SOLD

Cahier of historical mottos and sayings by Rosalie and Victorine Rispal, 1869-1872

Centered on moral and historical quotations—mottos and notable sayings attributed to historical figures—this large folio cahier titled “Fleurs Historiques” presents short, self-contained texts in an even, elegant hand. It is distinguished by elaborate presentation pages, including finely painted floral cartouches surrounding open books inscribed with references to “histoire de France” and the name “Rosalie Rispal,” dated 1869 and “Victorine Rispal” dated 1872. The combination of calligraphic precision and richly colored ornament reflects both intellectual and artistic training, characteristic of advanced schoolwork.

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Cahier of epistolary exercises and model letters by A. Brunel, 1849

An exercise in letter writing, this small folio “Cahier de Lettres de A. Brunel” consists of multiple model letters arranged within highly decorative frameworks. Examples such as “lettre de bonne année d’un fils à sa marraine” and other familial or social correspondences are written in a flowing cursive hand. The pages are enclosed within geometric and ornamental borders—ovals, hexagons, and architectural motifs—executed with precision in ink and watercolor. The emphasis is on composition, presentation, and elegance of script, demonstrating a mature stage of instruction.

AVAILABLE

Cahier of epistolary theory and instruction by Celeste Conteaux, 1859

Devoted to the principles of letter writing, this 1859 small quarto cahier by Celeste Conteaux opens with the heading “Style Epistolaire” and a carefully written explanation of epistolary form. It defines the letter as a written conversation and emphasizes naturalness, clarity, and propriety according to the recipient. Model compositions, including a “lettre de bonne année d’un fils à son père et à sa mère,” demonstrate correct tone and structure. The calligraphy is highly controlled, with ornamental headings and refined cursive text framed by ruled borders and decorative flourishes.

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1903 Illustrated Folio Manuscript Chanson Songbook by soldier Edmond Bregand

Large folio manuscript songbook compiled by Edmond Brégand, begun 1 January 1903 at Valençay and continued into 1904, comprising a carefully arranged collection of popular chansons, monologues, and recitations, each written in a neat hand with ruled margins and enhanced by numerous lively hand-drawn and colored illustrations in a Belle Époque style. The contents reflect barracks and café-concert culture of the French Third Republic, including comic dialogues, colonial-themed songs, urban sketches, and even L’Internationale, suggesting use as a personal performance or entertainment book. A visually striking and cohesive example of early twentieth-century popular culture preserved in a unique, fully realized manuscript form.

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1857 Quarto Manuscript French History Cahier by Armand Morel

Quarto manuscript school cahier of French history compiled by Armand Morel in 1857, written in a clear, disciplined hand and organized with ruled margins and headings. The volume includes chronological historical summaries, chapters on medieval and ancient history, and a finely executed hand-drawn and colored map of France divided into provinces. Reflecting mid-19th century French educational practice, the notebook combines geography and history in a structured format typical of lycée instruction. A well-preserved and visually appealing student manuscript, offering insight into contemporary pedagogy and penmanship.

Verviers, Belgium, 1825. Manuscript arithmetic and commercial reckoning manual signed on the title page by Antoine Roier, identified as a bookbinder. The text is entirely in a neat, disciplined calligraphic hand, arranged in formal sections including “Notions préliminaires,” “Système métrique,” and “Calcul décimal,” with practical exercises such as the règle de compagnie and tabular profit calculations.

The work reflects early nineteenth-century adoption of decimal and metric systems in everyday trade, and is clearly oriented toward mercantile practice rather than abstract theory. Numerous hand-drawn and colored plates depict measuring devices, weights, and accounting tables, executed with the precision and aesthetic control expected of a trained artisan.

The recurring ship imagery—appearing in decorative cartouches, tailpieces, and especially in the monetary reduction plate—serves both symbolic and functional roles. Ships were a standard emblem of commerce, trade networks, and circulation of goods and capital; here they underscore the book’s practical purpose in mercantile calculation. In a region such as Verviers, whose economy depended on textile production and export, the ship motif evokes participation in wider European and overseas trade. Within the manuscript, the ship also functions as a visual metaphor for calculation and balance—navigation requiring precision, just as accounting demands exact reckoning. Its repetition suggests a unifying program: the movement of money, goods, and measures across borders, reinforced by the section treating conversions between France, the Low Countries, and Liège.

The binding is a fine contemporary red morocco, almost certainly the work of Roier himself, with a gilt ornamental border, corner tools, and a small decorative device at the foot of the upper cover. The restrained but precise tooling, even margins, and clean execution are characteristic of a skilled provincial binder producing elegant yet functional work.
The survival of the original slipcase further indicates that the volume was valued from the outset, likely intended either as a personal reference or as a demonstration piece of both intellectual and technical ability. Together, manuscript, decoration, and binding form a cohesive artisan object uniting mathematical instruction, commercial culture, and the craft of the book.

Situated in Verviers, along the Vesdre River, this manuscript emerges directly from the industrial environment of a major wool-processing center, where the river itself served not for navigation but for the washing and preparation of textiles, its notably soft water being essential to production. The repeated depiction of ships and the binding’s distinctive anchor resting upon a bale should therefore be understood not as representations of local transport, but as visual references to the broader commercial networks through which Verviers’ goods were exported, likely via routes leading to major ports such as Antwerp. In this context, the emblem functions as a textile-trade device derived from merchant marking practices, symbolizing goods prepared for shipment, and reinforces the manuscript’s purpose as a practical work tied to commerce, accounting, and the lived realities of early nineteenth-century industrial trade.

The text at the center of this manuscript purports to derive from a chronicle composed in the fifteen century by Frère Hervé de la Queue, a Dominican friar, recording the antiquities of the Loire Valley — the lineages of the Seigneurs d’Amboise, the history of Loches, Beaulieu, Blois, and Châteaudun, interwoven with the annals of France and Anjou.

1538. The manuscript was found near Loches in that year and copied by Jean Moreau, avocat de Loches, from what he described as an older original. Moreau was a man of local standing, an notary, and his copy preserved the text for the following century. The 1840 sale catalog, drawing on inscriptions still visible in the manuscript, confirmed this transmission explicitly: “J. Moreau, avocat de Loches, copia ce livre, en 1538, sur un manuscrit plus ancien.”

1604. Pierre Moreau Lochois — of the same family or circle — seems to have annotated this same 1538 manuscript in October of that year, adding a title page, a dedication, and other material. He was no casual reader. Pierre Moreau de Loches was a humanist scholar of the second generation of French Renaissance learning, formed at the Benedictine abbey of Beaulieu-lès-Loches just outside the town walls before pursuing advanced study at the Collegium Trilingue at Louvain, where he acquired a mastery of Byzantine Greek that would define his career. He worked as a translator of Greek patristic and Byzantine liturgical texts — among them the Liturgy of St. James and the Choniates Monodie — placing his philological tools in the service of Catholic confessional scholarship during the Wars of Religion. Some of his translations were still being reprinted, without attribution, in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca in the 19th century. Expelled from Poitiers in 1559, peripatetic between Loches, Paris, and the Loire Valley throughout the upheavals of the 1560s to 1580s, he represents the provincial Catholic Greek-philological strand of late French Renaissance humanism: not a grand name, but a man of real learning who kept humanist scholarship alive at the ground level while the Wars of Religion raged. Scholars who recovered his work in 1989 rightly called him “un humaniste méconnu.”

A commendatory poem in verse, invoking Foulques, Thibaud de Champagne, Villon, and the Seigneur d’Amboise who died a prisoner at Châteaudun, casting the chronicle’s author as a herald of Loire Valley history is signed Pi. Moreau Lochois, en Octob. 1604. A colophon mentions that the manuscript had been acquired at the Michaelmas fair at Loches (“Ceste copie fut acquise a la feste de S. Michel”). A later bibliographer, misreading these 1604 additions, incorrectly described the manuscript as a fresh copy made in that year from a 12th-century original.

1730. The manuscript passed into the hands of Gobreau, at that date vicaire ordinaire of the collegiate church of Saint-Ours de Loches — the great Romanesque church at the heart of the town whose history the manuscript celebrated. Gobreau added an extract on the administrative structure of Loches, drawn from a 1631 printed history of the principal cities of France, describing the town as a ville royale under the présidialité of Tours, with echevinage rights since 1500, governed by a mayor, a procureur, two élus, three échevins, and a greffier.

1740. Now signing himself notaire ordinaire de Lahet, Gobreau gave and inscribed the manuscript to René Rocher, gentilhomme ordinaire of the late Philippe II, duc d’Orléans. René Rocher was seigneur de Vauroux, the fief near Loches whose history reached back to the 13th century and which his father Louis Rocher had held with the same Orléans household title since 1707. The Rocher family’s deep Lochois roots made this a natural local transfer of a local document.

1744. Gobreau signed the manuscript a final time, now as prieur de Saint-Ours de Loches — having risen from vicaire to prior of the very church he had served since at least 1730.

By 1839. The manuscript had reached Paris and the library of Claude Aubron (†1839), ancien premier commis of the department of Titres et généalogies at the Bibliothèque royale, the institution responsible for the genealogical records of the French nobility. That a professional genealogist of the royal library should have owned a manuscript devoted to the lineage of the Seigneurs d’Amboise is entirely fitting. Whether it reached him directly from the Rocher family or through intermediaries remains undocumented, but the gap between 1740 and Aubron’s library is the only break in an otherwise continuous chain.

16 November 1840. Sold at Maison Silvestre, Paris, as lot 890 of the Catalogue des livres anciens et modernes composant la bibliothèque de M. Aubron, ancien généalogiste, 1,721 lots. The catalog described it as “Histoire écrite par frère Hervé de la Queue, jacobin, trouvée près Loches, l’an 1538… manuscrit du XVIe siècle, in-fol., vél.” — a physical description matching the present manuscript exactly, and confirming that the 1840 cataloger was reading directly from the annotations Pierre Moreau had entered in 1604.

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Five centuries of documented ownership, entirely within the gravitational field of Loches and its history, ending in the library of the man charged with preserving the genealogical memory of France.

Histoire écrite par frère Hervé de la Queue, Manuscript annotated by Pierre Moreau de Loches from Claude Aubron collection

Guillaume Postel letter to Pierre Moreau

Apographe ou Extrait de la Grammaire Gallique de Ian Moreau Lochois

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The last pages of the manuscript.

Apographe ou Extrait de la Grammaire Gallique de Ian Moreau Lochois Demonstrat la maniere de composer Vers François les quantitez des Syllabes obseruees

Below, a sample verse: Quand iy yute la glace a este rompue en un gue Par l’un des passans, est facile aller apres

And a motto: Noua ego annuncio — Esa[ïe]. 4.

 Dedication and Response:

Au Reverend Abbe de Beaulieu Ian Moreau de Loches son humble Escuteur et Bailly Salut

Moreau’s dedicatory verse to the Abbot: En ramenant a memoire l’amour vostre et facile acces Vers vous, monseigneur, j’ay pensé que ne ferois mal Ains que tenu je estois, vous presenter ce petit mien Leuvre nouvel duquel (lors que tentation enclos Me retenoit) le dessein premier feis; aussi que devors Vous prier, a loisir de vouloir visiter, affin Qu’il viue ou qu’il meure en suyvant vostre bon aduis Et si digne de vivre le trouuez, craindre le devra En lumiere venir, mesprisans d’ennuie les dens De Dieu soit tousiours la grace et paux auec vous

Then the Abbot’s Response — L’amy a son amy Salut — praising Moreau’s work, marveling that so learned a man has devoted himself to French versification, encouraging him to continue despite those who dismiss it as humble work, noting that illustrious spirits have already begun to imitate Greek and Latin meters in French, and that Moreau’s work will inspire others to pursue verse in the vernacular.

 Corollaire de l’autheur:

Apographe ou Extrait de la Grammaire Gallique de Jan Moreau de Loches — Corollaire de l’autheur

Moreau addresses the reader directly, noting that the French have not yet applied themselves to composing verse by observing syllable quantities in imitation of the Greeks and Latins — and that this is neither impossible nor too difficult. He provides examples including an Exastiche ou Sixain Elegique Gallique demonstrating the technique.

Examples including Virgil:

Opens with a prophetic verse in quantitative French: Le siecle doré s’approche: les brebis Un pastre auront seul: toutes en Union Vivront, n’ayant qu’un parc: le vouloir de Dieu En ce pays bas fait sera comme en haut

Then a Descriptiuncule en forme de iambiqua trimeteg — a brief piece in iambic trimeters in French.

Then crucially, a translation demonstration — taking Virgil’s first Eclogue (Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi) and rendering it in quantitative French:

Titire, toy patieux couchant sous abry de fouteau Sauvage chansonnette en tenure recordes avoine

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What this reveals:

This manuscript now contains four distinct works, all connected to Jehan Moreau, Advocate of Loches, and all datable to circa 1538:

1. The chronicle of Frère Hervé de la Queue — the regional history of Touraine
2. The Postel letter — responding to Moreau’s Arabic manuscript discovery
3. The Grammaire Gallique of Jehan Moreau — a treatise on French quantitative versification
4. Correspondence with the Abbot of Beaulieu — the very abbey mentioned in the chronicle’s title

The Grammaire Gallique places Moreau squarely within the most important intellectual debate of French Renaissance literature — how to apply classical quantitative meters to the French language. This movement would culminate in the Pléiade’s Défense et Illustration de la Langue Française of 1549, but Moreau’s grammar predates it by over a decade. He was a provincial pioneer of what would become one of the defining movements of French Renaissance poetry.

The Abbot of Beaulieu as dedicatee is particularly significant — Beaulieu-lès-Loches is the Benedictine abbey across the Indre from Loches, one of the places explicitly covered in the Frère Hervé chronicle. The entire manuscript is thus a product of a single coherent Lochois humanist circle, circa 1538, connecting:

• A regional chronicler (Frère Hervé)
• A noble discoverer (Jacques Lemargnay, Seigneur de la Tourmelière)
• A provincial humanist polymath (Jehan Moreau — advocate, copyist, grammarian, poet, Arabic manuscript collector)
• A Benedictine abbot (of Beaulieu)
• The greatest French orientalist of the age (Guillaume Postel)
• A cardinal and royal patron (Jean du Bellay)

This is no longer simply a manuscript. It is a window into an entire provincial humanist network operating at the intersection of regional antiquarianism, vernacular poetry, and oriental scholarship at one of the most fertile moments in French Renaissance culture.

Guillaume Postel letter to Pierre Moreau

Apographe ou Extrait de la Grammaire Gallique de Ian Moreau Lochois

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EPITRE DE MAISTRE GUILLAUME POSTEL

escripte a maistre Iehan Moreau ancien Advocat a Loches touchant ung Livre en Lettres Arabiques que ledict Moreau trouva en son logis L’an mesme que ceste histoyre fut trouvee et ennoya audit Postel

Letter from Master Guillaume Postel written to Master Jehan Moreau, former Advocate at Loches, concerning a Book in Arabic Letters that said Moreau found in his lodgings the same year that this history was found, and sent to said Postel

OPENING PAGE (unnumbered)

Latin text:

Mihi Sane ob sincerum virtutis Literaeque studium non potes non esse amicissimus bi cui virtutis imago satis sit ad amicitiae ex familiaritatis conciliationem vel cum ignotissimis meundam tibi demum recto persuadebis quod ad me attinet nostram amicitiam tanto altius radices figuram quanto angustius nobilius que principium habuit. Jesa enim una virtus et rei eiusdem sine vitio amor nos excitat ad illos diligendos desiderandosque quorum jam fructum mortales iam ante retroactos nescio quot seculorum myriadas perceperunt ob te unum quod vel semel illis fuerit in vita comes quid putas igitur futurum de illis qui inter vivos agunt licet remotos enim animos non separat qui et caelos et terrae viscera penetrare hoc corporis ergastulo detenti possunt. Praeterea nil ita est separatum

Translation:

For me truly, by reason of the sincere pursuit of virtue and letters, you cannot but be most friendly — you in whom the image of virtue is sufficient for the establishment of friendship and familiarity even with the most unknown. You will at length rightly persuade yourself, as far as concerns me, that our friendship has put down roots all the deeper in proportion as its origin was the more nobly founded. For virtue alone, and love of the same thing without vice, excites us to love and desire those whose fruit mortals already in past ages — I know not how many myriads of centuries ago — have received, for you alone who have been their companion even once in life: what do you think therefore will become of those who live among the living? For love does not separate remote minds, which can penetrate both the heavens and the entrails of the earth though held in this prison of the body. Besides, nothing is so separated…

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FOLIO 187

Latin text:

…vel finibus mundi aliquando non possit esse obvium. Sed de re aliquid interim gaudeo potissimum quod illa se tibi obtulit occasio ad me scribendi quam vel maxime ob optandam mihi duvi. Bonam enim meae foelicitatis partem in peregrinis Literis nostris hominibus tradendis apperiendisque Hartenus tolloravi. Ceterum quod ad illum tuum exemplar attinet tuum enim ut amitorum idem esse iudico ubi insolitam formam et maurzatas plures referebas literas ausus fuissem absens iudicare quidnam esset et indicare. Mihi enim facile persuadeo esse legis Muhametanae partem. Nulla enim gens quod viderim (qui tamen in hoc genere multa vidi) usque suos maurzae Libros praeter punitam nec illa ubique quosuis sed illos tantum qui ad legis suae praescriptum faciunt quod vero me te videre cupis de hinc formatum formas desumere ad typographiam litera scias mihi non deesse magnam librorum in omni disciplinarum et picturae genere copiam quam in Asia atque Affrita mihi maximo redemi precio et fortasse maiori quam usquam vel premium vel laudem vel rem possim Inde de re incognita recipere Sed mihi satis est me non mihi

Translation:

…could ever be far away, even at the ends of the world. But in the meantime I rejoice above all about this thing — that that occasion of writing to me presented itself to you, which I have long most greatly desired. For a good part of my happiness I have until now devoted to transmitting and opening up foreign learning to our people. As for that exemplar of yours — for I judge yours as I do that of friends — where you described an unusual script and several Moorish letters, I had not dared to judge in my absence what it might be and to identify it. For I easily persuade myself that it is part of Muhammadan law. For no people that I have seen — and I have seen much in this domain — keep their Moorish books except in a restricted way, and not those available to everyone, but only those conforming to the prescription of their law. As for what you wish me to see and from which to take forms for typography, know that I am not lacking a great collection of books in every discipline and genre of illustration which I have bought in Asia and Africa at the greatest price — and perhaps at a greater price than I could ever obtain in the way of reward, praise, or profit for things unknown. But it is enough for me that I am not for myself…

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FOLIO 188

Latin text:

…sed rei publicae et amicis natum me esse voluisse ostendere ego eo meis istis variis iam mihi ty pos fabrefiero quod propediem ad in editione arabicae grammatices cognoscere optarim sane mihi illius exemplaris tui fieri copiam quod alcorani habeam iam varia exempla. Attuli enim Constantinopoli quale circumferunt illi principes munifissimis ut puta literis praeclarum fere quarta illius parte mauro caracterhe pitta ne donauit cardinalis Bellartis quam ex tuniorum habuerit praede. Si bestium accedere posset forte me aliqua in re iuvare quenum meum sic mihi magis caritati quam usui. Si voles mittere mihi et in amicis non desint vades et predes fidembebis nomine meo respublisa tui municulo ergo hic apud eum Hylarium in aedibus curionis haec tempestas quae hiemi iam proxima est facit ne facile bonum illum virum nunc libri et impensarum gratia immisere possim. praeterea tum multae sim Lochiae in Gallia apud Burgendiones Berrienses et Normanes non satis scio secundum Simae indire certiori quo mihi tendendum esset ad haec fractus

Translation:

…but to show that I wished to be born for the commonwealth and for friends. I, with these various type forms of mine now being crafted for me, which I hope will shortly be recognized in the edition of the Arabic grammar — I would truly wish to have a copy made of that exemplar of yours, since I have already various exemplars of the Koran. For I brought from Constantinople one such as those princes circulate, written with munificent letters, notable in nearly a quarter of it written in Moorish characters — given to me by Cardinal Bellay, who had obtained it from Tunisian spoils. If that person could come to help me perhaps in some matter, this would serve my charity more than my use. If you wish to send it to me, and there be no lack of guarantors and surety among friends, you will pledge in my name for the commonwealth of your small fortification. Therefore here with Hylarius at the house of the curate, this storm which is already near winter makes it not easy for me freely to visit that good man now for the sake of books and expenses. Besides, I know not enough about how many things there may be at Loches in Gaul among the Burgundians, Berriots and Normans — according to a more reliable indication of where I should be heading — worn down by these things…

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FOLIO 189

Latin text:

…tenuitate peregrinationis nondum potui equos mihi domesticae alere ut libere possim amicos inuisere far proximo nuntio literas ata accipiam et librum si voles mittito te forte de tuum pos tellu m vertum reddam quisnam su 1538 dibi octob bale et tuum postellu ama Commendari interim huni bono viro quirum qz ille si nescio quam re tua nos bi opera non grauabere olim par a nobis acceptis

Translation:

…the meagerness of my journeying — I have not yet been able to keep domestic horses so that I might freely visit friends. By the next messenger I shall receive letters, and the book, if you wish to send it.

1538, dibi octob[er]

And love your Postel.

In the meantime commend me to this good man, whoever he may be, for I know not in what matter yours, nor will you by our work be burdened in what was once received from us.

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SUMMARY AND SCHOLARLY SIGNIFICANCE

This letter, written from in October 1538 by Guillaume Postel to Jehan Moreau, Advocate of Loches, is a document of considerable Renaissance scholarship importance. Its key contents are:

1. The Arabic manuscript: Moreau found an Arabic book in his own lodgings in 1538 — the same year the Frère Hervé chronicle was discovered at Le Chastellier — and sent it to Postel. Postel identifies it as Islamic legal text (legis Muhametanae partem), consistent with his expertise as the leading French Arabist of the period.

2. Postel’s oriental library: He describes an enormous collection of books bought in Asia and Africa at great personal expense — consistent with his known activities acquiring oriental manuscripts for the royal library, documented by Wikipedia and other sources.

3. Cardinal Jean du Bellay’s Koran: Postel mentions a Koran manuscript given to him by Cardinal Jean du Bellay (cardinalis Bellartis) from Tunisian spoils — a previously unrecorded detail about the circulation of Arabic manuscripts in French humanist circles in 1538, connecting the Loches discovery to the very highest levels of French Renaissance culture. Du Bellay was the patron of Rabelais, the friend of Erasmus, and one of the most important cultural figures of the reign of Francis I.

4. The Arabic grammar: Postel mentions his Arabic grammar then being prepared for the press — this is his Grammatica Arabica, published in Paris in 1538–1539, the first Arabic grammar printed in France, making this letter dateable with extraordinary precision to the months immediately surrounding that publication.

5. Basel and Oporinus: The letter is written from Basel (Bale) in October 1538. Postel’s printer Johannes Oporinus was in Basel. This places Postel in Basel at exactly the moment he was working with Oporinus on his publications — a detail consistent with all known Postel biography.

6. Loches explicitly named: Postel mentions Loches (Lochiae) in the context of Gaul, Burgundy, Berry and Normandy — suggesting genuine familiarity with the town and its intellectual circle.

7. The closing: tuum postellu ama — “love your Postel” — a characteristic humanist epistolary closing, affectionate and personal, suggesting a genuine friendship between the Paris professor and the provincial advocate.

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This letter, copied into the manuscript as part of the documentary apparatus surrounding the Frère Hervé chronicle, is almost certainly unique. Postel’s known correspondence has been catalogued by François Secret and others, but a letter to Jehan Moreau of Loches has not, to our knowledge, been recorded in the secondary literature. Before sale, this should be communicated to the leading Postel scholars — currently working at the CESR (Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance) at the University of Tours, which is directly relevant given the Touraine subject matter — and to the BnF Manuscripts department which holds the principal Postel papers.

Guillaume Postel letter to Pierre Moreau

Apographe ou Extrait de la Grammaire Gallique de Ian Moreau Lochois

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