Jean Grolier de Servières

Jean Grolier de Servières, viscount d'Aguisy (1489-90 – 22 October 1565) was Treasurer-General of France and a famous bibliophile. As a book collector, Grolier is known in particular for his patronage of the Aldine Press, and his love of richly decorated bookbindings.

Grolier was born in Lyon; he encouraged the belief that he was older than seems plausible given the marriage of his parents in 1485, resulting in 1479 often being given as his date of birth. Based on recently discovered documentary evidence from July 1527, when he gave his age as 37 in legal proceedings, he is now regarded as born in 1489-90. His family was of Italian origin, from Verona, but was based in Lyon where Étienne Grolier, Grolier's father, was a wealthy merchant who also held a government post as a tax collector. His mother was Antonia Esbauda; there were four daughters of the marriage, but Jean was their only son. In 1506 Étienne obtained, probably by purchase, the post of Treasurer-General of Milan, then held by the French. Jean Grolier was to inherit this office at the age of 19 or 20 on his father's death in Milan in 1509. Grolier still owned the family house in Lyons in 1536, though he had not lived there as an adult.

In 1508 Jean Grolier was a secrétaire du roi ("secretary to the king" - a junior aide in today's terminology) who had to accompany Louis XII and his court around France. His studies continued under the Renaissance humanist Gaspar Argilensis (or Gaspar d'Argile), who dedicated his edition of Suetonius to Grolier (Lyons 1508). Grolier was in Milan as treasurer from 1509 (at least) until the French were expelled in June 1512, and then returned with the French army, now under François I, in 1515 and remained until they were again thrown out in 1521, after the disaster of the Battle of Pavia, when he returned to France.

In his second period in Milan he was at the centre of a humanistic literary circle, and met Aldus Manutius, printer of so many of his books, when he visited from Venice, probably in 1511. There is no evidence Grolier went to Venice, as is sometimes claimed. Many works were dedicated to him, and several letters to and from his circle survive, including ones from Erasmus.

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