Claude Paradin

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Claude Paradin (c. 1510 – 1573), was a French writer, collector of emblems or "devises", historian, and genealogist.[1]

Paradin was born in Cuiseaux (Saône-et-Loire), spending his adult life as canon of the Collegiate Church in Beaujeu, between Mâcon and Lyon.

Publications

His Devises Heroïques published in French in Lyon in 1551 by Jean de Tournes[2] was an influential printed collection of 118 emblems or "devises" and included an attached motto. These emblemata[3] became commonly used as markers or models of royal, aristocratic or moral ownership as well as decorative pattern books applied in a variety of crafts including, heraldry, masonry, sculpture, painting, woodcuts or textiles.[4] The 1551 edition was followed in 1557[5][6] by an expanded edition, now with 182 "devises" as well as providing a brief explanation of the universal significance of the symbol and how it represents the individual who chose it or to whom the symbol was attributed in the Renaissance as well as the motto.[7] The new wood blocks for the 1557 edition may be by Bernard Salomon who worked closely with Jean de Tournes.[8][9]

Devises heroïqves (1557). This illustration on page 216 bears the Latin motto "Vunius compendium, alterius stipendium" (The one profits, the other loses). Claude Paradin adds an explanation in French: Si un Serpent ne mangeoit l'autre, iamais ne deuien-droit Dragon. Ainsi les Riches & puissant, croissent au dommage d'autrui. (If a Serpent did not eat another, it would never become a real Dragon. Thus do the Rich and powerful grow by harming another.)

Paradin's other publications included Quadrins Historiques de la Bible,[10] (1553) and the Alliances Genealogiques des Rois et Princes de Gaulle (1561), dedicated to Catherine de' Medici.[11]

Publication history and international significance

References

External links

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