The Final Sixteenth-Century Printing of Medieval Europe’s Most Influential Love Allegory
[Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung]. Le rommant de la Rose nouuellement reueu et corrige oultre les precedentes impressions. Paris, Arnoul and Charles les Angeliers, 1537.
The final early edition of the Roman de la Rose, one of the foundational literary monuments of medieval Europe and the most influential allegory of love of the Middle Ages. Printed in Paris in 1537 and illustrated with 51 woodcuts, this rare octavo edition marks the end of nearly two centuries of continuous transmission before the text disappeared from print for generations.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Π8 a–z8, &8 τ8 A–Y8 YY8 ZZ8 aa–bb8 cc4 = 8 leaves, 403 numbered leaves, 1 leaf. Title printed in red and black.
Illustrated with 51 woodcuts. Small octavo (156 × 93 mm).
This edition constitutes the fourth printing of the Clément Marot revised text and simultaneously the final sixteenth-century octavo edition of the Roman de la Rose. It follows the celebrated 1531 edition extremely closely “page for page, line for line, error for error,” though in slightly larger format and printed in gothic rather than roman type.
Unlike the refined elegance of earlier Parisian editions, this printing reflects a transitional moment in French literary and book culture. Its somewhat rougher woodcuts and more economical production methods reveal a medieval tradition approaching the end of its dominance just as Renaissance literary ideals began reshaping European conceptions of love, allegory, and narrative form.
Physical Description & Binding
Eighteenth-century red morocco binding over five raised bands richly gilt with floral and ornamental tools. Spine with brown morocco label and gilt compartments framed by double gilt fillets. Covers within triple gilt fillet borders with corner fleurons; gilt board edges and decorative gilt dentelle borders to the turn-ins; brocade-paper endleaves with point-and-star pattern and entirely gilt edges throughout.
Binding rubbed; earlier inscription removed from title. Occasional contemporary marginal annotations throughout. Leaves 5–76 with small marginal wormtrack and occasional wormholes to the lower blank margins; faint dampstaining to approximately leaf 56; otherwise remarkably clean internally.
The elegant eighteenth-century morocco binding sharply contrasts with the comparatively modest sixteenth-century printing, transforming the volume into a consciously retrospective object of French literary memory.
The End of the Medieval Love Tradition
The Roman de la Rose occupied an almost unparalleled position within medieval European literary culture. Begun by Guillaume de Lorris around 1230 and expanded decades later by Jean de Meung into a vast encyclopedic satire on love, society, philosophy, and human behaviour, the text shaped courtly literature for centuries.
Yet by the 1530s its world was beginning to vanish. Alfred Karnein later described medieval courtly love literature as a cultural system that had exhausted its “civilizationally innovative impulses” and increasingly collided with broader intellectual and social developments.
The present edition therefore occupies a fascinating historical threshold. Its publishers still competed fiercely to issue the work — Bourdillon noted that “no less than ten different publishers adopted the disreputable changeling” — even while new Renaissance literary ideals rapidly displaced medieval allegorical traditions.
Only nine years later, in 1546, the first French edition of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili introduced an entirely different conception of love, beauty, image, and textual form. The transition was dramatic: from medieval dream allegory toward the sophisticated visual and philosophical culture of the Renaissance.
A Book-Historical Monument
Nineteenth-century scholars often dismissed the edition harshly. F. W. Bourdillon regarded it as a “cheap imitation” and “almost a parody” of the elegant 1531 edition, criticizing its “careless printing” and coarser recut woodblocks.
Yet from a modern perspective, these very qualities make the volume historically compelling. Like Emperor Maximilian I’s Ambraser Heldenbuch — another monumental attempt to preserve fading medieval literary traditions at the dawn of modernity — this final Roman de la Rose edition becomes a witness to the end of an entire cultural world.
Its relative modesty only sharpens that historical poignancy. The book preserves, almost accidentally, the last material echo of medieval France’s most influential vernacular literary text before the Renaissance definitively transformed European literary taste.
Literature
Bechtel G-383 (“1538”); not in BM STC French, Brunet, or Graesse; Bourdillon S; cf. Brun 241; cf. Ebert 19316f.; Rahir 619; Tchemerzine VII, 247.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 77b:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume II
