What transpired next may well constitute one of the earliest well-documented cases of “identity theft” in the European historical record. It grew to be something of a cause célèbre as initial legal proceedings in the criminal chamber at Toulouse revealed the impostor to be Arnaud du Tilh, nicknamed Pansette (the Belly), who was condemned and hanged in Artigat. Du Tilh’s case was overseen by a rotating tribunal, one of whom was the learned jurist Jean de Coras, who served as judge and reporter of the case for the duration of the trial that ultimately took place within the Parlement of Toulouse.

So impressed was de Coras by the legal and cultural implications of the imposture that he chose, just after the sentencing, to spend the ensuing months recording the dramatic tale of Martin Guerre in the French vernacular, which he published under the slightly sensational title Arrest memorable, du Parlement de Tolose, continent une histoire prodigieuse, de nostre tempt (Lyon, 1561). This appeared fifteen years later in Latin for wider consumption as the present edition, doubly distinguished by its fine contemporary blind-stamped pigskin binding with a rare inscribed armorial naming its owner as one Andreas Lissieczki. An inscription below dates the acquisition to 1625. A title-page manuscript note and bookplate indicate its subsequent accession into the library of the Jesuit College at Kalisz in southeastern Poland, which had been established in 1584.

The fame of Martin Guerre’s imposture was perhaps even more widely transmitted through a passing citation of the case in Michel de Montaigne’s best-selling Essais. In “On the Lame,” Montaigne, ever the skeptical philosopher, paused to draw attention to the difficulty of discovering the truth of any case in the face of meager evidence, and the corresponding peril of depending too heavily on such evidence when the consequence was death.

“In my youth, I read about the trial of a strange case, which Corras, a counselor of Toulouse, had printed, about two men who impersonated one another. I remember (and I remember nothing else) that he seemed to me, in describing the imposture of the man he judged guilty, to make it so marvelous and so far surpassing our knowledge and his own, who was judge, that I found much rashness in the sentence that had condemned the man to be hanged.”

Intrigued by Corras’s account and Montaigne’s interest in it, the historian Natalie Zemon Davis dove in to write a fascinating 1983 microhistory of the story as seen through the available historical evidence. This appeared just one year after the celebrated feature film The Return of Martin Guerre (1982) of which she assisted with the screenplay, the title character (i.e., the imposter) being played by Gérard Depardieu. A later 1993 film, Sommersby, adapted the tale to the era of American post–Civil War Reconstruction and starred Richard Gere as the imposter opposite Jodie Foster. A play, two novels, and an operetta have also been inspired by this poignant tale of love, lies, and loss.

—Kelsey Champagne, Earle Havens