ESTIENNE (Stephanus), FAMILY. - Printers who carried on their activity in Paris and Geneva in the 16th century, beginning in 1502.
The founder is HENRI I (b. between 1465 and 1475, d. 1526), whose famous edition of a Psalter in 5 columns (1509) is well known. His second son was ROBERT I, b. in Paris in 1499, d. in Geneva on 7 Sept. 1559. « Vir ad promovendas bonas litteras quasi natus » (Thesaurus, I, ed. 1740, p. 12), thoroughly versed in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, from 1526 onward he devoted himself in his own printing house, with tireless zeal, to the critical edition and diffusion of Latin classics, of Greek ecclesiastical writers and of a most useful Thesaurus latinae linguae (4 vols., Paris 1531; 2nd ed. ibid. 1536; 3rd ed. ibid. 1543; then editions at Lyon 1573, London 1735, Basel 1740-43), earning for himself the title of imprimeur du roi (1539) and of lexicographorum princeps. However, his activity, clearly divided into a Catholic period in Paris (until 1551) and a Protestant one in Geneva (1551-59), was from 1523 onward particularly dedicated to Sacred Scripture.
Thus he several times prepared the edition of the New Testament in Latin (1523), of the entire Bible in Latin or Vulgate (1528), of the Hebrew Bible (4 vols., 1539-44), of the New Testament in Greek (1546), of the New Testament in French (1553). In 1555 he followed these with the Concordantiae Bibliorum utriusque Testamenti, Veteris et Novi, novae integrae, quas revera maiores appellare possis, the first work of its kind.
In the various editions of the Vulgate (1528-57), E. attempted to re-establish critically the authentic text of St. Jerome and « s'est acquis une place de premier ordre dans l'histoire de la Vulgate » (H. Quentin, Mémoire sur l'établissement du texte de la Vulgate, Rome 1922, pp. 104-20). In the 4th ed. of the Greek-Latin New Testament (Geneva 1551) he introduced that division of the sacred text into chapters and numbered verses which he had devised inter equitandum between Paris and Lyon, a division not always good, but still in use today. His biblical editions, especially because of his annotations, were viewed with disfavour by the Sorbonne, so that in 1551 he moved to Geneva and went over to Protestantism, placing his Genevan publishing house at the disposal of the « reformers ». See his Responsio ad consumat theologorum Parisientium, quibus Biblia a Roberto Stephano, typographo regio, excusa calumniase notarum (Geneva 1552, at the same time also in French).
Other valuable works on biblical themes are a thesaurus of the Hebrew language or of the glossae on the Synoptics, namely: Nomina hebraea, chaldaea, graeca et latina virorum, mulierum, populorum, idolorum, urbium, fluviorum, montium caeterorumque locorum quae in Bibliis leguntur, restituta... (Paris 1537); Phrases hebraicae, seu loquendi genera hebraica quae in Veteri Testamento passim leguntur... thesauri linguae hebraicae altera pars (ibid. 1538); in Evangelium secundum Matthaeum, Marcum et Lucam commentarii ex ecclesiasticis scriptoribus collecti, novae glossae ordinariae specimen (Geneva 1553).
His son HENRI II (b. 1551, d. in Lyon 1598) brought the printing house to decadence, but as a Hellenist he achieved high renown for the edition of Anacreon (1554) and even more with the Thesaurus graecae linguae (1572), which, revised and reworked (Paris 1831-63), is still today the most extensive Greek lexicographical repertory.
Bibliography7 works
Adalberto Metzinger-Alessandro Pratesi