The sixteenth-century French emblem book as a form of religious literature

Emblem books and Protestantism arrived in France at much the same time. The first publication in France of an emblem book (that of the Italian jurist, Andrea Alciato, in its original Latin form) dates from 1534, the year of the Affaire des Placards-, while the first publication in France of an emblem book in the French language (Alciato in translation) dates from 1536, the year of Calvin's Institution From that same year, 1536, dates also the first native French emblem book to be written, Guillaume de la Perrière's Theatre des bons engins, although this was not actually published until four years later.2 Although the emblematic cult was a pan-European phenomenon, in the early decades of the genre it was France which dominated in the production of emblem books. Alciato's Latin emblem book was actually first published in Germany in 1531,3 but from 1534 publication of the work switched to the hands of a Paris printer, Chrétien Wechel, after which date a large number of editions of the work were published in France (in Latin or Frencji for the home market, and in Latin or translated into German, Spanish or Italian for export elsewhere in Europe). Native French productions (variously in Latin or French or both languages) quickly followed.4