by Motteley to Napoleon III. in 1850, and burned in 1871 in the library of the Louvre.
It is to De Thou that is due the preservation in France of the collection of manuscripts of Catherine de Medicis, who has been classed among illustrious wholesale biblioklepts for her appropriation of Marshal Strozzi’s library. De Thou was at the time the collection was offered for sale, in 1594, Librarian of the Royal Library, in place of Jacques Amyot, and he obtained injunctions restraining the Abbé de Bellebranche from disposing of the collection, until after several suits it became, in 1599, part of the royal collections.
De Thou has shared with Catherine de Medicis the time-honored distinction of a biblioklept, becomingly appreciated by Disraeli the Elder in the expression of an opinion on Bishop More’s collection of a library “by plundering those of the clergy of his diocese” (according to Gough), that “this plundering consisted in cajoling others out of what they knew not how to value, an advantage which every skillful lover of hooks must enjoy over those whose apprenticeship has not yet expired.”
De Thou’s collections were like Grolier’s, made principally in Italy, and it is estimated that at his
