The Provenance of a Book by Jean Calvin, bound in a Carolingian Manuscript Fragment in Amsterdam University Library (Band I E 22)

Abstract

Germain Colladon (1508-94), a refugee from France and a prominent lawyer in Geneva, was the owner of a rare copy of the Ioannis Calvini in viginti prima Ezechielis prophetae capita praelectiones (1565), Jean Calvin’s last commentary, which discusses the first twenty chapters of the prophet Ezekiel. Colladon may have met Calvin, the leading reformer of Geneva, already during their years as students at the faculty of law in Orleans and Bourges. Germain, his older brother Leon, and the latter’s son Nicolas frequented the public Bible studies of the Company of Pastors on Friday mornings, as is testified by a list of witnesses for the prosecution in the case against the physician Jerome Bolsec. Germain is also featured at the beginning of the heresy trial against Michel Servet, which invites an inquiry into a rare copy of Servet’s Christianismi restitutio, once owned by a member of the Colladon family. Court cases from the Genevan archives show Germain Colladon as a strict, even severe, lawyer who stuck to the penal code of his time. A number of medieval manuscripts, the provenance of which can be traced to Colladon’s library, testify to a rich collection, in which the preciously bound copy of Calvin’s last publication was no exception.Germain Colladon (1508-94), a refugee from France and a prominent lawyer in Geneva, was the owner of a rare copy of the Ioannis Calvini in viginti prima Ezechielis prophetae capita praelectiones (1565), Jean Calvin’s last commentary, which discusses the first twenty chapters of the prophet Ezekiel. Colladon may have met Calvin, the leading reformer of Geneva, already during their years as students at the faculty of law in Orleans and Bourges. Germain, his older brother Leon, and the latter’s son Nicolas frequented the public Bible studies of the Company of Pastors on Friday mornings, as is testified by a list of witnesses for the prosecution in the case against the physician Jerome Bolsec. Germain is also featured at the beginning of the heresy trial against Michel Servet, which invites an inquiry into a rare copy of Servet’s Christianismi restitutio, once owned by a member of the Colladon family. Court cases from the Genevan archives show Germain Colladon as a strict, even severe, lawyer who stuck to the penal code of his time. A number of medieval manuscripts, the provenance of which can be traced to Colladon’s library, testify to a rich collection, in which the preciously bound copy of Calvin’s last publication was no exception.