1530, Elyot led embassies to Emperor Charles V in 1531
and 1535. In 1531 his first and most famous publication
appeared, The Boke named the Governour; dedicated to
HENRY VIII, it was an appeal for humanistic values in the
education of the aristocracy. Pasquil the Plain (1532) ex-
tols the virtues of free speech against flattery. The medical
treatise The Castel of Health (1534) was novel in that it
was written in the vernacular and by a layman. Among
Elyot’s other works, the most significant is his Latin–
English Dictionary (1538).
Elzevir press (Elsevir press) The press founded by the
Elzevirs (or Elsevirs or Elseviers), a Dutch family of print-
ers, publishers, and booksellers, who spread from a base
in Leyden to The Hague, Amsterdam, and Utrecht, and
were active from about 1580 to 1712. The founder of the
dynasty, Louis (1546–1617) left Louvain to work for
PLANTINin Antwerp, before settling in Leyden in 1580 as
a binder and bookseller, eventually associated with the
local university. His publishing started in 1593 with an
edition of Eutropius, and classical authors continued to be
the main stock of the firm. Louis’s son Bonaventura
(1583–1652) and grandsons Abraham (1592–1652) and
Izaak (1596–1651)—the offspring of Louis’s oldest son,
Matthias—began the series of pocket classics in 1629, pro-
viding accurate texts for a large market. These little thirty-
twomos, with their narrow margins and solid slabs of
type, often with engraved title-pages, became the family’s
most famous product. Izaak, who had established a press
of his own in 1616, became printer to the university of
Leyden in 1620, and his successors retained the office.
GROTIUSwas the first contemporary author to be pub-
lished by the Elzevirs, in 1609; the Amsterdam branch, es-
tablished by Louis III (1604–70) in 1639, subsequently
concentrated on modern books in Dutch, German, Eng-
lish, and French until the death of Daniel Elzevir
(1626–80), Bonaventura’s son, when it was wound up.
The Leyden branch lasted a little longer, under the control
of Abraham’s grandson, Abraham II (1653–1712). The
Elzevirs, from Louis I on, sold new or second-hand books
throughout Europe, an activity just as important as their
printing and publishing.
emblems Symbolic pictures to which were added a few
words, often in the form of a motto or a short verse, to ex-
plain the full meaning. An emblem can be defined as the
graphic expression of a thought. Emblematic devices are
probably most familiar now as printers’ marks, such as the
ALDINE PRESS dolphin and anchor, glossed as “Hasten
slowly” (see illustration on p. 200). Francis Quarles, au-
thor of the best-known English emblem book, which ap-
peared in 1635, said “An Emblem is a silent parable.”
The Renaissance taste for emblems may have grown
in part from study of Roman medals and Egyptian hiero-
glyphs. It was reinforced by the publication of collections
of them in books; the first, Andrea ALCIATI’s Emblemata,
printed in Augsburg in 1531, with woodcuts by Jörg Breu,
initiated a fashion that lasted over a century. A Paris edi-
tion with better illustrations by Mercure Jollot followed in
1534, with a first French translation two years later and a
German one in 1542, all issued by WECHEL. In 1546 the
Aldine press printed more of Alciati’s emblems, followed
by Lyons printers who put them into French, Spanish, and
finally Italian, in 1549. The first English emblem book,
Geoffrey Whitney’s A Choice of Emblemes (Leyden, 1586),
was printed on the Continent because the stock of illus-
trations required was available there. Henry Peacham, on
the other hand, drew his own illustrations for the manu-
script book of emblems that he presented in 1609 to
Henry, Prince of Wales; most of these were incorporated
into his published work Minerva Britanna, or a Garden of
Heroicall Devises 1612), in which many of the individual
emblems were dedicated to members of the prince’s
household. The later English collections (both 1635) of
Francis Quarles and George Wither were predominantly
devotional in character. Dutch printers were the most pro-
lific producers of emblem books, and the PLANTIN PRESS
kept the fashion alive by diverting them to educational or
spiritual themes expressed in allegories. A book of this
kind marking the Jesuits’ centenary, Imago primi saeculi
Societatis Jesu, was issued by Jan Moretus in 1640.
See also: IMPRESE
Further reading: Peter M. Daly (ed.), Andrea Alciati
and the Emblem Tradition (New York; AMS, 1989).Emser, Hieronymus (1478–1527) German humanist and
Roman Catholic controversialist
Emser was born at Ulm and studied at Tübingen, where he
learnt Greek from Dionysius (the brother of Johann)
Reuchlin, and at Basle. In 1501 he became chaplain to
Cardinal Raimund von Gurk, and in 1504 secretary to
Duke George of Saxony. Initially he was in sympathy with
LUTHERand the reformers, but he wished rather to see the
Church reformed from within, without making any doc-
trinal break. From 1519 he was engaged in violent con-
troversy with Luther and in 1527 he produced a German
Bible, with introduction and notes, to counteract the effect
of Luther’s.Encina, Juan del (1469–c. 1529) Spanish poet, dramatist,
and musician
Known as the father of the Spanish theater, he was born
near Salamanca and studied there under Elio NEBRIJA. He
took minor orders and from 1492 to 1495 was in the ser-
vice of the duke of Alba, at whose palace he produced his
first pastoral entertainments which included his own
music. These were dialogues of shepherds and rustics
which combined classical material—Encina had trans-
lated Virgil’s Eclogues at age 21—with verse forms and
songs of popular origin. About 1500 Encina went to116600 EEllzzeevviirr pprreessss