Estienne Collection

The Estienne collection is the core of the library, built around a dynasty of scholar-printers whose workshops in Paris and Geneva set the standard for sixteenth-century printing.

In their hands scholarship and typography were one discipline, and the collection follows that work through classical philosophy, Roman letters, and the intellectual life of the Renaissance. Preference is given to volumes in their original leather bindings, or handsomely rebound, printed in Paris or Geneva.

Three figures anchor the collection: Robert, Charles, and Henri II Estienne. It was Robert who set the house's scholarly standard and Henri II who carried its Greek learning to its height, with Charles adding a further, more practical strand to the family's output.

1536 woodcut of a Roman vessel, from Lazare de Baïf's De Vasculis, Robert Estienne's first illustrated edition.

Noli Altum Sapere (“do not be proud minded”) was the motto of the Estienne publishing house, especially Henri II Estienne; it continues as “... as wisdom comes in restraint."

Versions of the printer’s device used by the Estienne and Elzevier families often show a man standing beside an olive tree. This figure can be seen as St Paul, referencing Romans 11:20—“Be not high-minded, but fear” (Noli altum sapere, sed time).

The tree often bears graft marks, those small circles with a cross (X); it is a botanical symbol of grafting, symbolising the cultivation of knowledge. Just as grafting joins new growth to an old rootstock, it reflects how Estienne sought to join new humanist learning to classical and scriptural tradition.

Henri Estienne (the Elder)

Founder of the Estienne printing dynasty. He was disinherited by his father in 1482 for taking up printing, a trade then thought to forfeit a family's noble standing, while his brother Raimond became the family heir. He established his own press in Paris around 1502, near the Sorbonne and serving its scholarly market, having married Guyonne Viart, widow of the printer Jean Higman, and taken over Higman's press. On Henri's death in 1520 his widow married his associate Simon de Colines, who directed the house until Henri's son Robert took it over in 1526.

Robert Estienne

Son of Henri the Elder, trained under his stepfather Simon de Colines, and master of the Estienne press from 1526. The house reached its height under him, crowned by the Thesaurus linguae latinae, a foundation of modern Latin lexicography, and by his editions of the Greek New Testament. His 1551 Geneva New Testament was the first to carry the numbered verses still in use today, a system that passed through the Geneva Bible of 1560 into English scripture. His Protestant sympathies brought him into open conflict with the theologians of the Sorbonne, and around 1550 he left Paris for Geneva, where he printed under Reformed patronage. His device, an olive tree, bore the motto noli altum sapere, taken from Romans and pointed as a quiet rebuke to Catholic authority.

Charles Estienne

Robert's younger brother: physician, scholar, and printer. When Robert left for Geneva in 1551, Charles, who had remained Catholic, took charge of the Paris press and was named king's printer the same year. He is best remembered for his illustrated De dissectione (1545), one of the earliest illustrated anatomical works, drawing on plates that predate Vesalius. His range was unusually wide: alongside the anatomy he produced an early French encyclopaedia and, in 1553, a French Paradoxes after Ortensio Lando's Paradossi, marking his taste for Italian humanism. He was declared bankrupt in 1561 and is said to have died in a debtors' prison, but the breadth of his learning left a distinct mark on the Estienne name.

Henri Estienne

Robert's son, Latinised as Henricus Stephanus, and the most celebrated scholar of the dynasty. His Thesaurus Graecae Linguae (1572) remained the foundation of Greek lexicography for three centuries. His 1578 edition of Plato gave scholarship the page references, known as Stephanus pagination, still used to cite Plato today. He issued Herodotus, Thucydides, Aulus Gellius, and many other classical authors in corrected or first editions, and his Latin Sextus Empiricus (1562) helped spread ancient scepticism through early modern Europe.

Brilliant but perennially unstable, he poured his fortune into vast scholarly projects and often sold at a loss, the Thesaurus itself nearly ruining him. He wrote sharp, satirical prose, including the Apologie pour Hérodote, that offended the authorities of his day. He died at Lyon in 1598, in much reduced circumstances.