A UNIQUE SURVIVAL
DESPAUTÈRE, Jean, and Gabriel DU PRÉAU.
Universa grammatica, cum doctissimis commentariis, ex praestantissimis quibusque Grammaticis desumptis, & huc fere ad verbum transpositis, atque maiori ex parte in Gallicum sermonem traductis … Postrema editio locupletata …
Lyons, Pierre Rigaud, 1608.
8vo, ff. 296, [8]; title printed in red and black with woodcut printer’s device, woodcut initials, typographic and woodcut headpieces; title-page wormed and slightly stained, first quire wormed at head and stained in gutter, other staining or browning throughout, a few ink stains in quires H–I and on T8; bound in contemporary deerskin over pasteboard, sewn on 3 tanned thongs; binding rubbed with abrasions and wormholes, sewing supports broken at front joint, quire I almost detached; manuscript note in ink to head of title-page.
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Universa grammatica, cum doctissimis commentariis, ex praestantissimis quibusque Grammaticis desumptis, & huc fere ad verbum transpositis, atque maiori ex parte in Gallicum sermonem traductis … Postrema editio locupletata …
A seemingly unrecorded issue of this comprehensive Latin grammar aimed at children, in a simple contemporary binding.
A popular schoolbook throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the first edition to use the title Contextus universae grammaticae Despauterianae appeared in Lyons in 1529. All of the numerous editions survive in just one or two copies; we have not located another copy of this edition, although Lyons editions of the same year by Jean Didier (recorded on USTC) and Jean Pillehotte (on OCLC, albeit with no copies currently located) are plausibly issues of the same. It was printed numerous times by Josse Bade, Robert Estienne, Sébastien Gryphe, Jean de Tournes, Christophe Plantin, and many others. In the seventeenth century an abbreviated version called Despauterius minor appeared, and in its French incarnation, Le petit Behourt, ou le nouveau Despautère, gradually superseded the Latin version. It was popular in Jesuit schools and Despautère became a byword for Latin grammar.
Jean Despautère (Van Pauteren, 1460–1520) produced several works on Latin grammar, the first being printed in 1512 with the title Commentarii grammatici, and in 1514 his Grammaticae institutionis rudimenta were issued. His text was in hexameters, which appear in the present edition in a larger roman font, surrounded by copious notes in both Latin and French. Gabriel du Préau (1511–1588), professor at the Collège de Navarre in Paris, introduced the bilingual text to aid younger learners; his version was regularly printed from 1562 until 1637.
We have found no other copy of this issue, nor is it listed in Desgraves’s bibliography of Despautère.
For the Didier issue, see USTC 6900989 (listing just two copies, both in France). See Gascard, ‘Les commentateurs de Despautère: presentation d’une bibliographie des manuels de grammaire latine au XVIIe siècle’, Les humanités classiques (May 1997), pp. 215–234; Desgraves, ‘Contribution à la bibliographie des éditions de Joannes Despauterius († Comines 1520) aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’ in Mémoires de la société d'histoire de Comines-Warneton et de la région VII (1977), pp. 385–402.
