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“The Catholic Moderator”: A French Reply to Bellarmine and its English Author, Henry Constable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

David Rogers
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Extract

The lively interest which Englishmen took in the events and controversies which culminated in the assassination of Henry III of France in 1589, and the succession of Henry of Navarre to the throne, is mirrored in the stream of pamphlets issuing from the London printing-presses and relating to French affairs. At a rough count, at least a score of books and pamphlets relating to France still survive which appeared in London in that year 1589 alone. Several of these were translated from French by the busy publicist and publisher Edward Aggas. One undated translation which came from his pen was that of a celebrated treatise written under the initials E.D.L.I.C. (standing for Edmond de L'Allouette, Iuris-consulte) who is frequently identified with Pierre de Belloy. The French original which first appeared in 15893 is entitled: Apologie catholique contre les libelles … publiées par les Liguez … dépuis le decés de feu Monseigneur, frére unique du Roy.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 5 , Issue 6 , October 1960 , pp. 224 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1960

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References

1. There is a brief sketch of Aggas in DNB. See also “A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England … 1557-1640, ed. R. B. McKerrow, (1910) p.3; Morrison's Index of Printers … in … Short-title Catalogue … 1475-1640 (1950) p.1 shows Aggas at his busiest during the 1580's.

2. For example, by at least one of his contemporary opponents—cf. note 7 below. The explanation of the initials is given in the revised edition (Paris 1768-78) of Jacques Lelong, Bibliothèque historique de la France, where the index of authors brings together by cross references the initials, the pseudonym Edmond de l'AHouette, and the Apologie Catholique, which had already been attributed to Pierre de Belloy in Lelong's first edition (Paris 1719, no.7974) on the authority of Philippe de Mornay's Mémoires and J-A. de Thou's Histoire de France.

3. Three editions dated 1585 are in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris; two of these are also in the British Museum. Both catalogues agree in giving priority to the edition containing “124” numbered leaves (really 132) followed by a genealogical table and an index. A copy of this edition is in the Bodleian (Tanner 441) and bears a printer's device—Time bringing Truth to light—which is a close copy of one used by Conrad Badius at Geneva and later by the firm of Haultin at La Rochelle (cf. Ph. Renouard, Les marques typographiques Parisiennes des XVe et XVle siècles, Paris, 1926, no. 535 and P. Heitz, Genfer Buchdrucker-und Verlegerzeichen, Strassburg, 1908 no. 7). The book does not seem to be from the Haultin press, but looks French-printed all the same.

4. It seems possible that there were two Latin editions in the year 1586; in addition to one which has the appearance of having been printed at Geneva or possibly in Germany (8°A38Th.), the Bodleian also possesses a Latin edition (8° A lo3 Art.) which bears the equivalent date clo Icxvic. This could stand for 1584, but such a date being impossible for this translation, a misprint may have occurred and clo Ioxivc, standing for 1586, may have been intended.

5. I have taken this title from Lelong, op.cit. (1719 edition) no. 7975—misprinted 7775—and C. Sommervogel, Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, 1890, tom. 1 col. 1180. The latter reads Fracorum for Francorum.

6. Bellarmine's letter is quoted by Sommervogel, loc.cit.

7. This title I have also taken from Lelong, loc.cit., who quotes Baillet's attribution of it to Bellarmine, and Sommervogel, loc.cit., whose title is slightly fuller. On his titlepage the French translator goes beyond Bellarmine and roundly declares de Belloy to be the author of the Apologie Catholique.

8. There are copies of the 1589 edition of the Examen pacifique in the Bodleian (8°M 65 Art.) and in the British Museum.

9. Although I have not been able to consult the French version of Bellarmine's Responsio, the passages from it which are quoted in the Examen pacifique prove to be close translations of portions of Bellarmine's original Latin, which I have checked in an edition printed at Fano in 1591 (Bodleian: 8°H 182 Art.). AH the early editions of this work of Bellarmine's seem to be very scarce.

10. STC 6377.

11. These initials were added at the end of the translator's preface in the second, and subsequent, “impressions “i.e. editions—STC 6378-80.

12. His conversion is dated 1578 by Abbé P. Feret, Le cardinal Du Perron, étude historique, Paris, 1877, p.7.

13. STC 6377-80.

14. Vol. I of the revised General Catalogue of Printed Books was published in 1931. Vol. LI, which covers DE-DEZW, appeared in 1954. No more have been published.

15. The identity of the Catholike Moderator with the Examen pacifique is not, however, a recent discovery. For example, it was entered in the Bodleian catalogue by a nineteenth century reviser.

16. By the senior editor of the present journal. The absurdity grows when it is now shown, as I have here done, that the author's adversary was in fact Bellarmine. That two future cardinals should engage anonymously in public theological controversy on opposite sides is not impossible, but unlikely, considering that the red hat came to each as a reward for services to the same church.

17. In addition to the authorities already quoted, Halkett and Laing's Dictionary of anonymous and pseudonymous English Literature (1926 edition) I, 302, ascribes the Catholike Moderator to du Perron, though mentioning its attribution to its (true) author in a note. The catalogue of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris likewise accepts du Perron's authorship.

18. Biographical Studies II, p. 275. Mr. Wickes there states that the book was published in September, but the titlepage actually gives October as the month.

19. Thus proving that the English translator, even if his evidence cannot be shown to be strictly contemporary, was once again well-informed when he stated in 1623 that the work had been “first written in French by a Catholike Gentleman.”

20. Arber, , A transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1875–94, II, 529.Google Scholar

21. For Wolfe see the article by Harry R. Hoppe, “John Wolfe, Printer and Publisher, 1579-1601,” Library XIV (1933) pp.241-288, where the author (hereafter in this note referred to as H) reproduces specimens of Wolfe's initial letters and ornaments. The Examen pacifique uses five different ornamental initial capitals, one headpiece and one factotum. Of the initial letters, C (p.4) belongs to H's set No. 2 and was used in STC 21673, a book signed by Wolfe in the same year, 1589; G (p.72) belongs to the same set; I (sig.A3 recto) belongs to H's set No. 3, and on the same page the headpiece, a narrow band of small interlacing circles, is to be found also in STC 13969, another book signed by Wolfe in 1589; the small C (pp.37, 107) belongs to H's set No. 4; the L (sig. Bl recto) is very close to H's miscellaneous initial No. 18, though it is not identical with it; most distinctive of all, the factotum (pp.51, 91) with its large break in the bottom border is H's No. 31.

22. At least no English version has yet been found earlier than 1623. Of course, the idea of an English version may have come from Wolfe and not from the author himself.

23. The best known are his editions of Macchiavelli under a Palermo imprint. The query of a puzzled Sicilian bibliographer led to his unmasking. On this see Harry Sellers, “Italian books printed in England before 1640,” Library IV (1925) pp. 105-128. There are a number of false imprints known which are not to be found in Seller's article nor in the STC, but it is certain that by no means all have yet been spotted. Mr. Denis Woodfield, of Lincoln College, Oxford, is preparing a thesis on clandestine English printing of books in foreign vernaculars.

24. Such were the Spaniards Antonio de Corro and Antonio Perez and the Italian Giordano Bruno.

25. The English original, fathered by Cecil on Richard Leigh, a seminary priest who had been conveniently disposed of by execution when the Armada danger had passed, is STC 15415. A copy of the Italian, which is not in STC, has recently been acquired by the Bodleian, which also has copies of a French translation printed secretly in London and likewise not in STC.

26. I owe my knowledge of this edition to the kindness of Mr. Woodfield, who discovered a copy of it in the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. I have not yet had an opportunity to examine it.

27. Arber, op.cit., III, 487.

28. Even if this allegiance dated from after the completion of his book, as already suggested, no one in 1623 would remember that.

29. Bodleian MS. Add. A207 (Summary Catalogue No. 30182).