Ancient Rome in Renaissance France: Around the Paris Edition of Biondo Flavio’s Roma Triumphans ([1532]–1533)

Abstract

Flavio Biondo’s Roma triumphans , his treatise on Roman civilization (completed 1459, first printed c. 1473) is a key text of Italian humanism and the basis of the long-lasting discipline of antiquarianism. It is an enormous, systematic survey of the public and private mores and institutions of ancient Rome, its cultural history, we would say. Its value was recognized by succeeding scholars (who tended to treat it as a quarry or a challenge for more focused research) and it went through a number of printings before 1559. This article takes the starting point of the Paris edition of 1533 to explore what can be known of the presence and use of the work in France from about 1500 to the 1550s. After considering the printer and the context of the publication, it touches on Roma triumphans in the work of Guillaume Budé, Jean Lemaire de Belges and Guillaume Du Choul.