7.0. Lexicographical works of Robert Estienne to 1539  [88]

As a printer, Robert Estienne's program was a practical one. Over a period of more than thirty years it covered a wide range of Latin and Greek classics, several editions of the Bible in Latin as well as an edition in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, grammars and other pedagogical works in both Latin and French, and several dictionaries, addressed to different audiences.

As an author and editor, we can say with Starnes (1963: 10) that "[h]is was an historical and critical method like that of such humanist scholars as Colet and Erasmus".

7.1. Early Lexicographical Works

"The greatest undertaking of Spanish Renaissance Humanism was a polyglot text of the Bible in parallel columns of the original languages and a Latin translation. This was the favorite enterprise of Cardinal Ximenes;  [90] it was completed in 1522  [91] after Ximenes' death. This work was one of the great monuments of scholarship and printing skill in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the Old Testament the Latin Vulgate was printed between the Hebrew text and the Greek Septuagint."

In 1537, Estienne published the glossary of proper names and the index to the Scriptures as a separate work with the title:

Hebraea, Chaldaea, Graeca et Latina nomina virorum, mulierum, populorum, idolorum, urbium, fluviorum, montium, caeterorúmque locorum quae in Bibliis leguntur, restituta, cum Latina interpretatione.
Locorum descriptio ex Cosmographis.
Index praeterea rerum et sententiarum quae in iisdem Bibliis continentur.
Parisiis
Ex officina Roberti Stephani.
M. D. XXXVII.

Further evidence of Estienne's feeling that proper names needed separate treatment comes from his revision of a dictionary of proper nouns compiled by Herman Torrentius (first printed in 1498). Estienne printed the Dictionarium poeticum quod vulgo inscribatur Elucidarius Carminum in 1530 and again in 1535. This text was the basis for his own work entitled Elucidarius poeticus, sive Dictionarium nominum proprium, published in 1541, "but his compilation deals more completely and systematically with the proper names found in ancient literature, with details and references, and incorporates general geographical information of a kind not to be found in the older book at all" (Armstrong 1956: 90).

Estienne's first large, original lexicographical work appeared in 1531: his Dictionarium, seu Latinae linguae Thesaurus, usually called Thesaurus.

7.2. Dictionarium, seu Latinae linguae Thesaurus

The first stage is represented by John Balbi's Catholicon. It was the first dictionary to be printed and it dominated the field in the last half of the fifteenth century. The nomenclature of the Catholicon contains ancient and medieval words, and the microstructure is a mixture of encyclopaedic articles and shorter ones. Balbi's citations are drawn mainly from earlier lexica including Papias and Hugutio, from the Vulgate and the Church Fathers, as well as from grammarians and commentators. From the humanist viewpoint, the Catholicon "lacks a solid base: that is, a classical vocabulary supported by citations from authors of good Latinity" (Brandon 1904: 28). We would also include in the first stage the Latin dictionary called Vocabularius breviloquus, compiled by Johannes Reuchlin from a manuscript dictionary based on the Catholicon (see 5.1.2.), and first published in 1475.

The Cornucopiae sive linguae latinae commentarii of Nicholas Perotto, published in 1489 (nine years after Perotto's death), represents the second stage in printed Latin dictionaries. Perotto carefully selected Latin words and studied them thoroughly in order to comment on their meaning and their classical usage. The consultability of the Cornucopiae is aided by an appendix in which the words commented on are listed in alphabetical order with a reference to the page on which they are treated (Brandon 1904: 28). The second stage should probably also include the Commentarii linguae latinae based chiefly on Ciceronian usage, written by Étienne Dolet. Although Dolet was a contemporary of Robert Estienne (the Commentarii were published in two volumes in 1536-1538), his method was entirely different, as Christie (1964: 244f.) explains:

"The work of Robert Estienne was a dictionary [...], in which the alphabetical order was followed, and in which each word was explained by itself and without regard to its relationship to others. Dolet, on the contrary, arranged his words according to their connection with each other, or rather with the ideas which they expressed. The commentary upon one word is followed by a commentary upon the words of a like character, and then upon those which are contrary or dissimilar."

It is almost certain that Calepino also used the Catholicon as a source. A number of its lemmata are found in the nomenclature of the Dictionarium: see Appendix 7 for a comparison of lemmata beginning Mag- in the two dictionaries. However, the structure of the articles is different in several respects, as we see from Exhibit 36:

In this example, Calepino retains phonetic and derivational information but omits grammatical details, and replaces the etymological definition with an internal reference. Lindemann (1994: 118) points out another important difference between the two dictionaries, that is, the function of citations. She explains that in the Catholicon Balbi frequently uses citations to support the encyclopaedic commentary. By contrast, Calepino uses citations from classical authors to prove the purity of the Latin form.

Brandon (1904: 29) remarks that it appears Calepino did not draw his citations directly from the authors but rather took them from grammarians and commentators, which diminishes the scientific value of the work. Nevertheless, the Dictionarium represents a step forward from the Catholicon, through the elimination of much medieval Latin vocabulary, the number of citations, and the absence of encyclopaedic articles (although Calepino retains some proper nouns).

Calepino's dictionary was an immediate success and enjoyed a lasting reputation (see 6.1.4.). However, repeated printings and emendations soon made it a difficult work to consult, and about 1528  [93] Estienne was asked to produce an improved edition of Calepino's popular work. He approached several scholars whom he considered suited to the task but, such was the state of the work,  [94] no-one would agree to undertake it. Finally, Estienne decided to write an original work based on a fresh survey of Latin literature (Armstrong 1956: 85), exemplified by the best writers and glossed by the most authoritative commentators (Wooldridge 1989a: 177). The result of three years' intensive labour by Estienne was the appearance in 1531 of a new Latin dictionary, comprising 964 folios and containing a quantity of French interpretations, with the title:

Dictionarium, seu Latinae linguae Thesaurus, Non singulas modò dictiones continens, sed integras quoque Latinè et loquendi, et scribendi formulas ex optimis quibusque authoribus accuratissimè collectas. Cum Gallica ferè interpretatione.

Brandon (1904: 36) writes: "Estienne proposed three improvements in the science of lexicography: that is, purging of the vocabulary, verification of generally accepted interpretations, and more extensive use of classical citations with precise references". Estienne explains his methods in compiling the Thesaurus in a second Preface,  [95] and we discuss them in Chapter 8.

We should stress that the Thesaurus of 1531 (T1531) is not a bilingual dictionary. Brandon (1904: 48) affirms that Estienne had Latin and only Latin in mind. He intended T1531, which is addressed studiosis lectoribus, to be used both by students and by scholars knowledgeable in Latin (Brandon 1904: 50). However, he later recognized the need to separate his dictionaries into monolingual Latin and bilingual Latin-French works. In the second edition of the Thesaurus (T1536), he eliminated the expression Cum Gallica ferè interpretatione and replaced it with a list of the Latin writers cited in the text:

Dictionarium seu Latinae Linguae Thesaurus, non singulas modo dictiones continens, sed integras quoque Latine et loquendi, et scribendi formulas Catone, Varrone, Caesare, Cicerone, Livio, Columella, Plinio avunculo, Plinio secundo, Plauto, Terentio, Virgilio, Martiale. Cum Latina tum grammaticorum, tum varii generis scriptorum interpretatione.
Parisiis. Ex officina Roberti Stephani, 1536.

French was suppressed entirely in the 1543 edition of the Thesaurus, a huge work of more than 3,000 folios in three volumes, and the last edition published by Estienne.

Dictionarium, seu Latinae linguae Thesaurus. Non singulas modo dictiones continens, sed integras quoque Latine et loquendi, et scribendi formulas ex optimis quibusque authoribus, ea quidem nunc accessione, ut nihil propemodum observatu dignum sit apud Oratores, Historicos, Poetas, omnis denique generis scriptores, quod hic non promptum paratumque habeat.
Editio secunda.
Parisiis. Ex officina Roberti Stephani typographi regii, 1543.

Wooldridge (1977: 21, n.8) remarks that the Thesaurus subsequently had a "glorious monolingual career". Posthumous editions appeared in Lyons in 1573, in London in 1734 and in Basle in 1740 (Brandon 1904: 59, n.2).

[Next] -- [Table of Contents]