ELLAIN (Nicolas). Lot n° 47

Discours panegyrique à Révérend Père en Dieu Monseigneur Messire Pierre de Gondy, Evesque de Paris [...]. Paris, Denis du Pré, 1570. 8-leaf in-4 booklet, stiff vellum (modern binding). First edition of this speech on the reception and entry of Bishop Pierre de Gondi, known as Cardinal de Retz (1533-1616), in Paris on March 9, 1570. Protected by Catherine de Médicis, he was appointed Bishop of Paris in 1568, Chancellor and Grand Chaplain to Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Charles IX. He carried out various diplomatic missions in Rome under Henri III and Henri IV. Nicolas Ellain (1535-1621) is listed in Chereau's French Medical Parnassus (pp. 203-204) as one of France's former physician-poets. This modest Parisian poet wrote a number of sonnets and panegyric speeches, collected collectively in 1861 by Achille Genty under the title Œuvres poétiques françoises de Nicolas Ellain, as well as an Advis sur la peste (1606). The Discours is followed by pieces in Latin and French, including a sonnet à Monseigneur de Paris sur son nom ainsi tourné Pierre de Gondy Per digne de Roy, a poem by Jacques Moysson, a clerk at the Châtelet and co-owner of the "maison de l'Ange" that Ronsard rented in 1564 (cf. Ronsard, la trompette et la lyre, no. 44). J. P. Barbier-Mueller, IV-2, n°29. - Diane Barbier-Mueller, Inventaire..., n°334.