MELANCHTHON, Philip / [CARION]. Des Faictz et gestes du roy François, premier de ce nom ; précédé de : Le livre des chroniques du seigneur Jehan Carion Philosophe, contenant tous haultz actes & gestes en convenable ordre, depuis le commencement du monde, Ensemble les faictz et gestes du feu roy François jusqu’au règne du roy Henry deuxième de ce nom, à présent régnant. Par lequel livre sera congneu les dates des ans estre très justement observé, ensemble les principales mutations qui sont advenues en ce Royaume, en la Religion & République du monde.Tourné de Latin en François par Maistre Jehan le Blond, imprimé en cette année 1548.

“The Chronicle known under the name of Carion had for more than a century such a success, especially among Protestants, that Dommerich, in his Epistola of Joannis Carionis chronica, printed in 1750, says to have seen twenty-eight editions of it; and there are certainly more of them.We can hardly avoid speaking of it here in some detail.Carion first published (in Wittenberg, 1532, 4to) the German text of his chronicle, which he had revised by Philip Melanchthon, and which came to the year 1532. The author having died in 1538, the work was continued until 1547 by Jean Funck, who, in the same year, published an 8vo edition in Nuremberg. This chronicle had already been translated into Latin by Herm. Bonn, and printed in Halle, in 1537, then with the continuation in Paris in 1548, and in Lyon, in 1554, 8vo. It is on this Latin version that the French version of Jean Le Blond was made and printed in Lyon, J. de Tournes & G. Gazeau, 1549 (also 1553), 16mo of 30 preliminary ll. and 750 pp.: continued until the reign of Henry II, Paris, Est. Groulleau, 1553, 16mo of 30 preliminary ll. and 351 ll.; – continued until the reign of François II, Paris, Ruelle, 1567, 16mo of 32 preliminary ll. and 375 ll., plus a catalog of the kings of France, in 2 ll.However Melanchthon, who had already had a great deal of interest in both the German text and the Latin version, entirely re-edited the work, and published it in Latin, still under the name of Carion.We will not talk about the various vulgar versions that were made of this book in German, Bohemian, Italian and Spanish…” Brunet (I, 1578-1579).

“The Chronicle of Carion had such a prodigious success in the 16^th century, it appeared in such a large number of editions and translations that it is not out of place to go into some details on the history of this work. Carion had written a chronicle in German, and before having it printed he wanted Melanchthon to correct it. Melanchthon, instead of correcting it, made another one, and published it in German, in Wittenberg, in 1531. This is what he himself teaches us, by writing to Camerarius: Ego totum opus relexi, et quidem germanice. Peucer, Melanchthon‘s son-in-law, and continuator of the same chronicle, says in his 1572 edition that Melanchthon crossed out all of Carion’s manuscript: Totum abolevit una litura, alio conscripto, cui tamen nomen Carionis proefuit.“(V-Ve)This first French edition is the work of Jean Le Blond, Norman poet, born in Évreux in the 16^th century who wrote several epistles against Clément Marot, when exiled in Ferrara.