Two parts in one volume, 4to (226x155 mm). Vol. I: [318] leaves. Collation: ā² A-KKKK⁴. Printer’s device on the title page. Vol. II (Seconde partie du thresor des trois langues françoise, italienne et espagnolle. En laquelle est contenue l’explication des dictions françoises en italien, & espagnol […]): [240] leaves. Collation: A-OOO⁴. The final leaf is a blank. Woodcut decorative initials, head- and tail-pieces. Text printed in double columns. Contemporary stiff vellum, spine in compartments with ink title and shelf mark, sprinkled edges. Slightly uniformly browned, some occasional light foxing, a very good, genuine copy.

Rare first edition of this very successful three-language dictionary.

All we know about Girolamo Vittori is that he was a citizen of Bologna and a teacher of modern languages. In 1609, he published in Geneva the Tesoro de las tres lenguas francesa, italiana y española, which is divided into two parts: the first contains a Castilian dictionary with explanations in French and Italian “con muchas frases y maneras de hablar particulares” (‘with many phrases and particular ways of speaking’) in Castilian; the second part contains explanations of French terms in Italian and Spanish, “pour faciliter le moyen à ceux qui desireront attaindre la perfection de composer en Langue italienne et espagnolle” (‘to facilitate the means for those who desire to attain perfection in composing in the Italian and Spanish languages’).

Vittori borrowed heavily from C. Oudin’s (d. 1625) Tesoro de las dos lenguas francesa y española (Paris, 1607), adding Italian as a third language (cf. G. Mattarucco, Prime grammatiche d’italiano per Francesi (secoli XVI-XVII), Florence, 2003, p. 66).

In the second edition of his Trésor, Oudin exposed Vittori, accusing him without reservation of having brazenly plundered his work without ever citing him. A typographical error conveniently served to prove the validity of this claim. In the first edition of the Trésor printed in Paris, due to a printer’s error, an entire page was omitted under the letter R: the text jumps abruptly from the word ‘retourcer’ to the word ‘réver’. The same error is repeated in Vittori’s Tesoro: “preuve suffisante - Oudin concluded - que ceux qui ont fait imprimer ce Tesoro à Genève, avec l’addition de la langue italienne et de quelques dictions espagnolles fournie par d’autres ne se sont servis que de notre premier esemplaire” (‘sufficient proof that those who had this Tesoro printed in Geneva, with the addition of the Italian language and a few Spanish expressions provided by others, used only our first copy’). Despite the accusation, Vittori’s Tesoro continued to be reprinted until the end of the century (cf. E. Mele, Tra grammatici, maestri di lingua spagnola e raccoglitori di proverbi spagnoli in Italia, in: “Studi di filologia moderna”, VII.1-2, January-June 1914, p. 27).

In fact, the work was reprinted in Antwerp by C. Lectin in 1614; in Geneva by S. Crespin and P. de la Romière in 1606 and 1616 (the former date is probably a misprint probably for 1616), by J. Crespin in 1637, in 1644 and in 1667, and by De Tournes in 1671; and more recently in Paris in 1973. A 1602 edition quoted by Palau (371193) seems to be a ghost.

“Nella rapida sequenza di opere lessicografiche, un posto di rilievo spetta anche al grande dizionario trilingue di Girolamo Vittori, il Tesoro de las tres lenguas: francesa, italiana, y española, pubblicato sempre a Ginevra nel 1609, in una dimensione pragmatica che ha però alle sue spalle l’orizzonte teorico di un’indagine storica e comparata sulle lingue neolatine. Basato in larga parte sul Dictionnaire françois-latin di Jean Nicot (1584) e sul Tesoro de las dos lenguas francesa y española di César Oudin (1607), il dizionario del Vittori, assieme a quello del Canal [Dictionaire françois et italien-Dittionario italiano e francese, Ginevra, 1598], rispondeva a una domanda di consumo da parte del pubblico, se furono entrambi esauriti nel giro di pochi anni. Certo, l’accento nazionale è qui assai più forte, ispirato da una concezione patriottica della lingua già collaudata nella querelle con l’Italia e l’italianismo di maniera, e il metodo di raccolta e selezione dei lemmi pare aver dimenticato o tralasciato l’impronta della filologia bembiana” (F. Sberlati, L’ambiguo primato: l’Europa e il Rinascimento italiano, Rome, 2004, p. 50).

Pernet Philippe Albert & Alexandre