Thomas Mahieu (born between 1515 and 1527 – died after 1588), also known as Thomas Maiolus, was a French courtier and

bibliophile A bookworm or bibliophile is an individual who loves and frequently reads or collects books. Bibliophilia or bibliophilism is the love of books. Bibliophiles may have large, specialized book collections. They may highly value old editions, aut ...

with a special interest in decorative

bookbinding Bookbinding is the process of building a book, usually in codex format, from an ordered stack of paper sheets with one's hands and tools, or in modern publishing, by a series of automated processes. Firstly, one binds the sheets of papers alon ...

s. Mahieu was advisor and secretary to

Henry II of France Henry II (; 31 March 1519 – 10 July 1559) was List of French monarchs#House of Valois-Angoulême (1515–1589), King of France from 1547 until his death in 1559. The second son of Francis I of France, Francis I and Claude of France, Claude, Du ...

, personal secretary to

Catherine de' Medici Catherine de' Medici (, ; , ; 13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589) was an Italian Republic of Florence, Florentine noblewoman of the Medici family and Queen of France from 1547 to 1559 by marriage to Henry II of France, King Henry II. Sh ...

from 1549 to 1560, and subsequently Treasurer-General of

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. His book collection is considered second only to that of Jean Grolier, who is considered Mahieu's mentor and spiritual father. Mahieu and Grolier used similar Latin ownership inscriptions on their bindings. " Mahieu used the Latinized form of his name on bookplates, ''Maiolus'', which for centuries was mistaken for an Italian surname. It was not discovered until 1926 that Maiolus, the otherwise unattested supposed Italian, and Mahieu, the prominent French politician, were the same person. Today, about 120 books are ascribed to Mahieu.

Bindings

France had taken over from Italy as the center of artistic bookbinding during the early sixteenth century. Political upheaval in Italy, the Sack of Rome in 1527, the French occupation of Milan, and the

Franco-Ottoman alliance The Franco-Ottoman alliance, also known as the Franco-Turkish alliance, was an alliance established in 1536 between Francis I of France, Francis I, King of France and Suleiman the Magnificent, Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire. The strategic and s ...

had caused innovations such as gold tooling and the use of high-quality Morocco leather to reach to France, where they were swiftly embraced and refined. It has proved difficult to identify the binder(s) of many of the Mahieu books. In later years Mahieu favoured plainer styles of binding, but the earlier commissions are distincively rich: punched and gilded backgrounds show a surface of sprinkled dots as a foil for coloured interlacings and arabesques." The tools used by Mahieu's bookbinders have been analysed. The use of

trefoil A trefoil () is a graphic form composed of the outline of three overlapping rings, used in architecture, Pagan and Christian symbolism, among other areas. The term is also applied to other symbols with a threefold shape. A similar shape with f ...

motifs suggested a common origin in a workshop that supplied bindings to Henry, Catherine, and Grolier, the so-called "atelier au trèfle" (meaning workshop of the trefoil). However, recent scholarship has thrown more light on the "atelier au trèfle" and the binders who worked for the royal family and Grolier, The

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

's bindings catalogue attributes one of Mahieu's bindings to Claude Picques and another to Gomar Estienne. The

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

also credits these two royal binders with commissions for Mahieu. The last binding known to be due to Mahieu was manufactured in 1588.

References

External links

British Library Bookbindings Catalogue
- Search on "Mahieu" for images and catalogue entries for bindings owned by Mahieu, and others in the style {{DEFAULTSORT:Mahieu, Thomas French bibliophiles Year of death missing Politicians of the Ancien Régime in France 16th-century French people Year of birth uncertain