La Forest de conscience contenant la chasse des princes spirituelle. Paris: Michel Le Noir [for the author], 30 September 1516.
8vo (156 x 86 mm). [119] leaves (of 120, final blank removed). Bâtarde type, shoulder-notes. Printer’s woodcut device (Renouard 620) on title, 24 nearly full-page woodcuts from 19 blocks, woodcut and metalcut floriated and historiated initials from 3 or 4 sets. (Paper restoration to lower margins of first 10 leaves, with probable ink facsimile of a few letters and of a small area at the foot of the woodcut on fol. A3r, fol. P4 with repair in upper margin and residual small hole, more extensive repairs in last 3 leaves, with skillful facsimile of a few letters; occasional minor dampstain.) Modern pencil foliation. Nineteenth-century dark red jansenist morocco, doublures of dark blue morocco within single gilt fillet border, moiré silk liners, gilt edges, by Huser. Provenance: Jean Bourdel, bookplate, inserted.***
First edition of a vast allegory in verse and prose, in which the hunt serves as a metaphor for the driving away of sins, embodied as animals. The large woodcuts, in which lettered banderoles identify the figures, are original to the edition and linked to the text.
An overview of original sin, compared to a toad or a pig, and of how to cleanse it through baptism, precedes chapters on psychological obstacles to “conversion” (penitence), on worldly vanity, on the need for penitence and how it pleases God even when only arrived at in one’s old age (but don’t wait), and a long “elegy on sin and vanity.” The author then describes, in prose, two visions (yimaginations), both with female allegorical figures: the first is a static apparition of salvation and sin: a radiant lady emanating light and divine perfumes, contrasting with a drab woman who is a mere facade — look behind and she is crawling with worms and rot. In his second vision, Concupiscence (desire and longing, which lead to sin), a hideous old hag, has climbed up to earth from hell. She is pregnant, and immediately upon arriving in a beautiful forest (of conscience or the soul) she gives birth to a monster with seven different bodies, who destroy the forest with their sulfurous breaths.
With these vivid images Michel introduces the main part of the work, in which each of the seven deadly sins is compared to a different beast: the lion is pride, the mole greed, the bear lust, the dragon envy, the wolf gluttony, the ass sloth, and the dog wrath. Following verse descriptions of each sin and its specific punishment are prose exhortations. Turning away from these bleak prospects, Michel describes in turn each of the hunters (les vaneurs): the cardinal and theological virtues, who chase away the sins, assisted by hounds. The “Forest de conscience” ends on O5v, and various pieces, including a poem honoring the Virgin, conclude the edition.
The closely hatched woodcut illustrations were likely designed by the author, who paid for the edition. They show the maw of hell, devils and monsters (including the septiforme offspring of concupiscence), the animal-sins themselves, and many human figures in medieval dress, all appropriately labeled. An example of the charming iconographic mixing of metaphors is the opening woodcut, in which a morose-looking “human tree” is bound by a rope of which one end, emanating from a gaping mouth labeled Péché [sin], has apparently snapped, and a devil is trying to reattach it, while the other end is held by the two Marys who are tying it to Christ on the cross. In the lower right corner a scrawny death figure wielding an ax is labeled iam securis ad radicem (Matthew 3:10: the ax is already at the root [of the tree]).
The woodcuts in the section on sins correspond to the text, but in the later sections only two of the seven woodcuts are new, the rest being repeated. In one of the “new” cuts (K4v), the hounds of Confession, Contrition and Satisfaction chase the beast of Sin out of the thickets of Obstinacy, and into the nets of Penitence; in the other (L5v), two penitents, decked with hunting gear, arrive at the Castle of Conscience, where they are greeted by Law, Perseverance (carrying a crown), and the Virtues. Opening the final supplemental section is a cut of the Virgin on the Crescent (O6v); smaller than the others, it was copied from earlier models and is probably from the printer’s stock.
While these illustrations with their clear labels could alone have instructed an unlettered audience, the lengthy text and its many marginal Latin citations from the Bible and Church fathers imply that the work was intended for a clerical or well-educated lay readership. This was the first published work of Guillaume Michel, who is named in the privilege at end and the colophon. Besides this work he left translations of Virgil, Suetonius, and Sallust, and three or four other works on religion and on the ideal moral basis of society. Possibly a cleric, he was clearly a man of means, who was able to finance not only the edition but also the expenses involved in obtaining a privilege: Amaury, Prévôt of Paris, who signed the privilege, notes that the author spent much time and money on the paper, production and impression of the work (“beaucoup de son temps et fraye de grans deniers pour le papier façon et impression”). To compensate him for these expenses, Amaury granted him an exclusive two-year privilege over the work, forbidding any printers or booksellers not expressly appointed by the author to print or sell it. This was among the earliest privileges granted directly to an author in France (cf. Armstrong “Notes” and Before Copyright).
OCLC and USTC record only one copy in the US (Getty); and one copy of the 1520 edition (Yale), an almost line for line reprint of this one.
USTC 14568; Bechtel M-325; Moreau I: 1436; Isaac and Shaw, A Typographical Catalogue of books printed in France 1501–1520 in the British Library IS000216; Brunet III: 1704 & Supplément I 1028; P. Mouchon, Supplément to Thiebaud (Bibliographie des ouvrages français sur la chasse), col. 1199, 1055. Cf. E. Armstrong, “Notes on the works of Guillaume Michel, dit de Tours,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 31, no. 2 (1969): 257–81; Armstrong, Before Copyright: the French Book-privilege System 1598-1526 (1990), pp. 80 & 272. Item #4487
Price: $15,000.00