Billon, Le fort inexpugnable de l'honneur, Paris, 1555, Parisian calf gilt for Peter Ernst, Graf von Mansfeld

BILLON, FRANÇOIS DE. [Le Fort inexpugnable de l’honneur du Sexe Femenin, construit par Françoys de Billon Secretaire. Paris: Jean Dallier, 1 April 1555]

A splendid binding for Peter Ernst, Graf (after 1594, Fürst) von Mansfeld-Vorderort (1517–1604), the covers decorated with his armorial insignia, a motto (of unexplained meaning) “Force m’est trop,” his name (Mansfelt), a capital M, and a variety of daisies, these perhaps a reference to his wife, Marguérite de Bréderode, who had died in 1554. The date 1555 is lettered at the foot of the spine.

A soldier and then imperial Governor of the provinces of Luxembourg and Namur, Mansfeld was captured by French troops during the siege of Ivoix (Carignan), and imprisoned in 1552 by Henri II and the Connétable Anne de Montmorency in the tower of the castle of Vincennes. Charles V refused to pay his ransom, and Mansfeld remained there for five years. With the presumed help of his valet de chambre, Jehan-Henri, he diverted himself by collecting books, each luxuriously bound for him in Paris. Once rehabilitated by Philip II, Mansfeld seemingly lost all interest in luxurious bindings, and engrossed himself in building a palace at Luxembourg-Clausen (still unfinished upon his death in 1604, now demolished).

Altogether, twenty-two volumes from Mansfeld’s library are known. Nineteen of these were published in 1978 by Émile Van der Vekene and Howard Nixon, with the latter crediting them all to a single craftsman, dubbed the “Mansfeld Binder.” (Paul Needham doubts that the bindings can be credited to a single shop; see Twelve Centuries of Bookbindings 400–1600, pp. 206–208.) The shop was patronized by the leading Paris bibliophiles of the day: Henri II, Jean Grolier, Thomas Mahieu, and Marc Laurin. In 1982, Van der Vekene, published two more bindings, one from the shop of the Mansfeld Binder, the other perhaps bound by Claude de Picques, and in 2006, a binding was discovered by Jean-Marc Chatelain in the Bibliothèque Méjanes. Only two of these twenty-two volumes are in private ownership: the present binding, and one at Wormsley in the Getty Library (acquired in our rooms, 5 December 1991, £308,000).

Two of Mansfeld’s books are in Latin, and the rest, mostly histories or chronicles, are in French. This volume contains the first edition a defense of women by the so-called “historian” of the Querelle des femmes, a work renowned for the extreme misogyny that Billon attributes to Rabelais. The author (1522–1566) was secretary to the diplomat Cardinal Jean du Bellay-Langey and signs the dedicatory epistle to Catherine de’ Medici, at Rome, 1550. The privilege is dated 1 April 1555 (style de Pâques) and although dated “1555” on the spine, the year of printing and binding was 1556. Nixon organized the volumes he bound for Mansfeld in three groups, placing the present volume in the third, and “most interesting,” group, as it foreshadows the development of the fanfare style. The binding features the simpler of three armorial blocks (Nixon I), without a crest, and with the head of the sheep pointing correctly to the left. Fabienne Le Bars has compared some of the tools used with those employed on three bindings executed 1546–1549 in a shop working for Thomas Wotton.

4to (248 x 167 mm). Roman type, italic shoulder notes, 37 lines plus headline. Collation: A⁴ (-1A1.4) e² A-Z⁴ AA-ZZ⁴ AAa-TTt⁴ (-TTt 4, blank): 263 (of 266) leaves (lacking 1A1.4, title-page and conjugate leaf, & TTt4 blank). Woodcut portrait of the author, aged 33, with the emblems of the secretary, pens and knives (f. 117 v), full-page woodcut representing the fortress of feminine honor (5 times repeated), woodcut “L’Allocution Pennae” (once repeated), woodcut page border (repeated). Ruled in red. (Lacking title and conjugate A4, 100 x 82 mm hole (repaired) in first leaf, where an early inscription was probably removed, possibly the author’s signature, as some copies were signed by him.)

Binding: Parisian tan calf (255 x 180 mm), 1556, for Peter Ernst, Graf von Mansfeld-Vorderort, probably by the eponymous Mansfeld Binder, 3 gilt fillets around sides, black painted band between two of these, interlaced double gilt fillets, filled with black paint, forming 12 rectangles, each containing a gilt marguerite polychromed in red and brown, central oval cartouche containing arms of Mansfeld painted red and silver within the collar of the Toison d’Or, surmounted by a rectangle containing “. M . | FORCE . MEST . | TROP .” and below, in a smaller partial rectangle, “MANSFELT .,” in the interstices a sémé of 3 gold dots, spine with 6 full and 2 half bands, richly gilt, title of 3 lines in compartment below upper half band “FORT … |… SEX … |… EME …”, the date “.1.5.5.5.” in compartment above lower half band, original edges of boards with alternating gilt fillet and gilt hashes pulled up to edges of cover as if the binding has shrunk, edges gilt and gauffered to an arabesque design. (Binding worn and restored at edges, joints, and spine-ends, front endpapers renewed.) Marbled slipcase, half brown morocco chemise.

Provenance: Peter Ernst, Graf (after 1594, Fürst) von Mansfeld-Vorderort (armorial supralibros, lettered with his name and motto) — effaced early manuscript inscriptions on first leaf (unidentified; one possibly of the Frères Mineurs of Luxembourg, to whom Mansfield gave part of his library) — Dr. Georges De Capmaker, Schaerbeek, Belgium — Pierre Berès, Paris (ticket on upper pastedown) — André Rodocanachi (1914–2001) — Pierre Foullon (fl. 1920–1965; given to his godson:) — Vicomte Jacques Couppel du Lude (1918–2008; Alde & Dominique Courvoisier, Paris, 23 November 2009, lot 3 (€80,000). Acquisition: Purchased at the Couppel du Lude sale through Thomas-Scheler. References: FB 5642; USTC 1126; cf. for the binding: Gothieke en Renaissance Boekbanden uit private verzamelingen tentoongesteld in het Museum Plantin-Moretus 12–27 November 1938 (Antwerp) p. 39, no. 132; Société de la reliure originale, Catalogue de l’exposition la Reliure originale ([Paris], 1947), p. 45 and Pl. VI; Nixon, Sixteenth-Century Gold-Tooled Bookbindings in the Pierpont Morgan Library (1971), p. 123 (no. 9 in list of 12 bindings in Mansfeld’s library); Van der Vekene, Les reliures aux armoiries de Pierre Ernest de Mansfeld (Luxembourg, 1978), pp. 102–103 no. XIV; Van der Vekene, “Deux reliures peu connues aux armes de Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld,” in Revue française d’histoire du livre 36 (1982), pp. 427–433; Le Bars, “Un luxe éphémère: les reliures aux armes de Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld” in Un prince de la Renaissance : Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld (1517–1604) (Luxembourg, 2007), II, pp. 157–167 (pp. 162, 164–165), 463–473 nos. 70–77