GEOFROY TORY
PAINTER AND ENGRAVER: FIRST ROYAL PRINTER: REFORMER OF ORTHOGRAPHY AND TYPOGRAPHY UNDER FRANÇOIS I.
PART I. BIOGRAPHY.
ESS than twenty years after the introduction of printing at Paris, there was born at Bourges a child of the people, destined to impart to French typography a vigorous artistic impulsion, or, to speak more accurately, to work therein a genuine revolution. Geofroy Tory[9] was born in the capital of Berry, about 1480, of obscure, middle-class parents, as he himself tells us.[10] Everything seems to indicate that he first saw the light of day in the faubourg of Saint-Privé, to this day the abode of humble vine-dressers. How, in that most lowly condition of life, he succeeded in acquiring the degree of education which he afterward exhibited, it is hard to say. However, it is proper to remember that Bourges was at that time a metropolitan and university city, where there were several schools, both ecclesiastic and lay. We may well believe that, having, at an early age, aroused the interest of some patron by virtue of his fortunate natural endowments and his intelligence, he was admitted to the schools attached to the chapter, where he learned the first elements of grammar. We shall soon find him dedicating the first fruits of his labours to a canon of the metropolitan church of Bourges, who seems to have been, at that time, his Mæcenas.
Once master of the first rudiments of grammar, Tory perfected himself by following the curriculum of the university, where, as we learn from himself, he had for his teacher a Fleming named Guillaume de Ricke, otherwise called 'le Riche' in French and 'Dives' in Latin; and for a fellow disciple under this Ghent-born master, a certain Herverus de Berna, from Saint-Amand, who afterward wrote a panegyric of the Comtes de Nevers.[11]
Tory then went, to finish his literary education, to Italy, whither he betook himself early in the sixteenth century. He sojourned principally in Rome, where he attended most frequently the famous college called La Sapienza,[12] and in Bologna, where he attended the lectures of the celebrated Filippo Beroaldo, who died in 1505.[13] Tory returned to France a little before that event, and established his domicile in Paris, which he always loved henceforward as one loves one's native city,[14] and where he began his literary career.