The Latin First Edition of the Constitutiones and Two French Editions with Noble Habsburg Provenance
Constitutiones clarissimi atque excellentissimi Ordinis Velleris Aurei: e Gallico in Latinum conversae. Antwerp, Willem Silvius, circa 1559.
Bound with two French editions of the statutes of the Order of the Golden Fleece printed on vellum for members of the Order alone.
Three exceptionally preserved vellum copies of the statutes of the Order of the Golden Fleece, one of the oldest and most prestigious chivalric orders of Europe, founded in 1430 by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy.
The group comprises the Latin first edition of the statutes, translated from French by the humanist and court secretary Nicolaus Grudius, together with two French editions printed shortly thereafter and again around 1626. All three copies were produced on vellum exclusively for knights of the Order themselves and preserve unusually distinguished aristocratic provenance connected to the houses of Neuhaus, Slavata, Czernin, and Nassau-Siegen.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
The first volume, the Latin Constitutiones, was printed on vellum in Antwerp by Willem Silvius around 1559. Quarto format (256 × 168 mm), illuminated with five woodcut initials heightened in gold and colours and preserved in a contemporary gilt calf binding with central arabesque medallion. Two additional manuscript leaves were inserted contemporaneously in order to continue the supplementary chapters by hand.
The second volume, Les ordonnances de l’Ordre de la Thoyson d’Or, likewise printed on vellum in Antwerp shortly after 1559, preserves the revised French text with the supplementary chapters fully integrated into the printed edition. Bound in a seventeenth-century vellum binding.
The third volume, Les ordonnances de l’Ordre de la Toison d’Or, printed around 1626 by Balthasar I Moretus, includes two full-page engravings by Cornelius Galle depicting the Spanish royal arms and the collar of the Order beneath the Burgundian motto Ante ferit quam flamma micet. Bound in contemporary vellum with gilt borders.
The Order of the Golden Fleece
The Order of the Golden Fleece occupied a unique position within the political and ceremonial culture of Habsburg Europe.
Founded by Philip the Good in 1430, the Order quickly became among the most exclusive dynastic institutions of late medieval and Renaissance Europe. After the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to Maximilian I, leadership of the Order passed into Habsburg hands and remained tied to imperial authority thereafter.
In 1559, shortly after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis and Philip II’s assumption of broader imperial authority, a major chapter of the Order was convened in Ghent. It was in this atmosphere that the statutes of the Order were printed for the first time in both French and Latin.
These were not commercial books. They were personal institutional documents intended solely for members of the Order itself.
Willem Silvius, Plantin, and the Antwerp Press
The precise circumstances of the editions remain bibliographically complex and historically fascinating.
The Antwerp printers Willem Silvius and Christophe Plantin appear to have competed intensely for royal favour during precisely these years. Leon Voet later suggested that Silvius may have secured appointment as royal printer partly through these prestigious productions, some of which may even have been printed within Plantin’s workshop itself. Plantin later complained that Silvius had taken advantage of his absence in Paris.
The Latin edition is especially important because it appears to preserve the earliest state of the text. The original sixty-six chapters are followed by sixteen supplementary chapters, with chapters seventeen through twenty-one supplied entirely in a contemporary manuscript hand on inserted vellum leaves. In the later French edition these additions had already been incorporated into the printed text itself.
The books therefore document the textual evolution of the statutes almost in real time during the crucial years immediately following the Ghent chapter of 1559.
Vellum Copies Reserved for the Knights
All three copies were printed on vellum and intended exclusively for knights of the Order.
Their function was unusually intimate. The statutes were at once legal code, ceremonial manual, ethical guide, and physical confirmation of membership within one of the most restricted aristocratic circles in Europe. Few books were more closely tied to the identity and self-understanding of their owners.
The physical survival of the copies reflects that prestige. Each remains preserved in remarkably fresh condition, with strong vellum, clean impressions, and bindings that retain much of their original character.
The Neuhaus, Slavata, Czernin, and Nassau Provenances
The provenance of the volumes allows the reconstruction of several generations of aristocratic Habsburg identity.
The Latin first edition may originally have belonged to Joachim von Neuhaus (1526–1565), who was admitted into the Order by Philip II in 1561. Through inheritance in the female line, the volume appears subsequently to have passed into the Slavata and Czernin families. A 1701 inscription records Maria Josepha Countess Czernin donating the book to the library of the Piarist monastery at Kosmanos in Bohemia.
The later French edition of circa 1626 belonged to Johann Franz Desideratus, Prince of Nassau-Siegen (1627–1699), knight of the Golden Fleece since 1661 and governor-general of Limburg and Guelders. Following his death, the volume passed to his widow Isabelle Claire Eugénie du Puget de la Serre.
The books therefore preserve not merely individual ownership but the continuity of dynastic memory across centuries of Habsburg aristocratic culture.
Provenance
Joachim von Neuhaus (probable first owner); the Slavata and Czernin families; Piarist monastery of Kosmanos. Johann Franz Desideratus, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, and Isabelle Claire Eugénie du Puget de la Serre. Later William Salloch and Christie’s New York, 1 June 1991.
Literature
BM STC Dutch 87; Brunet II, 239 and IV, 211–212; Cockx-Indestege et al.; Graesse II, 254 and V, 39; Van Praet, Bibliothèque du Roi V; Voet, The Plantin Press, no. 1017. Not in Adams.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, numbers 28a–c:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
