Calvin Under Cover: Jean de Tournes’ French Bible with Bernard Salomon Woodcuts in a Monumental Royal Binding
A Calvinist Bible Disguised Beneath the Portraits of Henry II of France
La Sainte Bible. Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1557.
One of the great illustrated French Bibles of the Renaissance, printed by the celebrated Lyon printer Jean de Tournes and richly illustrated with nearly 300 woodcuts by Bernard Salomon. The present copy survives in an extraordinary monumental contemporary binding decorated with portrait medallions of King Henry II of France — a striking visual camouflage for a discreetly Calvinist Bible printed during an age of growing religious repression. From the distinguished collections of L. A. Barbet and Maurice Burrus.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Three parts bound in one volume.
A6 a–z6 aa–ss6 tt8 A–Z6 Aa–Oo6 *8 a–t6 v4 = 6 leaves, 507 pp.; 442 pp., 9 leaves; 230 pp., 3 leaves. Printed in double columns with narrow marginal annotations throughout. Ruled throughout.
Illustrated with four woodcut printer’s devices, 193 Old Testament woodcuts (including twelve full-page illustrations), and 98 New Testament woodcuts by Bernard Salomon, together with numerous historiated initials, decorative borders, and ornamental vignettes.
Large folio (380 × ca. 252 mm), preserving several deckle edges.
Physical Description & Binding
Contemporary dark brown calf binding incorporating the original sixteenth-century covers. Smooth spine divided by eight interlaced gilt compartments. Covers framed with double gilt fillets and richly decorated with floral and ornamental strapwork heightened in turquoise and gold. At the corners of the central lozenge field are large gilt portrait medallions depicting Henry II of France and allegorical triumphal imagery associated with Fame, Victory, and Wealth. The centre retains an empty cartouche surrounded by two-tone interlaced strapwork.
Gilt edges and gilt gauffered decoration throughout. Preserved in a wine-red morocco case lined with velvet.
The binding belongs to a remarkable Lyonese group of richly patriotic “trade bindings” produced around the mid-1550s, incorporating royal portrait medals and political symbolism associated with Henry II and the French monarchy.
Jean de Tournes and the Religious Climate of Lyon
Jean de Tournes I (1504–1564), described by historians as the Renaissance Lyon printer par excellence, operated at the centre of one of Europe’s most sophisticated printing cultures. Having trained under Sebastian Gryphius, he established his own press in 1542 and rapidly became one of the defining figures of Lyonese humanist publishing.
Yet the political climate changed dramatically under Henry II. The crown intensified anti-Protestant measures through increasingly severe censorship laws and religious prosecutions. The Edict of Châteaubriant (1551) required theological approval for all printed books and intensified surveillance of printers and booksellers throughout France.
Jean de Tournes himself sympathized with Calvinism, though contemporaries emphasized that he was never fanatical or reckless. His Bibles therefore became masterpieces not only of printing, but also of confessional strategy.
A Calvinist Bible Disguised as Orthodoxy
The present Bible follows the revised French translation associated with Pierre-Robert Olivétan and Jean Calvin, yet Jean de Tournes carefully modified its appearance to resemble a traditional Catholic Vulgate. Calvin’s preface was replaced by that of Saint Jerome, and the Apocrypha were not visually separated from the canonical books.
These modifications acted as a kind of confessional camouflage. The genuinely Protestant elements survive primarily in the extensive indexes and annotations, where theological comments on terms such as “bishops,” “idols,” “purgatory,” and “vows” reveal unmistakably reformist tendencies.
The binding completes the disguise almost theatrically. The large royal portrait medallions of Henry II — one of the most determined persecutors of French Protestantism — create the appearance of an overtly patriotic royal publication, while Calvinist theology quietly unfolds beneath the covers.
Bernard Salomon and the Renaissance Bible Image
Jean de Tournes collaborated closely with the great Lyonese illustrator Bernard Salomon, whose biblical woodcuts transformed Renaissance book illustration. Salomon’s imagery abandoned medieval allegorical systems in favour of a more historical, archaeological, and humanized vision of biblical narrative rooted in Renaissance classicism.
The Old Testament illustrations, originally conceived independently from the biblical text itself, create sequences that function almost like visual narratives. The New Testament cycle, meanwhile, follows the textual structure more directly. Throughout, the images remain strikingly free from explicit confessional polemic.
The result is a Bible that reflects the remarkable atmosphere of relative intellectual openness that still survived in Lyon during the 1550s, where Catholic and Protestant artists and printers continued to collaborate despite mounting political tensions.
Provenance
Ownership inscription on title: “Lamare Rouault 1588,” with some contemporary annotations and underlining.
L. A. Barbet, sale I, 1932, lot 53.
Bookplate of Maurice Burrus (1882–1959), Alsatian parliamentarian and philatelist, who acquired the volume from Léon Gruel in 1937.
Literature
Not in Adams or BM STC French; cf. Brun 127 (1554 edition); Brunet I, 890; Cartier no. 360; Delaveau/Hillard no. 373; Ebert 2151; Graesse I, 375; Lonchamp, Français II, 53.
Binding discussed in Hobson, Humanists, pp. 136ff. and fig. 107; Toulet 151 and fig. 128.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, lot 88:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume II
