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Jacques Gohory’s Copy of the Poliphile (1546): A First Analysis of His Handwritten Marginalia

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Marginal Notes

Part of the book series: New Directions in Book History ((NDBH))

Abstract

The Baillieu Library contains a copy of the most beautiful book of the fifteenth-century, Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice, 1499). Styled as an allegorical dream, this humanist and architectural novel, written in a convoluted Italian, mixed with Latin and Greek, is renowned for its typographical design and its splendid woodcuts. The Baillieu also owns a copy of the first French translation, Hypnerotomachie (Paris, 1546), by Jean Martin. Embellished with figures which adapt some woodcuts of the 1499 edition, and enriched by others, the book is one of the great printing achievements of the period. Martin offers a very clever translation of the almost unintelligible Latinate Italian text, making the book available to a cultivated audience interested in antiquity, architecture, palaces, and gardens. The translation was a project supported by the diplomat, literate, and Paracelsian alchemist Jacques Gohory, who revised Martin’s translation and published in the 1554 edition a preface “revealing” the author’s name and commenting the text in detail. The Baillieu’s copy is unique, being Gohory’s own copy of the 1546 edition and a draft of his following editions. This chapter contains an analysis of the marginalia, and the spaces where Gohory annotates the text and writes his comments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Ubi humana omnia non nisi somnium esse docet (Venetiis: in aedibus Aldi Manuti, 1499). A second edition was issued in 1545 by the sons of Manutius.

  2. 2.

    It is not known by whom these excellent woodcuts were designed or engraved, but it can be observed that, stylistically, the images belong to the Venetian school.

  3. 3.

    Hypnerotomachia. The Strife of Love in a Dream (London: Simon Waterson, 1592).

  4. 4.

    Hypnerotomachie ov Discours du songe de Poliphile, Deduisant comme Amour le combat à l’occasion de Polia. Soubz la fiction de quoy l’aucteur monstrant que toutes choses terrestres ne sont que vanité, traicte de plusieurs matieres profitables, & dignes de memoire. Nouuellement traduict de langage Italien en Francois (A Paris. Pour Jaques Kerver aux deux Cochetz, Rue S. Jaques. M.D.XLVI. Avec Privilege du Roy); henceforth in this article given the short title Poliphile; held Baillieu [SpC/RB Mtc/19]. I would like to thank Special Collections, Baillieu Library, and the University Digitisation Centre, The University of Melbourne for their permission to use the images reproduced in this chapter.

  5. 5.

    The name of Etienne Delaune (1518–83) has also been suggested. Goujon collaborated again with Jean Martin on the latter’s translation of Vitruvius’s treatise De architectura, which was published in Paris in 1547.

  6. 6.

    Bembo (Gli Asolani) in 1545; Sannazaro (Arcadia) in 1544; Caviceo (Peregrino) in 1528.

  7. 7.

    This convoluted language has been compared with the “learned phrase” of Rabelais’ Limousin student whom the noble Pantagruel encounters in chapter 6 of Pantagruel, titled “How Pantagruel met with a Limousin, who too affectedly did counterfeit the French language”; see, for instance, Gilles Ménage, Menagiana ou les bons mots et remarques critiques, 3rd ed. (Paris: Bernard de La Monnoye, 1715), 4:69–85.

  8. 8.

    Gilles Polizzi, “Présentation,” in Francesco Colonna, Le songe de Poliphile, trad. de l’Hypnerotomachia Poliphili par Jean Martin (Paris, Kerver, 1546), présentation, translittération, notes, glossaire et index par Gilles Polizzi (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 2004), viii.

  9. 9.

    Leonardo Crasso was “a protonotary in the service of the papacy, captain of the citadel of Verona, Superintendent of Fortifications at Padua …, as a young man he had studied in Rome with one of the greatest scholars of his day”; Liane Lefaivre, Leon Battista Alberti’s “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili”: Re-Cognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 94.

  10. 10.

    Pietro Bembo, De Aetna (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1495/1496).

  11. 11.

    The 172 woodcuts include 39 floriated initials and 11 full-page illustrations.

  12. 12.

    As discussed below, the initial letters of the chapters form an acrostic, which reveals this “lover of Polia” as one “Frater Franciscus Columna.” Furthermore, a “Francisco alta columna” is indicated as the author of the book in a verse composition that appears printed in a single copy of the Hypnerotomachia now held in the collection of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin (Preussischer Kulturbesitz).

  13. 13.

    Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a cura di Giovanni Pozzi e Lucia Ciapponi, 2 vols. (Padua: Antenore, 1964).

  14. 14.

    Jim Hughes, “The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” codex99 (blog), 4 January 2011, http://www.codex99.com/typography/82.html.

  15. 15.

    “Leonardus Crassus Veronensis Guido Illustriss. Duci Urbini S.P.D.”

  16. 16.

    “Quod cum nostrati lingua loquatur, non minus ad eum cognoscendum opus sit graeca et romana, quam tusca et vernacula. Cogitavit enim … ut nisi, qui doctissimus foret in doctrinae suae sacrarium penetrare non posset, qui vero non doctus accederet non desperaret tamen. … Non hic res sunt vulgo expositae et triviis decantandae, sed quae ex philosophiae penu depromptae, et musarum fontibus haustae quadam novitate perpolitae omnium gratiam mercantur”; cited in Lefaivre, Leon Battista Alberti’s “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” 82.

  17. 17.

    Some copies have been annotated. See, for example, Dorothea Stichel, “Reading the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in the Cinquecento: Marginal Notes in a Copy at Modena,” in Aldus Manutius and Renaissance Culture: Essays in Memory of Franklin D. Murphy, ed. D. S. Zeidberg (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1998), 217–36.

  18. 18.

    Cited in Lefaivre, Leon Battista Alberti’s “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” 82.

  19. 19.

    Born in Ghent, Louis Blaubloom had a short career in the printing world (1520–1538). This collaboration with Kerver was his last contribution as a printer.

  20. 20.

    Francesco Colonna, Le songe de Poliphile, traduction de Jean Martin (1546), présentée, translittérée et annotée par Gilles Polizzi (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1994), 5 n1.

  21. 21.

    All the images included here are sourced from the Baillieu Library copy (published in Paris, 1546).

  22. 22.

    The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili runs to a total of 468 pages, while the Songe de Poliphile runs to 326 pages of the same size. As indicated in Polizzi, “Présentation”: “la contraction valorise le Livre I (70% de taux de restitution en moyenne contre 50% pour le Livre II) et les analyses architecturales (de 70 à 80% de restitution) ce qui change le caractère de l’oeuvre: l’architecture y tient relativement plus de place”; (ibid., xxxv n48).

  23. 23.

    See Martine Furno’s 2008 contribution to Architectura: Architecture, textes et images, an online database of books on architecture—manuscripts and prints published in France, written in French, or translated into French during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—curated by the Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance, Université François-Rabelais, Tours; “Les Livres d’architecture,” Architectura, accessed 8 November 2017, http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/ENSBA_LES1360.asp.

  24. 24.

    fols. 26, 27, 41v, 43, 43v, 74, 106, 107, 111v, 112v, 113, 113v.

  25. 25.

    Lefaivre, Leon Battista Alberti’s “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” 17. The author evokes here the Aldine edition, but this comment is also pertinent to the French edition.

  26. 26.

    Béroalde de Verville, Tableau des riches inventions couvertes du voile des feintes amoureuses, qui sont représentées dans le Songe de Poliphile, desvoilées des ombres du songe et subtilement exposées (Paris: M. Guillemot, 1600).

  27. 27.

    Gohory first translated the Discorsi in 1544 (this was a partial translation, published in Paris by Denis Janot). A new version was published in 1571 (likewise in Paris, by Le Mangnier – a full translation); and Il principe in 1571 (Paris: Le Mangnier). On Gohory as translator of Machiavelli, see Enea Balmas, “Jacques Gohory, traduttore del Machiavelli (con documenti inediti),” in Saggi e studi sul Rinascimento francese (Padua: Liviana, 1982), 23–73, or Rosanna Gorris Camos, “Dans le labyrinthe de Gohory, lecteur et traducteur de Machiavel,” Laboratoire italien 8 (2008): 195–229.

  28. 28.

    “Si la Cour ne m’eust lors transporté malheureusement de mes estudes, contre mon Genius”; Jacques Gohory, Le livre de la fontaine périlleuse (Paris: Jean Ruelle, 1572), 34 (fol. iijv).

  29. 29.

    “Delinearat primum eques Meltensis vir ingenio facili cultoque, ac me ut accurate legerem vehementer rogaverat”; Hypnerotomachie ou discours du songe de Poliphile (Paris: Jaques Kerver, 1554), fol. ã*3v.

  30. 30.

    Herberay was at this time at the pinnacle of his art, in the middle of his Amadis de Gaule enterprise, having already translated the first six books of the adventures of the virtuous knight, with two books remaining. According to Willis Bowen, Herberay had received the translation early in 1544 (the privilege is dated 8 March 1543, Old Style) from his publisher Vincent Sertenas, who was in association with Kerver; see Willis H. Bowen, “Jacques Gohory (1520–1576)” (PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1935).

  31. 31.

    Martin proceeds to explain how he obtained the book as well as exactly how he proceeded: “Mais s’il y en a quelques uns qui se fâchent de ce que je ne l’aie entièrement restitué selon l’italien: afin qu’ils ne m’en donnent blâme, je les veux supplier d’entendre comment je fus induit de mettre la main à cette œuvre. Incontinent après que j’eus mis en lumiere mon Arcadie de Sannazar, un mien ami, qui avait la copie de ce livre, me l’apporta pour me la communiquer et, après plusieurs propos, me pria que pour l’amour de lui, je voulusse prendre la charge de la revoir. Ce que je lui accordai, comme à celui pour lequel je voudrais faire beaucoup plus grand chose. Et, de fait, me trouvant pour l’heure un petit de loisir, commençai en sa presence, a changer non seulement quelques orthographes qui ne nous sont plus usitees, mais davantage, a transposer quelques mots qui retenaient encore le phrase italienne, tant corrompue, que veritablement je m’ebahis comment ce gentilhomme avait pu si bien en venir a bout; et certainement, cela me rendit si religieux en son endroit, que je n’ai jamais voulu amplifier ni diminuer aucune chose aux clauses qu’il avait faites, sinon parfois muer leur ordre afin de les rendre plus faciles”; Poliphile, fol. iiiv.

  32. 32.

    Poliphile, fols. iiir–v.

  33. 33.

    Elsa Kammerer, Jean de Vauzelles et le creuset lyonnais: Un humaniste catholique au service de Marguerite de Navarre entre France, Italie et Allemagne (1520–1550) (Geneva: Droz, 2013).

  34. 34.

    Kammerer, Jean de Vauzelles, 391–99.

  35. 35.

    Kammerer, Jean de Vauzelles, 52–58.

  36. 36.

    Kammerer, Jean de Vauzelles, 399–403.

  37. 37.

    Poliphile, fol. iiiv; the French for this phrase is quoted above, at n31.

  38. 38.

    Collation: folio: [1–6], 1–157 [158]; signatures: a6 A–2B6 2C8. An online version of the copy held in the collection of the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts [Paris, BENSBA, LES 1360] can be found at http://architectura.cesr.univ-tours.fr/Traite/Notice/ENSBA_LES1360.asp?param, with a notice by Martine Furno. This copy does not show any marginalia.

  39. 39.

    The phrase “the teacher in the text” is sourced from William Slights, Managing Readers: Printed Marginalia in English Renaissance Books (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 20. Elaine Whitaker suggests that “although readers’ alterations are idiosyncratic, they fall broadly into the following scheme: I Editing … II Interaction … III Avoidance”; cited in William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 16.

  40. 40.

    Gohory, Le livre de la fontaine périlleuse, 34 (fol. Eiijv).

  41. 41.

    “Car en tels livres de Steganographie on ne doit rien adjouter ne diminuer”; Gohory, Le livre de la fontaine périlleuse, 34 (fol. Eiijv).

  42. 42.

    I rely here on the scholarship of William Slights and William Sherman, who have, among many scholars, established a typology for reader’s notes. Particularly helpful in the case of this unique material are some of the functions listed by Slights, namely, amplification, emphasis, explication, rhetorical gloss, and translation.

  43. 43.

    Poliphile, fol. 58; another example is found at fol. 103.

  44. 44.

    Poliphile, fol. 103 [R6], being actually fol. 102. This error is not corrected in the 1554 edition nor in that of 1561.

  45. 45.

    Poliphile, fol. 51v.

  46. 46.

    Poliphile, fol. ã*3v. (All the following quotations from Gohory’s handwritten draft of the preface in Latin are found at the same location.)

  47. 47.

    The printed marginalia build a kind of Greek lexicon, as they all decipher the meaning of Greek names by explaining their etymological sense; for example, “Toxodore, don de poison” [Toxodore, gift of poison]; Poliphile, fol. 119.

  48. 48.

    Poliphile, fol. 43 (the orchard); fol. 118 (the headdress).

  49. 49.

    Poliphile, fols. 50–50v.

  50. 50.

    “Un Berger de subtil esprit dormoit sur une fontaine, et vouloit [Jupiter] qu’il jugeast du different survenu entre trois deesses s’estant despouillees nues devant sa face”; Poliphile, fol. 57.

  51. 51.

    Virgil, Aeneid, 1.26–27.

  52. 52.

    “Un Roy dedans un temple, prosterné devant une idole, et enquerant quele chose aviendroit d’une seule fille qu’il avoit … mais une nuict advint qu’en son giron tumba une pluye en gouttes d’or, dont elle conceut un enfant”; Poliphile, fol. 58v.

  53. 53.

    Ovid, Metamorphosis, 4.611.

  54. 54.

    Virgil, Eclogue, 10.69. This gloss is found at Poliphile, fol. 54v, intimating that none can resist the god of love.

  55. 55.

    On the importance of Roman culture in the Hypnerotomachia, see Frédéric Nau, “I/Y: La culture de la Rome antique dans l’œuvre de Francesco Colonna (1499),” Camenae 2 (2007): 1–23.

  56. 56.

    Ovid, Metamorphosis, 12.21; M.-A. Muret, “Elegia tertia,” in Juvenilia (Paris: Maurice de La Porte, 1552), lines 43–44.

  57. 57.

    Poliphile, fol. ã6v.

  58. 58.

    Among which are “Didon a Enee,” “Philis Demophoonti,” and a “Virgilii Imitatio” [Virgilian imitation]; Poliphile, fol. 132v.

  59. 59.

    Poliphile, fol. 19v.

  60. 60.

    Gohory’s considerable erudition as a humanist would be acknowledged some years later, when he was appointed to the position of the royal historiographer (1573–1576).

  61. 61.

    Poliphile, fol. 107v. Variations include “description d’un beau parterre” (fol. 113; fol. 129v), and “description de la fontaine” (fol. 125v; fol. 129v).

  62. 62.

    On alchemy, see Wallace Kirsop, “L’exégèse alchimique des textes littéraires à la fin du XVIIe siècle,” XVIIe siècle 120 (1978): 145–56.

  63. 63.

    “Proprieté du Chrysolithe” is referenced at Poliphile, fol. 58; “Proprieté du jaspe” at fol. 59v; “du coral” at fol. 62. However, no comment is made on the “Silenite de Perse, qui n’est point subject a la lime, et qui plaist a Cupido, pourautant qu’il maintient en santé, celuy qui le porte sur soy,” mentioned at fol. 62.

  64. 64.

    François Rabelais, “Gargantua,” in Œuvres Complètes, ed. Mireille Huchon (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1994), 29; the English is quoted from the translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty and Peter Antony Motteux (first published in 1693).

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  1. School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

    Véronique Duché-Gavet

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  1. Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Patrick Spedding

  2. University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Paul Tankard

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Duché-Gavet, V. (2021). Jacques Gohory’s Copy of the Poliphile (1546): A First Analysis of His Handwritten Marginalia. In: Spedding, P., Tankard, P. (eds) Marginal Notes. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56312-7_2

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