Born with Saint-Dié in 1448 and died in this city in 1527, the Chanoine Vautrin Lud was also general Master of the mine S of Lorraine, but it is especially as a creator of the Vosgean Gymnase that its name passed to the posterity.

It should be noted that its first name presents some alternatives: Vautrin, but also Gautier, Gauthier, Gaultier, Gualterus, even Walther in German. Its Lud patronym is derived from Ludovic.

A family very close to the duke of Lorraine

The mother of Vautrin Lud is déodatienne, it is Jeanne d' Ainvaux, rams of Warde of Wisembach. His/her father is of Alsatian origin, resulting from a family of Pfaffenhoffen which was put at the service of the duke Rene II of Lorraine.

His/her older brother Jean (or Johannès) becomes the secretary of the duke as of 1465 and is also at his sides at the time of the Bataille of Nancy in 1477. Thanks to its knowledge of the German language it is named general Master of the mine S of Lorraine in 1485.

Another brother, Nicolas (I), will exert also the functions of secretary of the duke. The son of this one, Nicolas (II), in his turn secretary in 1490, resides at Saint-Dié and becomes one of the collaborator close relations of his uncle Vautrin, who will install the printing works of the Vosgean Gymnase in his house.

In 1480 Vautrin Lud itself is initially the chaplain of Rene II and also its secretary - a function which will exert also its nephew Nicolas Lud in 1490. Four years later, thanks to the supports of the duke, it is named canon of the badge church of his birthplace.

With the service of the Church

With Saint-Dié, Vautrin Lud is at the origin of the festival of the Presentation of the Vierge to the Temple. Since 1494, on November 21st of each year, actors - covered rich person costumes young children - interpret this scene of the Bible.

Anxious to accommodate the patients reached of the Plague, it also makes set up with its expenses a vault as well as a farm contiguous on the hill of Ortimont to the north of the city. In a keystone of the chorus one can see the Blason carved of Vautrin Lud. This oratorical, then called Notre-Dame of the Consolation, is known today under the name of Saint-Roch vault, in homage to the patron saint of pestiferous the.

Ducal mines

In 1504 the canon obtains the load of general Master of the mines of Lorraine, thus succeeding his/her brother Jean (or Johannès) with the disappearance of this one. Until its death in 1527 it preserves this load, which passes then to its nephew Jean (II), wire of his/her brother Nicolas (I). The act of nomination of Vautrin Lud is preserved at the Departmental records of Meurthe-et-Moselle.

Extremely of this function, it offers two of the 22 pages enluminées of the Graduel of chorus of the chapter of Saint-Dié - a book of songs of 371 handwritten layers in Gothic characters on Vellum paper. One recalls the life of Sainte Beard, the other work of extraction and exploitation of the money ore in the neighborhoods, perhaps with the Cross-with-Mines or in the hamlet of Chipal according to the sources. The festival of the Dedication that Vautrin Lud introduced with Saint-Dié is represented in initial this page, and its armorial bearings of general Master of the mines are reproduced in bottom. Today one can consult this gradual of sizeable size (75 X 54 cm) in the room of the Treasury of the Médiathèque Victor-Hugo of the Saint-Dié-of-Vosges, where it was also digitized.

In 1505 the fellow-members of the canon choose it as Sonrier city - what confers capacities to him of administration and of justice on the part of the city which depends on the chapter.

The creation of the Vosgean Gymnasium

To the turning of the century Saint-Dié will become a high-place of the Humanisme in Europe, when Vautrin Lud creates under the protection of Rene II an ecclesiastical school directly attached to Rome, the Vosgean Gymnase (Gymnasium Vosagense). This foundation is generally located in 1490, but of other sources suggest a date a little later (towards 1500).

While ensuring its mission of teaching - nourished currents as various as the movement of the modern Dévotion, Alsatian humanism or the contributions of the Italian Renaissance - the Gymnasium also has a workshop of printing works that Vautrin Lud installed in the canonic house of its Nicolas nephew. Rebuilt after the fire of 1555, the building was indicated in 1911 like “the house of the baptism of America”, before being destroyed in its turn in 1944.

In addition to this nephew especially charged to supervise work of printing works, Vautrin Lud is surrounded by several scholars, such as Jean Basin of Sandaucourt, eminent Latinist and priest of Wisembach, humanistic Alsatian the Mathias Ringmann, author of a illustrated Latin grammar, and especially the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller which it will seek with Strasbourg, because it counts on him to illustrate a project which is due to him in heart: a new edition of the Geographia of Ptolémée which would take into account the recent discovered ones described by Amerigo Vespucci. Its mark of printing works, which will appear in particular on the Cosmographiae Introductio , indeed comprises the initial SD for Sanctus Deodatus, GL for Gauthier Lud, NL for Nicolas Lud and SEMI for Martin Ilacomilus (Waldseemüller).

Set on astronomy and geography, the canon develops itself a stereographic kind of Projection of the Globe and celestial spheres. He explains this process in a treaty accompanied by a mobile disc, the Speculi Orbis succinctiss. sed neque pœnitenda neque inelegans Declaratio and Canon , which it makes print first once at Johann Grüninger with Strasbourg in 1507. A new edition is published in 1512 by the same printer under the title Declaratio speculi orbis compositi has Gualtero Lud, canonico Deodatensi , in supplement with the Margarita philosophica of Gregor Reisch (sometimes indicated under the name of Gregoire Reich).

Knowing his tastes (of which it feels near), the duke of Lorraine entrusts to Vautrin Lud a sea chart which it has just received from the Portugal, as well as a French version of the account of the four accomplished voyages on other side of the Atlantic by the banker and navigator Florentin Amerigo Vespucci, confirming the discovery of a new continent. The canon is charged to translate them into Latin, which Jean Basin - known for its perfect knowledge of literary Latin - will do with elegance in the second part of the Cosmographiae Introductio.

This explanatory booklet accompanies a large chart by the world, Universalis Cosmographia , on which for the first time the word America appears. This official baptism of the new world will be worth with Saint-Dié the nickname of “Godmother of America”.

Other works are printed between 1507 and 1510, however in 1511 Mathias Ringmann, hellenist with the multiple talents, but also technician of printing works, dies suddenly in 29 years, and its premature disappearance puts the company in danger. Moreover Vautrin Lud is confronted with serious financial problems, in particular related to the trading loss of its share of mine, and must engage its own incomes to regulate sums due to two contractors.

So much so that it is constrained to sell the whole of its work of geography (translations, engraved boards) to two lawyers of Strasbourg. It must also give up printing as it wished it the charts drawn by Martin Waldseemüller for the Geographia of Ptolémée, in particular the first known chart of Lorraine (see Histoire of Lorraine). It is Of Strasbourg the Jean Schott which will take care of this publication in 1513.

The members of the Vosgean Gymnasium disappear the ones after the others: Martin Waldseemüller dies in 1520, Jean Basin in 1523, and finally Vautrin Lud itself in 1527.

Part of the will of Vautrin Lud (that obligatorily deposited in the files of the chapter) is preserved at the Médiathèque Victor-Hugo of the Saint-Dié-of-Vosges. They are 53 handwritten lines on parchment gone back to 1526.

Work of the historian and preserving Albert Ronsin as of the Sixties contributed much to the redécouverte of this humanistic Lorraine. In its birthplace a college bears from now on its name.

The price Vautrin Lud

Within the framework of the International festival of geography of the Saint-Dié-of-Vosges a jury of five specialists (following the example five members of the Vosgean Gymnasium) allots each year the price Vautrin Lud to an eminent personality of the field of the Géographie. It is about the highest distinction in a discipline for which there does not exist Nobel Prize. The list of the prizes winner of the price Vautrin Lud since 1991 figure in the article devoted to with the Festival.

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