De Gulden Passer. Jaargang 54

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A ghost no more: a contribution to the bibliography of Joannes David S.J.
by Anna E.C. Simoni
(The British Library, London)

The bibliography of Joannes David of Courtrai is known to be difficult; so much so that his biographers, L. Geerts-van Roey and J. Andriessen¹, in a context admittedly different from this article, gave up the attempt². It is especially difficult where there is conflicting evidence, such as with the claim for an earlier edition of his Occasio arrepta, neglecta, huius commoda: illius incommoda, of 1605 (fig. 1; henceforth Occasio). This publication receives detailed and one might think exhaustive treatment in the Bibliotheca Belgica³, with careful collation and a valuable explanation of the symbolism of the titlepage. The engravings found in the book are also listed and their titles quoted and they are correctly ascribed to the engraver Theodorus Galle who has signed plate 1. In the list of Jean David's works following the descriptions of the separate editions in the Bibliotheca Belgica⁴ the Occasio of 1605 gets the

1 L. Geerts-van Roey and J. Andriessen, Pater Joannes David, S.J., 1546-1613, In Ons geestelijk erf, dl. 30, 1956, pp. 113-115. For a summary and further bibliographical material see the article by J. Andriessen in Nationaal biografisch woordenboek, dl. 1, 1964, coll. 377-383.

2 Geerts-van Roey and Andriessen, op. cit., p. 148, note 159 ‘We verzaken aan deze bibliografische puzzle’.

3 Bibliotheca Belgica... Fondée par Ferdinand van der Haeghen, rééditée sous la direction de Marie-Thérèse Lenger, 1964 etc., tom. 2, p. 76, 77, no. D139.

4 ibid. p. 93.

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somewhat laconic remark ‘Paquot, mémoires (sic), cite une édition de 1603, qui n'existe pas’, a statement which reduces such an edition to the status of ‘ghost’. What Paquot⁵ says is ‘Occasio [etc.] Antv. Joan Moretus, 1603. 4^o. It. Ibid. Idem, 1605. 4^o. pp. 269. Occasio, Drama. A la suite du précédent. (2^e édition, p. 270-307.)’. The Bibliotheca Belgica is right, such an edition of 1603, bearing this title and imprint and just lacking the Drama part, cannot be found and does not exist. Yet Paquot is not wholly wrong, he simply misunderstood the evidence, in which he was not alone. The earlier edition is elusive, but not a ghost.

In the preface to the 1605 edition of the Occasio David himself refers explicitly to an earlier edition published for the use of children and repeats this information in the address to the reader of the second part of that edition entitled Occasio. Drama⁶ where he is even more precise, saying that this earlier edition occurred two years previously. Moreover, in both prefaces he makes it quite clear that the earlier version consisted of the plates only and bore the title Typus occasionis (fig. 2; henceforth Typus)⁷.

Obviously the Bibliotheca Belgica failed to take sufficient account of these statements and Paquot either misunderstood David or just copied a false or ambiguous statement from whichever source he used. But even had Paquot given the proper title for the 1603 edition and had the Bibliotheca Belgica accepted his quotation, we might not have got much further. For although David gives us the title and the date of the earlier edition and although some bibliographers and art historians have mentioned it, more or less correctly⁸, not one has so far revealed the crucial fact which is at the heart

5 J.N. Paquot, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire littéraire des dix-sept provinces des Pays-Bas, 1765-70, tom. 2, p. 107.

6 For a description of the Drama with its separate titlepage but integral part of the Occasio see Bibliotheca Belgica D139.

7 ‘Nos TYPUM OCCASIONIS aliquot nuper iconibus in studiosae juventutis gratiam exprimendam curaveramus’ on p. sig.⁺⁺ 2 verso; ‘occasione TYPI OCCASIONIS ante biennium in lucem editi’ on p. 273. Capital letters as printed there.

8 The first edition of P. de Ribadeneira's Illustrium scriptorum Societatis Jesu catalogus of 1608, p. 114 s.v. Joannes David is very short on works which one could assume the author or his editor A. Schottus to have been able to see hot from the press. The entry runs ‘Ioannes David... iconibus scripta sua pleraque cum admiratione spectantium illustrat’. It then mentions ‘Occasionis typus’ without any further details as one of the few works listed. The latest edition of Ribadeneira's catalogue of Jesuit authors is the Bibliotheca scriptorum Societatis Jesu edited by P. Alegambe, 1676, which on p. 436 offers a little more: ‘Occasionis typum sic inscriptum, Occasio arrepta... ibidem (i.e. Antwerp) 1603 & 1605. Dramate heroico, paris augmenti (sic) cui titulus Occasio. in 4^o’. V. Andreas, Bibliotheca Belgica, first published only ten years after David's death, in 1623, and its later enlarged edition of 1643 do not mention the Typus at all. J.F. Foppens in his Bibliotheca Belgica of 1739 merely copies the otherwise good list found in Andreas. C. Le Blanc, Manuel de l'amateur d'estampes, vol. 2, 1854, p. 265 s.v. Theodor Galle, no. 161-173, describes ‘Typus occasionis... Antverpiae, 1600. In-8. Suite de 13 p. Rare.’ He does not mention the Occasio. J.G.T. Graesse, Trésor de livres rares et précieux, 1859, s.v. Jan David, lists the ‘Occasio, Antv., Joa. Moretus, 1605, in 4^o, av. 12 planches par Galle’ and goes on to say that this is the second edition with the Drama while the first edition of 269 pages had been published in 1603, preceded that same year by an edition of the plates only under the title Typus occasionis. J.B. van den Bemden, De familie Galle, in De Vlaemsche school, jaarg. 6, 1860, p. 36, s.v. Theodoor Galle, writes that he engraved a suite of thirteen plates entitled Typus occasionis, Antv., 1600, in 8^o. He does not list the Occasio. J.-Ch. Brunet, Manuel du libraire, 1861, tom. 2, col. 536, s.v. Joan David, is much better: Typus occasionis... Antuerpiae, delineabat et incidebat Theod. Gallus, 1603, pet. in-4^o. 12 pl., le frontispice, et un avis gravé'. At the end of his entry for David he writes ‘Ces différents ouvrages de J. David sont recherchés à cause des gravures de Th. Galle dont ils sont ornés’. M. Funck, Le livre belge à gravures, 1925, p. 302, writes ‘David, Jean. Occasio arrepta... Antverpiae... 1605... Les planches avaient paru en 1603 sans texte, sous le titre de “Typus...” 12 pl., 1 front, et un avis gravé’, with reference to Brunet and to the original edition of the Bibliotheca Belgica. M. Praz, Studies in seventeenth-century imagery, 2nd edition, 1964, p. 313, informs the reader that the Occasio of 1605 contains twelve plates by Th. Galle which had already appeared in Typus in 1603. J. Landwehr, Emblem-books of the Low Countries 1554-1949, 1970, no. 133, describes the Occasio with reference to Praz, but not the Typus. The Drama alone is analysed by L. van den Boogerd, Het Jezuietendrama in de Nederlanden, 1961, pp. 131-136, without mention of the Typus, although he relates the ‘tableaux’-like scenes of the play to the plates in the Occasio. (Other authors on David are referred to elsewhere in this article or in the notes.)

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of all the trouble, namely, that the Typus edition is anonymous. When we look at the plates in the Occasio we find that they consist of an allegorical picture which occupies the upper portion of the engraving whose title is written above it in capital letters followed by the plate number, and with a separately framed lower portion which contains ten lines of Latin verse written in italics. Letters of the alphabet in roman capitals are used to label the figures in the picture and the lines below are in turn assigned to these characters

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and explain them (fig. 3)⁹. Of the twelve pictorial plates plus engraved titlepage only plate 1 bears the engraver's signature as shown in fig. 3; nowhere on any of the twelve plates containing the Latin verses is their author named. The titlepage of the Occasio mentions him (fig. 1), not so the titlepage of the Typus (fig. 2). Wherever in the works of reference the Typus is described it either follows a description of the Occasio and a repetition of the author's name would then seem unnecessary, or it is assigned to Theodore Galle only as for example by Hollstein¹⁰ who not only disregards the text and its authorship but has apparently no knowledge of the use of the plates after a new titlepage in the Occasio. Hollstein complicates matters by dating the Typus both 1600 and 1603. The earlier of these dates was already supplied, and as the only one, by Wurzbach¹¹ and is a mystery without the slightest basis of fact or tradition. David's preface to the Occasio. Drama in part two of the Occasio is quite definite: ‘occasione TYPI OCCASIONIS ante biennium in lucem editi’ can only refer to a first edition of 1603.

The other cause for confusion has been the belief that the earlier edition should also turn out to be a publication of Jan Moretus at the Officina Plantiniana, as implied by Paquot. This error may go back to Sweertius¹² whose short reference to the Typus follows on a

9 ‘Drama illud in promtu erat, quod olim ad tenerę ętatis exercitium, simplici Camoena luseram’ (Occasio p. 273). The plainly didactic method of identifying pictorial characters with the help of letters on the plates and in the text is used also in other works of David. The full text commentaries in the Occasio again explain the allegories using the same letters to point out the figures in the pictures.

10 F.W. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish etchings, engravings and woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, 1949 etc., vol. 7, p. 85. He describes the Typus as consisting of thirteen plates which allows for either the titlepage or the engraved preface preceding the plates, but not for both; he gives the imprint as Antv. and the date as 1600 & 1603 and the format as 8^o, statements we have seen before!

11 A. v. Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, 1906, s.v. Theodor Galle. He follows Le Blanc and Van den Bemden in his choice of date and format and likewise does not mention the Occasio. It may here be added that U. Thieme and F. Becker in their Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, 1907 etc., present a combined article on all the members of the Antwerp family of Galle, with not a word on either the Typus or the Occasio, but with reference to Wurzbach. It is sad to realize so often that errors are in this way perpetuated in even such highly respected works of reference.

12 F. Sweertius, Athenae Belgicae, 1628, pp. 416, 417. He describes David as his friend (‘mihi familiaris’) and should therefore have known his output, but unfortunately his account of it is sketchy.

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description of David's earlier work Veridicus Christianus with its imprint ‘Antuerpiae, apud Plantinum’ and runs ‘Occasionis typus. Ibidem’. This is of course only a statement of place, i.e. the same as before, that is, Antwerp. But it is all too easy for any reader of Sweertius to extend the ‘sameness’ to the publisher. Theodore Galle was the son-in-law of Jan Moretus and closely connected as an engraver with the publishing house of Plantin. He also provided the plates for other works of David published there, thus the temptation is strong to expect an earlier edition of the Occasio to bear that famous imprint. But it does not, and that too was not unusual in the publishing history of David's works.

The famous plates for the Veridicus Christianus, for example, were originally made to embellish the Latin translation of David's Christeliicken Waerseggher, for we know from David's preface to the Latin version that Moretus would not comply with the author's demand for a hundred copper plates to go into the Dutch text unless there was to be a Latin one also. David therefore wrote the Veridicus Christianus in the short space of three months, a translation with additions and corrections to the original, and this was the first of the two versions to appear in 1601. The plates in this work which had caused David so much work have no signature, but their style is closely related to that of the plates for the Typus and Occasio. There was also a separate publication of the plates only, Icones ad Veridicum Christianum, also 1601, with the imprint of Philippus Galle, Theodore's father¹³. In it and in the parallel Dutch version entitled Christeliicken Waerseggher like the later full text, of 1602, with the imprint of Jan Moretus¹⁴, the same plates

13 There is no copy of this or the corresponding Dutch edition of plates only in the British Library. The information here supplied is taken from Bibliotheca Belgica, tom. 2, p. 74, no. D135. Unlike the Typus, these editions of plates show David's name on their titlepage.

14 Bibliotheca Belgica, no. D135^bis note. The signature quoted there, with the spelling ‘Antuerpiae’, is the same as on the corresponding plate in the British Library's copy of the full Dutch text for which Bibliotheca Belgica no. D134 quotes a signature reading ‘Antverpiae’ with a v. A later Dutch version described in Bibliotheca Belgica no. D136 has a similar signature on this plate in which however the word ‘excudit’ has been changed to ‘sculp:’.

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are used as in the full Latin edition of 1601, except that the first plate is signed ‘Joan Galle excudit Antuerpiae’. This signature occurs also in the 1603 edition of the full Dutch text. The only Joannes Galle known to art history, including the dictionary of Hollstein, is Theodore's son, born in 1600. So here we have another puzzle which is made no easier by the omission of the signature from the same plate in the second edition of the Latin version published in 1606. The plates are frequently assigned to Jean Galle nevertheless¹⁵, but some authors, from Brunet to Praz and Landwehr¹⁶, assign them to Theodore without bothering to state their

15 As in the different editions described in the Bibliotheca Belgica mentioned above which notes the variants, but does not question the statement itself.

16 M. Praz, op. cit, p. 313: ‘copper plates by Th. Galle’, repeated in the description of the Christeliicken Waerseggher of 1603 with an additional reference to the Schild-wacht of 1602 which is normally found with it, as having one more plate by Th. Galle. It is not clear which plate is here intended, the Latin as well as the Dutch edition of this work contain two unnumbered plates. One shows Christ carrying the Cross surrounded by painters at their easels. This, like pl. 26 in the main sequence, has been tentatively attributed by L.J. Alvin, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre des trois frères Wierix, 1866, no. 1205 and 1815, to one of the Wierix brothers. The other plate with the movable disc within a flower border which is here part of the plate itself is described as a curiosity by several writers, esp. the Bibliotheca Belgica no. D132. These plates are not part of the Schild-wacht so much as of the whole book and neither is its frontispiece. The plate of Christ and the painters is the titlepage of a chapter in the main work called Orbita probitatis in the Latin version, Rolle der deugdsaemheydt in the Dutch. Very beautiful borders of flowers or fruit and vegetables or various geometrical designs engraved separately surround the plates only in the Latin edition of 1601 in the form of passe-partouts, found in the copy at the British Library and described by Funck, although not remarked upon elsewhere. In the British Library copies of these books the plates with the mobile disc also differ, probably due to wear and repair. In the copy of the Latin edition it has two small circular pieces, one with the letters MAR surmounted by a crown and with the image of a heart pierced by a sword below, corresponding therefore to the ‘monogramme de Marie’ described by the Bibliotheca Belgica. The other small circle bears the usual emblem of the Society of Jesus and has been pasted in the centre of the concentric circles on the recto of the plate. In the Dutch edition the circular piece with the monogram of the Virgin Mary occupies this central position on the recto, but is only attached by the same thread which holds the big disc on the verso which can be moved to show numbers in the little windows on the recto. The copy of the Latin edition of 1606 in the British Library lacks this plate altogether. Landwehr, op. cit, no. 130-132, ignores the unnumbered plate of Christ and the painters in the 1601 Latin edition and refers to it as a frontispiece for the Schild-wacht (which he transcribes ‘Schildt-wacht’) in the Dutch edition of 1603,02. Landwehr follows Praz in assigning all the plates in this book to Theodore Galle without mentioning the problem of Jean's signature. Praz knows the copy in the British Library, formerly British Museum; Landwehr gives no locations, although he quotes Brunet's remark on the presence of part music in the copy of the Latin edition at the Royal Library in Brussels which Praz does not mention but which is also found in the copy at the British Library. The Dutch edition of 1603, 02 and the Latin edition of 1606 are not recorded as having the music and do not have it in the British Library copies.

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reason for doing so and do not even mention the signature naming Jean. This is a problem which I gladly leave to art historians to solve.

Let us return to the Occasio and its predecessor, the Typus. It is inaccurate in this instance to speak of a separate publication of the plates of the Occasio. Instead, as David has told us himself, his first idea had been to publish plates only, of pictures and text, exhorting the young to grasp every opportunity for virtue and not to squander the moment in vice. In the above mentioned biography of David references can be found to his activities as teacher and catechist and he is there considered responsible as rector of the Jesuit college in Ghent for a school play performed there in connection with the solemn entry into that city of the archduke Ferdinand and his wife Isabella in January 1600¹⁷. The small edition of the Typus for children, with its speaking parts to explain the allegories of the pictures, would fit in well with this side of his life. According to the prefaces in the Occasio the author was later persuaded to enlarge the Typus with commentaries on each picture to make the work suitable for adults and to make a real play or pageant for actual performance based on the allegories of the plates¹⁸, with different dialogue instead of the short and rather static verses supplied on the plates, thus composing the Occasio.

17 op. cit. p. 142.

18 ‘Quia tamen, quod in TYPO hoc solis juvenibus applicuimus, cuivis hominum generi convenire quoque cognoscitur... ideò in istá OCCASIONIS explicatione, singula imaginum schemata ita visum fuit interpretari, ut unicuique mortalium usui esse possit. Sic etenim fiet, ut quod quisque umbraticè sub juvenum figura expressum animadvertebat, hoc in ipso decursu orationis clarè distinctéque sit lecturus’ (Occasio sig. + + 2 verso, + + 3 recto); ‘Versiculos ipsis iconum lamellis incisos excerpseram: visum fuit quibusdam (quorum dignitati & auctoritati plura debeo) facturū me studiosę juventuti rem non ingratam, si Drama ipsum, quod toti de OCCASIONE tractatui principium dedit, eiusdem ad calcem adnecterē’ (Occasio. Drama p. 273).

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Fig. 2

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Fig. 1

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Fig. 3

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Drama. This later edition which in itself contained also the earlier Typus - except for the titlepage and Galle's engraved introductory page recommending it to its young readers - no doubt gained a larger circulation and also survived better than the children's picture book. It would be interesting to know how many of the writers quoting the Typus had actually seen a copy of it¹⁹. Just as Hollstein lists the Typus under Theodore Galle as if no one else had inspired it and contributed to it, so the British Museum's General Catalogue of Printed Books (now of course the catalogue of the books in the British Library) has an entry for it under Galle's name only and no reference for it under the name of Jan David, Jesuit. It is not mentioned at all in De Backer-Sommervogel, BNCI or Olthoff²⁰. Le Blanc called it rare; but certainly, pace Bibliotheca Belgica, it exists²¹.

19 David's biography and the article by Andriessen of 1964 quoted above in note 1 ignore the existence of the Typus which they do not mention either directly or indirectly through Paquot's description of an earlier edition of the Occasio.

20 A. & A. de Backer and C. Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, vol. 2, 1891, p. 1847 do not list the Typus among David's works. There was no reason why an anonymous edition, not identified as David's, should be included in the Jesuit bibliography since there was no other Jesuit connection to be seen in it. The Bibliotheca Catholica Neerlandica Impressa 1500-1727, 1954, has no entry for it whether anonymously or under David. F. Olthoff, De boekdrukkers, boekverkoopers en uitgevers in Antwerpen, 1891, treats Theodore Galle as publisher of two works, the Typus is not one of them.

21 For another Jean David ‘ghost’ which was laid not long ago see L. Loosen, De katechismus-berijming van Jean David, in Ons geestelijk erf, dl. 38, 1964, afl. 1, pp. 103, 104. This relates the identification of an anonymous tract, Wijsheyt der simpel Christenen, published by Velpius at Brussels in 1593 and discovered in the Royal Library, Brussels, as the predecessor of the Christeliicken Waerseggher which had long been believed lost. This book is now properly listed under David in Typographica Belgica 1541-1600, vol. 1, 1968, p. 61, no. 813.