Bordeaux

Simon Millanges (1540/41-1623)

‘Millia millium ministrabant ei’
or
‘thousands of thousands ministered unto him’.
The glory of Bordeaux’s printing press.

Decimus Magnus Ausonius, Ausonii Burdigalensis, viri consularis, omnia, quæ adhuc in veteribus bibliothecis inueniri potuerunt, opera adhaec, Symmachi, & Pontij Paulini litteræ ad Ausonium scriptæ: tum Ciceronis, Sulpicia, aliorúmque quorundam veterum carmina nonnullæ, cuncta ad varia, vetera, nováque exemplaria, emendata, commentariisque illustrata per Eliam Vinetum Santonem. … (Bordeaux, 1580), Coat of arms of the city Bordeaux.

Simon Millanges (1540/41-1623) was a printer and bookseller in Bordeaux who was active from 1572 to 1623, at the address of ‘Rue Saint-James, près la maison de la ville, au coin de la Rue de Lopsault’. In June 1572, he bought two presses from Pierre I Haultin (1500?-80?), a printer from La Rochelle. Millanges also obtained the title of printer of the city of Bordeaux in 1573 and then the title of royal printer for Bordeaux in 1576.^[1] However, when he printed Worth’s copy of Decimus Magnus Ausonius’ Ausonii Burdigalensis, viri consularis, omnia, quæ adhuc in veteribus bibliothecis inueniri potuerunt, opera adhaec, Symmachi, & Pontij Paulini litteræ ad Ausonium scriptæ: tum Ciceronis, Sulpicia, aliorúmque quorundam veterum carmina nonnullæ, cuncta ad varia, vetera, nováque exemplaria, emendata, commentariisque illustrata per Eliam Vinetum Santonem. … edited by Élie Vinet (1509-87) in 1580, he placed neither his printer’s device nor the author’s portrait on the title page, but the coat of arms of the city of Bordeaux, as shown in Image 1. This decision was a reflection not only of his position as printer to the city but also of the fact that the city was the subject matter of the book.

The coat of arms of the city of Bordeaux has an ancient history, the richness and history of which have been nurtured by successive authorities of the city. The central elements are undoubtedly the two towers framing a bell tower surrounded by a medallion. These towers date back to the time of Charles VII, King of France (1403-61), who decided in 1459 to fortify the city against external attackers and to stop trading with England. The Cathedral of Saint André and the ‘Grande cloche’ (a gate at the entrance to the medieval city, also called the Porte Saint Héloi) were built at the same time. The bell tower had two important functions: magistrates of the city were instructed to ring the bell at the beginning of the grape harvest; and it was used to alert the populace when fires broke out in the city. The first coat of arms of the port city dated back to Richard I, King of England (1157-99), who had the towers and bell tower engraved with the three lions of the Plantagenet family.^[2]

However, this coat of arms, printed in 1580, is much richer in detail. Its symbolism had two purposes: the symbolic representation of the city and the affirmation of the king of France’s ownership of Bordeaux. There is a single Plantagenet lion above the bell tower, symbolising the end of English possession of the lands of the king of France (an argument reinforced by the presence of the fleurs de lys on a blue background above the lion); the undulating sea represents the River Garonne and the crescent is a representation of the shape of the port city in the form of an arc. In addition, the two antelopes framing the central medallion are chained by crowns of fleur de lys, a metaphor for the French reconquest of what was seen as an English occupation. The French lilies hold the English antelopes in place. Finally, the crown the antelopes are looking at represents the city’s title of nobility, inherited from the County of Ornon in the sixteenth century.^[3] The coat of arms is usually decorated with a motto, but the example in Image 1 only shows the Latinised name of the city: Burdigala.

Millanges’ publication of the Latin poems of Decimus Magnus Ausonius made him famous beyond the walls of Bordeaux. He printed the second edition of Ausonius’ poems in 1580 at the request of Élie Vinet, a Bordeaux humanist and historian. In addition to Vinet’s comments on Ausonius (c. 310-c. 395), and other ancient authors, this remarkable edition contains a 27-page dossier of detailed and precise research on the history of the city of Bordeaux (its history, origins, and the etymology of the name of the city).^[4] The book is richly decorated with four woodcut plates: the map of the city, the Piliers de Tutelle, the Palais Gallien amphitheatre and a Roman tomb as they existed in the sixteenth century. Image 2 is a representation of the Palais Gallien amphitheatre in Bordeaux, the actual ancient ruins of which are surprisingly similar to the sixteenth-century woodcut.

Vinet was the first historian of Bordeaux in the modern sense of the word: he produced a scientific and historical study of the city from its origins to the present day. He worked with ancient sources and their descriptions of the city (as in the Ausonius’ poems (barely a few lines long!)); he retraced the contours of the ancient city and gave an explanation of the ruins.^[5] Image 3 is another woodcut from his corpus of illustrations and represents the ‘Palais de Tutelle’ (an approximately third-century building). As the monument was destroyed at the end of the seventeenth century, this woodcut is now one of the few illustrations of this impressive monument.

This edition was an undeniable success, but it was not without difficulties. Vinet spent a large part of his life collecting, translating and commenting on Ausonius’ poems. When this work was almost finished, he asked his former pupil, Joseph Juste Scaliger (1540-1609), to give him his opinion on the notes he had written in recent years. Scaliger not only gave his former teacher his opinion, he had Vinet’s work printed in his own name. There is no record of Vinet’s reaction to the news, but this did not prevent him from getting the Lyon printer Antonius Gryphius (1527-99), to print the work there in 1574 – this time under Vinet’s name.^[6] It is interesting to note that Millanges republished the book in 1590, but with the addition of Scaliger’s comments. By this time Vinet had been dead for three years. We can therefore assume that there was nothing to prevent the printer from publishing the research of both the pupil and the master.

Ernest Labadie also mentions other famous publications by Millanges: La muse chrestienne of Guillaume de Salluste, seigneur du Bartas (1544-90) printed in 1573, the Poemes of Pierre de Brach (1547-1605) printed in 1576, the Essais of Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) printed in 1580, Burdigalensium rerum chronicon of Gabriel de Lurbe (d. 1613) printed in 1589, the Commentaires of Blaise seigneur de Monluc (1500?-77) printed in 1592, and the De la Sagesse livres trois of Pierre Charron (1541-1603) printed in 1607.^[7] He seems to have specialised in the publication of work by famous authors, French literature of the sixteenth century, and historical works related to the city of Bordeaux.^[8]

Finally, Millanges is often cited as the first typographer in Bordeaux. This assumption should be treated with caution, as the city had at least five typographers before the arrival of Millanges as a printer. His reputation in Bordeaux was such that he eclipsed his predecessors and contemporaries such as Gaspard Philippe (d. c. 1520), Jehan Guyard (d. 1542) and François Morpain (fl. 1541-63).[9] Simon Millanges was the head of a dynasty that lasted until the end of the seventeenth century, with Jacques Mongiron-Millanges (1618?-95), the last of the dynasty, resigning from his post as printer of the city in 1692.^[10] Thus, during the first half of the seventeenth century, his printing house, that of the Lacourts and that of the Coq shared the Bordeaux book market. Simon’s printer’s device is a frame with God in the centre, worshipped by angels, above a globe with the moon, sun and stars, symbolising the universe. God is in a central medallion with the Latin motto: ‘Millia millium ministrabant ei’, which was a quotation from Daniel 7: 10 (‘thousands of thousands ministered unto him’), which describes the scene.[11]

Millanges’ gradual dominance of the Bordeaux market began with the establishment of his printing works in rue Saint-James and his bookshop at the same address. To run his bookshop, Millanges hired Anthoine Girard (fl. 1606-10), a master bookseller from Lyon, and Claude Mongiron (fl. 1606-22), who became the managers of the Millanges bookshop in 1606. Three years later, in October 1609, Claude Mongiron married Simon’s daughter, Anne Millanges.[12] In October 1614, Millanges gave his two shops to his son, Jacques and his son-in-law, Claude.^[13] Millanges died in the last days of May or the first days of June 1623 at the age of 82.^[14]

Sources

Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Catalogue général.

Bost, Jean-Pierre, ‘Élie Vinet, historien du Bordeaux antique’, Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde, 21 (2015), 31-39.

Labadie, Ernest, Notices biographiques sur les imprimeurs et libraires Bordelais des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, suivie de la liste des imprimeurs et libraires de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde au XIXe siècle, documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’Imprimerie et de la Librairie (Bordeaux, 1900).

Meaudre de Lapouyade, Maurice, ‘Les armoiries de Bordeaux (A suivre)’, Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde, 6, no. 6 (1913), 385-410.

_____

^[1] Labadie, Ernest, Notices biographiques sur les imprimeurs et libraires Bordelais des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, suivie de la liste des imprimeurs et libraires de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde au XIXe siècle, documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’Imprimerie et de la Librairie (Bordeaux, 1900), p. 77.

^[2] Meaudre de Lapouyade, Maurice, ‘Les armoiries de Bordeaux (A suivre)’, Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde, 6, no. 6 (1913), 400-410.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Bost, Jean-Pierre, ‘Élie Vinet, historien du Bordeaux antique’, Revue historique de Bordeaux et du département de la Gironde, 21 (2015), 35-36.

^[5] Ibid.

^[6] Ibid, pp 34-35.

^[7] Labadie, Notices Biographiques sur les imprimeurs et libraires Bordelais des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, Avant-propos, p. vi-vii. Unfortunately Worth dd not collect these texts.

^[8] Ibid., p. vii.

[9] Ibid., on Gaspard Philippe: pp 92-94; on Jehan Guyard: pp 44-46; on François Morpain: pp 84-5.

^[10] Ibid., p. 9; Bibliothèque nationale de France, ‘Notice de personne “Mongiron-Millanges, Jacques (1618?-1695)”‘, BnF Catalogue général.

[11] Labadie, Notices Biographiques sur les imprimeurs et libraires Bordelais des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, pp 78-9.

[12] Ibid., p. 43.

^[13] Ibid.; Bibliothèque nationale de France, ‘Notice de personne “Mongiron, Claude (15..-1622)”‘, BnF Catalogue général.

^[14] Labadie, Notices Biographiques sur les imprimeurs et libraires Bordelais des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, p. 78.