The volumes had entered the market by the 17th century: the Claudianus, now in the Bibliotheca Brookeriana, was on the shelves of the Monastère Saint-Bernard, Fontaine-lès-Dijon; the Sannazaro, now in Eton College Library, was in the library of Louis Émery Bigot (1626-1689), and sold at auction in 1706. Guglielmo Bruto Icilio Timoleone, Count Libri (Libri-Carrucci) (1803-1869) acquired the Suetonius, and offered it in the sale in 1862 of the “Reserved and Most Valuable Portion of the Libri Collection,” with a plate in his Monuments inédits ou peu connus faisant partie du cabinet de Guillaume Libri (London 1862). The Claudianus and Silius Italicus both passed in 1914 through the hands of a Parisian bookseller, Théophile Belin, who supposed that the Greek letters “α ι” identify the accomplished classical scholar Jacques Amyot (1513-1593).
Following an intense study of Greek and Hebrew in Paris at the Collège of Cardinal Lemoine and Collège royal, Jacques Amyot was appointed in 1536 or 1537 professor of Greek at the university of Bourges, and preceptor to the sons of Guillaume Bochetel, Conseiller du roi and Secrétaire des finance. Within several years Amyot had produced French translations from the original Greek of two plays of Euripides, commenced work on a translation of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, and completed his first published work, a translation of Heliodorus (1548). In the spring of 1548, he travelled with his patron Jean de Morvilliers to Italy, where he remained until 1552, making effective use of manuscripts in Venice and the Vatican. Returning to France, Amyot was appointed in 1557 tutor to the future kings Charles IX and Henry III, and in 1570 was appointed to the bishopric of Auxerre.
Jacques Amyot rarely entered his name in his books,1 and our knowledge of his library is dependent on a post-mortem inventory (6-12 February 1593), compiled by a doctor of theology and a lawyer, which lists 164 books located in a study near the deceased’s bedroom in Auxerre. This inventory (Archives départementales de l’Yonne, G 1838) is dominated by works of biblical exegesis, editions of the Fathers of the Church, etc, which Amyot presumably required for his pastoral work; it contains almost no works by ancient authors, nor humanist commentaries on them, or literature. None of the five books with motto “Susque deque” and monogram “α ι” corresponds to an entry in the post-mortem inventory. Sylvie Le Clech-Charton, who has edited the inventory, supposed that Amyot gifted books during his lifetime to his brother Jean, or to his nephews. A recent attempt by Romain Mellini to locate the physical books yielded little fruit: just three volumes, corresponding to varying degrees with inventory entries. However, Mellini identifies four, heavily annotated volumes, absent from the inventory, as indisputably belonging to Amyot, sustaining conjecture of disposals prior to Amyot’s death.2 As no use by Amyot of the motto “Susque deque” has been reported by literary historians, his ownership of these volumes remains at best questionable.
Roger Mazelier, a scholar focusing on messages hidden in literary texts during oppressive times, interpreted the lettering on the Silius Italicus as “OC Sursumque Deorsumque OC”, with “OC” a coded celebration of Occitan culture.3
1. Romain Menini, “La bibliothèque du traducteur: Amyot et ses exemplaires de travail” in Bibliothèques des humanistes français 10 (2018), ¶9 (“il semble que Jacques Amyot n’ait que rarement porté son nom ou son ex-libris sur les volumes dont il fit usage”; footnote 9: “Nous n’avons croisé cette devise [susqz deqve] nulle part ailleurs, non plus que localisé ces volumes” [online, link]).
2. Sylvie Le Clech-Charton, Les Vies de Jacques Amyot, édition commentée de documents inédits (Paris 2013), pp.139-232; Sylvie Le Clech, Jacques Amyot à Auxerre, un évêque engagé (1570-1593). Colloque Jacques Amyot, une voix savante du XVIè siècle, Département de Seine-et-Marne, Musée d’arte et d’histoire de Melun, Université de Nanterre, 2013 [online, link].
3. R. Mazelier, “Chronogrammes et cabale chez les troubadours et l’Archiprêtre de Hita” in Cahiers d’études cathares 41 (1990), pp.1-205 (pp.47-49, with illustration taken from a Belin catalogue: “Sus était autrefois une préposition et un adverbe signifiant: ‘Sur’, ‘dessus’, ‘en haut’ et dérivait de Susum dont les latins se servaient au lieu de Sursum. Susque Deque était employé pour Sursumque Deorsumque, en haut et en bas, sceau des vicissitudes d’OC que le malicieux Sébastien Gryphe (pseudonyme tire de gryphos, qui, en grec, signife: énigme) l’hélléniste et hermétiste éditeur de Rabelais, mettait sous le signe de Silius Italicus, renommé pour son peu d’esprit d’après Pline: majori cura quam ingenio. Les cabalistes empruntaient à n’importe quel texte signifiant sa puissance sémantique en langue mélangée comme de nos jours les hebdomadaires satiriques cueillent et utilisent les perles de la presse quotidienne. Ici, c’est le titre latin qui a été retenu pour le jeu. De Bello punico donne, en langue macaronique: ‘Sur la guerre d’OC puni’.”).
(1) Claudius Claudianus, Cl. Claudiani poetae celeberrimi Opera (Lyon: Sébastien Gryphe, 1548)
Line drawing from Libri’s Monuments inédits
provenance
● unidentified owner using the motto “Susque deque” and monogram “ι α” (iota alpha)
● Samuel Weller Singer (1783-1858)
● S. Leigh Sotheby & John Wilkinson, Catalogue of a selected portion of choice & interesting copies of rare & valuable works collected by the late S.W. Singer, Esq., London, 24 May 1860, lot 244 (“in old ornamented binding, the sides covered with gilt scroll tooling, having impressed on the centre of each ck svsqz deqve in letters of gold”)
● Guglielmo Bruto Icilio Timoleone, Count Libri (Libri-Carrucci) (1803-1869)
● S. Leigh Sotheby & John Wilkinson, Catalogue of the reserved & most valuable portion of the Libri collection, London, 25-29 July 1862, lot 518 (“brown morocco, in compartments, gilt edges … A pretty French binding of the XVIth century, gilt in full in a very singular style. It will be found figured in Libri’s Inedited Monuments”)
● Beck (?) – bought in sale (£5 15s)
literature
Monuments inédits ou peu connus, faisant partie du cabinet de Guillaume Libri et qui se rapportent à l’histoire des arts du dessin considérés dans leur application à l’ornement des livres (Paris 1862), Pl. 47 (“Reliure française du XVIe Siècle, en maroquin brun” [link])