the term “emblème” in sixteenth-century france

THE T E R M "EMBL~ME" IN S I X T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y F R A N C E

While scholars have recently begun to turn to the corpus of Renaissance emblems in the attempt to explain certain structural patterns and leone- graphical motifs in French literature of the period,1 the lack of a satis- factory definition of the middle-French "embl~me" has hampered efforts to see the precise relationship between emblems and other literary struc- tures. Sometimes the emblem is confused with the related form of the courtly device; at others, it is considered too exclusively from the vantage point of modern usage.

Actually, the definition of this word should not pose any particularly difficult problems. The word"embl~me" did not enter the French language until the sixteenth century and only then as a direct and easily traceable borrowing from the Renaissance Latin of the humanists. Furthermore, since this term is relatively technical, one would expect to encounter re- stricted and precise patterns of usage. Yet, because of the nature of the phenomenon it described and because of the general semantic instability of middle French, the word "embl~me" has so far eluded the kind of rigorous definition which would take into account all the apparent in- consistencies of Renaissance usage. Huguet's definition is incomplete, for it takes no account of the artistic activity modeled on Alciati's ernble- mata. ~ The definitions of Marie Praz, Hecksher and Wirth, or Albrecht SchSne 8 are somewhat too general to describe French emblems from the middle of the sixteenth century with real accuracy because they are drawn largely from emblem books composed in other countries (especially Italy, Germany and the Netherlands) during the seventeenth century.

The etymology and history of the Latin "emblema" have been care- fully traced by Hessel Miedema in his excellent study of Alciati's use of the word. a Miedema explains that the word's Greek prototype referred to any mounted or inserted piece whether it be the insole of a shoe or a branch grafted onto a tree. While this meaning was not retained by either classical or medieval Latin, it did reappear during the Renaissance as, for example, in Coelius Rhodiginus's Lectionum antiquarum (1516) where one finds: "Si uer6 syluestri oleae domestica inseratur, fient quae vocantur cotinades. In quo obiter scitu diguum: urbana omnia syluestri- bus insita, dici emblemata. Apud Vlpianum digestis Ad exhibendum, Emblema phialae omnino aliud est: meminit Plinius quoque."5 In classical Latin the word "emblema" was a technical, juridical 6 term referring to decorative inlaid work as in a mosaic or, more often, to detachable, ornamental appliqu6s (especially gold and silver decorations attached to tableware). The best known and most extensive references to this Latin usage are found in Cicero's Verrine Orations and Bud6's Annotationes in pandectas (1508). The word still had much the same meaning in the Middle

338 Daniel Russell - The Term "Embldme" etc.

Ages as is clear from the following definition in the Catholicon of Ioannes Balbus (1286): "Sculptura vel ornamentum vasorum, vel varietas pavi- menti sive diversitatis colorum in pavimento. ''7

Lucilius, Cicero and Quintilian also used the word figuratively and with disapproving irony to describe speeches constructed of ingeniously interwoven points or the techniques of the orator who would learn passages from other authors to be used as rhetorical ornaments inserted in his own speeches. Cicero also used the word this way without any pejorative nuance. 8 With and without its ironic overtones, this figurative use of the word quite obviously survived in sixteenth-century France whenever the word "embl~me" was used to mean "piece rapport6e. ''~

Miedema has sought principally to show that, for Alciati, the emblema was a purely literary creation; from Alciati's famous letter to Calvo in 1522, Miedema concludes that Alciati must have conceived the emblem as "an epigram which describes something, so that it signifies something else. ''1~ He adds that Alciati never mentioned the illustrations and that the wood-cuts were always an addition of the publishers. Every reference in Alciati's correspondence clearly suggests that he did indeed understand the emblems to be epigrams, but in the preface Alciati addressed to Conrad Peutinger, matters are not quite so clear when he explains:

Haec nos festiuis Emblemata cudimus horis, Artificum illustri signaque facta manu: Vestibus ut torulos, petasis ut figere parmas, Et valeat tacitis scribere quisque notis. (11.3-6) 11

Miedema proposes the following translation of these lines: " In our leisure hours we make these emblemata: signa, executed by the master hand of craftsmen. Just as one can attach trimmings to clothing and badges to hats, so must each of us be able to write with dumb signs. ''12 While Miedema suggests that this tranlsation is accurate and would be considered standard, he claims to prefer the more "elegant solution" for the last phrase of "on dumb signs." Miedema's ensuing discussion of the passage is based on this translation which he believes supports him in denying the existence of any intended relationship between the text of Aleiati's emblems and the actual illustration of them.

Contemporary French translations of this passage show that at least some sixteenth-century readers understood Alciati quite differently. In 1536 Jean Le Fevre rendered the passage (his is hardly a translation) this way:

Jay dresse (selon ce que ientends) Quelques propos composez par histoires/ En quoy ie rends voyes a tous notoires Comme ilz pourront par seulz signes bien dire/.~ Et maintz bons rnotz/sans letre faire escripre: Quon peult poser en signeaulx & doreures Et escuz/bonnetz/& en aultres pareures:...13

Le Fevre then understood the emblems to be "quelques propos" ex-

Daniel Russell - The Term "Embl~me" etc. 339

pressed through "histoires". An histoire in the Renaissance could be either a text or a picture; but since the rest of the passage explains that these compositions can provide helpful models for the expression of "maintz bons motz" in decorative ideograms, we can assume that these histoires ate either pictures of such "hieroglyphic" signs or descriptions of them. Either interpretation, however, leaves the reader with the same impression that these compositions are in one way or another pictorial. 14

Partly to provide a corrective for Le Fevre's excessively free rendering and partly to demonstrate that French was capable of the density of Latin, Barth61emy Aneau set out some twelve years later to translate Aleiati's emblems line for line, as literally as possible. Here is the result for the passage in question:

I'ay par esbat ces Emblemes forg6z Par main d'ouvriers aussi la pourtraicture. Aflfin qu'on puisse en chappeaux, & vesture Mettre affiquetz, & divise consonne. 1~

Now Aneau was just as sure as Miedema that Alciati had meant by "emblema" a certain kind of epigram. 16 But Aneau obviously believed as well that these epigrams were intended by their author to be accompanied by illustrations and that he had been actively involved in the execution of these illustrations (1. 2 of the passage under consideration). These epigrams are seen as existing in relation to another work of art - just like many of the epigrams in the Greek Anthology which had served as Alciati's most immediate models in the elaboration of his emblems. 17 While Miedematranslates lines three and four of the passage as a compara- tiveclause ("Just as . . . " ) , Aneau read them rather as a final clause. Le Fevre obviously understood Alciati much the same way, and this reading of the passage has important implications for our understanding of the historical and artistic forces which helped make possible the creation of the emblems; Le Fevre and Aneau saw Alciati's emblems as models for craftsmen making devices and other kinds of decoration and thus situated them in a tradition of literary instructions to artists which dated in France from at least the middle of the fifteenth century, xs

In short, the emblema which Alciati created was perhaps, as Miedema claims, a special kind of epigram which "describes a particular thing either in such a way ihat it adds meaning to something existing, or so that it itself gains a pleasing additional content, whereby it comes in its turn to exercise a hieroglyphic function. ''1~ In mid sixteenth-century France, however, this epigram was apparently thought not to describe so much a "particular thing" as a pictorial representation of a thing or things. Each of Alciati's emblem-epigrams was seen as existing in relation to and perhaps even as part of another work of art. They are inscriptions as epigrams had always been throughut the early Italian Renaissance. 20 But unlike standard Renaissanceinscriptions, an emblem draws a moral lesson from

340 Daniel Russell - The Term "Embl~me" etc.

the work of art to which it is attached or onto which it is grafted by de- scribing that work in a certain way.

Guillaume de La Perri~re composed the first French emblem book in 1536. The extremely rare first edition was published at Lyons as Le Theatre des bons engins, auquel sont contenuz cent Ernblernes, and it was not illustrated. 21 It would therefore seem possible to assume, as Miedema apparently does, 22 that La Perri~re too considered emblems to be no more than epigrams (dizains). But when these dizains were next published in 1539, each was accompanied by an elegant wood-cut illustration. In the epistre dedicating his work to Marguerite de Navarre, La Perri~re indicated quite clearly that, by "embl~me", he meant here the illustrations accompanying his poems ( " . . . cent Emblemes, avee autant 'de dizains deselaratifz, & illustrez d'iceulx.") 23 Even if La Perri~re had intended his compositions to be illustrated from the start, it would not have been contrary to contemporary practice to publish the dizains without any illustrations. Even after 1539, dizains from this collection were often re- printed in unillustrated anthologies. ~4 To cite another example, Antoine Constantin was granted a Privilege du Roy in 1544 to publish "ce present Livre traictant d'Amours, intitul6 DELIE, soit avec Emblesmes, ou sans Emblemes . . . . -25 In these books then, ernbl~mes would seem to be, at least for their publishers, the detachable illustrations of dizains.

Such examples would perhaps help confirm Praz's contention that emblems as Alciati had conceived them are illustrations and hence "exact- ly the reverse of the epigram, ''26 if the term were not used in other passages from the same period to refer quite clearly to the epigram which describes a real or hypothetical illustration. In fact, there exists a manu- script copy of the 1536 edition of La Perri~re's Theatre by F. Julyot, a Besan~on jurist and poet; it is not illustrated and bears the title "Les Cent Emblemes." At the end of the transcription, Julyot specifies that they are "cent emblemes par dizains." 27 Furthermore, La Perri~re himself used the word "embl~me" some fifteen years later to describe the Latin epigrams of his Morosophie in a way which runs closely parallel to Miedema's definition of the emblema for Alciati: " . . . en chacun de noz Cent Emblemes Moraux du present ceuvre i 'ay encloz aux deux premiers vers Latins la description du pourtrait figur6, & aux deux vers suyvantz, le sens Allegorieque & Moral dudit p o u r t r a i t : . . . " 28 Here the emblem is an epigram in which the description of a picture serves as the preamble to and preparation for a presentation of its "sens Allegoricque & Moral." By being selective in his choice of details and by naming the actors in the illustrated scene, the poet does, in fact, describe the illustration in such a way as to make it function hieroglyphically.

In Gilles Corrozet's Hecatorngraphie (1540) the word "embl~me" refers almost certainly to the texts accompanying the illustrations. Denys Janot's dernande de privilege describes "ung petit livre intitul~ H~catom-

Daniel R u s s e l l - The Term " Embldme" etc. 341

graphie, auquel sont contenuz cent Emblemes garnys de cent figures . . . . ,,29 Here the word could, of course, refer to the elegant borders which frame each illustration and the accompanying quatrain on the verso of each folio. In Corrozet 's verse preface, however, it is clearer that he is thinking of the emblem as a text:

10

C'est ce livret qui contient cent embl~mes, Authoritez, Sentences, Appophthegmes, Des bien lettrez, comme Plutarque & aultres, Et toutesfoys, il en y a des nostres Grand quantit6, aussi de noz amys, Qui m'ont pri6 qu'en lumi6re fust mis Pour le plaisir qu'on y pourra comprendre Et pour le bien qu'on y pourra apprendre, Et pour autant que l'esprit s'esjouit, Quand avecq luy de son bien l'oeil jouit, Chascune hystoire est d'ymage illustr6e, Attin que soit plus clairement moustr6e L'invention, & La rendre autenticque, Qu'on peult nommer lettre hieroglyphique . . . . 3o

I f lines two and three of this passage are understood to be in apposition to the word "embl~mes" in the first line, it would then be fair to assume that emblems for Corrozet, here at least, are not only texts, but even, in Quintilian's metaphorical sense, passages borrowed from other authors. Perhaps Corrozet intended his emblems to be borrowed in turn to enhance or ornament other rhetorical expositions. But Quintilian's pejorative nuance has disappeared. Quite the contrary, as we see elsewhere in this preface, Corrozet saw no possibility for the poet or orator to say anything new ( " . . . on ne meet riens maintenant en lumi~re, /Qui n 'ait est6 ou veu ou desgnis6.")sl and saw himself as a "bon ouvrier" for whom the emblematic technique of borrowing, combining and varying already extant expressions of the eternal truths is the very ideal of all art. Corrozet modestly hopes that his own variations will provide someone with "Fruiet ou plaisir", someone who would not be affected by the same message expressed in a different way.

In the middle years of the sixteenth century (1534-1555) then, the em-

blame was apparently considered' to be some sort of detachable and perhaps borrowed rhetorical ornament. It could be either the text which described a work of pictorial art and suggested the moral lesson hidden allegorically within it, or it could be the detachable ornamental illustration of the text. In either case, the illustration was often understood, in a Neo-Platonie context, as a hieroglyph designed to show more clearly the "invention" as Corrozet calls it. 32

That an emblem was considered to be quite literally detachable is clearly evident from the production of the French publishing trade throughout this period. The epigrams from emblem books were often republished without any illustrations, and the emblem wood-cuts were regularly used to illustrate other, often quite different, kinds of pub-


lication, a8 But to be detachable, the emblem had to be detachable from something; it had to exist for and in relation to something else. By its very nature, each emblem came into being in a symbiotic relationship with another work of art in a different medium. Consequently, every time one talked about an emblem, he was in fact talking about a composite invention involving at least an epigram and a work of plastic art. A revision in the usage and definition of the word could not therefore be long in coming, but throughout the period under consideration, the word "embl6me" referred to only one part of such two-part inventions; it had not yet come to refer to the whole composition, nor did it yet imply any very precise relationship between the two parts of this composition. It was, however, understood that the emblematic relationship was meant to point out and emphasize a lesson of practical morality for everyday life.34

Nevertheless, it seems somehow inconsistent that the term could have been used as easily to refer to the pictorial as to the textual component of the invention. During the Renaissance, however, graphic art and literary expression were conceived as being much closer, in their goals at least if not in their techniques, than they are in the twentieth century. A peinture was a painting, but it was also a written description; an histoire could be a painting or drawing as well as the argument of a textual exposition. Newly revived interest in the poetic description of physical objects or works of art and the tradition of literary instructions to artists and craftsmen tended to reduce this distance even further. Finally, the Re- naissance fashion of pseudo-hieroglyphics turned every painting into a potential ideogram. So when Guillaume Gu6roult advised the Comte de Gruyere that, although his book is small,

. . . il ha bien puissance De vous donner quelque resiouyssance Quand vostre esprit de tout soucy delivre: Life voudra quelque embleme en ce livre. 85

one cannot be sure whether he was referring to his poems, the wood-cuts, or to the combination. It is perhaps more important to see that for Gu6- roult, as for his contemporaries, the emblem was above all a special kind of text which is partially hieroglyphic and partly discursive and whose purpose, to continue the quotation from Gu6roult, "est d'enseigner la vertu/Dont vostre c~eur heroique est v e s t u , . . . " This kind of composition was probably considered effective for "teaching virtue" because of its mnemonic qualities; the moral lesson contained in the epigram could be attached to the illustrated scene which would serve as an easily retained "memory place." 36

The first stage in the semantic evolution of the word "embl~me" was its confusion with "devise" between 1560 and 1570. This confusion is reflected in the titles of emblem books like Gabriello Simeoni's Les De- vises ou emblemes heroiques et morales (1559) or Georgette de Montenay's

Daniel Russell - The Term "JEmblOme" etc. 343

Emblemes, ou devises chrestiennes (1571); it corresponds to a shift in fashion which saw a fairly general eclipse of the emblem as it had formerly been practiced in favor of courtly devices which were now being collected, described and, occasionally, "moralized" rather as if they were emblems. 37 Occurring at a time when theoretical commentary was insisting that a device which was not composed of both a motto and a figure (a soul and a body) was defective, 8s this confusion does indicate, at least, that the word "embl~me" was beginning to refer directly to the combination of picture and text, whereas in earlier usage any references to a combination was implicit at best.

Jacques Gr6vin was apparently the first to take this evolution into account in a definition of the word in his translation of Hadrianus Junius's Emblemata (1567): "Nous nommons Embl~me toute proposition obscure de soy mesme, laquelle ne pouvant estre entendue de prime face, requiert une explication. Telles propositions sont ordinairement representees par figures & peinctures expliquees par vers. Elles concernent volon- tiers les meurs, & declairent les moyens de bien vivre: . . . - 3 9 This definition suggests that the emblem had evolved since the middle of the century from a rhetorical ornament into a special kind of communication. In the presentation of this emblematic "proposit ion" a picture is the most important component with the poetry serving merely to explain the im- port of the picture. The relationship between the two parts of the composition is now more dearly defined, and they are no longer seen as easily detachable one from the other. It is easy to see from this definition how the emblem came to be considered in the seventeenth century as primarily a pictorial composition, but in fact Gr6vin's definition does not break completely with earlier usage. For earlier writers too, the text was often the subordinate component of the composition; the real difference here is that the word "embl~me" now refers to the whole composition. Like his predecessors, Gr6vin considered the embldme to be a special kind of semi-hieroglyphic text rather than an artistic genre with a definite tripartite form as it would later be conceived in the seventeenth century.

During the 1570's and 1580's the emblem became the object of a certain amount of analysis and several attempts at definition with the publication in France of the commentaries on Alciati by Claude Mignault (1571) and Francesco Sanchez de Las Brozas (1573) and Pierre Langlois's Discours sur les hieroglyphes (1583). Even though Mignault's remarks on the emblem are somewhat lacking in consistency, as Menestrier has noted, 40 he remained the most-quoted authority well into the seventeenth century. Mignault launches his discussion of the emblem by declaring critically that "Plerique sunt non satis acuti, qui Emblema cum Symbolo, cum Aenigmate, cum Sententia, cum Adagio temer~ & imperit~ confuno dant." As he explains how the emblem is different from all these things, it becomes clear that an emblem is a picture for Mignault, and he even goes so far as to say " . . . nee semper necesse est in Emblemate esse

344 D a n i e l R u s s e l l - The T e r m " E m b l O m e " etc.

adiectum epigramma. ''41 In a slightly different context, however, he also describes emblems as "carmina, quibus imagines, agalmata, pegmata, & id genus alia scit6 adinuenta, vari~ & eruditb explicantur. ''42

By the time Mignault was composing the preface to his translation of Alciati's emblems, which was published twelve years later, his position has become considerably clearer, There he explains: " . . . par translation, ce nora se prent pour une maniere d'oraison ornee et revestue de quelques couleurs, et comme peintures de sentences. Mais icy, Emblemes ne sont autre chose que quelques peintures ingenieusement inventees par hommes d'esprit, representees, et semblables aux lettres Hieroglyphiques des Egyptiens, qui contenoient les secrets de la sagesse de ces anciens l~t par le moyen de certaines devises, et comme pourtraits sacrez: . . . - 4 3 So while Mignault was obviously aware of the figurative use of the word by Cicero and Quintilian as a part of a literary or oratorical construction, he tended to situate Alciati's invention within the tradition of the Egyptian hieroglyphics rather than that of the epigrams of the Greek Anthology. 44 In his opinion, Alciati had created his emblems in the following manner: " . . . de plusieurs endroits des meilleurs ouvriers il a en partie choisy quelques devises pleines de bon sens & invention: & en pattie aussi en a basti d'aultres ~t sa fantasie, qu'il a revestues de nouvelle parure: toutes lesquelles . . . il a illustrees & enrichies d'explication bien elegante, & docte, l~t off chasque peincture a son Epigramme pour esclarcissement, par mots purs & choisis autant que ce peust. ''aS Like Corrozet, Mignault understood the art of the emblem as a mosaic-forming technique of borrowings and variations. But while Corrozet added pictures to clarify the texts which he called emblems, Mignault saw texts composed of "pure and chosen" words being added to clarify the hieroglyphic signs or emblems which Alicati had taken from noble devices or constructed himself�9 Such texts are necessary because, as Mignault says in his "Avant propos du translateur: . . . . De fair il n 'y a Embleme qui ne comprenne en soy l 'argument & matiere d'un entier discours pour bastir un iuste volume � 9 The epigram becomes the reader's guide to the rich complexities of the sign. But whatever the origin and complexities of the signs, Mignault, like his contemporairies and predecessors, situated all emblematic compositions in the realm of moral allegory; for although he distinguishes three types of emblems, " . . . toutesfois peuvent tous estre rapportez aux mc~urs."46

One of the most interesting developments in Mignault's discussion involves his attempt to distinguish the emblem from the enigma. During the 1560's, Junius had published a group of enigmas with his emblems, and Gr6vin's definition makes the emblem look a bit like a riddle to be solved by the text. Mignault was the first French writer to attempt to make a clear distinction between the two. As a result of his efforts, he formu- lated what was to be the standard position on obscurity in emblems for the next hundred years: " . . . ratio debet esse clarior & apertior: ut quemad-

Daniel Russell - The Term "Emblkme" etc. 345

modum ab iis imperiti arcentur, sic docti homines aliquid habeant in quo ingenium exerceant. ''aT An emblem should be difficult enough to turn the profane away, but clear enough for the learned, for those initiated to the hieroglyphic code, to be accessible with a little stimulating effort.

For Langlois, on the other hand, the emblem is still a literary or rhetorical composition, but one which takes a work of plastic art as its pretext or point of departure: "Et par metaphore, on appelle Embleme, les Epigrammes qui interpretent ces gentilles & industrieuses peintures [the decorations which the ancients called emblems]. Ouvrage qui a est~ trouv6 si beau, que quelques-uns estimez entre les plus scavans, y ont employ6 de bonnes heures. Entre lesquels ce grand I. M. Alciat, abon- droit, en ce genre de poSme, a emport6 le premier lieu, ayant pill6 tout le plus beau des Grecs. ''48 Here the emblem is a "genre de poSme" which can be composed of borrowings from other poets to explain and emphasize the message implicit in a work of graphic art. Langlois's idea of the emblem differs little from that of earlier emblematists like Corrozet, but with the perspective provided by fifty years of emblematic production, Langlois is better able than his predecessois to take into account all the various details of composition in his definition. As a result he is the first French writer to present the emblem as a three-part invention when he remarks that, unlike the enigma: " . . . en l'Embleme, on se decouvre plus ouvertement, on y voit h iour & h travers le corps ainsi industrieuse- ment imag6 par le subtil & ingenieux ouvrier, qui nous represente par sa peinture quasi la chose qu'il nous veut dire, garny puis apres de devises & epigrammes, comme de beaux ornemens, & enrichissemens attachez ~t tel ouvrage. ''49 Here as with Gr6vin there is a certain continuity with earlier us~/ge, for the text is described in such a way as to correspond to the original meaning of the word "embl~me". Langlois, however, recognizes that there are two kinds of emblem texts, "devises & epigrammes." The device in this case corresponds almost certainly to the motto or titular inscription which had long been a standard part of the emblem in practice even though no previous definition had taken it into account. 50 This use of the word "devise" obviously reflects earlier usage (especially prior to 1550) when the devise was often a cryptic motto-like signature used by poets and humanists. 51 For that reason, Langlois hastens to distinguish between the devise as part of an emblem and "ce que nous appellons aujourd'huy Devise", which "doit tenir un peu plus de l'Aegyptien . . . puis que, comme par marques hieroglyphiques, on declaire ~t couvert ce qu'on veut exprimer de sa principale intention, de son courage, de ses desseins, & resolution. ''52 To the extent that the device and the emblem are considered to be textual commentaries, they are at least partially synonymous; the lingering ambivalence in the meaning of the word "devise" was perhaps the cause of the confusion between the two words in France between 1560 and 1570. 5a

The central piece in the composition which Langlois has described re-


mains, in spite of his emphasis on the text, the peinture: " . . . la grace de l'Embleme consiste en la peinture, qui doit estre si ingenieusement inven- tee, qu'elle nous semble parler. T M The emblem is a peinture which has been made to speak. Indeed, this is the way Menestrier, one hundred years later, interpreted Alciati's famous statement about his emblems, "Verba significant, res s ignif icantur . . ." 55 Menestrier understood Alciati to be saying that his emblems are "discours muets, une Eloquence des yeux, une Morale en couleurs, & des choses qui signifient, & qui expri- ment nos pens6es. T M This is why both Mignault and Langlois claim that there can exist emblems without any textual commentary. The ability of the emblem picture to stand alone is determined by the "invention" or composition of the peinture.

Now the peinture must generally, but not necessarily, be understood to be a picture. Indeed, Langlois seems to be saying that he is composing emblems although he does no more than describe the various ideogrammatic compositions which he calls "tableaux hieroglyphiques". There is no indication that he intended his book to be illustrated; and in fact, there exist numerous unillustrated editions of emblem books from all periods of the sixteenth century. The peinture in such emblem books must be understood to be the textual exposition or description of an "inven- t ion" for a painting. 57

At the end of the sixteenth century (1585-1600), emblems excited very little interest in France. 5 s The dictionaries of Nicot (1606) and Cotgrave (1611) do not have entries for the word, although Cotgrave does mention the derivative "emblemeur" (pr~tre). The only new emblem books to appear in France during this period were published in Metz and Bour- ges 59 - an indication that emblems were still of interest mainly to pro- vincial "attard6s".

One of these books, however, contains a revealing and rather extensive explanation of the appeal of the emblematic form. Pierre Joly composed a group of sonnets in French to serve as the "interpretations" for some of Jean-Jacques Boissard's Latin emblems. In his preface, Joly gives this reason for his undertaking: " . . . j 'ay trouv6 le sens de ses belles conceptions d'un goust si delicieux, que je desireroye en communiquer le plaisir h tous, & rendre palpable la subtilit6 de la doctrine de ce person- nage, par rexposition de ses devises, du fond desquels je m'ose vendiquer la cognoissance." He is setting out, then, to amplify or explain Boissard's short inscription-like devises (either the maxim-titles or the Latin epigrams). But Joly is aware that he can be criticized for explaining Boissard's "doctrine". Explanations attenuate the riddle element of the emblem structure or cause it to disappear entirely and thus take away part of the emblem's appeal: "Ie n'ignore pas toutesfois que partie de la delectation qui se doit puiser en ce labeur, consiste en la recherche que l'on fait comme

taton de l'exacte, & vraye signification de la painture; laquelle ayant

Daniel Russell - The Term "Emblkme" etc. 347

tenu quelque temps l'esprit en suspens; & venant finalement ~t se rencon- trer le ravit en admiration, & contente d'autant plus, que soubs un voile aggreable il descouvreje ne stay quoy de doctrine, & d'enseignement utile, & proffitable h la civile conversation, & commune soeiet6 des hommes. ''60 Plainly Joly believed that one important reason for the persuasive force of the emblematic form is its capacity to simulate a revelation or an intuition through the riddle which develops from the choice and composition of text and illustration; The reader discovers the solution to this riddle through a series of references back and forth between the text and the illustration. Such an investigation holds the reader's attention fixed as if in a suspension outside the kind of time which presides over the experience of reading a normally discursive textual presentation. The requirements of this investigation abolish any impression of logical, progressive, discursive explanation; so w h e n the reader discovers the solution to this riddle, he is as "ravished" by his agreeably sudden com- prehension of the message. The advantage of revelation is that it forces an immediate and total acceptance of the message in a way that a logical argument can not.

But Joly realizes no doubt that the solution of a riddle can provide no more than a superficial, momentary impression of revelation. Although it provides a certain pleasure, it is not ultimately any more convincing than any other kind of exposition. So he justifies his commentaries by claiming that they corroborate and reinforce the message which the reader has deciphered in the emblem: "Mais aussi me sera-il advou6 que le plaisir croistra, si ayant hesit6 quelque temps sur l'investigation du sens, on se met finalement hors de doute par la conference de si peu que j 'en ay escrit, qui servira de guide, & a fin que je die plus librement de fidele inter- prete des conceptions de l'Autheur, de qui je tien la pluspart de l'esclair- cissement de ses propres Emblemes . . . . -61 This is the whole strategy and justification of any extended prose of verse explanation added to an emblem.

During the sixteenth century, the French "embl~me" came slowly to refer to a combination of picture and text designed to enhance the presentation of a moral lesson after having first referred to only one or the other of the two parts of such compositions. Many of the characteristics of the Renaissance embl~me are simply extensions of the original mean- ings of the Latin "emblema" and its Greek prototypes. Like the gold and silver decorative appliqu6s on tableware which the Romans called emblems, the Renaissance literary emblem was conceived as a detachable piece. At first, the illustration and text could apparently be separated without creating the impression that any intrinsic artistic unity was being violated. Emblem motifs were designed with the intention that they would be borrowed by craftsmen and incorporated into all sorts of interior and vestimentary decoration. Later, emblem books were even composed so

348 Daniel Russel l - The Term "'EmblOme" etc.

that entire emblems could be quite literally detached, page by page, and used to decorate bourgeois homes. Furthermore, emblems and emblem books themselves were composed with motifs which had been "detached" f rom the works of other authors to serve as borrowed rhetorical ornaments. Both Mignault and Langlois noted with admiration Alciati's borrowings and his clever use of them. But by being turned to different purposes and combined, mosaic-like, into new configurations, these borrowed materials served, at least in theory, to create something new and different.

The emblem form was attractive to Renaissance humanists because it seemed to combine discursive with ideogrammatic communication. For Renaissance Neo-Platonists, ideogrammatic hieroglyphs permitted the visual intuition of truths not otherwise accessible in their absolute form. Their confidence in Egyptian hieroglyphs (wrongly considered to be ideogrammatic) as a utopian, almost magic language was reinforced by the attitude of total reverence which surrounded all very ancient languages during the Renaissance. But in fact, the illusion of intuition resulted from the kind of effort the reader was obliged to make in order to solve the allegorical riddle formed by the choice and disposition of the components of the emblem. This riddle, rebus aspect of emblem construction also made it seem fashionably hermetic. In the tradition of the cabala, it was felt that a difficult, hermetic vehicle helped preserve the message it contained in its original purity and intensity.

Such rather esoteric concerns were, however, incompatible with the emblem's usefulness in presenting a universally valid moral lesson in a way which is memorable and striking. After Mignault 's distinction between the enigma and the emblem, the hermetic ideal tended to give way progressively before the requirements of Protestant and counter- Reformation propaganda a n d pedagogy.

University o f Pit tsburgh DANIEL RUSSELL

Notes

1. This is especially true in Rabelais scholarship. See for example, G. Mallary Masters, "Rabelais and Renaissance Figure Poems", Etudes rabelaisiennes, 8 (1969), 51-68, and M. A. Screech, "Emblems and Colours: The Controversy over Gargantua's Colours and Devices" in M~langes d'histoire du XVIe sidcle offerts d Henri Meylan (Geneva: Droz, 1970), pp. 65-80.

2. There is no entry for the word either in Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne languefrangaise . . . . or in Tobler-Lommatzseh, Altfranziisisches Wiirterbuch. Nor does one find the word, for example, in Robert Estienne's Dictionnaire francois latin, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1549). Huguet's earliest examples date from 1560-1561 (Dictionnaire de la langue franar du seizidme sidcle, s. v. embl~me) although the word was in fact used a early as 1536 by Jean Le Fevre in the firstFrenchtranslation of Alciati's emblems.

Alciati's emblems were first published in a volume entitled Emblematum fiber (Augs- burg: Steyner, 1531); the first authorized edition was issued as Emblematum libellus (Paris: Christian Wechel, 1534), perhaps to distinguish it from the Steyner edition, but the original title prevailed in subsequent editions by other publishers.

D a n i e l R u s s e l l - T h e T e r m " E m b l ~ m e " etc . 349

3. Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, 2nd ed. (Rome, 1964); W. S. Hecksher and K. A. Wirth, "Emblem, Emblembuch", in Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, V (Stuttgart, 1959), col. 85-228; A. Sch6ne, Emblematik und Drama im Zeitalter des Barock (Munich, 1964); see also A. Henkel and A. Sch6ne, Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI . und X V I L dahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1967).

4. "The Term Emblems in Aleiati", JWCI, XXXI (1968), 234-250. See also, Pauly- Wissowa, Real-Encyclopiidie der classischen Altertumswisseaschaft, V (Stuttgart, 1905), col. 2487-2490.

5. (Basel: Froben, 1542), p. 458. 6. According to C.-F. Menestrier, L'Art des emblemes (Paris, 1684), preface.

Suetonius (De vita caesarum, In 7Yber., cap. 71) has an anecdote about Tiberius publicly striking the word "emblems" from a legal text because it had been borrowed from the Greek.

7. Quoted by Hecksher and Wirth, col. 85. 8. For precise references, see Miedema, pp. 239-240. 9. E. g. Montaigne, Essais, III, 9: "Mort livre est tousjours un. Sauf qu'h mesure

qu'on se met h le renouveller afin que I'acheteur ne S'en allle les mains du tout vuides, je me donne loy d'y attacher (comme ce n'est qu'une marqueterie mal jointe), quelque embleme supernum6raire. Ce ne sont que surpoids, qui ne condamnent point la pre- miere forme, mais donnent quelque pris particulier h chacune des suivantes par une petite subtilit6 ambitieuse". (OEuvres completes, Biblioth6que de la P16~ade, ed. A. Thibaudet and M. Rat [Paris, 1962], p. 941).

10. Miedema, p. 238. Alciati's correspondence has most recently been edited by G. L. Barni (Florence, 1953).

I 1. Omnia Andreae Alciati emblemata, cum commentariis per Claud. Minoem (Ant- werp: Christopher Plantin, 1577), p. 44.

12. Miedema, p. 241. 13. Livret des emblemes . . . (Paris: Christian Wechel, 1536); B. N. R6s. Z. 2522.

Apparently neither of Alciati's bibliographers (Henry Green, Andrea Aleiati and his Books o f Emblems [London, 1872] and Georges Duplessis, Les Embl~mes d'Alciat [Paris, 1884]) noticed that Wechel issued two editions of this translation in 1536. The prefaces bear different dates, and there are numerous typographical differences. This quotation comes from a copy belonging to the edition described by Green and Du- plessis.

14. See Huguet, s. v. histoire. Cf. istoria for L. B. Alberti in Della pittura (1434). On the Renaissance conception of hieroglyphics, see Liselotte Dieckmann, Hiero-

glypics: The History o f a Literary Symbol (St. Louis, Mo.: Washington Univ. Press, 1970). Eephrasis or pictorialism in literary description is discussed at length by Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts (Chicago, 1958) and with specific reference to sixteenth- century France by Panos Paul Morphos in "The Pictorialism of Lemaire des Beiges in Le Temple d'Honneur et des vertus", Annali Istituto Universitario Orientale-Sezione Romanza, V (Naples, 1963), 5-34.

15. Alciati, Emblemes . . . trans. B. Aneau (Lyons: Mac6 Boniaomme, 1549), p. 14. 16. Ibid., p. 11 : " . . . ce sont Emblemes especes de Epigrammes: en briefve parolle

concluans tresample sentence." 17. Nearly a third of the epigrams in the original edition of Alciati's emblems are

merely translations from the Greek Anthology. 18. See, for example, Henri Baude, Dictz moraulx pour faire tapisserie, ed. Annette

Scoumanne (Geneva, 1959), preface. 19. Miedema, p. 242. Cf. Henry Green, pp. cit., p. 10. 20. It would be well to recall here that the Latin "epigramma" means insciption.

On Italian Renaissance epigrams, see Burckhardt, Civilisation de la Renaissance en ltalie (Paris: Livre de poche, 1966), II, 149-152.

21. For details on this edition, see J. C. Brunet, Manuel du libraire (Paris, 1860- 1865), III, col. 830, and supplement 1, col. 777. A copy of this edition is in the British Museum (12314. aaa. 5).

22. Miedema, p. 246. 23. Le Theatre des boas engins auquel sont contenuz cent emblemes moraulx (1539;

rpt. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars' Fascimiles & Reprints, 1964), p. 6. 24. E. g. Le Printemps de Madame poesie chant~ par les vrays amantz au Theatre de

magnificence (Lyons: Jacques Berion, 1551); B. N. R6s. Ye. 1694. For a complete list

350 Daniel Russe l l - The T e r m " E m b l ~ m e " etc.

of such anthologies, see Fr6d~ric Lach~vre, Bibliographie des recueils collectifs de podsies du XVIe si~cle (Paris, 1922).

25. Maurice Sceve, D~lie, ed. 1. D. McFarlane (Cambridge, 1966), p. 118. To my knowledge, Sc~ve himself never used the word, and Dorothy Coleman demonstrates quite convincingly in "Les Emblesmes dans la D~lie de M. Sc~ve," SFr, 22 (1964), 1-15, that the compositions which illustrate Sc~ve's poems are in fact devices rather than emblems.

26. Praz, pp. 22-23. 27. B. N. ms. fr. 12795. 28. La Morosophie. . . (Lyons: Mac6 Bonhomme, 1553), epistre. 29. Hecatomgraphie . . . . ed. C. Oulmont (Paris, 1905), p. xxiv. 30. Ibid., pp. xxvi-xxvii. 31. Ibid., p. xxv. 32. On Neo-Platonism and hieroglyphics in the Renaissance, see especially, Dieek-

mann, pp. 31-44. 33. Some of the wood-cuts from the Hecatomgraphie were used to construct entirely

different emblems which were published with Corrozet's edition of the Tableau de C$b~s de Thebes (Paris: Gilles Corrozet, 1543). Some of the wood-cuts in Aneau's Picta poesis (Lyons: Mac6 Bonhomme, 1552) were first used for Marot 's translation of Ovid (Lyons: G. Rouille, 1550).

Furthermore, there is some evidence that the paginal format of some emblem books was designed so that entire pages could be detached to serve as decoration in modest bourgeois homes. In one edition of the "moralized" devices of Giovio and Simeoni, for example, the devices are printed on only one side of each folio (Tetrastiquesfaictz sur les Devises du Seigneur Paulo Iovio et de Messire Gabriel Simeon, Pour servir en Verrieres, Chassis, Gaieties, et Tableaux, ainsi qu'il plaira au Lecteur de les accomoder [Lyons: G. Rouille, 1560]; Arsenal Fol. B. L. 1178).

34. This is especially clear in the full titles of La Perri~re's two emblem books where, in each case, he speaks of "embl6mes moraux". Obviously, the allegory of a sixteenth- century emblem deals with Quid agaY and not Quid credas.

35. Le Premier fivre des emblemes, ed. De Vaux de Lancey (1550; rpt. Rouen, 1937), p. 5.

36. On Renaissance memory aids and systems, see Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, 1966).

37. E. g. Claude Paradin, Devises herofques (Lyons, 1557). 38. Of the many sixteenth-century Italian theorists of the device, the best known in

France was Paolo Giovio whose work was translated as Dialogue des devises d'armes et d'amours (Lyons: G. Rouille, 1561). Robert Klein gave an excellent account of this theorizing and an explanation of its intricacies in "La Th6orie de l'expression figur6e dans les tralt6s italiens sur les imprese, 1555-1612", BHR, )(IX (1957), 320--341.

39. Hadrianus Junius, Les Emblesmes. . . , trans. Jacques Gr6vin (Antwerp: Chris- topher Plantin, 1570), p. 63.

40. L'Art des emblemes (Lyons: Benoist Coral, 1662), p. 15. 41. Omnia Adreae Alciati emblemata . . . . . ed. cir., pp. 41-42. 42. Ibid., p. 43. 43. Les Emblemes de Andr~ Alciati, trans. Claude Mignault (Paris: J. Richer, 1583),

preface. 44. Rosemary Freeman posed the fundamental question about Alciati's sources in

English Emblem Books, 2nd 9d. (London, 1967), pp. 85-86, as follows: "From the very beginning it had been uncertain whether the form derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics or from the Greek Anthology, whether, that is, its pictorial or its rhetorical side was of prime importance."

45. Mignault, preface. 46. Ibid. 47. Omnia Andreae Aleiati . . . . p. 42. 48. Discours des hieroglyphes... (Paris: Abel l'Angelier, 1583), fol. 5 r. 49. Ibid., fol. 5 v. 50. Heeksher calls this part of the emblem the lemma; Sch6ne, the inscriptio. 51. Cf. Dictionnaire des lettres franeaises. Le seizi~me sidele (Paris, 1951), s. v. devise. 52. Langlois, fol. 6 r. 53. Langiois's was the first attempt in France to distinguish between the two closely

Daniel Russel l - The Term "'Embl~me'" etc. 351

related constructions. In the seventeenth century this was a problem which caused much ink to flow.

54. Langlois, fol. 5 v. 55. "Verba significant, res significantur. Tamesti res quandoque etiam significant,

ut hieroglyphica apud Horum et Chaeremonem eujus argumenti et nos carmine libellum composuimus, cui titulus est Emblemata." in De verborum significatione (I 530). Quoted by Hecksher and Wirth, col. 146.

56. Menestrier (1662), p. 15. 57. The "invention" of a painting, based on a sound knowledge of history and the

tales of the poets, was considered as important as the execution of a painting. See, for example, Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (1557).

58. The device, on the other hand, was extremely popular at the court of Henri IV; Sully and Robert (II) Estienne, among others, took great pride in composing devices for the royal couple and members of the court.

59. Jean-Jacques Boissard, Emblemes, trans. Pierre Joly (Metz: Abraham Fabcr, 1595); there were Latin editions of this and another collection of Boissard's emblems in 1584, 1585 and 1588. Jean Mercier, Emblemata (Bourges, 1592).

60. J.-J. Boissard, Emblematum f iber . . , avee l'interpretation Fran~oise du L Pierre l o l y . . . (Metz: Abraham Faber, 1588), pp. 6--7.

61. Ibid., p. 7.

the term “emblème” in sixteenth-century france

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