Jean Molinet’s Prose Roman de la Rose in Its Original Fugger Binding

[Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung]. Le romant de la Rose [/] Moralisie cler et net [/] Translate de rime en prose [/] Par vostre humble molinet. Nouuellement Imprime. Paris, Widow of Michel le Noir, 1521.

A remarkable copy of Jean Molinet’s prose adaptation of the Roman de la Rose, preserved in its original sixteenth-century Fugger binding and bearing the ownership inscription of Markus Fugger of the great Augsburg merchant dynasty. Printed in Paris in 1521 with woodcut illustrations and an extraordinary large introductory cut derived from a fifteenth-century Danse Macabre, the volume offers a fascinating encounter between late medieval French allegorical literature and the world of Renaissance German patrician humanism.

Edition & Bibliographic Information

A–E6 F4 G–I6 K4 L–N6 O4 P–R6 S4 T–Y6 Z4 = 126 numbered leaves, 2 leaves. Title printed in red and black in double columns throughout.

Illustrated with a large historiated initial on the title, architectural title border, large two-thirds-page introductory woodcut, 27 text woodcuts, and printer’s device. Small folio (265 × 190 mm).

This is the third edition of Jean Molinet’s prose adaptation of the Roman de la Rose, first issued in 1500. By the time of this 1521 edition, the medieval world of the Rose already appeared increasingly remote and archaic to Renaissance readers, yet the work still retained enormous prestige as France’s great allegorical romance.

The edition was printed by the widow of Michel le Noir one year after her husband’s death. Though more modest than the lavish Vérard editions, it preserves a striking transitional character between late medieval and Renaissance book production.

Physical Description & Binding

Contemporary light brown calf binding of the so-called “ordinary” Fugger type over five raised bands decorated with blind fillets. Spine compartments with gilt floral tools within blind-ruled frames. Covers with triple blind fillet borders, the inner frame incorporating gilt corner fleurons and a central gilt ornament. Housed in a modern cloth case with gilt morocco spine label.

Binding rubbed and lightly stained; spine discreetly restored; endleaves with traces of adhesive shadowing; title lightly finger-soiled. Nevertheless, the volume survives as an unusually authentic example of a working Fugger library binding rather than a later collector’s rebinding.

The most visually striking element of the edition is the large introductory woodcut, originally derived from a Danse Macabre printed in 1485. It depicts the author seated at his lectern surrounded by books while an angel unfurls an empty scroll above him. The scene combines manuscript culture, allegory, and the dreamlike atmosphere characteristic of the Roman de la Rose itself.

Markus Fugger and the Renaissance Reception of the Roman de la Rose

The true fascination of the present copy lies in its owner.

Approximately thirty years after publication, the volume entered the library of Markus (Marx) Fugger von der Lilie (1529–1597), member of the most powerful merchant family in Renaissance Germany. Fugger likely acquired the book during his student years in Leuven, where he pursued humanist interests and developed an enthusiasm for both classical and Romance literature.

That a young Fugger chose to acquire the Roman de la Rose is culturally revealing. Although German literary culture absorbed enormous influence from France, scholars long regarded it as “astonishing” that no German Roman de la Rose tradition truly emerged during the late Middle Ages. Yet the present copy demonstrates that the work nevertheless circulated among highly educated German Renaissance readers.

Fugger’s own life curiously mirrored aspects of the romance itself. In 1557 he married Countess Sibylla von Eberstein, thereby connecting the newly enriched Fugger dynasty to the old aristocracy of southwestern Germany — a real-world enactment of courtly aspiration and social elevation entirely in the spirit of the Rose.

At the same time, Markus Fugger embodied the tensions of Renaissance identity. Merchant prince, administrator, scholar, collector, patron, and civic official, he struggled constantly to reconcile commercial responsibility with intellectual ambition. His library became one of the notable private libraries of late sixteenth-century Germany, and it is within that humanist environment that this copy of the Roman de la Rose must be imagined.

Provenance

Ownership inscription on front pastedown:

“Marcus Fuggerus”

Markus Fugger von der Lilie (1529–1597).
Karl & Faber, Munich, auction VIII, 6–7 November 1933, lot 257.

Literature

Bechtel M-442; not in BM STC French, Brun, Brunet, or Graesse; Bourdillon Z; Davies, Fairfax Murray French, no. 331; Ebert 19323; Panzer VIII, p. 69, no. 1234.

For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 75:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume II