The Vincents

Worth’s copy of a heavily illustrated edition of a wonderful scientific work not only has much to tell us about early modern science – it also sheds vital light on one of the mechanisms used by Lyon printers and booksellers to survive the tumultuous events in France in the second half of the sixteenth century. The stratagems used by the wily Vincent dynasty, particularly Antoine I Vincent (d. 1568) and his son Barthélemy Vincent (fl. 1559-93), display the importance of being able to adapt to dangerous circumstances and turn a crisis into an opportunity.

Jacques Dauphinois Besson, Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum Iacobi Bessoni Delphinatis, mathematici ingeniosissimi … Cum Francisci Beroaldi figurarum declaratione demonstratiua. Necnon vbique necessarijs ac vtilissimis additionibus nunquam hactenus editis auctum atque illustratum: per Iulium Paschalem … (Lyon, 1582), title page.

In 1582, Jean I de Laon (1518-c. 1599), a printer based in Geneva, produced a magnificent work by the French mathematician Jacques Dauphinois Besson (1534?-73?), for the Lyon bookseller Barthélemy Vincent.[1] As the elegant title page of Worth’s copy makes clear, this imposing publication encompassed Besson’s chief interests: mathematics, engineering and, more generally, science.^[2] It likewise points to the close links between Lyon and Geneva and the importance of the Vincent dynasty in the book world of both cities in the sixteenth century. The address on the title page ‘Lugduni apud Barth. Vincent’ is a very graphic reminder of this for it gives the impression that the work was printed in Lyon, whereas the text had actually been printed in Geneva.[3] This was deliberate because by claiming it as a French publication the work was automatically protected by a royal privilege issued in Orléans on 20 June 1569, ensuring that no printer or bookseller on French soil could reproduce the book. Thus, by a typographical slight-of-hand, Barthélemy Vincent could continue trading with his old Lyon and French network, while remaining far from the troubles that had shaken Lyon since the early 1560s.

Barthélemy Vincent normally specialised in the production of legal texts, works by classical authors and religious books, i.e. his output was broadly reflective of the typical Lyon bookseller of the period. The subject matter of this 1582 publication, a book about the inventions of the engineer Jacques Dauphinois Besson (who was also the King’s mathematician), stands out from his usual output but it was clearly one that he felt warranted investment.^[4] This was in fact the fourth edition published by him (with the support of a monopoly privilege for 10 years), and he also published it after Besson’s death (1578, 1579, 1582). It contains 60 large and very detailed copper engravings, and a title page almost certainly made by the same engraver.^[5] It would have been an expensive work to produce and perhaps, because of this, was an exception to his normal fare.

The Vincent dynasty is a rather elusive one primarily because members of the family were constantly on the move during the late sixteenth century. The first identifiable member of the Vincent dynasty was a Lyon bookseller named Simon Vincent (fl. 1499-1534), the father of François, Bonaventure, and Antoine I, and hence the grandfather of Barthélemy Vincent. Aimé Vingtrinier dated Simon’s activity to between 1509 to 1525, but Claudin mentions a 1499 publication by him of a work on canon law.[6] Micheline Lecocq, in her thesis on the printer, dates his activity to between 1499 and 1532 and locates his shop in the Rue Mercière – a street renowned as the centre of the Lyon book trade.^[7] Vingtrinier recounts that Simon Vincent was first of all a printer, a member of the first generation of French book printers, and that he travelled through the provinces, looking for opportunities for his press, offering his missals and Bibles to all who could buy them.^[8]

Clearly by the early 1520s he was beginning to make an impact in Lyon for Eugénie Droz notes that in 1523 Simon was made a consul.^[9] This meant that he participated in the consulate of the city of Lyon, a very important institution that held municipal power until the eighteenth century. The consulate had taken over the running of the city from the powerful bishopric of Lyon, which had historically ruled the city until the fourteenth century. The independence this afforded in effect meant that the city’s merchants and tradesmen took the decisions, rather than the bishop – a factor which helps explain Lyon’s commercial power in the sixteenth century and the fact that the city proved to be a fertile ground for the book trade.^[10]

Anon, Itinerarium provinciarum Antonini Augusti. Vibius Sequester De fluminu, & aliarum rerum nominibus in ordinem elementorum digestis. P. Victor De regionibus urbis Romae. Dionysius Afer De situ orbis Prisciano interprete (Lyon: ‘apud Haeredes Simonis Vincenti’, s.n.), title page device.

Simon was succeeded by his son Antoine I in 1532. Antoine I not only inherited the family firm but he too was appointed consul (in 1543, 1551 and 1559), a proof of his sound management of the family business and his position in the city.^[11] Worth owned a handful of works published by him. His first was an un-dated but possibly 1536 edition of Itinerarium provinciarum Antonini Augusti. Vibius Sequester De fluminu, & aliarum rerum nominibus in ordinem elementorum digestis. P. Victor De regionibus urbis Romae. Dionysius Afer De situ orbis Prisciano interprete. The book had been printed for Vincent by Macé Bonhomme (fl. 1536-69), a printer based in Lyon, and it bears the following intriguing imprint: ‘apud Haeredes Simonis Vincenti’. By 1555 Antoine I was signing his own name for we find ‘apud Antonium Vincentium’ on Worth’s copies of Antonio Gadaldini’s Stephani Atheniensis philosophi explanationes, in Galeni priorem librum therapeuticum ad Glauconem, Augustino Gadaldino Mutinensi interprete. … (Lyon, 1555), and Antonio Musa Brasavola’s Examen omnium catapotiorum vel pilularum, quarum apud pharmacopolas usus est: Ad illustrem Alphonsum Estensem. Conradi Gesneri enumeratio medicamentorum purgantium, vomitoriorum & alvum bonam facientium, ordine alphabeti; omnia nunc primum & nata & excusa (Lyon, 1556).

Antoine I was certainly an intelligent merchant. Droz describes his movements and in particular his decision to leave with his family for Geneva in 1559. He left with his first wife, Perrette Gaudon, and their children: Jean, Antoine II (1559-72?), Emerance, Barbe, Jeanne and Yzabeau.^[12] In tow also were his sister Bonaventure and her son André Garbot, whose father Jean Garbot had died. Undoubtedly the decision to leave Lyon behind was due to the fact that Antoine I (and the rest of his family) were Protestants. By leaving Lyon in 1559 Antoine I was proving himself to be remarkably prescient, for only four years later, in 1563, suspected Protestants would be forcibly expelled from Lyon. Antoine I was making sure that he was leaving on his own terms. He had, moreover, carefully calculated not only where to go (Geneva) but also how to go – while at the same time retain his publishing privileges in France. When he left for Geneva, he therefore did so as a foreigner traveling to the new city. It was as if he were still a resident and citizen of Lyon, but traveling outside the walls. Droz describes the situation as ‘a temporary asylum […] that allowed him to act freely in Lyon and in France’.^[13] At Geneva, he and his son Antoine II published the famous Psalter, Les Pseaumes mis en rime Francoise, par Clement Marot, & Theodore Beze, of the reformer Theodore de Bèze (1519-1605). Printed and distributed throughout France in 1562, the work was a commercial success, and certainly would have been an even greater one had it not been for the outbreak of the wars of religion.^[14]

However, not all the family migrated to Geneva for Antoine I left his son Barthélemy behind to look after the family firm in Lyon. This was a calculated risk but from a financial perspective it made sense. Barthélemy took over the bookshop in 1559, becoming his father’s representative and director of the family firm in Lyon. It was only eight years later, in 1567, a year before his father’s death, that Barthélemy left Lyon for Geneva and finally began publishing under his own name.^[15] As we have seen, his Genevan publications, such as Worth’s wonderful Theatrum instrumentorum et machinarum (Lyon, 1582), retained their Lyon imprints – allowing this resilient publishing house to make the best of the dangerous situation in which they had found themselves.

Sources

Bibliothèque de Genève, Bibliographical database of books published in Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, and Morges in the 15th and 16th centuries, GLN 15-16.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Catalogue général.

Claudin, Anatole, Histoire de l’imprimerie en France au XVe et au XVIe siècle, 4v. (Paris, 1900-14).

Decourt, George, ‘Famille Vincent (1499-1567)’, Musée du diocèse de Lyon.

Droz, Eugénie, ‘Antoine Vincent: La propagande protestante par le psautier’, in Berthoud, Gérald, Georgette de Groër & Delio Cantimori (eds), Aspect de la propagande religieuse (Geneva, 1957).

Fargeix, Caroline, ‘Trahir la ville, trahir le consulat : le respect de leur serment par les consuls lyonnais du XVe siècle’, in Myriam Soria & Maïté Billoré (eds), La trahison au Moyen Âge : De la monstruosité au crime politique (Ve-XVe siècle) (Rennes, 2010), pp 273-280.

Jocteur Montrozier, Yves & Monique Hulvey, Préface, in Lyse Schwarzfuchs (ed.), L’hébreu dans le livre lyonnais au xvie siècle: Inventaire chronologique (Lyon, 2008), pp 9-12.

Lecocq Micheline, Simon Vincent, libraire éditeur à Lyon de 1499 à 1532, PhD thesis, Université Jean Monnet (Saint-Étienne, 1983).

Régnier-Roux, Daniel, ‘Notes sur les dernières années de Jacques Besson (1534?-1573?)’, Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance, 77 (2013), 199-213.

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).

Vingtrinier, Aimé, Histoire de l’imprimerie à Lyon, de l’origine jusqu’à nos jours (Lyon, 1894).

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[1] The Library of Congress gives Barthélémy Vincent’s dates as 1568-1593, but George Decourt, in his study of the Vincent dynasty, suggests that Barthélemy’s career began much earlier, in 1559: Decourt, George, ‘Famille Vincent (1499-1567)’, Musée du diocèse de Lyon.

^[2] Bibliothèque de Genève, Bibliographical database of books published in Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, and Morges in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, GLN15-16.

[3] The imprint does not mention the actual address of the Vincents’ shop in Lyon: the Payen shop in Rue Mercière.

^[4] Régnier-Roux, Daniel, ‘Notes sur les dernières années de Jacques Besson (1534?-1573?)’, Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance, 77 (2013), 212; Bibliothèque nationale de France, ‘Notice de personne “Besson, Jacques (1534?-1573?)”’, BnF Catalogue général.

^[5] Bibliothèque de Genève, Bibliographical database of books published in Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel, and Morges in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, GLN15-16.

[6] Vingtrinier, Aimé, Histoire de l’imprimerie à Lyon, de l’origine jusqu’à nos jours (Lyon, 1894), p. 319; Claudin, Anatole, Histoire de l’imprimerie en France au XVe et au XVIe siècle, 4v. (Paris, 1900-14), iv, p. 220.

^[7] Lecocq, Micheline, Simon Vincent, libraire éditeur à Lyon de 1499 à 1532, PhD thesis, Université Jean Monnet (Saint-Étienne, 1983).

^[8] Vingtrinier, Histoire de l’imprimerie à Lyon, de l’origine jusqu’à nos jours, p. 34.

^[9] Droz, Eugénie, ‘Antoine Vincent: La propagande protestante par le psautier’, in Berthoud, Gérald, Georgette de Groër & Delio Cantimori (eds), Aspect de la propagande religieuse (Geneva, 1957), p. 277.

^[10] It should be noted, however, as Caroline Fargeix explains, that at the end of the fifteenth century there was a new category of consul: jurists, who gradually took over the seats and the title of president of the consulate, while the merchants were accused of being less involved in the consulate. On this see Fargeix, Caroline, ‘Trahir la ville, trahir le consulat : le respect de leur serment par les consuls lyonnais du XVe siècle’, in Myriam Soria & Maïté Billoré (eds), La trahison au Moyen Âge: De la monstruosité au crime politique (Ve-XVe siècle) (Rennes, 2010) para. 21-22.

^[11] Droz, ‘Antoine Vincent: La propagande protestante par le psautier’, p. 277.

^[12] Bibliothèque nationale de France, ‘Notice de personne “Vincent, Antoine (1500-1568)”’, BnF Catalogue général.

^[13] Droz, ‘Antoine Vincent: La propagande protestante par le psautier’, p. 277.

^[14] Ibid, p. 281.

^[15] Decourt, George, ‘Famille Vincent (1499-1567)’, Musée du diocèse de Lyon.