[Book Review]: Jehan Ympyn Cristophle, Nouvelle instruction et remonstration de la très excellente science du livre de compte, pour compter et mener comptez, à la manière d’Itallie (1543). Edited by Yannick Lemarchand, Antoine Fabre and Gautier Gond, Experts Comptables Services, Paris, 2025

This review examines the recent reissue of Jehan Ympyn Cristophle’s "Nouvelle instruction et remonstration de la très excellente science du livre de compte, pour compter et mener comptez, à la manière d’Itallie (1543)" edited by Yannick Lemarchand, Antoine Fabre and Gautier Gond. Based on the copy preserved at the Médiathèque François-Mitterrand in Poitiers, the edition combines a complete annotated transcription of the theoretical section with a full photographic reproduction of the practical section, thereby preserving both the conceptual and linguistic content of the work and the visual organisation of its accounting entries. The review also considers the three studies accompanying the volume, devoted respectively to the bibliographical and material history of the copy, the place of Ympyn’s work in the development of the earliest printed treatises on double-entry bookkeeping, and the role of Antwerp’s Guild of Saint Ambrose in the teaching and dissemination of accounting techniques. Taken together, these contributions show how the production, circulation and preservation of accounting knowledge depended on the interaction between merchants, translators, printers, educational institutions and bibliographical practices. The volume’s principal merit therefore lies in presenting accounting as a form of practical, transferable and adaptable knowledge. Ympyn’s originality did not consist in devising a new method, but in making double-entry bookkeeping ‘in the Italian manner’ more accessible and usable, thereby promoting its dissemination across linguistic, institutional and cultural boundaries.