Sebastian Gryphius (; , in

Reutlingen Reutlingen (; ) is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the capital of the eponymous Reutlingen (district), district of Reutlingen. As of June 2018, it had an estimated population of 116,456. Reutlingen has a Reutlingen University, univ ...

– 7 September 1556, in

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

) was the head of a printing house in Lyon and a

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...

Biography

The son of Michael Greyff (Greif, Gryff, Gryph), Sebastien Gryphius learned the new craft of printing, first in Germany and then in

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

. Around 1520 he came to

where he settled, likely on the request of the , eventually acquiring French nationality from François I in 1532. Initially Gryphius primarily published works on law and administration, in Gothic script. He then moved to Latin classics. He also translated classical Greek authors into Latin. He is perhaps best-known today for having published his contemporaries

Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus ( ; ; 28 October c. 1466 – 12 July 1536), commonly known in English as Erasmus of Rotterdam or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic priest and Catholic theology, theologian, educationalist ...

Guillaume Budé Guillaume Budé (; Onomastic Latinisation, Latinized as Guilielmus Budaeus; January 26, 1467 – August 20, 1540) was a French scholar and humanist. He was involved in the founding of Collegium Trilingue, which later became the Collège de Fra ...

Philip Melanchthon Philip Melanchthon (born Philipp Schwartzerdt; 16 February 1497 – 19 April 1560) was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, an intellectual leader of the L ...

, and

Poliziano Agnolo (or Angelo) Ambrogini (; 14 July 1454 – 24 September 1494), commonly known as Angelo Poliziano () or simply Poliziano, anglicized as Politian, was an Italian classical scholar and poet of the Florentine Renaissance. His scholars ...

. Gryphius was a prolific publisher on language and philology, and had an excellent reputation for type-setting accuracy. While Santes Pagninus was in Lyon, Gryphius published not only an abridged version of his 1526 ''Institutiones Hebraicae'' in Greek, Hebrew and Latin in 1528, but also his seminal 1412-page ''Thesaurus linguæ sanctæ'' in 1529 and in the following year, the first Hebrew text of the Psalms published in France and translated by Pagninus. In 1536 he went into business with Hugues de la Porte, who financed him in an independent venture. He founded ''l'Atelier du Griffon'', with a

griffin The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (; Classical Latin: ''gryps'' or ''grypus''; Late and Medieval Latin: ''gryphes'', ''grypho'' etc.; Old French: ''griffon'') is a -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk ...

mark. Around this time he introduced the

Italic type In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Owing to the influence f ...

Aldus Manutius Aldus Pius Manutius (; ; 6 February 1515) was an Italian printer and Renaissance humanism, humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and preser ...

. In the 1540s he was the highly reputed 'Prince of the Lyon book trade', publishing (on

Lucien Febvre Lucien Paul Victor Febvre ( ; ; 22 July 1878 – 11 September 1956) was a French historian best known for the role he played in establishing the Annales School of history. He was the initial editor of the ''Encyclopédie française'' together wit ...

's estimate) half of the academic textbooks used in Europe. He promoted the local humanist culture, and his books were prized for their clean lay-out and accuracy. It has been claimed, as the nineteenth-century scholar Henri-Louis Baudrier mentions, that Sebastian Gryphius's printshop (''Atelier du Griffon'') was characterized as an "angelic society" for free-thinkers, citing Pierre Gauthiez, but Baudrier considers this naming to be sloppy scholarship born of confusion with another coterie of writers known as the Fourvière academy. His collaborators included André Alciat,

François Rabelais François Rabelais ( , ; ; born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French writer who has been called the first great French prose author. A Renaissance humanism, humanist of the French Renaissance and Greek scholars in the Renaissance, Gr ...

Étienne Dolet Étienne Dolet (; 3 August 15093 August 1546) was a French scholar, translation, translator and printer (publisher), printer. He was a controversial figure throughout his lifetime, which was buffeted by the opposing forces of the Renaissance and ...

Maurice Scève Maurice Scève ( – ) was a French poet active in Lyon during the Renaissance period. He was the centre of the Lyonnese côterie that elaborated the theory of spiritual love, derived partly from Plato and partly from Petrarch. This spiritual lov ...

and

Barthélemy Aneau Barthélemy Aneau (c.1510–1561) was a French poet and humanist. He is known for his novel ''Alector, ou le coq'', and his work on emblems. He was born in Bourges but later moved to Lyon where he became regent, then principal of the Collège de ...

, and they wrote highly of his work, even helping out in practical printing tasks. Their linguistic input and commentary greatly enriched the works printed. Gryphius also published texts which were later added to the Catholic Church's index as heretical, like for example

Girolamo Savonarola Girolamo Savonarola, OP (, ; ; 21 September 1452 – 23 May 1498), also referred to as Jerome Savonarola, was an ascetic Dominican friar from Ferrara and a preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He became known for his prophecies of civic ...

's ''Dominicæ Precationis Explanatio''. From 1534-1538, on the recommendation of , he collaborated with and published Étienne Dolet, an academic and satirical poet, who arrived in Lyon in 1534 after being freed from jail in

Toulouse Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from ...

. After publishing the speeches that landed Dolet in prison in Toulouse and, surprisingly given his close ties to Erasmus, the virulent anti-Erasmian ''Dialogus, de imitatione ciceroniana adversus Desiderium Erasmum'', and the book that first made Dolet's scholarly reputation ''Commentarii linguae latinae'' (Commentaires sur la langue latine), Gryphius continued to let Dolet, holding a royal publishing privilege from 1538, to publish using his workshop. The first edition of ''Carmina'' was thus published with Dolet's device, but from Gryphe's workshop. Soon, however, the two parted ways, and Dolet began releasing editions of many of Dolet's most successful publications with little or no change, to the point that modern scholars speak of piracy. By 1546, Dolet's friends in high places could no longer protect him and he was burned in Paris as a

heretic Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy. Heresy in Christianity, Judai ...

. From 1540, Rabelais came to Gryphius to publish his translations of

Hippocrates Hippocrates of Kos (; ; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician and philosopher of the Classical Greece, classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is traditionally referr ...

Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...

and Giovanni Mainardi and collaborated with him extensively particularly on texts related to medicine, but also on his edition of

Macrobius Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, usually referred to as Macrobius (fl. AD 400), was a Roman provincial who lived during the early fifth century, during late antiquity, the period of time corresponding to the Later Roman Empire, and when Latin was ...

Family

Sebastien Gryphius' brother Franz (François) was also a printer in the ''rue des Carmes'' in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

from 1532–1545, while another relative, Johann (Jean), ran a publishing house in Venice from 1540, which stayed in business until 1585. Both publishing houses borrowed the Lyonnais' device (a griffon on a cube and a globe) and likely sought thereby to take advantage of their better-known relative's reputation. His illegitimate son Antoine (1527?-1599) succeeded him at his printing shop in Lyon. Antoine Gryphius was the father of Sébastien II Gryphius, born around 1570, a bookseller in Lyon and later in Bordeaux.

Legacy

*There is a street named after him in Lyon. *The journal of the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon is called ''Gryphe''.

Notes

References

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gryphius, Sebastian 1490s births 1556 deaths People from Reutlingen German booksellers German printers French printers Booksellers from the Holy Roman Empire Emigrants from the Holy Roman Empire Immigrants to the Republic of Venice Immigrants to France French booksellers