Beschreibung:

VILLON, Franois (b. 1431). Fragment of two bifolia from Le grant testament. Codicille. Ballades. Petit testament . [Paris: Antoine Caillaut, ca. 1490, before May 1491]. Chancery 4 o. Collation: a-b 8 c 6 d-f 8 g-h 6. 4 leaves (of 58), consisting of fols. c1.6 and c2.5. Type: 111B. 27 lines. The fragment preserved as pastedown endpapers (now unglued), sewn within vellum liner strip, to the lower cover of a Sammelband containing three works, as described below. (Lower portions of leaves torn away, lacking the last 6 to 8 lines of each page, lower edges severely creased and frayed, wormholes to second bifolium catching a few letters, verso of second leaf offset from turn-ins.) Catalogues rgionaux des incunables des bibliothques publiques de France , vol. V (Bordeaux, 1987), 932. Contents of the fragment : Le grant testament , fols. [1r-2v]: lines 713-808, containing stanzas LXX-LXXXI; fols. [3r-4v]: lines 902-994, containing the last 8 lines of the "Ballade que Villon feit a la requeste de sa mere pour prier Nostre Dame" (Marot's later attributed title), the following stanzas XC-XCIII, the "Ballade de Villon a s'amye", stanza XCIV and the following "Lay" in 2 verses, and the first 5 lines of stanza XCV (line and stanza numbers following the Longnon-Foulet edition, Paris 1969). Binding : early 16th-century Flemish or Northeastern French blind-tooled calf over wooden boards, sides panelled with 7-fillet outer border and triple fillet inner border, inner panel of repeated lozenges composed of intersecting triple fillets, sewn on 3 pairs of double cords, alum-tawed endbands, single chased brass fore-edge hasp and catch (lacking clasp, a few scrapes and gouges and one or two old patch-repairs(?) to covers, board extremities rubbed with loss to leather at corners, lower portion of spine defective, cords exposed at head and tail, pastedowns [including Villon fragment] detached at an early date). Paper : Watermark: blessing hand with scallopped sleeve, with 7 scallops: close to Briquet 11493, Limoges 1454. Provenance : Sebastian ?Truge, doctor of medicine from Cambrai (16th-century inscription on front pastedown, one or two marginal notes in first work); illegible signature with date 1678 (inscription on front pastedown); childishly formed letters on title and last page, a few "nota bene" marginalia and underlinings in first work, including effaced inscription on e4v). FRAGMENT OF AN UNTIL RECENTLY UNRECORDED INCUNABLE EDITION OF VILLON. A single imperfect copy, lacking leaves a1, f8 and all of quire h, is preserved at the Bibliothque municipale de Nantes, where it was brought to light in the early 1980s by Louis Torchet in the course of his compilation of the Pays de Loire volume of the Catalogues rgionaux des incunables des bibliothques publiques de France . Torchet briefly described the Nantes copy (which is bound with two Paris imprints of the early 1490s, both popular French medieval romances) in an article in the Bulletin du bibliophile , 1984, vol. 4 (pp. 525-530). Study of the typeface permitted the attribution to Antoine Caillaut, whose press was active from 1482 to 1506, producing a variety of works, principally short and undated tracts; these include no other editions of Villon. Caillaut used his bastarda type 111 as early as 1486 for part of a French edition of Livy, printed by him but published under the imprint of Jean Du Pr (Goff L-250). The fount appears to have passed to the Angoulme printers Petrus Alanus and Andreas Calvinus at some time before May 1491, when it is found in their edition of Auctores octo , dated 17 May 1491 (GW 2778; cf. Paul Needham in the Hellinga Festschrift , Amsterdam 1980), thus establishing a terminus ante quem for this edition. Taken page by page, the text of the Caillaut Villon follows that of the edition printed anonymously by Denis Meslier ca. 1490-91 (CIBN V-180). Both editions contain the same textual variants as compared to Pierre Levet's original 1489 edition, but their line-b