Les Oeuvres

1593

Shoults Fb 1593 D

Lyon: Benoist Rigaud

In March 1476, Guillaume LeRoy finished the printing of Jean de Vigne’s La légende dorée, a French translation of Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea sanctorum. This was the first book printed in the French language. Importantly, it was executed in Lyon, the one city that rivalled Paris in the burgeoning print industry in France. The town boasted such masters as Johann Treschel; Johann Klein; Sebastian Greyff, and type designers like Robert Granjon. One 16th century printer was Benoist Rigaud, famed for printing Les Propheties by Nostradamus in 1568. Here is a less controversial publication, the works of Philippe Desportes (1546-1606), a courtier poet famed for sonnets and elegies; many in an imitative Italian style.