CHAPTER EIGHT

ANDRÉ WECHEL AT , 1572–1581

In 1597, at the height of Frankfurt am Main’s prestige as a centre of the European book trade, there appeared a poem celebrating both the book fair and the local printers and publishers, which unequivocally gives the preeminence to the typi Wecheliani, identifi ed by their famous device: Hast hie acht Truckereyen, merck Darinn truckt wirdt manch stattlich Werk. Damit nicht zweiff eln mochst daraus Sieh die Zeichen und Signet an: Und sonderlich den Pegasum, Das recht Postross der Musarum. Da fi ndst den Kern der Authorn, Mit schöner Schrifft , dessgleich hiervorn Hast gesehen nie, und sonderlich 1m Griechischen, also dass ich Sage, dass dieser Pegasus Zum hochsten hat gesetzt sein Fuss.1 Yet a mere twenty-fi ve years before the appearance of these atter-fl ing lines, the founder of the fi rm, André Wechel, had arrived in the city as a refugee from the St. Bartholomew’s day massacre, that most notorious instance of religious intolerance of its age in , appar- ently without resources, having left behind his presses and no doubt much else. How did he manage to rise like a Phoenix from such an unpromising situation? What contact did he maintain with France? What markets did he court and win, and against what competition? What new image did he develop as a publisher? Some of these questions have been addressed, albeit cursorily, in the article by W.R. Lefanu and the excellent monograph on the Wechel presses of R.W.J. Evans; the information in W.J. Ong’s Ramus and Talon Inventory off ers many

1 Konrad Lautenbach alias Marx Mangold, Marckschiff oder Marckschiff ergespräch von der Frankfurter Messe, n.p., 1597, pp. 33–34, reprinted in Hans Widmann (ed.), Der deutsche Buchhandel in Urkunden und Quellen, vol. 1. Hamburg: Hauswedel, 1965, pp. 42 and 44. 164 chapter eight clues which have previously not been followed up.2 Th is brief study sets out to collate the available data and to amplify it from archival and other sources; to off er new or modifi ed answers to the questions listed above; and to give an annotated bibliography of the publications of André Wechel between 1574 and 1581, in which dubious cases of attribution will be discussed. Wechel became a citizen of Frankfurt on 23 December 1572 on payment of the sum of 8 fl orins 16 shillings, giving his profession as ‘Buchführer’. According to Benzing (whose entry for Wechel is, how- ever, not reliable)3 he bought ‘das weisse Haus auf der Zeil’ at the same time. From surviving records about him in 1573, we learn that he acted as host to Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, and dispatched his wife to to help clear up his aff airs aft er his precipitate fl ight. He also bought a number of books of hours from Christophe Plantin in Ant- werp in December 1573.4 In the following year, his daughters married two French expatriates, Claude de Marne and Jean Aubry, who were involved in the book trade in and . Th eir activities were of considerable assistance in the revival of André’s fortunes, and they became André’s heirs in 1581.5 Also in 1574, he obtained a generous

2 W.R. Lefanu, ‘André Wechel’, in: Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, 21 (1966), 58–81; R.W.J Evans: Th e Wechel presses: humanism and in Central Europe 1572–1627, Oxford, 1975 (Past and Present Society, Supplement. 2). W.J. Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. 3 Frankfurt am Main, Biirgerbuch 1540–1585, fol. 243: ‘Andreas Wechel, Buchführer von Pariss ist frembdt zum Bürger angenommen worden. Iuravit den 23 Dezember anno [15]72 dedit 8 fl . 16 sch.’; Joseph Benzing,Die Buchdrucker des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts im deutschen Sprachgebiet, 2nd ed. Wiesbaden: Harrasssowitz, 1982, s.v. Frankfurt am Main: Andreas Wechel. Benzing calls Wechel a Calvinist (on the evidence for this claim, see below, p. 171); he claims that he was son of Chrétien Wechel, whereas he was in fact the nephew (see Annie Parent, Les métiers du livre à Paris au XVIe siècle. Geneva: Droz, 1974, pp. 160ff .). Wechel relates that he was in Paris during the St Bartholomew Day’s massacre, whereas Benzing claims that he left before these events (see below, note 12); Joannes Obsopoeus states that he died on 1 November 1581, not, as Benzing claims, on 31 October (see below, note 7). 4 See Karen L. Bowen and Dirk Imhof, Christopher Plantin and engraved book illustrations in sixteenth-centuiry Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 439. 5 Lefanu, ‘André Wechel’, p. 70; [Rectifi cation du contrat d’édition de laCosmogra- phie Universelle d’André Th évet], Paris, Archives Nationales, Minutier Central, 1xxiii.79; Paris, BN, MS Latin 8583 f. 225v (letter of Th éophile de Banos to Hubert Languet, dated Frankfurt, 25 September 1574); ‘Monsieur, jay receu vos lettres dernieres auec double joye, dautant que d’icelles iay sceu que bien vous est, et que d’autre p[ ar]t ne maies point en oubly. II est vray que ieusse mieux aymé vostre presence delaquelle je masseure de jouir veu I’occassion du mariage des fi lles du sieur Vuechel, lesquelles ie scay que vous avies accusé de leur paresse mais particulierement elles ont a ce coup