Monday Motivation Owl
This week’s motivated owl comes from the printer’s mark of the Geneva printing bothers Pierre and Jacques Chouët as it appears on the title page of their 1621 printing of Sextou Empeirikou ta Sōzomena. Sexti Empirici Opera quae extant, a work by the late 2nd-century philosopher Sextus Empiricus concerning the skeptical philosophy of Pyrrho of Elis. The Chouëts’ printer’s mark bears a version of a caduceus, in this case a single snake in a figure-eight, representing the printing trade, flanked by two cornucopia (representing abundance), and surmounted by the owl of wisdom and the Latin phrase In Nocte Consilium, which roughly means “counsel at night.”
Although the Chouët brothers were printers in Geneva, this title page identifies the place of printing as Coloniae Allobrogum, or Cologny, a municipality in the Canton of Geneva, but just outside the city’s jurisdiction. At the time of this printing, there were French laws banning materials printed in the non-Church-controlled Geneva, so by claiming to print in Cologny the Chouët’s could circumvent French censorship. Very sneaky!
They must have received this sly advice form their motivated “Night Counselor,” and this owl must be particularly motivated if it can make heads or tails of Pyrrhonism!
View more motivated (and some unmotivated) owls.
