Adrien Turnèbe (1512-1565) : a Humanist Observed

For Montaigne Adrien Turnebe was “le plus grand homme qui fut il y a mil’ans... il sçavoit toutes choses”. From the early optimism of Guillaume Budé (1468) to the more severe age of the Huguenot Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), Paris could boast a dazzling array of resident scholars whose works on both Latin and Greek authors would have been found in the libraries and private collections of all educated men. It is to that glittering circle of scholars that Adrien Turnèbe belongs. As a scholar, he bears comparison with the best of them. But unlike them, Turnèbe also enjoyed a considerable reputation as a printer, poet, and controversialist. From his appointment as a lecteur royal in 1547 to his death in 1565, Turnèbe produced an uninterrupted flow of editions, translations and commentaries on an astonishing range of Greek and Latin authors, and John Lewis studies and presents all of them.