Les vrais pourtraits des hommes illustres en pieté et doctrine, du travail desquels Dieu s’est servi en ces derniers temps, pour remettre sus la vraye religion en divers pays de la Chestienté. Avec les descriptions de leur vie et de leurs faits plus memorables Plus, quaratequatre emblems chrestiens. Traduicts du latin de Théodore de Bèze

PROTESTANT MARTYROLOGIUM AND EMBLEM BOOK

THE FIRST PORTRAIT GALLERY OF REFORMERS

4to (190x135 mm). [8], 284, [4] pp. Collation: (...)4 A-Nn4. With 49 full-page woodcut portraits within decorated woodcut borders (including the dedicatee's portrait on title-page verso), 11 woodcut borders without portraits but with two wind-heads and text in the center, and 44 half-page emblematic woodcuts within elaborate woodcut borders. Printer's device on title page. Woodcut initials, head- and tail-pieces. 18th-century mottled calf, gilt spine with lettering piece, all edges red. Engraved armorial bookplate on the front pastedown with manuscript shelf mark ("J VI 13 N° 1616"). Slightly uniformly browned, some marginal light staining, all in all a good copy with very strong impression of the illustrations.

Rare first French edition containing 12 additional portraits compared to the first Latin edition printed by de Laon a few months earlier in 1580 (Icones, id est verae imagines virorum doctrina simul et pietate illustrium). The text was translated into French by Simon Goulard (1543-1628), pastor in St. Jervais, presbyter, and Bèze's successor as moderator in the Venerable Company of the Pastors.

The work is dedicated to the young King James VI of Scotland, in whom Bèze celebrates the chief of a new protestant nation. In the dedication Bèze mentions his friends G. Buchanan and P. Young, who were James' tutors, and other English and Scottish figures who had moved to Geneva, like Ch. Goodmann, J. Knox, H. Scrimger, and A. Melville. Finally he explains that his work was conceived as a complement of Jean Crespin's Histoire des martyrs (1554).

The Icones (or Vrais pourtraits) is an extremely innovative work, which can be read both as a protestant martyrologium and an emblem books, but it is much more than that. The first part, containing the portraits of martyrs and other personalities, is divided into eleven geographical areas and, within each area, the names are arranged in alphabetical order. The structure works like a memory theater that helps to memorize the exemplar lives of the characters described. The choice is very personal insofar it includes catholic names as Francis I and Erasmus and even heretical personalities such as Michel de l'Hôpital. Also the exclusion of the Fathers of the Church is quite striking. The second part is a collection of emblems relating to Protestantism.

"This is a work in which word and image interrelate in what are innovative ways […] In Icones, both the first part of the book (that properly constitutes the Icones itself) and the (appended or, as I argue, commenting and concluding) collection of emblems, demonstrate the characteristics of what I have called extrusion: the self-designation of one or more elements, and the singling-out, by one part of the text, of another section. Rather than work to create a smooth surface in which word and image can slide together to form a hieroglyph, then, Icones acts in two ways. First, it is at times a text that competes with itself: word and mage struggle within it for primacy and do not always act in lockstep to produce meaning. The competition mirrors the relationship between Bèze's words and the words of the martyrs. Secondly, parts of the text create a mirror-effect, reflecting in their structure certain portions of the earlier text. The concluding emblems can indeed be seen as metatext […] The speaking body will not be recuperated, as in Crespin, by the compilation of textual fragments. Rather than quote or memorialize through citation, Bèze hopes to create a dynamic verbal and visual theater through the emblematic body. The words of the martyrs will speak through the interpretation and careful reading of Bèze tripartite text… The Jesuits accused Bèze of himself practicing the very idolatry he condemns. Yet Bèze does not conceive of his Icones as idols […] De Bèze includes woodcuts combined with tales of the martyrs to cause word and image to conjoin to produce a presence with whom he may converse" (C. Randall Coats, Memorializing the Martyr: Word, Image, and the Emblematic Body in Théodore de Bèze's 'Icones', in: "(Em)bodying the Word. Textual Resurrections in the Martyrological Narratives of Foxe, Crespin, de Bèze and d'Aubigné", New York, 1992, pp. 85-115).

The plan to publish a portrait gallery of reformers is first mentioned in a letter to Bèze's friend in Nürnberg, the pastor Lorenz Dürnhoffer dated December 3, 1577, asking for a portrait of Joachim Camerarius. On August 7, 1570 he applied for a printing license, which he obtained the same day from the City Council. Judging from the dedication to King James VI of Scotland, dated March 1, 1580, the printing of the Latin edition was finished toward the end of February. What Bèze produced was luxurious book: "Comme on le voit, les décors abondent et la structure est très rigoureuse. Le nombre de pages blanches est révelateur. On en compte pas moins de 34. Compte tenu du coût du papier, qui représente environ le tiers des coûts d'impression, il n'est pas permis d'hésiter. Il s'agit d'une edition de luxe, idée confortée par la profusion des décors gravés et l'aération de la mise en page" (Ch. Chazalon, Les 'Icones' de Théodore de Bèze. Étude d'une galerie idéale de portraits imprimé eau temps des guerres de Religion, Genève, 2001, I, p. 10; see also M. Jardeni, 'Eruditio ancilla reformationis': Theodore Beza and the Use of History in the 'Icones', in: "Knowledge and religion in early modern Europe: studies in honor of Michael Heyd", A. Be-Tov, ed., Boston, 2007, pp. 13-24).

The title of the work reveals Bèze's purpose and hints to its contents: "True portraits of the men illustrious for learning and piety, by whose ministry chiefly, on the one hand, the studies of good letters were restored, and, on the other, true religion was renewed in various regions of the Christian world […]; with the addition of descriptions of their life and work". The Pourtraits are arranged in geographical or national groups: the vanguard of the Reformation in England, Bohemia, and Italy (e.g. John Wyclif, Jan Hus, Jerome of Prague, and Girolamo Savonarola); the reformers and humanists of Germany (e.g. Luther and Melanchthon, but also Erasmus and Reuchlin); six martyrs of Germany (among them Heinrich von Zupphen and Wolfgang Schuch); the reformers of Switzerland and neighboring regions (e.g. Huldrych Zwingli, Johannes Oecolampadius, Jean Calvin, but also Conrad Gesner, Sebastian Münster, Johann Froben, and the Italian Pietro Martire Vermigli); reformers, humanists and martyrs of France (e.g. François I, Marguerite de Valois, Guillaume Budé, François Vatable, Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples, Clement Marot, Robert Estienne); Waldensian martyrs; reformers and martyrs of England (e.g. Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer); reformers and martyrs of Scotland (e.g. John Knox, Patrick Hamilton, Adam Wallace); reformers and martyrs of Belgium and Netherlands; reformers of Poland (John a Lasco); reformers and martyrs of Italy (Pomponio Algieri, Fanino Fanini, Olimpia Fulvia Morata); reformers and martyrs of Spain (e.g. Juan de Enzinas, Juan Diaz). The works contains about a hundred individual tributes, but Bèze could furnish only 49 portraits at the time of the publication of the present French edition, since he attached great importance to the authenticity of the portraits. All the portraits are placed within decorative woodcuts borders (of ten different variants). These are placed on the left hand side, whereas the biographical notices (sometimes accompanied by an epigram) are placed on the opposite page (cf. E.J. Hutchinson, Written Monuments: Theodore Beza's 'Icones' as Testament to and Program for Reformist Humanism, in: "Beyond Calvin: Essays on the Diversity of the Reformed Tradition", W.B. Littlejohn & J. Tomes, Leesburg, VA, 2017, pp. 21-62; see also T. Casini, Ritratti parlanti: collezionismo e biografie illustrate nei secoli XVI e XVII, Firenze, 2004, pp. 88-90).

It is certainly remarkable that just only one portrait of a woman is extant in the gallery: that of Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549), sister of King Francis I of France, author of the collection of short stories Heptaméron (1558), who, although espousing reform within the Catholic Church and often serving as a mediator between Roman Catholics and Protestants, never joined the Reformation (cf. J.A. Reid, King's Sister - Queen of Dissent: Marguerite de Navarre and her Evangelical Network, Leiden, 2009, p. 556).

Among the biographical entries another notable woman is eulogized by Bèze: Olimpia Fulvia Morata (1526-1555), Italian by birth, was an extraordinary figure in the sixteenth-century European culture. Her reputation as an exceptional humanist scholar, exile 'religionis causa' in Germany, was recognized all over Europe. Her fame allowed to claim that she was the first female university professor of Greek in the Empire (cf. O. Millet, Bèze poète et fondateur de la mémoire huguenote, in: "Revue d'Histoire du Protestantisme", 4, 2019, p. 614; see also L. Felici, Olympia Fulvia Morata 'Glory of Womenkind both for Piety and for Wisdom', in: "Fruits of migration. Heterodox Italian Migrants and Central European Culture, 1550-1620", C. Zwierlein & V. Lavenia, eds., Leiden, 2018, p. 174). Furthermore, six women martyrs are mentioned in the section on Spain.

After the portraits follow forty-four woodcut emblems, enclosed in ornamental frames of different forms and below an epigram in an elegant and well-spaced italic, which constitute a surprisingly anomaly within Bèze's oeuvre. "Some thirteen years before Bèze's emblems appeared, Georgette de Montenay had written an emblem book, Les Emblèmes ou devises chrétiennes (1567), dedicated to the Calvinist Queen of Navarre, Jean d'Albret, in which she uses the genre to preach her Christian and often overtly Calvinist faith. Was this the stimulus which caused Bèze to compose his forty-four emblems? If so, they could hardly be more different. To start with they are of course in Latin [in the Latin edition, in French in the French edition], and function in a fundamentally different manner: Georgette de Montenay's emblems mostly rely on a web of complex allusions to the Bible, both through the text (many mottoes are quotations which need to be recognized and completed), and through the engraved picturae executed by Pierre Woeriot, whereas Bèze's emblems are mostly striking in their simplicity and logical clarity […] Certain emblems express general moral truths without reference to faith. But others are outspoken in their espousal of the Protestant and anti-Papist cause […] [Bèze's] impact on contemporary writers was immediate: two emblem books of 1581 show undoubted and precise influence [Nicholas Reusner and Juan de Borja]" (A. Adams, The 'Emblemata' of Théodore de Bèze, 1580, in: "Mundus Emblematicus. Studies in Neo-Latin Emblem Books", K.A.E. Enenkel & A.S.Q. Visser, eds., Turnhout, 2003, pp. 72, 77, 92; see also A. Adams, Webs of Allusion: French Protestant Emblem Books of the Sixteenth Century, Genève, 2003, pp. 119-154).

Some critics, including some of his own ranks, accused Bèze of iconophilia. "Théodore de Bèze, en dépit des protestations d'orthodoxie qu'il accumule dans l'épître dédicatoire et en dépit de l'inspiration aristotélicienne qui caractérise effectivement sa conception et son utilisation de l'image aussi bien dans les Emblemata que dans les Icones, n'est pas à l'abri de la tentation hagiographique, qui dépasse en profondeur et en complexité l'iconophilie don't on a voulu le taxer" (R. Stawarz-Luginbühl, Les 'Emblemata/Emblèmes Chrestiennes, 1580/1581 de Théodore de Bèze: un recueil d'emblèmes humaniste et protestant, in: "Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance", 67/3, 2005, pp. 622-623; see also P. Eichel-Lojkine, Les 'Vrais Portraits' de Théodore de Bèze: comment regarder des images laïques?, in: "Résistence de l'image", Paris, 1992, pp. 105-137).

Quite a few speculations about the authorship of the portraits, the emblems and the borders were made (cf. Ch. Chazalon, op. cit., pp. 34-38 and E. Doumergue, Iconographie Calvinienne, Lausanne 1909, pp. 52-56), without coming to conclusive results. But one name always turns up, that of Pierre Eskrich (also Cruche or Vase, ca. 1520-ca. 1590), a master embroiderer, who converted to the reformed religion, and was very close in the humanist circles and in the world of the printers in Lyon, before settling down in Geneva. His first woodcuts appeared in Lyons around 1548. He produces woocut illustrations for French translations of Boccaccio Ovid, for the Picta Poesis of Barthélémy Aneau, for the Pegma of Pierre Cousteau and numerous illustrations for various Bibles printed at Lyons and Geneva (cf. P.C. Finney, A Note on de Bèze's 'Icones', in: "Seeing Beyond the World: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition", Grand Rapids, MI, 1999, p. 261-262).

"C'est dans une toute autre perspective bien sûr qu'Eskrich, un an auparavant, réalise, peut-être avec d'autres graveurs, le portrait de Luther et ceux d'autres réformateurs et précurseurs de la Réforme parus à Genève chez Jean de Laon dans Les vrais pourtraits des hommes illustres de son ami Théodore de Bèze, suivis de ses Emblèmes, qui sont, eux , incontestablement de sa main. On sait par sa correspondance que Bèze s'était préoccupé avec zèle de rassembler les portraits les plus fidèles des réformateurs, et à une époque où la vogue du portrait, et particulièrement du portrait en taille-douce, ne cesse de s'affirmer après les années 1570, le graveur démontre ici que le portrait gravé sur bois conserve toutes ses lettres de noblesse. C'est le premier exemple protestant de publication d'anthologie de portraits, genre iconographique très répandu au XVIe siècle, puisant ses racines dans des modèles antiques et classicisants, pour une audience de culture relativement élevée" (V. Selbach, Artisan ou artiste? La carrièrede Pierre Eskrich, brodeur,peintre et graveur, dans lesmilieux humanistes de Lyon et Genève (ca. 1550-1580), in: "Chrétiens et sociétés. Numéro spécial I: Le calvinisme et les arts",‎ 2011, p. 44).

F. Gardy & A. Dufour, Bibliographie des oeuvres théologiques, littéraires, historiques et juridiques de Théodore de Bèze, Genève, 1960, 340; Index Aureliensis, 118.752; Adams, B-921; P. Chaix, A. Dufour & G. Moeckli, Les livres imprimés à Genève de 1550 à 1600, Genève, 1966, p. 100; T. de Bèze, Les vrais poutraits des homes illustres, A. Dufour, ed., Genève, 1986, passim; A. Henkel & A. Schöne, Emblemata. Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart, 1978, pp. XXXV-XXXVI; J. Landwehr, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese Book of Devices and Emblems, 1534-1827: A Bibliography, Utrecht, 1976, p. 52; M. Pelc, Illustrium imagines: Das Portraitbuch der Renaissance, Leiden, 2002, pp. 56-57; P. Tanner, Paolo Giovio, Pietro Perna, Tobias Stimmer und ihre Porträtwerke, in: "Tobias Stimmer, 1539-1584", Basel, 1984, p. 239, no. 124a; M. Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, Rome, 1975, p. 270.