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Antoine Vérard published for the first time in 1491, in Paris, a work in two volumes entitled Premier Volume d’Orose and Second Volume d’Orose, which he dedicated to King Charles VIII. The text is explicitly presented as a translation of Orosius’s Historiae. In reality, however, although the author seemed to know Orosius’s Latin text, he reworked an earlier French text, Wauchier de Denain’s Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, the earliest universal history written in French (1210- 1220). The Histoire ancienne, which was a great success and was rewritten several times until the 15th century, was the first step in the dissemination of Orosius in French, but it was not a continuous or faithful translation of the Historiae either. The Volume d’Orose’s author modifies the French text he inherited, not so much by adding narrative sequences borrowed from Orosius’s Historiae or the Bible – even if he did add some elements, particularly in the sections devoted to the first and second Ages –, but by updating Orosius’s apologetic project to understand profane history. This repeated statement of a revival of Orosius’s vision constitutes its specificity, but it does not preclude it from putting forward the exploits accomplished by pagan heroes in certain passages.
