Epistolarum [...] liber. Adiunximus epistolam Julii Pogiani viri disertiss. de Ciceronis imitandi modo. Nunc demùm auctus & ab innumeris penè mendis, quibus librariorum incuria scatebat, repurgatus. Köln, Peter Horst, 1585. [Bound with:] Epistolae [...]: nunc recens, in gratiam studiosae iuventutis, multò quàm antehac unquam emendatiùs & correctiùs in lucem editae, & Annotationibus in margine illustratae. Basel, Leonhard Ostein, 1590.

Two works in one volume, 8vo.

I. MURET:

(2), 191, (3) pp. A-M⁸, N². With the printer's device on the title-page. Old vellum.

VD 16, M-6826.

THIRD (FIRST COLOGNE) EDITION. This is a reprint of the 1584 Ingolstadt edition (not of the 1580 Paris edition), in which, however, after the 96 letters contained in the latter, there is added the letter in Greek addressed to Muret by a Nicholaos son of Nathaniel (dated Venice, 1559), originally found in the first edition of 1580.

The following letters, addressed to Paolo Sacrati and reprinted from his Epistolae (Köln, Horst, 1583), are also added:

Sacrati, Paolo. Roma, August 13, 1563 (p. 165)

id. Roma, January 15, 1564 (p. 167)

id. Roma, March 10, 1565 (p. 169)

id. October 12, 1566 (p. 170)

id. Roma, October 21, 1565 (p. 171)

id. Roma, December 20, 1567 (p. 172)

id. Roma, June 14, 1569 (p. 174)

id. Roma, January 18, 1570 (p. 175)

id. Tivoli. August 13, 1571 (p. 177)

id. Roma, July 5, 1571 (p. 178)

id. Roma, October 31, 1573 (p. 179)

id. Roma, November 21, 1573 (p. 180)

id. Roma, July 21, 1574 (p. 181)

id. Roma, May 28, 1575 (p. 182)

id. Roma, November 16, 1573 (p. 183)

id. Roma, February 26, 1579 (p. 184)

id. Roma, July 9, 1580 (p. 185)

At the end (pp. 186-191) is again found the letter by Giulio Poggiani (1522-1568) to Nicholas Fitzherbert on the imitation of Cicero, dated Rome, March 31, [before 1568].

Marc-Antoine Muret exemplifies the essence of French Renaissance humanism. A master of Latin and student of Classical antiquity, he not only engaged in the recovery and exposition of ancient texts, but also actively employed the old genres and skills in the contemporary ecclesiastical and public spheres. He wrote Latin poetry, both sacred and profane, delivered public orations in Latin, and lectured in various schools throughout France and Italy on authors as diverse as Catullus and Tacitus and on topics as varied as Greek philosophy and Roman law. His list of friends, acquaintances, teachers, and students reads like a Who's Who of the period.

Born near Limoges, he attracted soon the notice of the elder Scaliger and was invited to lecture in the archiepiscopal college at Auch. He afterwards taught Latin in the Collège de Guyenne at Bordeaux, where he had Montaigne among his pupils and where his Latin tragedy Julius Caesar was presented. Some time before 1552 he delivered a course of lectures in the College of Cardinal Lemoine at Paris, which drew a large audience, King Henry II and his queen being among his hearers. He twice received counsel from the elder Scaliger at Agen and at Poitiers participated in a poetry contest judged by Jean Salmon Macrin. At Limoges, he knew Jean Dorat and Joachim du Bellay. Pierre Ronsard attended his lectures at various times, and the latter corresponded with him throughout his life. Denys Lambin, the great commentator of Lucretius, befriended him until their odd falling out in 1559. At Paris, he crossed paths with George Buchanan, Claude Goudimel, François le Duchat, Étienne Jodelle, and other well-known poets, printers, musicians, and intellectuals active there.

His success made him many enemies, and he was thrown into prison on a charge of homosexuality and heresy, but released by the intervention of powerful friends. The same accusation was brought against him at Toulouse, and he only saved his life by timely flight. The records of the town show that he was burned in effigy as a Huguenot and as sodomite (1554). This led to his flight to Italy.

He held a professorship of humanities at Venice, where he became a friend of Paolo Manuzio. Then accepted an invitation of cardinal Ippolito d'Este to settle in Rome, where he lectured for more than twenty years under no small difficulties and restrictions, foreseeing the decline of learning in Italy and making every effort to arrest it. In 1561 Muret revisited France as a member of the cardinal's suite at the conference between Roman Catholics and Protestants held at Poissy. He returned to Rome in 1563.

His lectures gained him a European reputation, and in 1578 he received a tempting offer (which he declined) from the king of Poland to become teacher of jurisprudence in his new college at Kraków. Despite the scandal and turbulences, he received the holy orders in 1576 and was induced by the liberality of Gregory XIII to remain in Rome, where he died in 1585 (cf. V. Leroux, Introduction, in: M.-A., Muret, “Juvenilia”, Genève, 2009, pp. 13-24; see also Ch. De Job, Marc-Antoine Muret: Un professeur Français en Italie dans la secondemoitié du XVI^e siècle, Paris, 1881, passim, F. Delage, Marc-Antoine Muret, poète français, Limoges, 1910, passim; D. Menager, Marc-Antoine Muret à la recherche d'une patrie, in: “La circulation des hommes et des oeuvres entre la France et l'Italie à l'époque de la Renaissance”, A. Fontana, ed., Paris, 1992, p. 260-269; and R. Trinquet, Un maître de Montaigne: l'humaniste limousin Marc-Antoine Muret, in: “Bulletin de la Société des amis de Montaigne”, 1966, pp. 3-17).

Muret's library passed to the Jesuits in Rome, and from there in great part to the Library of king Victor-Emmanuel (today Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Rome) (cf. P. Renzi, I libri del mestiere: ‘La Bibliotheca Mureti' del Collegio Romano, Siena, 1993, passim).

II. TIXIER:

(2), 117 pp. A⁸-I⁸, H⁴. Title-page within an ornamental border and with a woodcut vignette. Old vellum.

VD 16, T-1419.

THIS IS THE FIRST SEPARATE BASEL-EDITION of Tixier's collection of 149 model-letters, here printed with numerous marginal catch words and the original prefatory letter by Tixier, which was omitted in numerous earlier editions. Earlier Basel-editions (Brylinger, 1552, 1562, 1566, 1567?, 1581) were usually found with Tixier's Officina and other texts.

Little is known about the life of Jean Tixier. He was born in the Nivernois region and educated in the Collège de Navarre in Paris, where he taught rhetoric all his life. He published many textbooks for the use of his students and staged several school dramas, of which some were partly printed under the title Dialogi at Paris in 1530 (cf. O. Pédeflou, Ravisius Textor's Scholarly Drama and its Links to Pedagogical Literature in Early Modern France, in: “Proceedings of the Symposium of the Cambridge Society for Neo-Latin Studies on Neo-Latin Drama, Clare College, Cambridge, Monday 3^rd and Tuesday 4^thSeptember 2007”, A. Taylor et P. Ford, eds., to be published).

His most successful works were Epitheta (1518), a dictionary of proper names and other sustantives with a large number of adjectives and their synonymes; and Officina (1520), a dictionary of classified excerpts from classical and contemporary authors. Tixier was buried in the chapel of the College de Navarre (cf. M. Mignon, Un recteur de l'Université de Paris au XVIe siècle. Jean Tixier de Ravisy, humaniste et poète nivernais, in: “Bulletin de la Société Scientifique et Artistique de Clamecy, 35/7, 1911-1912, pp. 58-69; see also N. Istasse, Joannes Ravisius Textor: mise au point biographique, in: “Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance”, 69, 3, 2007, pp. 691-703).

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