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De Gulden Passer. Jaargang 35 (1957)

De Gulden Passer. Jaargang 35

(1957)– [tijdschrift] Gulden Passer, De–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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Christophe Plantin's Childhood at Saint Just
by Natalie Zemon Davis
(Bronxville, New York)

The childhood years that Christophe Plantin spent with his father at Saint Just-les-Lyon must have had some influence on his later cultural and religious values. The late Abel Lefranc suggested the educational importance of that period,(1) while H.F. Bouchery stressed the orthodox milieu in which Plantin was reared.(2) It therefore seems worthwhile to examine that milieu more closely, to try to give some life to the people of Plantin's childhood.

Our source for Plantin's years at Lyons is the letter of reminiscences written him by his dear friend Pierre Porret.(3) The letter was written from Paris on March 25th, 1567, not long after Plantin's decision to open a branch office in Porret's house on the rue Saint Jacques and thereby to make formal the business errands his apothecary friend had done for him from time to time.(4)

The context of Porret's reminiscences is significant. He had spent two hours with Monsieur le chevalier d'Angoulême,(5) who

always asked him news of Plantin. ‘Il vous ayme grandement,’ Porret explained

et qui plus l'incite à ce, c'est qu'il a bien entendu que jamays on ne vous a sceu faire trover bon ny condescendre à la nouvelle religion, quelque grande liberté qui se soit sceu monstrer par delà...

One of Monsieur's servants, a young German, had been deterred by Plantin from abandoning the holy Catholic church for which Monsieur was most grateful. Whereupon the chevalier pressed Porret for an explanation of the intimacy between him and Plantin and for the details of their youth together.

Consideration of Plantin's life followed a consideration of his orthodoxy. Without entering here into the thorny problem of Plantin's religious attitudes, we must note that Plantin had previously been suspected of interest in the new religion,(6) a fact of which Porret was aware but of which, we may be sure, he did not apprise Monsieur d'Angoulême, grand prieur of France. On the contrary, Porret's account would have reinforced Monsieur d'Angoulême's statements about Plantin's othodoxy:

Je luy ay récité comme feu vostre père avoit servy aux escolles un mien oncle qui s'appelloit Claude Porret, lequel a despuys esté obéancier de St Just de Lion, avec l'aide d'une sienne seur, qui estoit mariée a Chazelles,(7) païs de Forês, à un nommé Anthoine Puppier. Ledict obéancier trespassa, eagé de 80 ans et plus, en l'an 1548. Or a il eslevé 4 de ses nepveux, enfans de sadicte seur, ascavoyr: Francoys, Anthoine, Charles et Pierre Pupiers, et les a faict tous quatre chanoynes de ladicte esglise de St Just, et les deux ont estés obéanciers, l'ung après l'aultre,
avant qu'il trespassa, car il avoit résiné cum regressu, qui avoit lieu in ce temps-là. Pierre Puppier le feust après son trespas, qui ne dura guère. C'est celluy que vous avés servi à Paris et Orléans, lorsque feu vostre père vous amena chez ledict seigneur obédiencier, fuiant la peste quand tous mouroient en vostre maison. Vous estiés bien jeune et aviés aulcune cognoissance de jamoys avoyr veu vostre mère. Nous feusmes deux ou troys ans ensemble chez mondict oncle, avant que monsieur le docteur Pierre Puppier allast à Orléans ou en ceste ville, et, pour aultant que feu vostre père, qui governoit entièrement la maison, me donoit tousjours des friandises et qu'il m'apelloit son fils, je l'appelloys mon père comme vous.(8) Et voylà, ce (luy dis-je) d'où est venu nostre fraternité.

These are strange reminiscences! Except for the line about the ‘friandises,’ these are all barren biographical facts which would have been known perfectly to Plantin. These we would have expected Porret to sum up in one line to Plantin(9) and then to have expanded nostalgically upon a possible visit to a printer's shop, a possible expedition to explore the hill of Fourvière at Lyons, etc. Was Porret simply possessed of a tedious streak of pedantry, or was he trying to ‘get his story straight’ with Plantin, to let him know exactly what details he had given Monsieur d'Angoulême? Did he expect his letter to be intercepted?

When we come to the Pupier and Porret families, we discover another curious feature of this letter. Porret has unmistakeably written ‘Claude Porret’ and ‘Anthoine Puppier’. But all the sources indicate that the obédiencier of Saint Just during those years, the uncle in whose home he lived, was named Antoine Porret; and that the father of his four Pupier cousins was named Mathieu Pupier.(10) The latter's name he might forget over the years, but to forget Antoine Porret - an odd slip of the pen!

The Porret family was a bourgeois family of some prominence and comfortable means in Lyons and the nearby burg of Saint Just. Antoine Porret's father, François, was a merchant and

bâtonnier(11) of Saint Just. François Porret married Claude Josserand, whose brother François Josserand was a canon and obédiencier of the chapter of Saint Just and a chevalier of the cathedral chapter of Saint Jean of Lyons.(12) An interesting fact relates François Josserand to the early history of printing at Lyons: the obédiencier established the text for the Distinctiones of Henri Bouhic, printed in Lyons in 1498 by Jean Syber for the publisher Jacques Buyer.(13) By that date young Antoine Porret had complated studies at the University of Valence, where the better burgher families of Lyons often sent their sons, and had been a canon of Saint Just for one year. In 1501, his uncle François resigned as obédiencier of Saint Just in his favor. A year later Antoine became sacristan of the little chapter of Fourvière in Lyons.(14)

Who was the father of Pierre Porret? Probably it was Hugues Porret, who aided municipal preparations for the entry of Louis XII in 1507, who was among the ‘notables’ of Lyons at a meeting in 1516, and who was described as a ‘marchant drapier’ on a 1528-29 list of those giving loans to the town government.(15) Other relatives probably include Jacques Porret, merchant of Lyons, who in 1493 owned property outside the city; André Pourret, a judge of Lyons, whose son Antoine was a canon of

Saint Just in 1554; and Guillaume Porret, a canon of Saint Just in the 1540's.(16) We even find a ‘Pierre Pourret’ reimbursed by the Consulate in 1542-4 for firewood that he has sold it.(17) The status of the Porret family in the social hierarchy of Lyons is clear. The family was not among the wealthy upper bourgeois who made up the Consulate and who, by virtue of that office,(18) were ennobled. The Porrets were not Consuls, but they were ‘notables,’ and, in the church, their sons achieved positions respected by the Consulate families.

‘Je luy ai récité,’ Porret wrote Plantin, ‘comme feu vostre père avoit servy aux escolles un mien oncle..., lequel a despuys esté obéancier de St Just de Lion, avec l'aide d'une sienne seur...’ Sometime before 1501, then, the father of Christophe Plantin was the domestic of the student Antoine Porret, prabably at the University of Valence. A sister of Antoine Porret was evidently his housekeeper during those student days, Antoinette, later wife of Mathieu Pupier of Chazelles in Forez.(19) The Pupiers were of an old Forezian family, not noble but nevertheless of some importance in local administration. A Clément Pupier founded a prebend in the church of Feurs in 1410, and Mathieu Pupier and his descendants continued to name to that prebend.(20) Mathieu held the financial post of élu en l'élection de Forez. The seigneur of his birthplace Chazelles was the commanderie of the hospitaliers de Saint-Jean de Jerusalem. The commander of the order appointed such officers of justice as the châtelain, which post Mathieu held in 1519.(21)

Four of the children of Antoinette and Mathieu Pupier went to live with their uncle Antoine at Saint Just - Pierre, Antoine,

Charles, and François - and knew in this household the little boys Pierre Porret and Christophe Plantin. Antoinette had at least two other children who remained with her in Chazelles: Sibille, who married François Paparin of Forez and whose son Etienne was canon of Saint Just in 1540, and Jean Pupier, who succeeded his father in naming to the prebend of Feurs.(22)

The communal bourgeois background of the Porrets and the rural administrative background of the Pupiers blended together in the house at Saint Just to which the elder Plantin brought his young son. The little burg of Saint Just sat on the hill that rose from the right bank of the Saône. One left behind the busy ecclesiastical, financial and legal quartiers of the rive droite, slowly walked up the narrow old Montée du Gourguillon, passed through the wall of Lyons by the porte Saint Just, and crossed over to the burg. The occupants of the burg were the clerical personnel of the collegiate chapters of Saint Just and of the smaller Saint Irénée, and those craftsmen, storekeepers, notaries, etc., closely involved in the maintenance of the two religious institutions. The canons of Saint Just were seigneurs of the burg and each night locked its two gates.(23)

The churches of Saint Irénée and Saint Just dated from the fourth century. In the thirteenth century, the canons of Saint Just were a powerful feudal group with immense properties. By the mid fifteenth century, the chapter was in decline, with its properties being whittled away by king, pope, princes, and the canon-counts of Lyons, and with constant disputes between the chapter and its vassals and peasants. At the height of its power the members of the chapter were frequently from noble families



illustratie
The burg of Saint Just and the streets leading down into Lyons. From a 16th century map.


of the surrounding provinces; in the sixteenth century, only rarely so.(24) However, canonships at Saint Just were sought after by the better families of Lyons. Saint Just still had some power, its heritage was still old and honorable, its trésor still very rich.(25) Membership in the chapter put one in close touch with the noble canon-counts and archbishop of Lyons and facilitated ecclesiastical advancement. The archbishop was abbé of Saint Just, an honorary position. The chapter was headed by an obédiencier and included three other dignitaries and eighteen canons.(26) According to a sixteenth century witness, there were twenty eight houses with interior courts for the lower clergy of Saint Just, and for the canons twelve houses ‘fort grandes et spacieuses.’(27)

Christophe Plantin and Pierre Porret must have had comfortable quarters at Saint Just! How profound was their religious instruction is another matter. Saint Just was the parish church for one of the fourteen parishes of Lyons. Already in the fifteenth century there was talk of the bad behavior of the canons, the inadequate conduct of the divine service.(28) Although the chapter possessed the relics of Saint Just and other bishops of Lyons in rich tombs, it sustained into the sixteenth century a violent quarrel with the chapter of Saint Irénée. Each chapter claimed to have Saint Irénée's relics and accused the other of fraud and lies.(29) Of the spiritual qualities of Antoine Porret we cannot speak.

We do know that he had a successful ecclesiastical career - twenty eight years as sacristan of Fourvière and forty five years as obédiencier of Saint Just - and that at least he seems to have taught the techniques of ecclesiastical preferment to his Pupier nephews. Antoine Porret resigned as obédiencier, as Pierre Porret reminded Plantin, in 1546 in favor of Pierre Pupier, whom Christophe and his father had served at Orleans and Paris. Pierre Pupier resigned this in favor of his brother Antoine Pupier in 1550, and Antoine passed the office on to a nephew, François II Pupier, in 1555.(30) Another office which was kept within the family by more complicated means was that of trésorier of Saint Jean, a post giving its holder responsibility for the great treasure of the cathedral of Lyons. Pierre Pupier held it, then his brother Antoine, and then their nephew Étienne Paparin.(31)

Such were the companions, such was the atmosphere of Plantin's early years in Lyons. It would be interesting to know something of what he did there. To what extent was he touched by the life of cosmopolitan Lyons? Was he taken to a fair? Did he visit a printing atelier? We can furnish only a few reasonable speculations.

Assuming Plantin to have been born in 1520,(32) we would expect to find him in Lyons in the mid 1520's. It is possible that Plantin and Porret received their early instruction right in the cloister of Saint Just. However, in the 1520's, a canon of Saint Just, Antoine Barailhon, had a house on the rue de la Bombarde in Lyons, in which lived Claude de Cublise, ‘maistre

en arts... lequel... y fait escolle.’(33) This was not an overlong walk from the cloister, as the rue de la Bombarde was merely the lower extension of the Montée du Gourguillon. Cublise directed the school until 1533 when he was made regent of the recently founded municipal school, the Collège de la Trinité. It was he who introduced humanist erudition into the Collège by his choice of teachers.(34) If the young Christophe did study earlier at the rue de la Bombarde, we would not be surprised if it was Cublise who first stimulated that love of letters of which Plantin later spoke wistfully:

 
Oncques je n'eu l'aisance
 
Le temps, ne la puissance
 
Comme j'ay eu le coeur,
 
De vacquer a l'étude...(35)

If the years 1524-5 found Plantin at Saint Just, then he must certainly have been impressed by the important personnages there. François Ier, on his way to the wars, left Marguerite d'Alencon and the regent Louise de Savoie in Lyons in October, 1524. Marguerite stayed until August of the following year, when she left for Spain to help her ailing brother. The court did not finally leave Lyons until the end of January, 1526. Except for May through September, 1525, the court sojourned at the cloister of Saint Just.(36)

Marguerite's presence gave impetus to both literary and religious developments in Lyons. She herself wrote her poetic dream drama Le dialogue en forme de vision nocturne during that

winter at Saint Just.(37) Although the piety of her praying at Saint Jean was noted by others, Marguerite had in her entourage aumôniers, such as Michel d'Arande, who were sympathetic to the new religious ideas. The evangelical Pierre Sébiville was released from prison through her intervention, and he wrote in December, 1524 (with some exaggeration, to be sure), ‘il n'y a point aujourd'hui en France plus évangélicque que la Dame d'Alencon.’(38) A few months later Marguerite's husband Charles d'Alencon died in the obédiencier's house at Saint Just.(39)

Meanwhile Louise de Savoie was conducting affairs of state from Saint Just. It was there in the early hours of March, 1525 that she received the news of the king's defeat and capture at Pavia. It was there she dealt with ambassadors and arranged treaties. Such prominent figures as Antoine Duprat, chancellor of France, and Florimond Robertet, treasurer of France, stayed at Saint Just for a time.

The court was also concerned with the burg of Saint Just, inadequately fortified, it was an excellent spot for the launching of an enemy attack upon Lyons. Robertet told the Consulate of Lyons in the spring of 1525 that either the burg was to be fortified or it was to be torn down. The notables bemoaned damage to ‘deux si belles églises,’ but some preferred their destruction to the spending of municipal funds. Robertet agreed that the canons should subsidize the work; but a few years later, after some repairs had been undertaken, the Consulate was still complaining ‘bien que Messieurs de l'Esglise tiennent la pluspart des biens et terres nobles, neantmoings ils en furent soullagés et n'en paierent rien, et est le tout tombé sur le populaire et habitans de ladict ville.’(40)

Did little Christophe witness any of these events? What vistas were opened for him, what phrases overheard? Did he see the libraire Constantin Fradin come to Saint Just one November

day in 1525 and did he hear of the privilège to print certain books granted him by the regent?(41)

But to return to firmer ground - After a few years Christophe Plantin and his father left Saint Just to serve Pierre Pupier while he studied at Orléans and Paris sometime in the late 1520's. Pierre Porret described the next years as follows:

... apres que son maistre fust chanoyne, [votre père] se retira à Lion et vous laissa icy, en ceste ville, quelque peu d'argent pour vous entertenu a l'estude en atendant qu'il iroit à Toulouze, là où il vous debvoit mener. Mais il s'en alla sans vous, ce que voyant, vous vous en allastes à Caen servir un libraire...

Pierre Pupier was first made canon in early October, 1534; he resigned it the 19th of the same month, perhaps in order to remain at his legal studies. He became a canon permanently in March, 1537,(42) and it was probably after this date that Christophe's father returned to Lyons. The trip to Toulouse may have been for the education of another brother - not Antoine, who studied at Avignon,(43) but perhaps of Charles or François Pupier.

After some years in Caen, Plantin married. Porret became an apprentice apothecary, and, as he wrote Plantin, ‘puys vous amenastes vostre mesnage en ceste ville, où nous avons tousjours estés ensemble, et en l'an 1548 or 49 vous allastes à Anvers où vous estes encores.’ While Plantin was developing the great printing press of northern Europe, the companions of his youth pursued their different paths. Old Antoine Porret finally died in 1548. His successor Pierre Pupier died in 1551. An incident from the life of the next obédiencier, Antoine Pupier, shows that some interest in the antique had been stimulated in another member of the household. In 1553 Antoine discovered in his garden the funeral stone of a Roman merchant, had his arms engraved upon it, and mounted it. Antoine died in 1559, and his brothers, the canons Charles and François, died a few years after.(44)

Christophe Plantin had, of course, many business dealings with printers and booksellers of Lyons, but he never returned there. Pierre Porret did go back, and in his letter to Christophe described his reactions to this trip so as to enhance further the impression of perfect Catholic orthodoxy:

J'ay esté despuys quelques moys à Lion où vis je vostre cousin Jacques Plantin, fort vieux et quy jamays n'a proffite despuys qu'il a veu le ravage, de quoy ces mauldis rebelles, ennemis de Dieu, du roy et de nature, ont faict à St Just et St Irenee,(45) les deux plus anciennes esglises de la crestienté. N'estant content d'avoyr tué le reste de nos amys par delà, défenceurs du repos public et de la religion catholicque, ils ont renvercé jusques aux fondements ses deux anticques esglises, si bien servies et plaines de tant belles antiquités, et la maison où vous et moy avons esté nourris si amiablement et avec si gens de bien. Il y a quelques ans que vous parliez d'aller revisiter la sépulture de feu vostre père et luy faire un service, mays vous auriés bien affaire, à present, de trouver le lieu où il a esté enterré. Je suys joyeux de vous ramantevoyr de nos jeunes ans, mays le cueur me plourer de voyr une si grande désolation.

It is easy to understand Porret's grief as he stood at Saint Just and saw only rubble where once had been his childhood home. An internal revolution aided by Protestant captains from Dauphiné had made the Protestants masters of Lyons on May 1st, 1562. The next morning the Protestant soldiers entered the burg of Saint Just, attacked the churches, destroyed statues, pillaged the treasures, and organized a procession to ridicule the relics and cult objects. Motivated by religious conviction and by apprehensions of invasion through Saint Just, the Protestants later organized systematic demolition of all the buildings of the chapters of Saint Just and Saint Irénée.(46) The Protestants relinquished their control of Lyons in July, 1563, but the character of the burg of Saint Just was forever changed. When the church of Saint Just was rebuilt some years later, it was located farther down the hill within the city walls. The Protestants had begun

for military reasons the construction of a new large road up to Saint Just, and by 1569 the Chemin Neuf was finished and was being lined with inns and shops. In 1585 the burg of Saint Just was incorporated into Lyons.(47)

When old Jacques Plantin saw Pierre Porret during that visit to Lyons, he must have told him about a curious episode of the Protestant occupation in which relatives of Porret played a part. The obédiencier of Saint Just in the spring of 1562 was François II Pupier, nephew of the Pupier canons with whom Porret was raised and probably the son of Jean Pupier. The canons of Saint Just had neglected to call their vassals to defend the burg and escaped themselves before the Protestants' arrival. In an act dated February 19, 1564, François II Pupier described his actions at that time. He had taken most of the relics, reliquaries, and other treasures of Saint Just to his house at nearby Montrottier. There toward the middle of May, 1562, ‘ledict Pupier auroit esté adverty par ses parentz qui sont des principaulx de la religion’ that the Protestant commander of Lyons knew of Pupier's escape with the treasure, that he would soon send someone to get it, and that if the obédiencier did not comply, he would be hung. Ignoring the exhortations of ‘lesdicts parentz,’ the obédiencier left with the treasure, eluded the Protestants in Forez and the Auvergne for several months, and ultimately took it to his ancestral home at Chazelles. A few years later, before returning the treasure to the chapter, François II Pupier requested that the canons reimburse him for the expense of these travels and for the damage the Protestants had done to his home at Montrottier.(48)

Who were these prominent Protestants who warned their Catholic relative of his impending arrest and possible death? Surely one was ‘honorable homme Antoine Pupier, bourgeois et citoyen de Lyon,’ who inventoried the movables in the cloister of Saint Just and the monastery of the Minimes, May 8, 1562.

On a January, 1568 list of Protestants whose goods were to be confiscated, he was described as ‘Antoine Pupier surnommé La Croix-Blanche de Chazelles.’(49) He was probably the brother of François II Pupier.

But Pierre Porret did not hint a word of this to his ‘brother’ Christophe. Oddly enough, the name ‘Antoine Pupier’ does appear in the letter, once in connection with the canon Antoine Pupier and once as an error for Mathieu Pupier. Again we are left with a feeling of uncertainty about Porret's letter. Were the errors conscious or unconscious?(50) Who besides Plantin was expected to read this letter?


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