Book collecting seminar: Jonathan Nathan – ‘Duo Cymbala Mundi’

The Cymbalum mundi (Paris, 1537), a collection of four vernacular dialogues in the style of Lucian, is one of the most notorious and prestigious books of the French Renaissance. Part of its notoriety is due to a rumour that it concealed a coded atheist message; part of its prestige to the fact that it survives in only one copy (currently Bibliothèque Choiseul de Versailles, Goujet 12o 241). In my talk I will present evidence that this copy is in fact composed of leaves from two originals. I will also lay out what can be known from eigteenth-century sale copies about the complicated paths taken by both donor copies until, shortly before the French Revolution, they were fused into one.

Dr Jonathan Nathan is a research fellow at the Pharos Foundation and New College in Oxford.