Jean Bienné (d. 1588)

Titus Lucretius Carus, De rerum natura, libri VI. A Dion. Lambino … (Paris, 1570), title page device of the heirs of Guillaume Morel.

Jean Bienné, in Latin Ioannes Bene-natus, was initially employed as an apprentice in the printing firm of Guillaume Morel (1505-64), the King’s Printer for Greek, who  died in 1564.[1] Between 1565 and 1584 Bienné worked as a bookseller and printer  ‘In Clauso Brunello, juxta puteum Certenum’, i.e. Rue Chartière.^[2] As Image 1 shows, he used the Basilisk printer’s device, a device previously used by Morel. Although he succeeded Morel, Jean Bienné did not in fact inherit his title of royal printer; instead he appropriated the device and fonts of the ‘Grecs-du-roi’ for all his editions, hoping thereby to link his firm with the prestigious one of his predecessor.

Jean Bienné had initially been employed as a Greek corrector at the University of Paris and it is seems likely that it was there that he met Guillaume Morel and started to work as a corrector for him. In 1565, he married Morel’s widow, Barbe de Mascon (fl. 1565). Their marriage brought him into contact with other members of the book trade: Barbe’s brother, Jean Mascon, who was a printer’s corrector, and the bookseller Martin Le Jeune (d. c. 1584), who had been appointed guardian of Guillaume Morel’s children. According to Edmont Werdet, Jean and Barbe had a daughter who was ‘highly educated in Greek and Hebrew’ and who, on the death of her father, took over the management of his printing business. According to the same author, Bienné’s widow finally succeeded him in 1588.^[3] However, no documents have been found to confirm Werdet’s hypothesis. According to Renouard, it was Étienne Prevosteau (fl. 1579-1610), a son-in-law of Guillaume Morel, and Pierre Pautonnier (fl. 1601-13), Morel’s grandson, who took over the workshop from Jean Bienné, on his death on 15 February 1588.^[4]

At first Bienné used the following address: ‘In ædibus demortui Guil. Morelii’, but he soon added his own name and in 1566 we read: ‘Apud Ioannem Bene-Natum in aedibus demortui Guil. Morelii’. Bienné probably worked for a time with Martin Le Jeune for many of Bienné’s editions, especially his series of works by Denys Lambin (1520/21-1572), are often found bound together with other works published by Le Jeune.^[5] Bienné collaboration with Lambin began in 1566, when he published his Oratio de rationis principatu (Paris, 1566), and he continued to publish Lambin’s works until 1578. This great Renaissance humanist had returned to France in 1561 and had been appointed Royal Professor of Latin and Literature at the Collège Royal, and in the same year he was appointed Professor of Greek. Bienné was responsible for publishing Lambin’s most famous works: Appendicula commentariorum in Aemilium Probum, sive Cornelium Nepotem (Paris, 1569), and, in 1570, two major editions: a Greek edition of Demosthenes, Dēmosthenous logoi (Paris, 1570), and a Latin edition of Lucretius’ De rerum natura (Paris, 1570). Worth owned copies of the two latter works.

Lambin’s edition  of De rerum natura was the third edition of the text, the first and the second having been published in 1563 and 1564 by Philippe Gaultier (c. 1592-c. 1631). In the note to the reader, Lambin rails against ‘quidam Germanus’ (who has been identified as Hubert van Giffen (c. 1533-1604)), who was said to have stolen Lambin’s edition of Lucretius in order to publish it under his own name at Antwerp with Christophe Plantin (c. 1520-89), in 1565 and 1566.^[6] In Lambin’s 1570 edition, he drew parallels between ideas in De rerum natura and in the writings of the Church Fathers.

 Demosthenes, Dēmosthenous logoi, kai prooimia dēmēgorika, kai epistolai: syn tais exēgēsesin ōphelimōtatais, tou Oulpianou rhētoros, tē tōn palaiōn antigraphōn basilikōn epikouria auxētheisiais kai diorthōtheisais, dia philoponias, kai epimeleias tou Goulielmou Moreliou, typographon basilikou. Ek bibliothēkēs basilikēs. Proetethē bios Dēmosthenous, kai alla polla, pros ton tou autou rhētoros bion anēkonta, ek suchnōn sungrapheōn sullechthenta, (Paris, 1570), Sig. α6 recto and Sig. β1 recto.

Lambin’s edition of Dēmosthenous logoi, the first Greek edition of the work printed in France,  was an important step in his career, for it gave him an opportunity to defend the Greek language – he had, after all, been Professor of Greek at the Collège Royal since 1561 – and he duly dedicated the text to the king, Charles IX (1550-74). Lambin wanted to prove to his audience, and especially to students, that it was not enough to read Greek texts in Latin translations, no matter how faithful they were, because they did not reflect the style of each author.^[7] He naturally turned to Jean Bienné to print his work for he was well aware that, though Bienné was not officially the ‘King’s Printer of Greek’ he possessed the famous ‘Grecs-du-roi’. Lambin would also have known, from his previous dealings with Bienné, that the latter was a careful printer, one who would produce an excellent edition.

Plato, Timaeus Platonis siue de vniversitate interpretibus, M. Tullio Cicerone, & Chalcidio, vna cum eius docta explanatione (Paris, 1563-1579), title page device on the last book printed by Guillaume Morel and Jean Bienné.

Worth’s copy of Plato’s Timaeus is a graphic reminder of the interconnections between the firms of Guillaume Morel and Jean Bienné. The original Greek text, with its Latin translation by Cicero (106 B.C.-43 B.C.), had been printed by Morel in 1563 and the title pages of both the first and second parts duly bear the ‘1563’ date. In addition, Morel’s printer’s device is visible on the title page of the first part – as may be seen in the above image. However, when we delve a little deeper, we find a colophon at the end of the second part bearing the inscription ‘Absolvebat Ioannes Bene-Natus pridie Kalendas Maias 1569’. What was going on? Clearly Guillaume Morel had already printed the work in 1563, but Bienné, who had taken over all of Morel’s titles and output, had decided to take the Timaeus of 1563 and add a new colophon in his name at the end, dated 1569. He repeated the same manoeuvre in 1579, this time adding a Greek edition to the work, which explains why the work has three different dates and the device of Guillaume Morel.

Jean Bienné clearly concentrated on publishing Greek texts, sometimes with their Latin translation. He demonstrated a great interest in texts by ancient authors, the Fathers of the Church, and contemporary humanists such as Guillaume Budé (1467-1540), Denys Lambin and Jean Des Caurres (1540-87).[8] Thus, he did not stray far from Morel’s editorial choices (apart from a few exceptions such as works of religious polemics). Jean Bienné took over Morel’s firm and made it flourish for eighteen years before Morel’s relatives eventually inherited the Morel business.

Sources

Buron, Emmanuel, Philippe Guérin & Claire Lesage (eds), Les États du dialogue à l’âge de l’humanisme (Tours, 2015).

Dumoulin, Joseph, Vie et oeuvres de Fédéric Morel, imprimeur à Paris depuis 1557 jusqu’à 1583 (Paris, 1901).

Gambino Longo, Susanna, ‘La question de la mortalité de l’âme dans les commentaires humanistes de Lucrèce de G.B. Pio et D. Lambin’, in Laurence Boulègue (ed.), Commenter et philosopher à la Renaissance: Tradition universitaire, tradition humaniste (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2014).

Possanza, D. Mark, ‘Serpentine constructions: Lucretius, De Rerum Natvra 3.657–63’, The Classical Quarterly, 64, no. 1 (2014), 197-206.

Renouard, Philippe, Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer & Brigitte Moreau (eds), Répertoire des imprimeurs parisiens: libraires, fondeurs de caractères et correcteurs d’imprimerie: depuis l’introduction de l’imprimerie à Paris (1470) jusqu’à la fin du seizième siècle … (Paris, 1965).

Renouard, Philippe, Imprimeurs et libraires parisiens du XVIe siècle. Tome troisième, Baquelier-Billon (Paris, 1979).

Summers, Kirk, M., ‘The Logikē Latreia of Romans 12: 1 and its interpretation among Christian Humanists’, Perichoresis, 15, no. 1 (2017), 47-66.

Werdet, Edmond, Histoire du livre en France, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789, 4v. (Paris, 1861-64).

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[1] Bienné’s name first appears on a Morel publication of 1563.

^[2] Renouard, Philippe, Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer & Brigitte Moreau (eds), Répertoire des imprimeurs parisiens: libraires, fondeurs de caractères et correcteurs d’imprimerie: depuis l’introduction de l’imprimerie à Paris (1470) jusqu’à la fin du seizième siècle … (Paris, 1965), p. 34.

^[3] Werdet, Edmond, Histoire du livre en France, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789, 4v. (Paris, 1861-64), iii, pt. ii, p. 121.

^[4] Renouard et al (eds) Répertoire des imprimeurs parisiens, p. 34; Agence bibliographique de l’enseignement supérieur (abes), ‘Pautonnier, Pierre (15..-163.? ; imprimeur-libraire)’, IdRef – Identifiants et Référentiels pour l’enseignement supérieur et la recherche.

^[5] Renouard et al. (eds), Répertoire des imprimeurs parisiens, p. 34.

^[6] Gambino Longo, Susanna, ‘La question de la mortalité de l’âme dans les commentaires humanistes de Lucrèce de G.B. Pio et D. Lambin’, in Laurence Boulègue (ed.), Commenter et philosopher à la Renaissance: Tradition universitaire, tradition humaniste (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2014), pp 21-22.

^[7] Buron, Emmanuel, Philippe Guérin & Claire Lesage (eds), Les États du dialogue à l’âge de l’humanisme (Tours, 2015), pp 8-10.

[8] Agence bibliographique de l’enseignement supérieur (abes), ‘Caurres, Jean Des (1540-1587)’, IdRef – Identifiants et Référentiels pour l’enseignement supérieur et la recherche.