| The binding shown above is found in the LIBRAIRIE SOURGET - MANUSCRITS ET LIVRES PRECIEUX - CATALOGUE N° XXI, published in the year 2000, page 302, lot 117. There were a few important things that attracted my attention to this binding, however to make this page I needed more information about Comte d'Hoym. It is a well known bibliophile fact that Boyet made the Comte's bindings, and it is no surprise that the Sourget experts have attributed this binding to him. The surprise is that many more obvious Boyet bindings go without their attribution. Anyway looking for Hoym is not as easy as it should be mainly think because, 99% of all references to him are written as Charles-Henry, comte d'Hoym and this takes you directly to a book by Jérôme Pichon; Société des bibliophiles français. Vie de Charles-Henry, comte d'Hoym : ambassadeur de Saxe-Pologne en France et célèbre amateur de livres 1694-1736 Paris : Techener, 1880. This book is probably of great importance however we are not going to dwell on it for the moment. His real name is actually Karl Heinrich Graf von Hoym ou comte Karl Heinrich von Hoym (18 Juin 1694-1622 Avril 1736) (click here to read his tragic story) You can find a more complete story of his book collecting here. |
| I needed to find some way of determining when Hoym might have had this book bound by Boyet, what we learn from these articles is that Hoym was in Paris from 1713 to 1729 and it is within this period that he formed his library, the earliest possible date then for this binding might be 1713. From the spine panel below we can see that the corner ornaments are different but similar to those he was using in the 1684-1690 period. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2 we see the remarkable similarities of these decorations, we have looked at G2427 on page 5, and due to the bird palette XVI we might have assigned a date to it of 1705 or later. Now we might consider an even later date for this Boyet binding that covers a 1588 Montaigne |
| When I first started to catalogue Boyet's imprints I found that there were at least four distinct tools of the same general shape. These needed a serious study and so you see the results in Comparative Diagram 3, where I have added the imprint found in these spine panels, that seems to be lab-1d. |
| In this exercise then we have confirmed another Boyet palette as well a tendency to place 4 satellite fleurons around the central fleuron in the spine panels. When you search for books owned by Charles-Henry, comte d'Hoym, you discover yet more Boyet bindings and these are in differet styles, representing the later phase of Boyet's work, such as the binding shown below which is found at Open Edition books Éditions de la Bibliothèque nationale de France. You can hardly recognize this as a Boyet except for the codex palettes, that we have examined thoroughly an page 2. |
| The binding shown below is another Boyet found at Open Edition books Éditions de la Bibliothèque nationale de France. This you can easily recognize as a Boyet as Isabelle de Conihout & Pascal Ract-Madoux 2002 show a very similar binding on page 106 No. 47 Reliure au petit W (groupe 10,1707-1710 environ) however we can see here a circle diamond square palette (VIII) that we have studied on page 16.This mysterious palette is showing up at all different periods early and late. |
| Réserve des livres rares, Rés. J. 2113 : conservé avec des marges plus grandes qu'à l'ordinaire, réglé, les tranches dorées sur marbrure, l'exemplaire a été revêtu d'une reliure en maroquin rouge doublée d'un maroquin de même teinte. Les plats sont ornés des armes du comte d'Hoym et d'un encadrement extérieur de trois filets dorés ; aux contreplats, la surface vierge du maroquin est accusée par une dentelle un peu plus développée qu'à l'ordinaire |
| Now when we look at these comte d'Hoym bindings we have to consider that they could have been made in the period of 1714 to 1729, we started this series of pages investigating the dentelle binding of a 1698 Breviarium. That dentelle is framed by the same roulette that we see here in this doublure! (see page 2). Here I must return to the story of comte d'Hoym we read at the end of his wikipedia page this text... |
| In 1736, against the background of the War of the Polish Succession, he was arrested a third time on a charge of treason. He was found guilty, his estates were confiscated and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Among his confiscated possessions was one of the few known surviving copies of the Theophrastus redivivus, a 17th-century anti-religious text, which was then given to the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, where it remains today. However, the book was apparently first bought by Claude Sallier, who then donated it to the national library in 1741; however, his name does not appear on the list of individuals who bought the book in the initial August 1738 auction of von Hoym's belongings, throwing a shadow of doubt as to if von Hoym actually owned the copy or whether it was donated in his name to discredit him. |
| If you go to the Bibliothèque nationale de France you can find a digital reproduction of this manuscript book online in their Gallica section (click here to see it) and what do they show you first and foremost... the endpapers... |
| In this information the Bnf state that the binder of this manuscript was "probably" Boyet... I wish they would show the covers, but anyway lets look closely at this inner dentelle |
| By a strange coincidence this Theophrastus redivivus, inner dentelle was made with the same roulette as we see shown above on the comte d'Hoym doublure (BnF, Réserve des livres rares, Rés. J. 2113), and it is the same roulette as described by Metivier in 2002, and the same roulette as found on our 1698 Breviarium! |
| Theophrastus redivivus is famous for proclaiming that all the great philosophers, including the eponymous Theophrastus (ancient Greek philosopher c. 371 c. 287 BCE, successor of Aristotle), have been atheists; religions are contrived works of men; there is no valid proof for the existence of gods, and those who claim experience of a god are either disingenuous or ill. However, unlike the Treatise of the Three Impostors, another anti-religious work published around the same time, Theophrastus redivivus was never mentioned by the Age of Enlightenment philosophers and thinkers of the next century, despite being one of the first explicitly anti-religious works ever published in modern Europe. Wikipedia |
| I looked for translations of this book Theophrastus redivivus there is only one, and it is in French: La Fausseté des miracles des deux Testamens, prouvée par le parallèle avec de semblables prodiges opérés dans diverses sectes ; ouvrage traduit du manuscrit latin intitulé "Theophrastus redivivus" it was written in 1770 and you can see it online in Gallica here, the last French edition may have been 1775 (microfilm). I searched for an English translation, and did not find anything... this is strange, usually this sort of thing can now be found everywhere... this must be a very dangerous book to now be so well suppressed. Anyway we can put a rest to the compte d'Hoym conspiracy theory that this book was donated to the BnF in his name to discredit him... this book is covered in a binding by Boyet with an inner dentelle that matches another one that Boyet made for the comte, pretty strong evidence I would say. |
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| Even experts are sometimes wrong, before you spend thousands on a book, please do your own research! Just because I say a certain binding can be attributed to le Maitre isn't any kind of guarantee, don't take my word for it, go a step further and get your own proof. In these pages I have provided you with a way of doing just that. |
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