Dialogi XLII. Ad profligandam è scholis barbariem utilissimi. Louvain, Pieter Martens van Alst, March, 1524.<span style="line-height: 15.4px;">8vo. (40) leaves. Title within an ornamental woodcut border including the printer's device.
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8vo. (96) leaves. Title printed in red and black and a full-page woodcut at the end showing the author with his patron and his wife kneeling in prayer.
<span style="line
-height: 15.4px;">Contemporary blind-stamped calf with lettering on the panels, a bit rubbed, a few small repairs, but a very fine genuine copy with several old entries of ownership on the title-page, among them that of the Order of the Friars Minor Recollect of Ypres (Belgium).</span>
<span style="line-height: 15.4px;">Binding. The two works are bound together in a blind-stamped calf binding made by the Flemish Jacob Clercx de Geel from Antwerp active from about 1510 to 1537. He was succeeded by his son Gheert who was married with Abraham Ortelius' sister Anna. Gheert used the same panel with the first name of his father erased. In the same period, Jan Tys from Mechelen used a panel with the same design and the same text border but with his own name (cf. Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Exposition de reliures du XIIe siècle à la fin du XVIe: 5 avril - 28 juin 1930, Bruxelles, 1930, no. 192; S. Fogelmark, Flemish and Related Panel-Stamped Bindings. Evidence and Principles, New York, 1990, pp. 145-151, and J.B. Oldham, Blind Panels of English Binders, Cambridge, 1958, p. 16, AM.7, plate VII). On each cover there are two impressions of a panel divided into two rectangles each occupied by three animals (above: dragon, rabbit, dog; below: cattle, eagle, deer) enclosed within the curves of a vine branch. These are surrounded by a frame with the inscription: "Ligat[us] per man[us] / jacobi · clercx · qui · petit · a · malis · / erui · et ·semper / protegi · per · manus · domini" and at each angle a fleur-de-lys (see for a similar binding with the same panels, E.P. Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance Bookbindings, London, 1928), I, p. 209, no. 104). Between these two panels is another panel figuring dancing peasants and a piper (cf. P. Verheyden, De Boerendans op Vlaamsche Boekbanden, in: "De Gulden Passer", 20, 1942, pp. 209-237). This seems to be the only surviving specimen of the two panels in combination with the frieze of dancers signed by Jacob Clerx (see also L. Indestege, Boekbanden iut vijf eeuven. Catalogus van de tentoonstelling, Gent, 1961, no. 141).</span>
"Jacques Le Clerc, relieur en 1513, décorait ses reliures avec des plaques à froid, composées de rinceaux fleuris, renfermant des animaux chimériques accompagnés de filets, et d'une légende dans laquelle il faisait figurer son nom gravé dans le métal. Ce genre, très spécial à l'époque, fut adopté par beaucoup de relieurs en même temps; et s'il y a parfois dans les détails de l'ornementation quelque différence, le parti-pris reste toujours le même. Ces plaques étaient généralement répétées deux fois sur le même plat et reliées entre elles par des motifs gravés séparément. On lit sur cette reliure de Jacques Le Clerc : Ligat' Per Man' Jacobi Clerici Qui Petit A Malis Erui Et Semper Protegi Per Manus Domini. Ce qui se traduit ainsi : Relié par les mains de Jacques Le Clerc qui demande à être protégé des méchants à présent et toujours par les mains du Seigneur" (L. Gruel, Conférences sur la reliure et la dorure des livres. Paris, 1896, p. 40).
<span style="line-height: 15.4px;">I:) VERY RARE FIRST EDITION of this collection of 42 short dialogues covering a wide range of topics and conversational situations mainly centered on student life and written in a distinctly humanist classical Latin. The work has an immediate success and only five months later a second edition appeared with thirteen new dialogues. It was mostly used in Northern European schools and was reprinted many times at Antwerp, Cologne, Paris and Lyon until the middle of the century (cf. E. Daxhelet, Adrien Barlandus, humaniste belge, 1486-1538. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa personnalité, Louvain, 1938, pp. 169-180). In the dedicatory letter to his pupil Charles de Croy (1507-1564, later bishop of Turnai), he pays reverent tribute to Erasmus and Mosellanus as his literary models.</span>
The early sixteenth century brought the beginning of serious humanist engagement both with Latinity and pedagogy and the first two decades of the century had seen the appearance of the most influential colloquy collections as Erasmus' Colloquia familiaria (1518), Mosellanus' Paedologia (1518), Hegendorf's Dialogi pueriles (1520) and Barlandus' Dialogi. The possibility of the dialogue genre led Barlandus to use the colloquies increasingly as a vehicle for the critical and often satirical and polemical discussion of the major preoccupations of his age, moral and religious topics far beyond the horizon of the schoolroom. His Dialogi are of great interest not only as examples of the Latin used in the schools, and the methods of teaching it, but also as a source of information concerning school and university life in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries (e.g. the alehouse was an undesirable place for schoolboys: one who spends an evening drinking is threatened with expulsion for a repeat offence). The Dialogi are historical documents of great value to those who would picture not only the various aspects of student life at that time, but of culture generally (cf. T. Brüggeman & O. Brunken, Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Vom Beginn des Buchdrucks bis 1570, Stuttgart, 1987, cols. 919-920).
"Avec Barland, la simplicité du genre s'altère. Le nouveau venu veut paraître capable de mettre de l'agrément et de l'esprit dans nos dialogues, soit parce que l'exemple d'Erasme avait porté des fruits, soit plutôt parce que la Flandre était plus polie et d'une civilisation plus brillante" (L. Massebieau, Les colloques scolaires du seizième siècles et leurs auteurs, 1480-1570, Paris, 1878, pp. 131-132 and further pp. 133-157).
"In Barlandus Gesprächen lebt etwas von dem Geiste des Erasmus, den er ja auch neben Mosellanus als sein Vorbild bezeichnet und dessen Dialoge er gegen die Angriffe der Feinde in Schutz nimmt. Dieser erasmianische Zug offenbart sich namentlich in der Neigung zu satirischen Ausfällen, welcher in einer grossen Zahl von Dialogen, die sich von ihrem Zwecke einer Verbesserung des Unterrichts weit entfernen, nachgegeben ist. Gegen zwei Stände trug Barlandus einen unversöhnlichen Hass in seiner Brust, gegen den Adel und gegen die unwürdige Geistlichkeit" (A. Bömer, Die lateinischen Schülergespräche der Humanisten, Berlin, 1897-1899, II, pp. 126-127).
Adrianus Barlandus, a native of Baarland on Zuid-Beveland (Netherlands), became a pupil of Pieter de Schot at Ghent at the age of eleven. He continued his studies at the University of Louvain, probably in 1501. Having studied at the College of the Pig, Barlandus received the degree of Master of Arts in 1505 and began teaching Latin. In 1509 he was appointed professor of philosophy. In June 1510 he was elected procurator of the Dutch nation, a position he hold again in 1516, 1530, 1532, and 1538. He also served terms as quodlibetarius in 1512 and 1520 and as dean of the faculty of arts in 1518 and 1531. He became one of the most ardent supporters of Erasmus and the new learning at the University of Louvain. In autumn 1516 he composed a catalogue of Erasmus' writings for his Brother Cornelius. In 1518 he was offered the chair of Latin in the new Collegium Trilingue, but resigned in November 1519, partly because the friction with the faculty of arts, of which he was still a member. In 1526 he was appointed to the chair of eloquence, a post he held until his death. For the use of his students he composed a Compendiosae institutions artis oratoriae (1535) and De amplification oratoria (1536). Barlandus was a prolific writer and published a collection of elegant sayings in 1524, several historical works, among them De Hollandiae principibus (1519), De rerum gestarum a Brabantiae ducibus historia (1526), numerous paedagogical and moralistic works such as De ratione studii (1525) and Institutio christiani hominis (1526). His merits as a teacher and Latinist were especially recorded in Erasmus' Ciceronianus (1528) (cf. H. de Vocht, History of the Foundation and Rise of the Collegium Trilingue Lovaniense, 1517-1550, Louvain, 1951-1955, I, pp. 267-271).
<span style="line-height: 15.4px;">Biblioteca Belgica, B-262; Index Aureliensis 113.075; Universal STC, No. 37239 (two copies: Ghent and Brugge); Nijhoff-Kronenberg, no. 2360; A. Bömer, op. cit., II, p. 114, no. 1; R. Adam & A. Vanautgaerden, Thierry Martens et la figure le l'imprimeur humanistse, (Tournhout, 2009), p. 230, no. 256; E. Daxelet, op. cit., p. 159; K. Heireman, Tentoonstelling Dirk Martens: 1473-1973, (Alost. 1973), M239; R.F. Seybolt, Renaissance Student Life: the 'Paedologia' of Petrus Mosellanus, (Urbana, IL, 1927), p. XII.</span>
<span style="line-height: 15.4px;">II:) EXTREMELY RARE FIRST EDITION of Champier's most interesting work, a significant document for the development of cultural nationalism among Renaissance intellectuals. Champier was in Italy three times: in 1506, in 1509 and in 1515. During his last travel he spent some time at Pavia, where he was admitted to the 'collegium artistarum et medicorum'. The speech by Pietro Antonio Rustico, lecturer on logic and medicine, held on that occasion and printed toward the end of the volume, shows how proud Champier was about this honor. Rustico also alludes to Champier's family-ties in Italy, which he sees in the Campeggi families of Bologna and Pavia. At the end of the speech Rustico enumerates and praises the hitherto books published by Champier, important as an early bibliography. The main part of the volume consists of a 'epistolary duel' with Girolamo da Pavia, an Augustinian monk from Asti, with whom he had for five years an intensive correspondence through the Lyonese publisher Balthazar de Gabiano (cf. P. Jodogne, La correspondence de Symphorien Champier avec Jérôme de Pavie dans le 'Duellum epistolare', in: "The Late Middle Ages and the Dawn of Humanism Outside of Italy", G. Verneke & J. Ijsewijn, eds., Den Haag, 1972, pp. 44-56).</span>
In the Duellum Champier defends the French culture against the pretended superiority of the Italian claimed by some scholars, namely Sabellico, Foresti and Battista Mantovano. He also sees in many Italian writers detractors moved only by jealousy and malice and mentions Valla, Merula, Poggio, Pico and Girolamo Balbo. Fierce of his Lyonnais origins he praises the antique origins of his native city on the authority of Berosus, which however was rightly questioned by Girolamo da Pavia (cf. R. Cooper, Symphorien Champier et l'Italie, in: "L'Aube de la Renaissance", Genève, 1991, pp. 233-246). The volume contains furthermore various letters by Champier to others, e.g. a letter to Erasmus (Ep. 680a), in which Champier intervenes in his favor in the latter's dispute with Lefèvre d'Etaples over Psalm 8; a letter to Lefèvre d'Etaples followed by Champier's commentary on the Definitiones Asclepii (first published with Lazzarelli's translation in 1507), expressing his attitude to the Hermetic writings. But the book also contains letters addressed to Champier, mainly from other scholars and physicians, among them Alessandro Benedetti and Robert Cockburn, bishop of Ross (cf. A. Broadie, James Liddell on Concepts and Signs, in: "The Renaissance in Scotland: studies in literature, religion, history and culture", A.A. MacDonald, et al. eds., Leiden, 1994, p. 82; and J. Durkan, Robert Cockburn, bishop of Ross and French humanism, in: "Innes Review", IV, 1953, pp. 121-2.).
The volume closes with Catalogus preceptorum, patronorum, familarium et auditorum, in which Champier lists his teachers, patrons, friends and students.
The few libraries, which hold a copy of this work and the few scholars who mentions it in their articles, all pretend the work to be printed either at Basel or at Venice. It was in fact printed at Lyon, where the two printers Johann Froben and Jean Divineur were active for several Lyonese publishers such as (in the present volume) Luxembourg de Gabiano, Jacques Giunta and François Fradin. They even printed another work containing letters by Champier Duellum epistolare (1519) (see J. Baudrier, Bibliographie lyonnaise, VI, Lyon, 1904, p. 98; XI, Lyon, 1914, pp. 89-90).
Symphorien Champier, was born into a bourgeois family at Saint-Symphorien-sur-Croise, near Lyon and studied at the University of Paris before 1495, when he matriculated at the medical school of Montpellier, which granted him his doctorate in 1504. He taught liberal arts in Grenoble and took a doctorate in theology in 1502. In 1509 he was appointed physician to Antoine Duke of Lorraine, who brought him to Nancy. Champier followed the duke several time to Italy, where he was involved in the battles of Agnadello (1509) and Marignano (1515). During his stays in Italy he won recognition as an academic teacher from the University of Pavia. In 1519 he became an alderman in Lyon, and for the last twenty years of his life he was at the center of the cultural Renaissance of that city, while simultaneously promoting the study of medicine by helping to found the College of the Holy Trinity and sponsoring translations of, and writing commentaries on, the works of Hippocrates and Galen. In the 1530s he was involved in a controversy on the merits of Greek and Arab medicine with the German physician Lorenz Fries and also with the botanist Leonhard Fuchs. Michael Servetus, who was his student, wrote a defense of Champier against Fuchs, In Leonardum Fuchsium Apologia. Defensio pro Symphoriano Campeggio (1536). Champier became more and more hostile to Arabic medicine and in Clysteriorum campi contra Arabum (this work was ironically put by Rabelais in his library of Saint-Victor), he even goes so far to advise his readers to refrain from reading the Arabs. With over fifty titles to his credit, Champier was a very prolific author, editor and compiler. His most important writings were in medicine, pharmacy, philosophy, and occultism, but he also worked in theology, history, biography, genealogy, poetry, patristics, and many other fields. The famous scholar printer Etienne Dolet remarked in his Commentariorum linguae latinae (Lyon, 1536): 'From the schools of the physicians these rushed to the battle: Symphorien Champier, Jacques Dubois, Jean Ruelle, Jean Cop, François Rabelais, Charles Paludan. From all sides this serried band of doctors made such inroads into the camp of the barbarian that, wherever they stood, no place was left to the enemy' (cf. B.P. Copenhaver, Symphorien Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France, The Hague, 1978, pp. 45-86; and R. Cooper, Les derniers année de Symphorien Champier, in: "Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance", 47, 1998, pp. 25-50).
<span style="line-height: 15.4px;">Adams, C-1323; Index Aurelienis 135.510; Universal STC, no. 145128; P. Allut, Etude biographique sur Symphorien Champier, (Lyon, 1859), pp. 201, no. XXVII ("un des livres les plus rares de Champier"); J. Baudrier, Bibliographie Lyonnaise, vol. VI, (Lyon & Paris, 1904), p. 98; A. Pettegrew & M. Walsby, Books Published in France before 1601 in Latin and Languages other than French, Leiden, 2011, p. 385, no. 60685.</span>
