Aldis, M.A.
Cambridge: at the University Press 1916
learned friends and the scholarly world at large, but they
also stirred the admiration and emulation of contemporary
craftsmen. Aldine editions served as copies for publishers of
easy conscience to reprint to pirate, is perhaps too severe a
term for a period when the idea of legal property in literature
had scarcely been formulated-and they also served as a
standard of excellence to be aimed at by the more ambitious
printer desirous of attaining fame for his own productions.
On the death of Aldus Greek and Latin verses were
composed in his honor by his distinguished contemporary
Henri Estienne, who, during the first two decades of the
sixteenth century, shared with Jodocus Badius Ascensius the
honours of Paris printing.
Many of the books which Badius published contain a preface
reputation for correctness which his impressions acquired made it the desire of the foremost scholars of his day that
their books should bear his imprint. During his busy career of thirty-three years (1503-35) he printed more than seven
hundred books, including almost all the Latin classics and a number of important contemporary works. Many of these
bear on the title page his well-known device of a printing press at work, with the legend Prelum Ascensianum affixed
to it.
Henri Estienne, or, in the Latin form of the name, Henrlcus Stephanus, was the first of a celebrated family of
typographers who exercised their art in the French capital for more than a century and a half. He, also, was famed for
the accuracy of his editions. After his death, in 1520, Simon de Colines, who married his widow, carried on the
business until 1526, when it was handed over to Robert, Henri Estienne's second son. This Robert was not only, the
most distinguished member of the family both for scholarship and for the importance of his publications, but is,
perhaps, the most eminent in the whole list of French printers. His family circle included several scholars who were
engaged in the editorial work of the press; and Latin is said to have become the ordinary language of the household
from cellar to garret.
At this period the cause of learning and letters in France owed much to the patronage of King Francis I, but nothing at
all to the opposition of the theologians of the Sorbonne, whose antipathy to the new learning was so bigoted that in
1533 they endeavored to persuade the King to interdict altogether the practice of the art of printing in France. Robert
Estienne, whose editions of the Bible and other books which favored the spread of knowledge and enlightenment
brought him into conflict with the champions of ignorance, received encouragement and protection at the hands of the
sovereign, and in 1539 he was nominated printer to the king in Hebrew and Latin.
Printers Part 4 >
Printer Book Part 2
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