THE EARLIEST KNOWN VAUTROLLIER DE OFFICIIS, UNRECORDED
M.t. ciceronis de officiis, libri tres. Item Cato maior, seu de senectute, Laelius, sue de amicitia, Paradoxa Stoicorum sex ad Marc. Brutum. Quibus additum est praeter superiore aeditionem, Somnius Scipionis: Ex castigatione Joannis boulierii. Fragmenta poematum, in quibus continentus Aratea. Aliorum poematum nomina, sequens pagina indicabit. Postremo accessit Qu. Fratris, De petitione consulatus lib. Ex dionys. lambini monstroliensis emendatione. Accesserunt eiusdem annotationes, sue animadversiones.
Londini, [i.e. London].
Excudebat Thomas Vautrollerius Typographus. Cum privilegio Regiae Majestatis, 1578.
8vo.
331pp, [5]. [A-X8; X7-8 are blank]. Contemporary limp vellum; text-block detached from binding, which is marked and creased, with a small (contemporarily patched) hole. Tears and creasing to margins of first four leaves; and tear to head of L2, all without loss of text. Contemporary Latin ink inscription ('Ex sapienta est pieta...'???) to head of A2, contemporary manuscript notes in an English hand to verso of X8 (i.e., the final blank).
An entirely unrecorded sixteenth-century edition of Cicero's De Officiis, his classic text - in three books - on duty, which apparently predates any other edition of this work printed by French emigre printer Thomas Vautrollier (d. 1587).
One of a number of French printers who relocated to London at the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Vautrollier was admitted a 'brother' of the Stationers' Company in October 1564. However, he had clearly been operating as a printer in London before that date; indeed, the Stationer's Company had registered objection to his controlling a privilege for 'other latten books' in 1558/9. One of the few domestic printers willing to take on printing in Latin, in June 1574 Vautrollier, a committed Protestant and member of the French stranger church in London, was granted a ten-year royal privilege to print 'a number of Latin works, including Beza's New Testament and works by Cicero, Ovid, and Pierre Ramus' (Pettegree, A. Vautrollier, Thomas (d. 1587), bookseller and printer. Oxford DNB).
His press, permitted to employ six 'Frenchmen or Duchemen', was soon to capitalise upon contemporary demand for editions Cicero in Latin; in 1575 he published the Epistulae ad Familiares (STC 5297), edited by Denis Lambin (1520-1572) and with the marginal notes of Paolo Manuzio, and in 1579 two volumes of the Orationes (STC 5308) with the notes of Giovanni Michele Bruto (1517-1592), and the same editor's Rhetorica ad Herennium (STC 5323.7), then attributed to Cicero.
Cicero's De officiis was a standard work of moral philosophy in sixteenth century Europe. Indeed, Thomas Elyot's Governour (London, 1531) lists it alongside the works of Plato, and Aristotle's Ethics as a key text for young gentlemen. The first English edition - perhaps with demand stirred by Elyot's work - was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1534. No Latin edition is known to have appeared until, in 1573, the year before Vautrollier was granted his privilege for Latin editions of Cicero, John Kingston published an edition with notes by Melancthon.
It is perhaps surprising, then, that the earliest recorded edition produced by Vautrollier - who, we must remember, held the privilege in England for Latin editions as early as 1574 - is that of 1579 (STC 5266). It is surely yet more surprising that the 1579 edition he produced was that edited by Paolo Manuzio, rather than that of Denis Lambin, given he had favoured Lambin and Bruto for the other Ciceronian texts. Indeed, the 1584 edition of De officiis (which conforms almost exactly to the setting of this present edition) was, current records suggest, his first to reference the work of both of these editors.
All of which is to say that the evidence for this hitherto unrecorded edition of De officiis being a true 1578 production, and thus the earliest Vautrollier printed and first appearance of the Lambin edited text from an English press, is surely as strong as any possibility that the date in the title is a transposed 1587. The printer's device used by Vautrollier to the title of this volume - recorded by McKerrow (Printers' & Publishers' Devices in England & Scotland 1485-1640, London, 1949) as no. 164 - is noted as being in use since 1574. The only real sticking point, casting just the scintilla of doubt in this mind of this cataloguer, is the fact that the setting of this edition is a near perfect match for the 1584 edition. The only obvious difference in composition can be found on the setting of, and device on, the colophon; this edition features an 11 line Latin description of the royal privilege and his location, with a printer's device not featuring the initials, whilst the 1584 printing prints the same text on 10 lines Vautrollier's, and with a device displaying the initials T V. Disputes with the Stationer's Company, it is true, had led to his exploring further opportunities in Edinburgh during the early 1580s, but it is clear from his publications during these years that this did not put a stop to his London enterprises - and so this development cannot be used to suggest it is any more likely - the duration excepted - that a composition would not persist from 1579 to 1584, as from 1584 to 1587. It is of course also conceivable - just perhaps - that the numerals may have been deliberately transposed by the printer, given that 1584 was - as Pollard and Redgrave point out in STC, the final year of Vautrollier's privilege over editions of Cicero with Lambin's corrections.
But we are now, surely, clutching at straws for reasons to doubt the most likely explanation; that this unrecorded London printed edition of a key text of the sixteenth century, fully worthy of further research, predates the earliest known example from a successful Elizabethan printer.
One of a number of French printers who relocated to London at the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Vautrollier was admitted a 'brother' of the Stationers' Company in October 1564. However, he had clearly been operating as a printer in London before that date; indeed, the Stationer's Company had registered objection to his controlling a privilege for 'other latten books' in 1558/9. One of the few domestic printers willing to take on printing in Latin, in June 1574 Vautrollier, a committed Protestant and member of the French stranger church in London, was granted a ten-year royal privilege to print 'a number of Latin works, including Beza's New Testament and works by Cicero, Ovid, and Pierre Ramus' (Pettegree, A. Vautrollier, Thomas (d. 1587), bookseller and printer. Oxford DNB).
His press, permitted to employ six 'Frenchmen or Duchemen', was soon to capitalise upon contemporary demand for editions Cicero in Latin; in 1575 he published the Epistulae ad Familiares (STC 5297), edited by Denis Lambin (1520-1572) and with the marginal notes of Paolo Manuzio, and in 1579 two volumes of the Orationes (STC 5308) with the notes of Giovanni Michele Bruto (1517-1592), and the same editor's Rhetorica ad Herennium (STC 5323.7), then attributed to Cicero.
Cicero's De officiis was a standard work of moral philosophy in sixteenth century Europe. Indeed, Thomas Elyot's Governour (London, 1531) lists it alongside the works of Plato, and Aristotle's Ethics as a key text for young gentlemen. The first English edition - perhaps with demand stirred by Elyot's work - was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1534. No Latin edition is known to have appeared until, in 1573, the year before Vautrollier was granted his privilege for Latin editions of Cicero, John Kingston published an edition with notes by Melancthon.
It is perhaps surprising, then, that the earliest recorded edition produced by Vautrollier - who, we must remember, held the privilege in England for Latin editions as early as 1574 - is that of 1579 (STC 5266). It is surely yet more surprising that the 1579 edition he produced was that edited by Paolo Manuzio, rather than that of Denis Lambin, given he had favoured Lambin and Bruto for the other Ciceronian texts. Indeed, the 1584 edition of De officiis (which conforms almost exactly to the setting of this present edition) was, current records suggest, his first to reference the work of both of these editors.
All of which is to say that the evidence for this hitherto unrecorded edition of De officiis being a true 1578 production, and thus the earliest Vautrollier printed and first appearance of the Lambin edited text from an English press, is surely as strong as any possibility that the date in the title is a transposed 1587. The printer's device used by Vautrollier to the title of this volume - recorded by McKerrow (Printers' & Publishers' Devices in England & Scotland 1485-1640, London, 1949) as no. 164 - is noted as being in use since 1574. The only real sticking point, casting just the scintilla of doubt in this mind of this cataloguer, is the fact that the setting of this edition is a near perfect match for the 1584 edition. The only obvious difference in composition can be found on the setting of, and device on, the colophon; this edition features an 11 line Latin description of the royal privilege and his location, with a printer's device not featuring the initials, whilst the 1584 printing prints the same text on 10 lines Vautrollier's, and with a device displaying the initials T V. Disputes with the Stationer's Company, it is true, had led to his exploring further opportunities in Edinburgh during the early 1580s, but it is clear from his publications during these years that this did not put a stop to his London enterprises - and so this development cannot be used to suggest it is any more likely - the duration excepted - that a composition would not persist from 1579 to 1584, as from 1584 to 1587. It is of course also conceivable - just perhaps - that the numerals may have been deliberately transposed by the printer, given that 1584 was - as Pollard and Redgrave point out in STC, the final year of Vautrollier's privilege over editions of Cicero with Lambin's corrections.
But we are now, surely, clutching at straws for reasons to doubt the most likely explanation; that this unrecorded London printed edition of a key text of the sixteenth century, fully worthy of further research, predates the earliest known example from a successful Elizabethan printer.
Not in STC, ESTC or USTC. c/f STC 5266.2 (1584, known in just two copies - Peterhouse and Harvard).
£ 8,500.00
Antiquates Ref: 33242
