Donato Giannotti en France. L’édition lyonnaise

Abstract

This article aims to examine the relations that the Florentine Republican Donato Giannotti (1492-1572) maintained with France during his long exile from a particular vantage point, namely the French edition of his Libro della Republica de’ Vinitiani, first published in Rome in 1540 and reprinted thirty years later by Antoine Gryphe in Lyon. The editorial history of the book – the only one to have been published during the author’s lifetime – reveals how this French edition was a unique attempt to offer a revised version of the text, subjected to careful philological and linguistic examination on the model of the editio princeps and presented in a high-quality edition. The material analysis of Giannotti’s dialogue on Venice therefore raises a twofold question regarding the author’s relations with France. On the one hand, it invites us to consider the collaborative networks that unfolded around this editorial endeavor, which included not only the Republican exiles in Lyon who were engaged in an anti-Spanish historiographical project, but also humanists and men of letters who collaborated across the Alps for the publication of Latin and Greek classics. On the other hand, this research leads us to question the ways in which Giannotti’s book circulated and was received in France, and in particular its role in spreading the so-called “Myth
of Venice” across the Alps.