For a long time I had been planning a source-gathering trip to France due to the fact that some manuscripts of Biondo's Decades were in its libraries. The loud construction site on our building in Jyväskylä helped to set the trip on May-June 2023. Furthermore, since our seven-month-old daughter was now part of our lives, we decided it was best that she and my wife both accompanied me to France. This way we wouldn't have to spend any time apart from each other. In the next three blogs, I give some glimpses of what I have discovered on my voyage.
The aim of this journey was to consult, digitize and analyse five manuscripts, one in Besançon, three in Paris, and one in Saint-Omer. Some of the manuscripts had very scarce information online, so I was partly going in blind. The first destination was Besançon in the Eastern France, so we decided to fly to Zurich, and head to Besançon by train. The train journey took about four hours and finally Besançon was within sight.
Besançon is an ancient city as it has had occupants since Antiquity. It was called Vesontio by the Romans and Julius Caesar writes about the city in his Gallic Wars this way:
Vesontio [...] is the largest town of the Sequani, [...] and so fortified was it by the nature of the ground, as to afford a great facility for protracting the war, inasmuch as the river Doubs almost surrounds the whole town, as though it were traced round it with a pair of compasses. A mountain of great height shuts in the remaining space, which is not more than 600 feet, where the river leaves a gap, in such a manner that the roots of that mountain extend to the river's bank on either side. A wall thrown around it makes a citadel of this [mountain], and connects it with the town. (De bello Gallico 1.38).
Truly, as you can see, the city is surrounded by the river, giving it good protection by nature.
The library, where I was heading, Bibliothèque d'étude et conservation, was on the historical city centre, inside the river loop, or la Boucle, as the locals would say. The library was easy to find and I was surprised that it also functioned as municipal library, so I was perusing 500 years old manuscripts among the elderly locals coming to read the daily newspaper. This detail made the whole library feel like a cozy living room. The staff of the library was very nice and helpful and the director of the manuscript department there even wanted to discuss in depth about the topic of my research.
Sed ad rem, as Biondo would say. Ms. 855, which I came to inspect, is a copy of Biondo's first decade, i.e. it encompasses years c. 400-800 of the Late Roman Empire. Due to its script being southern (semi)textualis (or Rotunda), its origin is probably in the Italian peninsula. It was made ante 1482 due to a colophon (in French) in the end, saying it once belonged to the widow of master Jean L'Orfèvre. This widow (Gillette) died in 1482.
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| Besançon, Bibliothèque d'étude et conservation, ms. 855, f. 1r |
Jean L'Orfèvre (c.1410-c.1476) was a Flemish statesman. He studied law at the newly-founded University of Leuven in 1427-31, and even serving as headmaster of the university in 1435. L'Orfèvre had good relations with Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good (1396-1467) and thus he was appointed as president of the council of Luxembourg in 1444. After helping Duke with many diplomatic affairs, he was awarded with an estate as well as the chancellorship of Brabant in 1463. L'Orfèvre travelled to Italy many times, possibly acquiring our Decades copy during those trips. After his death in 1476, the estate in the Low Lands (and possibly his library) moved to the widow Gillette.
After Gillette's death, the trace becomes cold, until Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (1517-1586). He was of newly-rich family, but grew to be one of the most powerful men in the sixteenth-century Europe. He was cardinal and archbishop of Besançon and worked as an advisor to Holy Roman emperor Charles V (1500-1558) and to king Philip II (1527-1598) of Spain! He was a bibliophile, had a talent for languages, studied at Padua and Leuven(!), and had possibly six private libraries. One of these was at his hometown Besançon, and another one at Brussels, where Granvelle served the Habsburg regime until 1564. From the Low Lands (possibly Brussels or Leuven) he could have acquired our manuscript, unaccounted for between 1482-1560s. After returning to Besançon in 1564, Granvelle brought a part of his library with him to his Palais Granvelle, where our manuscript also went. This palace had a massive library of over 1300 books, both manuscripts and printed copies.
After Granvelle's death in 1586, his library remained in the family until its last member died in 1607. In the inventory of the same year (ms. 1627), our manuscript is mentioned as Blondi Flavii decas prima (third from the bottom in the image below). Most of the Granvelle library was later bought by abbot of St. Vincent in Besançon, Jean-Baptiste Boisot (1638-1694). Our manuscript has an ex libris from his library. After Boisot died, he bequeathed his library to the abbey, on the condition that it would be open to the public, thus forming one of the first public libraries in France! This collection formed the nucleus of the Municipal library of Besançon, where ms. 855 still is today.
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| Besançon, Bibliothèque d'étude et conservation, ms. 1627, f. 67r |
In the ms. 855, someone has marked many events concerning the Franks and the Burgundians, therefore possibly indicating that the reader of this manuscript was of French or Burgundian (including Besançon) origin. Although, this requires some further research, and I hope to discover more nuances in these Overall, the Besançon library was a delightful visit and I'll hope to soon be able to return there.
Next, we shall head to Paris. Part two coming soon!
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| The courtyard of the Granvelle palace |
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