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PLATO,
Phaedo, French prose translation by Jean de Luxembourg (d. 1548)
In French, illuminated manuscript on parchment
France, Paris, between 1536 (1538?) and 1545
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f. 9, Beginning of Plato, Phaedo, initial "D" |
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This is the deluxe presentation copy made for Charles of Valois, third son of King Francis I and brother of the future Henri II. Charles’s interests as a bibliophile have not been studied, nor is there an inventory of manuscripts made for him. It contains the first French translation of any work of Plato, Jean of Luxembourg’s translation of Plato’s Phaedo. One of only three known copies of an unpublished text, this manuscript is testimony to the interest in Christian Platonism in courtly circles. It pre-dates the first printed French Phaedo by Louis Le Roy (1553) by at least a decade. |
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