Historical essay on the art of bookbinding/Jacques Auguste De Thou

by Henri Pène du Bois

 

JACQUES AUGUSTE DE THOU.

n the annals of bibliophilic fame Grolier is first and De Thou is second. The classic author of the “J. A. Thuani Historiarum sui temporis,” “that grand and faithful history,” says Bossuet, was destined to greater fame as a collector of books than as an enlightened jurist and historian.

His predilection for fine books in superb covers was probably incited by his early admiration for the four books which Grolier presented to his father—Christophe De Thou—perhaps in recognition of valuable service as president of the commission in the suit for peculation, which resulted in Grolier’s acquittal and vindication. Of these four books was the famous “Translation of Hippocrates,” by Calvus (Rome, 1525), one of the finest Grolier bindings known, bequeathed by Motteley to Napoleon III. in 1850, and burned in 1871 in the library of the Louvre.

It is to De Thou that is due the preservation in France of the collection of manuscripts of Catherine de Medicis, who has been classed among illustrious wholesale biblioklepts for her appropriation of Marshal Strozzi’s library. De Thou was at the time the collection was offered for sale, in 1594, Librarian of the Royal Library, in place of Jacques Amyot, and he obtained injunctions restraining the Abbé de Bellebranche from disposing of the collection, until after several suits it became, in 1599, part of the royal collections.

De Thou has shared with Catherine de Medicis the time-honored distinction of a biblioklept, becomingly appreciated by Disraeli the Elder in the expression of an opinion on Bishop More’s collection of a library “by plundering those of the clergy of his diocese” (according to Gough), that “this plundering consisted in cajoling others out of what they knew not how to value, an advantage which every skillful lover of hooks must enjoy over those whose apprenticeship has not yet expired.”

De Thou’s collections were like Grolier’s, made principally in Italy, and it is estimated that at his death his library comprised some eight thousand volumes admirably bound in calf, vellum, and green, orange and red morocco, stamped with the various escutcheons described by Ap. Briquet in the “Bulletin du Bibliophile” of 1860, and by Joannis Guigard in the “Armorial du Bibliophile.”

To De Thou’s folio copy of the “Historia Piscium” of Salvianus, purchased at the Edwards sale for the Fonthill collection, has been accorded the palm of superior merit of all books of that age now extant. De Thou’s binders had profited by the example of Grolier’s, and in their hands the art of binding in morocco seemed to have attained perfection.