First and only complete edition with Latin translation
PQ1820 M28 T11 1629

Pierre Mathieu studied under the Jesuits and mastered Latin, ancient Greek and Hebrew. When he was nineteen his first tragedy, “Esther” was performed and published in Lyon in 1585. Before his death, Mathieu published four more allegorical tragedies, exploring contemporary issues of war in defense of religion. He studied law at Valence, receiving his doctorat in 1586. He was chosen and sent by the residents of Lyon to King Henri IV of France in 1594 to represent to him their fidelity. A year earlier, he had been put in charge of organizing the ceremonies of the king’s royal reception during his visit to Lyon. In Paris Mathieu became Royal Historiographer and was privileged guest of the royal court and the king. He fell ill accompanying Louis XIII at the siege of Montauban and died in Toulouse.

This collection of cultivated admonitions was written by Matheiu for Henri IV and then Louis XIII, Henri IV’s son. It is made up of individual parts that were published over a period of sixteen years (the last posthumously) — and were printed alone, in pairs, or all together, often in this irresistible little palm-sized format. Matheiu intended his readership to memorize the three suites, or volumes, each of one hundred quatrains. Attorney Jean Thomas (act. 1645) translated the French into Latin, printed in just this edition.

The present copy belonged to Louis XIII or was for presentation by him. It bears the book plate of Eugène Paillet (1829-1901) and the stamp of one Penard Fernández.

Paillet was a Parisian lawyer and judge and one of the great French bibliophiles of the nineteenth century. He was particularly interested in acquiring a number of different editions of the same work in order to illustrate the history of the publication. He was a founding member of the Société des Amis du Livre in 1874.

The translation of the quatrain above is by Christine A. Jones, Professor, World Languages and Cultures, The University of Utah. She explained that this was a “quick, unpolished” translation “to give the reader a sense of the irony and juicy moral ambiguity of the poems.”

French text facing the Latin translation, ornaments throughout. Each page bears various hand ruled borders in light faded red ink. Bound in contemporary gilt red morocco, chain-and-bloom roll around a central panel diapered with a dotted roll, interstices with fleurs de lys, which also fill the single vertical spine compartment. Marbled pastedowns, all edges gilt.

PQ1820-M28-T11-1629-Pastedown

Share this:

  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X

Like this:

Like Loading...

Book of the week – De rerum natura

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the week – De rerum natura

Tags

afterlife, Alexander Pope, biblical, blind-tooled, blindstamped, body, British, Cambridge, Church of England, classics, Constance, De rerum natura, decoration, engraved, Epicurus, fire, folio, French Revolution, frontispiece, Fulda, Germany, Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Gilbert Wakefield, gilt, gods, government, Greek, Hamilton, Homer, Horace, Jesus College, Londini, Lucretius, mathematics, ministry, morocco, mortal, nature, New Testament, pamphlets, poem, poet, portrait, punishment, rules, scholar, soul, Titus Lucretius Carus, tragedies, Tuscan, Unitarian, vicar, Virgil, Wa, Wakefield, world

PA6482-A2-1796-v.1-portraitPA6482-A2-1796-v.1-titlePA6482-A2-1796-v.1-pg1

DE RERUM NATURA LIBROS SEX, AD EXEMPLARIUM…
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BCE – ca. 55 BCE)
Londini: Impensis editoris, typis A. Hamilton, 1796-7
PA6482 A2 1796 oversize

De Rerum Natura is the only surviving work of Lucretius. Only one manuscript copy of it is known to exist. This manuscript was found in 1417 in a monastery at Fulda in Germany by Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, a Tuscan secretary to a church general council at Constance.

It is a didactic poem of 7,400 lines in six books, in which the poet expounds on the world view of the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus. The object was to abolish belief that the gods intervened in the world and that the soul could experience punishment in an afterlife. Lucretius demonstrated that the world is, instead, governed by mechanical laws of nature. He described the soul as mortal and posited that it perishes with the body.

This is the first edition of the “Wakefield” edition, the edition by Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801). Wakefield was a biblical scholar. The son of a vicar, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, through a scholarship. He studied mathematics and the classics. Although he took orders, he left the ministry and the Church of England and became a Unitarian. He earned his living as a tutor while writing controversial pamphlets attacking the government. He was imprisoned for two years for the publication of a pamphlet titled, “A Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Landoff’s Address,” in which he defended the French Revolution. To support himself, he published a translation of the New Testament (1792), companion editions to Horace (1794) and Virgil (1796), an edition with commentary of Greek tragedies (1794), an annotated edition of Alexander Pope’s Homer (1796), and this, his Lucretius. He published his De Rerum Natura at his own expense.

The book established Wakefield as a leading British scholar. The large paper, folio edition was mostly destroyed by a fire in the printing-office in which they were stored.

Engraved portrait of Gilbert Wakefield on frontispiece. Bound in contemporary straight-grained black morocco, panelled covers with broad blind-tooled borders and gilt edges, spine with broad gilt rules and blindstamped decoration. Edition of fifty copies.

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X

Like this:

Like Loading...

Follow Open Book via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 175 other subscribers

Archives

  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • September 2011
  • April 2011

Categories

  • Alice
  • Awards
  • Book of the Week
  • Chronicle
  • Courses
  • Donations
  • Events
  • Journal Articles
  • Newspaper Articles
  • On Jon's Desk
  • Online Exhibitions
  • Physical Exhibitions
  • Publication
  • Radio
  • Rare Books Loans
  • Recommended Exhibition
  • Recommended Lecture
  • Recommended Reading
  • Recommended Workshop
  • TV News
  • Uncategorized
  • Vesalius
  • Video

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
  • RSS - Posts

Recent Posts

  • Book of the Week — Home Thoughts from Abroad
  • Donation adds to Latin hymn fragments: “He himself shall come and shall make us saved.”
  • Medieval Latin Hymn Fragment: “And whatever with bonds you shall have bound upon earth will be bound strongly in heaven.”
  • Books of the week — Off with her head!
  • Medieval Latin Hymn Fragment, Part D: “…of the holy found rest through him.”

Recent Comments

  • rarebooks on Medieval Latin Hymn Fragment: “Her mother ordered the dancing girl…”
  • Jonathan Bingham on On Jon’s Desk: Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, A Celebration of Heritage on Pioneer Day
  • Robin Booth on On Jon’s Desk: Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, A Celebration of Heritage on Pioneer Day
  • Mary Johnson on Memorial Day 2017
  • Collett on Book of the Week — Dictionnaire des Proverbes Francais

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d