Adagiorum ad studiosae juventutis utilitatem, ex Erasmicis Chiliadibus excerptorum epitome.
Paris: apud Simon de Colines, 1523. First edition. Contemporary French blind-stamped calf over wooden boards, panelled with intersecting fillets and lozenge tools; remains of clasps present, metal attachments preserved; spine with raised bands. ff. 373 [22]. Wide-margined and notably clean throughout. Early manuscript moral sonnet signed “Frater Hugo Thubert” on the front flyleaf, and a biblical motto “Si quis vult post me venire…” in a seemingly different sixteenth-century hand on the rear flyleaf. With a few early marginal annotations in a sixteenth-century hand on ff. 39 and 253, and f. 9 ruled with brown-ink frames. Leather somewhat worn, including a damaged area on the front panel and some loss at the lower corners, with surface abrasions and light cracking along the joints; spine rubbed at head and foot. A complete, unsophisticated copy in its original binding, retaining notable early reader’s marks; overall in very good condition.
A rare example of early educational use of Erasmus’s Adagia, in its contemporary French leather binding and preserved with a handwritten French moral sonnet by its sixteenth-century owner, Hugues Thubert.
First edition of Jean Brouchier’s pedagogical epitome of Erasmus’s Adagia, printed by Simon de Colines in the early years of his Paris press. Though derived entirely from Erasmus’s celebrated Chiliades, the structure and didactic programme are Brouchier’s: an abridged sequence of selected adages arranged for the studiosa iuventus, intended to make the moral, historical, and rhetorical substance of the Adagia usable in the Latin classroom at an elementary stage.
Brouchier’s dedicatory epistle explains the rationale behind the epitome: while the Adagia had become essential reading for humanist education, their full scope far exceeded what younger students could manage. His selection extracts the most serviceable sententiae, supplying a compact repertory suited to memorization, written exercises, and introductory rhetorical training. The epitome reflects early humanist classroom practice, when teachers adopted shorter selections to provide beginners with a practical corpus for variation and elementary composition, while still introducing Erasmus’s ethical and stylistic programme.
A dedicatory letter to the magistrates of Florence precedes the text, outlining Brouchier’s aims and directing readers to Erasmus for fuller commentary. The work aligns with Colines’s broader programme of humanist educational printing, which equipped collèges and monastic schools with clear, reliable editions of classical and contemporary authors. Colines’s architectural title border, clean roman types, and spacious mise-en-page underscore the book’s intended function as a school text designed for legibility and daily use. As an adaptation of one of Erasmus’s most influential works, Brouchier’s Epitome documents an early stage in the mediation, condensation, and classroom transmission of the Adagia, illustrating the practical needs of humanist teaching in early sixteenth-century France.
Brouchier’s biography is largely undocumented; he is known only through a small group of humanist pedagogical editions issued in Paris between 1511 and 1534. Three of these—the present Epitome and the two editions of the Commentarii in Septem Sapientum Graeciae Apophthegmata—were printed by Simon de Colines, placing Brouchier within the circle of authors associated with Colines’s early humanist programme.
This copy preserves an unpublished French moral sonnet in the hand of Hugues Thubert, written on the front flyleaf and signed “Frater Hugo Thubert.” The poem belongs to the broad and often fragmentary vernacular literary production of the sixteenth century, when humanist education and the widespread use of printed and manuscript verse encouraged even non-professional writers to adopt classical forms for ethical reflection. Autograph poems of this type—especially those entered into the flyleaves of school and humanist books—are relatively uncommon, and they offer intimate evidence of personal reading practices. Thubert’s sonnet, in fluent but regionally inflected French, adapts the sonnet structure to a concise moral argument, setting impurity and chastity in rhetorical opposition, a mode familiar from contemporary humanist and devotional writing.
An early owner of the present volume, Hugues (Hugo) Thubert was a Benedictine of the Congregation of Chezal-Benoît, listed in the 1529 matricule as a monk of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and later recorded as having left the order (TELMA, IRHT). He signs himself in this volume and appears again as owner of another book—Jean Grolier’s former copy of Gaspar Bracellus’s Ortus delitiarum (Milan, Minutianus, 1515; Austin 357; Michon 24A)—which he inscribed with his name and the date 1580, and which subsequently entered the abbey library of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. These traces collectively document a Paris-based sixteenth-century reader whose surviving books display consistent humanistic engagement.
Rare; USTC lists 14 copies, only six outside France, and RBH records a single sale (2024).
References: USTC 180884; IRHT–CNRS. (n.d.). Matricule de la Congrégation de Chezal-Benoît (1529). In TELMA – Traitement électronique des manuscrits.
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Price: €12,000.00