The present edition of Jean Servin’s Psalmi Davidis a G.
Buchanano versibus expressi, nunc primum modulis IIII, V, VI, VII
et VIII vocum, a I.Servino decantati is the first since the work
was published in Geneva in 1579. At that time it followed on the
publication, in 1578, of two volumes by Servin, Premier (Second)
Livre de Chansons Nouvelles à quatre, cinq, six, sept et
huit parties, and another entitled Meslange de Chansons Nouvelles
à quatre parties. The Psalmi Davidis and all three volumes
of chansons were published by Charles Pesnot with an imprint of
Lyon (‘Lugduni’), apparently because the publisher
wanted to sell them in France at a time when importation of books
from Geneva was banned; in particular, he wanted to make them
available through the book-fairs in cities like Lyon. In the
context of the times such polyphonic works with an imprint of Lyon
would have greater appeal to a French public than volumes
ostensibly printed in Geneva, then a refuge for Protestants fleeing
the Wars of Religion such as Servin and his editor, Simon Goulart,
pastor of the Reformed church of St Gervais for some forty
years.
Servin’s settings of George Buchanan’s Latin texts
bear a dedication to ‘Serenissimo Scotorum Regi, Jacobo
Sexto’, namely King James VI of Scotland, then a youth of
thirteen who had been tutored from his early years by Buchanan.
Buchanan (1506-82), a distinguished historian, poet and dramatist
in the Humanist tradition had held teaching posts in France, first
at the Collège de Sainte-Barbe (from 1529) in Paris and the
Collège de Guyenne (1539) in Bordeaux, where Montaigne was
one of his students. Buchanan’s Latin version of the psalms,
a genre that had attracted contemporary French writers, was begun
during his internment by the Inquisition in the Monastery of San
Bento, Portugal, from 1547 to 1552 following the accusation of
heresy.
Taking the Vulgate version of the psalms as his basic text,
Buchanan styled his paraphrases after classical authors,
principally Horace. Dedicated to Mary, Queen of Scots (mother of
James VI), the work aroused the admiration of his first biographer,
Henri Estienne, who described Buchanan as ‘poetarum sui
saeculi facile princeps’.
Buchanan was also known to Calvin’s successor in Geneva,
Theodore de Bèze, who provided Servin with a letter of
introduction to Peter Young, King James’s other preceptor
besides Buchanan from 1572 to 1578. The links between Geneva and
Scotland were well established, for John Knox, Christopher Goodman,
Andrew Melville and other Reformers had visited the city earlier in
the century and come under Calvin’s influence even before the
Scottish Reformation of 1560.
"Les spécialistes de la littérature néolatine du xvie siècle, les chefs d’ensembles vocaux, choristes et musicologues, les théologiens apprécieront à sa très juste valeur cet impressionnant volume (...). Bel exemple d’interaction entre Réforme et Humanisme évoquant une étape particulière de l’histoire des mentalités littéraires et des sensibilités religieuses." (Édith Weber, dans: Church History and Religious Culture, 95, 2015, p. 334-335)