Henry Estienne
Encyclopedia
Henri Estienne also known as Henricus Stephanus, was a 16th-century French printer
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

 and classical scholar. He was the eldest son of Robert Estienne
Robert Estienne
Robert I Estienne , known as Robertus Stephanus in Latin and also referred to as Robert Stephens by 18th and 19th-century English writers, was a 16th century printer and classical scholar in Paris...

.

Biography

Estienne was born in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.

He displayed in his youth a genuine enthusiasm for Greek and Latin; and his father took special pains with his education, and, as a part of his general training, he undertook in his nineteenth year a protracted journey to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, England, and Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

, where he busied himself in collecting and collating manuscripts for his father's press.

In 1554 he published at Paris his first independent work, the Anacreon. Then he went again to Italy, helping Aldus
Aldine Press
Aldine Press was the printing office started by Aldus Manutius in 1494 in Venice, from which were issued the celebrated Aldine editions of the classics . The Aldine Press is famous in the history of typography, among other things, for the introduction of italics...

 at Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, discovered a copy of Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...

 at Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, and returned to Geneva in 1555.

In 1557 he seems to have had a printing establishment of his own, and, in the spirit of modern times, advertised himself as the "Parisian printer" (typographus parisiensis). The following year he assumed the title, illustris viri Huldrici Fuggeri typographus, from his patron, Ulrich Fugger
Fugger
The Fugger family was a historically prominent group of European bankers, members of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century mercantile patriciate of Augsburg, international mercantile bankers, and venture capitalists like the Welser and the Höchstetter families. This banking family replaced the de'...

.

In 1559 Henry assumed charge of his father's presses, and distinguished himself as the publisher,
and also as the editor and collator, of manuscripts. Works of Athenagoras
Athenagoras
Athenagoras has been the name of several notable Greek individuals:*Athenagoras of Ephesus, a tyrant of Ephesus around the 6th century BC*Athenagoras of Syracuse, statesman and military leader in Syracuse during the Sicilian Expedition, 415 BC to 413 BC...

, Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, and Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

 appeared in 1557; Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus was a Greek historian who flourished between 60 and 30 BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily . With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about Diodorus' life and doings beyond what is to be found in his own work, Bibliotheca...

, 1559; Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...

, 1561; Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....

, 1562; Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...

, 1564; Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

, both 1566 and 1581; and Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...

, in 1568. His complete edition of Plato's dialogues in 1578 is the basis of their now standard Stephanus pagination
Stephanus pagination
Stephanus pagination is the system of reference and organization used in modern editions and translations of Plato . Plato's works are divided into numbers, and each number will be divided into equal sections a, b, c, d and e...

. He improved old translations, or made new Latin translations, of many Greek authors.

His most celebrated work, the Thesaurus linguae graecae, or Greek thesaurus, which served up to the nineteenth century as the basis of Greek lexicography
Lexicography
Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....

, appeared in 4 volumes in 1572, with a supplement in two volumes. This work was begun by his father.

Of the editions of the Greek New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 that went forth from his presses, those of Beza
Theodore Beza
Theodore Beza was a French Protestant Christian theologian and scholar who played an important role in the Reformation...

 with his commentary deserve mention. A triglot containing the Peshitta
Peshitta
The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from the Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD...

 appeared in 1569, of which some copies are in existence, bearing the date Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

, 1571. In 1565 a large French Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 was printed.

Henry's own editions of the Greek New Testament of 1576 and 1587 are noteworthy; the former containing the first scientific treatise on the language of the apostolic writers; the latter, a discussion of the ancient divisions of the text. In 1594 he published a concordance of the New Testament, the preparatory studies for which his father had made.

Much earlier he translated Calvin
John Calvin
John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530...

's catechism into Greek, which was printed in 1554 in his father's printing room.

He died in Lyon in 1598.

Family

Henry was married three times, and had fourteen children, of whom three survived him. His son Paul (born 1567), of whose life little is known, assumed control of the presses. Two of Paul's sons were printers — Joseph at La Rochelle
La Rochelle
La Rochelle is a city in western France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department.The city is connected to the Île de Ré by a bridge completed on 19 May 1988...

, and Antoine (died 1674), who became "Printer to the King" in Paris in 1613. Fronton du Duc
Fronton du Duc
-Life:Fronton du Duc was born b. at Bordeaux in France. At first he taught in various colleges of the Society of Jesus, and wrote for the dramatic representations encouraged by the Jesuits the "Histoire tragique de la pucelle de Domrémy, autrement D'Orléans" . It was acted at Pont-à-Mousson before...

's Chrysostom, and Jean Morin's Greek Bible (3 vols., 1628) were issued from Antoine's presses.

His son Henry succeeded to the title of "Printer to the King" in 1649, and his work closed about 1659. This Henry left no children, and was the last of the family who took active interest in editing and printing.
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