Jean Petit

Jean I Petit (d. 1540; documented from 1492), Latinized as Johannes Parvus and occasionally Johannes Pusillus, was a Parisian bookseller and publisher whose enterprise became one of the largest suppliers of scholarly books in early sixteenth-century France. A libraire juré of the University of Paris, he organized production through numerous independent printing houses, combining his own investments with those of printers and fellow booksellers. The BnF’s Bibliographie des éditions parisiennes du XVIe siècle associates his name with well over a thousand editions, encompassing both shared ventures and publications issued on his own account. His historical importance rests upon this capacity to coordinate an extensive publishing programme across different workshops, subjects, and markets.

Petit’s birth date and early training remain unknown. He came from an established Parisian family: his father, Oudin Petit, and his grandfather, Jean, were butchers in the rue Saint-Jacques. His entry into bookselling therefore represented a change of occupation within a commercial urban milieu. His principal premises stood in the same street, close to the Mathurins and within the university’s book-trading district. The Lion d’Argent is documented from the 1490s; the Fleur de Lys d’Or appears from 1511. Their use overlapped, with the earlier sign continuing in some imprints through 1515. Other recorded addresses include the hôtel de Beauregard in the rue Clopin and premises in the rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais.

His early publications already served distinct readerships. Around 1498 he financed a Paris edition of Jean d’Arras’s Mélusine, printed by Pierre Le Caron. A further edition, produced for him by Thomas Du Guernier around 1503, reused the earlier illustrative material and contained sixty-three woodcut illustrations. These publications brought an established French prose romance into Petit’s catalogue alongside Latin schoolbooks. Their production also reveals an enduring feature of his business: a text and its visual apparatus could be transferred between workshops while the bookseller’s commercial participation continued. The dating of these editions depends partly upon the successive forms of Petit’s device and the addresses of the printers involved.

Classical literature became a major component of the enterprise. Petit participated in the 1499 edition of Terence’s comedies associated with André Bocard, Josse Bade, and the commentary of Guy Jouenneaux. The substantial Virgil publications of 1500–1501 further developed the market for annotated teaching editions. Thielman Kerver printed the Aeneid for a partnership including Petit, the Parisian bookseller Jean de Coblencz, and Jean Alexandre of Angers. Its colophon explicitly distinguishes Parisian and Roman year reckoning, placing completion on 1 February 1501. The volume assembled commentaries by Servius, Donatus, Filippo Beroaldo, and Bade, together with Maffeo Vegio’s supplementary book. Such editions offered readers a coordinated apparatus of ancient interpretation, recent scholarship, and pedagogical explanation.

Petit’s association with Josse Bade, or Badius Ascensius, became particularly productive after Bade established his Paris press in 1503. Their respective responsibilities varied between projects: Bade could act simultaneously as printer, commentator, editor, and co-publisher, while Petit supplied investment and a separate sales outlet. An important example was the revised Adagiorum collectanea of Erasmus, completed on 24 December 1506. The title advertised revision and enlargement by Erasmus and an index prepared by Bade; copies were offered both at the Ascensian premises and at Petit’s Lion d’Argent. This edition belongs to the development of Erasmus’s original Collectanea, preceding the greatly expanded Adagiorum chiliades published by Aldus in 1508. Petit’s involvement thus extended to a work undergoing substantial intellectual and editorial transformation.

The same commercial network supported both university theology and new philosophical writing. John Mair’s In primum Sententiarum, completed on 29 April 1510, was printed by Henri Estienne at the expense of Bade, Petit, and Constantin Lepus. Estienne and Petit also jointly financed Charles de Bovelles’s collection beginning with the Liber de intellectu. Its colophon bears the date 1510, while the typographical catalogue of French post-incunables places production on 31 January 1511, using the state of the title border as additional evidence. The book combined Roman types, diagrams, and an ambitious philosophical programme. These projects show how Petit supplied related but intellectually diverse constituencies within the university market.

Legal publishing required similarly elaborate partnerships and editorial apparatus. The 1511 Decretales of Gregory IX, issued with Bernard of Parma’s gloss and editorial contributions associated with Jean Chappuis and Lodovico Bolognini, followed an edition of 1509. The related Clementinae, completed in November 1511, were printed by Kerver for himself, Petit, and the Lyon bookseller Jean Schabeler. They incorporated the gloss of Johannes Andreae and additions by Jean d’Imola, and were reissued in 1513. Here, repeated revision, tables, glosses, and finding aids increased the usefulness of established professional texts, while the partnership connected Parisian manufacture directly with a provincial distribution centre.

Petit’s ability to mobilize several presses is particularly well documented in Jean Raulin’s Opus sermonum quadragesimalium, published in 1512, although dated 1511 ante pascha. This extensive quarto was divided between several printers, as its colophon acknowledges. Typographical analysis identifies the participation of André Bocard, Berthold Rembolt, and an unidentified third workshop. Petit obtained parliamentary and royal privileges in March 1512, protecting a substantial coordinated investment. Rembolt subsequently printed Raulin’s Itinerarium Paradisi for him in 1513 and the Doctrinale mortis in 1518. These transactions document a sustained publishing relationship in which privileges, manufacturing capacity, and successive additions to an author’s corpus were managed together.

Revision and accumulated commentary also sustained the classical list. The 1514 Pharsalia of Lucan, printed by Bade for himself and Petit, was revised by Gérard de Vercel and brought together commentaries and annotations associated with Giovanni Sulpizio, Beroaldo, Bade, Marcantonio Sabellico, and other scholars. Its elaborate title border and Ascensian device accompanied an editorial identity shared with Petit. The publication illustrates the commercial value of a recognizable text enriched by additional scholarship: its appeal depended upon the particular combination of readings, explanations, and supplementary material offered to purchasers.

Petit continued to invest in illustrated French books. Pietro de’ Crescenzi’s Le Livre des prouffitz champestres et ruraulx, published with Michel Le Noir in 1516, addressed agriculture, vineyards, gardens, water supplies, and rural buildings. Its fourteen illustrations, printed from nine woodblocks, included four blocks already used in the French edition of 1486. The reuse of these images connected Petit’s production with an earlier generation of illustrated vernacular publishing. Alongside romances, such practical works broadened his market beyond the Latin-reading university public and demonstrate how existing visual resources could retain commercial usefulness across successive editions.

Petit’s publisher’s devices gave this dispersed production a recognizable commercial identity. Surviving variants show his initials on a shield, supported by heraldic animals, with the fleur-de-lis incorporated into later designs. The different cuts should be distinguished individually: an early device uses a lion and a leopard, while another familiar version presents two lions flanking the shield. His motto, Petit à petit, made a verbal emblem from his surname. Since these marks appeared in books manufactured by different printers, they identified the bookseller’s participation and sales establishment as well as helping readers recognize his publications. Their successive forms remain important evidence for dating undated books.

Distribution extended through documented partnerships and branches. Petit maintained connections in Normandy, commissioned printing at Rouen, and operated in Lyon, where his address was in the rue Mercière, opposite Saint-Antoine. Romain Morin served as his factor there before establishing his own business. An English connection is explicit in editions of Savonarola’s De simplicitate Christianae vitae and Introductorium confessorum produced in 1510: Bade printed them for a partnership including Petit and the London bookseller Henry Jacobi. These arrangements provide concrete evidence of international circulation through shared publication and designated sales outlets.

The later history of the enterprise requires careful separation of family members. Jean II Petit joined his father’s business from 1518; a notarial document of 11 April 1526 describes both men as libraires jurés. Their overlapping use of names and commercial identifiers complicates attribution of individual publications. Current BnF authorities place Jean II’s death in 1533 and that of Jean I shortly before 14 October 1540, revising the older chronology that ended the elder Petit’s career around 1530. His grandson Oudin Petit, son of Jean II, was active by November 1537 and succeeded to the business in 1540. Oudin subsequently became a leading university bookseller, but lost that office in December 1567 because of his Protestantism, carrying the family’s publishing history into the confessional conflicts of a later generation