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.