The Politics of Print During the French Wars of Religion Literature and History in an Age of Nothing Said Too Soon 9004440801, 9789004440807

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The Politics of Print During the French Wars of Religion

Faux Titre ÉTUDES DE LANGUE ET LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISES

Sous la direction de / Series Editors Keith Busby Sjef Houppermans Paul Pelckmans Emma Cayley Alexander Roose

volume 443

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/faux

The Politics of Print During the French Wars of Religion Literature and History in an Age of “Nothing Said Too Soon”

By

Gregory P. Haake

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Frans Hogenberg, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, c. 1572. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Haake, Gregory P., author. Title: The politics of print during the French wars of religion : literature and history in an age of “nothing said too soon” / by Gregory P. Haake. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, [2021] | Series: Faux titre, 01679392 ; vol. 443 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020038430 (print) | LCCN 2020038431 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004440807 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004440814 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: French literature—16th century—History and criticism. | Printing—France—History—16th century. | Authors and publishers—France— History—16th century. | Literature and society—France—History—16th century. | Renaissance—France. | France—History—Wars of the Huguenots, 1562-1598— Literature and the war. Classification: LCC PQ239 .H24 2021 (print) | LCC PQ239 (ebook) | DDC 840.9/003—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038430 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038431

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0167-9392 ISBN 978-90-04-44080-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-44081-4 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

For Mom and Dad

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Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Crisis 29 1 The Crisis of Representation 34 1.1 Too Much of a Good Thing 35 1.2 Nominalism 38 1.3 Scholasticism vs. Humanism 47 1.4 Ancients vs. Moderns 49 2 The Crisis of Interpretation 54 2.1 Imitation 56 2.2 A New Word 62 2.3 Destructive Debates 69 3 The Crisis of Authority 76 3.1 Authority and the Church 79 3.2 The Monarchy and Authority 87 3.3 History and Authority 92 4 Conclusion 97 2 Fanatics, Martyrs, and the Rhetoric of Extremes 99 1 “Le bon & saint zele”: Extreme Devotion to the Cause 101 2 Tyranny: The Extremes of Princely Rule 111 2.1 Atheism and Tyranny 120 3 The Rhetoric of Martyrdom 123 4 Conclusion 132 3 Print Matters 135 1 The Power of a Preface 139 2 Sacred Scripture: A Charged Textual Frame 155 2.1 Scripture on the Title Page 156 2.2 Judith and Holofernes: Exegesis, Politics, and History 159 2.3 Judith and Holofernes: Counterpoint 162 2.4 Weaving Together Poetry and Scripture 167 3 Poetic Interludes: Framing Texts with Verse 171

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3.1 De l’estrange et subite mort de Henri de Valois 173 3.2 Pierre de l’Estoile’s Registre-journal 176 3.3 Charles Pinselet’s Le Martyre des deux freres 179 4 Conclusion 183 4 Recreating Authority in the Person(a) of the Author 185 1 Ronsard’s Political Intervention and Personal Attacks 190 2 Teaching through Drama: Jean de La Taille and Saül le furieux 205 3 Experience Knows Best: Finding Authority in Foreignness 213 4 Prometheus and Prophet: Stealing the Truth for the Reader 218 5 Conclusion 235 5 The Mémoire of the Advocate David and the Discrediting of the Guises 239 1 The Treason of the Guises: The Mémoire and Papal Authority 242 1.1 The Gesta Stephani papæ 248 1.2 A Direct Response and a Call to Action 252 2 Lyon Looks South: An Alternative Emphasis for the Mémoire 255 2.1 The Sack of Antwerp of 1576 258 3 Making It Stick: The Enduring Nature of the Mémoire as a Political Attack 260 4 Conclusion 268 6 The Truth at the Source 270 1 From Calumny to Exaltation: Seeking Unity and Truth in the Wisdom of the Past 273 1.1 The Language is the Message 274 1.2 Here Come the Franks 279 1.3 Better than Troy 281 2 Excessive and Repetitive Citation 288 3 Arming the Resistance: Differing Approaches Among Monarchomachs 291 3.1 Propagandistic and Reactionary 292 3.2 A Change in Rhetoric and a Change in Evidence 298 4 Obstacles to Hotman’s Success 309 Conclusion: Finding a Way Out 315 Bibliography 325 Index 348

Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank my faculty mentor, Prof. JoAnn DellaNeva. As an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, I took my first course on sixteenth-century French literature from Prof. DellaNeva, and it was thanks to her that my passion for it was ignited. She has continued to be a source of wisdom and insight, and her feedback on this manuscript and on many other projects has been essential. Since this project began as my dissertation at Stanford University, I am indebted to my advisor, Prof. Cécile Alduy. Her honest critiques, as well as her support and encouragement, allowed it to be a success. I would also like to thank the other members of my reading committee, Profs. Jean-Marie Apostlidès and Dan Edelstein, whose input contributed to the evolution of my dissertation into book form. At the Hesburgh Libraries at Notre Dame, I would like to thank Monica Moore and Julie Tanaka for their commitment to obtaining and maintaining resources on sixteenth-century France. At the Stanford Libraries, I would like to thank Sarah Sussman and the entire staff in the Department of Special Collections. To the countless librarians and archivists at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France who have provided me assistance over these many years of research and writing, I am extremely grateful. Finally, I would like to thank most especially my two families. First, to my religious family, to my fellow priests, brothers, and sisters in Holy Cross, thank you for your example, guidance, friendship and prayers. Thank you particularly to the Holy Cross community in Paris who has so often welcomed me during my research visits. Thank you to the Corby Hall community at the University of Notre Dame, and especially, the superior, Rev. Austin I. Collins, C.S.C., for their encouragement and support. Second, to my parents, brothers and sisters-inlaw, nephews, niece, and whole family, thank you for your example, guidance, friendship, prayers, and love.

Introduction The reader needs to know that Jean Guy was a parricide and a Catholic. After observing for many years the dissolute life of their son, Jean’s parents had begged him and pleaded with him to change his ways, but he only responded by persevering in his debauchery. The confrontation came to a head on a late September day in 1565, when in the family home, Jean grabbed his sword as his father’s increasingly aggressive reproaches had Jean on his heels. In the little village of Châtillon-sur-Loing, others must have heard the voices, and then, all of a sudden, silence. According to the printed account of the incident (entitled L’Histoire memorable de la conversion de Jean Guy parricide, & la constance de sa mort: natif de Châtillon sur Loing, et exécuté audict lieu (The memorable history of the conversion of Jean Guy parricide, and the steadfastness of his death: native of Châtillon sur Loing, and executed in said place) and published a year later by Éloy Gibier of Orleans), Jean’s father, Emé, lay on the ground, run through with a sword at the hands of his own son. It seemed clear to those who arrived first on the scene that Jean, whose renowned lack of compunction would no doubt have extended to the decision to murder his father, had indeed committed the crime. Moreover, they had the chance to witness Emé’s final words: “Sauve-toy, sauve-toy mon fils: je te pardonne ma mort” (Flee, flee, my son; I forgive you for my death).1 Despite this moment of tenderness for his son where Emé was “meu de compassion, & oubliant la cruauté qu’il avoit receuë de [son fils]” (moved by compassion, and forgetting the cruelty that he had received from [his son]) (7), no further explanation of the circumstances seemed necessary. And yet, even in the face of the evidence and of his father’s expression of compassion, Jean did not hesitate to assert to the authorities that he was not at fault and that his father, deranged by his fury at his son, had instead hurled himself (“s’estoit precipité”) upon Jean’s sword (7). Several of these narrative elements, from Emé’s plea to Jean’s attempt to exculpate himself, seem to be setting up this account as a letter of remission, a legal instrument in sixteenth-century France for those looking to appeal a criminal conviction. This somewhat complicated process required an account of the crime in the form of a letter that followed certain structural and rhetorical

1  L’Histoire memorable de la conversion de Jean Guy parricide, & la constance de sa mort: natif de Chastillon sur Loing, & execute audict lieu (Orleans: Eloy Gibier, 1566), 7. Translations are the author’s, unless otherwise noted. Hereafter cited in the text.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004440814_002

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Introduction

conventions.2 For example, it was not unusual for supplicants in their letters to include as a legal strategy a pardon from the mouth of the victim or an alternative explanation, no matter how thinly plausible, of their crime.3 At the same time, the text’s resemblance to a letter of remission more or less ends there. While the author proceeds to the very brief account of the trial, the majority of the text instead focuses on Jean’s decision to eventually drop his appeal, on his religious conversion, and finally, on his death. Even though Natalie Zemon Davis includes L’Histoire de Jean Guy in her study of letters of remission, she does so only because of the narrow religious and political statement that this aversion to the appeals system of the time represents. In introducing her commentary, Davis writes: “During the Wars of Religion, [Calvinists] mounted a critique of pardons that started with the supplicant’s soul and ended with the practice of the state.”4 To emphasize the evil and deceptive nature of the appeal, the author explains that Jean only decides to pursue it because a fellow prisoner, described as a “meschant garnement de faussaire” (oathbreaker of questionable morals), convinces him to do so (10). According to the Calvinist view, the system of appeals incorporated what was corrupt in the Catholic sacrament of confession, and it encouraged the deception in which Jean at first engages in order to explain his father’s unworthy end.5 The campaign to convince Jean to desist from his appeal begins in earnest after he is remanded to local custody to await his journey to Paris to continue the process. At this point, it becomes evident that the text is in fact not a letter of remission, nor simply a Protestant critique of the appeals process. The title reveals much in this regard. Perhaps lost on the modern reader is the significance of the village in which this incident takes place and that serves as a propitious setting for an encounter with Reformation ideas: Châtillon-sur-Loing just happens to be the birthplace and location of the estate of the Admiral Gaspard de Coligny (1519–1572), the leader of the Huguenots during the earlier years of the French wars of religion (1562–1598) until his death in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. Just how providential the proximity to the Coligny family is becomes obvious when Jean ends up in the great tower of the Coligny’s chateau due to the ongoing renovations of the local village prison. This puts both Jean and a fellow prisoner under the same roof as the pious and eager-to-evangelize members of the Admiral’s household. Soon after 2  See Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 7–35. 3  Davis, Fiction, 17. 4  Davis, Fiction, 60. 5  Davis, Fiction, 61.

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the prisoners’ arrival, the Admiral’s eldest daughter, Louise (1555–1620), who is but ten years of age, allows her curiosity and zeal to get the best of her, and she initiates a series of visits to Jean by herself and by others that result not only in Jean renouncing his desire to appeal but also in his total conversion to Christ and to the true faith. This series of interactions comprises the majority of the text and would therefore lead one to believe that, principally, the text serves as a tool for the promotion of Protestant ideas and for evangelization. This occurs not only through the exposition of theological doctrines in the mouths of Jean’s many visitors during his imprisonment, but also in the legendary quality surrounding Jean’s conversion and death. Once more, the title has already announced these aspects of the text as more important. Only one word in the title, “parricide,” explicitly refers to Jean’s crime, and his conversion, even from a textual standpoint, takes precedence over it. Moreover, the juicy details of the news item last only a couple of pages before the author moves on to other more pressing matters. It is less important that Jean Guy has killed his father; it is more important that Jean experiences a profound religious conversion of which his great constancy in the face of his torture and execution is evidence. Jean’s is a story of virtue born out of vice, but layered on top of what might otherwise play like a standard conversion story is Jean’s formation in the true faith, namely that of the Protestants. The rest of the text recounts this nearly miraculous conversion as little Louise, her mother, Charlotte de Laval (1530–1568), her brothers’ preceptor, the Coligny household’s minister of the word of God, and even a household servant who is a religious elder all come to convince Jean of the error of his ways and of the necessity of accepting before his execution his culpability and asking Jesus Christ for forgiveness and mercy. While Jean surely cannot stop his ultimate fate, he can drop his appeal as a first sign of this newfound faith in God. This gives context to the critique of the appeals system that the text proposes but, in the end, tempers its significance. The author and Jean’s interlocutors raise the issue because it constitutes an essential but only initial step in Jean’s conversion. His steadfastness in death will constitute an even greater sign of God’s grace at work, and this display begins early on the morning of his execution when Jean, with the Coligny household gathered around him, proceeds to give a simple but eloquent discourse that according to the author shows Jean to have a “docteur” or teacher of the faith within himself, one who had learned so much in so little time (36). His subsequent death is quite touching and noble as the author describes it, and it marks the text’s movement into its final act. Jean performs his role rather well. After his discourse, Jean incites the people to pray and to sing psalms (42). At the moment when his torture and death are to begin, Jean gives himself

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Introduction

over willingly and peacefully: “[L]e bourreau commença à faire son office: & comme il vouloit prendre le bras dudict criminal pour luy coupper le poing, il luy tendit aussi franchement que si c’eust esté à un barbier, duquel il n’eust deu recevoir qu’une simple saignée” (The executioner began to do his duty: and as he wished to take the arm of said criminal to cut off his wrist, he gave [it] to him so freely that it was as if to a barber, from whom he was to receive but a simple bleeding) (43). Jean maintains this same level of calm and constancy, having “Dieu & son Fils nostre Seigneur en sa bouche” (God and his Son our Lord in his mouth) until his last moment (43). In the description of Jean’s death, the text as a conversion story reaches its fulfillment, and it has moved from word to action. Jean has received his religious instruction and now embodies it in what is akin to a martyr’s death. At the very least, his death is legendary in that it resembles the legends of the many saintly deaths of early Christianity and beyond. More contemporary to this account is the tradition of Jean Crespin (c. 1520–1572) and his martyrologies, which offer a Protestant version of a glorious Christian death, rooted in conversion.6 The multiple discourses and sermons throughout the text allow a structure within which to teach doctrinal lessons on mercy and forgiveness, but this final great act is the climax of the narrative and concretizes everything that precedes it. During the final five pages, the author builds off of Jean’s beautiful death and explains what fruits he hopes his account will bear. The author returns to Jean’s crime briefly, but the message to the reader reinforces the text’s many lessons about how to be a good parent and a good child, about avoiding evil and Satan’s snares, and about the importance of embracing God’s mercy. To this point, one can observe several layers to the story of Jean Guy. It is at first a letter of remission; then it seems it might be criticizing the very system by which letters of remission were necessary; then an opportunity for the author to showcase Protestant teaching; and finally, it is the legend of a saintly death, a means to inspire and encourage Reformation-minded individuals and communities in France. Another layer to this text, though strident when it makes itself known, is not as coherently identifiable as these others. It is peppered throughout the text, and perhaps, because it is so blatantly ideological and political, so polemical and incendiary, the reader fails to see it, lest the author’s magnanimity or motives, or even worse, the veracity of Jean’s story, be compromised. Sometimes, this darker layer to the text is subtle, lurking behind the promotion of Protestant theology. The reader might sense that, rather 6  See, for example, Jean Crespin, Histoire des vrays Tesmoins de la verite de l’Evangile, qui de leur sang l’ont signée Jean Hus jusques au temps présent (1570) (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (Arsenal) FOL-H-3846).

Introduction

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than arguing for the theology of the Reformation, the author or speaker is arguing against something. At other times, this layer is more explicit, characterized by dismissive metonymies, such as “Papauté” (Papacy) or “Eglise romaine” (Roman Church). In any case, doubts about the text’s veracity that might have earlier been whispers, whether at the moment of Jean’s perfect eloquence or in the neat coincidences that placed Jean in the very home of the irreproachable and pious family of the Admiral de Coligny and his associates, become much more difficult to ignore if one reconsiders the text as religious polemic, a news item that the author has spun into an opportunity to attack Catholics and their Church. To this end, the text implies, and in some instances asserts outright, that the nature of Catholicism is so insidious that it results in many horrific defects integral to Jean’s character. In other words, given his background under the yoke of the Papacy, it should not be surprising that he lived a life of debauchery, that he killed his father, or that he persisted in his deceit about his guilt until he had been properly evangelized and converted by the family of the Admiral de Coligny. At many key moments within the text, this editorial and ideological thrust makes itself clearly known, and it begins no sooner than the prefatory material. Immediately following the title page is a letter to the reader. More specifically in this case, it is addressed “Au lecteur chrestien” (To the Christian reader) (2). From the title page, the reader has already learned that this text has a religious orientation with its emphasis on Jean’s conversion and a quote from Isaiah 55. The letter to the reader clarifies precisely what direction this religious orientation will take with a hint at the coming aspersions that will be cast on Catholicism. The author writes: “Ami qui lis ceste histoire, si tu es pere, fay-la [gloire de Dieu] souvent resonner aux aureilles de tes enfans, afin qu’en icelle, comme en un miroir, ils voyent quels fruicts proviennent des religions, non songneuses d’apprendre de bonne heure aux enfans la crainte de Dieu” (Friend who read this story, if you are a father, make it so that [the glory of God] often resonates in the ears of your children, so that in [that glory], as in a mirror, [your children] see what fruits come from religions not careful to teach to children from an early age the fear of God) (3). He further clarifies: “Ce qui avient en toutes celles, où la Parole de Dieu est ou rejettee du tout, ou impurement annoncee” (This is what happens in all these religions where the Word of God is either rejected completely, or impurely proclaimed) (3). The author will later attribute this principal fault to Jean’s parents, and more specifically to his father, Emé. If only the latter had corrected Jean earlier and more firmly, then his son would not have killed him. If only he who had subscribed to one of these unnamed religions had more assiduously instilled in his son the fear of God, then Jean might not have become the monster that he

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Introduction

was. Within the text itself, a very strategic passive voice seems to blame the victim: “Si vous [Jean] eussiez esté (luy disoit-il [le précepteur]) bien nourri en la crainte de Dieu, & bien instruit en sa Loy, vous eussiez appris qu’il vous falloit honorer vostre pere & vostre mere: afin que vos jours fussent prolongez sur la terre” (If you [Jean] had been (he [the preceptor] said to him) well-nourished in the fear of God, and well instructed in his Law, you would have learned that it is necessary to honor your father and your mother: so that your days on the earth would have been prolonged) (15). While the text remains silent on who is precisely at fault, one can surmise that either the Church or Jean’s father, but most likely both, are the probable culprits. When conveying testimony at the trial that praised the relatively good reputation and character of Jean’s parents, the author nevertheless mentions that this opinion was not universally shared. He writes: “[I]l s’est trouvé par le tesmoignage de certains personnages, gens de bien, ce que dessus estre vray, quant à leur conversation ordinaire : mais au demeurant, que c’estoyent povres gens, bien fort rustiques, & sans aucune intelligence quant à la vraye pieté (comme le porte aussi l’ignorance de ceux qui sont nourris en la Papauté, comme ils estoyent)” (It has been found by the testimony of certain personages, nobles, that what is written above is true, with respect to their ordinary conversation: but when it comes down to it, that they were miserable people, very rustic, and without any intelligence with respect to true piety (as behaves also the ignorance of those who are nourished in the Papacy, as they were)) (8–9). While it is true that they were good neighbors and that Jean had a long history of bad behavior, his parents out of their own ignorance and false piety were not capable of reversing their son’s disastrous course. Jean’s many interlocutors throughout his captivity will reiterate this root cause but will also highlight the negligence of another more problematic parent, the Catholic Church. The preceptor, for example, in speaking to Jean about God’s fidelity and honesty, makes a startling contrast: “Car Dieu n’est pas menteur. Mais en la Papauté vous ne tenez conte des Commandemens de Dieu, & faites bien plus grand cas des inventions & resveries des hommes” (For God is not a liar. But with the Papacy, you do not take into account God’s Commandments and are more interested in the inventions and reveries of men) (15). The critique clearly represents a Protestant point of view, but in a certain sense, it continues to exonerate Jean up to this point for his failure to understand the gravity of his actions.7 At first glance, this rhetorical strategy used by more than just the 7  For an eloquent explanation of what informs this perspective, see Denis Crouzet, Dieu en ses Royaumes: Une histoire des guerres de religion (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2008), 133–36. In the context of his history of the wars of religion, Crouzet outlines both the Lutheran and

Introduction

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preceptor is designed to ingratiate to Jean those who are trying to convert him, but for the reader listening in on the exchange, the rhetoric takes on a greater importance. Granted, the author has already avowed a higher purpose in the letter to the reader, where he suggested that Jean’s story is a kind of fable from which the reader can draw an encouraging lesson: “[N]ostre devoir est d’en faire nostre profit, & rendre le diable confus, en tirant un bon ordre du desordre qu’il aura voulu mettre en avant, & du mal, le bien” (Our duty is to profit [from these events] and to render the devil disoriented, by pulling good order out of disorder that he will have wanted to foster, and [to pull] from evil, good) (2–3). It is a noble purpose indeed, but this good order that the author seeks to draw out of this true tale is one according to which the deficiencies and falsehoods of the Papist religion are well exposed and suppressed. Jean’s conversion is not just a triumph of good over evil; it is a triumph of good religion over error. Maligning Jean’s parents is a strategy to demonstrate this error, but the example of other Protestants in the face of it will further expose it and advance the cause of the Reformation. From one of those gathered around Jean during his imprisonment, a question is posed that hints at what is really at stake: Pensez-vous (luy disoit-on) que tant de gens de bien, serviteurs de Dieu, qui ayans bien long temps esté miserablement detenus & traitez rigoreusement és basses fosses, pour ne vouloir adherer aux idolatries de la Papauté, ayent senti une telle violence & cruauté comme il sembloit ? Nenni, nenni: car ils n’eussent si constamment souffert tels tourmens (19). Do you think (it was said to him) that so many good people, servants of God, who having been for a long time detained and treated severely in dungeons, for not wanting to adhere to the idolatries of the Papacy, had felt such violence and cruelty as it seemed? No, not at all: for they would not have so steadfastly suffered such torments.

Calvinist perspectives on sin and death, by which they both squarely reject the eschatological, that is, Catholic understanding of death and salvation: “L’angoisse du jugement est subvertie puisqu’il n’y a pas de jugement après la mort. Les dés ont déjà été jetés, et celui qui a la foi ne peut regarder sa mort personnelle qu’avec un extraordinaire optimisme” (134). This is precisely the disposition to which the members of the Coligny household are trying to convert Jean Guy. His desire for an appeal makes manifest an anguish surrounding death and judgment. If he lies about what happened and denies his guilt, he can live to fight another day and forestall judgment, allowing him to continue to live as he pleases. Instead, his death allows him to reject such reveries and to embrace peacefully the judgment and salvation he has already received.

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Introduction

The allusion to other Protestant martyrs in this rhetorical question proposes a model for Jean to follow, but it also praises the constancy in suffering and death of these champions of the reformed faith who have gone before him. The question and its reasoning are emblematic of the tone of the whole text as it explains Jean’s conversion and the righteousness of the faith to which he is being converted, especially over and against the ignorance and inadequacy of its Papist counterpart. While Jean’s death will not be that of a martyr, he will now meet the executioner with the fullness of the faith, embracing his sin and God’s mercy. One among the number of his interlocutors seizes upon the difference that this makes: “Quelcun de la compagnie luy dit aussi, Or ça, mon ami, si on vous demande si vous estes Chrestien, je m’asseure que vous direz qu’ouy: mais si on vous demande que c’est de l’estre, je pense que ne sauriez que respondre” (Someone among the company also said to him: And now, my friend, if one asks you if you are Christian, I am sure that you will say yes: but if one asks you what it means to be one, I think that you would know how to respond) (19). What distinguishes Jean’s conversion is that he now possesses an intelligent faith, one that surpasses the ignorance of his past that is attributable to his parents and their own weakness as Christians. Jean certainly lives up to the distinction by his last words and by his death, and the account of them that is meant to inspire certainly does so. However, given the particular historical moment of the text’s appearance and the many assumptions and slights with respect to Catholicism, it is difficult not to see a deeper design behind its publication. While the parricide occurred in 1565, the text comes out the following year, just as the peace that was established after the first war continues to wear thin.8 The text is blatantly ideological and ultimately political, and while the text ostensibly focuses on the dramatic conversion of a parricide, it faults the perpetrator’s Catholic background as being a principal cause. The author is writing for fellow partisans of the Reformation, that which the name of the publisher confirms. Éloy Gibier specialized in the publication of libels and other texts emanating from Louis, Prince de Condé 8  For a detailed study on the challenges of pacification after the Edict of Amboise (1563), see Jérémie Foa, Le tombeau de la paix: Une histoire des édits de pacification (1560–1572) (Limoges: Pulim, 2015), 37–121. Foa continually highlights that the peace was imposed by royal authority, namely from the top down. See also Penny Roberts, Peace and Authority during the French Religious Wars, c. 1560–1600 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 32–33, and Olivier Christin, La paix de religion: L’autonomisation de la raison politique au XVIe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 1997), 166–67. Christin, particularly, emphasizes the difficulty of relying on a hesitant and indecisive royal authority to ensure peace. For the Admiral de Coligny’s central political role at this time, see Nicola M. Sutherland, The Huguenot Struggle for Recognition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 142–154.

Introduction

9

(1530–1669) and his associates.9 It takes advantage of Jean’s upbringing to illustrate the defects of a Christianity under the authority of the Pope. The selection of a parricide as the context within which to criticize the ignorance and false piety of Catholics inflames the critique, rendering it slanderous. In the five explicit references to Catholicism in the text, the author articulates several principal defects that have hurt Jean: a lack of intelligence and true piety (9), an inability to follow God’s commandments and an attraction to the reveries of man (15), idolatry (19), an inability to know God (20), and ignorance with respect to God and the faith (20–21). All are presented as obstacles to Jean’s formation in the faith, but the author all the while implies an association between Jean’s Catholicism and his moral choices. During an exchange with a domestic of Coligny’s household who is also an elder in the local Reformed Church, the attack takes its most defined form: [L]edict Ancien luy remonstra la grande ignorance & impieté en laquelle on l’avoit nourri en l’eglise Romaine, & qu’au lieu d’y avoir appris à servir Dieu purement selon sa Parole, on luy avoit appris d’aller à la Messe, où il n’entendoit rien, puis fleschir le genoil devant du bois & de la pierre: invoquer ceux qui sont morts, prier pour les trespassez, croire au purgatoire, & à un tas d’autres fatras dont on y abuse les povres gens : mais qu’il estoit bien heureux que Dieu l’avoit retiré hors de telle abomination (31–32). The aforementioned Elder remonstrated with him the great ignorance and piety in which he had been nourished in the Roman Church, and that instead of having learned to serve God purely according to his Word, they had taught him to go to Mass, where he understood nothing, then to bend the knee before wood and stone: to invoke those who have died, to pray for the deceased, to believe in purgatory, and in a pile of other rubbish with which they lead the poor people into error: but that he was blessed that God had pulled him back out of such an abomination. The author brings together all of the critiques of Catholicism into one tirade, implying once again that if Jean had properly encountered God’s word instead

9  Louis Desgraves, Éloi Gibier Imprimeur à Orléans (1536–1588) (Geneva: Droz, 1966), 7. Desgraves mentions that Gibier publishes L’Histoire de Jean Guy in a time (1562–1568) when he was printing works from other Protestant authors and not just on texts from the Prince of Condé (48–49).

10

Introduction

of being confused by the false piety and teaching of Roman religion, then at best, none of this would have happened. But what did actually happen? As a letter of remission, there would already be reason to question the historical accuracy of L’Histoire de Jean Guy.10 Moreover, with the impassioned speeches in the service of Jean’s conversion or with the extended expositions of doctrinal theology from the mouths of ministers, domestics, and of Jean himself, the account of Jean’s crime, trial, conversion, and death push the limits of believability. Then, there is the overwhelming convenience of many of the facts: the location of the crime, the closure of the village prison, the promptings of the ten-year-old Louise de Coligny that set off the series of exchanges that lead Jean to conversion, Jean’s conversion itself, and his speech before his death. On this last event, the text itself expresses disbelief that a loosely Catholic debauch was able in such a short period of time to absorb and appropriate the language and theology of those who were at the center of the Reformation in France (36). To the Protestant reader, Jean’s story is miraculous. It demonstrates the power of God’s grace to bring about conversion and good from evil. The facts line up perfectly since the hand of God was guiding those involved toward a particular end that would reveal God’s glory. At the same time, to the Catholic reader, this text is nothing less than calumny. The text suggests that Jean’s upbringing in the Roman Church had something to do with his crime, as if all Catholics are potential criminals because of their so-called ignorance or false piety. The author has obviously embellished Jean’s story to make a religious and political point; that is, if he did not invent it completely. Regardless of how readers of opposing ideological viewpoints understood the reality of what the text describes, what is interesting is how the author anticipates the potential opposition to his narrative and tries to overcome it. In the case of L’Histoire de Jean Guy, it begins with the title page, whose title has already shown to be revealing. This feature has, with the advent of the printed text, begun to afford a useful space in which to initiate a conversation with readers and to convince them of the text’s credibility, even though that credibility may be compromised by also revealing a clear ideological or partisan bent. Two quotations appear on the title page of Jean Guy: one from scripture and another a quatrain. For the former, the author or publisher has chosen a passage from Isaiah 55:11: “Ma parole ne retournera point à moy en vain: mais fera tout ce que j’auray voulu, & prosperera és choses esquelles l’ay envoyee” 10  See Davis, Fiction, 7–35. In her first chapter, Davis outlines in great detail how letters of remission were composed, and one can infer that they depicted mostly true events with quite a bit of narrative shaping and, as would be expected, bias toward the supplicant.

Introduction

11

(My word will not return to me in vain: but it will do all that I have willed and will prosper in all things for which I have sent it). The quatrain, equally confident and aggressive, presages a central image in the text, namely that of bearing fruit: Le curieux qui lit & rien n’entend, Semble celuy qui chasse & rien ne prend : En lisant donc (si voulez estre instruicts) Laissez la fueille, & retenez les fruicts. The curious who reads and understands nothing, Resembles those who hunt and take nothing: By reading therefore (if you want to be instructed) Leave the leaf, and retain the fruits. In both instances, the author implicitly asserts some key points about the text. First, the members of the Coligny family and household speak clearly as instruments of God’s word, and they could not have failed to convert Jean since it would have contradicted Isaiah’s prophecy. Second, the quatrain backhandedly flatters the reader while making it clear what conclusion he or she should draw. Since, within the text, the author will designate what fruits are to be retained, the reader would be quite unintelligent for failing to understand or take them. The author essentially traps the reader into attributing authority to the text lest the reader be left empty-handed and empty-headed. The title page seizes authority for the text that follows in addition to performing its most fundamental function of signaling the text’s subject. The prefatory material continues in the task of buttressing the authority and credibility of the text in the opening letter to the reader. The addition of the limiting adjective “chrétien” (Christian) to the title “Au lecteur” (To the reader) implies, as the rest of the letter will make clear, that only real Christians will be interested in or receptive to what is contained therein. True Christians would of course recoil at any description or even mention of parricide, but this natural aversion in fact presents an opportunity for the author. For almost the entire first page, the author explains why one would normally never seek to preserve the memory of parricide lest the devil’s work be allowed to spread, but since it is so difficult to contain the noise and the knowledge of such a grave and sensational occurrence, why not try to make the best of it? This leads to the author’s aforementioned comment about hoping to salvage some good from this evil (2–3). The author expresses a reluctance that he ultimately decides to suppress since the story so perfectly reveals the glory of God, which is

12

Introduction

news definitely worth spreading since it has the potential to bear fruit in the education and conversion of others. The disinterested reader might say that this reluctance and hesitancy seem feigned given the richly developed account that follows, but they demonstrate a rhetorical strategy on the part of the author. Indeed, the author has reservations about spreading the account, but its real poignancy that reveals God’s glory and that also happens to expose the deficiencies of Catholicism is just too good not to tell. Within the text itself, the author employs yet another strategy to enhance its credibility. The author layers a series of genres in order that these respective genres mutually reinforce the reader’s perception that the text is reliable and therefore true. He opens with what seems like a letter of remission. When the story progresses well beyond that, especially since Jean’s interlocutors are all trying to convince him to drop his appeal, it seems to be a critique of the judicial system. The extensive discourse surrounding these brief pleas to Jean to abandon his appeal creates the feel of a theological text that allows the readers to listen in on what Jean is being taught and to therefore learn themselves. But underlying the critique of the judicial system are statements on the corruptions of Catholicism, namely that the taint of the Catholic sacrament of confession has compromised the appeals system.11 This narrow attack is only one of many, since the author outlines other corruptions of the Papacy throughout the text, especially in reference to Jean’s personal history. This generic layering of the text is part of the artifice of the narrative that draws the reader in, and because three of the four layers are not inherently polemical, they strengthen the text’s credibility, thereby couching the anti-Catholic polemic within more legitimate storytelling genres. The author takes advantage of these generic shifts within the text to promote defamatory assertions and to ease the reader into considering the text to be reliable. The text refrains from persuading but instead attempts to plant seeds of certainty in the reader’s mind that what is being recounted is true. The growing understanding during this period of history as fact notwithstanding, the historicity of the text remains in the eye of the beholder. The author is aware that this perception is still fluid in the late sixteenth century and employs multiple strategies to convince the reader that the text is true not necessarily in a factual sense but in the sense of being plausible or conveying greater truths of which the facts should not get in the way.12 All of this makes the account suspicious both with respect to its historical accuracy and to the author’s motives. 11  Davis, Fiction, 61. 12  Davis, Fiction, 4: “To be sure, fictive creation had its most appropriate expression in poetry or a story, not in history, which was increasingly praised (through not always practiced)

Introduction

13

In this way, the story of Jean Guy’s conversion exemplifies the state of historical—and religious, political, and literary—discourse at the time. This conversion narrative in fact shares several common elements with many other texts from the period of the French wars of religion. The basic facts of the episode are plausible but ultimately unverifiable. The circumstances of the story, as well as the character, behaviors, and actions of those involved, reflect clear ideological and partisan divisions, according to which one side is virtuous, righteous, or faithful, while the other side is unintelligent, dishonest, or evil. Finally, while the text may or may not have a designated author, the circumstances of its publication reveal an attempt to take advantage of the instability and unreliability of discourse in order to claim a new center of authority. The author and the publisher, Éloy Gibier, demonstrate an awareness of the power of the print medium both in challenging traditional modes of authority, such as the king or the Catholic Church, and in shaping narratives, especially with paratextual material, in order to manipulate the reader’s perception and interpretation of the text. The portrayal in print of a historical event provides an opportunity to advance a religious or political objective, and it only matters how true the account seems to be, not whether it actually is. As the awareness of this new opportunity sinks in, a temporal dimension introduces itself into the calculus. It does not suffice to get one’s version of history into print, or to convince the reader that it is the truthful one. It is also important to get there first. Authors and publishers have a sense that, even with the printed text, first impressions are everything. Ideology is a potent motivator, but this rush to define quickly and fix the meaning of recent history tends to create only more tumult. One need only imagine again the opposing reactions to the story of Jean Guy, where one could add speed over accuracy as another mark against the veracity of the account. Ironically, the haste to define what is true can often result in the further twisting of it. Simon Goulart (1543–1628), a Protestant historian and compiler, exemplifies this dynamic and at one point outright names it. Through his choices regarding what historical texts to include in his compilations, but also in his own reflections on current events in the commentary surrounding them, he sees clearly that amid the instability of discourse, being the first to define the narrative of history in print has its advantages. In his letter to the reader from the first volume of his history of the reign of Charles IX (1550–1574), Goulart anticipates his critics and makes a hearty defense of a history that does not enjoy the benefit of many years of reflection: “Cependant, il n’y a rien qui soit trop tost dit” (Nevertheless, there as a truth which was ‘bare’ and ‘unadorned.’ But the artifice of fiction did not necessarily lend falsity to an account; it might well bring verisimilitude or a moral truth.”

14

Introduction

is nothing that is said too soon).13 This could very well be the motto of the age. The time for hesitation and reflection is over; it has led to too much uncertainty. While Goulart admits that errors in this history “said too soon” might discredit his account of events, he implores the reader to look beyond them for the sake of the truth of the wider work. He writes: Quant aux fautes, si elles sont commises de fait d’avis, si elles renversent l’histoire, si elles s’entretiennent (comme de nostre temps il n’y en a que trop d’exemples) & si celuy qui escrit n’apporte que des affections particulieres dont il soit aisé de le convaincre, elles sont à condamner & rejetter. Mais si pour un mot, pour une incertitude de temps, pour un nom, pour une obmission, ou amplification, si pour quelque trait piquant ou gaillard, il y a des cerveaux si fascheux qu’ils rejettent ce qui est bon au reste, je ne puis croire qu’ils trouvent beaucoup de compagnons.14 As for errors, if they are committed because of opinion, if they overturn history, if they are preserved (as from our time there are but too many examples) and if he who writes brings only personal prejudices of which it would be easy to convince him, they are to be condemned and rejected. But if for one word, for one mistake of time, for a name, for an omission, or amplification, if for some stinging or bawdy trait, there are brains so contentious that they reject what is good in the rest, I cannot believe that they find many companions. He does not ask that the errors be simply ignored but, rather, discarded. And in typical fashion from this period, he makes a personal appeal: those who would discredit the entirety of his work for a few errors would have a “contentious brain” and would find themselves quite alone. He frames the acceptance of his account as a sign of level-headedness, and for those who would not accept it, they would find themselves isolated, apart from the community. Moreover, while, in the first part of the passage, Goulart seems to come out boldly in favor of integrity and disinterest, or of wanting to avoid bias or prejudice, he is perhaps being a bit disingenuous. While this sounds very noble, a cursory examination of his compilation contradicts his anticipatory protestations. Nevertheless, it is another attempt to build his credibility, and in these few short sentences that contextualize his first major historical work, Goulart 13  Simon Goulart, Mémoires de l’estat de France, sous Charles neufiesme, vol. 1 (Meidelbourg [Geneva]: Henrich Wolf, 1576), 4 (Arsenal 8-H-6189). 14  Goulart, Charles neufiesme, 2b–3.

Introduction

15

practices a technique that he and his contemporaries from all political points of view will use to fight the effects of the unreliability of discourse and to infuse their words with an irrefutable character. He is conscious of the political importance of publishing first, or at least before his enemies, and yet, he wants to protect his text from accusations of unreliability. His rhetoric admonishes the reader to overlook any faults in the text or any doubts these may elicit and to accept his discourse as trustworthy. What kind of situation were Goulart and his contemporaries actually facing that would lead them toward a discourse shaped by politics, rather than aesthetics? Ironically, it begins with France’s somewhat mythical origin. The French kingdom had been unified as a people and as a faith since the baptism of Clovis at the turn of the sixth century.15 With the advent of the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century, the perception was that a millennium of unity was suddenly shaken. Tensions had been building between French Catholics and Protestants for some time when violent conflict finally broke out into open war in 1562. Under Francis I (1494–1547), a fairly tolerant sovereign in the face of evangelical emergence, that tolerance finally reached its breaking point when the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist was defamed in the well-known Affair of the Placards in 1534.16 Tolerance for Luther, Calvin, and their ideas would ebb and flow throughout the sixteenth century in France, much as it would during the whipsaw of wars and peace treaties that would characterize the period of the wars of religion, generally recognized to last until 1598, with the approbation of the Edict of Nantes.17 This back and forth that kept deceiving the French people into thinking that unity and peace had finally arrived both anticipated and resulted from the discursive solutions proposed by the many authors whose work I will analyze. This uncertainty demonstrates that during this period of vacillation between bloodshed and calm, no one’s word can be taken as solid, and worse, no authority seems capable 15  See William Beik, A Social and Cultural History of Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 16  For a detailed history of Francis’s dealings with Protestants, especially in cases where the Paris Faculty of Theology was involved, see James K. Farge, Orthodoxy and Reform in Early Reformation France: The Faculty of Theology of Paris, 1500–1543 (Leiden: Brill, 1985). For a more optimistic view on Francis’s approach, see Patricia and Rouben Cholakian, Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 41, 135–36. For how the king’s position changed after the Affair of the Placards, see Cholakians, Marguerite, 173. 17  On the reception of the Edict of Nantes, see Janine Garrisson, L’Edit de Nantes: Chronique d’une paix attendue (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 9–10. In her introduction, Garrisson explains that it was first met with indifference and that over time, resistance and resentment started to build.

16

Introduction

of rescuing its credibility. It is no wonder that authors during this period felt that, at its heart, the wars of religion were more about the power of words than the power either of one’s religious confession or of one’s political persuasion. Who could believe Catherine de’ Medici (1519–1589) when she said she wanted peace?18 Who could believe Charles IX when he vowed to the Admiral de Coligny (1519–1572) to avenge him?19 Who could believe Henry, Duke of Guise (1550–1588) when he claimed to be fighting for the Catholic faith rather than for the political destiny of the House of Lorraine?20 Who could be sure that Henry of Navarre (1553–1610) when, after converting back to Catholicism in 1593, would tolerate his former brothers and sisters in the Reformation?21 This constant shifting of alliances, changing professions of faith, contradictory orders from on high, and fleeting peace treaties reflected great instability while also reinforcing it. Amid a loss of certainty, anything and everything was up for grabs, and on a discursive level, competing arguments and accounts of these same events, even from those involved, rapidly deteriorated into a conflict not about pertinent issues, or even somebody’s promises, but about basic facts, the nature of reality, or fundamental truths that only recently seemed universal. While such discussions can sometimes bear fruit, a building uncertainty and serial shifts in meaning, intentional or otherwise, began to inhibit any possible progress. Principles or facts that would otherwise facilitate peaceful resolution

18  For more on Catherine’s vacillations, see Kathleen Wellman, Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 243. 19  See R.J. Knecht, The French Civil Wars, 1562–1598 (Harlow, Essex, England: Pearson, 2000), 165: “The truth will probably never come to light. Nor are we ever likely to know who advised Charles IX to destroy the Huguenot leaders … Denis Crouzet believes that the decision to kill the Huguenot leaders could not have been premeditated. He sees it as an impetuous move by the king and his ministers aimed at salvaging the neo-platonic dream of a harmonious kingdom which the attempt on Coligny’s life had seriously imperilled.” 20  See Henri Forneron, Les Ducs de Guise et leur époque, 2nd ed. (Paris: Libraire Plon, 1893), 2:291–319. This is an older history, but Forneron’s chapter on the day of the barricades in 1588 illustrates well the more cleanly political turn that Henry of Guise’s path had taken just before his assassination the following December. 21  For an expression of doubt about the reliability of Henry’s word, see Jean de Sponde, Advertissement au Roy, ou sont deduictes les raisons d’estat, pour lesquelles il ne luy est pas bien seant de changer de Religion (1589), 8 (British Library edition): “Sire, pouvez-vous devenir si promptement Catholique Romain, sans violer lâchement la foi et l’union que vous avez si souvent jurées aux Réformés?” Sponde’s question precisely highlights the issue at hand: the news of Henry’s conversion is difficult to believe and seems implausible, especially since he had been such an ardent supporter of the cause of the Reformation. In the end, Henry of Navarre’s oaths to his fellow Protestants were more or less without basis, allowing him to dispense with them when it was no longer politically convenient.

Introduction

17

instead become battlegrounds unto themselves where notions of faith, political identity, history and even words were decided.22 When the French wars of religion began with the Massacre at Vassy, open, violent conflict was new, but the war of words was not. The state of scriptural exegesis, the advent of Renaissance humanism, and the explosion of the Protestant Reformation, among other factors, contributed to a context in which literary discourse was no longer reliable and was open to ideological and political manipulation. Disputes about Scripture evolved into disputes about the Church, but the French wars of religion involved more than just a fight over the future of Christianity. The intermingling of religion and politics guaranteed that religious disputes would reverberate into the political sphere as well. Nevertheless, these wars reflected that, at the heart, France (as it was in 1562) was still looking to a common faith to preserve its unity.23 In this context, the political realities of a divided kingdom, the religious strife between Catholic and Protestant, and the consequences of a semiotic crisis rooted in problems of reading, writing, and authority all mixed together to elicit a desire—or perhaps imposed a demand—among writers, poets, and dramaturges to reassert the truth of their own discourse, to render it effective and authoritative in redefining and stabilizing discourse, the kingdom, and the faith, in order to create the unity they believed necessary for peace. The story of Jean Guy shows what is at stake. If the author can convince the reader that the account of Jean’s last days is as it happened, opposition to what it proposes must dissolve, and everyone can come together. I argue that in response to a semiotic crisis and its consequences in the religious and political sphere, 22  On this issue of first principles, one must take into account Plato’s Cratylus, whose role during the sixteenth century Marie-Luce Demonet engages in Les Voix du signe: Nature du langage à la Renaissance (1480–1580) (Paris: Champion, 1992), 390–99. This essential dialogue on language presents the two positions of conventionalism and naturalism as theories for the naming of people and things, and through the dialogue’s questioning of the origin of language illustrates the difficulty in the shifting meanings of words. Echoes of the Cratylus are certainly present in the phenomenon since the dialogue focuses so much on words and their connection to meaning, not to mention the role of those who are charged with the process of naming, which Socrates describes as not simply an utterance but an action (praxis) (387c). 23  See Joseph Bergin, The Politics of Religion in Early Modern France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 22–35. Bergin outlines the early positions of both sides that assumed that anything resembling tolerance or liberty of conscience would be necessary since God would in the end unify France under one or the other. Bergin writes that “[Theodore] Beza’s tart repudiation around this time of liberty of conscience as ‘a thoroughly diabolical dogma’ left little room for the possibility of liberty of worship or religious practices generally. It was only later, when their hopes of religious victory had been blunted, that France’s Calvinists would have to rethink that position” (24).

18

Introduction

authors such as the one who preserves Jean Guy’s story were emboldened by an awareness of the advantages of print culture and undertook several rhetorical techniques and textual strategies in order to neutralize the crisis and therefore render literary discourse more effective in a tumultuous political context. This study is not about proving the pervasiveness or persuasiveness of various literary and historical texts.24 Nor is it about the ultimate effectiveness of texts within particular communities.25 Rather, it is about showing that authors have realized that Renaissance discourse, once considered an opportunity for creativity and dynamism, has now devolved into an instrument of instability. Various interlocutors then take advantage, attempting to negotiate truth and a lasting peace through poetry and prose, through historical compilations and pamphlets, through prophecy and polemic. Examples that suggest the awareness of the crisis and the concomitant attempt to exploit it are quite numerous, and a variety of genres and literary forms reflect it. From well-known or canonical texts, on the one hand, and less well-known or anonymous texts, on the other, one can see how these strategies were not unique to one or the other, but that they occurred at all levels of literary and historical discourse. It has 24  See Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), esp. Chapter 7, “Pamphlets and Persuasion,” 156–184. Pettegree at various points expresses reservations about judging short texts’ effectiveness by the numbers, since flooding the market with short texts might have been a strategy to make their point of view seem prevalent (163). There was no guarantee they were actually read. 25  For studies that address more directly these questions, see Luc Racaut, Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity during the French Wars of Religion (Burlington, VT: Aldershot, 2002); Emily Butterworth, The Unbridled Tongue: Babble and Gossip in Renaissance France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) and her earlier volume, Poisoned Words: Slander and Satire in Early Modern France (Leeds: Legenda, 2006); and Antónia Szabari, Less Rightly Said: Scandals and Readers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). Racaut’s work describes how Catholics managed to take advantage of the print medium in the short term more readily than Protestants and how the demonization of the latter through preaching and polemical texts incited violence during these tumultuous times. Butterworth studies in her more recent work the dynamics of rumor and gossip in several of the major literary works of the period, including those of Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, Brantôme, and more relevant to this study, Ronsard. In her earlier work, she explores the role of slander and satire, especially as it relates to the impugning of a figure’s personal honor. Szabari’s analysis perhaps hews most closely to this study, especially in her explanation of rhetoric and how it helped to define particular communities amid the factionalism of the period. For example, Szabari provides a fascinating analysis of how different theological principles influenced the fashioning of polemical texts from either Catholics or Protestants. Building upon this excellent scholarship, this study pushes further the question of the unstable discursive environment and how authors and publishers, being conscious of this instability, strategized to take advantage of it for political gain.

Introduction

19

been my goal, therefore, to choose those texts from the period of the wars of religion that best illustrate the rhetorical and textual strategies that writers and publishers undertook to accomplish their religious or political goals. I have organized this study into six chapters. Chapter One outlines the development of the conditions under which representations of reality during the period of the French wars of religion became uncertain and a vacuum of authority opened a way for authors and their printed texts to step in and define the meaning of history on their terms. In short, one can look to the emergence of a semiotic crisis at the textual level, which constitutes, in fact, the convergence of multiple crises that from the end of the Middle Ages through the Renaissance inhibit the capacity to discern real from fake, especially in the contentiousness of the post-Reformation French context. I will give a general—and by no means comprehensive—overview of this semiotic crisis in its origins and progression, highlighting the ways in which it weakened the efficacy of signs, especially in the period leading up to the wars of religion. I will identify the ways in which signs became increasingly distant from the signified, since the strategies that authors employ, just before, during, and just after the wars of religion, speak directly to the problems that the crisis created. In order to refine even further the nature of the semiotic crisis, I have divided it into three sub-crises: a crisis of representation, a crisis of interpretation, and a crisis of authority. Even more simply stated, I see these three facets as reflecting problems of writing, reading, and authorship. Discussion of this issue tends to suffer from a lack of clarity on whether this was a crisis of representation or interpretation. The critical literature sometimes confuses the terms or uses them interchangeably. This is not surprising since the border between reading and writing is permeable, especially during the Renaissance. Normally, to be a good writer, one must be a good reader. The question of authority relates to both as well; after all, interpretations are often only as good as the interpreters, and representations are only as good as those who create them. I wish to clarify these distinctions even while acknowledging the frayed boundaries between them. In order to be effective, signs must be able to represent meaning, they must be able to be interpreted, and they must rely on a stable authority: yet all three—representation, interpretation, and authority—are under pressure in the early to mid-sixteenth century. I will explore that pressure and discern what the effects on discourse were that elicited such a strong reaction when the dispute over ideas turned to violence. With respect to representation, I will focus particularly on the transition from the medieval period to the Renaissance, the consequences of nominalism as a philosophy and as a

20

Introduction

theological perspective, and the great debates between Ancients and Moderns and scholastics and humanists. With the crisis of representation, I believe that the question of distance between the sign and the signified led to confusion, and these contentious and polemical debates at the level of their rhetoric and content, as well as nominalist influence, augmented the distance if it did not sever it completely. I will evaluate the crisis of interpretation through the lens of imitation and exemplarity, the controversy over Scriptural exegesis, and the study of philology. The rapidly changing hermeneutics as well as what those hermeneutics were yielding with respect to texts whose interpretation seemed fixed long ago made interpretation fuzzier more globally. Finally, the deterioration of political and religious authority and the concurrent rise in the authority of writers created instability in literary and political discourse that authors would later address directly during the wars of religion. Authorities that in the past would have helped resolve some of the confusion arising from the crises of representation and interpretation had lost much of their standing and credibility. Others, namely authors, were pleased and ready to step in and take over this role, especially when it came to the definition of historical and political narratives. All three sub-crises suggest multiple problems, and in identifying those problems and their consequences, it will be easier to understand why the authors of literary discourse employed the strategies that they did in the ensuing years. Chapter Two moves from these conditions to the textual dynamics of sixteenth-century literary discourse. As authors and publishers churned out polemics and rumor, they employed certain rhetorical, lexical, thematic and paratextual strategies to make their version of events and their characterizations of their enemies seem instead like verifiable history. This begins with a rhetoric that focuses on reigning in and limiting the meanings of words to allow them to more easily and clearly represent what they signify. Authors begin to reject multivalence—or to limit it—since giving a word an exclusive meaning reduces the distance between sign and signified. In turn, this strategy has the effect of boxing out alternative meanings, particularly those coming from one’s ideological opponents. During the French wars of religion, this most often manifests itself in the desire of Catholics to limit meaning in order to exclude Protestants and vice versa. This literary strategy reverberates into the political precisely because it excludes one’s opponents from discourse entirely, a useful tool in shutting down debate about what is and is not true. Limiting the meaning of a word can exclude an ideology just as easily as it can exclude another meaning, and if it can exclude certain ideologies, it can exclude the ideologues behind them. Since the words themselves are the tools in this case, I will analyze this phenomenon according to several discrete terms

Introduction

21

or concepts that were recurring and were points of contention in the fight for definitive meaning: zeal, foreignness, tyranny, and martyrdom. The last represents a bit of an unusual case since it was not necessarily the meaning of the word or concept that needed to be limited but rather who qualified; it was in the attribution of the term that its ability to represent was given limits. The other side of representation is interpretation, and the advent of print culture opened to authors and publishers new spaces in which to influence the reader. In Chapter Three, I will examine how, through mostly paratextual elements, authors tried to intervene in the political sphere by managing the interpretation of their literary text. In this liminal space made famous by Gérard Genette, the author attempts to have a prescriptive and preemptive—or in some cases subsequent—conversation with the reader about his text. In the sixteenth century, it was no different. In fact, it is of the utmost importance, as the reader’s conclusions about current events would help shape the direction of those events. In more traditional paratexts like the preface, the postface, and the title page, I will examine the clearest examples of this tendency. In the use of quotations from Sacred Scripture, I will look at how authors and publishers were responding to the crisis of interpretation with respect to scriptural exegesis and how certain quotations became polemical in themselves as their interpretations became more and more contested. Finally, in a period of such rich poetic production, I will discuss how authors employed different texts in verse to frame the interpretation of a wider discourse. In more clearly signaling to the reader where the author stood through the paratext, the more likely it would be that the reader would receive the message that the author intended to send. Surrounding all of these strategies were attempts to control the meaning of the events of the day, both in their portrayal and their reception. In order for the manipulation of the representation and interpretation of events to be in any way effective, it was necessary for the author to have some degree of personal authority unto himself. Moreover, in the political sphere where the ability of different actors to intervene depended on their personal authority, they needed to pay close attention to any weaknesses in that authority when and if they arose. In Chapter Four, I will propose several ways in which authors addressed these difficulties. Through their texts, authors created and cultivated certain personas and then in turn used those personas to infuse their texts with authority. In some circumstances, they relied upon this newfound personal authority to go a step further by infusing the king or the Church with authority that they had lost over the course of the previous century. In order to accomplish this, authors had to combine their poetic persona and their historical persona with the poetic “I”, fusing all three together to form a symbiotic relationship that guaranteed authority to all three. I will look at

22

Introduction

several texts and their authors to examine how this dynamic played out. Firstly, I will analyze Louis Dorléans’s text from 1587 written by an “English Catholic” to French Catholics on what to expect with the ascension of a Protestant sovereign to the throne. Closer to home, Pierre de Ronsard, after many years writing in multiple poetic forms, turns to the political in his Discours. Ronsard puts his personal and poetic authority on the line in order to try to influence the debate about the direction of France. In Jean de la Taille’s Saül le Furieux, I will show how the use of prophetic tropes within the play and a treatise on the tragic combined to portray the author as disinterested observer and potential prophet who criticizes the king in order to reinvigorate his authority. Finally, in the apotheosis of personal authority bearing upon the text and upon the political sphere, Agrippa D’Aubigné writes Les Tragiques, an epic poem that is apocalyptic in nature. It resembles the Promethean gift of fire, bestowed upon humanity, a dangerous but essential gift that will help create a more stable political environment for a France of the present and future. All of these authors have great expectations about what their personal authority might be able to do for their texts and for France. Most of them will be found wanting, but the turn toward the personal authority of the author is nevertheless an important development in the fight against the semiotic crisis in literary discourse. The authority of the source either affirms the real or gives a veneer of the real to what in fact might be fake. Chapters Five and Six will present an in-depth examination of what this sudden awareness of the power of the printed text and the authority of authors and publishers in the face of an unstable discursive environment will yield. I have chosen two very particular examples that will illustrate the dynamics at work, first in the political manipulation of narrative and second in the fight to reverse it. Chapter Five will examine the case of the Parisian advocate Jean David, who, in 1576, died under mysterious circumstances on his return from Rome to Paris. It is claimed that among his effects was an account of a meeting with the Pope that outlined a plot to overthrow Henry III, and to replace him with the Duke of Guise. Two versions of David’s Mémoire, as it was called, were published soon after the incident, and both represent an attack on the Guises to discredit them but on slightly different fronts: one focused on their internal threat, and the other highlighted the threat posed by foreign powers looking to intervene in France’s civil and religious disputes. In either case, David’s papers and the texts published with them demonstrate through their rhetorical and editorial strategies how far such an account could go in defining public perception of their target. What sets the text apart and makes it worthy of this more detailed study is the speed with which the story gained traction, the levels of power to which the text rose in its readership—Henry III and Henry of

Introduction

23

Navarre both read it and believed it to be true—and the degree to which it relies on the discursive environment to seem real. Chapter Six offers a counter-example to the case of the Advocate David and his Mémoire. While François Hotman’s Francogallia, first published in 1573, displays an awareness of the slipperiness in distinguishing the real from the fake, it instead tries to resist the uncertainties that result. In proposing a reasoned and reasonable plan for replacing the king, Hotman relies “upon the empirical rather than the normative, upon history rather than philosophy, upon the particular rather than the universal.”26 Hotman, and to an extent, the Monarchomachs who were the other members of the coterie of political theorists that shared Hotman’s ultimate goal, tried to get ahead of the false and misleading with the demonstrably true and credible, and to unify France amid the cacophony of unreliable voices. It ultimately becomes a cautionary tale as the politics shift and as the treatise becomes another tool in the dispute over the true nature of France and French politics during the wars of religion. Hotman’s misstep will manifest itself most poignantly when his Catholic opponents eventually appropriate his work for their own ends. A study of this type presents two very important methodological, or perhaps even phenomenological, questions: what is literature, and what is history? Furthermore, the manner in which the two relate opens the territory upon which authors contest the battle for the meaning of current events. With respect to the first question, the period of the French wars of religion includes many different types of texts: histories and historical compilations, yes, but also poems, libelles, treatises, royal letters and communications, scriptural exegesis, discourses on doctrine, and martyrologies. What among these can one consider to be literature? Timothy Reiss proposes that “[l]iterature is … a socially purposive discursive activity (sign practicing and organizing) that we suppose to serve some specifiable role within the totality of different discursive practices composing what we call society (and how any society understands itself).”27 Several terms and phrases in this short definition have helped orient my readings and analysis throughout what follows. From the very beginning, Reiss defines literature as “socially purposive.” Reiss is quick to point out that literature has served both subversive and revolutionary goals as well as those of established authority.28 This would seem to indicate that he takes 26  R  alph E. Giesey, ed., and J.H.M. Salmon, trans., introduction to Francogallia, by François Hotman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 5. 27  Timothy Reiss, The Meaning of Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 1. 28  Ibid.

24

Introduction

this “social purposive[ness]” as some sort of social advocacy. Later, Reiss describes its social function as the following: “Literature taught the patterns from which the most powerful could learn as well as the discrete events filling out those patterns. It showed the rationality of the natural order, coherent with mind and correctly ordered language, as it simultaneously reflected the elements concretizing that rational structure.”29 I have certainly taken it as such and have looked for connotations of advocacy in the texts that I have chosen to include.30 As for “discursive activity (sign practicing and organizing),” this lies at the center of this study; assessing and analyzing sign practicing and organizing has led me to my interest in the semiotic crisis, as well as to the different strategies that authors used for taking advantage of it or trying to reverse or remedy it. Authors practiced socially purposive activity in both their use of and engagement with signs, ranging from trying to define or alter them for their political goals. The final aspect of Reiss’s definition that has guided me is ambiguous. He suggests that this discursive activity serves “some specifiable role within the totality of different discursive practices.” Unfortunately, Reiss never really defines what this role might be; he leaves it at the suggestion that literature is somehow different from other possible discursive activities. Thus, 29  Reiss, Meaning of Literature, 132. Reiss is addressing at this point in the book a seventeenthcentury context in which this function of literature was proposed as a remedy to disorder and violence. This presupposes a disease that needed to be cured. It is my contention that this was the very dynamic that emerged during the wars of religion. 30  This is, in fact, one of the terms that helped me to define a turning point in Renaissance literature. For example, the literature, say around the 1550s, often constituted advocacy for a type of language or writing. I am thinking of Joachim Du Bellay’s La deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549). One could also make an argument that Ronsard’s or Scève’s love poetry was a form of political advocacy in this regard as they offered their own imitations of the Petrarchan canzoniere. See Cynthia Nazarian, Love’s Wounds: Violence and the Politics of Poetry in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016). At the breakout of the wars of religion, however, the revolutionary versus establishment became the defining paradigm, attracting advocacy to the two poles. Later, Reiss explains how poetry was always ideological but not always necessarily political: “Poetry surely disseminated ideology (as when does it not?). But its efficacy depended exactly on its not saying what was behind such ideology: it created a broad abstraction about the events and nature of princely authority (although it evidently in some sense ‘contained’ them, for otherwise no generalization would be possible). Poetry could include ambiguities and even apparently ‘subversive’ effects it might disseminate ‘an iconography of state’ (as Leonard Tennenhouse has put it), but it necessarily referred to a distant king, a ‘deus absconditus, hidden beneath the mask’ (Goldberg). Such writing relied on separation and distance from the acts themselves of polity and the daily functioning of authority; on an absence, indeed an inability, of intervention. This poetry was, as all is, profoundly ideological in aim, but it was not, as later literature would be, specifically political: formative of and active in the actual performance of sovereignty and the political order” (28–29).

Introduction

25

literature distinguishes itself in some way. To add a bit more ambiguity—or nuance—Reiss writes that this role changes and adapts according to its environment. My perception of the change in literature from the early and midsixteenth century to the late is absolutely tied to his contention.31 The shift in literature’s objectives reflects the shifts that occurred in the political and religious environment during the wars of religion. This broad definition of literature presents a further problem. The volume of writing produced during the period of the wars of religion presents a monumental body of documents, and the generic boundaries between different pamphlets, poems, compilations, and other forms of what one might consider in such a project are blurry at best. On the one hand, I have excluded more personal or functional communication in my analysis: letters, diplomatic communiqués, between the court of Poland and that of France for example, or even official pronouncements of the king. I believe that these represent discursive activity that is different from literature. While one could certainly define them as “socially purposive” and as containing elements akin to literary discourse, they are explicitly communicative in a way that differentiates them from normal literary discourse. On the other hand, I have decided to include avertissements, discours, remonstrances, histoires, prefaces to compilations and other paratextual sources, in addition to sources that are more readily considered to be literature, such as the epic poem or even some of the dizains, sonnets, and other poetic forms that Goulart or his contemporary Pierre De l’Estoile (1546–1611) placed amid other texts in their compilations and histories, either to preface and transition between texts or as elements in the compilations unto themselves. Most notably missing are some of the major political treatises from the era, the writings of Jean Bodin, for example. I have decided not to include these texts because they are explicitly and by definition political; their subject is politics and political theory, and both the author and reader are aware of the stated political purpose. In other words, there is little to no surreptitiousness to their composition or publication. The exception to this is of course the treatises of the Monarchomachs, but only because of their unique appropriation of history in order to argue for particular political ends. Their “social purposive[ness]” does not quite resemble that of a remonstrance or an avertissement that only touches upon political themes, but in their use 31  See Reiss, Meaning of Literature, 3: “What we have called ‘literature’ is part of an environment in which we are able so to name it. I argue, here and elsewhere, that that environment developed out of a moment of fairly abrupt discursive transformation occurring in Western Europe during some of the years traditionally known as the Renaissance, between roughly the mid-sixteenth century and the early seventeenth.”

26

Introduction

of rhetoric, literary tropes, and a historical narrative formed and shaped by the author for a political purpose, they share much in common. Their aptitude in this regard renders them a formidable resistance to the instability of discourse at the time, as well as to the political system they were trying to change. The writings of the Monarchomachs, along with all of the literature I have chosen, are responding to a crisis of signs, and the ensuing response that has political consequences begs for further analysis. I will explore how this literature either takes advantage of or tries to reverse the semiotic crisis and the discursive instability it created with a new authority for the text and its author. Included in the category of literature during the sixteenth century is also of course history.32 The latter’s participation in the former could explain the phenomena by which authors took advantage of the unreliability of discourse, since they could be attributed to a more fluid understanding among sixteenthcentury writers and readers of the distinction between literature and history. As Natalie Zemon Davis points out in her study of letters of remission and assumes in her analysis of L’Histoire de Jean Guy, in the minds of both reader and writer, what is true and what is truth are two different questions. Davis writes: I want to let the ‘fictional’ aspects of these documents be the center of analysis. By ‘fictional’ I do not mean the feigned elements, but rather, using the other and broader sense of the root word fingere, their forming, shaping, and molding elements: the crafting of a narrative […] By the categories of Renaissance rhetoricians and literary theorists, the letter of remission was a mixed genre: a judicial supplication to persuade the king and courts, a historical account of one’s past actions, and a story. In all three there was a role for crafting and shaping.33 Critics of this study might argue that I am attributing to this “forming and shaping” that was considered a normal part of the practice of rhetoric, persuasion, and history a certain malice that understands an intent to deceive. In other words, one could just assume that the author of the story of Jean Guy innocently believed that he was recounting a true story, even if he consciously knew that the details were embellished or invented. According to such an explanation, it is not an instance of the manipulation of an interesting news item 32  Lionel Gossman, Between History and Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 227. 33  Davis, Fiction, 3–4. For an overview of Renaissance historiography, see Claude-Gilbert Dubois, La Conception de l’histoire en France au XVIe siècle (1560–1610) (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1977).

Introduction

27

that could be used for the sake of political gain but rather the author’s attempt to present what he knew to be true with a degree of authorial license that enriches the reader’s understanding of a nearly miraculous event. I am obviously inclined to believe that something more is at work here than simple narrative crafting. The strategic detail and polemical language of many of the texts presented as history prohibit a characterization of mere storytelling, even though one could argue as Hayden White does, that the more history resembles a story, the less reliable it is.34 The intermingling of literature and history was just one discursive reality among many that allowed authors leverage in presenting their discourse and their narratives as credible and reliable while making a political point. In the sixteenth century, much hinges on the author’s awareness of the gap between history as reality and history as political narrative. Roland Barthes, in highlighting what distinguishes historical discourse from all others, defines this gap: “[I]t is reality, but surreptitiously changed into shamefaced meaning: historical discourse does not follow reality, it only signifies it; it asserts at every moment: this happened, but the meaning conveyed is only that someone is making that assertion.”35 The author’s awareness depends on Barthes’s characterization of the slippage between reality and the manufacturing of meaning; the author performs it “surreptitiously.” But does his right hand know what the left is doing? Lionel Gossman, in his discussion of Augustin Thierry, the nineteenth-century French historian, writes: Later, in 1836, after the triumph of liberalism, and in the midst of threats from the left as well as from the right, Thierry became critical of what he called ‘my passion for politics and my inexperience in history’; and he compared his earlier writings with those of the eighteenth-century philosophical historians, who wrote ‘with the aim of abstracting from the historical account of events a body of proofs and systemic arguments, of providing a summary demonstration, and not a detailed narrative.’36 While the sixteenth-century author may not have sought a summary demonstration, nor an undetailed narrative, he was certainly preoccupied with abstracting from the historical account proofs and arguments for his political 34  Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 1–25. 35  Roland Barthes, “Historical Discourse,” in Introduction to Structuralism, ed. Michael Lane (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 154. Emphasis in the original. 36  Gossman, History and Literature, 85.

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Introduction

position. This sort of historical proof-texting demonstrates a particular consciousness to seek out current events that demonstrate his worldview as well as his ideological positions and to form and shape these narratives to illustrate them in an unassailable way. The author is not just looking for the best possible version of a historical event, or even the most politically advantageous; the author is looking for the definitive version so as to seal the political implications of the narrative in the reader’s mind.37 If readers have the fewest possible doubts that the account corresponds to the reality, then they must accept the author’s ideological conclusions as well. What Nancy Partner suggests is a potential danger of this type of narrative strategy is instead, for the sixteenthcentury author, an advantage: “Carried into the public arena of knowledge and belief, collective myths of group superiority justifying hatred and contempt for others (whoever the designated ‘others’ are) show the dark side of importing fictional freedoms into historical mimesis.”38 Partner is right to characterize these narratives as mythical. Gossman agrees: “The ideological burden of history is aggravated by its closeness to what Barthes calls contemporary myth […] [Myth] is thus neither brazen nor innocent: it is, one is tempted to say, discourse in bad faith, founded on a shifty refusal to clarify the relation between the signifier and the signifié, or concept. ‘Myth,’ in Barthes’s own words, ‘is read as a factual system, whereas it is a semiological system.’ ”39 These authors did not see their process as mythmaking but as history making. History’s place within literature gave them the rhetorical tools and the space within which to wrest control of historical narratives and to exploit an evolving consciousness about history, at least among the authors, for political gain. 37  For a helpful study on different versions of the same story, whether historical or fictional, see Barbara Herrnstein Smith, “Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories,” Critical Inquiry 7, no. 1 (1980): 213–236. 38  Nancy Partner, “Historicity in an Age of Reality-Fictions,” in A New Philosophy of History, ed. Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 32–33. 39  Gossman, History and Literature, 251.

Chapter 1

Crisis At the beginning of his essay “De la gloire,” written sometime between 1578– 1580, Michel de Montaigne writes, “Il y a le nom et la chose : le nom, c’est une voix qui remerque et signifie la chose : le nom, ce n’est pas une partie de la chose, ny de la substance : c’est une piece estrangere joincte à la chose, et hors d’elle” (There is the name and the thing. The name is a sound which designates and signifies the thing; the name is not a part of the thing or of the substance, it is an extraneous piece attached to the thing, and outside of it).1 Montaigne’s commentary reflects a nominalist perspective that “denounces the false alliances between words and the reality they are supposed to represent.”2 Writing in the latter half of the sixteenth century, Montaigne, by his thought, takes a position that reflects some of the uncertainty and ambiguity of the semiotic environment in which he lived.3 His comment also suggests many assumptions of a conventionalist view, but his discussion of the relationship between names and things conceals a warning. One cannot trust that the relationship between names and things will reveal the true character of the things described.4 There is a breakdown in which “signs have become opaque, they can mislead at any moment; deception rules.”5 Curious, considering what was occurring around him, that to illustrate the opening principle of the essay, Montaigne explores the dynamics of giving praise to God’s name rather than to God himself, since 1  Michel de Montaigne, “De la gloire,” in Les Essais, ed. Jean Balsamo, Michel Magnien, and Catherine Magnien-Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 655. Translation from Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, trans. Donald M. Frame (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 568. 2  François Rigolot, “French Renaissance Writers and the Wars of Religion,” in Religion and French Literature, ed. Buford Norman, French Literature Series 25 (Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998), 16. 3  Marie-Luce Demonet addresses the status of the naturalist and conventionalist approaches to language as it appears in Plato’s Cratylus in Les Voix du signe: Nature du langage à la Renaissance (1480–1580) (Paris: Champion, 1992), 390–99. This essential dialogue on language presents the two positions as theories for the naming of people and things, and through the dialogue’s questioning of the origin of language, it illustrates the difficulty in the shifting meanings of words. 4  For commentary on this phenomenon, see Marie-Luce Demonet[-Launey], “Le nom de gloire ou « le nom qui court »,” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne 7, no. 27–28 (1992): 19–32. 5  See Rigolot, “French Renaissance Writers,” 16, where he proposes this characterization when discussing Montaigne’s thoughts on the semiotic crisis. It is in reference to the way in which Montaigne assesses the situation in his own time.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004440814_003

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one cannot add to God’s greatness due to his eternal and immutable character. Thus, he argues, human beings turn to God’s name as the object of their praise, because while joined to God, God’s name is still outside of God and can fluctuate in value. Montaigne’s reasoning about the nature of words is helpful here, for it logically separates signs—and their value—from that which they signify. In this case, Montaigne relies on the separation to emphasize that only God is worthy of glory, not human beings. His examination permits the question, therefore, whether God’s name may then be subject to diminution as well. While God himself remains as eternal as ever, the changes in the value of his name and of other words, perhaps, might eventually influence how one sees their substantive reality. Montaigne’s discussion reveals much about the consequences of more than a century of reevaluation, disputation, and adjustment surrounding words and their meanings. As the consequences of this crisis reverberates, discourse on a broader scale is rendered more and more unstable as it strains for credibility in the representation of reality. The disconnect between God and his name is emblematic of a crisis that affects the foundations of the society and culture of the time and to judge what is true and what is not. What is this crisis exactly? Rigolot summarizes it very succinctly above: “Signs have become opaque.” Other critics describe it primarily as a problem of representation (Timothy Hampton), others as a problem of interpretation (Michel Jeanneret and Terence Cave), and still others assess the state of the sign during the Renaissance without really labeling it a crisis (Marie-Luce Demonet) or see the crisis in terms of a loss of purpose (Timothy Reiss).6 Because this so-called semiotic crisis touches so deeply the fundamental realities of sixteenth-century France, it does not suffice to say that it was simply a crisis of signs and their relationship to the signified; the diversity of thought among critics about what exactly “it” is only confirms this. Montaigne’s reflections suggest that something more is operating—or has operated—to augment the distance between the two. The semiotic crisis constitutes, in fact, the convergence of multiple crises that from the end of the Middle Ages through 6  See Timothy Hampton, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, NY; Cornell University Press, 1990), especially 1–30; Michel Jeanneret, Le défi des signes: Rabelais et la crise de l’interprétation à la Renaissance (Orleans: Paradigme, 1994), 9–17; Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), especially chapters two and three, 35–124; Demonet, Les Voix du signe, 12, who writes: “La conception de l’arbitraire évolue cependant au cours du [seizième] siècle. La prédominance d’un signe motivé par les propriétés des objets (par leur intention) est mise en question par la conscience d’une Histoire qui construit des significations absentes à l’origine ; ensuite, elle est modifiée par l’idée que les premiers mots ont pu être motivés par autre chose que par leur définition.”; see Reiss, The Meaning of Literature, especially the introduction and the first chapter, “A Poetics of Cultural Dismay,” 1–41.

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the Renaissance has altered the relationship between signs and the signified at many levels of their existence and use. Taking the example that Montaigne has given us, one can discern these different levels of crisis that can help guide the discussion of what makes language and therefore literary discourse effective as a means of conveying what is true.7 The word “glory” and how to attribute it comprise the subject of Montaigne’s discussion. Having established that glory belongs only to God, Montaigne suggests that this logically makes it difficult and dangerous to attribute it to human beings and especially to oneself.8 This does not stop people from trying, as one quick look at the world at any point in history could tell us. However, Montaigne, in pointing this out, reminds us of the disparity between the word as it is commonly used and the reality. What does “glory”—or virtue or honor—really represent? If only God, then not a human being. Nevertheless, human beings still try to take advantage, detaching glory from what it truly represents. “Glory,” therefore, detached from that which it can truly signify, becomes mere flattery, rumor, or false praise.9 Montaigne here gives an explanation as to how the distance between the name and the thing can become problematic for the thing as the name can become attributable to many deficient alternatives. Beyond the sign itself, a breakdown has also occurred in the ability of one to read the signs. Here, it is not that signs have become completely unintelligible, although that may be the case in some instances. Rather, it is that in reading signs, a crisis of interpretation has occurred in which the proliferation of interpretations has led to confusion about what the signs might possibly mean. If the name “glory” can no longer adequately represent the reality behind it, interpretations of the name will equally fail to measure up. As attributions of “glory” become more and more varied, they risk contradicting one another, and Montaigne succeeds in outlining where false interpretations may lead. In chasing after what a soldier has misunderstood to be “glory,” he will inevitably fall short most of the time: “Infinies belles actions se doivent perdre sans tesmoignage, avant qu’il en vienne une à profit” (An infinity of fine actions must

7  For a good treatment on the consequences of Montaigne’s thought on the discourse of virtue and exemplarity, for example, see Patricia Eichel-Lojkine, “Montaigne ou la gloire en mouvement,” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne 7, no. 27–28 (1992): 69–90 8  Montaigne, “De la gloire,” 656. 9  See Montaigne, “De la gloire,” 659: “J’ay veue [la gloire] fort souvent marcher avant le merite: et souvent outrepasser le merite d’une longue mesure” (I have very often seen [glory] go ahead of merit, and often surpass merit by a long distance). Translation from Frame, Complete Works, 572. Even Montaigne’s image of one outpacing the other suggests the distance that can develop between the name and the thing.

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be lost without a witness before one appears to advantage).10 At the same time, since so many perceive these little triumphs as translating into glory, they risk their lives for them anyway. What they are chasing they have based on a false interpretation of what glory is and how it works. It means too many things to too many people, and the consequences elicit folly. In the end, “[q]ui n’est homme de bien que par ce qu’on le sçaura, et par ce qu’on l’en estimera mieux, après l’avoir sceu, qui ne veut bien faire qu’en condition que sa vertu vienne à la cognoissance des hommes, celuy-là n’est pas personne de qui on puisse tirer beaucoup de service” (Whoever is a good man only because people will know it, and because they will esteem him better for it after knowing it, whoever will do well only on condition that his virtue will come to the knowledge of men, that man is not one from whom one can derive much service).11 Montaigne lands squarely upon the issue here: the substance of one’s actions are inconsequential, it is only how they are portrayed or perceived. Montaigne’s discussion of “glory” is but an example, but we can pull from his analysis many of the dynamics that were at work before and during the period of the wars of religion. Signs have become opaque because they have been detached from what they represent; interpretations abound, and they have ceased to be universal, or at least as universal as they once were. Corresponding with the increasing inability to represent, the crisis of interpretation creates an environment of constantly shifting meaning that exacerbates religious and political divisions. Amid all of the confusion, a simple solution seems to present itself, but it is one that authors will use for good and for ill. It will attract authors from both the sphere of high literature as well as the lowly libelliste to intervene in the religious and political with attempts at forging an effective but not necessarily reliable discourse. The reasoning might go something like this: if only someone with the proper authority would clarify the proper meaning of “glory,” continuing with this example, then the crisis—or crises—would end. But this, of course, is at the heart of the problem. Various authorities, if Montaigne’s citations are any indication, have tried to define what it is, and as the representation and the interpretation of it slip, the authority behind those definitions can be left discredited as well. Montaigne suggests this possibility when he asserts: “Il n’est chose qui empoisonne tant les Princes que la flatterie, ny rien par où les meschans gaignent plus aiséement credit autour d’eux” (There is nothing that poisons princes so much as flattery, and nothing by which the wicked more easily gain credit with them).12 Something akin to flattery begins to take over 10  Montaigne, “De la gloire,” 660. Translation from Frame, Complete Works, 573. 11  Montaigne, “De la gloire,” 660–61. Translation from Frame, Complete Works, 573. 12  Montaigne, “De la gloire,” 656. Translation from Frame, Complete Works, 569.

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the discursive environment; it poisons both the prince and his people, and it allows the wicked to gain credit with them. As Montaigne’s formulation hints, personal and political interests motivate authors to take advantage of the widening detachment between the name and the thing, or perhaps the historical account and the event, just as a flatterer would with the prince. Of course, the prince must first lose his own grasp of what is true in order to be susceptible to such designs. In such a state, his authority has eroded to the point where he along with kings and popes could no longer control discourse enough to resolve questions about glory, about God, or anything else for that matter. If one can no longer trust words, one can no longer trust the word of an authority, who himself can no longer credibly discern between truth and error or between flattery and frankness. Authorities that once acted with relative impunity began to elicit doubts for several reasons, some of them self-inflicted, others not. Moreover, the crisis of authority did not just affect traditional sources of power like crown and crosier. Whether due to advances in philological study or by ideological preference, otherwise respectable textual sources lost their power to persuade or to validate arguments. The late sixteenth-century author sought to reclaim some of this tattered authority ideally in the quest to stabilize discourse and to be able to propose reliable narratives that reflected reality. Unfortunately, this quest often ended not in more reliable narratives but in a more effective manipulation of them. First, it is important to understand the conditions that created the space for these authors to try such a gambit. What follows comprises a general overview of these conditions within the context of the semiotic crisis. This crisis to which Rigolot refers by way of Montaigne resulted from a complex mixture of smaller crises and is often metonymically labeled for one of its components. This is not surprising since it is composed of a breakdown in representation, interpretation, and authority. By analyzing these component crises from a historical, cultural, political, and even theological perspective, one can understand why authors during the French wars of religion had the opportunity and often believed it necessary to alter or impose meaning in their discourse. I do not presume to provide in what follows a comprehensive and definitive analysis of the semiotic crisis of this period, for that is not the focus of this project. However, in order to understand the phenomenon that I will later demonstrate in the literary discourse of the late sixteenth century, one must first understand the context in which it occurred and the associated phenomena that preceded and accompanied it. Finally, it would be easy to present from a distance a succession of crises in order to explain the eventual response without trying to discern how an author, reader, or more simply, how even the illiterate during the sixteenth century perceived and experienced the semiotic crisis. Such an approach would in

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some sense defeat the purpose, for what literature during the wars of religion attempted to do relied to some extent on people’s desire to overcome the crisis of which they would have had direct experience. Whether fully conscious of it or not, those living in the sixteenth century, like Montaigne, would surely have had some awareness of the confusion surrounding discourse in order to be receptive to the language and rhetoric that sought to remedy its consequences. 1

The Crisis of Representation

In the discussion of the semiotic crisis before and during the sixteenth century, it can be difficult to distinguish between representation and interpretation. Since the terms do not always seem to be carefully employed by critics, it is not always easy in this period to determine if the discussion addresses problems in reading or writing or both.13 I do not mean to make accusations in this regard about the integrity of certain critics’ scholarship on these matters. On the contrary, the somewhat synonymous use of the two terms only confirms that representation and interpretation are related, like two sides of the same coin. In this case, the text itself usually acts as the coin, with the writer approaching one side, and the reader the other. More precisely, representation deals primarily with the writing of texts or with the creation and use of signs and the creation of discourse, whereas interpretation has more to do with reading those objects of literary or artistic production. To add yet another layer, authors often encountered problems with writing because they suffered from problems of reading.14 Their words fail to fulfill their representative function because the 13  See Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text, 35–77 and 78–124, his chapters on imitation and interpretation respectively. The former deals more with representation. Nevertheless, it is not always clear whether representation or interpretation is the focus. See also Hampton, Writing from History, 5: “Exemplarity, then, shifts the problem of imitation, much discussed by recent critics as a cornerstone of writing in the Renaissance, to the level of reading.” Writing corresponds to representation, while reading corresponds to interpretation. And yet, the focus of his study remains more on the representation of exemplars. Hampton’s work exemplifies the overlap between the two but also highlights the sliding back and forth that has possibly created a lack of clarity in the discussion. 14  See Hampton, Writing from History, 5. Hampton insists that issues of reading were coming first: “Thus, Cave’s assertion that imitation as writing produces new notions of reading in the Renaissance might well be reversed, and one might say that it is in fact from their relationships to their readers and to the space in which those readers define themselves through action that Renaissance texts derive their structure and rhetorical strategies.” One could say, therefore, that representation followed interpretation for good or for ill. If one begins to recognize problems of reading, those certainly could translate into problems of writing for authors as imitators.

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author’s interpretation of signs had already distanced the sign from the signified. Here I want to focus first on this process of representation and where it breaks down. By representation, I mean the ability of signs, in this case, words, to carry out their proper function in representing meaning. As I mentioned in my introduction to this chapter, it is a question of assessing how well the word “glory” represents glory. From the late Middle Ages into the sixteenth century, signs began to fail in their primary function of signifying; they ceased to properly represent their meaning, especially as authors used them. At the heart of this failure, though, is distance, for the farther a sign moves from the signified, the less it is able to fulfill its function of pointing to its established meaning.15 One can point to many events, trends, and even individual texts that suggest this distance and the difficulties with representation that contribute to a crisis thereof, all of which would be too numerous to examine in this short overview. However, several of these trends are particularly pertinent, especially when examining literary discourse and its reliability in the representation of prominent figures and events during the wars of religion. The first was the dilution of meaning that occurred toward the end of the Middle Ages, mostly due to the deficiencies of symbolism and realism that governed the use of signs. Secondly, the rise of nominalism and its descendants muddied the concept of universals and the connections to them, preferring to find meaning first at the level of the particular. Finally, destructive debates that occurred between, for example, scholastics and humanists and then between Ancients and Moderns undermined the efficacy of discourse as the polemics between the two called into question articulations of the fundamentals of their respective intellectual and literary movements, making it difficult for interlocutors to find a discursive space in which to communicate. 1.1 Too Much of a Good Thing The transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance brought to the surface many problems in medieval discourse, even as some elements of that discourse continued well into the sixteenth century. In the religious domain, the richness 15  See Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). Foucault contends that during the Renaissance, signs “n’avaient pas besoin d’être connus pour exister : même s’ils restaient silencieux et si jamais personne ne les apercevait, ils ne perdaient rien de leur consistance” (73). By contrast, in the seventeenth century, “Le signe n’attend pas silencieusement la venue de celui qui peut le reconnaître : il ne se constitue jamais que par un acte de connaissance” (73). Foucault is more or less summarizing the ante rem and post rem perspectives. It is precisely within this transition from one understanding to the other where the distance between the word and the thing is perceived and exploited.

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and complexity of the union between faith, culture, and language during the Middle Ages might have actually diluted meaning and inhibited the ability of words to represent meaning properly. The medieval French context consisted of both “an unlimited desire to bestow form on everything that is sacred, to give any religious idea a material shape so that it exists in the mind like a crisply painted picture,” but also an atmosphere in which there is “nothing and no action that is not put in its relationship to Christ and faith.”16 This was likely the goal of a society and culture that embodied the intricate and delicate union of religion and daily life. And yet, the pervasiveness of these two medieval desires creates a problem, for “in this supernaturalized atmosphere, the religious tension of true transcendence, the stepping away from the material, cannot always occur. If this tension is missing, then everything intended to awaken a consciousness of God rigidifies into terrible banality, being an astonishing this-worldliness in other-worldly terms.”17 Representation of religious fervor and sentiment borders on the absurd with the ritualizing of every action and every second of the day, leading one mystic, Henry Suso, for example, to slice and peel his apple in such a way as to honor the Trinity, as well as the relationship between Mary and Jesus.18 As these minutiae of daily life are infused with maximum religious meaning, the meaning of religion itself along with its doctrines and images, is obscured. Furthermore, the combination of this extreme symbolism with the detailed and exaggeratedly hierarchical realism at all levels of medieval life creates a context in which the smallest adversity or inconsistency can cause whole systems of thought to unravel. Before the arrival of humanism, these inconsistencies did indeed begin to arise during the Middle Ages. Jean Gerson recounts meeting someone who saw the feast of All Fool’s Day as equivalent in solemnity to the feast of the Immaculate Conception, for example.19 Such a comparison trivializes the solemn; if everything is so sacred, nothing is. Even while the connections between signs and the signified remained technically intact, they are continually undermined by the tenuousness of symbolic, as well as idealistic, thought. Johan Huizinga summarizes the many faults of medieval reasoning in his chapter entitled, “Forms of Thought in Practice,” in his provocatively titled The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919). In short, the rush to generalization based on single instances and the near

16  Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 173, 174. 17  Huizinga, Autumn, 174. 18  Huizinga, Autumn, 174. 19  Huizinga, Autumn, 175.

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constant reliance on mistaken judgments to reinforce false narratives pervade the late medieval mind.20 What makes this intellectual environment an antecedent to the crisis of representation is not necessarily these many weaknesses that Huizinga lists. Ultimately, yes, the superficiality and lack of complexity make easy targets for the humanists, philologists, and rhetoricians of the Renaissance, but it is the certitude with which this medieval mentality proposes its conclusions that is its undoing and is also the way in which late medieval thought leads to the crisis of representation. Contrast Huizinga’s characterizations with that of his predecessors Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt. Jo Tollebeek, when outlining the problem of the Renaissance and its relationship to the late Middle Ages, finds common ground between the three historians in their agreement on the pejorative characterization of this medieval certitude as “fossilization.”21 However, Huizinga came to believe that the Renaissance did not usher in the remedy to the fossilized and staid Middle Ages, but a period of decline that extended out of its ostensibly dowdy predecessor.22 According to the Dutch cultural historian, the Renaissance was not “ ‘the dawn’ of the Enlightenment (Michelet), not an ‘awakening’ (Burckhardt), not an ‘exuberant acceptance and dominance of life’ (the fin-de-siècle Renaissancism modelled on Nietzsche). The Renaissance  […] had been less modern, more ‘medieval’.”23 Amid the fossilization of thought in the late Middle Ages proposed by Huizinga, signs, of course, become dead, lifeless, and isolated from any meaningful context. While it remains up for debate whether or not Huizinga’s assertion about the periodization of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance is accurate, it raises questions about—or at least, places in the realm of possibility—the fact that the tired and staid cultural discourse of the late Middle Ages persisted into the Renaissance. At the very least, the consequences of this fossilized discourse 20  Huizinga, Autumn, 282–83. 21  Jo Tollebeek, “ ‘Renaissance’ and ‘fossilization’: Michelet, Burckhardt, and Huizinga,” Renaissance Studies 15, no. 3 (2001): 358. 22  The question of how the Renaissance could have emerged out of such infertile intellectual and cultural ground posed a problem for these historians. See Tollebeek, “ ‘Renaissance,’ ” 359. According to Tollebeek, Burckhardt never resolved it: by the time of his Die Kultur, “the break between the two [periods] was complete; how the new civilization had arisen—indeed, how it had been able to arise—remained a puzzle for the reader.” As for Michelet, he proposed several solutions and ultimately settles on the image of death: the Renaissance had emerged “in a passage through death, in which life had vanquished fossilization” (361). 23  Tollebeek, “ ‘Renaissance,’ ” 362. Other critics of Huizinga affirm this assessment. See Wessel Krul, “In the Mirror of van Eyck: Johan Huizinga’s Autumn of the Middle Ages,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 27, no. 3 (1997): 362.

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endured and contributed to the decline in the ability of discourse to properly represent meaning. 1.2 Nominalism The realism and symbolism that weakened the connection between words and their meanings does not necessarily give a full perspective on the state of representation at the end of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. Huizinga succeeds in presenting only a partial picture in his assessment of discourse within its cultural context in this time and place. At one point in The Autumn of the Middle Ages, Huizinga refers briefly to another prominent force but seems to dismiss it in favor of affirming the dominant influence of realism and symbolism. Nominalism opposed this prevailing influence, and about it, Huizinga writes: There were also nominalists: the universalia post rem had its defenders. However, the thesis is not too daring that radical nominalism has never been something else other than a countercurrent, a reaction, an opposition, and that the younger, more moderate nominalism only accommodated certain philosophical reservations about an extreme realism, but placed no obstacle in the path of the inherent-realistic thought of medieval intellectual culture in general.24 This assessment falls a bit short, for nominalism more than “accommodated certain philosophical reservations.” It set itself up as an opposing force to realism, and as William Courtenay attests in contradistinction to Huizinga, the debate between realism and nominalism had not been resolved in favor of realism; this was only Huizinga’s read on the situation.25 Thus, if nominalism continued to exert influence on the intellectual life beyond the thirteenth century, what was its role in the crisis of representation? Nominalism, after all, reemerges, as we have already seen, in the writings of Montaigne, and the fact that its echoes appear in the context of Montaigne’s discussion of the semiotic crisis might lead one to believe that its heritage is related to it in some way. Nominalism has its roots in Plato’s Cratylus since it is associated with the conventionalist position taken by Cratylus himself.26 In the Middle Ages, 24  Huizinga, Autumn, 237. 25  William J. Courtenay, “Huizinga’s Heirs: Interpreting the Late Middle Ages,” in “Herbst des Mittelalters”? Fragen zur Bewertung des 14. und 15. Jahrunderts, ed. Jan A. Aertsen and Martin Pickavé (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 34. 26  See Raphael Demos, “Plato’s Philosophy of Language,” The Journal of Philosophy 61, no. 2 (October 1964): 595–610. Demos’s analysis makes plain the connection, especially as it pertains to both conventionalism and nominalism’s relationship to the arbitrary.

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however, numerous thinkers and scholars engage the trend, among whom we can cite William of Ockham, Pierre d’Ailly in France, and Gregory of Rimini.27 A clear and consistent definition of nominalism may be hard to discern, but Cyrille Michon offers one that attempts to encompass multiple centuries and thinkers: Face à cette incertitude historique, j’ai préféré réserver le qualificatif de nominaliste à toute doctrine qui a) refuse de poser dans son ontologie autre chose que des individus concrets b)  cantonne au monde des signes (des noms) l’universalité et l’abstraction.28 Confronted with this historical uncertainty, I have preferred to reserve the label of nominalist to every doctrine that a)  refuses to pose in its ontology anything other than concrete individuals b)  relegates to the world of signs (of names) universality and abstraction. On both accounts, nominalism stands in contrast to the realism and symbolism of the Middle Ages that Huizinga describes. Since the goal of realism is to find how the concrete instances reflect a universal that exists unto itself, the two seem impossible to reconcile. While that may be, it is not impossible to attribute to both movements an effect on the crisis of representation. As for nominalism’s effect, it introduces an element of subjectivity that complicates a word’s ability to represent, especially as one ventures into abstraction, for an intellectual outlook focused so much on a collection of concrete examples will by nature make abstraction difficult. Courtenay affirms that nominalism, as an anti-realist view focuses on a world that is described in terms of individual substances and their qualities: “It replaced a world of inherent essences that made things operate as they did, with a contingent, legislative view of the orders of nature and grace. And instead of seeking causes in forms that lie behind or beyond sense experience, and then transforming those into images, this other approach privileged the world of sense experience and individual 27  See Courtenay, “Heirs,” 35. Courtenay cites others like Adam Wodeham, Nicole Oresme and Marsilius of Inghen. Huizinga, however, only mentions Oresme and not in the context of nominalism. See Huizinga, Autumn, 384, where he writes that Oresme was no humanist, “even though the ideas of Oresme contained much that is new.” 28  Cyrille Michon, Nominalisme: La théorie de la signification d’Occam (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1994), 16.

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things, and distrusted images and explanations based on inherent natures that cannot be directly perceived.”29 By way of example, my idea of charity may look very different from my neighbor’s idea of the same. When writing about it, my neighbor will therefore read into my idea of charity her idea of it. If the universal, Charity, is no longer clear or even purported to exist, much more communication is needed to properly contextualize the word in order for it to correspond to the concept. This then raises the question as to how nominalism was possible or even desirable in the cultural atmosphere that Huizinga describes. While I am not here to argue necessarily against Huizinga, his critics’ responses help to shed light on the development of the crisis of representation. For example, Courtenay goes on to explain that nominalism is actually closer to a more traditionally biblical framework, which “sees the universe as a contingent system, created and not necessary, which operates on the basis of God’s ordinations and sustaining will.”30 Such a biblical perspective on words and meanings makes sense in the later Middle Ages and into the Renaissance with the advent of the Protestant Reformation and its perspective on sacred texts.31 The Reformation’s eventual rise also seems to confirm Courtenay’s assertion that nominalism existed side by side with the realist intellectual environment that Huizinga describes. If this is indeed the case, nominalism offers an attractive alternative to a system of thought that in its excesses has exhausted words to the extent that they no longer have meaning; logically, making them more concrete and localized might rehabilitate them. However, as nominalism began to affect theological reflection and inquiry, it introduced into the late medieval—and eventually, Renaissance—mind the essential quality to the development of the crisis of representation, which is distance. Distance as a consequence to nominalism and to nominalist theology was felt at the level of one’s relationship to God that resulted from nominalist views on God’s absolute versus God’s ordained power. An emphasis on the former meant that human beings could no longer necessarily trust God to act according to the order by which he has created the world. Since our senses and our 29  Courtenay, “Heirs,” 34–35. 30  Courtenay, “Heirs,” 35. 31  Courtenay, “Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion: Papers from the University of Michigan Conference, ed. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 31. Courtenay critiques the decidedly negative early twentieth century view of nominalism that labeled it as destructive of Christianity and therefore leading to the Reformation. While I still believe that nominalism is no doubt connected, I take a neutral stand as to the degree of its influence.

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reason tie us so firmly to this established order and since God may, according to this idea, have the option of denying, neglecting, or contradicting it, God becomes one who acts randomly and arbitrarily. According to the nominalist position, while one certainly can make a decent guess as to how God will act, the uncertainty that the assumptions of God’s absolute power introduces constantly lurks, placing one’s reasonable conclusions into question.32 Scholars like William Courtenay and others have attempted to moderate this view. In nuancing the thought of William of Ockham and of others considered to be nominalists, Courtenay writes, “God has committed himself to maintain the order that he has created, and when he occasionally acts contrary to certain principles or laws that normally operate within that order, it is for reasons that are in keeping with the broader design of his established will.”33 Nonetheless, according to this more moderated view, Ockham’s thought still at the very least emphasizes that one’s knowledge of reality comes from contact with the particular that reinforces an empiricist and skeptical inquiry.34 A specific question arises as to how realism (ante rem) and nominalism (post rem) interact with each other and within the culture to contribute to the crisis of representation. Realism searches for universals to identify particulars, and nominalism relies on particulars to then define universals. The fact that the two are in opposition would normally indicate that either one or the other was the problem. However, it is not necessarily what each mode of thought proposes that created problems for representation, but it was how both of them were perceived, in addition to the dialectic between the two that created the necessary distance between sign and signified. In critiquing Huizinga’s position about the realism of the late Middle Ages, Courtenay acknowledges that what 32  See Ullrich Langer, Divine and Poetic Freedom in the Renaissance: Nominalist Theology and Literature in France and Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Langer identifies this as somewhat of an extreme view of nominalism’s effect on theology and on the wider culture: “By emphasizing God’s power and freedom the late scholastics [according to Etienne Gilson] were burning the bridges to God, thus making way for a secular, empiricist, and skeptical Renaissance and Enlightenment” (7). See also Michael Giordano, The Art of Meditation and the French Renaissance Love Lyric (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). Giordano discusses the effects of nominalism on love poetry. In Giordano’s estimation, the poet in the Délie chafes at the potentia absoluta of the woman; it intensifies his rage and frustration because she does not follow the rules (315). This perspective from the poet reflects wider frustration and distance that individuals would have felt toward God as a result of nominalist thought. 33  Courtenay, “Nominalism,” 43. See also Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). Oberman not only gives voice to this attenuation of Ockham’s influence on the metaphysical disruptions of the late Middle Ages, but he also critiques Huizinga’s view of the culture through his study. 34  Courtenay, “Nominalism,” 44.

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Huizinga discusses as late medieval culture is a real and tangible possibility, albeit one that an account of the influence of late medieval philosophy does not necessarily inform.35 But one of the defining characteristics of the realist atmosphere that Courtenay tries to distinguish from Ockham and the nominalists is the overwhelming pessimism that drives Huizinga’s late medieval world. While Courtenay acknowledges that this pessimism lurks in late medieval philosophy, nominalism intends to be a positive foil, even though it fails in its effectiveness with respect to representation.36 In its view of creation, nominalism ends up inhibiting what gives words stable meaning. It seems as if words end up determining meaning rather than reflecting it. Eventually, sixteenthcentury authors will imagine themselves in relationship to their texts much in the same way that they perceive God’s relationship to creation. Leaving aside for the moment what such a role has to say about the crisis of authority, this particular staging of the author’s relationship to the text has consequences for the ability of a text’s components, namely words, to represent meaning. Returning to the nominalist discussion of God and his absolute power, one can see the complications that this raises. According to nominalism, [c]reation is now supposed to mean that every entity comes into existence from nothing, in such a way that even in respect to its conceptual definition it was not there previously. Only in this way can the possibility be excluded, as William of Ockham argues, that God might restrict His own power by creating a particular entity, because any aspect of other concrete creations that happened to be identical in species with the first could only be imitation and repetition, not creation.37 In this way, nominalism reinforces God’s creative freedom, even though it may look like God has initiated an endless series of imitations. Multiple dogs, for example, certainly resemble one another, but according to the nominalist view, each particular dog is created ex nihilo. This radical particularity does indeed succeed in concretizing concepts, perhaps helping the medieval and Renaissance mind feel more optimistic about the created world. However, as 35  Courtenay, “Heirs,” 34, 36. 36  Courtenay, “Heirs,” 31–32. Courtenay does not deny that there were reasons for the darkened worldview that Huizinga presents, but he claims that the origin of that worldview was more proximate. For example, the way in which late medieval scholars discussed the deaths of colleagues can seem cold and defeatist, but this only reflects that it’s a fact of life, not necessarily that there is a moral—read symbolic—explanation. 37  Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 153.

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previously discussed, the distance that nominalism creates between creator and creation then transfers to the created word. If each new iteration of a sign is analogously created ex nihilo, its meaning in literary discourse is destabilized and its referential powers inhibited. Clearly, nominalism as a solution to the obstacles to language erected by late medieval realism and symbolism did not help to remedy the problem. Leading up to the French wars of religion, literary discourse in France reflected some of the problems that nominalism had created while responding to—or even openly contesting—the symbolist and realist perspectives. In the influential work of François Rabelais (d. 1553), we can find this turn away from the universal, and he does so in a way that subtly presages some of the dynamics in late sixteenth-century polemics. Before getting to how Rabelais’s engagement of nominalism aided writers during the wars of religion, let us first look at problems of representation in the text itself. Of course, one of the essential characteristics of the realist perspective is the use of resemblance in determining universals. Rabelais, on the other hand, plays with resemblance, and surprisingly, it leads to a return to the individual. Ullrich Langer has commented extensively on this phenomenon in his discussion of Christian charity in Pantagruel (1532) and Gargantua (1534). He theorizes that in many of the encounters between Pantagruel and Panurge, what drives Pantagruel’s love for Panurge is not the acknowledgment that Panurge is an image of God that resembles Pantagruel himself, the normal course of things that would lead one to offer charity. Rather, Rabelais’s representation of the two reinforces their singularity. Langer writes, “Panurge and Pantagruel are not representations of each other, qua their love in the body of Christ, that is, through their common status the essence of Panurge is not present in Pantagruel, and vice-versa.”38 Whereas the concept of Christian charity would typically reinforce the appeal to the universal image of God reflected in each individual human being, Rabelais, while not necessarily denying that Panurge reflects the image of God, shifts focus to what makes Panurge different. The singularity that makes Panurge lovable replaces his participation in the body of Christ as what elicits Christian charity in Pantagruel. This “act of love based on their difference” has consequences with respect to the issue of representation, for Langer adds, “In a further sense, then, the essence of Panurge is not captured by the words used to ‘represent’ him; these words point to him, designate him, refer to him, but they are not a

38  Ullrich Langer, “Charity and the Singular: The Object of Love in Rabelais,” in Nominalism and Literary Discourse: New Perspectives, ed. Hugo Keper, Christoph Bode and Richard J. Utz (Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997), 226.

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‘copy’ of a real Panurge.”39 If descriptors of Panurge, or of any other character for that matter, can no longer capture the essence of that to which they are referring, then words are failing. According to Langer, this matches with the “nominalist refusal of the mimetic model of representation.”40 Nominalism’s focus on singularity, exemplified here in Rabelais’s account of Pantagruel’s love for Panurge, weakens the relationship between sign and signified. While it would certainly go too far to say that the connection between words and what they represent is severed, Rabelais’s suggestion that noble Christian charity can emerge from singularity has at least weakened it. The contradictions and paradoxes in Rabelais’s texts do not, of course, end there, for Pantagruel’s behavior in his first encounter with Panurge models the breakdown in representation that nominalism’s move away from mimesis engenders. The result is an episode that challenges both the symbolist and realist points of view; it is an encounter that subverts the medieval focus on God’s proximity and the universal. This famous first meeting between the giant and his companion has elicited much commentary, but for our purposes, it behooves us to go a bit deeper and expand upon Langer’s analysis of this chapter from Pantagruel as a reflection of nominalist influence in sixteenth-century literature. Langer’s analysis focuses on the end result of the encounter, that is, the charity that Pantagruel accords Panurge after finally understanding what Panurge needs. Beginning in the previous chapter, however, Rabelais, unbeknownst to the reader, is setting up the encounter that follows in a letter that Pantagruel receives from his father advising him toward a faith formed by the virtue of charity: Mais par ce que, selon le saige Salomon, Sapience n’entre point en ame malivole, et science sans conscience n’est que ruine de l’ame, il te convient server, aymer, et craindre Dieu, et en luy mettre toutes tes pensées et tout ton espoir, et par foy formée de charité, estre à luy adjoinct en sorte que jamais n’en soys desamparé par peché.41

39  Ibid. 40  Ibid. 41  François Rabelais, Pantagruel, ed. Guy Demerson (Paris: Seuil, 1996), 122, 124. For an alternative interpretation of this passage that focuses on charity, see Edwin Duval, The Design of Rabelais’s Pantagruel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). Earlier in his article on charity, Langer addresses this passage as a source of his reflection on love borne out of difference and not resemblance, which is representative of a shift toward nominalism. I am favoring Langer’s framework here.

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But since, according to Solomon, ‘Wisdom will not enter a soul which deviseth evil,’ and since ‘Science without conscience is but the ruination of the soul,’ you should serve, love and fear God, fixing all your thoughts and hopes in Him, and, by faith informed with charity, live conjoined to Him in such a way as never to be cut off from Him by sin.42 According to this advice, a faith formed by charity will keep Pantagruel connected to God such that sin will never separate him from God. It would seem that Gargantua’s advice negates the effects of nominalist theology that so often emphasizes God’s distance from human beings.43 The charity that Gargantua describes to his son follows firmly from God’s ordained order that he has laid out for human beings, thus the imperative that Pantagruel follow it. Rabelais sustains this symbolist red herring in the beginnings of the subsequent chapter, for many elements of the narrative suggest an allegorical representation of the parable of the Good Samaritan, which of course would follow nicely from the previous chapter’s exhortation on charity. Rabelais cleverly evokes this paradigm of Christian love of one’s neighbor and then promptly subverts it according to nominalist principles: if the actions of the Good 42  M.A. Screech, trans., Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Rabelais (New York: Penguin, 2006), 49. 43  This theological concept results from nominalism’s analysis of the difference between the potentia absoluta and the potentia ordinata, the difference between God’s absolute and ordained power. See Courtenay, “Nominalism,” 39: “Potentia absoluta referred to the total possibilities initially open to God, some of which were realized by creating the established order; the unrealized possibilities are now only hypothetically possible […] Potentia ordinata, on the other hand, is the total ordained will of God, the complete plan of God for his creation.” As Courtenay emphasizes, alternative created orders, while hypothetically possible, are not actually possible. Initially, the difference between these two powers did not mean that God’s intervention, by a miracle, for example, in his ordained order indicated an expression of his absolute power: “God has committed himself to maintain the order that he has created, and when he occasionally acts contrary to certain principles or laws that normally operate within that order, it is for reasons that are in keeping with the broader design of his established will” (39). However, Courtenay does allow for the possibility that some, d’Ailly and Gregory of Rimini, for example, did interpret the miraculous as a manifestation of God’s absolute power. At stake in this dialectic are the doubts it raises about God’s presence and proximity to creation. See Blumenberg, Legitimacy, 328: “The modern age began, not indeed as the epoch of the death of God, but as the epoch of the hidden God, the deus absconditus—and a hidden God is pragmatically as good as dead. The nominalist theology induces a human relation to the world whose implicit content could have been formulated in the postulate that man had to behave as though God were dead.” In this scenario, God becomes arbitrary, willful, and unpredictable; if human reason can no longer depend on or understand God, God becomes a stranger to us (Langer, Freedom, 8).

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Samaritan represent God’s divine order, Pantagruel, even though eventually acting upon Christian charity, fails to properly represent this famous Gospel passage in his initial encounter with Panurge.44 At the start, the episode depends on a visual encounter, an element that would seem to continue the allegory.45 Moreover, like the victim in Jesus’ parable, Panurge as a victim is nothing terribly out of the ordinary, and he is clearly not a beggar but a man of some stature that has endured some kind of misfortune: “Un jour, Pantagruel […] rencontra un homme beau de stature et elegant en tous lineamens du corps, mais pitoyablement navré en divers lieux et tant mal en ordre qu’il sembloit estre eschappé ès chiens, ou mieulx resembloit un cueilleur de pommes du païs du Perche” (Pantagruel […] one day […] met a man handsomely built and elegant in all his bodily lineaments but piteously injured here and there and so bedraggled that he looked as if he had just escaped from a pack of dogs, or better still like an apple-picker from the orchards of Perche).46 In the Gospel of Luke, robbers have attacked the victim leaving him half-dead on the side of the road.47 So far, so good; with Christian charity in the background of the narrative, we can now expect Pantagruel to help the victim and to embody Christian charity as he plays the role of the Good Samaritan. And yet, this succor is slow in coming, as Pantagruel, though clearly moved by the sight of Panurge, hesitates by first speaking and asking questions of the victim before offering aid. The Good Samaritan does not speak and does not ask questions; he simply springs into action. At this point, Rabelais initiates his subversion of symbolist representation. With the breakdown of the allegory, Rabelais derails the ability of the characters to represent and to replicate this particular ideal of Christian charity that Rabelais has deliberately suggested. Rabelais’s characters are freer than that and are able to embody instead nominalism’s assertions about the limits 44  At first glance, Pantagruel’s failure to recognize his neighbor in need might seem to be a breakdown in interpretation on Pantragruel’s part, and while I certainly do not preclude the possibility that this passage could be a part of a discussion of the crisis of interpretation, many elements in the encounter indicate that problems of representation arise as well. 45  “But a Samaritan traveler who came upon [the victim] was moved with compassion at the sight” (Luke 10:33) (emphasis mine). See Timothy Hampton, Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 42: “This motif [of the importance of vision] is also central to Christ’s parable about the good Samaritan. For it stresses that charity and pity stem not from language, but from vision: ‘and when he saw him, he had compassion’ ” (emphasis in the original). 46  Rabelais, Pantagruel, 126. Translation from Screech, Gargantua and Pantgruel, 51. 47  Luke 10:30. All biblical citations, unless otherwise indicated from NASB (La Habra, CA: Foundation Publications, 1997).

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of resemblance. Both the Gospel narrative and Rabelais’s story of the meeting of two strangers result in an act of charity, but symbolism’s insistence on the representation of some independent external nature of things, especially a divine one, no longer applies. In pushing the narrative away from an allegory of the Good Samaritan, Rabelais denies the reader his symbolism but creates a context in which what follows stresses the charity based on singularity that Langer emphasizes. While Rabelais may have been proposing a solution to the problem of symbolism, his nominalist response still could have created confusion. If loving one’s neighbor is no longer based on one’s resemblance to the neighbor or on two individuals’ resemblance to God, on what is it, in fact, based? Langer’s argument is that it is based on difference. Nevertheless, it demonstrates how this nominalist particularity can throw into confusion the significance of even the simple but very important word, “neighbor.” Rabelais has used the text to demonstrate the value of nominalism’s preference away from the pre-existing universal, away from the mimetic, and toward the unique and the specific. This further detachment and preference away from universals unmoor words and images from what they signify and will open up new lines of debate that are just as detrimental in the crisis of representation. 1.3 Scholasticism vs. Humanism48 Nominalism, of course, was not the only destabilizing force in these areas of medieval and Renaissance life. Intellectual trends associated with humanism proved just as influential, and the humanist rivalry with scholasticism provides a framework in which to explore the effects of humanism on the reliability of discourse. The humanist tendency to assume scholastic training, even while challenging it, adds to the confusion. As with nominalism, humanism, which focuses so much on words, uses them to strike at some of the most fundamental assumptions of its elder rival. Representation undergoes a double blow in the battle between these two intellectual traditions: on the one hand, scholasticism’s overuse and abuse of words, especially in relationship to the 48  Many destructive debates occurred before and during the sixteenth century that contributed to the instability of both representation and interpretation: Ciceronian controversies, neoplatonism, the Querelle des Amyes, and the Querelle des femmes are but a few examples. The choice to discuss scholasticism vs. humanism and Ancients vs. Moderns is meant to give two salient examples that speak to both literary discourse and approaches to history, but in no way to exclude these others as being insignificant. For more on these other controversies, see, for example, Floyd Gray, Gender, Rhetoric and Print Culture in French Renaissance Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); JoAnn DellaNeva, ed., and Brian Duvick, trans., Ciceronian Controversies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007; M.A. Screech, “An Interpretation of the Querelle des Amyes,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 21, no. 1 (1959): 103–30.

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transcendent, exacerbates what Huizinga describes above, and on the other, humanism’s attempt to concretize meaning through the senses equally distances the signified from one’s experience of words. The debate that would then develop between the two further creates a situation in which resolution, namely for words and their meaning, remains elusive. Erika Rummel characterizes the opposition between the scholastic and humanist traditions in terms that reflect the polemical nature of the period: “On the whole, the polemics of the sixteenth century were aggressive and unforgiving in tone. Unvarnished bluntness came to characterize the dispute. A magisterial tone pervaded the writings of the scholastic theologians; invective was the weapon of choice in the humanistic camp.”49 A magisterial tone is not surprising considering the aforementioned fossilization of thought and discourse during the period out of which scholasticism had emerged. By the end of the Middle Ages, the intense and fastidious dialectic was not just killing creativity of thought, but it was also depriving words of their meaning in its search for extreme precision and the endless parsing of ideas. The desire for the refinement of terms became so radical that it was impossible for meaning to have stability since further refinement was always possible or even necessary in the scholastic mind.50 Since the scholastics equated this refinement and precision with truth and correctness, typically backed by the Magisterium of the Church, their arrogance and fossilization followed quite logically. On the other hand, the contemptuous tone struck by the humanists was equally unhelpful to words and their meanings; the invective had the potential to undermine the innovative scholarship that humanists undertook. On one side, scholasticism attempted to arrive at the perfect—in the sense of complete—meaning. On the other, humanism sought to discover the original meaning. Humanists often labeled the hyper-precision for which scholastics were known as either obscurantism or pedantism. The former is a “darkening” or “obscuring” of ideas and concepts through language; obscurantism by its very etymology reflects the aspects of the crisis of representation

49  Erika Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance & Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 5. 50  See Petrarch’s characterization of scholasticism, as quoted in Rummel, Debate, 30: his opinion includes “the characterization of the scholastic method as mental gymnastics rather than a genuine search for truth; the view that dialectic has no moral application and therefore must not become a lifetime pursuit; the description of the dialectician as contentious, quibbling sophists; and the rejection of the notion that subtle speculation could further an understanding of the Word of God.”

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that scholasticism precipitated.51 The problem was so prevalent that even purported defenders of scholasticism criticized obscurantist tendencies for their damaging effects on language and the pursuit of knowledge.52 Pedantism gets bogged down in false details; it is the hair-splitting that avoids the true substance of the question. Obviously, the two are related, but the perception of these particular deficiencies in scholasticism provide fertile ground for Rabelais’s satiric pen in Chapter VI of Pantagruel. The encounter with the Limousin, like the first encounter between Pantagruel and Panurge, has elements that reflect the crisis of interpretation, to be sure, but they also reflect how being obscure and pedantic inhibited representation. In the case of the Limousin, Rabelais does not just end up critiquing the ill effects of scholastic precision, but he also raises some important issues about the use of Latin, which touches on yet another discussion about the effects of the increasing prominence of the vernacular.53 While Latin words were becoming increasingly foreign, the vernacular as a vessel by which scholars discussed serious matters of theology or philosophy might have been too low-brow to properly convey meaning about such weighty ideas.54 In any case, Rabelais mocks the propensity on the Limousin’s part to evade meaningful discourse by employing Scholastic techniques. 1.4 Ancients vs. Moderns More germane to the fundamentals of literary discourse during the wars of religion, the later debate between the Ancients and the Moderns that manifests 51  See Erasmus, De Copia, trans. Betty I. Knott, vol. 2 of Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. Craig R. Thompson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), I, 1 (295): “We find that a good many mortal men who make great efforts to achieve this godlike power of speech fall instead into mere glibness, which is both silly and offensive. They pile up a meaningless heap of words and expressions without any discrimination, and thus obscure the subject they are talking about, as well as belabouring the ears of their unfortunate audience.” 52  See Jean Gerson, Contra curiositatem studentium, ed. and trans. Steven Ozment (Leiden: Brill, 1969). It would seem that Gerson critiques especially the tendency of scholastics to expound on things about which they know very little or things that God has chosen not to reveal. Gerson writes: “Yet, as the mockery we see about us daily demonstrates, they presume to pass judgment and speculate on these things which they cannot understand, and they rush into so many fantastic absurdities” (43). Obscurantist language certainly aids and abets those addressing things they themselves do not understand. In addition, such a scenario renders their discourse ever more opaque and therefore useless. 53  For a more extended treatment on the episode of the Limousin and its implications for language, see Gérard Defaux, Pantagruel et les sophistes: Contribution à l’histoire de l’humanisme chrétien au XVI ème siècle (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). 54  Joachim Du Bellay will address this problem in his La Deffence, et Illustration de la Langue Françoyse (1549).

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itself in the debate over poetry in the mid-sixteenth century shares some of the characteristics of the debate between scholastic and humanist. This discussion about the nature of poetic discourse furthers the crisis of representation, however, in its more direct treatment of the consequences of the move to lyric poetry. Many who are participating in this debate will later make contributions to the literary discourse that emerges in the political sphere during the wars of religion. I would like to take a look at this debate primarily through the writings of two major players who defined themselves in opposition to one another: Thomas Sébillet in the Art poétique françois (1548) and Joachim Du Bellay in La Deffence, et Illustration de la Langue Françoyse (1549). The latter, of course, looms larger on the horizon of literary discourse, but the former made a contribution to the discussion that helps to concretize the continuing disputes about language and its ability to represent images and ideas. These two examples of the genre of the art poétique serve as contrasting guides for poetic representation on the eve of the wars of religion. As with many of the trends we have already examined, the desire to improve and solidify expression continues to add to the instability of the process. In addition, these treatises on the poetic arts attempt to clarify the program of a new poetry in the vernacular. Thus, they continue to problematize the issue of representation, especially with respect to the role of the ancient languages in early modern discourse. As we make the transition from a more intellectual debate between scholasticism and humanism, it is important to look to the poets and how they digest and participate in the debate leading up to the period in question.55 One of the principles upon which Sébillet insists in his Art poétique françois is that of the inspiration of the poet. His appeals to virtue certainly speak of an Aristotelian influence. He writes: “Tous lés ars sont tant conjoins avec ceste divine perfection que nous appellons Vertu, que outre ce qu’ilz ont assis leur fondement sus elle comme pierre quarrée et ferme, encore ont ilz emprunté d’elle leur vertueuse appellation” (All of these arts are so joined with this divine perfection that we call Virtue that in addition to having laid their foundation upon it as a squared and firm stone, they have borrowed from it their virtuous appellation).56 Sébillet describes a participation in divine inspiration that places the poet and his work in a passive role. While the structure of the poet’s 55  See Jean-Charles Monferran, L’Ecole des muses: Les arts poétiques français à la Renaissance (1548–1610) (Geneva: Droz, 2011), 16: “[L]es traits que nous étudions ne sont pour la plupart pas l’œuvre de savants, de maîtres ou de précepteurs mais celle de poètes, qui font et pensent la poésie à la fois, et cette double compétence n’est pas sans incidence sur la conception comme sur l’écriture de leurs textes.” 56  Thomas Sébillet, Art poétique françois (Paris: Gilles Corrozet, 1548), I, 1 (1). (BnF RESYE-1213).

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relationship to the divine is certainly not out of place in the mid-sixteenth century, it is reminiscent of more scholastic modes of thought. Sébillet elaborates on this articulation of poetic purpose by listing the great leaders and prophets of the Old Testament, of ancient Greece, and beyond. He writes, “Car ce qu’en Pöésie est nommé art, et que nous traitons comme art en cest opuscule, n’est rien que la nue escorce de Pöésie qui couvre artificiellement sa naturéle séve, et son âme naturélement divine” (For what in Poetry is named art, and that we discuss as art in this opuscule, is nothing other than the naked bark of Poetry which artificially covers its natural sap, and its naturally divine soul).57 The real substance of poetry, that is, its soul and lifeblood, has its source in the divine, and its value corresponds not to its outer ornaments but in the degree to which it reflects its spiritual origin.58 At the level of invention and elocution, Sébillet proposes what one might call a more conservative approach. For example, when discussing proper elocution, he writes: “Je voeil seulement en cest endroit aviser le futur Pöéte, qu’il soit rare et avisé en la novation dés mots” (I want only to advise the future Poet, that he be infrequent and careful in the innovation of words).59 Neologisms, even though they might certainly enrich the language and be founded upon ancient forms, pose a danger, if only for fear that “l’asprété du mot nouveau n’égratigne et ride lés aureilles rondes” (the bitterness of the new word does not scratch and wrinkle round ears).60 The danger of such innovation might be that it flows from neglecting or superseding divine inspiration in favor of pagan sources.61 57  Ibid. 58  Sébillet’s view certainly reflects a neoplatonist understanding of poetry’s relationship to the divine. One can trace this perspective back to scholasticism through Pico. The relationship becomes even clearer in light of Maritain’s definition of art in The Frontiers of Poetry: “Thomistic theology considers the peculiar nature of the idea of the artist and closely investigates what it implies. It is an idea of making or doing, a spiritual and immanent object contemplated in the mind, born of and nourished by the mind, living by the life of the mind, the immaterial matrix out of which the work is produced in being, an idea formative of things and not formed by them. Far from being measured by them like the speculative concept, it is the more independent of things the better it realises its peculiar essence” (Art and Scholasticism and the Frontiers of Poetry, trans. Joseph W. Evans (New York: Scribner, 1962), 89) (emphasis in the original). 59  Sébillet, I, 4 (9). 60  Ibid. 61  See Francis Goyet, ed., introduction to Traités de poétique et rhétorique de la Renaissance (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1991). Goyet distinguishes one of the main points of contention between writers like Sébillet and Aneau and those of the Pléiade: “L’inspiration antique et païenne s’oppose en effet à une inspiration moralisitrice et chrétienne alors beaucoup plus puissante qu’on ne pourrait l’imaginer aujourd’hui. Pour Sébillet, la source de l’inspiration remonte non à Homère mais à Moïse” (27).

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Du Bellay, in what constitutes the modern response to Sébillet, expresses not an altogether different view. As Goyet points out in his introduction to his edition on poetic treatises, little territory divides the two sides.62 And yet, the polemic develops anyway.63 Du Bellay continues to focus on the enrichment of the French language, rejecting the more staid processes of Sébillet and the Marotiques and emphasizes the development of the proper poetic aesthetic that will assist the French language in moving beyond Latin and other ancient sources while still not forgetting them. In this sense, Du Bellay shows himself the descendant of humanism. While discovering ancient texts is essential for the development and cultivation of the French language, he proposes a few caveats. As a guide to how sixteenth-century poets should proceed, he proposes as a model the way in which the Romans engaged with Greek texts: Immitant les meilleurs Aucteurs Grecz, se transformant en eux, les devorant, et apres les avoir bien digerez, les convertissant en sang, et nouriture, se proposant chacun selon son Naturel, et l’Argument qu’il vouloit elire, le meilleur Aucteur, dont ilz observoint diligemment toutes les plus rares, et exquises vertuz, et icelles comme Grephes, ainsi que j’ay dict devant, entoint, et apliquoint à leur Langue. Cela faisant (dy-je) les Romains ont baty tous ces beaux Ecriz, que nous louons, et admirons si fort.64 By imitating the best Greek authors, transforming themselves into them, devouring them, and, after having thoroughly digested them, converting them into blood and nourishment, selecting, each according to his own 62  Goyet, introduction to Traités, 8. 63  For the polemical response to Du Bellay, see Barthélemy Aneau, Le Quintil horacien, in Traités de poétique et rhétorique de la Renaissance, ed. Francis Goyet (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2002), 175–218. Aneau writes as Quintilius, a critic of Virgil and Horace and who Du Bellay himself describes as “un sçavant Homme, aussi peu adulateur,” in Book II of the Deffence. See Joachim Du Bellay, La Deffence, et Illustration de la Langue Françoyse, ed. Jean-Charles Monferran (Geneva: Droz, 2001), II, 11 (168). Aneau begins with Du Bellay’s title and goes chapter by chapter, critiquing it in a manner nothing short of ruthless. 64  Du Bellay, La Deffence, I, 7 (91–92). This is one of the passages that Aneau heavily criticizes: “Tout le commencement du chapitre est de translation vicieuse, et inconséquente, commençant par manger, moyennant par planter, et finissant par bâtir, en parlant toujours de mêmes choses : auquel vice tombent coutumièrement ceux qui toujours veulent métamorphiser, où il n’est besoin, et appliquer figures, où propriété serait mieux convenante” (Aneau, Quintil, 189). Aneau, in his critique, arrives at the very problem I propose: Du Bellay, et al., through their excessive innovation, while creative and dynamic, created problems for representation and interpretation.

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nature and the topic he wished to choose, the best author, all of whose rarest and most exquisite strengths they diligently observed and, like shoots, grafted them, as I said earlier, and adapted them to their own language. In doing this (I say) the Romans constructed all those fine writings we so ardently praise and admire.65 Du Bellay uses the metaphors of devouring and digestion to describe the appropriate way to integrate these texts that have gone before them. Mere translation, of course, does not suffice.66 The organic process that Du Bellay describes can and does result in writing that resembles the Ancients, but it is nevertheless transformed. On the one hand, a new and interesting reality manifests itself in the newly reborn text. On the other hand, digestion, after all, causes degradation. In the transformation of ancient models and texts, Du Bellay’s process can take the original texts to places not easily recognized. At the same time, it is clear that Du Bellay, even in his counsel, shows the difficulties in representation that were already developing. As Barthélemy Aneau points out in his critique of the Deffense, Du Bellay becomes excessive in his metaphors, mixing digestion, plants, and building. What function, therefore, do words serve, even in a translation? Aneau is correct to point out that Du Bellay’s argument is problematic not only on a conceptual level, but it also reflects the developing problem in its articulation. As the French language becomes more prominent and is more and more charged with being able to appropriately signify, even in a translation, Du Bellay seems to struggle with its adequacy in using it to define what it means to translate ancient texts. Du Bellay far from demonstrates that translation into the vernacular can bring clear and verifiable representations of meaning. Du Bellay’s mixed metaphors suggest the wide distance that translators must traverse in order to render ancient texts in a French that is true to their meaning. As if translation did not already suffer from such distance by way of its susceptibility to false equivalency. Translation requires nuance, and although Du Bellay tries to capture that nuance with multiple images, he fails to execute that nuance adroitly. It is fair to ask whether Du Bellay’s exposition on translation is symptomatic of a crisis in language or if it goes right to the cause, whether Du Bellay’s entire text on the French language creates confusion about 65  Translation from Joachim Du Bellay, The Regrets with the Antiquities of Rome, Three Latin Elegies, and the Defense and Enrichment of the French Language, trans. Richard Helgerson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 336. 66  See Du Bellay, La Deffence, I, 6 (89–91).

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that language’s ability to represent meaning or if the fact that he entitles it “La Deffence” reflects a disquiet with problems in representation that Du Bellay already saw on the horizon. An argument can be made for both. Nominalism had certainly erected a significant distance between name and thing; it instantiated names too profoundly in the particular, multiplying meaning and a nascent relativism. Scholastics, humanists, Ancients, and Moderns all tried in their own way to engender discourse with meaning, but as these various movements debated as to how best to do that, they further distanced the sign from the signified. Sébillet and Du Bellay also raise an important question about where the poet’s authority has its source, a question that determines the author’s relationship to the text and to an extent, the authority of the text itself. This anticipates some of the issues in the crisis of authority. For now, while this distance creates a problem for representation and for writing it also means that readers will struggle to interpret as these words drift from what they represent. 2

The Crisis of Interpretation

Implied in many of the processes under examination in the previous section is not simply difficulty with the act of writing but also with the act of reading, for during the Renaissance, a great deal of reading is encouraged in order to write.67 One certainly cannot imitate without first reading to find out what is worthy of imitation, and one cannot ignore, therefore, the role of this fundamental element to the process of writing in examining the atmosphere of the semiotic crisis leading up to the wars of religion. After this analysis the many 67  Erasmus, De Copia, I, 9 (303): “In addition we shall add greatly to our linguistic resources if we translate authors from the Greek, as that language is particularly rich in subjectmatter and vocabulary. It will also prove quite useful on occasion to compete with these Greek authors by paraphrasing what they have written. It will be of enormous value to take apart the fabric of poetry and reweave it in prose, and vice versa, to bind the freer language of prose under the rules of metre, and also to pour the same subject-matter from one poetic container into another. It will also be very helpful to emulate a passage from some author where the spring of eloquence seems to bubble up particularly richly, and endeavor in our own strength to equal or even surpass it. We shall find it particularly useful to ‘thumb the great authors by night and day,’ especially those who were outstanding in the rich style, such as Cicero, Aulus Gellius, and Apuleius. We must keep our eyes open to observe every figure of speech that they use, store it in our memory once observed, imitate it once remembered, and by constant employment develop an expertise by which we may call upon it instantly.” Also, Joachim Du Bellay writes in the Deffence: “Ly, donques, et rely premièrement (ò Poëte futur), fueillette de Main nocturne, et journelle, les Exemplaires Grecz et Latins” (II, 4 (131)).

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difficulties and challenges of writing in the late medieval and early modern period, one can begin to see how troubles in the area of representation can quite easily lead to tumult in interpretation and vice versa. In fact, readers must strain all the harder to bring into focus the meanings of texts as signs falter in their representation. After all, the crisis in representation does not translate into the cessation of all interpretation. On the contrary, interpretation becomes just as necessary but more subjective; interpretation in this period reflects a desire for greater certainty while in practice yielding very little. As the second of the three branches in the semiotic crisis, the crisis of interpretation presents yet another opportunity for the writers and thinkers of the sixteenth century to simultaneously struggle with and profit from the competing interpretations and to stake a claim on truth. Interpretation becomes a locus of dispute, hesitation, and doubt, but this is only the beginning. Michel Jeanneret writes: “L’hésitation sur les niveaux de sens, sur la priorité du littéral ou du figuré, le débat sur les méthodes de lecture et, devant un objet énigmatique, la prolifération des explications possibles, tout cela touche à des points névralgiques, dans l’activité savant comme dans la vie religieuse de la Renaissance.”68 If this is only the “tip of the iceberg”, as Jeanneret puts it, neuralgic is a good word. Through new methods and more so-called “scientific” analysis, scholars try to discover “original” or “true” interpretations in order to settle important, even ancient, questions. As with representation, however, there are unintended consequences that, ironically, will undermine their efforts. Later, when political discourse begins to unravel, the race to lay claim to “proper” interpretations of history, theology, or literature will become even more urgent and more elusive. In this section I will attempt to address the many issues surrounding interpretation at which Jeanneret hints. Even more so than with representation, we begin to see the hardened polemics that develop around many of these issues since interpretation tips the balance toward action—toward Reiss’s idea of “social purposiveness”—whereas the effects of the crisis of representation rest more with the author’s creative process. First and foremost, I will begin with a discussion of imitation that builds a nice bridge between representation and interpretation and explores the interpretative side of that particular process. Exemplarity posed an especially interesting problem for imitators during the Renaissance since what or whom one chooses to imitate reflects so much contemporary ideas about what those original sources meant. However, the relationship between imitation and interpretation does not stop there; once texts have been constructed through the process of reading and 68  Michel Jeanneret, Le défi des signes (Orleans: Paradigme, 1994), 10.

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imitating, interpreting the finished product itself becomes a problem for a host of reasons. A look into the consequences of eclecticism will highlight some of these complications. Secondly, the importance of the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, a controversy that began with the nascent field of philology relates not only to the opposition between scholasticism and humanism but also reverberates profoundly in the religious domain with the strife between Catholics and Protestants. Finally, I will reexamine the scholasticism versus humanism debate in light of the crisis of interpretation. With the help of Rabelais’s satire, it becomes clear how certain methods of interpretation were causing the ensuing interpretations to be opaque. While there are certainly other trends that contributed to this particular branch of the semiotic crisis, these three areas in particular set the stage for the reactions of different authors during the wars of religion who will try to manage the interpretation of their own texts to prevent them from suffering the ill effects of hermeneutical uncertainty. 2.1 Imitation To demonstrate how imitation can be a question of reading, rather than just writing, we turn to Erasmus in the De copia. In a passage in which Erasmus models how a writer might discern how to use particular images, he gives the example of the death of Socrates. This historical event is as versatile as it is multivalent, and depending on how one reads it, it can serve multiple purposes, even contradictory ones: “The death of Socrates can be used to show that death holds no fear for a good man, since he drank the hemlock so cheerfully; but also to show that virtue is prey to ill will and far from safe amidst a swarm of evils; or again that the study of philosophy is useless or even harmful unless you conform to general patterns of behaviour.”69 In selecting amongst even these three interpretations of his death, one can find ways in which to praise or blame Socrates for his actions and show them as either admirable or deplorable. Contradictory interpretations should not dissuade one from using them, however, for, as Erasmus indicates, this favors the writer who can take advantage of such multivalence in a text.70 We will come back to Erasmus, but in Socrates, we certainly find what serves as an appropriate exemplar for the Renaissance reader and writer. In discussing the implications of imitation on the crisis of interpretation, it is helpful to examine the role of exemplars since, as Timothy Hampton points out in his book on the subject, “Exemplarity, then, 69  Erasmus, De copia, 639. 70  Erasmus gives this example in describing how to list and categorize images that one gleans from one’s reading. See De copia, 639: “If you look at the example of Socrates and determine its successive scenes, how many subject headings you will thus elicit!”

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shifts the problem of imitation, much discussed by recent critics as a cornerstone of writing in the Renaissance, to the level of reading.”71 Moreover, shifting the emphasis to reading permits the flexibility—and also the confusion, perhaps—that accompanies the exercise of interpretation that is at the service of rhetoric. Hampton adds soon after, “The representation of the exemplary figure constitutes the moment in the Renaissance text at which the matter of ancient history becomes rhetoric.”72 In other words, in deciding upon an interpretation, the writer and the reader no longer see Socrates as a historical figure, his life no longer as an historical event, but a rhetorical tool whose truth becomes verisimilitude as it is molded and shaped by the writer’s interpretation and subsequent use of the image. In the previous section, I explored how different representations of an image created tension between the universal and the particular. Hampton’s suggestion that rhetoric appropriates the historical for its own purposes certainly extends this tension into the realm of interpretation. The proliferation of particular interpretations of the exemplar begins to pose a problem for the stability of meaning: [T]he life of the hero can easily be sliced into a multitude of discrete metonymically related segments or moments. Some of these may connote virtue, but some may suggest vice, and their interaction always produces conflict and moral dialectics, with the potential to turn back and subvert the pedagogical intention of the humanist who evoked the exemplar as a model for his student or reader in the first place. In other words, the persuasive function of the name may be undermined by the ambiguity of certain of the hero’s acts.73 By the very practice that Erasmus suggests in the De copia, writers, by way of their contradictory interpretations can end up subverting their own purposes in even acknowledging the multiplicity of interpretations, especially if any one of them is not clearly preferred or seen as universal or definitive. The question remains, however, whether the average reader would have sensed these tensions in the text. It is possible that the sixteenth-century reader might have instead appreciated the actualization of the exemplar such that any contradictions in the image would have been suppressed in the face of this appreciation. 71  Timothy Hampton, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 5. Emphasis is in the original. 72  Ibid. 73  Hampton, Writing from History, 27.

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Hampton seems to indicate that indeed, this would not have posed a problem since the perfect exemplar consists of a universal that can then descend to the level of the practical, a double function that reinforces the worthiness of the exemplar while rendering it pertinent as a pedagogical tool.74 This paradox of being somehow both universal and particular further engenders confusion especially in light of humanist principles regarding their source material. Namely, if humanists had as a goal in their reading to discover and honor the historical context of ancient texts in order to properly interpret them—as opposed to the scholastic model of using citations regardless of their context—then the humanist cannot satisfy a desire to arrive at a practical, applied, or particular meaning. If the correct meaning were uniquely tied to a distant past, it would seem a logical impossibility to interpret the text in such a way that could encourage an interpretation moored to the reader’s time and place. In his analysis of Angelo Poliziano’s lectures on the Silviae of Statius, Anthony Grafton remarks that much of Poliziano’s commentary is more rhetorical than historical: “Poliziano is as concerned with the literary genres of the Silvae as with their historical occasions. More important, he treats some of them not as historically conditioned products of human art but as absolutely perfect examples of eternally valid principles.”75 We again arrive at a similar conclusion to Hampton’s: when it comes to imitation, rhetoric is more important even than the humanistic imperative to properly situate a text historically. Whether they reflected their historical context or not, certain exemplars’ original meaning mattered little since they were not always very well known in the first place. The phenomenon of the “minor exemplar” was a common one, but the usage of these minor texts, particularly popular among the members of the Pléaide, may have contributed to the obscurity of sixteenth-century French poetry and to the crisis of interpretation. At the heart of the use of minor exemplars was the imitative philosophy called eclecticism, which emerges in opposition to Ciceronianism. In an effort to avoid the air of listing sententiae in the manner of scholasticism, Renaissance writers turned to the most important of rhetorical models of the ancient world, Cicero, in order to streamline their rhetoric with this most familiar and ideal of models.76 Nevertheless, 74  Hampton, Writing from History, 53. At the very least, this tension is presented as ideal, as Hampton cites Erasmus’s depiction of the perfect exemplar in his Institutio principis christiani. This tension reflects Erasmus’s humanist ideal of focusing on general notions of virtue before moving to specific practice of it (51). 75  Anthony Grafton, “Renaissance Readers and Ancient Texts: Comments on Some Commentaries,” Renaissance Quarterly 38, no. 4 (1985): 615–649, 633. 76   For an interesting study on one Renaissance writer’s relationship to Cicero, see Carl P.E. Springer, Cicero in Heaven: The Roman Rhetor and Luther’s Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

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eclecticism remained a valid alternative. As JoAnn DellaNeva discusses at length, Petrarch speaks positively of it, albeit indirectly, when he recounts an incident in which he committed an act of plagiarism.77 Petrarch describes how he has “culled” different passages from his reading and has digested them such that they have become such a part of him that he lost his awareness that they ever were separate from him. Apart from Petrarch, other treatises on writing mentioned an eclectic approach a bit more directly, ensuring its place throughout the Renaissance. It certainly found favor among the poets of the mid-sixteenth century, especially on the part of the members of the Pléiade. Poetic anthologies, florilegia, and other collections offered food for consumption, and while Cicero never really goes away, the eclecticism of the poets of the Pléiade takes advantage of a greater diversity of texts in composing their work. That being said, the compositions of poets like Du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585), and perhaps even Maurice Scève (c. 1501–1564), start to resemble the collections of medieval sententiae, if not in form, at least in the composition of their parts. While it is true that Ronsard’s Amours (1552) or Du Bellay’s Olive (1549) in no way look like a text by, say, Peter Lombard, one could parse their compact poems such that a list of references that are often taken out of context emerges.78 The recombination of sources masks any semblance of the Lombardian style while the origin of the elements becomes all the more opaque and evokes the image of a digested and newly formed text that one sees proposed in Du Bellay’s Deffence. The unrecognizable state of these references and their unmoored character has implications for interpretation, for as the source material gets lost in the creations of these poetic masters, one can no longer be assured of discerning their original or perhaps even intended meaning, a process that would have otherwise been recognized as essential to the proper interpretation of these texts.79 While one can certainly discern a distinctive character and interpretation to the Amours or the Délie, the 77  JoAnn DellaNeva, Unlikely Exemplars: Reading and Imitating beyond the Italian Canon in French Renaissance Poetry (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2009). This passage from a letter to Giovanni Boccaccio frames DellaNeva’s narrative regarding minor model imitation. 78  Peter Lombard (c. 1100–1160) was briefly bishop of Paris, a scholastic theologian, and author of the Libri quatuor sententiae or the Sentences. This characteristically scholastic style of writing tends to list statements and citations of other sources and lends itself to an argumentation using evidence taken squarely out of context. 79  See DellaNeva, Unlikely Exemplars, 95. In describing the Italian anthologies of which sixteenth-century French poets were likely readers, DellaNeva writes: “At any rate, in reading the Giolito anthology, the overwhelming impression is one of successive, independent poems that do not form a cohesive unit. This is yet another way in which the reader of the volume is less inclined to be cognizant of the individual poets behind the

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diversity among and within individual poems may seem random or can reflect the disjointed nature of the anthologies from which these poets drew. The consequences for interpretation are twofold: as we have already seen, the interpretation of texts becomes subservient to rhetoric or to the overall thrust of the author’s work, and the reader has fewer and fewer reference points in the text by which to navigate meaning and perhaps to interpret either the parts or the whole of individual texts.80 While there are certainly many examples of how eclecticism can lead to obscurity, Joachim Du Bellay represents a particularly important one since he so often relied on anthologies to compose his poetry. Moreover, in his appropriation of the source material, he would radically transform the meaning and the content. Sonnet XXIV in the Olive, for example, takes up the image of Narcissus, and as noted by Ernesta Calderini, Du Bellay “emprunte au sonnet italien la fable mythologique et lui assigne une function expressive qu’elle n’avait pas chez della Torre” (borrows from the Italian sonnet the mythological fable and assigns to it an expressive function that [the fable] did not have in Della Torre).81 At the same time, Calderini points out in her introduction that in this same poem, “[l]oin de suivre l’exemple des mauvais imitateurs qui ‘s’amusant à la beauté des motz, perdent la force des choses’, [Du Bellay] récupère ainsi et met à contribution, le sens que la fable a acquis dans une tradition interpretative représentée, entre autres, par deux grands maîtres d’amour et de poésie : Pétrarque et Bembo” ([f]ar from following the example of bad imitators who ‘amusing themselves with the beauty of words, lose the force of things,’ [Du Bellay] recovers in this way and makes as his contribution the sense that the fable acquired in an interpretive tradition, depicted, among others, by two great masters of love and of poetry: Petrarch and Bembo).82 While this certainly may be the case—I am not disagreeing with Calederini’s assessment—it would seem that such a process that appropriates a minor poetic text fails to

poems printed on a given page. Their voice is generally not sustained, the way it certainly is in a canzoniere; rather, fluctuations in tone from one poem to the next are the norm.” 80  See JoAnn DellaNeva, ed., introduction to Ciceronian Controversies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), xxii. Interestingly, none other than the Ciceronian Pietro Bembo acknowledges that there is “a distinction between borrowing material (which can be taken from a variety of sources) and imitating style (which should be taken from a single source).” Bembo points out that Pico, his adversary in a debate about Cicero, did not recognize this distinction. If this is the case with other eclectics, their ignorance might explain why there is a danger of subverting content to style. 81  Ernesta Calderini, ed., Olive, by Joachim du Bellay (Geneva: Droz, 1974), 80n. 82  Calderini, introduction to Olive, 28.

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honor the humanist model of interpretation.83 Cécile Alduy summarizes well the way in which these texts were appropriated: “L’effacement de la disposition originelle et la déperdition de sens qui en résulte ne sont pas les seuls altérations que subit l’oeuvre : c’est aussi le fondement du rapport entre tout et parties qui se trouve bouleversé, ainsi que le statut même du poème et son mode de lecture” (The effacement of the original disposition and the progressive loss of meaning that results from it are not the only alterations that the work undergoes: it is also the foundation of the relationship between the whole and the parts that finds itself shaken, as well as the status itself of the poem and the manner of reading [it]).84 Alduy later uses the image of marquetry, a mosaiclike design that creates its effect with contrasting shades of the same or similar colors, when discussing Ronsard’s Amours: “Ronsard exploite la forme si particulière du texte du recueil, marqueterie de pièces qu’il sait incruster et joindre judicieusement pour des effets de contraste ou de camaïeux” (Ronsard exploits the very particular from of the text of the collection, marquetry of pieces that he knows how to incrust and join just right for a contrasting or manyhued effect).85 In this image, the shades of the individual pieces encrusted in the wider work become less and less essential to one’s reading of it, since it is the whole that is most pleasing, rather than the individual parts. At the same time, Scève further complicates matters when he uses a similar method most of the time, but in his citations of Petrarch, he counts on the reader knowing something about how to interpret the Petrarchan source text. He reacts to and manipulates the content of the original to make his own point. In this instance, the pieces or fragments that Scève appropriates cease to be another piece of the marquetry, but they become their own focus of meaning within the wider 83  I would add here the observations of Robert Melançon who writes about Jean de Sponde (1557–1595): “Le code pétrarquiste devient chez [Sponde] un simple répertoire, et extrêmement restreint, de lieux communs, de prétextes à des variations ingénieuses ; ses grandes structures et la vision de l’amour qu’elles impliquaient ne s’y retrouvent plus” (“La fin du pétrarquisme,” L’Automne de la Renaissaince, ed. Jean Lafond and André Stegmann (Paris: J. Vrin, 1981), 263). What Sponde creates is good, but it highlights a regression in interpretation during the imitative process. What was once a highly developed reading of Petrarch, though often a contested one, has become a simplified appropriation of “commonplaces” that no longer seem to evoke their original context. 84  Cécile Alduy, La politique des « Amours » (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 81. This entire section of Alduy’s book takes a broader perspective on the phenomenon that Melançon explains in the previous note. On multiple fronts, French poets detach the original texts from their original meaning and appropriate them as they see fit. My point is that this runs counter to humanist interpretative techniques and further sows confusion about how to approach any text, much less the source text being referenced. 85  Alduy, Amours, 193.

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project. The poet’s inconsistency elicits an inconsistent response from the reader and interpretation becomes all the more difficult. Thomas Greene in his book, The Light in Troy, contrasts a humanist hermeneutic that seeks to grasp the interpretation of the text in its proper historical context with a more medieval one that “presupposed a fullness of knowledge awaiting the successful interpreter—knowledge that is whole and entire because it can be unlocked by a single operation of the appropriate intellectual key.”86 Neither I, nor Greene, for that matter, are suggesting that this “older model” of interpretation disappeared after the dawn of the Renaissance. Du Bellay’s use of Della Torre’s text seems to assume this older model in its construction and in its interpretation of the source material. Many of these issues will be relevant when considering continuing intellectual debates and scriptural exegesis, but for now, suffice it to say that shifting values with respect to interpretation along with the liberal use of minor models created a moving target of meaning that leaves the door open not only for the manipulation of sources, but also for the types of naked rhetorical assertion that we will see in the texts of the wars of religion. 2.2 A New Word A more naked text is perhaps what early humanists were trying to achieve through their textual and philological studies. Getting to the source and situating a text in its appropriate historical context represented only one side of the new humanist model of interpretation. Words themselves also needed a great deal of analysis since the original meaning of a word, in the language in which it was written, would reveal the writer’s original intent, and in theory this would provide a more certain interpretation. If one could strip away all of the accretions that have occurred through years of recopying and retranslation, scholars can purify and solidify interpretation, all the while correcting the mistakes of the past, especially of the Middle Ages. In this section, I will explore the monumental implications of the change from medieval textual criticism and exegesis to that of the humanist and early modern period. Firstly, I will outline the history and the consequences of a more philological approach to Sacred Scripture, especially as an alternative to the medieval method of exegesis that had come before. Secondly, I will look at new modes of interpretation in action, namely through a discussion of new perspectives on scriptural interpretation in the writings of John Calvin (1509–1564). The reaction to and interpretation of scriptural texts yields a glimpse of the state of exegesis on 86  Thomas Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 94.

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the eve of the wars of religion but still in the midst of the developing divisions between Catholic and Protestant. By the mid-1440s, Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457) had more or less completed his influential work on the Latin language, Elegantiae linguae latinae. One cannot underestimate the importance of the role of this work in Renaissance interpretation and exegesis. Ann Moss gives a sense of its full impact: “It established as authentic a select idiom and patterns of phrasing that fell within the boundaries Valla set to what he deemed to be good classical Latin. It was a methodological paradigm and a quarry for illustrative material. It was a standard authority and, in some of its more contested observations of detail, it provided meat for later philological experts to cut their critical teeth on.”87 An example of its devastating critiques of Latin usage had to do with the most basic of Christian doctrines, that of the Holy Trinity. According to Valla, the word persona to refer to the persons of the Trinity represented a gross misuse since Latin only allows for the word persona to refer to the “qualities and attributes of an individual (and hence a character or role in a drama).”88 Consequently such a definition according to what Valla calls “consuetudo” or “common usage” quickly leads one into a heresy since it seems to imply that one Deity is playing three distinct roles. A quick look at medieval exegesis, however, reveals how such misunderstandings can and did so easily arise. In the Middle Ages, biblical interpretation consisted of analyzing the text with respect to four modes of interpretation: literal, typological, moral, and anagogical.89 In contrast, the humanist model would spend more time focusing on the literal since it is the level most rooted in the original meaning and context. In the example given by Lorenzo Valla, though not a scriptural one, the personae of the Trinity could be explained on a typological, or even moral or anagogical level, such that the classical “customary usage” of the term loses its pertinence to the theological discussion.90 That 87  Ann Moss, Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 35. 88  Lisa Jardine, “Lorenzo Valla and the Intellectual Origins of Humanist Dialectic,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 15, no. 2 (1977): 143–164, 158. 89  For a classic modeling of these four modes of interpretation, see Bonaventure, Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, vol. 8 of Works of St. Bonaventure, ed. Robert J. Karris, O.F.M. (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2001). Moreover, Bonaventure’s description of biblical interpretation in the Prologue to the Breviloquium reflects these four levels as he addresses the “depth” of the Word of God. See Bonaventure, Breviloquium, trans. Dominic V. Monti, O.F.M., vol. 9 of Works of St. Bonaventure, ed. Robert J. Karris, O.F.M. (Saint Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005), 1–26. 90  Especially with respect to Scripture, it is not always clear that Valla was trying to influence the theological discussion; he was just trying to refine the interpretation of the Bible.

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being said, it is also clear that a misunderstanding of the literal meaning could in theory lead to a false interpretation on one of the other levels. In fact, this is exactly where the use of philology comes in. Moving from Valla to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), one can see the integration of philology with medieval modes of interpretation. Pico even expands them, adding a fifth sense, the physical.91 Whereas Valla more or less tried to stay out of theological interpretation, all the while trying to correct and update Jerome’s translations, Pico launches full bore into the exegetical realm by trying to incorporate the humanist study of languages into theological study.92 All of the many attempts to address the problem of biblical exegesis through philology reflected the general thrust of humanist scholarship away from the medieval and into every part of Renaissance culture. Erasmus would of course pick up the mantle of humanist biblical scholarship in his own translation of the New Testament that appeared in 1516.93 This daring project in the lineage of Valla not surprisingly met with some resistance. In one particularly pertinent exchange with Erasmus, his student and friend, Martin Dorp, writes to Erasmus: You will tell me: ‘I would not want you to change anything in the copy that you own, and I do not think that the Latin version is erroneous. I merely wish to show that which I found in the Greek codices that is different from the Latin. What evil could come of this?’ Naturally, my dear Erasmus, much evil could come of this! Many people will begin to discuss the integrity of the text of the Sacred Scriptures, and many will begin to doubt even if only a small part appears to be false, not, I say, because See John Monfasani, “Criticism of Biblical Humanists in Quattrocento Italy,” Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, ed. Erika Rummel (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 15–38. 91  Monfasani, “Biblical Humanists,” 35. 92  The integration of philology and theology was an enormous controversy. Theologians believed that their discipline was beyond the competency of mere language scholars. However, since biblical interpretation relies so heavily on the analysis of words and their meanings, many philologists firmly claimed said competency in the face of the theological establishment. See Erika Rummel, ed., introduction to Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 2. And on Erasmus’s transition from philology to exegesis, see also Erika Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986). 93  See Josef Eskhult, “Latin Bible Translations in the Protestant Reformation: Historical Contexts, Philological Justification, and the Impact of Classical Rhetoric on the Conception of Translation Methods,” in Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Scholars and Their Readers in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bruce Gordon and Matthew McLean (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 167–185.

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of your work, but only through hearsay. Then what Augustine writes to Jerome will happen: ‘If one admits even with the best intentions, that there are errors in the Sacred Scripture what will remain authoritative in it?’94 Dorp is worth quoting at length here because he expresses not only all of the fears and anxieties about what philological scholarship would bring to theology, but also what is at stake for the faith of the Church and her members. Erasmus brushes off his younger friend with no little bit of condescension, reminding Dorp of the importance of seeking true knowledge and theology.95 Both Dorp and Erasmus are right: on the one hand, there was never any doubt—at least the intensity of Dorp’s protest seems to reflect certainty on the matter—that this new approach to biblical exegesis and theological interpretation was going to shake the Church at its core; on the other hand, there was no stopping it, and so it required the best of one’s intellectual energy in order to ensure that it would lead to the vera theologia. And therein lies the difficulty: how does one ensure that true theology is the result? Even if two scholars’ philological investigations yield identical translations, how does one then guarantee one interpretation? After all, words are not discrete elements in a text, and a new understanding of particular terms or images have a relationship to those that surround them, and their interaction with the text could look different to the same philologist who chooses to take the next step into theological interpretation. As Jeanneret puts it: “La rigueur de la méthode, de l’établissement du texte à l’intelligence des nuances sémantiques, correspond donc, pour tous, à une exigence fondamentale. Mais les désaccords se chargeront souvent de rappeler que les voies de l’interprétation sont multiples et ses résultats, contingents” (The rigor of the method, from the construction of the text to the intelligence of the semantic nuances, corresponds therefore, for all, to a fundamental demand. But the disagreements will often take charge to recall that the paths of interpretation are multiple, and the results, contingent).96 In this context, the temptation toward the most literal and perhaps empirical reading possible will become very strong and also has the side effect of reinforcing the preeminence of philological or scientific methods as the only ones that can yield the proper interpretation. This has consequences for established authorities, such as for king or clergy, who were 94  As quoted in Cecilia Asso, “Martin Dorp and Edward Lee,” Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, ed. Erika Rummel (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 171–72. 95  Asso, “Martin Dorp,” 172. 96  Jeanneret, Le défi des signes, 12.

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the ones who used to settle the truth, but as with most of the intellectual, cultural, and methodological trends of this period, the philology as a solution to the problem of errant interpretation might have resulted in even more confusion about what scripture meant. Exegetes need to find a way to integrate philology and allegory, so that the two coexist as we have already seen with Pico in the fifteenth century. Jeanneret again summarizes the issue: “[L]a philologie passe pour être à la fois utile et insuffisante : utile, parce que la Parole de Dieu, qui est le fondement de la religion, doit être restaurée dans sa pureté et son intégrité ; insuffisante, parce que la science et ses techniques ne peuvent qu’être subordonnées à la puissance de la foi” (Philology passes for being useful and insufficient at the same time: useful, because the Word of God, which is the foundation of religion, must be restored in its purity and integrity; insufficient, because the science and its techniques cannot be subordinated to the power of faith).97 The Word continues to be a living one, even though philology fixes it in time and according to authorial intent. And yet, the life that comes from the Word would then come from personal meditation on it, which in turn could yield even more interpretations, even if its original meaning and intent is clear. The tension between the two aspects of philological biblical interpretation is therefore not resolved, and the authority that normally would have been able to resolve it finds itself no longer sufficiently effective. At the same time, it was not always a question of resolving the tension between philology and allegory. One of the most famous of biblical exegetes of the period decides to put allegory aside completely. In his Institution de la religion chrétienne, first published in 1536, John Calvin gives detailed instructions on how to read the Old and New Testaments together. Contrary to other theologians, such as Melanchthon (1497–1560), who saw the two as separate but successive covenants, Calvin preferred to see the two texts as a whole, while still rejecting an allegorical interpretation of the Old through the New.98 Without entering into the theological nuances of why one or the other is a good idea, one has to take a look at Calvin’s hermeneutic because of its undoubted significance during the sixteenth century. This significance will become evident as we turn more explicitly to the consequences of philology and scriptural exegesis in literature. For now, Calvin’s chapter entitled, “De la similitude et difference du viel et nouveau Testament,” will serve as the focus of the discussion. Calvin demonstrates his scriptural hermeneutic by, as the title so clearly states, exploring the similarities and differences between the Old and New 97  Jeanneret, Le défi des signes, 25–26. 98  Olivier Millet, ed., notice to Chapter VII, Institution de la religion chrétienne, Jean Calvin, 2 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 956.

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Testaments. With respect to similitude, Calvin derives three main principles: 1) God never offered a terrestrial paradise to the Jews, but rather the same immortality offered to followers of Christ, 2) The covenant between God and the Israelites was not founded on their merits but on God’s mercy, and 3) The Israelites did know Christ as mediator and were party to his promises.99 The content of what Calvin proposes is not all that revolutionary; it is rather the hermeneutic that he uses to arrive at said proposals. The reasoning that follows his articulation of this consistency is devoid of allegorical interpretation, at least as one would have known it during the sixteenth century. For example, Calvin cites a series of biblical texts in his arguments regarding his first proposition: “Comme aussi il est dict par les autres Prophetes : Tu es nostre Dieu, nous ne mourrons point. Item : Le Seigneur est nostre Roy et Legislateur ; il nous sauvera. Item : Tu es bien heureux, Israël, d’autant que tu as salut en Dieu” (As it is also said by the other prophets: You are our God, we shall not die. Item: The Lord is our King and Lawgiver; he will save us. Item: You are blessed, Israel, because you have salvation in God).100 Herein, Calvin cites Habakkuk, Isaiah, and Deuteronomy, respectively. What is striking, however, is that Calvin seems to believe that his interpretations are literal and therefore philological. They are the former, but certainly not the latter, especially if by philological, one intends for the interpretation to be well situated in its time and place. Will God save the Israelites? Yes, but from what? One could pronounce all three prophecies in the midst of battle, and they would still hold just as true. What makes them Christological in Calvin’s eyes is the fact that he knows and believes in Christ, but that does not mean that the text assumes Christ’s Resurrection.101 This being said, Calvin roots the rest of his argument in the historical events— namely, hardships—of the patriarchs of the Old Testament. In his reading of their lives, he is correct in highlighting their lack of recompense here on Earth, but while assuming an air of the literal, he never really shakes the allegorical.102 It is this aspect of Calvin’s argument using Sacred Scripture that 99  Calvin, Institution, 967. 100  Calvin, Institution, 974. 101  I must reiterate that I am not arguing the theological merit of Calvin’s text. I am only explaining his hermeneutic as it relates to contemporary trends in interpretation, namely to allegory and philology in this instance. 102  See Richard A. Muller, “The Hermeneutic of Promise and Fulfillment in Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament Prophecies of the Kingdom,” The Bible in the Sixteenth Century, ed. David Steinmetz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 68: “[T.H.L.] Parker argues the distinction between Calvin’s method [of exegesis] and the other extant models: Calvin stressed the mind of the historical writers of Scripture and not, as Faber did, the mens Spiritus sancti; Calvin was separated ‘decisively from Erasmus’ by his concern for the historical in Scripture, and from Lyra and all those who retained some elements of

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will be so important later during the wars of religion, for it provides an interpretive key for the difficulties that the Huguenots will endure, lending the ensuing interpretations of said difficulties credibility not only on a spiritual but also on an eschatological level. Olivier Millet writes: Ces pages sont décisives pour la future culture religieuse réformée, car— tel nous semble être leur accent et leur intérêt moderne—au lieu d’ériger ces personnages en ‘types’ annonçant les vérités révélées dans le Nouveau Testament, au lieu de ne voir en eux que des ‘ombres’ sans consistance propre en attente de la révélation de leur identité, elles reconnaissent en eux des figures qui, déjà, représentent et accomplissent consciemment, comme autant de modèles concrets et humainement proches, la substance de la vie chrétienne.103 These pages are decisive for the future reformed religious culture, for— such seems to us to be their accent and their modern interest—instead of building up these characters into ‘types’ announcing the revealed truths in the New Testament, instead of seeing in them only ‘shadows’ without proper consistency waiting on the revelation of their identity, [these pages] recognize in [these personages] figures who, already, represent and fulfill consciously, like so many concrete and humanly close models, the substance of the Christian life. In other words, Calvin by attempting to shun allegory, creates the hermeneutical conditions for later Protestants to interpret their own situation allegorically and authoritatively. Francis Higman presages this rhetorical reality: “Mais dans sa pratique quotidienne de l’Ancien Testament, le mouvement est renversé, et il reporte sur la nouvelle alliance tout ce qu’il trouve dans l’ancienne […] Le Dieu coléreux, vengeur, arbitraire, terrifiant des Hébreux est le même aujourd’hui et pour toujours” (But in his daily practice of the Old Testament, the movement is overturned, and he brings to bear onto the new covenant all that he finds in the old […] The angry, vengeful, arbitrary, terrifying God of the

allegory by his attention to the ‘simple,’ grammatical sense of the text.” The rest of Muller’s article explores Calvin’s attempts, especially with respect to the Prophets, at a literal hermeneutic. Moreover, Francis Higman points out that none other than Pierre Doré, a noted symbolist exegete, actually lifted 21 pages of Calvin’s seventh chapter of the Institution, so amenable was he to Calvin’s supposed literal analysis. See “Calvin et le peuple élu,” Lire et découvrir (Geneva: Droz, 1998), 652–53. 103  Millet, notice to Chapter VII, Institution, 960.

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Hebrews is the same today and for always).104 This reversal that uses the Old rather than the New Testament God as the primary interpretive lens will reappear in the polemical literature of the late sixteenth century, but not as a God who punishes his own people, in this case, the Protestants, but who punishes their enemies. In fact, the punishment of one’s enemies promises fulfillment of God’s covenant to his righteous ones who follow the Gospel. Scriptural interpretation will become essential and problematic not only to faith but to the interpretation of current events as well.105 2.3 Destructive Debates These questions about definitive interpretations and about allegory and authorial intent were not limited to the discussion of sacred scripture. In reading literary texts of the period or of Antiquity, interpreters were raising the same questions as they were for the exegesis of Sacred Scripture, and they were using the same methods. The many treatments of the writings of Ovid are but one 104  Higman, “Calvin et le peuple élu,” 659. 105  In Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron (1558), one can see the disagreement that can result from multiple and notably false interpretations of scripture. For example, after Nouvelle 36, Saffredent cites 1 John 4:20, a passage on brotherly love, as an excuse for his libidinous behavior. Obviously, this does not fit with the intent of the biblical text. Erasmus, in his own philological ventures and scriptural exegesis, attempts to address this serious hermeneutical problem. For him, the ambivalence resides in the fact that God indeed guarantees at some level the meaning of the text, but this sensus is not always easily discoverable. Multiple languages and translations, textual variations, and the foreign milieu in which the text was produced all contribute to widening the distance between the reader and the text. See Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 79. For Erasmus, the discussion surrounding certain scriptural passages would not necessarily pose a problem, for “the authentic reading of the Bible demands the subsequent attempt to disseminate its sensus by means of commentary, paraphrase, translation, or preaching: a new discourse will be generated by the reading act, so that in effect ‘interpretation’ becomes a special mode of ‘imitation’ ” (Cave, Cornucopian Text, 80). Erasmus describes a process not unlike the imitation theories found in Du Bellay’s Deffence: “The text is to be wholly absorbed by the reader and located in the pectus […] In other words, the scriptural text is made consubstantial with the reader and is then re-uttered in a speech-act grounded in the living presence of the speaker, a process which achieves its end in that vivid penetration of the listener’s mind which is in itself a mark of authenticity” (Cave, Cornucopian Text, 85–86). Despite an appeal to the reader’s humility in submitting to the text, Erasmus encourages an activity a hermeneutical relationship that will ultimately lead back to the Tower of Babel, at least on the level of competing interpretive voices. In ideal conditions, Erasmus’s counsel may yield results, but as the divisions among Christians deepen ever further, the necessary humility will be lacking and the regression of interpretation to which Cave alludes in speaking of exegetes like Erasmus and Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples will devolve into degradation (Cave, Cornucopian Text, 80).

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example.106 We already saw a glimpse of the differences between the scholastic and humanist worldview in the chapter on representation. However, in that instance, the focus was mostly on what words and images could do. In the realm of interpretation, we move much closer to discovering a demonstrable sensus germanus of a text, just like with Sacred Scripture. Cave summarizes theories of “the notion of a self-allegorizing Scripture, the removal of intermediaries, and the attempt to suppress any sensus alienus or ‘affiction’. Indeed, the phrase ‘le naturel’ has connotations not unlike those of sensus germanus.”107 This natural state of the text is how Augustine understood it, and that point of view is then applied to non-religious texts in their interpretation. It would seem that in this case, context is key, but with the scholastic tendency to take texts or parts of texts firmly out of the place in which they are produced, one can see how easily a scholastic can be accused of a false interpretation. At the same time, the methods of humanism do not always lead to an ideal or stable result. As the Renaissance wore on, it seems possible that scholasticism was fighting its way back into hermeneutical prominence. This is perhaps overstating it, but in one particularly notable example, humanism is satirized for its glassy-eyed devotion to new types of knowledge or wisdom that do not necessarily clarify interpretation. In Chapter XIII of Rabelais’s Pantagruel, a scholar from England named Thaumaste, comes to see for himself the riches of Pantagruel’s knowledge. As a way of putting that knowledge on display and for Thaumaste to test it, Pantagruel agrees to a debate with Thaumaste, a debate in which Panurge replaces Pantagruel and proceeds to mock Thaumaste with a series of incomprehensible but certainly obscene hand gestures. Max Gauna, in summarizing M.A. Screech’s views of this encounter, characterizes the episode within as a critique of the Renaissance magus: “Thaumaste represents the Renaissance tradition of magical humanism, whose principal ancient inspirations were Platonic and Neoplatonic, and which exerted considerable influence on the thought and indeed the actions of many influential contemporary figures […] He is seeking knowledge of divine things, but in what for the Erasmian evangelical is […] the wrong places, namely the works of the ancient philosopher-magicians.”108 While Gauna suggests that an alternative interpretation of the episode by Edwin Duval affirms it as a critique of medieval scholasticism, Gauna persists in the one given by Screech, for as both Screech and Duval fail to point out, the first person that Thaumaste cites 106  Cave, Cornucopian Text, 94–98 107  Cave, Cornucopian Text, 98. 108  Max Gauna, The Rabelaisian Mythologies (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), 58.

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as an authority is Plato, which would have been grossly out of character for a scholastic theologian.109 Screech and Gauna seem to have the stronger argument, for Thaumaste, in comparing himself to many who have journeyed far and wide to hear wisdom, only one is explicitly religious, that of the Queen of Sheba coming to see Solomon; all of the rest are pagan. Another aspect of the episode points to this as a satire on humanism and its interpretive tools. While Thaumaste certainly wants to partake in something akin to scholastic dialectic, he chooses to move beyond words: Semblablement, je ne veulx point disputer en la manière des Académicques, par declamations, ny aussi par nombres, comme faisoit Pythagoras, et comme voulut faire Picus Marandula à Rome. Mais je veulx disputer par signes seulement, sans parler : car les matières sont tant ardues, que les paroles humaines ne seroient suffisantes à les explicquer à mon plaisir. Similarly I do not want to dispute in the manner of the Academics by declamations, nor by numbers like Pythagoras and as Pico Della Mirandola wished to do in Rome: I want to dispute by signs alone with no talking, for the matters are so arduous that no words of Man would be adequate to settle them to my satisfaction.110 This last part of his intervention would seem to express almost explicitly the crisis of representation. It does, of course, but in order to get at the heart of Rabelais’s satire, it is more notable that Thaumaste wants to move beyond both scholasticism as well as the language of numbers sought by Pico. Thaumaste rejects the interpretative capabilities of both scholasticism and the Hermetic current that had invaded Renaissance humanism.111 The latter did not improve upon the former, due to its overwrought interpretations of numbers and signs 109  Gauna, Mythologies, 60. 110  Rabelais, Pantagruel, 104. Translation from Screech, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 99. 111  See Eugenio Garin, Hermétisme et Renaissance, trans. Bertrand Schefer (Paris: Editions Allia, 2001), 85: “Filtrée par des textes hermétiques, on avance l’image nouvelle du rapport homme-monde (macrocosme-microcosme), où l’homme devient ‘créateur’. On insiste sur l’image d’un univers vivant parcouru par des forces que l’homme peut dominer et guider seul en réussissant à construire les instruments adaptés. On définit la vision de la réalité comme un système de symboles qui, connus dans leur valeur, permettent un authentique déchiffrement des choses.” This esoteric point of view poses multiple hermeneutical problems that Rabelais mocks, mostly for its gnostic tendencies. Ultimately, this claim toward an authentic deciphering and then domination of creation is in the end too subjective, as Thaumaste’s “signes” exemplify.

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that led in turn to alchemy, astrology, or magic. Thaumaste clearly considers himself to be a more enlightened version of a humanist, or at least he aspires to be. However, his attempt will end poorly for him in our eyes as his hermeneutic is still shown to be sorely deficient. It is probably not worth the effort to go through the different signs that the two men make to each other, but it is quite clear that those coming from Panurge are vulgar.112 This eludes Thaumaste, however, and he proclaims, “Seigneurs, à ceste heure, puis-je bien dire le mot évangélicque : Et ecce plusquam Solomon hic. Vous avez icy ung trésor incomparable en vostre présence” (My Lords, now is the time to quote the Gospel saying, “And, behold a greater than Solomon is here”).113 Thaumaste employs the heights of Christological language in order to refer to what Panurge has done. He has shown himself inept at the interpretation of Panurge’s signs and at interpreting Sacred Scripture, for someone who truly understood Matthew 12:42 would have never used it to describe Panurge, even if his gestures had been the least bit meaningful. Thaumaste is guilty of an extreme hubris that aids no one in the domain of hermeneutical skill. This hubris—“and that of Faust, Prospero, all magicians, for Rabelais at this stage of his intellectual journey—is to cast aside the tedious, difficult, earthbound business of reasoned argument.”114 In other words, Rabelais, by his satire, reflects a philosophy of argument that requires one to undertake the demanding and sometimes messy task of interpretation. Both scholastics and humanists can be lazy in this regard if they go to extremes, for in both cases, their behavior starts to resemble superstition. This lack of commitment to good interpretation that we see among scholastics and humanists is endemic to the crisis thereof. What Rabelais does show us is that humanists can be guilty of just as much sophistry as scholastics. In fact, this term was often at the center of the battle 112  For more on the interpretation of these signs, see James Helgeson, “ ‘Ce que j’entends par ces symboles pythagoricques’: Rabelais on Meaning and Intention,” Etudes Rabelaisiennes 42 (Geneva: Droz, 2003), 75–100. Helgeson writes: “Instead—to borrow an expression from François Rigolot—the passage suggests an interpretation ‘à plus bas sens’, one closer to the bawdy hermeneutic comedy which Screech diagnoses in the episode” (95). See also M.A. Screech, Rabelais (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), 120: “Les signes employés sont de deux sortes, selon qu’ils sont utilisés par Panurge ou par Thaumaste. Ceux de Thaumaste sont censés révéler des vérités profondes et cachées qui surpassent ls capacités du langage humain ou au moins les dépassent. La signification des signes de Thaumaste est ésotérique et n’est connue que des initiés. Les signes de Panurge sont obscènes, et c’est évident pour tout le monde sauf pour Thaumaste qui tente de les interpréter selon des principes ésotériques.” 113  Rabelais, Pantagruel, 113–14. Translation from Screech, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 108. 114  Gauna, Mythologies, 63–64.

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between the two intellectual camps. Especially in their commentary, glosses, and interpretation, both sides accused the other of acting in the lineage of this much-maligned group of ancient thinkers. From a scholastic standpoint, humanists were guilty of sophistry in their choice of rhetoric over substance. On the other side, scholastics were accused of it in their endless dialectic that seemed to accomplish nothing.115 The above incident of the duel of signs between Panurge and Thaumaste is meant to demonstrate its folly. In the search for meaning, the sophist was of course always in the wrong, no matter from what side he was speaking. What made the accusation of sophistry so pivotal was that it was so often used to characterize the content and context of disputation. When Thaumaste arrives, he proclaims the following: “Je ne veulx point disputer pro et contra, comme font ces folz sophistes de ceste ville et de ailleurs. Semblablement, je ne veulx point disputer en la manière des Académicques par déclamations” (I have no wish to debate pro et contra as do the silly sophists of this town and elsewhere. Similarly I do not want to dispute in the manner of the Academics by declamations).116 In response, Pantagruel proposes: “[M]ais je te pry que entre nous n’y ait point de tumult, et que ne cherchons point l’honneur ny aplausement des hommes, mais la vérité seule” (I beseech you, let there be no […] uproar amongst us and may we seek truth alone, not the honour and plaudits of men).117 In the first citation, Thaumaste makes a clear, and perhaps justifiable, critique of scholastics. And yet, as Gauna and Screech have shown, this particular episode ends up targeting an extreme form of humanist for their particular form of ridiculousness.118 The ambivalence as well as versatility of the term sophistry permits a characterization of both 115  For a fuller treatment of this back and forth about sophistry, see Rummel, Debate, 21: “When the Platonic debate [about sophistry] resurfaced in the Renaissance, the twofaceted image of the sophist—voluble rhetorician/quibbling trickster—was retained. Thus, the curious ambivalence of Marsilio Ficino, who sometimes interprets ‘sophist’ in terms suggesting a mercenary humanist, and at other times, a scholastic dialectician.” 116  Rabelais, Pantagruel, 104. Translation from Screech, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 99. 117  Rabelais, Pantagruel, 105. Translation from Screech, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 100. 118  See Edwin Duval, The Design of Rabelais’s Pantagruel (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). Duval writes that in this episode, “Panurge intervenes at a critical moment to defend his lord against a serious challenge to his divine sapience and in the process proves even to doubters that Pantagruel is a type of Christ” (75). Regarding the debate itself, Duval characterizes it thusly, “the challenger [Thaumaste] is a sophisticated dialectition whose real purpose is to confound the humanistic prince with his subtle problems and farfetched dialectical disputations and thereby to avenge the old scholastic disciplines that Pantagruel had so soundly defeated in defending his theses against them” (77). I find Screech’s explanation more plausible, that Rabelais’s focus is rather on satirizing the humanistic magus. It would seem that the affirmation by Thaumaste of Pantagruel’s “sapience” would have to be, in this context, somewhat ironic.

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extremes but also simultaneously creates an environment in which all interpretive methods are put under scrutiny. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but if it is this easy to attack both rhetorician and dialectician, wherein lies the proper course to settle arguments? In Pantagruel’s response to Thaumaste, we receive a Solomonic answer, indeed, but nevertheless a problematic one. The call to seek the truth alone over the applause of men is a noble one, but there is little doubt in Rabelais’s text, as well in the scholastic and humanist approaches to interpretation, that this is easier said than done. Gérard Defaux contends that in the episode of the debate of signs, “Rabelais y souligne pour la première fois avec netteté une opposition qui ne va plus désormais cesser de structurer tous ses romans, celle du Sage et du Sophiste” (Rabelais here underlines for the first time with clarity an opposition that is no longer from this point forward going to structure all his novels, that of the Sage and the Sophist).119 This is most definitely true, as long as the difference between Sage and Sophist does not correspond to Humanist and Scholastic. It would seem that for Rabelais, he is not making this direct connection. And yet, in the debate about sophistry, Defaux points out a connection that Rabelais was perhaps making, namely one that ties the debates about sophistry in the sixteenth century with the debates about it in Greece in the fifth century CE. The Sage is Socrates, the one who seeks “la vérité seule” (only the truth); the Sophist is the one who seeks “l’honneur et applausement des hommes” (honor and the applause of men).120 The Sophist transcends the identity of both scholastic and humanist mostly because aspects of both can be found in the characterization thereof. Moreover, humanism, as we have already seen had absorbed and assimilated much of scholasticism even as it rejected it.121 Thus, each side is presented with a choice: either they interpret and think according to dialectic or according to rhetoric and style. As time passed, the two became more and more one, even though authors tried to convince more and more of their readers that they were acting out of a quest for truth. After Ramus, “[La dialectique] joint désormais à sa rigueur et à ses subtilités les charmes de l’éloquence” ([Dialectic] combines from this point forward the charms of eloquence to its rigor and its subtleties).122 But this did not translate into better interpretation, nor into better argument, for because of the other contributing factors in the crisis of interpretation, the two sides seem to have absorbed the worst of the other as well. In one final description of the sophist 119  Defaux, Pantagruel et les sophistes, 22. 120  Defaux, Pantagruel et les sophistes, 24. 121  Defaux, Pantagruel et les sophistes, 38. 122  Defaux, Pantagruel et les sophistes, 40.

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from Defaux, one can see where the combination of the two could have—and did—lead: Le sophiste, au contraire, au nom de l’efficacité et du triomphe personnel, rompt avec toutes les valeurs traditionnelles. Il se libère de tout souci de l’éthique. Il se révolte même contre les limites que Dieu impose à sa nature. Il est celui qui croit à la toute-puissance de la raison humaine pour dominer l’univers et ses semblables. La science devient pour lui la fin suprême, et non plus la sagesse.”123 The sophist, on the contrary, in the name of efficiency and of personal triumph, breaks with all of the traditional values. He liberates himself from any ethical worry. He revolts even against the limits that God imposes on his nature. He is the one who believes in the almighty nature of human reason to dominate the universe and his equals. Science becomes for him the supreme end, and no longer wisdom. These characteristics are exclusive neither to dialecticians, nor to rhetoricians, but they are common to those who search not for truth alone but for their own truth, guided by reason infused with passion. The accusation of sophistry can immediately put into doubt the content of the purported sophist’s ideas, while still implicitly recognizing that there may be something of value in his rhetoric. For this reason, many will make the accusation while continuing to amplify their rhetoric. Amid a crisis of interpretation, certainty—or the air thereof—rules. Rhetoric will replace actual certainty as authors try to convince their audience that what they are saying and writing is true. It will not be a question of reasoned argument but a question of convincing that their content has an air of truth. Since the reader has potentially lost his or her ability to discern one way or the other, the author will have all the more persuasive power with which to declare himself the winner. These ongoing debates about scholasticism and humanism, as well as the new hermeneutical tools deployed in the pursuit of the best interpretation of Sacred Scripture and the questions that interpretation’s role in imitation raises were all factors in creating an atmosphere of instability and uncertainty that would require author’s to reestablish definitive and authoritative meaning during the contentious period of the wars of religion. The process of imitation, especially with respect to exemplarity, raised doubts about how to interpret the lives of 123  Defaux, Pantagruel et les sophistes, 36.

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heroes and exemplars. Eclecticism made it difficult to understand the parts of the whole and therefore the whole. Biblical exegesis gave the impression that the interpretation of Sacred Scripture was personal and therefore particular to the extent of being unrecognizable or too unreliable. The scholastic and humanist debates continued to sow uncertainty as methods of reading, writing, and thinking distracted authors and their readers from the pursuit of actual truth in favor of an appearance of immutability. Representation and interpretation together, however, still only reveal an incomplete picture of these tumultuous conditions. The overall semiotic crisis also flourished on a crisis of authority, related to both representation and interpretation, but with some unique characteristics of its own. In the next section, I will explore the consequences of the veritable crumbling of what were once highly stable and influential means of authority. Amid the other aspects of the crises of signs and their meaning, traditional religious and political authorities fail to meet the challenges that the semiotic crisis poses, worsening it and heightening its unfavorable consequences. 3

The Crisis of Authority

Returning for a moment to the citation from Montaigne that began our examination of the semiotic crisis in the early modern period, one can detect by its absence an important element to the question of language. When discussing the “nom” and the “chose,” he writes that the name, “c’est une piece estrangere joincte à la chose, et hors d’elle” (it is an extraneous piece attached to the thing, and outside of it).124 The absence makes itself known in the grammatical construction that Montaigne employs. The name is joined to the thing, but by whom? In the Cratylian debate about the natural and conventional approaches to language, Socrates makes a point of discussing by what authority names are created and designated.125 In his choice for the passive voice, Montaigne 124  Montaigne, “De la gloire,” 601. Translation from Frame, Complete Works, 568. 125  Socrates discusses the role of the legislator (nomothetes) as the one who creates names. David Sedley has a nice discussion of the legislator and his role in his Cambridge commentary on the dialogue. See Plato’s Cratylus: Cambridge Studies in the Dialogues of Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 68–76. He writes: “Even if [Socrates] were thought to conjecture that the earliest name-makers used their status as (literal) legislators in order to bring a nomenclature into currency, he can hardly have thought that the equivalent function in his own day, that of generating neologisms, was still the preserve of legislators. Yet, as we have seen, the name-making function of nomothetai is assumed to survive in his own day. When Socrates calls the nomothetes ‘the rarest of craftsmen’, he cannot be referring to political legislators, of whom there were undoubtedly plenty

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chooses to bypass the issue but ends up signaling the final major problem contributing to the semiotic crisis in the sixteenth century. This unmentioned factor is authority, namely, as Montaigne implicitly suggests, those who have the power to designate meaning. In exploring the crises of representation and interpretation, we have touched on this overarching concept and alluded to it as an underlying structure that faltered to some extent—or more precisely, at some level—either as a result or in anticipation of the crises of representation and interpretation. For example, with scholasticism, one of the attitudes that authors displayed was certainty, or at least an air thereof. While humanism boasted its own brand of certainty based on a more scientific approach, scholasticism was infused with a certainty rooted in faith. Even though it was known for its obsessive dialectic, which may have given the impression that the debate was never closed, scholasticism’s conclusions carried with them an air of immutability due to the combination of rigorous dialectic examination with faith. Humanism did not set out to contest matters of faith necessarily; in fact, its focus was on “scientific” examination that was intended to lend credibility to faith that it had not previously enjoyed. Nevertheless, when those “scientific” conclusions did not correspond to what the faith had taught or what scholasticism had “proved,” the authority of the Church and her texts no longer seemed definitive. Once various authors, scholars, theologians or thinkers sensed a weakness, the reliability of authority decreased as the attacks increased. This weakening of authority did not always take place directly. Often, authority was collateral damage in other debates about theology, politics, history, or literature. It is these indirect causes that I would like to examine first before moving on to what I believe was a more direct and destructive force against authority in the early modern period. To be sure, the distinct and often legal separation of authority with respect to the Church and the State is a later invention; in the sixteenth century, the boundaries of these institutions were porous to the extent of being indiscernible at times. However, as a means of conveying the extent to which a crisis of authority occurred at this time, it is worthwhile to treat them as centers of their respective modes of authority, namely the religious and the political, with the understanding that these centers were fully integrated within a whole. The crisis of authority in the Church is obvious and is well documented, mostly since it resulted from or caused one of the major

in contemporary Greek cities, but to the postulated linguistic legislators, the people who succeed in bringing neologisms into circulation. New words do enter the language, so someone must be devising and launching them” (70).

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theological disputes in the history of Christianity.126 Moreover, the relative weakness of the French episcopate left a vacuum of leadership that made the problem of ecclesiastical authority, especially in France, that much worse. The saving grace for the Church’s authority during this period was the Council of Trent, at which the French influence was relatively small. The corruption of the French clergy did not help either in translating the renewal of Trent into the French context. Much of this corruption was rooted in the Church’s relationship to the monarchy, whose control of the clergy enabled its corruption. Just because the monarchy was in charge, though, does not mean that it did not experience an erosion of authority in its own right. Among the many paradoxes of the early modern period, the centralization of authority that occurred during the Valois dynasty did not necessarily end in more real control. The reign of Francis I represents an excellent example of this phenomenon. Reputedly more of an enlightened and cultivated monarch, Francis I embarked on a concerted effort at the consolidation of his power even while promoting more liberal values.127 The true nature of what Francis had done came to light with the Affaire des placards, when a crackdown on those who would mock the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist were chastised swiftly and firmly. But it was just such incidents as these that seemed to conflict with the perception of Francis as a humanist monarch, therefore contributing to the decline of kingly authority rather than assuring it.128 Under his son, Henry II, and subsequent 126  It would be easy to get bogged down in a “chicken or the egg” analysis about whether the crisis of authority was a result or a cause of the Protestant Reformation. It is probably both, but there is no doubt that once the Reformation played itself out, the Church’s authority was seriously weakened, perhaps even on both sides of the debate. After all, Protestantism did not cease to factionalize or to divide after the sixteenth century. The initial contestation of ecclesiastical and scriptural authority that came from Luther reverberates even today. There were certain conditions in the realm of authority that allowed Luther to nail those ninety-five theses to the Church door in protest, but that act set off a flurry of consequences that further exacerbated the crisis of theological and ecclesiastical authority during and after the Reformation. 127  Philippe Hamon offers a nice picture of the Renaissance monarchy in his chapter, “Une monarchie de la Renaissance? 1515–1559” in La Monarchie entre Renaissance et Révolution 1515–1792, ed. Joël Cornette (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 13–62. On this particular point, Hamon describes Francis I’s gallery at Fontainebleau that shows him “en train de chasser l’ignorance, ou bien tenant dans sa main une grenade, symbole de l’unité de l’Etat” (20). The representation reflects his intellectual openness but also the increasing sacralization of the French monarch. 128  One of the ways that Francis reconciled this apparent conflict was by seeing the affair of the placards as a political rather than a theological or ecclesial issue. Donald R. Kelley explains that at this time, “[t]o reject immanence, and thereby traditional authority, on grounds of private conscience was merely heretical; but to proclaim these views publicly was treasonable” (The Beginning of Ideology: Consciousness and Society in the French

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monarchs, the real authority of the Valois kings deteriorated further with each succession, reaching its nadir in the assassination of Henry III in 1589. I will take a look at the ways in which royal and political authority was already significantly undermined in the years leading up to the wars of religion. One of the traditions that helped to build up the foundations of ecclesiastical and royal authority was the historical one. It is a tradition that will come to rely much on the authority of the author himself, and the rise of the authority of the historian anticipates the authority that other authors will try to seize during the wars. In addition, these authors did not just rely on their own authority but also on that of their research, which in many cases was demonstrably superior to that of previous historical methods. Early modern historians, using the tools of humanist scholarship, corrected history, to be sure, but some of that scholarship was used to reframe legend, or even polemic, as historical truth. Very often, this was done at the expense of opposing or even established historical narratives. For example, Lorenzo Valla corrects one of the Church’s principal justifications for its involvement in the political sphere by unraveling the validity of the Donation of Constantine. History was new territory in the contestation and creation of authority that could challenge traditional narratives in the theological or political sphere. Overall, in these two central spheres of fifteenth and sixteenth century life, it was not a favorable period for the establishment and exercise of authority, creating a vacuum waiting to be filled. This third leg of this crisis will have serious consequences for language as the absence of authority that guaranteed meaning would permit many to take advantage of the situation, promoting their own authority to guarantee the truth behind their words. 3.1 Authority and the Church Long before Martin Luther may or may not have nailed the ninety-five theses to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg in 1517, the beginnings of the Reformation were already stirring.129 In many of the intellectual and Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 19). Therein lies the problem, only when the theological issue becomes a political one does it become a threat. As a precursor to the wars of religion, the affair demonstrates the dangerous mix of religious and political ideologies and the written word. 129  There are many excellent works that directly address the question of the continuity or discontinuity between the theology, liturgical practice, and piety of the Middle Ages and the Reformation. See Berndt Hamm, The Reformation of Faith in the Context of Late Medieval Theology and Piety, ed. Robert J. Bast (Leiden: Brill, 2004). On the particular moment of the Ninety-Five Theses, see Brad S. Gregory, Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation and the Conflicts that Continue to Shape Our World (New York: HarperOne, 2017), 39–46. Gregory even emphasizes that printing the Ninety-Five Theses was integral

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scholarly traditions that I have already discussed, one can see the seeds of a shift in approach on many aspects of the Christian faith, notably in the approach to Sacred Scripture. With the nature and meaning of the written word in such upheaval, Luther and other reformers nevertheless decide to turn to scripture alone as the foundation of Christian belief. This turn has drastic consequences for structures of authority within the Christian community as well, for Luther’s call to sola scriptura assumes to an extent the setting aside of the authority of the hierarchy, of tradition, and even of history.130 This situation presents both a dilemma and an opportunity: Luther and other reformers desire to circumvent traditional modes of authority who were the target of many Reformation critiques, but they simultaneously need to create a new authority by which they could support these critiques and other theological assertions.131 Humanism and philology give Luther and other reformers a reasonable expectation that the return to a pure version of scripture—to a pure source of Christian belief—will provide an acceptable replacement.132 Fortunately for the reformers, an already existing mistrust of ecclesiastical authority will aid them in their pursuit. In his excellent volume on the French episcopate, Frederic J. Baumgartner outlines the many reasons why the bishops in this particular context were no longer worthy of the trust of the faithful, beginning with their decided lack of moral rectitude, spiritual development, and intellectual prowess. In his introduction, Baumgartner writes: “In [sixteenth-century French] society a bishop was usually not resident in his diocese to administer it, cared little or nothing about what his flock thought of him, and often did not to their notoriety (44). Finally, in Luther’s particular case and on his relationship to humanism and scholasticism, see Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation 1483–1521, trans. James L. Schaaf (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 1:161–74. 130  See Bruce Gordon, “The Changing Face of Protestant History and Identity in the Sixteenth Century,” in Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), 1:1–22. 131  This was easier said than done since scripture alone, along with increased access to it, could create theological chaos with no one to judge proper and improper exegesis. For more on the problem of authoritative interpretation of scripture in the post-Reformation world, see Ian Maclean, “Les pratiques de la lecture érudite de la bible avant 1630,” in Crossing Traditions: Essays on the Reformation and Intellectual History, ed. Maria-Cristina Picasso and Daniela Solfaroli Camillocci (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 216–29. 132  See Gigliola Fragnito, “Interdiction et tolérance des écritures saintes en langue vernaculaire dans l’Europe catholique (XVIe–XVIIe siècles),” in Vernacular Bible and Religious Reform in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era, ed. Wim François and August den Hollander (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 205–20. Fragnito catalogues many of the fears of members of the Church’s hierarchy surrounding vernacular translations, namely that their authority to adjudicate biblical interpretation would evaporate with greater access to the bible among the laity.

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have a university degree. Although standards for canonization to sainthood did become more rigorous after the Council of Trent […] not a single French bishop of the century was canonized or, it appears, was even considered.”133 Ecclesiastical authority did not just leave itself open to challenge; it was ripe for it. Right around the time that Martin Luther was undertaking his own initiative to counteract what he saw as the corruption of indulgences, the French Church embarked on a new agreement with Rome that would continue to take it further away from anything resembling credibility or integrity. With the Concordat of Bologna, signed in 1516, Francis I inserted himself ever more into the process of episcopal appointments, exacerbating the deplorable state of France’s bishops. Whether in flouting the agreement’s requirement that a bishop have the required university degree or in the persistent tendency to nominate men who were well-connected but certainly not of a high moral character, the king weakened the French episcopate by using it as his personal system of favors.134 That being said, the dominance of various bishoprics by a handful of families, along with certain French ecclesiastical traditions that kept the various sees in the hands of the few, certainly did not help improve the quality of these successors to the apostles.135 Contrast this situation with those who were finding the Reformation attractive. Martin Luther himself was not just an agitator for reform; he was also, by most accounts, an adept and intelligent theologian steeped in the language and methods of scholasticism.136 Of course, his intimate knowledge of scholasticism enabled him to refute many of its conclusions.137 Of particular importance to Luther was the rediscovery of the Word in the form of Sacred Scripture, 133  F rederic J. Baumgartner, Change and Continuity in the French Episcopate: the Bishops and the Wars of Religion 1547–1610 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986), 1. 134  Baumgartner, French Episcopate, 12. 135  See Baumgartner, French Episcopate, 21–26, where he describes the traditions of the exchange of sees, resignation in favorem, and regression. The first meant that bishops did not have to be accountable to their flock; if the relationship deteriorated, they just exchanged their diocese with another across the country. Resignation in favorem meant resigning in favor of someone of the bishop’s choosing. Finally, regression meant the reclaiming of a bishopric after one’s successor resigns or dies. 136  See Steven Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 231, and Leif Grane, “Luther and Scholasticism,” in Luther and Learning, ed. Marilyn J. Harran (Selingsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1983), 52–68. 137  For an account of Luther’s ardent attack of the thought of the Ockhamists, see Ozment, Reform, 234–35. This is interesting considering later assertions that Ockham’s thought was in part responsible for the Reformation. See Ozment, Reform, 16–17. For more on the influence of nominalism on the Reformation, see Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), especially chapter three, “Late Medieval Theology and the Reformation,” 67–115.

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as opposed to the medieval emphasis on Tradition.138 Thus, “[w]hereas […] the church had arrogated unto itself the authority to determine what Scripture said and how it should be interpreted, they held that all practices in the church must be securely underpinned by scriptural authority.”139 Enter philology, which will try to sort out exactly what those various interpretations of Sacred Scripture were going to be. When the philological explanations are clearly in conflict with what the Church teaches, or no scriptural explanation of the Church’s practices are to be found, the authority of the Church suffers in the face of much more credible and scientific challenges. Many of these challenges to Church authority come from without, but Baumgartner also outlines many internal factors that are much more localized and that explain why ecclesiastical authority would later be so ineffective during and in the lead up to the wars of religion. It was likely difficult for the faithful to respect episcopal authority when it was mostly absent from the diocese. Most of the day-to-day tasks of running the Church were left to the bishop’s underlings, while the bishop was more preoccupied with maintaining his political standing.140 Reactions to episcopal absenteeism had already surfaced in the fifteenth century, and Trent would later try to address this and many other problems. In response, there was not an absence of feverish rhetoric addressed at the many faults of the episcopacy. A certain Franciscan, Olivier Maillard preached in Nantes in 1470: “On peut dire de l’Eglise ce que disait Jérémie en gémissant : la reine des provinces est tombée sous le tribut ; […] les races à qui l’entrée du sanctuaire fut interdite s’y sont établies […] Quels sont ceux qu’on introduit ainsi dans la maison de Dieu? ‘Des chasseurs, des ruffians, ribauds, paillars, ignorants, ambitieux, aveugles les yeux bandés’ ” (One can say about the Church what Jeremiah said while moaning: the queen of the provinces has fallen under the tribute; […] the races to whom entrance to the sanctuary was forbidden have now established themselves there […] Which are those whom one has thusly introduced into the house of God? ‘Hunters, ruffians, the debauched, the depraved, the ignorant, the ambitious, the blind with eyes blindfolded’).141 The rhetoric was often harsh and acerbic, but in addition to reflecting anger and frustration toward the hierarchical church, 138  J ohn L. Flood, “Martin Luther’s Bible Translation in its German and European Context,” in The Bible in the Renaissance, ed. Richard Griffiths (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 49. 139  Ibid. 140  Baumgartner, French Episcopate, 105. 141  M. Piton, “L’idéal épiscopal selon les prédicateurs français de la fin du XVe siècle et du début du XVIe,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 61 (1966): 86. Piton gives many other examples, even noting that some commentators say that Rabelais’s Panurge has nothing on these preachers who spoke out against the decadence of the episcopate (86–87).

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it risked stirring up more secular fervor against the Church at the local level. Steven Ozment notes that in the lead-up to the Reformation, civil authorities were taking more of an initiative to curb ecclesiastical privileges as the clergy’s abuse of them grew steadily out of control.142 Long gone were the days when the Church could dictate to the political sphere in order to protect itself from this type of secular interference. Logically, it would seem that later, when the Church wanted to assert its doctrinal dictates, it would then find itself equally impotent. On this very front, the Church’s inability to perceive its own weakness will prove to be further detrimental to its cause, for as the Reformation grows in scope and popularity, the Church will find itself incapable of responding. In some cases, the lack of response is by choice: “Protestant antagonism to the episcopal office and zeal to seize the vast properties and revenues held by the prelates placed most bishops in a relationship of confrontation with the reformers, yet a large number of bishops ignored the presence of Protestants in their dioceses.”143 This situation did not improve even after the breakout of the wars of religion where property seizures and violence only intensified.144 The utter ambivalence on the part of Catholic leadership, even in the face of threats to their person, could only have inhibited the efforts of those who actually tried to counteract the rise of Protestantism.145 The case of Cardinal Charles de Lorraine (1524–1574) reveals much about the futility of the struggle, or at least to what extent the authority of the episcopacy in France had eroded by the time the wars of religion broke out. Charles is a good study since he was known not only to be brilliant, but also to be of a relatively upstanding moral character among his fellow prelates and courtiers. According to H. Outram Evennett, Charles “neither hunted nor gambled; kept neither horses, dogs nor birds; was sober and abstemious at table, and fasted twice a week, on Fridays and Saturdays.”146 His moral rectitude did not, however, preclude an intellectual vibrancy and openness: “He liked to surround himself with men of culture and learning, to listen to and take part in their conversation, to discuss questions of law or philosophy, art or theology. Knowledge of all kinds

142  Ozment, Reform, 205. 143  Baumgartner, French Episcopate, 144. 144  Ibid. 145  See Baumgartner, French Episcopate, 91. While perhaps not a direct cause of the eroded position of the Church, Baumgartner does note that many bishops chose to cede to civil authorities their power to prosecute heretics. 146  H. Outram Evennett, The Cardinal of Lorraine and the Council of Trent: A Study in the Counter-Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), 5.

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he cultivated for its own sake.”147 If Baumgartner’s account of the French episcopate is accurate, Charles, unlike many of his brethren, administrated his diocese with a sincere and committed attention.148 Finally, Charles displayed an openness to evangelical ideas and sought peace between Catholics and adherents to the Reformation but was foiled by the political and religious environment.149 So then why was Charles, after being named Archbishop of Rheims in 1538 and then Cardinal in 1547 seemingly so ineffectual when it came to the translation of the Tridentine reform into the French context or with respect to possibilities for reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants? Part of the reason likely has its origin in the general lack of interest on the part of the French Church in the Council to begin with, a condition of the religious and political environment that certainly was not Charles’s fault. The Concordat of Bologna that had gone far to isolate the Church in France from the international Church, but that had also, according to Evennett, protected the French Church from some Reformation tendencies, left French prelates and politicians with little desire for confrontation with the different players in Germany and their newfound religious divisions.150 Moreover, French obstruction of the Council focused primarily on preserving their so-called Gallican rights enshrined in the Concordat of Bologna.151 This resulted in the near total absence of the French episcopacy from the actual theological, doctrinal, and scriptural discussions that took place in the somewhat abortive first sessions of the Council that lasted from 1547–1549. Evennett describes the French attitude: “But on the whole the French attendance had been very poor, even at Bologna. No constructive proposals had come from the Gallican Church; it had identified itself with no positive point of view. The general attitude of Crown and clergy alike may be described as negative and suspicious.”152 The Protestant, and in France, the Calvinist, tide continued to rise, and here, Charles’s considerable diplomatic, political, and intellectual gifts seem to have faltered as these talents began to 147  Ibid. Later, Evennett highlights all of the many poets and thinkers who celebrated Charles’s patronage, including Ramus, Ronsard, and Du Bellay (13). This is confirmed by Jean Balsamo, “Le Cardinal de Lorraine et l’Academia remensis,” in République des lettres, République des arts, ed. Christian Mouchel and Colette Nativel (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 14. 148  Evennett, Lorraine, 16–20. Charles undertook a great many reforms in his diocese for the sake of the clergy and the faithful. He seems to have been beloved in his diocese for his pastoral manner and throughout Europe for his preaching. 149  See Stuart Carroll, “The Compromise of Charles Cardinal de Lorraine: New Evidence,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, no. 3 (2003): 469–483. 150  Evennett, Lorraine, 26–27. 151  Evennett, Lorraine, 32. 152  Evennett, Lorraine, 34.

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work against him. His association with the Inquisition, his often reactionary attitude, and shifting forces at court in France and elsewhere conspired to compromise his authority. Evennett summarizes: “Versatility was the key to his character, but it was also its canker. Not only did it make him appear hypocritical in the eyes of his enemies, often very unjustly, but it constituted a definite hindrance to the full use of his many gifts […] He had aims and objects in plenty—but without the single directing motive which makes the great man, and the saint. Hence the appearance of ineffectiveness, which somehow takes the lustre from all his achievements.”153 More recently, Stuart Carroll, while arguing for a reassessment of Charles’s actual beliefs, which revealed him to be sympathetic to reform, nevertheless affirms Charles’s penchant for political expediency and his misunderstanding of the necessary conditions to obtain a compromise.154 In many ways his life reflects nearly perfectly the progression of the Church in France through the period leading up to the wars. Namely, the Church enjoyed a great intellectual tradition and some degree of openness but found that the faults of her members were too great—and the polarization fo the environment too severe—in order to guarantee its own credibility and success. In a panic, certain corners of the Church turned toward persecution, which only hardened its enemies, and very much like with the Cardinal de Lorraine, resulted in authors from opposing camps targeting them with their poisoned pens. The ambivalence of the Church in France toward reform and toward persecution made a major symbol of authority seem hypocritical and constituted a hindrance to the full use of its many gifts. The increasing panic and perception of hypocrisy surrounding the Church may not have been the only reason for the weakness of its authority. After all, what makes the Cardinal de Lorraine reflective of the weakness of ecclesiastical authority is his penchant for leniency at certain times. Nicolas Le Roux notes that “Le cardinal de Lorraine et Michel de L’Hospital militaient pour l’établissement d’un dialogue entre les partis” (The Cardinal de Lorraine and Michel de L’Hospital fought for the establishment of a dialogue between parties) in 1560.155 At the same time, the accommodating attitude of Cardinal Jean Du Bellay made him a target for the critics at the Sorbonne, who charged him with Lutheranism in 1530.156 Many other prelates joined Du Bellay in tolerating Protestants out of their humanist principles, or even out of the neglect that 153  Evennett, Lorraine, 74–75. 154  See Carroll, “Compromise of Charles,” 479. 155  Nicolas Le Roux, Le Roi, la cour, l’état: De la Renaissance à l’absolutisme (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2013), 140. 156  Baumgartner, French Episcopate, 124.

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Baumgartner has already highlighted as a common modus operandi among the Catholic clergy. In sum, no unified voice existed to articulate and defend the authority of the Church. Erasmus himself tries to calm the furor surrounding the new ideas by discouraging people from rushing to a judgment of heresy on every theological intervention.157 In its place, a chorus of opinions and actions, mostly operating in a reactive state, gave rise to uncertainty about very serious—and very seriously held—beliefs. The various sides of the issue began to gather strength as they sought to speak in place of the magisterium, and these positions would then be oft represented and contested in the literature of the wars.158 The Church’s main instrument in the exercise of its authority—its discourse—fell on deaf ears as its credibility eroded. Moreover, the absence of French prelates at the first sessions of what would be a powerful force in the reform of the Church and its episcopacy, the Council of Trent (1545–1563), led to a reduction in its effectiveness at home and abroad.159 Dismissed by the other members of the Council, the Gallican approach did not seem to go far. This is not surprising since the decrees eventually produced by the Council seemed to be addressing directly many of the corruptions of the French episcopacy.160 Amid all of these challenges to the Church’s authority, one cannot forget the consequence that matters for our purposes here, that is, how the weakness of the Church’s authority in the spiritual, doctrinal, theological, and even political spheres affected the use of language and the development of the semiotic crisis. The Church has lost the ability to define or to confirm the definition of its own beliefs and the words that signify them. When swaths of the population no longer accept the authority of the Church or its scholars in recognizing valid interpretations of scripture and doctrine, readers will seek other authorities to replace it. Luther and Calvin represent but a few. I would argue, 157  See Joseph Lecler, S.J., Histoire de la tolérance au siècle de la Réforme (Paris: Aubier, 1955), 135. Lecler cites from Erasmus’s letters: “Autrefois on regardait comme hérétique celui qui s’écartait de l’Evangile, des articles de foi ou de ce qui avait une autorité analogue. Maintenant si quelqu’un s’écarte tant soi peu de saint Thomas, c’est un hérétique … Tout ce qui ne plaît pas, tout ce qu’on ne comprend pas, c’est une hérésie.” This is a fascinating articulation, and a prescient one, for Erasmus suggests that the label of heresy that simultaneously attempted to stigmatized any opposing view and to reinforce the only authority capable of judging heresy, namely the Church, might have diminishing returns. 158  For a good summary of both sides of the issue, see Philip Benedict, “Un roi, une loi, deux fois: Catholic-Reformed co-existence in France 1555–1685,” in Tolerance and intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 65–93. 159  For more on the evolution of the French episcopate during and after the Tridentine period, see Joseph Bergin, The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589–1661 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), esp. 335–64. 160  Baumgartner, French Episcopate, 108.

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however, that when it comes to the issue of language, even these alternatives were not entirely attractive since their hermeneutic methods and their results further clouded the relationship between signs and the signified. As Luther himself acknowledged, the reliance on Sacred Scripture alone did not create the integrity of authority for which he had hoped.161 As a collective religious identity and authority became less relevant, political authority seems to be the logical place to look for a replacement. 3.2 The Monarchy and Authority Charles de Lorraine embodied the ecclesiastical authority that was equally at ease while operating at court, an ease that exemplifies the close relationship between Church and crown. The boundary between the two was always permeable, but the political authority of this period as well struggled to keep up with the times and to exercise itself in a convincing manner. It is hard not to look at political authority in France on the precipice of the wars of religion with a certain degree of disappointment. The evolution of the role of the prince throughout the sixteenth century showed great promise. The popularity of the genre of the miroir du prince (mirror of the prince) embodies the attitudes toward princely authority in this period, both for the principles of rule that it proposes as well as for the assumptions the author makes about his relationship to the king.162 Nevertheless, the proliferation of idealistic speculation and counsel about that to which princes should aspire in their rule failed to translate into action.163 Moreover, having centralized princely authority in 161  See Jules Michelet, Mémoires de Luther, écrits par lui-même (Paris: Adolphe Delahays, 1854), 307–08. Michelet cites a letter from Luther to the Christians of Antwerp: “Le diable voyant que ce genre de vacarme ne peut continuer, il lui faut du nouveau ; il se met à faire rage dans ses membres, je veux dire dans les impies, à travers lesquels il se fait jour par toute sorte de vanités chimériques et de doctrines extravagantes. Celui-ci ne veut plus de baptême, celui-là nie la vertu de l’eucharistie ; un troisième met encore un monde entre celui-ci et le jugement dernier ; d’autres enseignent que Jésus-Christ n’est pas Dieu ; les uns disent ceci, les autres cela, et il y a presque autant de sectes et de croyances que de têtes […] Quand le pape régnait, on n’entendait point parler de troubles ; le Fort (le diable) était en paix dans sa forteresse ; mais à présent qu’un plus fort est venu qui prévaut contre lui et qui le chasse, comme dit l’Evangile, il tempête et sort avec fureur et fracas.” Luther does not call for a return to the Roman fold, but he does lament a deterioration that has led to much meaningless and heretical discourse without any authority to regulate it. 162  See Frédérique Lachaud and Lydwine Scordia, eds., introduction to Le Prince au miroir de la littérature politique de l’Antiquité aux Lumières (Mont-Saint-Aignan: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2007), 13–14. 163  See Jean Meyer, L’éducation des princes du XVe au XIXe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 2004), esp. chapter three, “L’Humanisme. Une nouvelle donne pour l’éducation des princes?”, 77–120. Meyer is very skeptical that this genre did any good in the sixteenth century.

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the hopes that this consolidation would facilitate a better political atmosphere broke down when princely rule suddenly started to veer toward tyranny. The deception and disappointment when this began to occur no doubt compromised the integrity of the king’s word as one could no longer trust that these lofty principles were indeed guiding him. Francis I represents the first movements both toward centralization and toward the new humanistic ideal of the enlightened prince.164, 165 He demonstrates many of the qualities of a ruler who benefitted from a humanistic education.166 His sister, Marguerite de Navarre, had Protestant sympathies, which Francis seems to have tolerated.167 As part of his consolidation, Francis augmented the independence of his kingdom through the move toward the vernacular language in its administration. His patronage of the arts and his pursuit of Leonardo da Vinci reveal a desire for a new kind of rationality in his thought and with respect to technological innovation.168 In many ways, Francis resembles the rulers that would claim the mantle of enlightenment 164  I recognize that the use of the word “enlightened” is troublesome since it evokes an anachronism. However, I would like to suggest some parallels between this period in political authority and what occurred during the age of the Enlightened Despots. See, for example, A. Lentin, Enlightened Absolutism (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Avero, 1985), ix. Lentin’s definition of the eighteenth-century phenomenon makes the connection obvious: “ ‘Enlightened Absolutism’ denotes the combination of such policies as administrative centralization, religious toleration and the subordination of church to state, the encouragement of modern techniques in agriculture and industry and official patronage of the arts. It suggests a general awareness on the part of the rulers, an interest in the philosophy and culture of the Enlightenment and some degree of commitment to its values.” 165  For a discussion of Francis’s push toward centralization, see J. Russell Major, From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles, & Estates (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). This does not, of course, mean that the Valois succeeded. See Bernard Quilliet, La France du beau XVIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1998), especially Chapter II, “La France d’un seul homme,” 24–43. Quilliet believes that kings in the sixteenth century had not reached absolute rule. 166  See Patricia F. and Rouben C. Cholakian, Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 16–17: “Consequently [Louise de Savoie] gave her daughter (and her son) a far broader and more liberal education than was usual for noblewomen (or noblemen) in her day. Indeed, she treated Marguerite and François equally. From the outset they had the same tutors and followed the same course of studies […] Two humanist scholars and churchmen […] taught them Latin and biblical history. Another ‘érudit,’ Robert Hurault, ‘gave Marguerite her first lessons in philosophy.’ ” 167  See Cholakians, Marguerite de Navarre, 40–65. 168  See R.J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 149–54. Knecht writes, “In 1517 Francis I was anxious to show himself not only as a great soldier, but as a great patron of learning […] Francis was an avid collector of manuscripts and books. He also shared an interest, common among princes of his day, in the occult sciences: astrology, alchemy and the Cabala” (149). It is

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about a century and a half later. In the literature of the period, representations of Francis confirm this image of a ruler who could be challenged or at least slightly goaded without much consequence. Clément Marot made such an effort with his patron and shows a relationship between poet and prince that reflects an image of a softer princely authority. Marot, whether it was in trying to get himself out of prison or trying to get money from Francis, chose the poetic outlet as a way to solicit favors from his patron. Even though the manner in which Marot addressed these requests to Francis never really approaches the crime of lèse-majesté, Marot’s tone takes certain liberties such that when published might have led to a characterization of the sovereign that was much less authoritarian. In a particularly clever example, the poet writes at the end of his epistle, “Marot estant prisonnier, escript au roy, pour sa délivrance” (Marot being a prisoner, writes to the king, for his liberation), the following: “Treshumblement requerant vostre grace, / De pardonner à ma trop grant audace / D’avoir empris ce fol escript vous faire. / Et m’excusez, si pour le mien affaire / Je ne suis point vers vous allé parler : / Je n’ay pas eu le loysir d’y aller” (Very humbly asking your grace / To pardon my great audacity / Of having undertaken to do for you this foolish writing. / And excuse me, if for my affair / I have not at all come to speak to you: / I have not had the leisure to go).169 Of course, he has to write this epistle since his imprisonment prevents his presence before the king. This clever apology reminds his patron of his inability to offer reverence in person, which of course could be remedied if the poet indeed receives that which he requests through his work. In another example, Marot is asking for money but at the same time creates a nice example of the rhetoric of the “infortune.” In the “Epistre au Roy, par Marot estant malade à Paris,” Marot needs money since one of his own valets has robbed him. He offers his patron a deal: “Je vous feray une belle cedulle, / A vous payer (sans usure il s’entend) / Quand on verra tout le monde content ; / Ou (si voulez) à payer ce sera, / Quand vostre los et renom cessera” (I will make for you a nice promissory note, / to pay you (without interest, it is understood) / When we see everyone content; / Or (if you want) it will be paid, / When your praise and renown cease).170 Marot once again shows his cleverness by promising to pay when the king no longer enjoys a good reputation. Since the assumptions of the relationship between poet and patron guarantee that this difficult to believe that Francis’s interest in these edgier areas of knowledge did not translate into a greater openness to other ideas about philosophy or Christianity. 169  Clément Marot, “Marot estant prisonnier, escript au roy, pour sa délivrance,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Flammarion, 2007), vv. 61–66. 170  Clément Marot, “Epistre au Roy, par Marot estant malade à Paris,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. François Rigolot (Paris: Flammarion, 2007), vv. 98–102.

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will never happen, Marot can rely on these assumptions in order not to pay. Cynthia Skenazi adds another layer when emphasizing the political capital of the letter, that this “belle cedulle” represents a promise of repayment of the debt in political capital. The talent of the poet becomes currency to service any deficiencies in the image of the king.171 This perhaps explains some of the boldness of Marot’s sponsored works; his own political capital gives him independence and standing in the relationship that allows his more ironic style and brash tone. While the poet would likely never presume to be equal in stature to the king, he believes that he is in a position to cleverly challenge him. The exchange between the poet and the sovereign suggests a game between two political players where the king ultimately has the upper hand but probably never really fears or plans to punish the poet who depends on him. By contrast, when Francis felt really threatened, he turned to persecution, and the first cracks in the façade of the humanist king begin to show. During the Affair of the Placards, Francis exerted his royal authority to root out a bit of cleverness on the part of those who would impugn the Catholic Mass.172 In response, Francis allowed the Parlement of Paris to act, resulting in the execution of twenty people for sedition and heresy in 1534 and early 1535.173 The reaction to Francis’s crackdown fostered the mistrust of an ostensibly more reasonable monarch. Interestingly, even though his severity seems inconsistent, it was not all that surprising, considering that Francis’s toleration tended to be tied to the favor one enjoyed at court.174 At any rate, the Affaire was indeed a turning point and should have cleared up any doubts about the king’s willingness to defend the faith when 171  See Cynthia Skenzai, “L’économie du don et le mécénat: les formes de l’échange dans une épître de Clément Marot,” French Studies 57, no. 4, (2003): 470: “Le poème de Marot permet par conséquent à son auteur de renégocier une dette anticipée (une dette d’argent et une dette affective) envers le roi par le biais d’une dépense conçue en termes esthétiques et culturels: un capital matériel (l’argent convoité) est converti d’avance en un capital symbolique qui, dépassant le niveau des relations personnelles du poète et du roi, donne à leur échange une dimension publique et par là politique. Les louanges que le poète dispense à profusion à la fin de l’épître servent pleinement la propagande royale.” 172  See Michael W. Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground: Conflict and Reform in the Pays De Vaud, 1528–1559 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), especially Chapter 4, “The Clash of the Old and New Faiths,” 93–132. 173  William Monter, “Heresy executions in Reformation Europe, 1520–1565,” in Tolerance and intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 53. On the Parlement’s role in the lead-up to the wars of religion, see Nancy Lyman Roelker, One King, One Faith: The Parlement of Paris and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 174  Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 319–20.

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he felt attacks upon it were more “sedition” than “heresy,” all the while tarnishing his credibility as a tolerant monarch.175 Still hopeful, Francis, reassuring them that he was not guilty of persecution, pressed on with his project to bring France and Germany into a closer relationship as a counterweight to the Hapsburgs.176 Francis’s reign and his relationship to new ideas has a complex history and one that is as inconsistent as the king’s decisions, but it affirms the unreliable and perhaps cynical nature of Francis’s rule. With his particular character and boldness, he seems to have pulled it off, but that does not mean that the real authority of the monarchy was not weakening as Francis sought to centralize and attribute to himself even more strength. When other personalities took the helm, the situation did not improve. Henry II, who reigned from 1547–1559 on the eve of the wars of religion, continued Francis’s program of centralization while dispensing with his father’s moderately tolerant veneer. Henry adhered to the idea that it was the state’s responsibility to prosecute heresy, and he continued to take advantage of that role. In 1547, three acts on the part of the King sought to tighten his grip on orthodoxy in order to further secure the unity of France. On April 5, he “reaffirmed the use of judicial torture, public whipping, and the cutting off of the tongue” for blasphemy. In the following month, he “prohibited the publication of books on religion that had not been approved by the Sorbonne and the possession of books on the Index of Forbidden Books.” Finally, in October of that year, he “created [the chambre ardente] in the Parlement of Paris whose purpose was to hear heresy cases exclusively.”177 While many were perhaps pleased with Henry’s commitment to the faith, the interest in bringing heretics to the stake did not bring about the unity he intended. Moreover, Henry’s marriage to the Florentine, Catherine de’ Medici, in 1533, likely made matters worse, for Catherine’s foreign birth as well as her association with Machiavelli elicited further mistrust of the king’s ability to rule with integrity.178 Sentiment on Catherine’s identity fits with France’s overall anxiety about unity in the face of religious discord. A queen of foreign birth who brings numerous courtiers with her most likely did not contribute to the idea of a unique French 175  See Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 321: “The persecution of French dissenters which followed the Affair of the Placards seriously damaged Francis’s reputation in Germany just as he was trying to heal its religious division.” One could presume that the King’s relationship to those at home favorable to the Reform was equally damaged. 176  Knecht, Renaissance Warrior, 321. 177  Baumgartner, French Episcopate, 92. 178  Many of these fears about Catherine and her Italian ancestry will resurface in the Vie de Sainte Catherine (1575), a satirical text about Catherine’s life that strongly emphasizes her association with Machiavelli and characterizations of his political philosophy.

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identity. Anti-Italian feeling could also be attributed to the correspondence in the French mind between Italy and the papacy, and after the Concordat of Bologna and the yearning for a solidified Gallican Church, the Italian presence at court represented a threat, despite an established and oft idealized connection between Paris and Florence.179 The two principal means of authority in the French context were being challenged from many different fronts and were having trouble at every turn. Amid this crisis, another possibility arises to fill the vacuum, but one that does not necessarily replace Church or state. The authority of the writer offers an alternative, but one that is not stable enough to bring about the unity and peace that France so badly needs. 3.3 History and Authority The collapse of history as an established authority in many ways mirrors the tumult surrounding Sacred Scripture. Humanist methods of scholarship were brought to bear on historiography, just as they were on scripture, and the result was often damaging to established historical narratives that had lent credence to both religious and political authority.180 The Renaissance brought about renewed interest in the long march of the development of human thought. More and more, thinkers saw history as a way to access the accumulation of human knowledge.181 Thus, the stakes are raised for establishing exactly of what this accumulation of knowledge consists. History becomes an essential authority just at the time that new insights into it make it seem unreliable. The study of the past creates in many instances what the twenty-first century reader might call “gotcha” moments, when new inquiry into the historical record reveals that 179  This relationship was already characterized in the text of Jean Lemaire de Belges in La Concorde des deux langages (1511), with the French language of course gaining the upper hand. For the history on the Renaissance connection between France and Florence, see Arthur Tilley, The Dawn of the French Renaissance (New York: Russell & Russell, 1918), especially chapters III–V (56–182). 180  On the implications of sixteenth-century historiography, see the essential Claude-Gilbert Dubois, La Conception de l’histoire en France au XVIe siècle (Paris: A.G. Nizet, 1977). Dubois gives the sense of how new research methodologies brought about feelings of betrayal whose author was history: “[C]e qui est mis en relief, c’est la trahison d’un texte par l’intermédiaire des gloses et des commentaires : de là cette idée d’une pureté intiale de la révélation, et de sa corruption par amoncellement d’erreurs, qui fait intervenir la dimension historique” (32). 181  See Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). Kelley writes that “man is defined not as a rational or a political animal but as a remembering animal, not as homo sapiens but as homo historicus” (1–2). This becomes increasingly important during the wars of religion as writers focus less on what they know and more on what they remember, however biased or inaccurate it may have been.

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certain historical proofs about the political, religious, or social world were in fact fabrications. Ironically, in discovering evidence that contradicts these narratives, authors rediscover historical proof as an invaluable rhetorical tool to shore up their own versions of the way things were that in turn happen to affirm their versions of the way things ought to be. A pivotal example of Renaissance scholarship shattering the authority of history was the fifteenth century Italian humanist and scholar Lorenzo Valla (c. 1407–1457). Valla embodied the newfound regard for history in that he saw it as an even greater source of knowledge than philosophy: “The discourse of historians exhibits more substance, more practical knowledge, more political wisdom […] more customs, and more learning of every sort than the precepts of any philosophers.”182 Valla’s quote of course does not suggest that medieval scholars—or any other scholars, for that matter—were ignorant of history. As Valla’s own work will attest, Western society and culture relied heavily on history as a form of heritage or as a means of validating tradition. What Valla seems to critique, however, is that history has for too long been at the service of philosophy, an arrangement that has stifled history’s true authoritative function. In fact, philosophy was not the only discipline that should be subjected to the purifying discovery that was history. As Kelley tries to demonstrate, Valla believed that one must tie grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic to history in order for it to flourish. More importantly, as we have already seen with the crisis of interpretation, it was the inherently historical study of philology that was the real key to Valla’s genius. So how did this philological genius contribute to a crisis of authority with respect to history? It was Valla’s earth-shattering takedown of what was commonly known as the Donation of Constantine that most affected, or perhaps reflected, the crisis of historical authority. Long established as one of the justifications of the Church’s authority over secular matters, the Donation of Constantine was the historical moment at which Constantine donated significant lands on the Italian peninsula, thereby guaranteeing a papal foothold in secular affairs. Moreover, what made this document so useful, or rather, convenient, to papal authority was that it guaranteed said authority over the entire spiritual and temporal realm.183 While the comprehensiveness of the 182   As quoted in Kelley, Foundations, 20, from Lorenzo Valla, De rebus a Ferdinando Hispaniarum rege et majroibus ejus gestis, “prœmium,” in Opera Omnia, ed. E. Garin (Turin, 1962), II, 6. 183  See Christopher Coleman, The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), 1–2. Coleman lists all of the things that the Donation guarantees: “[The Donation of Constantine] purports to reproduce a legal document in which the Emperor Constantine the Great, reciting his baptism and the cure of

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list of privileges that the Donation purportedly grants somewhat defies belief, the document was more or less universally accepted as authentic until the fifteenth century, even as some occasionally raised doubts about it.184 While cited by many popes, it was not necessarily the most important of documents on the matter of the relationship between secular and religious power until the sixteenth century when many of the questions it addresses became of vital importance during the Protestant Reformation. Valla’s study of the text, therefore, becomes a key piece of evidence in the fight against pontifical authority. Valla approaches the document with the explicit project of debunking what seems so obviously to him a forgery. In the process, Valla boldly proclaims that he will also go after the highest of authorities without reservation since they are so obviously in the wrong: “I am one who writes not only against the dead, but against the living as well—not one or two of them, but many—and not merely against private persons but even against those who hold high office!”185 The breadth of the challenge that Valla sets forth is significant. No tradition held by those who have gone before or those who currently live will go unexamined. The Donation formed the foundation of a great deal of authority in past and present and of popes and faithful. Its role as a seminal document for the structures of contemporary authority meant that his takedown would discredit many of the most fundamental elements of the society in which he lived.186 As a correction of a long held and long mistaken belief in the relationship between the Church and the Roman Empire, Valla in his analysis his leprosy at the hands of Sylvester, Bishop of Rome 314–36, confirmed the privilege of that pontiff as head of all the clergy and supreme over the other four patriarchates; conferred upon him extensive imperial property in various parts of the world, especially the imperial Lateran palace, and the imperial diadem and tiara, and other imperial insignia; granted the Roman clergy the rank of the highest Roman orders and their privileges; gave Sylvester and his successors freedom in consecrating men for certain orders of the clergy; it tells how he, Constantine, recognized the superior dignity of the Pope by holding the bridle of his horse; grants Sylvester Rome, all of Italy, and the western provinces, to remain forever under the control of the Roman See; and states his own determination to retire to Byzantium in order that the presence of an earthly emperor may not embarrass ecclesiastical authority.” 184  For an excellent study of the origins and history of the document, especially on how it was used, see Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007). 185  Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine, trans. G. W. Bowersock (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3. 186  It is important to note that Valla was not the first to suggest that the Donation was a forgery. Nicholas of Cusa had written on the question several years earlier in 1434 in his De concordantia catholica. See Bowersock, introduction to On the Donation of Constantine, by Lorenzo Valla (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), vi.

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takes on a role greater than one who has decided to write against the tradition. It is a document that rewrites history and does so while relying on particular philological but also rhetorical tools. The history-by-linguistic-analysis nature of the text is what makes it so pertinent for later sixteenth-century writers. At the time of the document’s first appearance, the Church greeted it with “equanimity”;187 ecclesiastical authorities did not seem very concerned because threats to their authority were either minimal or lacking in credibility. However, when Protestant reformers began to appropriate Valla’s text for their own purposes, the Church reacted by placing it on the Index, although at the late date of 1559.188 Valla, of course, is not the only model of the historiographical turn that occurred with the advent of Renaissance humanism. Although not a selfdescribed humanist, Guillaume Budé (1467–1540) developed the use of philology in historical inquiry throughout his lifetime. As a bridge from Valla to the later sixteenth century, Budé insisted on the study of words as a key to understanding the past. Budé “agreed, too, [with Valla] that words reflected reality (verba rerum imagines) and that the contours of the historical world were revealed only through the close study of language.”189 Whether it was in the exploration of Roman coinage or Roman law, Budé did not hesitate to question classical sources and to assert his own authority in the interpretation of texts or in the writing of history. In the heritage of Valla, Budé would make “conjectural emendations” of texts where he judged there were “depraved” or “mutilated” passages: “He could not conceal his pride in his own successful ‘restitutions,’ and he entered with great relish into that increasingly popular humanist sport, the hunt for interpolations.”190 While it seems to have made for compelling history, Budé is entering into dangerous territory. Many who were less skilled than he was, whether from a philological perspective or in their encyclopedic knowledge of classical sources, were anxious to imitate a style that lent itself to propaganda; Kelley notes his extensive influence among both Catholics and Protestants as well as among philologists and propagandists.191 On the literary side, Marie-Madeleine de La Garanderie argues that Budé heavily influenced Rabelais, especially in the realm of word play.192 Of course, Rabelais and Budé were writing texts of a 187  Bowersock, introduction to Donation, x. 188  Bowersock, introduction to Donation, vii. 189  Kelley, Foundations, 63. 190  Kelley, Foundations, 71. 191  Kelley, Foundations, 80. 192   Marie-Madeleine de La Garanderie, Guillaume Budé, philosophe de la culture, ed. Luigi-Alberton Sanchi (Paris: Editions Classiques Garnier, 2010), 530.

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completely different genre. Nevertheless, Budé’s method of investigating and creating with language in his historiography opens new avenues of authority across multiple genres and in multiple contexts. In another essay on the “Singularité de Budé,” La Garanderie characterizes one aspect of Budé’s style that relies on his individual authority as a scholar and writer: Mais bien loin de décalquer ses modèles comme font à l’époque les “Cicéroniens”, il entend faire de la langue un usage—correct il va de soi— mais tout sien. Ainsi est-il sensible à l’oralité du style : d’où ses longues phrases dont la ponctuation rythme la respiration. Ainsi se plaît-il à faire appel au grec là où le latin ne peut aller. Ainsi est-il fasciné, non seulement par les douceurs de la beauté classique mais aussi, et plus encore, par les âpres et insolites beautés de l’Ancien Testament. Ainsi, par le jeu du style métaphorique, parle-t-il en termes d’antiquité de la France de François Ier, et de christianisme en termes de paganisme.193 But far from reproducing his models as did the “Ciceronians” at the time, [Budé] understands himself making of language a use—a correct one, it goes without saying—but all his own. Thus is he sensitive to the orality of style: from which his long sentences whose punctuation regulates respiration. Thus does it please him to call upon Greek there where Latin cannot go. Thus is he fascinated, not only by the sweetness of classical beauty but also, and more still, by the bitter and unusual beauties of the Old Testament. Thus, by the game of metaphorical style, does he speak in terms of the antiquity of the France of Francis I, and of Christianity in terms of paganism. Budé was not writing literature per se and was not writing in the vernacular. And yet, through a style that was all his own and that relied on his encyclopedic knowledge and ability to reframe texts and their language in his own way, Budé was able to preference his own authority over the authority of even classical texts. He demonstrated how it was possible to take advantage of a set of humanist tools along with his recognized intellectual prowess to form particular historical narratives. With Budé, he sought truth by his own authority, but with others who were so influenced by his methodology, one cannot say the same. Propagandists were among these “others,” and so were satirists like Rabelais. The philological, historical, and rhetorical skills that writers like Valla and Budé used begin to move away from fairly neutral goals of creating 193  La Garanderie, Budé, 512 (emphasis added).

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a reliable historical record that sometimes had systems of authority as collateral damage toward writing that directly targeted authority. Budé’s assertions about what he can accomplish as a historian presages Goulart’s declaration: “il n’y a rien qui soit trop tost dit.” Budé’s boldness paves the way for a statement like that since one can only articulate history so quickly by one’s own authority. Budé demonstrates the transition that was occurring with historical authority, but it also hints at the absence and subsequent search for authority in other domains. 4

Conclusion

At the same time as Budé is trying to carve out his own authority with respect to history, the rise of the printed word gives weight and permanence to the authority of the written word. At the beginning of the Prologue to Rabelais’s Pantagruel, the narrator warns the reader amid a surprising prediction. He asks the reader to get to know his book by heart for fear that printing will one day cease. It is a curious statement to make and one that could be construed as a marketing ploy. In other words, this book is so precious that one must read it as frequently as possible in order to preserve its pages. He proposes his narrative to be learned and taught “ainsy que une religieuse Caballe” (as a religious cabbala).194 This brief and fascinating analogy reveals much about the semiotic crisis at the time of the work’s composition. Presumably, Alcofribas is referencing Kaballah, the Jewish mystical and gnostic tradition that promises secret knowledge to those who study it. It is an interesting suggestion of where one can and should find meaning. The printed word is still ascendant, and there is no reason to think that it could or would perish. And yet, Rabelais feels the need to warn against such an eventuality. Rabelais must suspect that the printed word is not doing a very good job of preserving the meanings of that which it ostensibly stabilizes. The image suggests that meaning is safest when it is protected and interpreted by those who are let in on it by their readings of Rabelais’s work. It is impossible to say, but the imagery nevertheless alludes to an enduring instability of meaning even as Rabelais prepares to contribute to it. His work epitomizes the many problems of representation, interpretation, and authority that we have explored in this first chapter. Rabelais and many others struggle with navigating all three within a greater semiotic crisis that has rendered their words less sure against the constant shifts in thought since the end of the Middle Ages. In many ways, the literary discourse of the wars of 194  Rabelais, Pantagruel, 46. Translation from Screech, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 11.

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religion will represent a last gasp of instability just as what were intellectual and theological disputes spill over into the actual battlefield. In a world where religion, politics, and literature are so intertwined, every moment provokes— or requires—a response. In the next three chapters, we will examine the literary discourse itself, and how authors tried to create meaning for their political advantage. In such a contentious period, every word resonates in the political sphere, and so the stakes rise with every articulation, since it could mean that victory on the battlefield as well as in the battle for hearts and minds might soon be won.

Chapter 2

Fanatics, Martyrs, and the Rhetoric of Extremes As he contemplated his crime and his Christian faith in the days before his execution, Jean Guy drew inspiration from the example of the Protestant martyrs, who endured cruel torments for not wanting to believe in the idolatries of the Papacy.1 The author of the Histoire de Jean Guy makes one of those gathered around Jean in these final moments cite the trials of these glorious witnesses as a means of convincing Jean of the truth of the Protestant cause. People do not submit themselves to torture for falsehoods. This line of argumentation creates a chain reaction that connects what is occurring within the text and what should be happening within the reader, since it is as much for the reader as it is for Jean. Protestants suffered for the truth; the truth encourages Jean and brings him to conversion; the reader’s conversion, whether actual or potential, is encouraged and affirmed. Moreover, the author bestows upon the reader a framework for interpreting Jean’s impending righteous death. While it cannot live up to that of the martyrs, since he suffers justly for the crimes that he has committed, his choice to embody the principles of the Reformation and to reject the text’s obvious caricature of Catholic ones, makes him akin to the martyrs. Perhaps one could call him Jean Guy, parricide and confessor, an exemplary disciple who was deprived of a martyr’s death but who, if circumstances had been different, would have demonstrated the courage and the virtue necessary to do so. On the other hand, to a Catholic in 1565, Jean’s dramatic conversion would have likely been seen as yet more foolishness on the part of a clearly disturbed young man. Unfortunately, the lack of any textual evidence of Catholic reaction to Jean Guy’s story prohibits any definitive determination; no mentions of the incident in general, nor as it is portrayed in L’Histoire de Jean Guy, exist. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that Catholics would have understood Jean’s story as polemic disguised as hagiography. Though the text promises to produce the good fruits of the Gospel, it likely produced only the rotten fruits of division, both religious and political. Its implicit critique of the sacrament of confession verges on the heretical, and its more overt critique of the appeals system endangers political unity. Its definition of righteousness and its characterization of Catholicism sow further division. The opposition does not just adhere to an alternate religious confession; they are unintelligent or even 1  L’Histoire de Jean Guy, 19.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004440814_004

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fanatical in their stubborn allegiance to the Papacy. For Protestants, their resistance is virtuous since it embraces the true Church and the true Gospel; it is the quiet, peaceful, and glorious submission of Jean Guy, whose newfound religion and acceptance of God’s mercy gives him the courage to die so that he might live eternally. The story of Jean Guy and the text recounting it only give one side of the conflicting interpretations of this historical event, but other examples of more historical note provided fodder for a war of words that glorified one side, portraying them as righteous victims, and the other side as zealous fanatics who were undermining true religion and France itself. Fanaticism and the representation thereof illustrate well the rhetorical and textual dynamics of the period of the wars of religion. The divisions between Catholic and Protestant have hardened into religious and political polarization that has then spilled into the streets and onto the battlefield. Theological dispute has become political and even violent. The creativity and tumult of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance have yielded new tools for polemicists, and in the fight to win the war of words, a rush ensues to represent one’s own side as being as virtuous as the martyrs and the other as unhinged as the fanatic. Jean Guy’s story was a promising selection in this regard since his debauched and murderous past lends the air of the miraculous and heroic to his conversion and death. If God is for him, who could be against? The same characterization will be afforded to others, including to Henry III’s assassin, the Dominican friar Jacques Clément. Equally, the contempt and disdain shown for the most rabid fanatic will be reserved for Clément as well. But before getting to that extreme case, one can trace the development of this rhetorical fight from well before August 1589, when Clément succeeded in what from one point of view was his holy mission. The debate over fanatics and martyrs lays bare what one might call a rhetoric of extremes that fights against the instability of discourse to impose a unique representation of the truth of history. This rhetoric of extremes, in its attempt to make the truth unmistakable and indisputable, constitutes a limiting principle that in turn tries to define clearly friends and enemies. The more confident the author’s take on events, the more readers will know that in either accepting it or rejecting it, they choose their side. In this chapter, I will explore this first rhetorical strategy by which authors attempted to create a definitive representation of events and then to take advantage of it in order to depict their political and religious opponents as fanatics and themselves as victims and martyrs. The concept of zeal is one of the key concepts on which this analysis hinges. Writers borrowed a language from ancient and biblical sources that already lent itself to carefully defined characterizations of what it meant to be devoted to a particular cause, political or religious. And yet, during the wars of religion, this Renaissance erudition

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and intertextuality is shaped into an attack, meant to separate and anathematize one side of the debate. With respect to the more explicitly political, the debate over fanaticism coalesces around the concept of tyranny. Accusations in this regard target political leaders, most notably the king, and attempt to delegitimize him. Victims of the tyrant, especially if he is working against the true faith, can appropriately be called martyrs, of course, and it is in this final category where those who are full of zeal and are casualties of war become righteous witnesses to the truth. They are the victims par excellence, but they also prove the righteousness of one’s cause. As that companion of Jean Guy so poignantly reminded him, such people would never have submitted themselves to such torment for a falsehood. 1

“Le bon & saint zele”: Extreme Devotion to the Cause

Zeal by its very nature is extreme; it does not easily tolerate doubt or division within oneself or within a defined community. One must be wholly committed to whatever thing, idea, or cause for which one is zealous. A full history and etymology of the word is beyond the scope of this project, but in order to show how zeal was used as a tool in the definition of extremes, some historical examples are helpful in determining why authors chose to settle on it in their rhetoric as they shaped their representations of events during the French wars of religion. A well-known and interesting use comes from Cicero (106 BCE– 43 BCE) in his “Fourth Oration Against Catiline.” The context of the oration makes for an uncanny comparison to rhetorical phenomena of late sixteenthcentury France, especially as it relates to who would be zealous, why, and how it might be expressed. Cicero writes: “Omnes ordines ad conservandam rem publicam mente, voluntate, studio, virtute, voce consentiunt” (All classes agree for the preservation of the republic with heart and will, with zeal, with virtue, with their voice).2 He employs the word many times throughout the oration, but this instance illustrates with what exactly Cicero associates zeal, namely, with virtue of the civic kind and with a single-minded unity of heart and will. For him, zeal is a political trait, directed toward the safeguarding of the Roman republic, and in many ways, his attitude presages the Catholic use of the term during the wars of religion, since it is so focused on union and the fervor that one must feel for the republic in fighting against those outside it who would seek to destroy it. Cicero writes: “Hosce ego homines excipio et secerno libenter 2  Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Catilinam, ed. C.F.W. Mueller, vol. 12 (Leipzig: B.G. Teubneri, 1921), IV, 18 (295).

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neque in inproborum civium, sed in acerbissimorum hostium numero habendos puto. Ceteri vero, di immortales! qua frequentia, quo studio, qua virtute ad communem salutem dignitatemque consentiunt!” (These men I am only too glad to except and set apart, for in my view they are to be classed as mortal public enemies, not just wicked citizens. But the rest—heavens above!—look at the crowds, the enthusiasm, the valour with which they unite for the salvation and honour of us all!).3 In addition to his repeated association of studium with virtus, he draws a clear line between those who are invigorated for the defense of the unity of the republic and its enemies who are “excepted,” even from the worthless, for having worked against it. Thus, the great orator defines zeal, a fervor to defend the “common dignity and safety,” and perhaps unity of the republic against the lowest of the low. Zeal naturally separates friends and foes of the republic by the end to which it is directed. This is nothing new. However, another interesting aspect of this particular text on civic zeal has to do with the orator’s own relationship to it. Implicitly, Cicero puts himself forward as an example of the type of zeal that he exhorts his listeners to have. In the opening of the Fourth Oration, Cicero explains: [V]ideo vos non solum de vestro ac rei publicae verum etiam, si id depulsum sit, de meo periculo esse sollicitos. […] Mihi si hæc condicio consulatus data est ut omnis acerbitates, omnis dolores cruciatusque perferrem, feram non solum fortiter verum etiam libenter, dum modo meis laboribus vobis populoque Romano dignitas salusque pariatur. I see that you are concerned not only at your own danger and that of the Republic but also, if that is averted, at my own. […] For myself, if these were the terms on which I was given the consulship, that I should endure all the suffering, all the anguish and all the afflictions, I shall bear them bravely and even gladly, provided that my efforts secure for you and for the Roman people your authority and your salvation.4 Zeal for the republic sets him apart, mostly because it very much includes the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the republic. In this case, Cicero applies studium only to the virtuous, but his distinction between the virtuous, himself included, and those who are not even worthy of the worthless anticipates 3  Marcus Tullius Cicero, In Catilinam, trans. C. MacDonald, vol. 10 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), IV, 15 (154–55). Both the Latin text and the translation are taken from this volume. 4  Cicero, In Catilinam, IV, 1 (134–35).

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a further nuance of what it might mean to be fervent. Depending on the cause—being for or against the integrity of the republic, for example—this fervor can be foolishly misplaced, negating any positive consequences of its extreme nature. In the Christian world, various writers, most notably St. Paul of Tarsus (c. 5 CE–c. 64 or 67 CE), more clearly suggested by their usage the existence of good and bad zeal. With Paul, we have a before and after, a conversion experience that transforms the object of his zeal without altering its intensity. What guides his zeal, or perhaps the state of those who incur its consequences, determines what the reader should think about it. Paul uses the word in mainly two contexts: in one, to describe his persecution of Christians before his conversion to Christianity, and in another, to describe after his conversion how Christians should live their religious lives. In his letter to the Galatians, his zeal is misplaced: “For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous (zēlōtēs) for my ancestral traditions.”5 It would seem that Paul is associating his persecution of the new faith with his extreme zeal for his ancestral traditions. In other words, it was in strictly adhering to the law that logically led to his role in trying to destroy the Christian faith. It is interesting to note some of the lexical signals Paul is sending about his zealous behavior: his persecution was “beyond measure” (kath’ hyperbolēn); he was advancing “beyond” (hyper) his contemporaries; he was “extremely” (perissoterōs) zealous. The cues are all there that signify a fanatical devotion to Judaism that set him apart in what in retrospect he sees as a negative distinction. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul is trying to highlight a break with his past while not necessarily condemning his religious energies; it is these energies’ stated end that caused difficulty since it was his zeal for the Jewish law that led him to persecute Christians rather than any particular distaste for their new faith. Once that zeal is redirected, it is transformed along with the one who possesses it. Paul affirms his implicit conclusions about zeal in a monologue in the Acts of the Apostles. By way of his own now virtuously zealous example, he exhorts his fellow Christians to continue in theirs: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous (zēlōtēs) for God just as you all are today.”6 5  Galatians 1:13–14. 6  Acts 22:3. See also Acts 26:11: “Many times, in synagogue after synagogue, I punished [followers of Jesus] in an attempt to force them to blaspheme; I was so enraged against them that

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The rhetoric does not really change; he still characterizes his pre-conversion religious devotion as being zealous but then likens it to the state of his postconversion audience. Paul clarifies his distinction between zeal properly constituted and its more pernicious form in his letter to the Romans: “I testify with regard to [the Jews] that they have zeal (zēlon) for God, but it is not discerning.”7 He is commending his former Jewish brethren for their fervor and devotion, but he critiques them, since their zeal is not guided by proper knowledge. If Jesus Christ or virtue or charity were one’s aim, then zeal would not at all be problematic, even if extreme. And it is in fact, this particular passage that will become integral to the discussion of zeal during the wars of religion, since it represents the defining principle of who is or is not virtuous in their exercise of zeal. It is this assessment of zeal that is extreme, but acceptable, that operates in many texts throughout the wars of religion. Pierre de Ronsard in 1579 alludes to it positively when describing the peace that Henry III brings to France upon his accession: “Mais si tost que son front en France etincela / Rayonnant de vertu, chacun à son exemple / embrassa nostre Eglise et mesprisa le temple, / Et des songes nouveaux ne fut plus curieux, / Par luy fait zelateur des loix de ses ayeux” (But as soon as his forehead in France sparkled / Shining with virtue, each according to his example / embraced our Church and disdained the temple, / And about new dreams were no longer curious, / By him made zealot of the laws of his ancestors).8 Amid what one could definitely describe as an overstatement since the religious divisions most certainly did not cease upon Henry III’s arrival, Ronsard makes a statement both about the zeal of the people as well as their leader in a formulation that even evokes Paul’s oft repeated reference to zeal for the laws of his ancestors. An ardent desire to follow closely the traditions of one’s elders—a virtue that Ronsard holds up for kings elsewhere9—is required, engendered, and assumed in characterizing a I pursued them even to foreign cities.” Paul here characterizes his energy not as zeal, but as rage. One can presume that he sees an undiscerning zeal and rage as the same or similar. In Philippians 3:6, he writes: “in zeal (zēlos) I persecuted the church, in righteousness based on the law I was blameless.” 7  Romans 10:2. 8  Pierre de Ronsard, Panegyrique de la renommée à Henry troisiesme, Roy de France & de Pologne, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 2015), vv. 80–84 (6:5). In the 1584 edition, verse 83 reads instead: “Et ferme ne fut plus de sectes curieux.” And in the 1587 edition, “Et des nouveaux prêcheurs ne fut plus curieux.” 9  See also Pierre de Ronsard, Institution pour l’adolescence du Roy trèschrestien Charles neufviesme de ce nom, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 2015). Ronsard admonishes Charles IX along almost the exact same lines: “Apres il fault tenir la loy de vos ayeulx, / Qui furent Roys en terre, & sont là hault aux cieux: /

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peaceful and unified kingdom. Conversely, what broke this union in the first place is what is now supposedly holding it together. In the Discours des misères de ce temps (1562), Ronsard writes after the breakout of violence: Tout va de pis en pis: les Citez qui vivoient Tranquilles ont brisé la foy qu’elles devoient : Mars enflé de faux zele & de veine aparence Ainsi qu’une furie agite nostre France Qui farouche à son prince, opiniastre suit L’erreur d’un estranger, qui folle la conduit.10 All goes from worse to worse: the Cities that lived Tranquilly have broken the faith that they owed: Mars, puffed up by false zeal and vain appearance As well as a fury, agitates our France Who, timid to its prince, obstinate, follows The error of the foreigner, which, foolish, guides it. What unites can also divide as Ronsard associates many negative characteristics with, this time, a false zeal, including that to which Paul likened it in Acts 26, that is, fury or rage. Just as with those listening to Cicero desired to encourage and protect him in response to his zeal for Rome and perhaps as those who were wary of Paul’s conversion in the Acts of the Apostles, defining zeal becomes of the utmost importance in order that one may react to it and model it appropriately. The zealous must be set apart for veneration or derision, and later sixteenthcentury authors used their discussion of zeal to clarify the issue. In 1589, when a Dominican monk decided to venture from Paris to Saint-Cloud with the intention of assassinating Henry III, he was destined for notoriety. The actions of Jacques Clément and the discussion thereof, however, represented a flashpoint in the rhetoric of extremes. Depending on what one believed about his motivations and inclinations, one could measure one’s own behavior and that of others by it. The two sides of the debate about Clément are presented almost Et garder que le peuple imprime en sa cervelle / Les curieux discours d’une secte nouvelle” (vv. 67–70) (4:7). It almost seems a commonplace for Ronsard that the king protects and promotes the “law of his ancestors” against Protestantism and for the sake of the unity of his people. 10   Pierre de Ronsard, Discours des misères de ce temps, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier, vv. 185–90 (4:29).

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in their entirety in Simon Goulart’s Mémoires de la Ligue.11 With the word zèle, Goulart takes advantage of two strategies to make the preferred meaning clear: first, he relies on the placement of texts within the compilation, and second, he contrasts opposing meanings of the word in order to bring into focus the correct one. The example in question occurs right at the beginning of his fourth volume of the Mémoires de la Ligue and follows immediately after a short preface. Goulart begins this fourth volume and his account of Henry’s assassination with a surprising text, given his political leanings. It is entitled, Discours veritable de l’estrange & subite mort de Henri de Valois, advenue par permission divine, lui estant à sainct Clou, ayant assiegé la ville de Paris, le Mardi premier d’Aoust 1589 (True discourse on the strange and sudden death of Henry of Valois, come to pass by divine permission, him being at Saint Cloud, having laid siege to the city of Paris, Tuesday, the first of August 1589).12 Ostensibly a “true” account, the insertion of “advenue par permission divine” (come about by divine permission) tips the reader off as to what will follow. In other words, this particular account will emphasize the divine sanctioning of Henry III’s assassination at the hands of the Jacobin monk. The discourse itself makes the case for Clément’s zeal by first reminding the reader of the horrors of Henry III’s reign: cities taken by force, men, women, children, and worst of all men of the Church who suffered a cruel and ignominious death, women of a young age and religious violated, and the Blessed Sacrament trampled under foot.13 The author paints a clear picture of the sovereign that emphasizes his sins against God and his fellow human beings that are both brutal and blasphemous. Since Henry III’s excommunication has had no effect, something had to be done. Fortunately, Clément stood at the ready: “une nuict comme il estoit en son lict lui envoye son Ange en vision, lequel avec grande lumiere se presente à ce Religieux, & lui monstrant un glaive nud, lui dit ces mots : Frere Jaques, je suis messager du Dieu tout puissant qui te viens acertener que par toi le Tyran de France doit estre mis à mort” (one night while he was in his bed, an Angel 11  Simon Goulart, Quatriesme recueil contenant l’histoire des choses plus memorables avenues sous la Ligue, depuis la mort du Roy Henri III. au mois d’Aoust 1589. jusques au deuxiesme voyage du Duc de Parme pour assujettir la France au Roy d’Espagne, sur la fin de l’an M.D.XCI. (Stanford Libraries Edition). Hereafter referred to as the Mémoires de la Ligue. 12  This text also appeared as an independent text. See Discours veritable de l’estrange & subite mort de Henry de Valois, advenue par permission divine, luy estant a S. Clou, ayant assiegé la Ville de Paris, le Mardy I. jour d’Aoust, 1589 (Troyes: Jean Moreau, [1589]) (BnF 8LA25-24 (24)). 13  Discours veritable de l’estrange & subite mort de Henri de Valois, advenue par permission divine, lui estant à sainct Clou, ayant assiegé la ville de Paris, le Mardi premier d’Aoust 1589, in Mémoires de la Ligue, by Simon Goulart (Stanford Libraries Edition), 9.

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was sent to him in a vision, who with a great light presented himself to this Religious, and showing him a bare blade, said to him these words: Brother Jacques, I am a messenger of the almighty God who comes to you to assure that by you, the Tyrant of France must be put to death).14 In a scene that evokes any number of angelic interventions in the Bible, Clément awakes in the middle of the night and a messenger from God shows him and tells him what he needs to do. The decision to respond comes easily to Clément and demonstrates his purity and unity of mind and heart in his task: Que mesmes au cas que celui qui executeroit un si bon œuvre, fut mis à mort (comme à peine y pourroit-il faillir) il seroit bien heureux, veu le bon & saint zele qui l’auroit meu à ce faire n’estant corrumpu, ni d’affection mauvaise, ni par argent, ni par autres moyens communs aux vicieux : Lesquelles paroles furent si aggreables à Frere Jaques, que deslors il proposa de donner sa vie en proye; aux charges de faire mourir Henri de Valois.15 And even in case the one who would execute such a good work were put to death (as he would hardly be able to avoid) he would be happy, given the good and holy zeal that would have moved him to do this, not being corrupted either by evil affection, nor by money, nor by other means common to the vicious: Such words were so pleasing to Brother Jacques, that from that moment, he proposed to give his life as ransom; to the duties of making Henry of Valois die. The author here presents the Catholic version of the zealous ideal. Good and holy zeal not only emerges from those who are predisposed to it—the author clearly insists on the fact that the monk represents fertile ground in which to plant the seeds of such virtue—it will also require a total devotion traditionally reserved for a select few: he must be totally free from corruption or anything else that characterizes those who are vicious. This description evokes Jesus’ declaration in the Gospel of Matthew that those who endure persecution for the sake of the Christ are indeed blessed (bienheureux).16 Taking into account Henry’s perfidy and Clément’s angelic sanctioning from above, no doubt may arise that the zeal that Clément expresses is good and discerning; it is a zeal that comes at great personal cost, but one which is for the right reasons—in 14  D  e l’estrange & subite mort, 10. 15  De l’estrange & subite mort, 11. 16  Matthew 5:11–12.

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this case, to kill a godless king. Framed as such, it fits into the positive definition of zeal as a virtue that might seem extreme, but in its extremeness is justified. But there’s one thing missing from this representation of Clément’s story that plays into the hands of those who would like to portray his actions only as extreme: Clément never speaks, or at the very least, does not show any active engagement with his mission. Paul in the letter to the Romans warned about zeal absent of discernment or good knowledge. Thus, whereas the Catholic perspective might point to Clément’s unconditional willingness to do what God is asking him without word or complaint, the Protestant one can just as easily interpret this silence as a total lack of healthy discernment, which would reduce his zeal to mere fanaticism. What would then make Clément notable would be his irrational zeal, akin to that of the pre-conversion Saul of Tarsus. This alternate interpretation did not of course go unarticulated. In the Brief avertissement sur deux discours imprimez à Lyon touchant la mort de Henri III. Roy de France, occis en trahison par un Moine Jacobin, l’an 1589. Le premier jour d’Aoust (Brief notice on two discourses printed in Lyon touching upon the death of Henry III, King of France, killed treacherously by a Jacobin Monk, in the year 1589), the author mocks and attempts to negate the image of Jacques Clément as an exemplar of zeal with a definition of his own. The characteristics that in this discours supported the narrative of Clément’s zealous intervention into French politics now become something quite different. What Clément, or others, may have perceived as the message of an angel was in fact the case of “un homme fort simple, comme qui diroit niais & grossier : qu’il estoit devot, & par consequent aisé à decevoir sans contenir de religion” (a quite simple man, as one would say stupid and uncouth: that he was devout, and consequently easy to deceive without holding back any religion).17 More likely than not, another “moine plus cauteleux” (more cunning monk) was simply confirming Clément’s “meschante deliberation” (poor decision-making).18 The author then reminds the reader that this is by no means the first example of such manipulation of the simple-minded dévot, for there were four Jacobins burned with the permission of the Pope in the Swiss city of Bern in 1509 for having convinced a novice, with the assistance of opium, that he was not only experiencing visions of an angel, the Virgin Mary, and St. Barbe, but that he

17  B  rief avertissement sur deux discours imprimez à Lyon touchant la mort de Henri III. Roy de France, occis en trahison par un Moine Jacobin, l’an 1589. Le premier jour d’Aoust, in Mémoires de la Ligue, by Simon Goulart (Stanford Libraries Edition), 15. 18  Ibid.

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had the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ.19 Of course, the opium stupefied the novice enough so that the four monks could inflict the wounds without the novice having any recollection of it. The author continues with several more anecdotes in the same vein and attributes the many incidents he cites as being inherent to the nature of the Dominican order. He casts doubt on the Dominicans’ credibility with respect to any miraculous vision, for the author then recounts a tale whereby Dominic experiences a vision of the Virgin Mary with an infinite number of already deceased Dominican friars nestled beneath her cloak. The inconsistency in this account is glaring: Comment cela, puis que Dominique qui leur a donné commencement estoit encore au monde? Il ne vescut pas plus de cinquante un an, estant né l’an 1170. & mort l’an 1221. Ceux qui ont escrit ses miracles disent que lors qu’il vint à Rome du temps d’Innocent troisiesme, pour faire aprouver sa secte […] il n’estoit acompagné que de quinze autres.20 How is this, since Dominic who founded them was still in the world? He did not live more than 51 years, being born in the year 1170 and having died in the year 1221. Those who have written down his miracles say that when he came to Rome at the time of Innocent III, to get approval for his sect […] he was accompanied only by 15 others. Moreover, Innocent III (1198–1216) refused Dominic’s request, and it was not until the beginning of the reign of Honorius III (r. 1216–1227) that the Dominicans were eventually approved. The author concludes that the friars could not possibly have been as numerous as “ants” by this time.21 This discovery and its analysis probably inclined one to suspect Dominican embellishments when it came to such angelic utterances, a sure sign that Clément’s “meschante deliberation” is quite typical of them and should be suspect. Discrediting Clément’s supposedly holy motivations and also that of the Dominican order, the author exposes their purported zeal as nothing more than manipulation of the weak, possibly as part of a systematic scheme that gives only an illusion of a good and discerning zeal. Later in the text, the author addresses the question head on when he assimilates Paul’s zeal for persecuting Christians with that of Jacques Clément, while explaining what is necessary 19  Mort de Henri III, 16. 20  Mort de Henri III, 17. 21  Ibid.

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to ensure that zeal is directed appropriately. He quotes from the passage from Romans when he declares that it was certainly a case of zeal “sans science” (without knowledge).22 He renames it, therefore, a “fureur diabolique” and a “rage infernale” that leads one to fight against God himself. Once again, he invokes Paul’s descriptions of his own misguided fervor as nothing more than rage. All of this serves the following inflammatory conclusion: Ce fut donc une poison & furie de Satan que ce zele qui induisit le moine à devenir assassin & parricide : comme de ces mesmes diaboliques affections, ont tousjours esté particulierement transportez les Jacopins ou Dominicains, lesquels raisonnablement prennent & doivent pour tel respect estre appellez Demonicains ou Diaboliques, ou, pour mieux dire, Diables visibles, comme vrais enfans de celui, lequel fut homicide des le commencement.23 It was therefore a poison and a fury of Satan that this zeal that induced the monk to become an assassin and parricide: as of these same diabolical affections the Jacobins or Dominicans have always been particularly carried away, those who take to being called or must be called by comparison Demonicans or Diabolicals, or, to put it better, visible Devils, as true children of he who was a [perpetrator of] homicide from the beginning. The opposition between the zeal of Jacques Clément and the zeal that is with science is clear: one is for Satan, and the other is for God. The author not only delegitimizes them in the eyes of God, he also dehumanizes them in a stroke of paronomasia that characterizes their fanaticism as beyond a simple lack of good reason or discernment. Expressing his disdain for the word itself as defined by the monks, the author equates this zeal with poison and fury; it is, in fact, diabolical. Playing upon the Dominicans name, making them “Demonicans,” no longer religious, holy, or even human, he asserts that in their hearts, what they call zeal is nothing more than “diabolical affections,” perpetuating Satan’s homicidal legacy. The author of the Mort de Henri III demonstrates in some aspects an equally extreme position to that of the preceding text in Goulart’s compilation, but in contrast to this discours, the Mort de Henri III provides a more effective proof in its debunking of angelic vision and copious invocation of the legacy of St. Paul. Paul’s own language 22  Ibid. 23  Mort de Henri III, 25.

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to his fellow Christians relies on a rhetorical structure characterized by its reliance on his membership in the community. His interlocutors should no longer—and in fact can no longer—exclude him based on his zeal. Not so for Jacques Clément and his fellow Dominicans, whose fanaticism has clarified what it means to be properly zealous and has confirmed the pernicious nature of Clément’s dastardly act. 2

Tyranny: The Extremes of Princely Rule

One of the stronger arguments made by the author of the Discours de l’estrange et subite mort was perhaps the one that depicted Henry III as a king who had lost his legitimacy and was therefore deserving of God’s wrath. While this may not excuse his assassination, it certainly reveals another line of attack in the rhetoric of extremes as it was more explicitly situated in the political sphere. Representing the prince as a tyrant was useful to both sides in the wars of religion, depending on which side desired to support the king at any given moment. When Charles IX was in power and especially in the years leading up to and after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in August 1572, it was necessary to raise the specter of tyranny in order to warn him lest he go too far, or eventually, to justify deposing him for having exceeded the limits of his authority. In the 1580s, as Henry III became less and less friendly to the ideological designs of the Duke of Guise and the Catholic League, this rhetoric was reappropriated and targeted at him by Catholic writers. Another example was of course the accusations of tyranny that figured into the narratives about the zeal of Jacques Clément. If the king is a tyrant, then anyone, zealous or not, can legitimately rid the kingdom of a menace to the good and just exercise of power. As with the discussion of zeal, tyranny can mean many things to many people, and its many manifestations presented a great opportunity to target rulers with a rhetoric depicting them as extreme and therefore illegitimate. The rhetorical power of this particular concept begins on the Protestant side. As many other texts would later do—including in the Mort de Henri III— the biblical image of King Saul was a central one in undertaking this permutation of extreme rhetoric. Saul was God’s chosen king for his chosen people, but at a certain point, Saul no longer enjoyed God’s favor. To figure out why this made him a tyrant and therefore left him susceptible to the judgment of God and others, one must look to the First Book of Samuel. Therein, one can see how Saul’s downfall provides such versatile rhetorical fodder to those who would use it to prove their point. To punish the Amalekites for their assault on

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Israel, God promises victory to Saul and his troops only if they “utterly destroy all that [the Amalekites] have.”24 This includes putting to death every man, woman, child, ox, and donkey, among others. Instead, Saul decides to defeat the Amalekites and take the spoils rather than obliterating booty that would certainly enrich him and the Israelite army. In another context, what Saul has done might be considered merciful, but it is nevertheless greedy and worst of all, against God’s commands.25 It is this latter transgression that makes of Saul a tyrant, that and his later decision to consult a spirit medium when he falls even deeper into disfavor and is looking for a way out.26 Three aspects in particular heighten Saul’s versatility as a useful image in the political rhetoric of various authors, both Catholic and Protestant. Firstly, his decision to consult a spirit medium smacks of blasphemy and idolatry.27 His syncretistic turn to pagan faiths does not just show his neglect of God’s commandments, it is a blatant transgression of the first commandment to have no other gods before the God of Israel. Secondly, there is his greed and the greed of his army; they break God’s commandments for material gain. Finally, this decision to allow certain members of the Amalekite army to return to their homeland and their decision to spare parts of the civilian population suggest a lack of resolve and cooperation with God’s punishment of a pagan people that according to the biblical text has clearly offended him. All three of these failures result in Saul’s alienation from God, but the first and third will fit perfectly into the rhetorical landscape of an accusation of tyranny. The engagement with or tolerance of an alternative to the one, true faith, an accusation that could come from all sides, and the hesitancy in fulfilling God’s will no matter what the cost or who will die leaves a prince susceptible to this type of 24  1 Samuel 15:3. 25  The focus on cooperation with God’s commands represents a change in the definition of tyranny, at least as it is proposed in texts from before the breakout of the wars of religion. Ronsard, for example, suggests that tyranny consists in a prince not recognizing his solidarity with those whom he rules. See Ronsard, Institution, vv. 111–13 (4:9): “Aussi pour estre Roy vous ne devés penser / Vouloir comme un Tyran vos subjects offencer, / Car comme nostre corps, vostre corps est de boüe.” 26  1 Samuel 28. 27  See Monique Cottret, “La justification catholique du tyrannicide,” Parlement(s) 3 (2010): 107–17. Cottret notes that this was a justification for tyrannicide already in the fourteenth century in the case of Louis, Duke of Orleans (109). The Council of Constance in 1415 eventually condemned Jean Petit’s assassination of Louis in 1407. However, the Council found it so on the grounds that Jean Petit had not consulted the proper authorities. She writes: “Le concile condamnait le tyrannicide commis par un particulier qui n’aurait pas consulté les autorités. Un sujet ne pouvait pas de lui-même renoncer à l’obéissance. Mais si Dieu par « vocation extraordinaire » confiait cette tâche à un sien fidèle? Si l’Eglise justifiait cette vocation? Le concile demeurait prudent” (110).

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discourse. In turn, authors hone their discourse to imply or to say outright that with the prince convicted of the crime of tyranny, he can and must be excluded from power. One particular playwright chose to dramatize this dynamic at about the same time of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. First published in 1572, but likely composed up to ten years before, Saül le furieux by Jean de la Taille (1533–1608) retells the story of Saul’s demise from the First and Second Books of Samuel.28 Since it predates the massacre itself, it reads more like a warning to the king that what happened to Saul can happen to him. Because of his crimes, “Dieu [le] chasse, / [le] bannit et forclôt de sa premiere grace” (God chases [him], / banishes [him] and excludes [him] from his first grace).29 La Taille stresses Saul’s status as outsider as a manifestation of God’s disfavor. What merits such punishment are Saul’s crimes from the biblical text that are mentioned in Act III: his choice to go easy on the Amalekites (vv. 775–76) and his consultation of the spirit medium (vv. 740–42). At this point, La Taille chooses to highlight something else that is not as apparent in the biblical version and speaks more to the historical context in which he is writing. Both in Act I and during the deceased prophet Samuel’s speech to Saul in Act III, La Taille places in the foreground the betrayal of Saul’s role as father to his children.30 In Act I, when Saul tells his son Jonathan and his three brothers that they must fight the Philistines, which will likely result in their death, Jonathan responds, “Mais que voulez-vous dire, / De vouloir furieux vos trois enfans occire, / Et moy vostre Jonathe ?” (But what do you want to say, / To want, furious, to kill your three children, / And I your Jonathan?) (Act I, vv. 19–21). Jonathan then laments that it is “Comme s’il n’estoit plus le Roy Saul [s]on pere” (As if he was no longer the King, Saul, [his] father) (Act I, v. 24). Saul’s son points out twice that his father is unrecognizable, both in this last line of the scene and in his description of Saul as “furieux” in endangering his children. This characterization hints at the fact that tyrants may have lost competency to a certain extent, that they are no longer themselves, which casts 28  Elliott Forsyth, ed., introduction to Saül le furieux, by Jean de La Taille (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1998), xvi. 29  Jean de La Taille, Saül le furieux, ed. Elliott Forsyth (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 1998), Act II, vv. 289–90. Hereafter cited in the text. 30  For more on the characterization of the relationship between king and subject, see Charlotte C. Wells, Law and Citizenship in Early Modern France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 58–93. Wells cites especially the influence of Jean Bodin (1530– 1596): “[T]he most important sixteenth-century appearance of the family metaphor was undoubtedly in the work of Bodin, who wrote: ‘The well-managed family is the true image of the state, and the domestic authority resembles the sovereign power’ ” (92).

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doubt on their legitimacy. Moreover, the filial relationship between Jonathan and Saul reflects the imagined relationship between subjects and their king. What father would betray his children? Those who would do so not only are not themselves, but they no longer look like the king as father who protects those in his care. This could represent a subtle reminder to Charles IX that he has a responsibility to all of his children, including the Protestant ones, not to sacrifice their lives for the sake of his kingdom. This familial imagery comes into play later in Act III when the prophet Samuel who has been summoned by the spirit medium and taken possession of her body proclaims Saul’s “derniere sentence” (final sentence): “Encor apres ta mort toute ta race entiere / Rendra compte au Seigneur de ta vie meurtriere, / Car tes Fils, tes Nepveux, et ton genre total, / Avec mille malheurs verront leur jour fatal” (Still after your death all your entire race / Will render account to the Lord of your murderous life, / For your Sons, your Nephews, and your entire race, / With a thousand misfortunes will see their fatal day) (Act III, vv. 767– 70). In a shift from the relationship between the king and his subjects, La Taille hits at the king’s hereditary legacy. In abandoning God’s commands, God will abandon him and his progeny, completely isolating any remnant of him from present and future rule. This curse that broadcasts a warning to the reader and spectator clearly articulates the price to be paid for tyranny: the king and his family will lose the right to rule and will have to cede to another. In the play, David replaces him, an image of the ideal king who follows God’s law even while being his sovereign on earth.31 In fact, Saul’s removal is part of his sentence in order to make room for David, “un meilleur Esleu” (a better Chosen) (Act III, v. 758). Admittedly, the stakes are low in La Taille’s play; there is no talk of revolt or assassination, since throughout the play it is God who directs the events, which do not include Saul’s forced removal, despite an expressed desire to the contrary.32 In Act IV, Saul asks his squire to dispatch him, but the servant refuses, saying, “Que ce grand Dieu plustost escarbouille ma teste / De son foudre éclattant, avant que je m’appreste / De toucher vostre chef, que Dieu a eu si cher, / Que mesmes l’ennemy ne l’a osé toucher” (May this great God 31  For a similar usage of this image, see Ronsard, Institution, vv. 183–85 (4:12): “Lequel je suppliray vous tenir en sa loy, / Et vous aymer autant qu’il fit David son Roy, / Et rendre comme à luy vostre sceptre tranquile.” 32  Saul’s death is treated both as an inevitable consequence of his malfeasance, as in the chorus of the Levites that ends Act III (vv. 841–908) and as a desired outcome on the part of Saul himself in Act IV. After learning of his sons’ death, he implores, “Venez, venez plustost, mes ennemis, me prendre, / Et que le mesmes fer lequel a fait descendre / Mes Enfans aux Enfers, mes jours viennent achever, / Venez vostre fureur en mon sang dessoiver” (vv. 971–94).

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rather crush my head / With his bursting thunder, before I prepare myself / To touch your head, that God has held so dearly, / That even the enemy did not dare to touch it) (Act IV, vv. 1075–78).33 On the one hand, despite Saul’s many misdeeds, God has tried to preserve his anointed king, giving him more chances to “gaign[er] sa faveur” (gain his favor) (Act II, v. 418), but on the other, Saul has likely become unsalvageable as a credible ruler, a fact only reinforced by David’s ultimate ascent. This tension runs through the entire play, a tension that derives directly from the biblical source material, but that takes on more poignancy since the whole existence of the play suggests that the playwright believes God’s anointed has already chosen or is in danger of choosing a path similar to Saul’s. The tension continues during the final act, as La Taille creates more ambiguity, but this time with respect to David. La Taille slightly alters the biblical narrative such that Saul does in fact commit suicide but is exculpated since he falls on his sword in order to escape an ignominious death at the hands of the Philistines.34 For this, Saul is praised, but Act V also includes an exchange between David and the Amalekite soldier who claims to have killed Saul, an exchange during which David chooses to punish him with death, eliciting from the soldier a curse on David for not being more grateful that he has killed his mortal enemy.35 Accusations of David’s tyranny fly (Act V, v. 1289), even though they come from the opportunistic Amalekite. Even the now favored king is capable of the extremes that led Saul to his disfavor; David is not immune from accusation if he violates the principles set forth in La Taille’s definition of tyranny. The clarity of the image of tyrant serves as a warning not just for the current, but also for future kings, and it stigmatizes anyone who would choose to reject the will of God and rule only for himself. Saul is but one example of the tyrant in this period during and after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Before compiling his Mémoires de la Ligue in the 1580s and 1590s, Simon Goulart attempted to chronicle the years of 33  See Forsyth, Saül le furieux, 71n. He writes that this is an “allusion à l’épisode raconté dans I Sam. XXVI, 6–12, où David interdit à un de ses officiers de mettre la main sur Saül parce qu’il est l’Oint du Seigneur. Cette action de David était souvent citée en exemple par les Protestants à l’appui de la doctrine du droit divin.” 34  The end of the First Book of Samuel states that Saul committed suicide, but the first chapter of the Second Book of Samuel corrects the sequence of events, stating that it was instead an Amalekite soldier who comes upon a lingering Saul and eventually dispatches him. The biblical text does not explicitly pass moral judgment on Saul’s decision to fall on his sword, but David’s decision to have the Amalekite killed and his lament at Saul’s death are indeed there. 35  Once again, in the context of the play, the Amalekite soldier has not killed Saul. He tells David he did thinking David will reward him for taking out his enemy (Act V, vv. 1159–90).

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Charles IX’s reign in the 1570s, and in this earlier compilation, one particular document stands out with respect to the intensified rhetoric of extremes that identifies the tyranny of princes. In the second of three volumes of his Mémoires de l’estat de France, sous Charles Neufiesme, Goulart includes a text entitled, Discours des jugemens de Dieu contre les tyrans: recueilli des histoires sacrees & prophanes, & nouvellement mis en lumiere (Discourse on God’s judgments against tyrants: collected from sacred and profane histories and newly brought to light).36 Based on the title, it is apparent that this particular text catalogues various examples from history to flesh out the realities of a situation in which God—or the people—are confronted with a tyrannical king. In about 160 pages, the author cites no less than 115 different examples of tyrants from the Bible, from the Greeks, from the Romans, and from many pagan peoples. He includes many of the usual suspects: Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus, Caligula, Nero, and Xerxes, for example. The entry on Dionysius the Elder (432 BCE–367 BCE) of Syracuse constitutes one of the longest at eight pages.37 Unsurprisingly, one of the many examples that the author chooses is that of Saul. The author takes a slightly different approach to the first king of Israel than that of La Taille, however. He cites the familiar offenses—greed, failing to heed God’s commands, etc.—but then makes special mention of Saul’s persecution of David and of his own son Jonathan who supported David.38 Where this text varies from La Taille is in its unambiguous condemnation of Saul: Estant assailli des Philistins, & voyant que le Seigneur ne lui respondoit point, au lieu de s’humilier & remedier par bons moyens aux fautes passees, il a recours au diable afin de savoir quelle sera l’issue de ceste guerre. Le lendemain bataille est donnee, apres la perte de laquelle Saul se rua dessus son espee & se tua soymesme.39 Being assaulted by Philistines, and seeing that the Lord did not respond to him, instead of humbling himself and remedying by good means his past faults, he had recourse to the devil in order to know what would be the way out of this war. The day after, the battle is begun, after the loss of which, Saul throws himself upon his sword and kills himself. 36  D  iscours des jugemens de Dieu contre les tyrans: recueilli des histoires sacrees & prophanes, & nouvellement mis en lumiere, in Mémoires de l’estat de France sous Charles IX, vol. 2 (Meidelbourg [Geneva]: 1578), 554–630 (BnF 8-H-6188 (2)). 37  The author of this text is not the first to highlight Dionysus’s tyrannical legacy. See, of course, Dante, Inferno, Canto XII, where Dionysus is immersed in a river of boiling blood. 38  Discours des jugemens, 559–60. 39  Discours des jugemens, 560.

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Saul is just one in a long list of tyrants, and he is certainly not entitled to any reverence for his willingness to kill himself rather than die at the hands of the Philistines. In addition, the author feels the need to point out the king’s failure to humble himself and to make reparation for his errors by “good means.” The subtle implication of this detail suggests that Saul has not totally lost the favor of God, or at the very least, it ever remains within his grasp, if only he would change his ways. In any case, the consequence that Saul’s intransigence demands is utterly obvious, and in this narrative, his suicide almost seems like an afterthought given the banality of its presentation. The author of this Discours des jugemens demonstrates, therefore, some degree of continuity with La Taille’s representation of tyranny, but Saul’s legacy cannot be salvaged in any way since he failed to repent. It is this point on which the author of the Discours des jugemens focuses his argument. Tyranny marks the tyrant, to be sure; he cannot escape the consequences of his oppression or of his disobedience to God’s commands, sins for which he should incur the opprobrium of his people. And yet, it is still ambiguous as to whether or not the people can forcibly remove him. The author of the Discours des jugemens suggests that a tyrant’s victims may only have recourse to God’s judgment. Returning to Dionysius the Elder, the entry includes a detail that is not uncommon among the effusion of examples: “Apres avoir ainsi tyrannisé pres de quarante ans, il alla recevoir hors du monde le salaire de ses deportemens : aucuns disent qu’il fut tué par ses gardes & serviteurs, les autres empoisonné : & les autres escrivent qu’il mourut tout soudain de joye qu’il eut de certaines bonnes nouvelles qu’il entendit” (After having thus tyrannized for about forty years, he went to receive outside this world the recompense for his behavior: some say that he was killed by his bodyguards and servants, others that he was poisoned: and others write that he died suddenly of joy that he had regarding certain good news that he heard).40 The author seems to give precedence to Dionysius’s divine punishment, not to his earthly one. He takes a tone of assurance with the reader that even if the tyrant did not in fact die at the hands of others, “il a esté fouëtté sans cesse du juste jugement de Dieu, comme nous l’avons veu, & comme la malediction tombee sur son successeur le monstre clairement” (he was whipped without ceasing by the just judgment of God, as we have seen, and as the curse that fell upon his successor clearly shows).41 While the author assumes that God’s punishment followed Dionysius in the next life and in this one, it is not obvious from the narrative he presents how this judgment manifests itself concretely. If the point of this rhetoric is 40  D  iscours des jugemens, 599–600. 41  Discours des jugemens, 600.

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to stigmatize the sovereign and demonstrate how his extreme behavior excludes him from legitimacy, what does this mean practically for the tyrant’s subjects or even for the tyrant himself? The author, perhaps as an act of selfpreservation, gives several indications but stops short of saying exactly what this might include. In a passage that echoes La Taille in its allusions to the prince as a father to his people, the first part of the discours makes a comparison between the role of the sovereign and that of husband and father: “[T]out ainsi que le mari, qui au lieu d’aimer, entretenir, garder & conserver sa femme, la hairoit, fouleroit, & traiteroit cruellement, ne seroit jamais supporté en Eglise ni Republique bien dressee : Si un pere estoit bourreau de son enfant, si un maistre n’avoit pitié quelconque de son serviteur, ils seroient reprimez & ramenez par force à leur devoir” (Just as the husband, who instead of loving, maintaining, protecting and preserving his wife, would hate her, beat her, and treat her cruelly would never be tolerated in Church, nor in a Republic well set up: If a father were the torturer of his child, if a master were to have no pity for his servant, they would be stopped and led back by force to their duty).42 The analogy certainly makes sense, but it does not recommend how or by what precise force one is to make the sovereign fulfill his paternal role. Later, the author more forcefully prescribes a remedy to the tyrant’s errors: Et tout ainsi qu’il est permis & commandé aux Princes de chastier les meschans & seditieux : je croi qu’on ne dira point que ce soit mal fait de trouver mauvais & condamner un Prince qui seroit le plus seditieux de toute sa principauté : non plus que ce ne seroit point mal fait d’appeler loup le berger qui escorcheroit & mangeroit les brebis qu’on lui auroit baillees en garde.43 And just as it is permitted and commanded for Princes to chastise the evil and the seditious: I believe that one will not say that it would be poorly done to find as bad and to condemn a Prince who would be the most seditious of all his principality: neither that it would not be at all poorly done to call a wolf the shepherd who would skin and eat the sheep that one would have given to him to protect. While it may be quite obvious what one does with a wolf that picks off the sheep, the author never states outright that the tyrant is to be punished by death or even to be deposed. The writer defers action, choosing to remain at a 42  D  iscours des jugemens, 554. 43  Discours des jugemens, 556.

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linguistic level; the offending prince will only be called a wolf. The use of the conditional throughout constantly hedges the theoretical accusation against becoming an actual one. While the tyrant is not above the law, since that would make him equal to or in competition with God, the author insists that his intention is not to explore the consequences of the prince’s misdeeds to their logical conclusion, namely his forcible removal. Instead, he desires to demonstrate how God punishes tyrants in this world and in the next in a particular way without explicitly denying the legitimate means by which a people can punish a tyrant. These are means that God gives them and that are “instrumens louables de sa juste vengeance” (praiseworthy instruments of his just vengeance).44 In his strongest statement perhaps of the whole text, the author pushes the matter even further as he clarifies that patience has its limits: Pour le regard de la patience requise és Chrestiens tyrannisez, certainement elle l’est aujourd’huy autant que jamais mais patience n’oste point la prudence, liberté & magnanimité aux gens de bien, qui en renonçant à toute affection particuliere, servent à Dieu aussi bien en rompant le joug & empeschant le cours de la rage de Satan & de ses adherans ennemis de tout ordre, qu’en attendant paisiblement sa main.45 With respect to the patience required in tyrannized Christians, certainly [this patience] is today as required as ever, but patience does not at all take away prudence, freedom or magnanimity from good people, who in renouncing all particular affection, serve God as well both in breaking the yoke and stopping the flow of the rage of Satan and of his followers, enemies of all order, as in waiting peacefully for his hand. The author here cannot mask his intentions; he is making a threat. Patience will not get in the way of prudence, and those whom the tyrant persecutes cannot wait indefinitely for God’s judgment to come.46 Nevertheless, while the 44  Discours des jugemens, 556. 45  Discours des jugemens, 557. 46  See Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525-vers 1610, 2 vols. (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005). Crouzet addresses this distinctly Protestant train of thought: “Persévérer et ne pas s’accommoder des cérémonies superstitieuses de l’Eglise papistique, c’est alors témoigner que Dieu gouverne et conduit tout, que tout ce qui advient et peut advenir n’est que l’œuvre de Dieu, de Sa vertu incompréhensible […] Etre captif, ou être tourmenté, est alors une consolation pour des hommes qui s’en remettent totalement à Dieu” (1:714). Crouzet is writing about the period before Saint-Barthélemy, but his assertions about Protestant thinking apply thereafter,

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rhetoric reaches its height as he assimilates the tyrant and his behavior to an instrument of Satan’s rage, he ends with a verb of waiting (“attendant”), peacefully entrusting the people once again to God’s hand. Being the conduit of the Prince of Darkness most definitely disqualifies from ruling even the most sacred of kings. And yet, the author of the Discours des jugemens still cannot bring himself to say that the tyrant must be deposed or killed. In this sense, the entire text, not just this excerpt, can be seen as a threat, but a veiled one. The author seeks to stigmatize in a more symbolic sense without actually committing to following through to the most extreme of responses to the tyrant’s behavior. It reinforces the notion that the text is a rhetorical and not prescriptive discourse. In other words, the author hopes for efficacy in singling out the prince, depicting him as fanatical in his rule, and convincing him to reform rather than in convincing the people to rid themselves of him. What is certain, however, is that toward the end of the reign of Henry III, the threats become more open and explicit as tyranny came to include more than just transgressing God’s mandate for his princes to rule but also into the realm of heresy. Traditionally defined, heretics dissent not simply from practice or custom but from the most fundamental aspects of the faith, the divinity of Christ or the Trinity, for example. The Catholic League will attempt to expand this definition in order to ensnare the king in an accusation of heresy and tyranny.47 In other words, if the League could succeed in pinning a charge of atheism on Henry III, it would become clear that he could not possibly act in accordance with the will of a God he no longer acknowledges. This would constitute an ultimate tyranny that perhaps takes the sovereign beyond what his subjects could reasonably endure. 2.1 Atheism and Tyranny Using a more historical and perhaps more inflammatory approach in a text entitled L’Athéisme de Henry de Valois: Où est monstré le vray but de ses dissimulations & Cruautez (The Atheism of Henry of Valois: Where it is shown the true goal of his dissimulations and cruelties) from 1589, the author tries once again especially since the reward for their patience is more or less highlighted by Agrippa D’Aubigné’s epic poem, Les Tragiques, which I will examine in Chapter Four. 47  See Cottret, “Justification,” 113. She notes how an accusation of heresy more easily justifies tyranny from the Catholic point of view: “Le tyrannicide est légitimé car il permet de vaincre l’hérésie. C’est en la matière la grande supériorité du catholicisme sur le protestantisme. Tandis que les monarchomaques protestants, dans la tradition médiévale, discutent à l’infini pour trouver les bonnes instances qui peuvent éventuellement justifier l’élimination d’un tyran, les catholiques disposent d’un pape qui lance anathèmes, excommunications et donc légitime le tyrannicide.”

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to stigmatize the prince, but by reassuring the reader that Henry is just like everyone else. Moreover, the author feels the need to cite the First Book of Samuel in which both the prophet Samuel and God express displeasure at the Israelites desire for a king. In other words, God and Samuel know that kings mean possible abuse of power, and so the Israelites are asking for something that they really should not want.48 Already, the author uses biblical sources to question the legitimacy of the institution itself, but then, turning to a more specifically French context, the author recounts the history of French kings, concluding, “Quoy qu’il en soit, pour cela le Roy ne doit entrer en aucune presomption : il demeure le mesme homme qu’il estoit auparavant, l’onction ne change aucunement son premier estre” (Whatever the case may be, for this the King must not enter into any presumption: he remains the same man that he was before, the anointing does not change at all his initial being).49 This is somewhat of a shocking statement, and it renders accusations of tyranny that much more powerful. In other words, if the prince is incorruptible and untouchable, then even aspersions of the most pernicious behavior cannot compromise his authority, but in this case, part of questioning his legitimacy amid accusations of tyranny is to remind him and everyone else that he is only a human being. The word that really pops in this essay is of course “athéisme,” but it only conceals or characterizes what the writer believes to represent the more treacherous act on the part of Henry III: the assassination of the Duke of Guise and his brother Louis II, Cardinal of Guise. He writes that “[Henry III] pensoit que la mort de ces deux Princes fut le triomphe de son Atheisme, il sent aujourdhuy que c’est le comble de ses malheurs” ([Henry III] thought that the death of these two princes was the triumph of his Atheism, he senses today that it is the height of his misfortunes).50 Moreover, this betrayal sets him apart even from his abominable—according to the author—predecessor, Louis XI (1423–1483): “Quant à la lascheté de cest assassinat, il ne l’a apprise de Loys 48  See L’Athéisme de Henry de Valois : Où est monstré le vray but de ses dissimulations & Cruautez (Paris: Pierre des Hayes, 1589), 5: “L’Avarice des enfans du prophete Samuel fut cause de la resolution que prendrent les Israëlites d’avoir un Roy comme leurs voisins : la demande en despluet fort au prophete, lequel supplia Dieu de leur faire entendre de quelle rude façon ils seroient gouvernez par un Roy.” See also Paul-Alexis Mellet, Les Traités Monarchomaques: Confusion des temps, résistance armée et monarchie parfaite (1560–1600) (Geneva: Droz, 2007). Mellet proposes a “typology of tyranny” as found in the writings of the Monarchomachs (221–27). Immediately following it, he identifies the passage describing God and Samuel’s concerns in 1 Samuel 8 as key to the sixteenth-century discussion of tyranny. Mellet explains that the passage was cited as a limit on kingly authority in order to prevent tyrannical behavior (227–29). 49  Athéisme, 10. 50  Athéisme, 18.

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unziesme, non-pas de plus barbare matin qui ait oncques esté au monde, l’on ne sçauroit produire aucun exemple de cest horrible massacre” (With respect to the cowardice of this assassination, he did not learn it from Louis XI, not a single more barbarous morning that has ever been in the world, one would not be able to produce any copy of this horrible massacre).51 The author casts aside any doubt that Henry III perfectly distinguishes himself for the bad by his decision to kill the brothers Guise, since “not one” other example of such a horrible massacre can be produced. Even the cowardice of Louis XI cannot compare. Thus, he may incur an equally singular reprimand, one that Jacques Clément will of course be happy to deliver. Of all the rhetoric identifying extremism, that which focuses on the sovereign is unusual. Firstly, in a bit of a paradox, it assumes that in order to isolate the tyrant, he must be represented as being just like everyone else; he must be separated from his divine sanction and favor so that he may be properly punished.52 This unexpected step must precede the rhetoric labeling him an atheist, a heretic, a murderer, or a tyrant. Subject to the same punishments as any one of his subjects, he may then be deposed or even assassinated, even though the latter is infrequently, if ever explicitly, prescribed before it actually happens in the case of Henry III. The argument that the sovereign is just like everyone else reflects another evolution from that of an argument about the sovereign’s relationship to God—although this is an implied consequence—to that of the sovereign’s relationship to the people. If one looks at the discourse surrounding Henry III’s atheism, for example, it does not really address a denial on Henry’s part of God’s existence.53 In actuality, his assassination of the 51  A  théisme, 29. For more on the political machinations of Louis XI, especially with respect to the trial and death of Jacques d’Armagnac, see Lydwine Scordia, “Peurs, rumeurs et calomnies sous le règne de Louis XI,” in Peurs, rumeurs et calomnies, ed. Monique Cottret and Caroline Galland (Paris: Editions Kimé, 2017), 41–60. 52  See Crouzet, Guerriers de Dieu, 2:41. Crouzet cites John Calvin as the origin of this type of rhetoric: “Les phrases suivantes brisent une représentation de la monarchie, elles sont à proprement parler la vraie rupture idéologique : « Par moy, dit le Seigneur, les Rois regnent et les Potentats font de justes ordonnances : que si l’authorité des Rois et tous superieurs depend de l’ordonnance et institution de Dieu, selon qu’il est escrit, Toute puissance est d’en haut, quand ils bataillent et se bandent contre Dieu et son Eglise, ils ne sont plus vrais Rois, mais personnes privées, aux quelles il ne faut obeir pour ce regard, comme semblablement en ce cas cessent l’obeissance et respect deus aux peres et meres. » La résistance au roi d’iniquité est d’autant plus légitime que, dans la guerre, le Public ne fait que se dresser contre un roi redevenu personne privée, dégradée d’un ordonnancement divin inséparable d’un exercice du pouvoir conforme à la Loi de Dieu.” 53  It would be anachronistic in a way to suggest that this is the meaning of “atheism” in most sixteenth-century texts. See George Hoffmann, “Atheism as a Devotional Category,” Republic of Letters 1, no. 2 (2010): 44–45: “The term’s failure to establish itself reflects its

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principal defenders of the Catholic party constitutes his atheism. The uses of the imagery of King Saul reflect this as well. The definition of tyranny transforms from a straightforward decision to ignore God’s commands to greed and intransigence. If such a God-less definition of tyrant reflects a behavior as egregious as these authors claim, an extreme response seems more acceptable and the rhetoric has accomplished its goal. 3

The Rhetoric of Martyrdom

Along with a tyrant comes his victims. The horror of St. Bartholomew’s Day was obvious enough as the execution of a political vendetta, but as a religious persecution, it takes on more poignancy. Others had certainly trod the path of martyrdom before August 1572, and the evocation of such righteous men and women in the Histoire de Jean Guy confirms that Protestants were tilling the soil to accept the seed of the martyrs’ blood well before Jean’s protector, the Admiral de Coligny fell victim to an assassination attempt. His death and the death of so many in the streets of Paris respond to the desire for martyrology. The intensity and poignancy of martyrdom further contributes to the community’s definition as such, as well as to a more developed liturgical life. From a rhetorical standpoint, it implicitly and constantly affirms their status as righteous and virtuous victims and the status of their opponents as persecutors. Martyrdom is by nature fanatical; it is an extreme expression of one’s beliefs. However, the discourse of martyrdom now allows authors to portray those who have gone or who are willing to go to their death in the most positive and defining of ways. Unsurprisingly, this language and rhetoric will not be reserved to the Protestant side. Every movement needs their heroes and the image of martyr and all that is associated with it provides an ideal tool in a religious and political conflict.54 Sometimes it is the simple use of the word; historical status as a parochial category within religious discourse: sixteenth-century ‘atheism’ was distinctly not a forerunner of liberal freethinking, neither practically nor even theoretically. Instead, it served the cause of confessional partisanship as a means by which to characterize and reshape not unbelief, but belief.” 54  For a pivotal study on sixteenth-century martyrdom, see Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). In his conclusion, Gregory writes about the impossibility—to the religious leaders of the time—of toleration as a solution. Interestingly, much of this desire for truth or death boils down to the interpretation of Sacred Scripture: “For martyrs to have been unwilling to die for their beliefs, they would have had to consider ambiguous the many biblical passages that stipulated steadfastness in suffering” (346). This is precisely why martyrdom is so important in the literature of the period: it is an antidote to the

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sometimes it is in the compilation of Acts of Martyrs according to the tradition of the early church. In either case, authors must identify who is and is not a martyr and why. If either side is able to claim someone as a martyr for their cause, then their cause is the more noble and the one not only worth fighting for but worth dying for.55 The definition of the concept is not really up for debate; it is in attributing it where the battle occurs. This also makes this particular concept different; it moves beyond the word, shaping narratives of people’s lives—or deaths—for a religious and political end. Winning this battle has the added benefit of transforming one side’s bitter enemy into a witness to fervor, virtue, and most importantly, to what is “right.” This is what makes the image of the martyr so useful: it distinguishes someone for their ideological purity; their adherence to the cause is without stain. Martyrdom represents an ideal and transforms the fanatic into a convicted follower of right religion. The hope is that eventually if the martyr narrative is compelling enough, it will gain a broader appeal and draw people to not only the right side, but the blessed side, in the conflict. Many of the dynamics at work in the use of martyr language we have already seen at work in the definition and attribution of zeal. In fact, those who are zealous are sometimes martyrs, and those who are martyrs are certainly zealous. Thus, there is a good deal of crossover between the two, even though, it is quite clear by the very nature of the two terms that one is presumed to be a fuller expression of devotion. Before the wars of religion had even begun, members of the Reformation were looking for narratives to build up the resolve of their community in the face of intolerance. The quintessential exemplar of the Protestant martyrology was compiled by Jean Crespin (1520–1572) and was published in multiple editions beginning in 1554, including a Latin edition in 1560.56 Crespin’s series brings together common elements from Catholic ambiguity that had arisen in the Renaissance. To Catholics and Protestants, inquiry amid tolerance had been tried and led to division and violence. Better to seek unity reinforced by absolute truth. The cloud of martyrs is the ultimate testament to this desire. 55  With their conception of the Church and Christianity being somewhat more recent, it was especially important for Protestants to establish their own cloud of witnesses. Crouzet notes many examples of how the Reformers were already preparing for this eventuality before the wars began. See Crouzet, Guerriers de Dieu, 1:715–17. 56  For a complete history of the publication of Crespin’s martyrologies, see Jean-François Gilmont, Jean Crespin: Un éditeur réformé du XVIe siècle (Geneva: Droz, 1981). Gilmont observes that while we can say that Crespin is the author, editor, and printer of these large works of Protestant history (165), he relied heavily on other authors, especially John Foxe, to complete his work (see “La technique rédactionelle de Crespin,” 182–87). Nevertheless, Gilmont proposes that there is a consistent thrust to the history that Crespin presents: “Crespin n’envisage que l’histoire qui décrit l’action divine. Le but de l’historien, ‘c’est de

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martyr narratives while at the same time turning against that developed tradition. What is immediately striking about these editions is their immense size. Their physical presence conveys a sense of their gravity, but also of their comprehensive nature; it is a cloud of martyrs in book form. A cursory scan of the index of entries yields some interesting characteristics. Firstly, the English dominate; in just the alphabetical entries from A through C, there appear 21 English martyrs out of the 77 entries. Secondly, the ordinary, or perhaps even the anonymous, dominate; few names jump out as recognizable. Granted, they may have been more prominent in the sixteenth century, but Crespin’s qualifications seem to reinforce the fact that many of the martyrs lived fairly ordinary lives. In other words, they are all extraordinary because of their witness. Finally, there appear some unexpected entries, one of which is particularly noteworthy, since it reveals much about how Crespin was interpreting and attributing martyrdom. In the index, under H, one finds the entry, “Hierome Savanarola, italien” (Girolamo Savanarola, Italian). Going to the actual entry, one finds the following subtitle: “La mort de Savanarola nous reduit en memoire comme un commencement de la lumiere, laquelle puis apres est parvenue à un plein midi” (The death of Savanarola finds its place in our memory as a beginning of light, which then after reaches a full noon).57 The entry then begins with an acknowledgment of the subject’s problematic foreign identity, “Du temps d’Alexandre sixieme pape de Rome Espagnol de nation  […] fut bruslé à Florence Hierome Savanarola, religieux de l’ordre des Jacopins, homme renommé en vie & doctrine” (From the time of Alexander VI, pope of Rome, Spanish of nation […] was burned at Florence Girolamo Savanarola, religious of the order of the Jacobins [Dominicans], man renowned in life and in doctrine).58 Crespin is sure to note that Pope Alexander VI was Spanish before articulating why Savanarola’s life and death constitute a martyrdom for the cause. Most notable is Savanarola’s opposition to the papacy, his critique of the clergy, and his calls for renewal of the Church. Crespin also attributes to him the ability to predict the future: “Frère Hieronyme a dit beaucoup de choses avant quelles fussent advenues” (Brother Girolamo said many things before they came to pass).59 This, of course, suggests a certain prophetic quality proposer aux lecteurs, comme en un miroir, la puissance, la sagesse, la justice et la bonté de Dieu’ ” (188). 57  Jean Crespin, Histoire des vrays Tesmoins de la verite de l’Evangile, qui de leur sang l’ont signée, depuis Jean Hus jusques au temps présent (1570), 55 (Arsenal FOL-H-3846). Crespin’s text is commonly referred to as the Histoire des martyrs, the title that appears hereafter in the text. 58  Ibid. 59  Ibid.

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and therefore proximity to God. He confirms this toward the end of the entry when he writes that even Marsilio Ficino attributed to Savanarola “un esprit Propheticque” (a Prophetic spirit).60 A more traditional example cited by Crespin is that of Thomas Tomkins who has an entry in Book IV. Cited also in John Knox’s “The Names of the Martyrs” from 1559, gentleman for whom “la main fut mise à l’esprœuve sur la flamme ardente avant que le surplus du corps ait esté mis au feu” (the hand was put to the test on the burning flame before the rest of the body was put to the fire).61 Crespin notes that he was just a humble tisserand (weaver), but what makes him worth mentioning was the rage that he elicited from the Bishop of London upon examination: “Car combien que Tomkins fust homme sans lettres, neantmoins il avoit assez de savoir pour ne pouvoir estre conveincu par l’Evesque & estoit si ferme en icelle, qu’il ne voulut jamais donner lieu aux erreurs qui estoit reprouvez” (For how much was Tomkins a man without letters, nevertheless he had enough knowledge to not be able to be convinced by the Bishop and was so firm in this that he never wanted to yield any ground to the errors that were condemned).62 Fortunately, this courage and strength lasted until the end, for this tisserand “bruslant dedans de plus grand’ flamme de zele, endura ceste bruslure exterieure de telle constance, que son tyran ne profita de rien, sinon qu’il devint beaucoup plus cruel” (burning within from the great flame of zeal, endured this exterior burning with such constancy that the tyrant profited from nothing, except that he became much more cruel).63 Crespin’s narrative, as it does here, often reflects the tradition of the martyrology. As we will see with the account of the Admiral de Coligny’s death, many elements signal the veracity of the story as well as the righteousness of the martyr. He endures great pain with great constancy. Along with this, his simplicity and lack of education frustrates the cruel tyrant. In the end, the persecution does nothing for the tyrant and serves to strengthen the resolve of any who might fall victim to persecution in the future.64 Crespin’s martyrology makes clear to the reader who really occupies the positions of persecutor and victim. To be sure, his text performs more or less the same function as martyrologies of the past, but in the context of the wars of 60  Crespin, Histoire des [martyrs], 56. 61  Crespin, Histoire des [martyrs], 315. 62  Ibid. 63  Ibid. 64  This particular narrative evokes the act of martyrdom of St. Lawrence the Deacon. See Prudentius’s (348–413?) Peristephanon, Hymn II, “Passio Laurentii beatissimi martyris.” For a lengthy discussion of this work and the imagery therein, see Michael Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993).

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religion, it conveys a renewed sense of urgency to solidify who needs to be singled out for reverence for the encouragement of the Protestant side, especially toward the beginnings of the conflict.65 Foreignness counts for nothing, at least in a negative sense, since England provides a fertile field from which Crespin can draw inspiration for the French. What Crespin’s compilation shares with other images of martyr is this connection to early Christian templates for a righteous death in the face of persecution. The rush to define certain people as martyrs clearly defines not only winners from losers but also reassures one’s own side of God’s favor. The Histoire des martyrs widens the scope of the image since it incorporates more common examples of martyrdom as opposed to the big names like Gaspard de Coligny. Thus, the image, while still one that seeks to exclude certain members of the community for veneration, attempts to become more effective in encouraging and reaffirming the Protestant struggle. In this sense, “exclusive” does not necessarily mean “small number” but “defined community of the righteous,” a concept that will become more evident as other authors incorporate martyrdom into an apocalyptic context. While Crespin’s numerical inclusiveness sought to reassure the many people suffering from the intolerance of the Protestant community, other authors chose to be more selective in who deserved to be represented as a martyr. Moreover, with these more famous figures, we see more contentiousness as to whether or not the title was merited. With political and religious assassinations, it is perhaps most unclear whether one can present the deaths in question as a case of martyrdom. Because they so often involved such pivotal actors, it was all the more imperative for their deaths to incarnate the glory of the martyr in order to reinforce their respective sides in the conflict. Two notable examples are very similar in that they involve leaders from both the Catholic and Protestant parties. The narratives of their deaths, however, fail to mention the word “martyr,” or any form thereof, while still using some common elements that certainly suggest that the reader should single these men out for veneration.66 In both cases, the goal is the same, to sanctify their memory and 65  For a more extended treatment of Crespin’s motivation in compiling the Histoire des martyrs, see Jean Crespin, Histoire des martyrs persécutez et mis à mort pour la vérité de l’évangile, depuis les temps des apostres jusque à présent (1619), ed. Daniel Benoît, 3 vols. (Toulouse: Société des livres religieux, 1885–1889), esp. the introduction, vii–xxiii. 66  In most of the narratives that I have chosen, neither the author, nor the personages involved utter the word “martyr.” It is curious, especially since the imagery is so clear. I believe this to be a deliberate rhetorical strategy that speaks to the semiotic crisis. Since signs, and in this case, words, have become unreliable, it is better in this case to allow the death of the person in question to speak for itself. In allowing the reader to come to his or her own conclusion, it makes the representation of martyrs more compelling and also signals a nice bridge between representation and interpretation.

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transform them into heroes for the cause that validate the truth and goodness of the cause. The first example I want to examine is that of the aforementioned Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. In Goulart’s Mémoires de Charles IX, Goulart includes a detailed account of his death that displays some key characteristics of the martyrdom narrative that is developing in literary discourse following Saint-Barthélemy. In the opening sentence of the account, the tone is set with a reference to a proverb that immediately evokes martyrdom. The author writes that Cosseins, whom the Duke of Anjou had designated to guard Coligny’s house, was someone “en quoy plusieurs disoyent le proverbe estre vray, qu’on avait baillé la brebis à garder au loup” (in whom several said the proverb was true, that one had given to the wolf the sheep who is to be guarded).67 In this scenario, Coligny is, of course, the lamb. The Christological imagery does not end there. When roused from his bed to face his certain death, Coligny “en invoquant ardemment Jesus Christ son Dieu & Sauveur recommanda son esprit entre ses mains” (while ardently invoking Jesus Christ, his God and Savior, commended his spirit into his hands).68 His words echo those of Christ upon his death and those of St. Stephen, the proto-martyr.69 Throughout the ordeal, the Admiral shows his own resolve while encouraging others to save themselves, many of whom do so “miraculeusement” (miraculously). In the final moments before his death, Goulart evokes the confrontation between Jesus and his captors in the Garden of Gethsemene: “N’es tu pas l’Amiral? C’est moy respondit-il, avec un visage paisible & asseuré” (Are you not the Admiral? It is I he responded, with a peaceful and assured face).70 Not only with a martyr’s dignity, but also according to the death of Christ himself, Coligny submits to what he knows is coming. Finally, the compiler includes a detail that one often finds in stories of the martyrs; he notes several times that those sent to capture and kill the Admiral are impressed by his peace and his resolve in the face of his impending death.71 This detail is of course to add to the credibility of the 67  Goulart, Mémoires de Charles IX, 1:287. 68  Goulart, Mémoires de Charles IX, 1:288. 69  “And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ ” (Luke 23:46); “They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’ ” (Acts 7:59)! 70  Goulart, Mémoires de Charles IX, 2:289. “So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth and said to them, ‘Whom do you seek?’ They answered Him, ‘Jesus the Nazarene.’ He said to them, “I am he’ ” (John 18:4). The description of Coligny’s death certainly fits into the wider tradition of the “mort exemplaire,” but in combination with the other elements that I have cited here, this particular account emphasizes aspects of his death that attribute to him Christian martyrdom. 71  Goulart, Mémoires de Charles IX, 2:289.

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martyr’s death as a righteous one, for even the persecutors draw inspiration from their sacrifice and witness. Sixteen years later after the assassination of the Admiral de Coligny and the massacre of Saint-Barthélemy, the two most prominent members of the Catholic party were to meet their end as well, and Jean Boucher, a Catholic polemicist, employed much of the same rhetoric in describing their assassinations at the hands of Henry III. Summoned to the king’s presence on December 23, 1588, the Duke of Guise entered the Château de Blois only to be besieged by the king’s guards, the “Quarante-cinq.” Much like Goulart in his account of the death of Coligny, Boucher never uses the word “martyr,” but the details of the Duke’s death announce Boucher’s agenda in portraying him as a victim and a witness for the cause. Returning to his text, La Vie et faits notables de Henry de Valois (The Life and notable deeds of Henry of Valois), Boucher sets the scene by emphasizing that the unsuspecting Duke, having faith in the king’s good will, leaves his own guards behind only to be attacked by members of the Quarante-cinq who stab him multiple times. The Duke cries out: “O Dieu, est-ce pour mes pechez!” (O God, ‘tis for my sins!).72 The Duke’s body suffers further indignities at the hands of the Quarante-cinq and of the king as he emerges to verify that the Duke is dead. Boucher makes the meaning of the Duke’s death clear: “Ainsy Henry de Valois traistre coüard & poltron feit mourir ce magnanime Prince, à cause qu’il maintenoit la Religion Catholique” (Thus Henry of Valois, traitor, coward, and weakling had killed this magnanimous Prince, because the latter upheld the Catholic Religion).73 In addition, the text includes an engraving of the Duke’s corpse with six swords piercing him and a seventh hovering over the fallen warrior. The Duke’s brother endures a similar fate but a day later. Boucher writes that Louis II, Cardinal de Guise, arrived at Blois the night of his brother’s death, but it is not until the morning after, while Henry III is at mass, “ce perfide” (this perfidious one), that the Quarante-cinq are supposed to accomplish the king’s will. Boucher notes that they hesitate, “disans qu’il estoit personne sacree” (saying that he was a sacred person), suggesting another one of the martyrdom tropes of the persecutors fearing the holiness of the future martyr.74 The task eventually falls to the Capitaine Gast and his soldiers, and the Cardinal dies in much the same manner as his brother, as it is depicted in another engraving included in the text.

72  Jean Boucher, La Vie et faits notables de Henry de Valois, ed. Keith Cameron (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), 136. 73  Boucher, Vie et faits notables, 137. 74  Boucher, Vie et faits notables, 143.

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The accounts of the deaths of the Brothers Guise do not drip of the rhetoric of martyrdom as much as does Goulart’s on the death of the Admiral de Coligny. Nevertheless, many of the signs are there and are reinforced by the engravings found within the text. Other sources also confirm that many desired to represent their deaths as martyrs for many of the reasons I have already articulated, namely, to provide seeds of fervor and justification for the cause. Keith Cameron cites multiple texts that more definitively portray the ambush as a martyrdom. In one of the individually published placards that included the two engravings of the assassinations, the author writes: O mort salutaire & proffitable à vous seul, & à vostre invincible Frere, Piliers de l’Eglise militante! Martyrs, car ainsi vous peut-on bien appeler ; pour autant que les Catholiques croyent asseurément, que vous estes eslevez aux sieges bien-heureux de ceux qui nos ont baillé la foy confermee par leur sang, pour laquelle vous & plusieurs de vos devanciers avez esté outrageusement massacrez.75 O salutary death, profitable to you alone, and to your invincible Brother, Pillars of the Church militant! Martyrs, for thus can one well call you; because Catholics believe assuredly that you are elevated to the blessed seats of those who gave us the faith, confirmed by their blood, a faith for which you and several of your predecessors have been outrageously massacred. In Signes merveilleux aparuz sur la ville & Chastau de Bloys (Wondrous signs appeared above the city and chateau of Blois) and in Le Martyre des deux frères (The martyrdom of the two brothers), both from 1589, the respective authors make it more explicit that the Duke and Cardinal of Guise died for their Catholic faith and are therefore blessed by God. The former text describes a series of mystical signs that appear above the city and chateau of Blois warning the inhabitants of God’s punishment, just as he punished the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The potential destruction is of course depicted as God’s response to the assassination of the Guise brothers.76 With respect to the latter, one need look no further than the title page for the martyrological symbolism. 75  Keith Cameron, ed., La Vie et faits notables de Henry de Valois, by Jean Boucher (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), 142n1. 76  Signes merveilleux aparuz sur la ville & Chastau de Bloys, en la presance du Roy: & l’assistance du peuple. Ensamble les signes & Comette aparuz pres Paris, le douziesme de Janvier, 1589. comme voyez par ce present portraict (Paris:  1589) (Arsenal 8-H-6425 (11)). There is an engraving on the title page that depicts the many signs.

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It depicts a crucifix in the center with the Duke of Guise kneeling on the right and the Cardinal kneeling on the left. At the base of the crucifix hover on the respective sides a crown and a galero, the cardinal’s hat. Underneath these symbols of the brothers’ roles here on earth are two hearts, the Duke’s with a sword through it and the Cardinal’s an arrow, both of which suggest the way in which the brothers died. Finally, the heavens are open and bursting forth above them while a skull and bone are nestled at the base of the crucifix. Throughout the actual text, the author employs images like Isaac to emphasize his innocence and ignorance in the face of his impending sacrifice or the actual label of martyr and the attribution of “holy zeal.”77 The Cardinal is depicted as “un second Jesus Christ” who awakens his companion in the middle of the night to pray, just like Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemene.78 The imagery is anything but subtle; the iconography is clear, as if there were any doubt. One can see in these two texts a more direct response to the genre of the Protestant martyrology that had already been around since the 1560s. Finally, in the most prominent battle over the status of the deaths involved in an assassination, Jacques Clément stands at the center and presents an interesting case as well as a much contested and significant one historically. He did not die for the Catholic faith in any traditional sense; he was not asked to deny Christ or to worship an alien God, which already puts his status as a martyr into doubt. Instead, various writers portray Clément as a martyr simply for doing what he believed to be God’s will. Such a slip constitutes nothing more than a nuance, to be sure, but it is an important one, since it takes advantage of the distance between the word and what it represents, all the while trying to bring the two together in a way that excludes others from the category. It will permit many others who do not quite fit the ideal to be held up as having died for the faith. Returning to the Discours veritable de l’estrange & subite mort de Henri de Valois, we can examine how this slip into a martyr narrative can occur. The vision by which the angel tells Clément what he is to do also reveals to the Jacobin what he will gain: “Pense donc à toi, & te prepare comme la Couronne de martyre t’est aussi preparee” (Think therefore of yourself, and prepare yourself, as the Crown of martyrdom is prepared for you as well).79 Compare the nature of this vision with the Martyrdom of Polycarp, for example: “And while 77  Charles Pinselet, Le Martyre des deux freres contenant au vray toutes les particularitez plus notables des massacres, & assassinats: commis és personnes de tres-hauts, tres-puissans, & tres-chrestiens Princes, Messeigneurs le reverendissime Cardinal de Guyse archevesque de Reims et de monseigneur le duc de Guise pairs de France. Par Henry de Valois a la face des estats dernierement assemblez à Blois (1589) (Arsenal 8-H-6425 (1)), 25, 30. 78  Le Martyre des deux freres, 36. Cf. Matthew 26:40–41. 79  De l’estrange et subite mort, 10.

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he was praying, it so happened, three days before his arrest, that he had a vision and saw his pillow blazing with fire, and turning to those who were with him he said, ‘I must be burned alive.’ ”80 While the two passages are not precisely parallel, the heavenly vision and the resolution that its content are meant to inculcate certainly resemble one another. Clément does not fail to heed the angel’s command: “Estant donc resolu, il fait par plusieurs jours, jeusnes & abstinences au pain & à l’eau, se confesse, se fait communier, & recevoir le precieux corps de nostre Sauveur & Redempteur Jesus Christ, se disposant comme un homme qui va rendre son ame à Dieu” (Being resolved, therefore, he made during several days, fasts and abstinences of bread and water, went to confession, communicated, receiving the precious body of our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ, readying himself as a man who is going to give his soul over to God).81 The text makes clear that this is a martyr’s preparation, at least that of someone who is going to give his life for God. Since he has already given his life as a Dominican, this act constitutes a deepening of even that commitment. While his body is quartered and burned after succeeding in his task, the author is sure to mention that his soul, on the other hand, “ne laisse monter au Ciel avec les bien-heureux” (did not cease rising to heaven with the blessed).82 Clément has received his just reward since he did not fear to “mettre l’Eglise & le peuple en liberté” (put the Church and the people in freedom).83 The author employs many of the different ancient attributes of the martyr to solidify his case that Clément is one. If he succeeds, Henry III is the villainous tyrant everyone thought him to be, and Clément shows himself to have undisputedly served God in the tradition of the great cloud of martyrs who have gone before. 4

Conclusion

The discussion of fanatics and martyrs distills the two sides into their purest form, and the extreme rhetoric corresponds to the lengths to which fanatics and martyrs will go to defend their cause. At the same time, the rhetoric shows the instability of the language with respect to its representation and attribution. Jacques Clément can be either saint or sinner, either a martyr or a fanatic, at the service of the polemicist’s pen. This versatility but also instability 80  T  he Martyrdom of Polycarp, Early Christian Fathers, ed. and trans. Cyril Richardson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), 151. 81  De l’estrange et subite mort, 11. 82  De l’estrange et subite mort, 13. 83  Ibid.

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of words and images simultaneously allows the opposing representations but also elicits the desire to overcome the instability with absolutes. In sum, it is about definition: writers are trying to define communities, religious or political or both, while trying to define words, concepts, and the meaning of the events of history. As the discussion of the crisis of representation in Chapter One indicated, the Middle Ages represented a time where meaning and representation were clearer, and a distinct cohesion between that meaning and the group toward which those meanings were directed existed. In fact, the community was infused with that meaning, and thought and deed only had meaning with respect to the primary lens of the spiritual and the transcendent. However, as the relationship between sign and signifier began to break down, the distance that developed between words and what they represented exacerbated religious and political disunity, especially in Renaissance France. The rhetoric of extremes is ultimately a war against nuance. It offered writers a tool to combat this separation and to construct unshakeable definitions that made signs adhere to the signified in a clarifying way; it allowed authors to rapidly and efficiently reduce the distance between words like zeal, tyrant, and martyr and what these words were meant to represent. If writers could recapture an exclusive and defined meaning for these and perhaps other words, an exclusive and defined community could coalesce around them, recreating unity where it had been lost both in the literary and political spheres. Was this discourse a reversal of the advent of nominalism and Renaissance humanism? Not entirely. I would instead argue that the rhetoric that these authors employed was an attempt at negating the unintended consequences of these positive—or at the very least important—developments in Western thought. The consequences of nominalism, I believe, run particularly deep through what ultimately developed in France in the sixteenth century. The absolutes that help keep signs and the discourse that they composed stable became as distant as the hidden and arbitrary God of nominalist theology. After the saturation of the sacred in the late Middle Ages, nominalist thought was a promising remedy, but it came at a difficult moment when that same saturation had already weakened the connection between signs and the signified, not because of distance, but because of overuse. What makes a rhetoric of extremes so essential in combating nominalism’s ill effects is that it tries to recreate the universals that nominalist thought had attempted to discard. While certain authors like Rabelais tried before the wars of religion to reconcile nominalism’s effects with the semiotic crisis, as Ullrich Langer has shown in his discussion of charity, such experimentation failed to gain traction. One could imagine zeal receiving a similar treatment. In other words, while Rabelais, in a nod to nominalism’s resistance to substantive absolutes, incorporates differentiation

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in his charitable ideal, the same could go for St. Paul. Those who are zealous set themselves apart, much like Paul himself, in living their convictions. Admiring this zeal and its different instantiations for their own sake, might have led to greater tolerance. Alas, it was not to be, for the confusion led to accusations of fanaticism rather than tolerance for firmly held beliefs. At the same time, Renaissance humanism’s influence on the scholarly tradition, especially with respect to the debate against scholasticism and the rivalry between the Ancients and the Moderns, equally had an effect on the crisis that led to such an ardent rush to stabilize signs and their representation. The creativity of language, neologism, and the Italian tradition created a dynamic environment, but with the religious conflict that developed, that dynamism eventually became a liability. In a reaction akin to the one against nominalism, new approaches to political authority suddenly became negative attributes as they were used to define what is and is no longer acceptable. They had created too much diversity, even chaos in the political and religious context. Amid the villains, it would also be necessary to create the perfect heroes in the form of martyrs, who, in their purity, bring into focus the clearest picture of what it means to exclude what is no longer helpful, as well as those who inhibit unity. The use of martyrdom not only notices those who properly represent the idea, it also counts on the reader interpreting that representation firmly; it is what makes the image of the martyr so effective. In the next chapter, I will move into that interpretive framework, examining texts from the period of the wars of religion that worked primarily to reverse the ill effects of this second aspect of the semiotic crisis, as writers and perhaps printers tried to manage and anticipate the so-called correct interpretations of the texts that they published in order to make their meaning clearer and their effect greater.

Chapter 3

Print Matters The author of L’Histoire de Jean Guy in his letter to the reader that precedes his account of the converted parricide frets that Satan has taken control of the age and that the good fruit of his text will be to bring those who have fallen under his spell to ask for God’s pardon amid a return to a true and lively faith.1 They will imitate Jean Guy. The prospect of a Satanic influence over all people and over the reader had to have shocked the latter into attention; in reading this text, there was much at stake. Such statements were not unusual and created a framework in the reader’s mind before he or she continued with the text itself. In the very first sentence of the first volume of the Mémoires de la Ligue, Simon Goulart does not leave any doubts about what his project will accomplish for the reader. He writes: Ami Lecteur, si jamais Satan se transfigura en Ange de lumiere pour nuire à l’Eglise de Dieu, & la ruïner s’il lui estoit possible, c’est de notre temps, auquel il a fait liguer ensemble les plus grands de l’Europe avec l’Antechrist son fils aisné, par une & sous une maudite & sanglante Ligue, qu’ils osent impudemment surnommer saincte, lequel tiltre de saincte luy convient aussi peu, que le tiltre de verité au pere de mensonge, qui les conduit & meine, comme jadis il manioit les Scribes & Pharisiés qu’il fit liguer ensemble pour faire la guerre à Jesus Christ.2 Friendly reader, if ever Satan transfigured himself into an angel of light to harm the Church of God, and to ruin it if it were possible for him, it is in our time, during which he has put into league together the greatest of Europe with the Antichrist, his eldest son, by and under a cursed and bloodthirsty League, that they impudently dare to name holy, which title of holy fits it as little as does the title of truth fits the father of lies, who leads and guides it, as in another time he handled the Scribes and the Pharisees that he put into league together in order to make war against Jesus Christ.

1  L’Histoire de Jean Guy, 4. 2  Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, 1: n.p.

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Goulart’s characterizations of his subject matter leave little doubt. The Protestant historian has set out to expose to the world that the Catholic League is in league not with God but with Satan himself, or at least, it certainly looks that way. Goulart sets the tone for the entire six-volume set of his compilation with one extremely polemical and inflammatory sentence. There is more to his preface, but one need not read on to know with what hermeneutic to approach his collection of late sixteenth-century texts. Gérard Genette in his seminal work of literary theory, Seuils (1987), writes about the preface, “La préface auctoriale assomptive originale, que nous abrégerons donc en préface originale, a pour fonction cardinale d’assurer au texte une bonne lecture” (The assumptive original authorial preface, that we will abridge therefore to the original preface, has as its cardinal function to assure for the text a correct reading).3 For Goulart, this “bonne lecture” entails only one possibility, namely that the Catholic League is a diabolical alliance against all that is good, holy, or associated with Jesus Christ. The provocative nature of this opening salvo by Goulart guides the reader toward his broader goal, which is perhaps necessary since Goulart often includes texts from the League itself in his compilation. These texts of the opposition are no less important to the narrative that Goulart wants to establish than are the texts from the Protestant camp, but in order to ensure that the reader approaches anything offered by the League with appropriate disdain, Goulart declares his position—and what should be the reader’s position—from the first moment. The pivotal initial contact that is the preface is but one of the many species of the paratext. Titles, dedications, epigraphs, and postfaces are some of the others that Genette identifies, but in my analysis of the shaping of history in the printed text, I would like to expand the idea of the paratext even further. In the literature of the wars of religion that has emerged after the crisis of interpretation, it is my view that authors employed any means necessary to manage the reader’s interpretation of their texts to ensure a bonne lecture, not just the means that Genette and others define as paratext. Thus, I would like to expand Genette’s concept to include other strategies, methods, and textual fragments that authors used to accomplish this goal and to initiate an exchange with the reader about the text they are reading.4 Genette writes in 3  Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2002), 200. (emphasis in original). 4  This multitude of paratextual methods and strategies requires that I distinguish between the paratext as a literal and physical presence in the text and its metaphorical function. In the former case, the paratext frames the text spatially, whereas in the latter it may do so by means of creating interpretative barriers or guideposts to control the reader’s reaction. Some paratexts act as one or the other or even sometimes both. In most cases, I have tried to make it evident as to which applies where.

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his introduction, “Cette frange [qui est le paratexte], en effet, toujours porteuse d’un commentaire auctorial, ou plus ou moins légitimé par l’auteur, constitue, entre texte et hors-texte, une zone non seulement de transition, mais de transaction” (This border [which is the paratext], indeed, always a bearer of authorial commentary, or more or less legitimated by the author, constitutes, between the text and the outside-text, a zone not only of transition, but of transaction).5 And this transaction is at the heart of the matter. In reading Genette’s categorization and characterization of the paratext, it is clear that what he identifies could be described as the author’s conversation with the reader about the principal text that he or she has written. This is, of course, why “threshold” is so apt; it permits an exchange, a passage between the text and the reader. In the following comment on the difference between the postface and the preface, Genette characterizes the nature of this exchange: L’inconvénient majeur de la préface, c’est qu’elle constitue une instance de communication inégale, et même boiteuse, puisque l’auteur y propose au lecteur le commentaire anticipé d’un texte que celui-ci ne connaît pas encore. Aussi dit-on que bien des lecteurs préfèrent lire la préface après le texte, quand ils sauront ‘de quoi il s’agit’ […] [L]’auteur pourrait épiloguer en toute connaissance de cause de part et d’autre : ‘Vous en savez maintenant autant que moi, alors causons.’ ”6 The major disadvantage of the preface is that it constitutes an instance of unequal communication, even limping, since the author proposes to the reader in it the anticipated commentary on a text the reader does not yet know. Consequently, one can say that many readers prefer to read the preface after the text, when they will know ‘what it is about’ […] [T]he author could comment in full knowledge of the facts on both sides: ‘You know now as much as I do, so let’s chat.’ Genette speaks of both of these paratextual elements in terms that evoke a dialogue: “communication,” “commentaire,” “causons.” These elements allow the author to communicate to the reader not just the text itself but his thoughts about the text. This dialogue permits the author to guarantee—or attempt to guarantee—the “correct reading,” as we have already seen. In the literature of the wars of religion, a desire for efficacy turns this paratextual communication into something more than a necessity but practically an obsession. Authors 5  Genette, Seuils, 8. 6  Genette, Seuils, 240.

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are so concerned that their message be properly received by the reader by way of the reader’s interpretation of the text, that textual framing becomes of the utmost importance, to such an extent that it starts to resemble manipulation.7 The conversation rapidly descends into indoctrination as the author tries to create a uniformity of perspective. The polemics and the indoctrination convey the urgency of this conversation that needs to take place, and as I discussed in the previous chapter, this urgency is a response to a wider concern that meaning has been compromised and that the “bonne lecture” will not be guaranteed.8 Textual framing, both in a literal and metaphorical sense, takes advantage of the print medium and helps the author to shape the content of the text, the purported reality it presents, and the perception of it. Framed properly, the text, its elements, and its arguments seem, writers hope, more certain in the face of the shifting tide of meaning. Offering a clearer view of what they present does not necessarily correspond to a more accurate one. I would like to propose in this chapter yet another strategy by which authors and publishers took advantage of the unstable discursive environment and employed particular strategies to render their texts more powerful in the political sphere. An analysis of several instruments of which authors availed themselves to keep the conversation with—or the manipulation of—the reader going in this regard will reveal how the printed word afforded another opportunity for authors and publishers to accomplish their goal. Firstly, I will take a look at the use of a more traditional paratext, the preface. It is fundamental and provides the clearest window into what the author thought about the text and what he wanted the reader to think about it.9 Examples range from merely suggesting to the reader an interpretation to, 7  On the gathering and framing of texts during the Renaissance, but in the English context, see Mary Thomas Crane, Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 8  Crane attributes to English Renaissance authors an “anxiety” about controlling their language in light of the processes of copia. Since contemporary cultural codes differed from those of a pagan classical period, interpretation of texts could quickly get out of control. Framing texts allowed for better understanding of reappropriated text, but it also gave new influence to rhetoricians and authors who saw an opportunity for a more authoritative voice. See Crane, Framing, 16: “The humanists who wrote the most important logics and rhetorics in this period were engaged in constructing a place for themselves in society by establishing their ability to teach others how to have something authoritative to say, how to control it, and how to use it to control others.” 9  See Philippe Desan, “Préfaces, prologues et avis au lecteur: strategies préfacielles à la Renaissance,” What is Literature? France 1100–1600, ed. François Cornilliat, Ullrich Langer, and Douglas Kelly (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1993), 101–121. Desan addresses the difficult process by which the author, even though anonymous, is able by prefatory material to have the authority to influence the reader (103).

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in more radical examples, completely reframing texts in a different context so as to change the meaning 180 degrees without changing a word of the main body. Secondly, in an area with higher stakes considering the time period in question, authors relied on Sacred Scripture as a way to frame their texts and to control their interpretation. With contrasting and sometimes directly contradictory biblical interpretations, the citation of Sacred Scripture emerges as a principal point of contention but also as a way to suggest and to reinforce the interpretation of a text’s ideology. Whether spatially through biblical citation on the title page or through exchanges in which authors attacked an opponent’s scriptural exegesis rather than the arguments the scripture was meant to support, the holy word afforded the opportunity to solidify Protestant or Catholic scriptural interpretation while framing broader political implications of current events.10 Finally, at the end of a period of such rich poetic production, authors turned to verse in order to distill and promote their arguments. Before, within, and after their texts, a well-chosen sonnet or sextet permitted authors to quickly and pithily summarize their proposed interpretation of their texts and the events they recount in addition to heaping on more invective. In all three cases, writers try to keep the conversation going, trying to make it clear to the reader what he or she should think of the subject at hand. This textual framing often made the content and the arguments clearer, but authors also sought to render their texts more powerful in setting their version of reality as the dominant one. 1

The Power of a Preface

In the fourth volume of his Mémoires de la Ligue, Simon Goulart makes his case against Jacques Clément’s villainous act against Henry III. I have already explored the ways in which this discussion fulfills a certain rhetoric of extremes by its manipulation of words and ideas both for the case that Clément was a fanatic or that he was a martyr. However, especially in this fourth volume, there is more to Goulart’s toolbox of strategies. Namely, he quite adeptly uses the placement of texts and their prefaces as a way to influence the reader’s 10  With both Sacred Scripture and poetry, it is difficult to limit the discussion to paratext, per se, which is why I prefer the idea of a textual framing. Certain biblical interpretations, even if they are used as evidence in support of one argument, often position the entire text along the ideological spectrum, thus the increased attention by the opposition in attacking scriptural exegesis. With the Word of God especially, a conversation parallel to the text itself begins to develop. This is in addition to the signals the author is sending to the reader through the Scripture quoted and through the interpretations thereof.

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interpretation of what he includes in his famous compilation. One particular example comes a bit later than his depiction of the perfidious Dominican monk: a Catholic League text entitled Arpocratie, ou Rabais du caquet des politiques et jebusiens de nostre age (Arpocracy, or Putting in their place [literally “quieting the chatter”] the politiques and the Jebusites of our age) (1589). Just in case his framing strategy of the Arpocratie and of the previous texts on Clément does not yield the proper response, Goulart decides to follow up later in the volume with a text that is sure to convince the reader once and for all of the League’s folly. Perhaps one of the Catholics’ own can convince the reader how crazy the members of the League are, and so he turns to a piece written by no less than a Doctor of the Sorbonne. According to Goulart, a Carmelite by the name of F.Th. Beaux-Amis wrote the text and highlights that it makes a nice counterpoint to the Arpocratie since both texts originated in Lyon but from different publishers. But here some inconsistencies arise that could potentially reveal that Goulart’s framing of the texts is perhaps more interesting than the texts themselves. He claims in his paratextual interlude that the Arpocratie was published in 1589 and that the text by Beaux-Amis was printed “quelques annees apres.”11 However, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) possesses at least two exemplars of the Beaux-Amis text that date before that. In fact, their earliest copy is from 1567, published in Paris, which means that the Beaux-Amis text is not a response to the fanaticism of the Leaguers, but a response to rumblings against the sovereign, likely by Protestants, in the middle of Charles IX’s reign, after his mother was technically no longer regent.12 The text was published again in 1575, after Saint-Barthélemy, and the BnF has another exemplar from 1594 by the Lyonnaise publisher that Goulart cites, Benoît Rigaud. The title of the Rigaud edition is telling, for it includes the assertion that the

11  Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, 4:127. 12  The 1567 edition, entitled Remonstrance salutaire aux devoyez qu’il n’est permis aux subjets, sous quelque pretexte que ce soit, lever les armes contre leur Prince & Roy, le tout prouvé par l’escriture Saincte, includes no preface or other paratextual material other than the title page. The 1575 edition, entitled Remonstrance au peuple françois, qu’il n’est permis à aucun subjet, sous quelque pretexte que ce soit, se rebeller ne prendre les armes contre son Prince et Roy, includes a dedicatory epistle to the “tres-haute et tres-puissante dame Catherine de Medicis, Royne mere du Roy & regente de France.” Needless to say, this bit of textual framing does not appear in Goulart or in the edition from 1594. Finally, the 1594 edition, entitled Remonstrance au peuple françois, qu’il n’est permis à aucun subject, souz pretexte que ce soit, se rebeller ne prendre les armes contre son Prince & Roy, ny attenter contre son Estat: le tout prouvé par l’Escriture saincte, has nothing other than a title page either. Even the marginal notes are identical in all three editions.

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text is backed up by evidence from Sacred Scripture.13 It is fascinating that at least in this instance, the Protestant compiler, Goulart, did not need to change anything of the scriptural interpretation in order to appropriate the text. In addition, the text does not mention any particular king or prince, which makes its reproaches to all parties anonymous and thus universally applicable. It simply lists a series of scriptural examples of God’s people being oppressed by kings and, despite the potential tyranny, still choosing to live peacefully under those kings. Since the text was first published in 1567 and then again in 1575, it would only have been logical that it was written to Protestants at both historical moments who might have been tempted to rebel against Charles IX and his mother, first in the middle of his reign and then after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572. However, Goulart in his prefatory material presents the Remonstrance as a direct response to the “Ligueur Jesuite” who wrote the Arpocratie.14 Moreover, at the end of Beaux-Amis’s text, Goulart further interprets it as a rebuke to the champions of Jacques Clément: Telle fut la censure faite au nom de la faculté de Sorbonne, par le Carme surnommé, l’un de ses anciens maistres & supposts, non seulement aux Ligueurs assassins de Henri de Valois, leur Roy & Prince legitime, sanguinaires ennemis de son vrai successeur : mais aussi à la Sorbonne mesme, qui apres l’execution de Blois avoit aprouvé la degradation du Roy, fulminé contre icelui, comme si c’eust esté un tiran abandonné au premier tueur : dont s’ensuivit l’enragee conspiration du Jacopin, le parricide commis en la personne du Roy, la canonization de ce furieux que l’enfer crea, & les resolutions mataeologiques que Henry de Bourbon, roy de France & de Navarre estoit decheu du droit de succession à la Couronne, encores qu’il se recatholiquast & devint Romaniste mille fois.15 Such was the censure made in the name of the faculty of the Sorbonne, by the above-named Carmelite, one of its old masters and bedrocks, not only to the Leaguer assassins of Henry of Valois, their legitimate King and Prince, bloodthirsty enemies of his real successor: but also at the Sorbonne itself, that after the execution at Blois, had approved the degradation of the King, fulminated against him, as if he had been a tyrant 13  This is a qualification that appeared in the title of the 1567 edition but dropped out of the 1575 edition, only to be added again in the 1594 edition. 14  Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, 4:127. 15  Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, 4:148–49.

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abandoned to the first killer: from which followed the enraged conspiracy of the Jacobin, the parricide committed against the person of the king, the canonization of this furious one that hell created, and the fruitless resolutions that Henry of Bourbon, king of France and of Navarre was deprived of the right of succession to the Crown, though he recatholicized himself and became a Romanist a thousand times. While the compiler gets many things wrong about the author, the original context, and the goal of the text that he is commenting, it does not really undermine his argument. Assuming that he knew the actual origin of the text, Goulart is affirming that even Charles IX was incontestable when he ordered the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. By mislabeling a text from 1574 meant to address that question and that was directed against his coreligionists, Goulart inadvertently reinforces his position. If the reader has an awareness of this text, he or she may in fact conclude that one must live under one’s legitimate prince no matter what, and Goulart seems to agree, no matter which side the prince favors. It would seem to be a curious thing for Goulart to affirm given some of the texts he chose to include in the Mémoires of Charles IX’s reign. In the third volume of the Mémoires de Charles IX, on the period surrounding St. Bartholomew’s Day, Goulart includes a polemical text on the queen mother, entitled Discours merveilleux de la vie de Catherine de Médicis (Remarkable discourse on the life of Catherine de’ Medici). Goulart uses the 1576 edition of the text and places it at the very end of the compilation. While Goulart chooses to preface the text himself, he also includes a preface from the author that is not found in most other independently published editions. Goulart’s preface introduces the text with more or less accurate and quite ordinary information about what it contains, but it does include some more provocative details: “Or dautant que ceste regence ainsi prattiquee & pretendue par la roine mere, ouvrit la bouche à beaucoup de personnes pour en murmurer, un Politique ne se peut contenir de rechercher & dresser un sommaire du gouvernement d’icelle Roine” (And yet, because this regency practiced in this way and claimed by the queen mother opened the mouths of many people so that they might murmur about it, a Politique cannot contain himself in researching and constructing a summary of the government of this Queen).16 Goulart in this short preface gives us the writer’s motivation for composing the text while suggesting some interpretive keys to it. Firstly, it was born out of gossip and complaint, a “murmuring” that pushed the author to put down an account of what was, 16  Goulart, Mémoires de Charles IX, 3:422b.

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according to Goulart, a disastrous regency. Secondly, Goulart shifts very subtly his characterization of what the text actually is. His discussion of murmuring makes it seem as if what follows may not be an account of the regency at all but an account of the gossip and complaining surrounding it. Lest he leave the reader with that impression, he is sure to say that this murmuring only instigated the creation of the text, which is in actuality a researched analysis of Catherine’s rule. The latter, of course, sounds much more reasoned and reasonable than a collection of comments by wagging tongues. The framing of this particular text does not end with Goulart. Before the Discours merveilleux’s simple and declarative, but provocative, opening line— “Catherine de Medicis, en premier lieu est Florentine” (Catherine de’ Medici, in the first place, is Florentine)—the author of the Discours merveilleux himself adds some introductory material, which he titles, “Le Gouvernement de Catherine de Medicis Roine de France.” It is a strange title to begin the text, considering that the title of the entire work is focused so much on the personage of Catherine and her (mis)deeds, rather than on her government. Nevertheless, he immediately begins framing the text with a sleight of hand: “Comme il seroit tres-utile que les vies de toutes personnes publiques qui ont apporté quelque notable fruict au monde fussent bien et diligemment escrites, tant pour recompense de leurs travaux que pour exemple de vertu à l’advenir” (How it would be very useful that the lives of all public persons who have brought notable fruit into the world would be well and diligently written down, as much as a recompense of their works as for an example of virtue for the future).17 He expresses a good and noble wish; instead of proposing another sort of miroir du prince, an instruction to the sovereign on how to be a good ruler, he here suggests something more akin to the life of a saint, except that we know that what this author will likely present will not in any way resemble hagiography. In the second sentence, he confirms the reader’s suspicion: Aussi pense-je certainement, qu’il seroit à souhaiter, que les personnes qui n’ont prins leur plaisir, ny employé leur peine qu’à mal faire, fussent ensevelies en perpetuelle oubliance, tant pour punition de leurs meschancetez indignes de memoire, que pour ne laisser aux hommes trop habiles d’eux-mesmes à tout mal, un patron de meschanceté, pour tant plustost s’y façonner.18

17  Discours merveilleux, in Goulart, Mémoires de Charles IX, 3:423. 18  Ibid.

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Thus I thought certainly that it would be desirable that the persons who have not taken their pleasure, nor employed their pain but to do evil, were buried in perpetual forgetting, as much as for punishment of their misdeeds, unworthy of memory, as for not leaving to men, too clever for themselves to every evil, a patron of bad behavior, according to which they can more quickly fashion themselves. The last thing that one would do to ensure that the memory of bad people or rulers was effaced would be to write a book about them. Thus, one can conclude that this second sentence of the preface has a rhetorical function. What is worse: falling into oblivion, to be mourned and remembered by no one, or to be exposed as a fraud and a tyrant who is responsible for the ills of the country? The former is probably worse, but then the reader would miss out on the opportunity to confirm Catherine’s ignominy and to learn from it what not to do, even though more unsavory characters risk taking positive lessons from Catherine’s life. Reading on, the solution may present itself. After writing that such nefarious characters should be relegated to the great oubli, the author writes: C’est pourquoy j’ay quelque temps faict conscience d’escrire les actions de Catherine de Medicis, qui se dit aujourdhuy regente de nostre miserable royaume de France, comme estant icelle un vray patron de tyrannie en ses actions publiques, et de toutes sortes de vices en ses plus privées, et ay craint aucunement de souiller mes mains en si vilaine et orde matiere.19 This is why I have for some time had scruples about writing down the actions of Catherine de’ Medici, who calls herself today the regent of our miserable kingdom of France, as being a true patron of tyranny in her public actions, and of all sorts of vices in her private ones, and I fear a little soiling my hands in such a villainous and filthy subject. In other words, the author has been debating whether or not he should record Catherine’s legacy. In his crisis of conscience, he manages to include several other slights, namely that Catherine is an illegitimate ruler who claims to be regent. He does not fail to remind the reader of the miserable state of the country. Finally, the author makes an important distinction that leads us back to the image of the life of a saint that he had proposed in the first sentence of the preface. Referring to Catherine as a “patron de tyrannie” in her public actions, 19  Ibid.

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he adds that she is just as vile in her private ones. The specific mention of both public and private presents an interesting justification for what will follow, for the Discours merveilleux is by no means a political treatise. It is an intensely personal one directed at the queen regent. Nevertheless, the author implies that the queen’s disreputable personal character affects her civic duties and is likely responsible for the miserable state of the kingdom of France. And so it is with a heavy heart that the author decides to go ahead and make these things public: Je suis contraint de laisser tous ces scrupules, et me suis obligé à mettre la main à cest ouvrage, bien qu’à contrecœur […] Je ne pretens point, Dieu m’en est tesmoin, dire simplement mal d’elle : je tasche d’empescher que elle ne nous face mal. Je ne la veux point injurier. Je veux advertir un chacun de son injustice, et des torts et injures qu’elle faict à ce royaume.20 I am constrained to leave behind these scruples, and obligate myself to put my hand to this work, even though reluctantly […] I do not claim, as God is my witness, to simply speak ill of her: I am trying to keep her from doing us harm. I do not want to insult her. I want to warn each and every one of her injustice, of the wrongs and the insults that she is doing to this kingdom. The author’s posturing probably lends itself better to the discussion of authorial identity in the next chapter, but as material in a preface, it performs a rhetorical function equally associated with the management of the reader’s interpretation. This is not simply a historical text or a hit piece; the author has a moral obligation, which he himself creates, to present this information to the reader. The fact that he does not simply speak ill of the queen regent—he protests too much, I think—is meant to present the text as dire warning rather than as a self-interested tract. What is the effect of this preface? Or better yet, the effect of this preface in combination with Goulart’s on the text that follows and its interpretation? The text itself polemicizes Catherine’s origins, identity, motivations, and rule; it depicts the events of her life and legacy in a politicized fashion. As is not entirely unusual with a preface, the author, in a type of implied preterition, presents his text by saying what he does not desire to do, when this is actually what the text does. In other words, the author says that he does not simply want to speak ill of her but that he wants to make sure that she will stop ruining the country. His 20  Ibid.

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protestations that he does not want to injure Catherine or that he does not do this out of vengeance come off as at best insincere. Nevertheless, the preface may soften its invective to the reader who is interested in the improvement of France’s situation, while still allowing that same reader to absorb it. This is the author’s goal all along, and Goulart, in his introductory material abets him in it. Much like Goulart and the author of the Discours merveilleux, other authors in the midst of the polemical debates of the period try to establish their texts as objective truth, or at the very least as disinterested argument that happens to result in casting a public figure in a negative light. In other words, if Catherine de’ Medici had not perpetrated these wrongs in the first place, there would be no need for the author of the Discours merveilleux to expose and attack her. The truth is after all sometimes harsh but necessary. Taking advantage of this obvious principle, authors in their prefatory material downplay their polemical tone in order to make their arguments seem more balanced and reasoned. An appeal to truth is central to the refined poetic preface to Agrippa D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques (1616). The first edition of this epic poem has more than just a preface; it includes a fascinating epistle to the reader that I will examine in the next chapter on authorial identity. To the second edition would also be added some liminal poems by Daniel Chamier and Anne de Rohan. The preface, however, tills the ground of the reader’s mind to prepare it for the seed of truth. It presents an account that goes deeper than simply the facts of the case; D’Aubigné is trying to establish something more profound, a text that has a particular effect upon the reader that goes beyond separating fact from fiction. For this reason, the preface of Les Tragiques makes for a compelling study. From early on, the author wants the reader to know that the grand epic work that follows presents the Truth.21 This truth that the author mentions no less than ten times is one that is more than simple clarity with respect to the history of the wars of religion but an effective truth that takes on Christological undertones and therefore enhances expectations for the text that follows. The author focuses on the truth of the reformed religion, to be sure; theirs is a narrative born in truth and that yields the truth. In addressing himself to his own book, the author writes: “Ceux que la peur a revoltez / Diffameront tes veritez”

21  It is important to note that in the 1616 edition, D’Aubigné’s name does not appear on the title page. The author’s name is listed as, “LBDD.” See Frank Lestringant, ed., Les Tragiques, by Agrippa d’Aubigné (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), 373n26, where he identifies the meaning of the abbreviation, “Le Bouc du Désert.” I will discuss this self-designation, along with the image of Prometheus, in the next chapter.

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(Those that fear has made turn away / will defame your truths).22 In these two short verses, the author sets up his enemies as being fearful of what lies within his text, and he suggests that proof of its veracity is found in the opposition’s desire to defame it. This rhetorical strategy, although a common one, is necessary in order to reassure readers that in responding favorably to the text, readers also may incur the attention of defamers. Not to worry, though, since this denunciation will only further convince readers of the rightness of what they have encountered. The witness of the persecuted lends credibility to the message. As I said, however, the author’s text presents more than just the facts of the history of the struggles of French Protestants in the latter sixteenth century. He writes: Car je la [the Protestant Church] trouve dans le creux Du logis de soi tenebreux, Logis esleu pour ma demeure, Où la verité sert de jour, Où mon ame veut que je meure, Furieuse de sainct amour.23 For I find it in the hollow Of the abode in itself dark, An abode chosen as my dwelling, Where truth serves as daylight, Where my soul wants me to die, Furious with holy love. The logis to which the author is referring is located within the greater place of truth that is the Valleys of Angrogne where Protestants have hidden and protected themselves for years. Here, he finds a place where truth can be his light; he finds a “logis de verité” (abode of truth) that the valleys have defended. This truth is the history of French Protestants in their struggle. Nature itself defends it, and as it has been a light for him, his transmitting of the same truth in the text will be a light for the reader. This comes at a cost, however:

22  Agrippa D’Aubigné, Préface, in Les Tragiques, ed. Jean-Raymond Fanlo, 2 vols. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1995), vv. 49–50 (29). The “révoltés” in question here are those who are Protestant who convert back to Catholicism. See Fanlo, Les Tragiques, 29n. 23  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 127–32 (34).

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De celui qui aura porté La rigoureuse verité, Le salair’ est la mort certaine. C’est un loyer bien à propos : Le repos est fin de la peine, Et la mort est le vrai repos.24 From he who will have brought The rigorous truth, The recompense is certain death. It is an appropriate price: Rest is the end of suffering, And death is true rest. The power of the text begins to come into view. It has not only posed a danger to the author, but presumably it will pose a danger to the reader as well. The danger is a sweet one, for here, the author evokes the truth of the Gospel and the Resurrection, which while it does not offer to take away death, it does promise the end of suffering and the “vrai repos” (true rest). A text that sheds light and that gives sweet repose is, therefore, a force unto itself. The author has deepened the significance of what the text will offer, and the deepening does not stop there. He also uses the preface as a way to prepare the reader for the genre of the text that follows. Les Tragiques is known to be a text with apocalyptic undertones.25 Thus, the poet starts to break in the reader 24  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 151–56 (35). 25  With regard to biblical apocalyptic, see Claudio Moreschini and Enrico Norelli, Histoire de la littérature chrétienne ancienne grecque et latine, trans. Madeleine Rousset (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 2000), 116: “La composante de base est donc la représentation de deux niveaux de réalité, l’un accessible à l’expérience humaine, l’autre propre aux êtres spirituels et ne pouvant être connu que dans la mesure où il est révélé ; or ce second niveau influence de manière déterminante les événements du monde d’« ici-bas », lesquels ne sont souvent que la face visible de conflits qui se développent dans l’« autre monde ». La connaissance de ces derniers est donc décisive pour une compréhension exacte du sens de l’histoire et pour un comportement correct ; cette connaissance est concédée à certains personnages privilégiés, soit parce que leur est accordé l’accès au monde de l’audelà, soit parce qu’ils en ont une vision ou qu’elle leur est communiquée par un envoyé.    Historiquement, l’exigence d’une telle connaissance naît souvent dans des situations perçues comme désordre, dans lesquelles il est difficile d’admettre une communication avec le monde divin ; c’est pourquoi les révélations, tout comme le message qu’elles contiennent, sont attribuées à de grands personnages du passé. C’est ce qui explique la fréquente pseudépigraphie, comme aussi l’injonction de cacher la révélation jusqu’à la fin des temps—qui sont régulièrement ceux du véritable auteur ; il faut en effet expliquer

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and to signal these apocalyptic themes in the preface. His use of these methods is meant to give the reader an interpretative key for the rest of the text. Toward the beginning, he even incorporates his belief in the truth of his text in order to establish it as an apocalyptic one as well. He writes: Si on te demande pourquoi Ton front ne se vante de moi, Dis leur que tu es un posthume Desguisé, craintif & discret, Que la verité a coustume D’accoucher en un lieu secret.26 If they ask you why Your face does not boast of me, Tell them that you are posthumous, Disguised, fearful and discreet, That the truth has the custom Of birthing in a secret place. The author addresses the text itself, indirectly explaining to the reader why he has kept the text anonymous. While the author reiterates that the text is born from truth, he uses several other adjectives that are perplexing. He asks that the text announce itself as being posthumous, which in sixteenth-century French designates one born after the death of his or her father. In fact, this adjective likely refers to the story of Agrippa Posthumus, whose slave resembled his master and impersonated him. D’Aubigné understood the story differently, however. In his version, the slave tried to conceal his resemblance in order to trick the enemy, a goal that the poet clearly desires for his text.27 The next few verses confirm this, since the text is disguised, fearful, and discreet, and it is born by truth in a secret place. D’Aubigné tries to heighten the mystery around the origins of the text while still affirming its veracity. He creates a false obscurity— maintaining its anonymity and cryptically calling it posthumous—to intensify the text’s apocalyptic character. The Greek word “apokalupsis” means “revelation” or “uncovering,” but there is definitely a connotation that this uncovering comment une révélation qui prétend être reçue depuis si longtemps n’est faite qu’à ce moment-là.” See also Lars Hartman, “Survey of the Problem of Apocalyptic Genre,” in Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East, ed. David Hellholm (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1989), 329–43. 26  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 25–30 (28). 27  See Fanlo, Les Tragiques, 651n.

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emerges from darkness or obscurity. This is one of the reasons why these texts are so effective for communities experiencing oppression and disorder: from the darkness of their strife emerges a narrative that gives them light and hope and that puts them back in touch with the divinity who seems to have abandoned them.28 D’Aubigné is trying to construct this obscure origin so that the text might reflect the qualities of biblical apocalyptic and therefore give his reader comfort amid the light of truth. Later, this light begins to shine through in the ways in which the poet rewrites and presents certain familiar passages from Sacred Scripture. In a stroke that resembles the method of the writer of the Book of Revelation, many of the images are pulled from the Old Testament. At verse 205, the poet evokes the many battles that the Israelites fought as underdogs: Là l’enfant attend le soldat, Le pere contre un chef combat, Encontre le tambour qui gronde Le Psalme esleve son doux ton […] Ils sentent que Dieu sçavoit faire La toille aussi dure que fer.29 There the child awaits the soldier, The father fights against a chief, Encounters the drum that rumbles The Psalm raises its sweet tone […] They sense that God knew how to make Canvas as hard as iron. Woven into the poet’s allusion to a somewhat miraculous episode from D’Aubigné’s Histoire universelle (1616–1630) is a lexicon that evokes the details of God’s help to the Israelites.30 This bestows God’s favor upon his coreligion28  While he never mentions that the text is apocalyptic, David Quint situates Les Tragiques firmly on the side of what he calls the “politically defeated,” in the tradition of other epics written from the point of view of the loser like Lucan’s Pharsalia and La Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla. See David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form From Virgil to Milton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 113. 29  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 205–08, 215–16 (37–38). 30  See Fanlo, Les Tragiques, 37n.

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ists who fight against the odds in the same manner. The child fighting the soldier evokes David and Goliath, an encounter that repeats itself not only in its circumstances but also in its outcome. The poet produces the same effect when talking about leaders from ancient times: Les Samsons, Gedeons, & ceux Qui n’espargnerent, paresseux, Le corps, le hazard & la peine, Pour, dans les feux d’un chaud Esté, Boire la glace à la fontaine, Ramenerent la verité.31 The Samsons, Gideons, and those Who did not spare, lazy, Body, danger or suffering, In order to, in the fires of a hot summer, Drink ice at the fountain, Brought back Truth. The poet invokes famous leaders from the Old Testament to speak about the leaders who defend and protect the Protestants in the present day.32 In verse 308, “Gedeon” (Gideon) is assimilated to Henry IV, and the poet worries, “J’ai peur qu’une Dalide fine / Couppe ta force & tes cheveux, / Te livre à la gent Philistine, / Qui te prive de tes bons yeux” (I fear that a pretty Delilah / will cut your strength and your hair, / Deliver you to the Philistine people, / who will deprive you of your good eyes).33 Very quickly, the Samsons and Gideons are reduced down to the figure of Henry, and the poet rewrites the history to express his dismay that Henry’s relationship with Gabrielle D’Estrées will lead him to convert back to Catholicism, therefore blinding him to the truth.34 All of these references and retellings are in the apocalyptic vein and signal to the reader the genre of the text that follows. He is preparing the reader to turn on this particular hermeneutic as he or she approaches the text. The final goal of D’Aubigné’s preface is to suggest a particular and very effective consequence that will occur upon reading it. The text will succeed in 31  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 301–06 (43). 32  See Lestringant, Les Tragiques, 377n301. 33  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 315–16 (43). 34  See Lestringant, Les Tragiques, 377–78n315.

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confirming within the reader’s mind where he or she stands with respect to the truth based on how the reader reacts to the epic verses that follow. The preface acknowledges several times divisions that can occur, but according to the author, the text will justly reinforce these divisions. In the eighth stanza, he writes that the text’s goal will be “de plaire aux bons, & plaire à peu” (to be pleasing to the good, and to be pleasing to the few).35 In the following stanza, he ascribes to the text the power to classify even the enemy: “Heureux livre qui en deux rangs / Distingue la trouppe ennemie / En lasches & en ignorans” (Happy book that in two ranks / distinguishes the enemy troop / as cowards and ignoramuses).36 The poet of course appeals to traditional categories of the function of rhetoric, namely to please, to teach, or to move, but in this case, he seems to place a special significance on those whom his verses ultimately please. He expresses no doubt that they will upset his enemies, but he feels it necessary to explain that this displeasure will help to identify cowardice and ignorance among them. He does not specifically mention how this is going to happen, but this unhappy distinction follows upon his contention that we have already examined (vv. 49–50) that fear will drive some to defame the truths found in his work. The reader can conclude, therefore, that any fear expressed about the text from the enemy has its source in cowardice or ignorance and can be dismissed. Furthermore, the text’s trustworthiness can be explained on an even more fundamental level between those who will like it and those who do not. The poem will help distinguish between the two because it will be medicine to some and poison to others. By the very consumption of the text, the reader can discover where they stand with respect to the history and ideas that the poet proposes: Je n’excuse pas mes escrits, Pour ceux-la qui y sont repris : Mon plaisir est de leur desplaire : Amis, je trouve en la raison, Pour vous & pour eux fruict contraire, La medecine & le poison.37 I do not excuse my writings, For those that are here accused [by them]: 35  D’Aubigné, Préface, v. 48 (29). 36  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 52–54 (29). 37  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 367–72 (47).

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My pleasure is to displease them: Friends, I find in these words, For you and for them, a contrary fruit, Medicine and poison. The text that follows will bear fruit, but it will be lethal to those who are not well disposed to its contents. This is the most declarative statement yet about the effectiveness of the text and how it will be received. The poet attributes much power to the text to either nourish and heal the “right” reader and make the “wrong” reader mortally ill. He continues with these contrasting and opposing reactions: Vous lourez Dieu, ils trembleront, Vous chanterez, ils pleureront : Argument de rire & de craindre Se trouve en mes vers, en mes pleurs, Pour redoubler & pour esteindre, Et vos plaisirs & leurs fureurs.38 You will praise God, they will tremble, You will sing, they will cry: Subject matter to make one laugh and to fear Are found in my verses, in my cries, To strengthen and to extinguish. The consistent opposition between the “vous” and the “ils” reinforces the way in which the text will divide, mostly in being a cause for joy for those who are favorable to it and a cause of fear and anger for those who are opposed. Once again, we arrive at the question of what exactly these three main functions of D’Aubigné’s preface are meant to accomplish for the reader as he or she sets upon the poem. In being reminded of the truth of the text, in being set up for an apocalyptic reading, and being warned of the power of the text to divide and even to be a medicine or poison to the reader, those who approach the text are to see it as being comparable to scripture. While the poet never makes this claim outright, these three contentions that the preface repeats and reinforces evoke the power of a text that is pointed in its efficacy and whose credibility is beyond reproach. The final stanza leaves the reader with this impression and with a great deal of reverence for what is going to follow: 38  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 373–78 (47).

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Tu [le livre] es né legitimement, Dieu mesme a donné l’argument : Je ne te donne qu’à l’Eglise : Tu as pour support l’equité, La verité pour entreprise, Pour loyer l’immortalité.39 You are legitimately born, God himself has given you a subject: I give you but to the Church: You have for support equity, The truth for a project, For recompense, immortality. The author, in order to elevate his text, reverts to an inspirational model by which God has given the “subject,” and the poet just transmits it to the Church. The text has a life and character of its own and is defined by its equity, truth, and immortality. In addition, the declarative and commanding nature of the author’s pronouncements contributes not only to its prophetic quality but also to its presumption of truth, power, and effectiveness. The poet has raised the expectations for his text and what the reader will find within it. It is more than just a publicity technique; the fact that it is an epic poem with apocalyptic overtones and the fact that the author positions himself in the unique role of inspired prophet, which we will explore in the next chapter, creates an aura around the text that heightens the reader’s interpretive sensitivity and colors that interpretation with an intense expectation of finding a greater truth. There is, of course, nothing wrong with wanting to capture the reader’s attention by way of a preface or to make him or her better disposed to the message that follows. However, as is the case with many of the phenomenon that I have been exploring in this project, it is the historical and discursive context in which these authors are doing it that tinges their methods with a bit more significance. Why does Goulart think that he can recycle a text written at the wrong time and for the wrong audience? Why do authors, like the one who wrote the Discours merveilleux, feel the need to go on at length in order to characterize their work as the opposite of what it most certainly is? Why does D’Aubigné feel the need to emphasize that his epic poem conveys a dangerous but powerful truth and nothing but? The simple response is that they do it 39  D’Aubigné, Préface, vv. 409–14 (49).

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because they can; the semiotic crisis has created a discursive environment in which it was feasible to undertake such an intervention in the interpretation of one’s own text. More than better disposing the reader to the message, the author sought to control the interpretation of the text through the prefatory material by pointing the reader in the particular direction he wanted the reader to go, even before the reader had taken in the first word. The realm of meaning is otherwise just too fluid in order to leave it to chance. At the same time, these authors take advantage of the state of crisis in order to have more control and to limit the meaning of their text. With Goulart, he used his preface not just to limit meaning but to radically change it for a specific political purpose. The author of the Discours merveilleux uses a sleight of hand to get the reader to be more open to his polemic and to the fact that Catherine’s example is so bad it must be exposed. Finally, D’Aubigné wants to emphasize that there is only one truth to the history of the wars of religion and that any criticism that the “real truth” encounters only confirms that it is so. The prefatory material reveals both an anxiety about the state of meaning and an opportunism that allows greater control of one’s text. In the next section, I will show how this situation that was simultaneously detrimental and advantageous made Sacred Scripture another useful paratextual tool in the conversation between author and reader about how to interpret the author’s text. Either as prefatory material or as evidence, it raises the stakes at a time when scriptural exegesis was so hotly contested and politicized. 2

Sacred Scripture: A Charged Textual Frame

In a post-Reformation context, it is not at all surprising that Protestant authors would use Sacred Scripture as an essential device in framing their texts. However, Catholics were no less inclined to do so. First of all, Sacred Scripture and its interpretation afforded yet another opportunity to attack the opposition, and secondly, with the renewed focus on scripture and its exegesis, the value of a scriptural citation could lend integrity to the text. In both instances, Sacred Scripture helps to solidify the meaning and significance of the text in the eyes of the reader. And yet, Scripture often carries with it a conversation parallel to the text in which it appears that can distract the reader—either intentionally or unintentionally—from the matter at hand. Whenever Scripture is involved, there are always disputes, not just over the arguments that scriptural citations are meant to support, but also over the interpretation of the scriptural passages themselves. Initially, I will explore Scripture in a more strictly paratextual role as a title page citation, but since Scripture is so often

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embedded in the texts and is such an integral part of the arguments, it is not always appropriate to call them a paratext. Nevertheless, almost every scriptural citation is loaded with extra-textual meaning, dispute, and its own particular connotations that immediately create a site of transaction between the author and the reader. With the particularly charged story of Judith and Holofernes, for example, I will show how one biblical episode, though integrated into a political argument, can draw the reader outside of the text into a parallel conversation about the interpretation and the validity of this same episode. The meaning of Sacred Scripture and the disputation of its interpretation, therefore, make it an essential tool in supporting arguments but also in attacking the enemy within this parallel space. In a second sense, Sacred Scripture helps lend credibility to a text. Positioned properly outside of or within the text, it represents an attempt to render the text more serious and solemn. Whether it was with the frequent citation of it or just a creative engagement with it, Scripture provides the author with a means of elevating his text beyond mere polemic or even argument. Perhaps then, the reader will be enticed into being open to its arguments and maybe even convinced by them. 2.1 Scripture on the Title Page In its life independent of Goulart’s compilation, the aforementioned Arpocratie displays some interesting elements that reveal how authors during the wars of religion sought to manage the interpretation of their texts through Sacred Scripture. In comparing the different editions of this Catholic League text, one notices that while the body of the piece is nearly identical, the material printed on the title page varies, not only between editions, but also between the particular editions and the texts they purport to cite. The Parisian edition from 1589 lists two quotes from Psalm 34 of the Vulgate. The first quote, from verse 26, appears in both Latin and French: “Induantur confusione & reverentia qui maligna loquuntur super me. / Ceux qui parlent mal & mesdisent demoy soient revestus de confusion & de vergongne.”40 The citation does not surprise, since the text proceeds to argue against the Politiques and any who are associated with Henry of Navarre. The author or printer signals to the reader that 40  L ’Arpocratie ou Rabais du caquet des politiques et jebusiens de nostre aage (Paris: Didier Millot, 1589), t.p. (BnF 8-LB35-179). Some versions of this text in the Vulgate read “magna” instead of “maligna.” See The Vulgate Bible, vol. 3, ed. Swift Edgar and Angela M. Kinney (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 240–41. Edgar and Kinney use “magna” and translate it as “great things against me.” On the other hand, the Anchor Bible translates this as “calumny,” a translation that evokes the Latin “maligna.” See The Anchor Bible: Psalms I (1–50), trans. Mitchell Dahood, S.J. (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 210 and 215–16. Dahood translates directly from the Hebrew.

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Catholics are the victims of Politique calumny, since, presumably, they speak wicked things about the Catholics. The citation also positions the text as a sort of prayer in that it implies a request to God that confusion and shame be heaped upon the calumniators. The second citation from Psalm 34 that appears in the Parisian edition is from verse 19 and also has an unusual variation: “Non supergaudeant mihi qui adversanti mihi inique: qui oderunt me gratis & annuunt oculis.”41 The citation seems to be incorrect with respect to its source.42 The Vulgate reads “qui adversantur” not “qui adversanti”. The latter does not really make any sense; the form “adversanti” would be a present active participle and “adversor” is a deponent verb. If the author or printer meant “adversaries” or “adversarial,” modifiying the qui, it might be understandable except for the fact that it leaves the relative clause without a verb. This second mistake in the Parisian edition certainly suggests that the first quotation might have been accidentally, rather than intentionally, transcribed incorrectly, since this second mistake seems to indicate ineptitude on the part of the transcriber. At any rate, the second quotation reaffirms the interpretative lens through which the reader is supposed to approach this text, namely that the Politique and Protestant parties feel themselves in a position of superiority in their opposition to the Catholics. The opposition rejoices “over” them, and the quotation uses a Latin idiom meaning “to wink at,” a gesture with connotations of mocking or contempt. The other interesting aspect of this choice of verse from Psalm 34 is that it mentions that the opposition hates them “for nothing.” Right from the start, it signals an unrepentant Catholic position while simultaneously attempting to portray the Catholics as innocent victims in this scenario. With respect to Sacred Scripture, this is a very important positioning to maintain. Very often, the victimized party resembles more closely God’s chosen people, whether the Israelites or the followers of Christ. In other words, if one group is the victim, they are the righteous. This theme comes up consistently in the psalter and is at the center of Christ’s Gospel message: “And He was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.’ ”43 Those who bear the cross follow in the footsteps of 41  “Let them not rejoice over me who unfairly oppose me: who hate me for nothing and wink [at me].” 42  The Lyonnaise edition, published independently in 1589 by Jean Patrasson, shares the same citation from Psalm 34 but does not include a French translation thereof. It neither includes a second verse from Psalm 34. However, it does repeat the erroneous transcription of verse 26. This is the text to which Goulart is reacting in his compilation that we have already explored in the section on prefacing. 43  Luke 9:23.

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Christ. These few examples of Sacred Scripture as citations on title pages show not only how authors view their texts but are also consistent with the way in which they want readers both to interpret the text and also to view themselves upon reading the text. The biblical citation on the title page of Jean Boucher’s De justa Henricii Tertii abdicatione e Francorum regno is a fascinating one.44 Either he or the publisher boldly chooses a quotation from the book of Sirach, an apocryphal text, and therefore one that Protestants do not recognize as being the inspired word of God. Nevertheless, he calls the reader’s attention to this text from chapter 10 that addresses the continual passage of earthly regimes: “Regnum a gente in gentem transfertur propter injustitias & injurias & contumelias & diversos dolos. In manu Dei potestas terra: & execrabilis omnis iniquitas gentium: & utilem rectorem suscitabit in tempore super illam.”45 This citation immediately hits the reader with a scriptural proof text to show the ancient wisdom of the passage of reigns; it is a typical instance of God correcting injustice and giving power, which is really in his hands, to the right person. Anyone who is at all versed in Sacred Scripture, though, will immediately recognize that this citation is not simply from chapter 10 of the book of Ecclesiasticus, more commonly known in English as the book of Sirach. Whoever inserted the quote spliced together several fragments from several different verses. From the beginning to “dolos” constitutes all of verse eight, but from “In manu” to “terra” is the first half of verse four. Then, he jumps to the second half of verse seven from “execrabilis” to “gentium” and then back to the second half of verse four from “utilem” to the end. Moreover, he has made a mistake in the transcription; in the Vulgate, Sirach 10:4a reads “In manu Dei potestas terræ,” not “terra.” This error probably does not mean much with respect to its comprehension, but it nonetheless reflects again the lack of precision with which these biblical citations are treated. On the one hand, this mistake, along with the splicing and recomposition of the Scripture, plays into the Protestants’ worst fears about the Catholic respect or understanding of sacred texts, and on the other hand 44  Jean Boucher, De justa Henricii Tertii abdicatione e Francorum regno (Paris: Nicolas Nivelle, 1589) (Arsenal 8-H-6361). For detailed information on the printing of this text, see Cornel Zwierlein, The Political Thought of the French League and Rome (1585–1589) (Geneva: Droz, 2016), 59–77. Zwierlein does not comment on the biblical citations, other than to note a printing error in some editions of the first two words of the quote from Ecclesiasticus (63). 45  Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 10:8, 4a, 7b, 4b. “Rule is transferred from one people to another because of injustices and injuries and abuses and various deceits. In the hand of God is earthly power: and all unfairness to the peoples is detestable: and he will raise up over them the right leader at the right time” (Translation my own from the Vulgate). The text itself simply cites “Ecclesiasticus 10.”

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the citation subtly reaffirms the Catholic perspective of their complete control over its interpretation and usage. Regarding the content, the choice of Sirach 10 is a surprising one because of some of the Latin vocabulary. As we have seen in the previous chapter, many fear the influence of foreign powers on the French throne, thus justifying the abdication of a king, at least scripturally, by citing a text that explains the transfer of power “from one people to another,” a suggestion that might have alarmed those who, while loyal to the Catholic Church, were wary of the interference of Spain. At the same time, as with some of the previous quotes that we have examined, this particular citation reassures the reader of his or her own righteousness in the struggle. God will take care of everything and will rid them of the “people” that is threatening the Almighty’s power through their abuse of it. The final provocation occurs because of the text’s status as apocryphal. Signaling that this text will likely not convince a Protestant reader but serves rather as a rallying cry for those of like mind, the author chooses a citation from a scriptural text that is extra-canonical according to most Reformation theologians. Implicit in this choice is a rejection of Protestant scriptural interpretation but also the belief that these apocryphal texts are ignored at the enemy’s peril. If they were to recognize the validity of the book of Sirach, they might learn a thing or two. Alas, they do not, and the citation lends a further air of (self)-righteousness to the text that follows. The author, in contrast to the opposition, subscribes to an uncorrupted biblical interpretation and would therefore more appropriately judge the subject at hand, as well as the unfolding of history according to God’s design. 2.2 Judith and Holofernes: Exegesis, Politics, and History One of the ways in which Sacred Scripture has always been used but that takes on some interesting characteristics in the latter sixteenth century is as evidence for the author’s argumentation or as an image that affirms divine sanctioning of the events of history. There is nothing especially innovative about this usage.46 As was the case during the medieval period, one’s daily life and routine could be constantly judged and compared to scriptural events, giving the impression that life on earth was an endless repetition and reliving of the biblical narrative. However, during the wars of religion, when interpretation of Sacred Scripture—or even the inclusion of certain scriptural passages in the canon—are under dispute, scripture as evidence becomes problematic and its 46  For more on the use of the image of Judith and Holofernes in early modern France, see Kathleen M. Llewellyn, Representing Judith in Early Modern French Literature (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014).

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own site of contention as well. Opposing sides not only dispute the righteousness of one’s actions according to scripture, but they also dispute the interpretation of the scriptural passages themselves. To illustrate this phenomenon, I return to the account of the assassination of Henry III by the monk Jacques Clément. In the Discours veritable de l’estrange & subite mort de Henri de Valois, whose discussion of zeal and martyrdom I have already examined, one can find yet another curious scriptural image that was often used in the literature of the wars of religion. When the Discours describes Clément’s vision in which an angel tells him to assassinate the king, he goes to a fellow monk, “homme fort scientifique, & bien versé en la saincte Escriture” (a man of great learning, and well versed in Sacred Scripture), to confirm the validity of the vision and that its command is within the bounds of acceptable behavior. In wondering whether one may assassinate a king, Clément receives the following response from this fellow religious and scholar: [V]eritablement il nous estoit defendu de Dieu estroitement d’estre homicides : Mais d’autant que le Roy qu’il entendoit, estoit un homme distrait separé de l’Eglise, qui bouffoit de tyranies execrables, & qui se determinoit d’estre le fleau perpetuel & sans retour de la France, il estimoit que celui qui le mettroit à mort : comme fist jadis Judith un Holoferne.47 Veritably it was strictly forbidden for us by God to commit homicide: But because the King in question was a distracted man, separated from the Church, who swelled with execrable tyrannies, and who was determined to be the perpetual plague without refuge of France, he estimated that he who would put him to death [would do] as Judith once did to Holofernes. In this particular framework, Clément’s fellow monk reassures him by citing Judith’s role as what one might call an “instrument of God’s justice” or a “divinely sanctioned warrior,” a notion that a later text included by Goulart will attempt to dislodge. For now, though, this Leaguer text relies on the image to frame its entire discussion of the assassination and its justification for it. It is important to remember that the Book of Judith recounts not just the beheading of an enemy of Israel, but also a situation in which this same enemy is besieging the Israelites on their own territory. To wit, as this particular discourse notes in its title, Henry III was in the process of trying to take Paris back by force from the Catholic League. Clément goes out to Saint-Cloud to kill Henry, just as Judith infiltrates the enemy camp in order to get to Holofernes. The narrative 47  De l’estrange et subite mort, 10.

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in the Book of Judith also heaps praise upon the Israelites, albeit indirectly, by implying that they are living upright and righteous lives, zealous for the Lord. This comparison also has the secondary effect of encouraging the Parisian people in their commitment just as much as it affirms the actions of the “divine servant” Clément. In the Book of Judith, Holofernes gathers several peoples to attack Israel, but one of their leaders gives him a warning. A certain Achior of the Ammonites says: “So now, my lord and master, if these people are at fault, and are sinning against their God, and if we verify this offense of theirs, then we shall be able to go up and conquer them. But if they are not a guilty nation, then your lordship should keep his distance.”48 Since the Israelites are being virtuous, God rewards them by sending his servant Judith. The same could be said for the Catholic Parisians to whom has been sent Jacques Clément and whose uprightness ensures their victory in this particular battle. At least, this is the hope. These many parallels help temper the extreme nature of what Clément believes he has been asked to accomplish; or rather, it makes it more palatable. The comparison serves a particular and very important moral purpose, namely whether or not one may kill for God. Judith of course shows that God can and does sanction homicide under the right circumstances that the many implied parallels between the two stories confirm are present. The narrative nevertheless still lays out the question in explicit terms: “A quoi l’honneste homme fist response, que veritablement il nous estoit defendu de Dieu estroitement d’estre homicides” (To which the upright man made his response, that veritably it was strictly forbidden for us by God to commit homicide).49 The response is twofold: the king is a plague ( fléau) upon France, which justifies it in one sense, and like with Judith, the act will be considered “chose saincte & tres recommandable, attendu qu’il delivreroit un grand peuple de l’oppression tyrannique d’iceluy” (a holy and very commendable thing, given that he would deliver a great people from the tyrannical oppression of this [king]).50 This sacrifice begins with Clément’s self-purification that resembles much of what scripture outlines about Judith’s impeccable character. The author of the biblical text describes this virtue in detail after she has been widowed but before she has undertaken the mission for which she is known: The widowed Judith remained three years and four months at home, where she set up a tent for herself on the roof of her house. She put 48  Judith 5:20–21a. 49  De l’estrange et subite mort, 10. 50  Ibid.

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sackcloth about her loins and wore widow’s weeds. She fasted all the days of her widowhood, except sabbath eves and sabbaths, new moon eves and new moons, feast days and holidays of the house of Israel. She was beautifully formed and lovely to behold […] No one had a bad word to say about her, for she was a very God-fearing woman.51 In addition, she gives a speech to rally the Israelites against their enemies, enjoining them to call upon God for help against their enemies. Before going off to meet Holofernes, the text concludes with a prayer in the mouth of Judith in which she asks God: “Give me, a widow, the strong hand to execute my plan.”52 Clément is no less attentive to his pious preparation: “il fait par plusieurs jours, jeusnes & abstinences au pain & à l’eau, se confesse, se fait communier, & recevoir le precieux corps de nostre Sauveur & Redempteur Jesus Christ, se disposant comme un homme qui va rendre son ame à Dieu” (He made over several days fasts and abstinences from bread and water, he went to confession, he went to communion and received the precious body of our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ, preparing himself as a man who was going to give over his soul to God).53 Later, as he arrives at the place where he must undertake his deed, Clément prays God to “conduire sa main & sa haute entreprise, d’un virile cœur & vertueux” (guide his hand and his noble undertaking, with a heart virile and virtuous).54 In the end, the Israelites are victorious thanks to Judith’s bold and brutal actions. These actions are tempered, of course, by their zealous nature, by the fact that they were perpetrated according to God’s will and for God’s people. 2.3 Judith and Holofernes: Counterpoint With Clément’s divine sanctioning in question, the author of the text that Goulart places next in the fourth volume turns to the misinterpretation of Scripture as another reason for discrediting the Jacobin’s deed. Among other passages, the author attacks the central image of Judith versus Holofernes. The author of the Brief avertissement sur deux discours imprimez à Lyon touchant la mort de Henri III attacks the narrative of the Discours veritable de l’estrange et subite mort directly, and singles out the religious and scripture scholar who advised Clément, for after all, “[q]uiconque donc ne sera destitué de jugement, ou preoccupé de passion considere maintenant de quel poids sont les raisons 51  Judith 8:4–8. 52  Judith 9:9b. 53  De l’estrange et subite mort, 11. 54  Ibid.

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de ce moine si docte en Theologie” (whoever therefore will not be poor in judgment or preoccupied by passion now considers of what weight are the reasonings of this monk so learned in Theology).55 The author must pay special attention to refuting this man’s counsel since it is scripturally based and since it was integral in convincing Clément that God can sanction being a “homicide.” Interestingly, he does not choose to contest the interpretation of this passage found in the Discours, he chooses to contest the divine inspiration of the text as a whole: Que le lecteur Chrestien considere, si autrement il ne le scait, que ce livre de Judit, (Selon la sentence de S. Jerosme, l’un des quatre docteurs de l’Eglise, comme ils parlent) est declairé Apocryphe en une preface escrite par ce docteur, nommé Galeatus. Ce mot Apocryphe, signifie obscur, inconu, dont l’on ne scait l’origine ni l’auteur, partant non authentique ; ni dont l’on doive tirer preuve pour confirmation de la doctrine de l’Eglise.56 May the Christian reader consider, if he otherwise does not know it, that the book of Judith, (according to the determination of St. Jerome, one of the four doctors of the Church, as they say) is declared Apocrypha in a preface written by this doctor, named Galeatus. This word Apocrypha signifies obscure, unknown, of which one does not know the origin, nor the author, thus not authentic; nor from it should one draw proof for a confirmation of the doctrine of the Church. The author is making an argument about the authority of this Apocryphal text, but also one that is well rooted in the consequences of the semiotic crisis. He points out that being Apocryphal, the text is “obscure, unknown, of which one does not know the origin, nor the author.” The advent of humanist and philological study places a heavy importance on the clarity of the text’s language, as well as its provenance, as evidence of the text’s authenticity and authority. With the book of Judith, this is missing, and is, after all, one of the reasons why Protestants ended up rejecting the texts of the Apocrypha in the first place.57 Since this image of Judith and Holofernes loomed so large in the League’s Discours, the author chooses not to stop at casting aspersions on the authority 55  Mort de Henri III, 20. 56  Ibid. 57  See John Calvin, Institution de la religion chrétienne (1541), ed. Olivier Millet (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 378–82, especially 378n374. Calvin not only puts into doubt the authority of certain scriptural texts but also discusses his concerns about allegorical interpretation of scripture.

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of the text but then shifts to discrediting Judith’s own justification for the assassination of Holofernes. He cites Genesis 34:29, a text that Judith herself cites as justification in Judith 9:2, and also Genesis 49:5 as examples of how God does not in fact favor the action she undertakes. Judith invokes the actions of her ancestors, Simeon and Levi, who take revenge on those who raped their sister, Dinah, but there is no doubt of the inconsistency of Judith’s interpretation of the reference and its original context.58 Jacob twice condemns the behavior of his sons, while Judith presumes that Simeon’s actions were not only divinely sanctioned but also burned with an appropriate zeal for God. It is on this very point that the author then chooses to contest the Catholic interpretations of Jacques Clément’s treachery. After citing several other examples from Sacred Scripture that exclude the possibility of justification for Clément’s act, he concludes: Sur le propos dont est question, nous avons desja monstré que le fait du moine est chose contraire à l’Escriture Saincte : dont s’ensuit que le pretexte de zele & de bonne intention ne peut excuser ce moine qu’il n’ait commis un acte tresmeschant ; pour lequel selon Dieu & selon les hommes il a merité un supplice severe, aspre, & exemplaire.59 On the argument in question, we have already shown that the opinion of the monk is a thing that is contrary to Sacred Scripture: from which follows that the pretext of zeal and good intention does not excuse this 58  Both passages from Genesis express Jacob’s disappointment: “You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household” (Genesis 34:30), and in his last words to his sons, he predicts “Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. May I never come into their council; may I not be joined to their company—for in their anger they killed men, and at their whim they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49:5–7). Judith prays: “O Lord God of my ancestor Simeon, to whom you gave a sword to take revenge on those strangers who had torn off a virgin’s clothing to defile her, and exposed her thighs to put her to shame, and polluted her womb to disgrace her; for you said, ‘It shall not be done’—yet they did it; so you gave up their rulers to be killed, and their bed, which was ashamed of the deceit they had practiced, was stained with blood, and you struck down slaves along with princes, and princes on their thrones. You gave up their wives for booty and their daughters to captivity, and all their booty to be divided among your beloved children who burned with zeal for you and abhorred the pollution of their blood and called on you for help. O God, my God, hear me also, a widow” (Judith 9:2–4). 59  Mort de Henri III, 23.

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monk for having committed such a heinous act; for which according to God and men he merited a severe, bitter, and exemplary punishment. With all of the scriptural evidence taken into account, Clément’s action is unjustifiable; the framing of the Discours’s argument lacks validity and should be discarded. It is for this reason that in addition to critiquing the Catholic use of Judith, he also takes aim at the interpretation of Moses and the Exodus as it is portrayed in the Discours. The author of the Discours claims that Clément killing Henry III corresponds to Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt in that both were stories of deliverance from God’s enemies.60 The author of the Avertissement then makes a curious argument: he invokes the incident in which Moses kills an Egyptian in defense of his Israelite brethren, for which Moses was then exiled from Egypt. The author then cites St. Stephen’s reference to the incident in the Acts of the Apostles as legitimizing this particular revenge killing in contrast to Judith’s. Thus, “Moyse avoit legitime vocation de Dieu en tout cela qu’il fit pour la delivrance d’Israel : mais il en va tout autrement de ce que fit le moine, comme nous l’avons monstré” (Moses had a legitimate vocation from God in all this that he did for the deliverance of Israel: but he went about it wholly differently than did the monk, as we have shown).61 Not so fast. Neither Exodus, nor St. Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles necessarily sanction Moses’s act. The Avertissement contends that Moses kills the Egyptian “estimant que ses freres sceussent bien que Dieu devoit les delivrer par son moyen” (estimating that his brothers knew well that God must deliver them by this means).62 Assuming that the Israelites knew that he was supposed to help them, Moses takes his revenge, but then, on the following day, the Israelites throw it back in his face and accuse him of being a hypocrite for intervening a second time in a dispute between the Israelites themselves.63 While it is certainly clear that Moses’s later actions in leading the Israelites out of Egypt were indeed divinely sanctioned, this one does not take place in any sort of context of divine revelation or intention. This interpretation of Exodus in the Avertissement, therefore, resembles Judith’s misinterpretation of Simeon’s revenge that the author has just criticized. It seems that both Judith and Moses have erred. 60  D  e l’estrange et subite mort, 10–11. Delivering God’s people from tyranny acts as the hinge here; both Judith and Moses did the same thing, and Clément is simply following in that tradition. 61  Mort de Henri III, 22. 62  Ibid. 63  Exodus 2:14.

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What, therefore, is the author of the Avertissement’s argument here against the Judith and Holofernes story directly and against the glorification of Jacques Clément indirectly? Amy Graves-Monroe comments upon Clément’s martyrdom in her detailed monograph on Simon Goulart, and she makes an interesting point about what Goulart was trying to show with respect to the fateful Dominican. He was an instrument, part of the doctrine of “second causes,” that would eventually lead to the ascent of Henry of Navarre to the throne.64 If one assumes that this is the goal and if one consults some medieval exegetes on this particular Mosaic passage, the wider point becomes clear. The author of the Avertissement did not consider the passage an example of revenge killing at all; it was an example of Moses as an instrument of God in freeing the Israelites. In other words, his killing of an Egyptian anticipates his future role as liberator of God’s chosen people, something that is borne out in the rest of the undeniably canonical Book of Exodus.65 He presents Moses in contrast to Judith as someone who was divinely sanctioned versus someone who was clearly not. Thus, it seems that Clément could be akin to Moses, although very mildly, but certainly not divinely sanctioned, as was Moses, nor a fanatic revenge warrior like Judith who justifies her bloodshed on scriptural falsities and misinterpretations. The author of the Avertissement follows all of this with a discussion of a quote by St. John Chrysostom, who wrote: [C]ela qui se fait jouste la volonté de Dieu, quoi qu’en aparence il semble mauvais, est neantmoins plaisant & agreable à Dieu, au contraire ce qui est sans la volonté de Dieu, ou autrement qu’il n’a ordonné, est chose meschante & detestable, quoi qu’elle semble estre precieuse devant Dieu.66 That which makes one combat the will of God, even though in appearance it seems evil, is nevertheless pleasant and agreeable to God. On the contrary, that which is without the will of God, or that he has not otherwise ordained, is a bad and detestable thing, even though it seems to be precious before God. 64  Amy Graves-Monroe, Post tenebras lex: preuves et propagande dans l’historiographie engage de Simon Goulart (1564–1628) (Geneva: Droz, 2014), 217. 65  For an example of medieval exegesis on Exodus 2, see Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher, ed. and trans. Bernard McGinn (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986), 42. Eckhart views the exchange between Moses and the Jews who question his authority as a comment on who, according to God, is in a position to judge. The suggestion is that Moses, of course is—and will be—in such a position as God’s chosen leader for his people. 66  Mort de Henri III, 23–24.

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He cites the examples of Abraham and Isaac, God’s command to the Israelites to take spoils from the Egyptians in Exodus 3:21, 11:2, 12:35; Saul is chastised for taking the spoils of the Amalekites, an incident that I’ve already analyzed. All of this is to affirm, according to the author, Chrysostom’s maxim and warn everyone “de ne se laisser transporter par sa bonne intention contre le commandement de Dieu, lequel est dit par Moyse, Deut 4.2. Vous n’adjousterez rien à la parole que je vous commande, ni n’en diminuerez rien, afin que vous observiez les commandemens de L’Eternel vostre Dieu, &c.” (not to get carried away by one’s good intention against the commandment of God, which is said by Moses in Deuteronomy 4:2: You will add nothing to the word that I command you, nor take away anything from it, so that you observe the commandments of the Eternal, your God, etc.).67 The author of the Avertissement uses scripture to distinguish himself from the author of the Discours, but only to say that Clément was a clueless bystander. If one frames his actions not according to the Book of Judith, an apocryphal and therefore illegitimate text, but according to Exodus, then the reader will arrive at the proper understanding of his misdeed. 2.4 Weaving Together Poetry and Scripture Having respect for Scripture’s legitimate status as the divinely revealed word means interpreting it properly, but it also means respecting its integrity as a sacred and complete revelation. Failing to do so could elicit yet more controversy that opened authors up to an attack and could potentially delegitimize their use of Sacred Scripture, their interpretation of it, and their writings themselves. One such use of Sacred Scripture that developed during the Renaissance was the rewriting or retranslation of scripture by a poet or author. The example of Clément Marot’s psalms signifies an example of real devotion to the scriptural text itself but one that incurred a significant amount of backlash.68 This rewriting of Scripture eventually takes a turn toward the polemical and historical, as many of the rhetorical techniques from the Renaissance will do during the wars of religion. In a fascinating text from 1588, a poet decides to write a poem in support of the Duke of Guise but in a surprising way. In Le Benedictus du prophète royal, Adapté mot à mot à la confusion & ruyne des Heretiques, published in 1588 by Jean Patrasson in Lyon, the poet takes the text of the Benedictus, the canticle from the Gospel of Luke prayed daily at lauds, and he parses it into words or short phrases. Interspersed between the Latin text are 67  Mort de Henri III, 25. 68  For a more creative example, see Artus Désiré, Le contre-poison des 52 chansons de Clement Marot, faussement intitulés par lui (Paris: Pierre Gaultier, 1560) for an almost line-by-line “refutation” of what Désiré considers to be a quasi blasphemous text.

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stanzas in French that praise the Duke de Guise and reaffirm God’s antipathy toward the heretical Huguenots. The chunks of text from the Benedictus prayer, while remaining in Latin, complete each of the French stanzas. For example, the poem begins: Monsieur de Guyse vaillamment A deffait ces barbares bandes, Tant les Francoyses qu’Allemandes : Dieu en soit eternellement Benedictus69 Monsieur de Guise valiantly Defeated these barbarous bands, As many French ones as German: May God be for it eternally Blessed Instead of using the French “béni,” the author uses the first word and title of the canticle to complete the stanza. The poem uses every word in the twelve verses of the prayer that are spoken by the father of John the Baptist, Zechariah, upon the former’s birth. The poet divides the prayer into 76 fragments that he adds to their respective stanzas. This creative but unusual use of Sacred Scripture constructs a somewhat odd text that causes the reader to stop short every time the Latin word or phrase appears. Not all of the Latin fragments are immediately decipherable. Presumably, the sixteenth-century reader would have been somewhat familiar with the canticle in Latin, but it is unclear the extent to which he or she would have been familiar with its word for word meaning, which the poet is keen to articulate in the title of the text. An example of the confusion that might arise occurs in the middle of the text: Ils [les Huguenots] faisoient cent milles ravages, Ils estoient par tout redoutez, Ils piccoroient de tous costez, Ranconnans villes & villages, Et sine timore70 69  L e Benedictus du prophète royal, adapté de mot à mot à la confusion & ruyne des Heretiques (Lyon: Jean Patrasson, 1588), 3. 70  Le Benedictus, 9.

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They were making a hundred thousand ravages, They were everywhere feared, They marauded from every side, Ransoming city and village, And without fear A similar quandary to the one encountered with title page citations now arises, one that creates confusion as to the poet’s intent. The actual Latin text reads, “Ut sine timore,” not “Et sine timore.” However, in order for this particular fragment to make sense in the context of the stanza, ut (so that) must be changed to et (and).71 Moreover, this particular stanza demonstrates a common flaw in the entire structure of the poem, namely that the meaning of the scriptural text is wholly discarded and placed at the service of the original French text. The “without fear,” in the context of the Gospel canticle, refers to the state in which God’s chosen people might be able to worship God. Here, the poet uses it as a descriptor for the Huguenots who ravage and harass and do so sine timore. The poet, in his lack of respect for the scriptural text, favors his own and sows further confusion in the interpretation of this key Gospel prayer. Ironically, he embodies one of the great Reformation critiques of scriptural interpretation: that Catholics do not really know what scripture means and incorrectly use it in isolation without any attention to what the words actually say. Changing a word here or there, whether done deliberately or not, does not instill much confidence in the integrity of the text either. It is difficult to know what this poet was trying to accomplish through this exercise. The title page gives some indication. It reads: “Suivant la conference duquel on congnoit comme Dieu a voulu monstrer de nouveau (par le bras de Monsieur de Guyse soubs l’authorite du Roy) que son Eglise a esté & sera tousjours victorieuse, triomphante & permanente” (Following the conference of which one knew how God wanted to newly show (by the arm of Monsieur de Guise under the authority of the King) that his Church was and will always be victorious, triumphant, and permanent).72 The Benedictus is about the promise of God’s favor, and the way in which the poet uses it relies on this general understanding of what Luke 1:68–79 means. However, the poet shows little understanding—or rather he shows little regard—for the individual meanings of the words in the biblical text. Ultimately, it seems that his goal in building 71  Luke 1:74 reads in Latin, “ut sine timore, de manu inimicorum nostrorum liberati, serviamus illi.” Roughly translated, this means, “so that without fear, freed from the hands of our enemies, we might serve him [God].” 72  Le Benedictus, t.p.

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a poem off of the text of the Benedictus was to end where most poets of the period also wanted to end: peace. The final stanza reads: Si que par vostre passion, Venuz au bout de nostre vie, Nous puissions manger l’ambrosie, Et avoir la fruition Pacis.73 Such that by your passion [suffering, as in that of Jesus], Come to the end of our life, We might be able to eat the ambrosia, And have the fruition Of peace. Like many other polemical authors of the time, the devotion to their cause and their motivation for manipulating the interpretation of their texts was to get all readers on the same page. They often saw unity of ideology as the only opportunity for peace over and against tolerance. The promise of peace contained within the Benedictus is one given but also enforced by God. The poet’s hope was for the same against the heretical Huguenots. However, the poem’s departure from the biblical text poses an obvious and a serious problem, since it negates any credibility or aura of truth or immutability that such textual framing would lend. Authors could successfully and effectively use scripture in this period, but in this case, it impedes interpretation rather than facilitates it, leaving the reader as confused as the poet hoped his text would leave the heretics. The very nature of the use of Sacred Scripture pulls the reader outside of the text into a conversation that runs parallel to it. In a period when Scripture was under such dispute and was at the heart of the conflict between Catholic and Protestant, it is difficult for its use not to become politically charged just by its simple invocation on a title page, as an argument, or as a reference. If the goal of paratext is to have a conversation with the reader about the interpretation of the text, those who cited Sacred Scripture most likely succeeded. However, the content of that conversation varied at the very least and at most strayed significantly from the subject matter of the principal text. As a title page citation, Scripture could act as a powerful frame for the text it was introducing, 73  Le Benedictus, 16.

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signaling clearly to the reader where the author stood with respect to the wider political and religious dispute. However, the levity, and perhaps carelessness, with which authors and publishers reproduced the citations could quickly become a distraction. In the case of the story of Judith and Holofernes, this was almost certainly true based on the response that it got from the opposition. Instead of attacking directly the argument itself about whether or not a monk could kill the king, it was easier to attack the legitimacy of the biblical passage used to support the argument. While the issue of regicide—or of the purported tyranny of the king—is what is being contested, scriptural interpretation takes on pride of place in the dispute and the matter of regicide becomes almost secondary. Finally, the creativity with which authors and poets employed Scripture further degrades its power in influencing the political since its meaning and textual integrity are not honored. All of these uses of Sacred Scripture reflect the crisis of interpretation that preceded them, but they also demonstrate how a desire to end the speculation on biblical exegesis was causing too much tumult. For this reason, it seemed more urgent to critique the use of the Scripture in discourse rather than to dispute the discourse itself. This was not just a facile sort of rhetoric, but it had the unintended effect of perpetuating an interpretive crisis with respect to Scripture since a formerly reliable piece of evidence or interpretative lens became such a battleground unto itself. Perhaps, this is why authors would look to another means of framing in order to concretize and control the interpretation of their discourse as it related to their representation of history. 3

Poetic Interludes: Framing Texts with Verse

In the sixteenth century, the ability to create powerful verse translates into one of the better means for conveying truth through a reliable discourse. The controversy between the ancients and the moderns, Du Bellay’s Deffence, and the prominence of Ronsard and the Pléiade reflect just a couple of examples of poetry’s ongoing importance and influence. As a framing element, this importance and influence makes itself known by providing compilers and authors a means to put an exclamation point on an ideological representation of history and to send a message, perhaps even one more powerful than Scripture. Unlike Ronsard, Du Bellay, and others, the poets in question were not aiming to edify and enrich by their poetic creations. With the advent of print culture, much verse made it onto the page that might have otherwise been easily forgotten. It endured perhaps not because of its aesthetic value but because of its usefulness. In L’Histoire de Jean Guy, the title page included a quatrain that is

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not what Du Bellay was envisioning when he wrote of the defense and enrichment of the French language. This quatrain nevertheless serves an important purpose within the paratextual space, as a printed utterance between the publisher or author and the reader: Le curieux qui lit & rien n’entend, Semble celuy qui chasse & rien ne prend : En lisant donc (si voulez estre instruicts) Laissez la fueille, & retenez les fruicts. The curious who reads and understands nothing, Resembles those who hunt and take nothing: By reading therefore (if you want to be instructed) Leave the leaf, and retain the fruits. This appeal takes advantage of the reader’s desire for intellectual openness. The quatrain reads as both a promise and a threat. On the one hand, the author or publisher promises that the text will bear fruit; on the other, he subtly threatens the reader if the latter fails to retain the proper fruits after reading the text. Furthermore, there seems to be an implicitly spiritual component, since the mention of fruits connects the text to Jean’s forthcoming spiritual conversion as it relates to the fruits of the Gospel and proper religious teaching. This short poetic interlude anticipates and answers any questions about the intended significance or interpretation of the text, emphasizing the gravity of the reader responding properly. Genette is more or less silent on what role poetry could play as either a preface or a postface, for example, but it often functions in the same manner even if it does not take the traditional prose form.74 For my analysis on this particular textual technique meant to further clarify in shorthand the meaning of the events described in the text that follows, I will return to several examples, some by now quite familiar, that are related to the assassination of Henry III and to the assassination of the brothers Guise that preceded it. These examples demonstrate how poetry distilled the discourse surrounding it and either allowed the reader a quick reference guide

74  See Genette, Seuils, 164. Genette defines a preface as “toute espèce de texte liminaire (préliminaire ou postliminaire), auctorial ou allographe, consistant en un discours produit à propos du texte qui suit ou qui précède” (164). It is a straightforward definition, and it does not necessarily exclude poetry or verse. Nevertheless, in the examples that he gives for synonyms of the preface, they are all prose forms.

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to the nature of the text or to render the text’s meaning more concrete in the reader’s mind. 3.1 De l’estrange et subite mort de Henri de Valois The Discours veritable de l’estrange & subite mort de Henri de Valois from 1589 is found both in the fourth volume of Goulart’s Mémoires de la Ligue and independently. In its various printed versions, different paratextual material appears and in different combinations, but the verse pieces when they do appear serve to distill the narrative of the main body, to signal the ideological perspective, and to attack political enemies.75 For the Discours, up to two pieces appear: a sestet and a sonnet. The first recounts the facts of the case using more or less neutral language, and the second carries more ideological charge as it glorifies the assassin Jacques Clément while vilifying Henry. Remember that the text on the bizarre and sudden death of Henry III presents the party line of the Catholic League on the death of the last Valois king. Goulart does not fail to include both as part of his compilation, especially since such elements can equally serve to summarize and to distill the text’s intended meaning for the friendly and unfriendly reader. The sestet, entitled “Sizain de la mort inopinee de Henri de Valois,” reads: L’an mil cinq cens quatre vingts-neuf, Fut mis à mort d’un couteau neuf, Henri de Valois Roy de France : Par un Jacobin, qui expres, Fut à S. Clou, pour de bien près, Lui tirer ce coup dans la pance.76 In the year fifteen eighty-nine, Was put to death by a new knife, Henry of Valois, King of France: By a Jacobin, who on purpose, Was at Saint-Cloud, to get in close, And give him a blow to the belly.

75  Two variations exist: 1) editions with only the “Sizain de la mort inopinee de Henri de Valois” appended (in BnF 8-LA25-24 (24), for example), and 2) an edition with both the sestet and a sonnet by A. Perraud (in the Mémoires de la Ligue or in BnF FC133-21). 76  Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, 4:13.

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Not terribly notable, the poem signals a playful and joyful tone in its brevity. Curiously, in its neutrality regarding the event that it describes, it almost seems to contradict the preceding narrative of the text, especially in the context of Goulart’s compilation, for the mention of the “couteau neuf” and the description of the death of Henry as being “inopinee” (unexpected) deemphasize the purported divine intentionality of the act, lending an impromptu quality to the Jacobin’s deed. Since the text has finished telling us that God had clearly asked for Henry’s demise, it makes his assassination seem almost capricious, as if Jacques Clément had grabbed a knife on his way out to kill the sovereign. Of course, he goes with purpose—he was after all at Saint-Cloud “expres”—but the levity with which the poet treats the subject, disparages the grand vision of the angel that guided the monk’s hand in the first place. The mention of where the king received the blow, in the “pance,” adds to the mocking tone, since one could interpret this as a metonymy for the excess of Henry’s lifestyle. At any rate, this short piece almost seems like a little rhyme that a child might learn to make light of what most would consider a very serious act. The tone of the sestet contrasts with the weightier one of the sonnet that follows. One would expect a greater amount of gravity with this particular poetic form, and it delivers, giving a much more accurate summation of the League’s argument in favor of the king’s assassination. Attributed to an “A. Perraud,” the sonnet is entitled, “Sur la mort du Tyran des François occis par permission divine à S. Clou le premier d’Aoust 1589. par F. Jaques Clement de l’ordre de Jacobins”: Quel magnanime Esprit te va guidant le bras, Quand sans pallie, hardi tu viens à l’entreprise, Non, il faut que de Dieu ton ame fust éprise : Le coup est bien mortel, mais le cœur ne l’est pas. Quelle postérité doit croire ce trespas, Qu’un Tyran des Francois, la peste de l’Eglise Dans le sein d’une armée, au sac, au sang apprise, Par un seul tombe mort, parmi tant de soldats ? Il est mort toutefois, aussi la Tyrannie : Et mourant par sa mort l’Eglise reprend vie, Elle qui en ses jours tant de Parques avoit. Et cil qui déguisé d’une feinte apparence, Sous un fard infidel les hommes decevoit, Tombe aux filets, quand plus en ses ruses il pense.77 77  Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, 4:14.

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What magnanimous Spirit goes guiding your arm, When without disguise, emboldened you came to the task, No, it is necessary that your soul be seized for love of God: The blow is indeed mortal, but the heart is not so. What future generations must believe this demise, That a Tyrant of the French, the plague of the Church In the middle of an army instructed in plundering and in blood, By one single man falls dead, among so many soldiers? He is nevertheless dead, and Tyranny as well: And dying by his death the Church gets life back, She who these days has so many Fates. And he who, disguised by a feigned appearance, Infidel, under make-up, deceived men, Falls prey, when more about his ruses he thinks. Several key elements emerge in this sonnet that affirm the League’s narrative. With the very first verse, the poet evokes God’s divine sanction with respect to an act that the League considers to be consonant with God’s magnanimity as the “magnanimous Spirit” guides the arm of the monk. Moreover, it is not just Clément’s arm that the Spirit is guiding, but also his soul, since the poet mentions that to undertake his mission, his soul had to be in love with God. Both realities of Clément’s disposition are described in detail in the preceding Discours. Next, the poet reminds the reader of why God had to intervene, namely that Henry’s tyranny required a response, and by this response, the Church will have new life. The poet creates a curious image, almost a reverse martyrdom, in Henry’s death. Normally, a martyr’s death brings life to the Church, but here, it is the death of a tyrant that will do so. Finally, the poet ends with a Leaguer commonplace by mentioning Henry’s penchant for make-up, a symbol not only of his ostentatiousness and sexual proclivities but also of his dissimulation with respect to France and the Church, a noted contrast to Clément’s sincerity. This summary of accusations is meant to define the story of Henry III’s rule and of his death. It also affirms God’s hand in what is portrayed as Clément’s miraculous success. As paratextual material, that is, as a communication to the reader outside of and about the text, it reveals, albeit in a small way, the consciousness of the poet as to how his sonnet shapes the text and in turn, how the text shapes the reader’s and future generations’ view of the events therein described. Meant to speak of the insurmountable odds that Clément had to overcome with God’s help in order to accomplish his mission, the poet expresses disbelief that posterity could possibly believe it. The sonnet reminds the reader that this version of events is reliable because it is so unbelievable.

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3.2 Pierre de l’Estoile’s Registre-journal This method of punctuating current events with the strategic use of verse is even more characteristic to the compilations of Pierre de l’Estoile. His Registre-journal du Règne de Henri III (1574–1589) narrates the history of the period much in the same way one would expect a historian to recount the unfolding of events in more modern times. This is to say that he gives a year and then a month and tells what happened. It often makes for somewhat dry reading and while certainly a history, also gives the impression of being a personal diary. At the same time, De l’Estoile frequently, although not always, includes poetry within—or perhaps next to—his narrative. I write “next to” because while the poetic material is related to the narrative, it usually arrives after a journal entry, less frequently within, even though I will give an example of such an insertion. In this sense, De l’Estoile’s methods mirror those of others including Goulart, while including a significantly larger number of poetic texts. De l’Estoile interrupts a chronological account with various poetic pieces from the time period that he himself describes as being of interest. He portrays an attitude that is meant to make the reader think that these poetic texts were just circulating and he thought he might include them.78 But his diffidence belies what I would contend is frequently an ideological project that frames the thrust of his journal entries. In his entry for June 1587, De l’Estoile makes note of a curious theft that occurred in a Paris cemetery. A painting in the cemetery on whose subject De l’Estoile is silent begins to incite Parisians against the Huguenots and the Politiques. The king and the parliament order the painting to be removed, and they send a certain Hierosme Anroux to take care of it. In response several pieces of poetry are written to attack Anroux, and De l’Estoile includes them in his entry for that particular month and year. The poem, untitled, is as follows: Laissez ceste peinture, ô Renars politiques, Laissez ceste peinture, en laquelle on void peints Les spectacles piteux et les corps de sang teints, Sang, dy je, bien heureux des devots catholiques. 78  See Pierre de l’Estoile, Registre-journal du règne de Henri III, ed. Madeleine Lazard and Gilbert Schrenck (Geneva: Droz, 2001), 5:320. His introduction to the poems laments the death of the Duke of Joyeuse, October 1587: “Un docte courtizan se moquant tant de ce poëme d’une Ombre, de Du Perron, que des Epitaphes de Baïf et autres Complaintes et poësies semées et divulguées par eux, et imprimées à Paris sous leurs noms, composa les vers suivans, qui pour estre bien faits et valoir mieux que tout ce qu’on en a imprimé, ont esté ici recueillis, estans tumbés entre mes mains.” De l’Estoile’s tone here is casual while still trying to emphasize the quality of the verse.

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Enfin peu serviront vos renardes prattiques, Car le Dieu, qui d’en haut meut le cœur des humains, Animera du peuple et le cœur et les mains, Pour se venger, par lui, des sectes hérétiques. Et toi, Hierome, et toi, à qui l’on a donné Charge de faire oster ce tableau massonné, Garde bien d’attenter à ceste œuvre tant chere ! Ton pere, en son vivant de son art fut masson ; Si tu demassonnois, tu lairrois la raison, Dedaingant, fils ingrat, le mestier de ton pere.79 Leave this painting alone, O political foxes, Leave this painting alone, in which one sees painted The piteous spectacles and the bodies of tinted blood, Blessed blood, I say, of Catholic devotees. In the end, few will serve your perfidious practices, For the God, who from on high moves the heart of humans, Will energize the heart and the hands of the people, To avenge itself, by him, heretical sects. And you, Jerome, and you, to whom one has given The charge to get rid of this painting mounted with masonry, Keep from attacking this work so dear! Your father, during his life for his art was a mason; If you were to take down the masonry, you would leave behind the reason, Disdaining, ingrate son, the profession of your father. The sonnet repeats several Catholic League themes, such as the righteousness of those who have died for the cause, elevating them to a saintly status (“bienheureux et devots catholiques”). In contrast to the text attributed to Henry IV from Goulart, it is the Catholics who are claiming divine assistance here, since God “will energize the heart and the hands of the people, / To avenge itself, by him, heretical sects.” This sonnet, however, gets personal and saves some 79  De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:306–07.

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of its invective for Anroux who is accused of being an “ingrate son” who has shown contempt for his father’s profession of a mason or builder and would abandon reason by tearing down this work of art. Like some of the other poetic texts I have examined, this one lacks in quality what it makes up for in vitriol. Nevertheless, De l’Estoile employs a similar strategy to the publisher who included the sonnet on the assassination of Henry III. De l’Estoile includes the poetry to expose the Catholic party for being extreme; it is a manner in which to discredit them and to highlight their hysterical reaction to a fairly insignificant event. The removal of the painting was not going to win or lose the debate or the war. At other moments in the Registre-journal, De l’Estoile employs the same strategy but in a way that relies on the principal of quantity over quality. In other words, he attaches innumerable examples of poems that illustrate his point and affirm his interpretation of the events he recounts.80 In one instance, he chooses both. After his entries for the year 1585, he appends to his journal a lengthy section of poetry and other writings, which he entitles, Ramas de divers escrits, discours, pasquils, sornettes, et poesies de toutes sortes, semees et divulguees, en cest an 1585, sur le subject de la Ligue, agreable aux uns et esplaisant aux autres, selon la diverse composition et bigarrement des esprits de ce siecle. (Prenez le bon, laissez le mauvais.) (Gathering of various writings, discourses, pasquils, sornettes, and poetry of all kinds, disseminated and divulged, in the year 1585, on the subject of the League, agreeable to some and disgusting to others, according to the diverse composition and blending of the minds of this century. (Take the good, leave the bad)).81 This title so well encapsulates the spirit of the times, but not in the way he contends. The vast majority of the pieces he includes are either against the League or are, like the sonnet on Anroux, meant to expose the League for its ridiculousness. And yet, De l’Estoile uses the title to make them seem balanced. He also takes advantage of the opportunity to seem neutral and ambivalent about the reader’s reception. Perhaps he is, but his lengthy appendix belies an approach to history that is strident in its criticism of the Catholic League. But as for the writings themselves, he opts in this case for some quality with his quantity, and he chooses several sonnets by Estienne Pasquier (1529–1615). 80  See De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:270–91, where he includes texts on the death of Mary, Queen of Scots. It is clear that her execution caused a great stir in Paris, but De l’Estoile recounts her death with ambivalence, a reaction that the copious poetic material bears out. He ends with a dialogue between an Englishman and a Frenchman in which the two articulate reasoned arguments for and against Mary Stuart’s execution, a further sign of ambivalence amid the more passionate response at court. 81  De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:53.

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Their subtle attacks on the League and their plaintive tone set them apart, since they express a great deal of frustration that no one in France seems to be standing up to the League, especially to the House of Lorraine: “Il me deplaist, sans plus, que tant de bons esprits / Et tant d’hommes vaillans s’endorment en la France” (It displeases me, more than anything, that so many good minds / And so many valiant men go to sleep in France).82 The four poems reflect a more moderate position, for they call on the French to react. At the same time, he calls attention to his own weakness and inability to fight: “Mais je n’ose parler, durant le temps qui court, / Car je crais le desdain des maistres de la Court, / Et, faible, je ne puis secourir ma province” (But I dare not speak, during this time that flies, / For I fear the disdain of masters of the Court).83 Finally, in his last sonnet, he gives advice to the king by imagining if he were in the king’s place: “Guerrier, je marcherois en armes effroiable, / Plain d’audace, d’horreur, de grave majesté, / Et domtant les mutins, d’un courage indomté, / Je rendrais ma memoire à jamais perdurable” (Warrior, I would march with frightening arms, / Full of audacity, of horror, of grave majesty / And taming the mutinous, with an indomitable courage, / I would make memory of me endure forever).84 The melancholic quality of these sonnets is striking, and as Henry III progressively loses more and more control, they give voice to those who want to see France return to unity and peace. These poems suggest that De l’Estoile’s ambivalence in other places is not ideological at all but seeks rather to expose the extremes in favor of what Pasquier proposes here, that is, a little courage and strength. At any rate, the entire gathering of writings provides a support to the journal’s narrative and goal: to expose the pettiness and corruption of the League but also to appeal to those who are tired of the polemics and the violence and who want to see France return to peace. Placed amid De l’Estoile’s journal entries, these various selections of verse serve as markers of the direction he is going with the narrative while also giving a sense of the historical context in which the events he recounts are occurring. 3.3 Charles Pinselet’s Le Martyre des deux freres I have analyzed a Protestant and a Politique perspective, but now I turn to an example from a text that I have already discussed in the previous chapter. In Charles Pinselet’s Le Martyre des deux freres, the deaths of the brothers Guise are recounted in a way that very clearly depicts them as the last stand of two martyrs. To reinforce the point, Pinselet includes several pieces of poetry and 82  De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:83. 83  Ibid. 84  De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:84.

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wordplay to announce both before and after his text his ideological bent. The introductory sonnet constructs the martyrological narrative from the first words and fulfills some key features of prefatory material. The sonnet reads as follows: Qui voudra d’escouvrir la ruse & la faintise D’un parjure faisant son serment & sa foy Qui vray mocqueur de Dieu violant toute loy Et tout couvert de fart veut opprimer l’Eglise. Qui voudra voir à nid sous une robe grise Un hermite masque d’un beau filtre de Roy Du peuple le fléau la ruine & l’effroy Sans Dieu, sans foy, sans loy, le veut duire a sa guise. Qui voudra voir encore combien de cruautez Combien de traisons & de desloyautez, Faictes par un Tiran en la ville de Blois Qu’il lise ce livret & il verra comment, Jamais il ne s’est vue plus maudit garnement, Pour pratiquer tels faits que Henry de Valois.85 Whoever will like to discover the ruse and the fakery Of a perjurer making his oath and his faith Who, a real mocker of God, violating all law And all covered in make-up wants to oppress the Church. Whoever will like to see nested under a gray robe A hermit, mask of a good filter of a King, Of the people the plague, the ruin, and the fright Without God, without faith, without law, wants to lead it as he sees fit. Whoever will like to see still how many cruelties How many betrayals and disloyalties, Done by a Tyrant in the city of Blois May he read this booklet and he will see how, Never will he see a more cursed thug, To practice such deeds than Henry of Valois. An experienced reader of sixteenth-century poetry might immediately notice the common formula that the poet uses at the beginning of each stanza. Each 85  Pinselet, Le Martyre des deux freres, n.p.

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one begins with a variation of the “chi vol vedere.”86 This focus on seeing, and in the final tercet, reading, emphasizes the importance of the visual with respect to martyrdom. Boucher’s Vie et faits notables also stressed the importance of putting the king’s misdeeds on display, but in this case, the author is well aware that martyrs need to be seen to be believed. Their death is a witness, and his work will present that witness to the eyes of the reader. The text that follows will not just expose the reader to a martyr’s witness, but it also exposes the treachery of Henry III. In fact, if this opening sonnet is any indication, the text, while ostensibly being about the martyrdom of the Duke of Guise and his brother, the Cardinal, will likely deal just as much if not more with the fact that the king is a tyrant who has betrayed his people and his Church. The visual vocabulary applies to this aspect of the text’s subject as well, for the poet deploys many of the familiar tropes against the king that were in use at the time: the make-up, dissimulation, and fraudulence. All of the language creates an image of a king in a mask, and those who would like to see behind that disguise should read on. At the end of the sonnet, the poet then adds an anagram of his name: “Y PRESCHE LE SALUT” (Here [he] preaches salvation). This anagram in the form of a devise or motto makes a final point about what the reader will find. The author has managed to frame the text in a third manner as a text that is effective for one’s life of faith. Within the text, the author preaches salvation. Martyrdom has always been held up as an exemplary path to eternal life, but Pinselet’s text is one, because of its focus not just on the brothers but on the king, preaches salvation for the reader and for France who must rid herself of her traitorous sovereign. At the end of the text, the author gives another anagram of his name, several quatrains, and a final sonnet. This last word is somewhat shocking and exemplifies where the struggle is, at least from the Catholic side, after the deaths of the two Guise brothers. Firstly, he gives the second anagram: “La richesse peult” (Richness can). It comes across as fairly innocuous, at least less significant than the first one appearing at the beginning. However, in the closing sonnet, the writer’s ultimate goal comes into view: Avoir appris comment ces deux Princes tous deux Sur le corps de Jesus, & sur la foy publicque, Ont esté massacrez d’une main heretique, Ce n’est avoir appris qu’un acte malheureux.

86  This formula is used by Ronsard and others. See Cécile Alduy, Politique des “Amours”: Poétique et genèse d’un genre français nouveau (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 362–66.

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Mais ce qui est entré, dans le cœur par les yeux, Te doit mettre en la main, une bonne pratique, La rencontre du nom nom annagrammatique, Te predit ton salut, si sauver tu te veux. Il presche le salut, & La richesse peut Il est assez aisé d’entendre ce qu’il veult, Veux-tu toujours porter le joug de tyrannie Tens la gorge au cousteau, du tyran inhumain, Veux-tu sauver ta foy, le corps, les biens, la vie, Il faut mettre au thresor ta liberalle main.87 To have learned how these two Princes, both of them, On the body of Jesus, and on the public faith, Have been massacred by a heretic’s hand, It is not to have learned of an unfortunate act. But what has entered, into the heart by the eyes, Must put into your hand, a good practice, The encounter of a name, not anagrammatical, Foretells to you your salvation, if you desire for yourself to be saved. He preaches salvation, and richness can. It is easy enough to hear what he wants, Do you want to always carry the yoke of tyranny Give over your neck to the knife, of the inhuman tyrant, Do you want to save your faith, your body, your goods, your life, One must put your free hand to the treasure. In his follow up, Pinselet confirms that he and the reader are on the same page. This fulfills very much what Genette proposes for the postface.88 In the first stanza, he confirms what the reader learns from the text: the glorious martyrdom of the two brothers according to the life of Christ. The sonnet makes a serious turn in the first tercet, though. He challenges the reader about what he or she will do in response to the text, and here is where the author shows himself the most invested in writing an effective text. After all, he is preaching. He 87  Pinselet, Le Martyre des deux freres, n.p. 88  Genette, 240–41. I refer back to Genette’s statement on the postface that I cited in the introduction to this chapter: “[L]’auteur pourrait épiloguer en toute connaissance de cause de part et d’autre : ‘Vous en savez maintenant autant que moi, alors causons.” This is precisely the attitude that Pinselet displays. He acknowledges the seriousness of what he has just recounted and now introduces a frank conversation in which he is going to demand a grave sacrifice from the reader.

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asks if the reader really wants to live under the yoke of tyranny. This rhetorical question acts as a call to action, a call that is confirmed in the final tercet. He commands the reader to present his or her throat to the knife, if they want to save “[l]a foy, le corps, les biens, la vie.” It is the Gospel call to lay down one’s life in order to save it. These are the sacrifices that must be made, and the death of the brothers Guise shows the way. In contrast to the use of Sacred Scripture, the use of poetry as a paratext creates a conversation between the author and the reader that is both subtler and more focused. Since the use of poetry would not lead to disputes about apocryphal texts or exegesis, it keeps the reader more focused on the texts that it frames, as well as the arguments and even the ideology within. In Goulart’s Mémoires de la Ligue, poetry sustains Goulart’s narrative while forming a useful transition, even if the poetry has its source in the opposing side. De l’Estoile uses it in a similar manner but manages to extend his narrative by allowing the literary discourse to support his view of history while giving a voice to the events and their participants that he describes in his journal entries. Finally, in Le Martyre des deux freres, Charles Pinselet uses poetry in a much more traditionally prefatory fashion, sending a message to the reader about how to interpret his text as well as his own role with respect to it. Without all of the hang-ups of Sacred Scripture and relying on the richness and dynamism of what poetry had represented to Renaissance France, it offers a useful tool in managing the interpretation of texts during a disputatious era. 4

Conclusion

For these writers and compilers, the “bonne lecture,” or proper reading, constitutes an essential step in the interpretation of texts. These authors set out to do more than just convince. They expect to elicit a particular response from the reader that sticks, which perhaps explains their intense and varied methods for solidifying their message and influencing the interpretation of their texts. The period of the wars of religion is not unique in this respect. However, what is unique is the urgency with which they execute their task. In addition, what reflects the nature of the time is the tendency to encourage division and polarization for the sake of ideological unity and uniformity over and against tolerance. Much of the textual framing that I have described ignores the possibility of tolerance as a vain hope. In mocking the opinions, the history, and the ideology of the other side, the authors in limiting the interpretation of their own texts announce that their text and what it represents to the reader are

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the only true way forward. If it had been otherwise, authors, poets, historians, and compilers would have sought to temper the polemic through their textual framing rather than to incite it. In this respect, textual framing works in concert with the rhetoric of extremes. A jolting preface or a concise sestet attempts to render interpretations of the texts they complement definitive, inevitable, and indisputable. No other possible interpretations are allowed. In these many examples of prefatory material, from Goulart to the author of the Discours merveilleux on Catherine de� Medici to D’Aubigné, the preface establishes the ideology before the reader has a chance to do it. Lest readers make up their own mind and possibly find themselves in an enemy camp, these writers propose a truth that their text is going to support. They hope to make it so simply by telling the reader that it is so. In the midst of the semiotic crisis, they cannot risk that their works will be misinterpreted and misunderstood. The same motivation incites authors to use Sacred Scripture to ornament and to support their discourse. However, this comes at the expense of the content. Since so much of the Scripture that was deployed elicits a parallel conversation about scriptural exegesis, the only message that may stick is one about how to interpret particular biblical passages. While this may be a secondary goal, signaling to the reader where he or she may fit in the hermeneutical disputes between Catholic and Protestant, this particular method of textual framing, while relying on an erstwhile foundation of evidence, may eventually move toward ineffectiveness. As a potential response, many authors, including Goulart, chose to turn to a more reliable source to distill and reinforce their message. Goulart, De l’Estoile, and Pinselet use verse to frame their texts, giving them more polished, literary, and pithy ornaments that highlight the correct interpretation of what lies within. All of this was to make for a clear and effective text. Doubt was to be diffused, and readers were to know not only what the author thought but also where they themselves stood with respect to the debate between the two sides and the history each side presents. In the conversation between author and reader, the former continually sends pings to the reader’s hermeneutical capacity, guiding him or her to the intended outcome. Whether through the prefatory material, through the use and interpretation of Sacred Scripture, or through a strategically placed poem, writers and compilers provoke their enemies and shore up the base in the hope that their effective word reaps the intended benefit in the political sphere. In the next chapter, the conversation between authors and readers will continue, but this conversation will broaden with respect to the wider culture and society all while it narrows to focus more on the author personally in order to reinforce the text by way of the identity and the authority of its creator.

Chapter 4

Recreating Authority in the Person(a) of the Author The author of the Histoire de Jean Guy insists upon his reluctance to publicize the lurid details of a parricide. He does not want to spread the news of this heinous crime lest others imitate it; as soon as justice is done, the memory of such an event must be extinguished.1 And yet, he decides to move forward anyway. While his reticence may be somewhat rooted in a sincere desire not to cause scandal, he intends his protestations to convince the reader of the credibility of his history. In sharing Jean’s story, with all of its scandal and the potential deleterious consequences of publicizing a murder, he invites the reader into the risk he is taking, trusting that the reader will see his exposition of the unsavory details not as a sign of a sick fascination, but as a mark of veracity. The truth of the matter is so compelling and potentially fruitful that he was not capable of holding it back. The special circumstances, through which the author reasons before the eyes of the reader, create an imperative for putting pen to paper. The reluctance, the rationale, the desire to draw good out of Jean’s miraculous conversion all position the author as one trying to do honor to the truth. He justifies himself while setting up a story that the reader is likely to believe. The author enjoys real authority and so does his text, but it is necessary for the author to establish this bona fides clearly, since the reader might not consider the text on its own to be reliable. In addition to difficulties with representation and interpretation, the deterioration of traditional centers of authority, namely the Church and the king, has also begun to accelerate in the latter part of the sixteenth century, and the authorial positioning on display in the Histoire de Jean Guy offers a solution at the very least for the sake of the printed text and the truth that it purports to tell. The figure of the author, therefore, emerges as a potential alternative, as a new center of authority particularly well positioned to resolve questions concerning meaning. Critical studies of sixteenth-century lyric poetry warn incessantly against the conflation of the poetic “I” with that of the author; the reader is not to be searching for autobiography, for example, behind the poet’s love story.2 In Scève and Ronsard’s canzonieri, the story of the poetic “I” and the 1  L’Histoire de Jean Guy, 1. 2  For an exploration of this question of the author’s voice within the text, see Nathalie Dauvois, Le Sujet lyrique à la Renaissance (Paris: Presses Universitaires Françaises, 2000). She tries to examine and explain what to do with the first person in Renaissance lyric poetry. It is clear

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“plot” of the love story may resemble certain characteristics of Maurice and Pierre’s life, but the reader must exercise caution in assimilating the poetic identity with the historical one. On the other hand, one would go too far in arguing that their historical existence had no bearing on what they wrote regarding such a personal topic. For Scève in particular in the Délie, the intensity of emotion that the poetry conveys suggests that the experience of love that he depicts goes deeper than a poetic fiction. The case of the Délie raises the question: are the images of the poet’s suffering so vivid that they cannot help but construct a living, breathing historical reality beyond the text? Or is it the inverse: does knowing more about the historical Scève, that he likely experienced such love and perhaps such anguish, make the text somehow more convincing? I raise the issue from the period before the wars of religion because it presages an authorial turn that was slowly evolving in lyric poetry but that comes into full bloom in the literature of this later period. As a response to the deterioration of princely and ecclesiastical authority, authors turned to none other than themselves for a substitute, taking a step back from the poetic “I” to build an authorial persona that represented a place to which the reader could turn in the reader’s search for authority for the text.3 What is at stake for an author in attempting to create this new center of authority built upon a writer’s life or, to use a very modern concept, upon his “brand”? Two possibilities present themselves: 1) In many instances, the author is trying to establish his own authority in order to rehabilitate another kind of authority, i.e., the king or the Church, or both, or 2) The author saw himself as a replacement, a center of authority to fill a vacuum, and the text was an end in itself, as was the case with the Histoire de Jean Guy. I will look at examples of both. When such significant and ancient sources of authority had been found wanting, authors, whose distance from their text had already been lessening during the Renaissance, offered an alternative. This alternative pales in comparison to the scope of a king’s or a pope’s authority, to be sure, but it nevertheless provided yet another strategy to give their words power in defining history in the midst of a crisis of authority that was in need of remedy. that the “I” in the text for Dauvois is rarely Ronsard or Scève, the historical person. To quote Dauvois, who in turn quotes D. Montet-Clavie, “le je est ‘une pure instance d’énonciation’ ” (5). This is true. But later, with poets like Scève, the “I” begins to double; it is at the same time enonciative and also potentially reflective of his historical identity or his poetic persona. The poet relies on and the reader begins to be conscious of an “I” outside of the text. 3  See Dauvois, Sujet lyrique, 92, where she indeed acknowledges this authorial turn in the doubling of the “I” in lyric poetry: “On est toujours en quelque sorte à la fois ou simultanément dans le temps du mythe et dans le temps de l’histoire quand il s’agit de poésie lyrique. Et le je a lui-même un double statut.”

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How did this more intense focus on the author come about? How was it possible? It is a consequence of changes in language and in the author’s relationship to the text that were already developing in the Middle Ages.4 Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet speaks of two creative models emerging in the fourteenth century: Polyphemus and Prometheus.5 Both of these mythical models rely on the individualization of the creator: with the former, it is his isolation and distinctiveness as the one-eyed giant6; with the latter, it is the titan who sculpts human beings out of clay, not necessarily he who revolts against the gods.7 In both instances, the poet creates and recreates in the model of the gods or of the divine, demonstrating a connection to divine creation. Agrippa D’Aubigné will in fact take up the image of Prometheus as one who revolted against the gods, further differentiating the author from the powers that be and allowing D’Aubigné to claim his own authority. Nevertheless, this independence from traditional centers of power already shows itself in an age where, as Cerquiglini-Toulet writes, “Il est malaisé de parler de ‘création’ littéraire pour une époque où seul Dieu crée, où seul Dieu, ainsi que le rappelle Jean Le Fèvre dans le Respit de la Mort, est ‘le droit createur.’ L’imitation du geste divin ne peut se situer que du côté de la contrefaçon, du côté du diable” (It is difficult to speak of ‘literary creation for a period where God alone creates, where God alone, as Jean Le Fèvre recalls in the Respit de la Mort, is the rightful creator.’ The imitation of the divine gesture can only put itself on the side of counterfeit, on the side of the devil).8 Obviously, this perspective on literary creation had moved beyond accusations of the devilish by the time D’Aubigné begins to write, since he positioned himself as God’s mouthpiece proclaiming the truth. In part, it explains the rise of the writer as prophet. In a period when God seems distant, as if he is no longer creating, he needs someone to speak for him. D’Aubigné and others are happy to help, but they counterbalance it with

4  The development of print culture is another aspect of this evolution of the authority of the writer from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. In this project, my goal is to focus on how authors created authority for themselves and for their texts through their rhetoric and within the text themselves. For more on how the author’s relationship to patrons and printers evolved and how it affected their personal authority, see Cynthia Brown, Poets, Patrons, and Printers: Crisis of Authority in Late Medieval France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). 5  See Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, “Polyphème et Prométhée: Deux voies de la ‘création’ au XIVe siècle,” Auctor et Auctoritas: Invention et conformisme dans l’écriture médiévale, ed. Michel Zimmerman (Paris: Ecole des Chartes, 2001), 401–10. 6  Cerquiglini-Toulet, “Polyphème et Prométhée,” 402–03. 7  Cerquiglini-Toulet, “Polyphème et Prométhée,” 409. 8  Cerquiglini-Toulet, “Polyphème et Prométhée,” 401.

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an insistence, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, on the very personal nature of their work. As authors felt more comfortable taking control of their own creation, devilish or not, authors, either consciously or not, began to take advantage of the versatility of the poetic “I” in their quest for credibility. This versatility is founded upon the threefold division of the “I” as outlined by the scholar James Helgeson in his article entitled “Who is the ‘I’ in Early Modern Poetry?”9 It is not really Helgeson’s divisions that permit these new authorial maneuvers; it is the reassembling of the three into one “I” that allows it. If the reader no longer sees the separation between the “I” of the text and the “I” of a Ronsard for example, the personal identity of Ronsard bears upon the text and its authority. One could descend into a chicken-or-the-egg argument here, for it is difficult to say whether this fusion occurred first in the reader’s or in the author’s mind. Either way, what matters is that the authors seem to be at least minimally aware of the potential impact as they attempt to construct authorial personae that rely less and less on the “I” of the text alone and remove the center of the “I” to the second or third degree, that is, to Helgeson’s persona of the author or to the historical reality of the author himself. It varies as to which one of these two moves to the forefront; different authors depend on the different degrees at different times. Nevertheless, during the wars of religion, what began in the Middle Ages and continues to evolve during the Renaissance reaches its fruition during the period of the wars of religion. Neither total anonymity, nor the “I” of the text alone sufficed as a means to render the writer’s discourse more credible, especially when intervening in the political sphere.10 9  James Helgeson, “Who is the ‘I’ in Early Modern Poetry? Marc-Antoine Muret on Poetic Action,” Nottingham French Studies 49, no. 3 (2010): 19–20. To review, Helgeson divides the “I” into three levels: 1) the “poetic persona,” or the “I” in the text without any reference to the author per se, 2) the “author-as-persona,” which includes two categories: the author in a “staged” relationship to other contemporary authors and the author who borrows from other older texts, and 3) the actual person of the author who lived and died, i.e., Pierre de Ronsard. 10  See Catherine Attwood, Dynamic Dichotomy: The Poetic ‘I’ in Fourteenth- and FifteenthCentury French Lyric Poetry (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998). Attwood implicitly notes this progression in her analysis of the poetic “I” in her book: “Whereas the preceding chapter aimed to explore the literary significance of the separation of the implied poet from his poetic ‘I’, this chapter and the three which follow it will deal with the first-person speaker in the work of an individual poet—in this instance Guillaume de Machaut—as it appears on the surface of any given text, at any moment and in any voice, whether or not apparently identifiable with that of the implied poet” (71). In other words, she acknowledges that whereas before, the different levels that Helgeson identifies were separate, the lines between them become more and more blurred, resulting in the reunification of the textual “I” with the author as a historical individual or with the author’s persona.

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In this chapter, I argue that as a strategy to combat the absence or unreliability of secular and religious authority, writers merged these authorial identities in order to strengthen the credibility of their discourse, especially as it related to the authority of their representations of history. Simultaneously, in order to ensure that this fusion would be effective, they employed multiple strategies, which I will outline here, to build up the credibility of their authorial persona or their actual historical identity. They needed to strengthen the parts as a means to strengthening the whole. While writers initially seem to have undertaken this process in order to rehabilitate traditional centers of authority, later in the wars of religion, they will deploy this strategy increasingly for the sake of their own personal authority and the authority of their text, offering an alternative, rather than a support, to secular and religious power.11 I will begin this discussion with Pierre de Ronsard and his Discours. Ronsard’s attempt at political poetry marks the turning point from the lyric poetry that had dominated into the mid-sixteenth century to the more politically charged literary discourse of the wars of religion. Due to his notoriety, poetic prowess, and to the fact that the Discours emerged just before and during the first open conflict in 1562, I see his work as being a defining moment—an acceleration, perhaps—in this convergence toward the authority of the poet or writer outside of the text and in service of the text. Ronsard not only represents what is perhaps the most explicit example of someone assuming his already extant authorial persona in order to lend weight to his political words, he also does so initially in order to rehabilitate to varying degrees civil and ecclesiastical authority. Ronsard wants to show how the unfolding of current events favors a renewed strength of the king’s and the Church’s authority. Jean de la Taille, whose play Saül le furieux (1572) I have already discussed with respect to the rhetoric of extremes, was a playwright who was positioning himself as a prophetic critic of civil authority. While his reproaches in the text are clear, he means them to get the king back on the right path by inviting him to contemplate the story of King Saul. By contrast, in what would be the final years of Henry III’s reign, this concern for civil authority and the buttressing thereof would yield to an exposition of its grave mistakes and cynicism about its future. Hardly a call for Henry III to fulfill his potential as the sovereign, the Avertissement des Catholiques 11  This continued convergence on the author’s persona, or on his historical identity, elicits a question about why this progression took place. Was it because civil and ecclesiastical authorities were at this point a complete failure, incapable of being rehabilitated? Or was it because the temptation for the author to build himself up for the sake of his textual creation became so great that he decided to focus on that? Or was it because he began to see himself as an arbiter of political authority, such that it was a case of cutting out the middleman? I believe that my analysis shows that it is probably all of the above.

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Anglois aux François Catholiques retells recent history in England and tries to convince French Catholics to do everything possible to reject Henry of Navarre as king, lest they suffer the fate of their English brethren under the Protestant Elizabeth I. I will examine this text from 1587, published anonymously, but almost certainly written by Louis Dorléans (1542–1629), wherein the author draws upon a constructed foreign identity as a way of giving him and his text more credibility. In this case, the rehabilitation of the king fades from view as the author’s preferred political outcome moves to the center. Finally, in Les Tragiques (1616), Agrippa D’Aubigné presents himself as a truth-teller, a prophet who is sanctioned by God and whose retelling goes well beyond an attempt at authority based on a simple eyewitness account. He brings the weight of prophecy and prediction to bear on his epic poem to lend it more urgency and credibility. He constructs both a dual authorial persona based on Prometheus, giver of a dangerous gift to humanity and defier of the gods, and also an apocalyptic prophet who reassures readers of their righteousness.12 D’Aubigné’s focus is on his own and the text’s authority as a means of reinforcing divine authority, especially as he retells the history of the wars of religion to show that this same divine authority designates D’Aubigné, his correligionists, and even the reader, if willing, as the community of the righteous. During the tumult of the wars of religion and the concomitant semiotic crisis, the poetic or textual “I” is no longer capable of defining and supporting the meaning of the text; authors turn to themselves and to personae of their own design to infuse their texts with credibility and efficacy as they intervene in the political sphere either to support or to replace traditional but tired centers of authority. 1

Ronsard’s Political Intervention and Personal Attacks

Few authors better exemplify the authorial turn that took place upon the breakout of the wars of religion than Pierre de Ronsard. One of the characteristics that makes it easier to trace this evolution is the diversity of texts that he produced. Odes, love poetry, epic, and political verse, all of them contribute to his profile as the prince of poets during the sixteenth century. Ronsard dabbled 12  See Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu, esp. Book I, Chapter III, “ ‘Le terrible et merveilleulx assault donné contre la saincte cité de Jerusalem’: le Temps de l’attente de Dieu,” 163–232. Crouzet explains the fertile eschatological ground upon which D’Aubigné would later build his identity as apocalyptic prophet. In other words, the division between Catholic and Protestant had both sides convinced that the eschaton would soon arrive. D’Aubigné, who published his epic poem after the fact, seems to be arguing that this eschatological vision was, to a certain extent, fulfilled.

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in so many poetic forms because he felt that this would allow the best route to solidifying his identity not just as a literary authority but as a political one as well. Thus, it is unsurprising that just as the political and religious conflicts in France started heating up, he decides to try his hand at the miroir du prince as well as at the discours, the avertissement, and the remonstrance. With this latest turn in his poetry, the persona of “Ronsard” assimilates more and more with the actual person, Pierre de Ronsard. This tendency is borne out of a desire to preserve his poetic immortality, for his critics also force this assimilation through their increasingly personal attacks on his political commentary. This particular dynamic constitutes a unique one and will be the focus of my analysis of Ronsard’s political interventions. Ronsard’s ostensible goal is to build up the monarchy and to reinvigorate the Catholic faith so as to unify France; he is interested in using his poetic prowess to interpret the signs of the times and to rehabilitate these powers that have lost their authority. At the same time, Ronsard is very interested in preserving the image and persona of “Ronsard,” but the taint of the polemic against Pierre de Ronsard begins to tarnish this image, such that he must defend the former to burnish the latter. His defenses begin to fail because the collapse of princely authority—the source of his power and influence in the first place—and of ecclesiastical authority—that he is trying to defend—are too much dead weight and have isolated him and caused him to reevaluate how to preserve his own legacy. In order to offer himself as an authoritative voice in the political sphere, Ronsard must first identify where it is exactly he feels he can be of assistance. In one of his first political texts, the Elegie à Guillaume des Autels gentilhomme Charrolois (1560), the poet describes the situation and implies the remedy: Je suis esmerveillé que les grandz de la court (Veu le temps orageux qui par l’Europe court) Ne s’arment les costez d’hommes qui ont puissance Comme toy de plaider leurs causes en la France, Et revenger d’un art par toy renouvellé Le sceptre que le peuple a par terre foulé.13 I am in wonder that the great ones of the court (Given the stormy time that runs through Europe) Do not arm the parties of men who have power As you do to plead their causes in France, 13  Pierre de Ronsard, Elegie a Guillaume des Autels gentilhomme Charrolois, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: STFM, 2015), vv. 3–8 (10:349).

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And to avenge by an art that is by you renewed The scepter that the people have trampled on the ground. The poet expresses his astonishment that the powers that be have not yet called upon what he seems to consider as the new center of authority and influence to help renew themselves: poets. In addressing his elegy to Guillaume des Autels, he makes a direct appeal to a fellow author, but of course, Ronsard really means to put himself forward as a possible candidate for buttressing “the great ones of the court.” The poet’s characterization of the revolts that have occurred also surprises: the people have knocked the scepter back down to earth and trampled upon it. Paul Laumonier’s note on this verse suggests that Ronsard was perhaps a bit premature.14 If the first manifestations of civil and religious violence have brought political power this low, this soon, Ronsard must think that it was already fairly weak to begin with. It is not just courtly authority that needs renewal, however. Ronsard also acknowledges the beating that the written word has taken, at least from his perspective: Ainsi que l’ennemy par livres a seduict Le peuple devoyé qui faucement le suit, Il fault en disputant par livres le confondre, Par livres l’assaillir, par livres luy respondre.15 Just as the enemy by books has seduced The people led astray who falsely follows him [the enemy], We must by disputing with books confound him [the enemy], By books assault him, by books respond to him. He recognizes that false words and propaganda have led the people astray and have contributed to the destruction of the foundations of authority that Ronsard feels need to be so urgently rebuilt. The “books” (v. 19) by which the enemy has seduced the people refer to the Protestant pamphlets that have invaded France and have been quite effective at spreading confusion.16 He 14  See Laumonier, Œuvres complètes, 3:349: “Il s’agit des premières manifestations de révolte civile et religieuse en France, notamment de la conjuration d’Amboise (mars 1560).” The Conjuration d’Amboise was of course a serious matter, which I do not deny, but Ronsard’s assessment leans toward the harsh. 15  Ronsard, A Guillaume des Autels, vv. 19–22 (10:350). 16  See Yvonne Bellenger, ed., Discours et derniers vers, by Pierre de Ronsard (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1979), 218n: “Tout ce passage fait allusion aux pamphlets protestants que les réformés introduisaient en France et répandaient avec une redoubtable efficacité.”

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proposes the written word as a possible weapon against such misinformation because one that is based on truth, that has integrity, will not fail to persuade and to renew “the art” that he asserts will be so effective against the uprisings. Where actual arms have failed or will fail (vv. 10 and 11), the weapon of the word will win the day. His repetition of “by books” means that even though books have been to this point an unreliable authority, Ronsard and Des Autels, presumably, have the wherewithal to reinvigorate them and to put them at the service of what they feel is right. In his appeal to his fellow poet, Ronsard seems to have effaced the poetic “I” and built his argument upon the foundation of his public persona of “Ronsard, the Prince of Poets.” In removing the textual “I”, the most distant and perhaps the least useful in a political argument, Ronsard brings the discourse closer to himself but still draws upon the authority of his identity as court poet and as the master of contemporary poetry in a Pléiadian era. This persona speaks in the elegy, for he writes at one point when lamenting France’s difficulties, “France, de ton malheur tu es cause en partie, / Je t’en ay par mes vers mille fois advertye” (France, of your misfortune you are in part the cause, / I have by my verses a thousand times warned you of it).17 The “I” in the text calls upon his status as someone who could even possibly warn France of her trials. A thousand times, he has had the chance to do so, and she has clearly not listened to her illustrious prince of poets. A few verses later, he criticizes the treatment of Des Autels himself (vv. 163–70) and of France’s prophets who are called upon and then mocked for foretelling France’s misfortune (vv. 171–74). Ronsard lists this series of public figures that might have had or still might have some influence over France and her people. This influence still rests at the level of “figures”, though; the appeals, and the contempt thereof, has not yet become personal, and so Ronsard continues to rely on it in his effort to rehabilitate the written word as an instrument of political influence. Ronsard’s reliance on his persona as Ronsard, the Prince of Poets, continues to be evident in his decision to intervene with his own version of the miroir du prince.18 In the Institution pour l’adolescence du Roy treschrestien Charles neufviesme de ce nom (1562), Ronsard again nods to the fragility of royal power in his opening verses, “Car un Roy sans vertu porte le sceptre en vain” (For a King without virtue carries the scepter in vain).19 He implicitly acknowledges 17  Ronsard, A Guillaume des Autels, vv. 157–58 (10:357). 18  Laumonier gives a nice list of similar texts “dont Ronsard a pu s’inspirer” (see 11:3n). I cite them in order to emphasize that I believe that Ronsard was not necessarily that interested in giving advice to the king but that he did so because he felt he needed to do it in order to fulfill his public role as court poet. 19  Pierre de Ronsard, Institution pour l’adolescence du Roy treschrestien Charles neufviesme de ce nom, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier, (Paris: STFM, 2015), v. 3 (11:3).

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that the king’s authority does not exist independently of the king but that it depends on the king’s own virtue. If this was indeed a prevalent opinion at the time, it is no wonder that the king’s authority was so easily challenged. Ronsard has a solution, based upon a poetic characterization of himself and of his role at court: Pource on dit que Thetis la femme de Pelée, Apres avoir la peau de son enfant brulée Pour le rendre immortel, le prist en son giron Et de nuit l’emporta dans l’Antre de Chiron, Chiron noble Centaure, à fin de luy apprendre Les plus rares vertus dés sa jeunesse tendre, Et de science & d’art son Achille honorer : Car l’esprit d’un grand Roy ne doit rien ignorer.20 For this one says that Thetis, the wife of Peleus, After having burned the skin of her child, In order to make him immortal, took him in her lap, And at night carried him off to Chiron’s lair, Chiron the noble centaur, in order to teach him The rarest virtues from his tender youth And to honor Achilles with knowledge and art For the mind of a great king must be ignorant of nothing. Ronsard, through this introductory image, creates an alternative poetic persona for himself that lends credibility to the text that follows and will ultimately serve to help the king with his own credibility. This is the rhetorical phenomenon that we will of course see over and over again during the wars of religion where authority is so lacking. Nevertheless, in this particular instance, the choice falls on the centaur Chiron, whose role as the educator of Achilles and whose foster-father Apollo guarantees his credibility as both pedagogue and poet. While the image is somewhat fantastic, it is appropriate—and maybe even expected of him—considering Ronsard’s role as court poet. He can easily slip into this role because of his position, and it qualifies him to offer yet another opinion of how Charles IX should be formed. The emphasis on the poetic persona of Ronsard reaches its apotheosis in an intervention directed not toward the king but toward the queen mother. In the Discours des misères de ce temps, Ronsard gives his most complex and 20  Ronsard, Institution, vv. 5–12 (11:4).

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articulate recommendation for what France needs. Still speaking out of the persona of “Ronsard, the Prince of Poets,” he maintains a critical but balanced approach to the problem at hand. His nod to equilibrium shows itself in the opening verses of this discourse where Ronsard shifts back and forth between virtue and vice to announce that the fight between the two is currently trending in one direction. He writes: Mais puis que nous voyons les hommes en tous lieux Vivre, l’un vertueux, et l’autre vicieux, Il nous fault confesser que le vice diforme N’est pas victorieux : mais suit la mesme forme Qu’il avoit dés le jour que l’homme fut vestu (Ainsi que d’un habit) de vice et de vertu.21 But since we see men in every place Living, the one virtuous, the other full of vice, We must confess that deformed vice Is not victorious: but follows the same form That it had from the day that man was clothed (Just as with an outfit) with vice and with virtue. The motion of the balance persists throughout the opening lines, and even his repetition of the “v” sound evokes the motion of the balance swinging back and forth. Obviously, in this case, he thinks vice is currently winning, but stylistically, the back and forth gives the impression, at the level of language, of a pendulum on whose course he is going to plot a position. The reader anticipates where that will be, but the Prince of Poets still gives the impression of a world that is going through its typical motions that started in the garden of Eden, even though that may be cold comfort to the victims of vice. Ronsard’s enlarged perspective on history and on virtue and vice gives the impression of distance; he is simply observing at the beginning of his statement to the queen mother. This disinterested observer stance will constitute Ronsard’s posture for the rest of the discourse, even though he gives clear indications about where he thinks things should go. He rests at the level of lament and toward the end pleas to the queen mother and to God for an improvement to the situation. He barely mentions Protestants or their theology, and the whole discourse never 21  Pierre de Ronsard, Discours des Miseres de ce Temps, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: STFM, 2015), vv. 5–10 (11:19).

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seems to go beyond simple commiseration about the not so favorable state of affairs. The closest he gets to polemic or even criticism of the Reformation comes about halfway through the text when, in an oblique reference to the fickleness of human belief, he postulates that Jupiter might be toying with human beings: Un jour estant gaillard choisit pour son amye Dame Presomption, la voyant endormie Au pié du mont Olympe, & la baisant soudain Conçeut l’Opinion, peste du genre humain. Cuider en fut nourrice, & fut mise à l’escole D’orgueil, de fantasie, & de jeunesse folle.22 One day [Jupiter] being randy chooses for his lover Lady Presumption, seeing her asleep At the foot of Mount Olympus, and suddenly kissing her Conceived Opinion, pest of the human race. Belief was its nurse, and it was put into the school Of pride, of fantasy, and of youthful folly. Otherwise, he remains levelheaded throughout, that is, until his final prayer. While not a direct hit against the Reformation, his prayer to God at the end comes off less as supplication for the preservation of France and more like imprecation directed at his enemies. He pleads to the Lord: Donne qu’en plain midy le jour leur semble trouble, Donne que pour un coup ilz en sentent un double, Donne que la poussiere entre dedans leurs yeux : D’un esclat de tonnerre arme ta main aux cieux, Et pour punition eslance sur leur teste, Et non sur un rocher, les traiz de ta tempeste.23

22  Ronsard, Miseres, vv. 131–36 (11:26). For a characterization of the role of opinion in the sixteenth century, see Tatiana Debbagi-Baranova, A coups de libelles: Une culture politique au temps des guerres de religion (1562–1598) (Geneva: Droz, 2012), 406: “L’opinion fait le plus souvent partie des catégories du discours utilisées pour décrire l’adversaire ; cette notion revêt alors le sens d’une fausse croyance ou d’une apparence trompeuse. Ce mot s’accompagne généralement de qualificatifs négatifs.” 23  Ronsard, Miseres, vv. 231–36 (11:32).

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Grant that at high noon, the day seems to them a trouble, Grant that for a single blow, they feel a double, Grant that dust gets into their eyes: With a thunderbolt arm your hand in the skies, And for punishment rush upon their head, And not upon a rock, the strikes from the storm. .

Ronsard clearly states his desires so that “the same law unites all our provinces” (v. 223), but wishing harm toward those in revolt is not necessarily polemical and does not demonstrate a great degree of courage. He spouts rhetoric that would have been expected of a court poet, though a court poet who flirted with or was friendly with the Reformation.24 His balance consists in a slight nuance, that of his desire to see France united. This was to come about at the expense of these enemies, but their destruction was not necessarily the explicit goal. Things were about to change, however, and as the authority of Ronsard as the “Prince of the Poets” began to be defamed, Ronsard quickly shifted his focus in order to recuperate what possible authority might have remained to him on the personal level. For, how can he help rebuild princely or ecclesiastical authority if his own is wanting? The Continuation du Discours des Miseres de ce Temps, most likely composed around the beginning of October 1562, expands upon the disdain that was evident in the very last verses of the original Discours.25 Ronsard attacks more explicitly Protestant theology and accuses them of being like so many heretics who have gone before (vv. 61–66) or inconsistent at best, given their many divisions and contradictions (vv. 241–48). He singles out Théodore De Bèze for several more specific pleas and laments that the Prince de Condé has been taken in by this heterodoxy (vv. 135–43). The general character of the Continuation is much more bitter, and the urgency with which Ronsard writes amplifies the polemical nature of his words against 24  See Laumonier, introduction to Œuvres completes, 11:v–xvii. Laumonier comments extensively on the political situation at the time and how Ronsard fits into it. He affirms Ronsard’s flirtation with Protestantism, but he also recounts Ronsard’s decision to come down on the side of the Catholics. There are many reasons, but Laumonier highlights that “Les Calvin et les De Bèze se montraient d’une austérité, d’une intransigeance religieuse, qui effrayait ce libre imitateur d’Anacréon, de Catulle, d’Horace, d’Ovide et de J. Second” (viii). In other words, the Reformation did not fit with Ronsard’s lifestyle, and it also inhibited the fostering of his persona as the Prince of Poets. Quite simply, it held him back. In the end, Laumonier proposes that it came down to the unity of France at all costs, a reality that the Protestants incessantly threatened (x). 25  Pierre de Ronsard, Continuation du Discours des Miseres de ce Temps, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: STFM, 2015), 11:35–60.

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the Huguenots. However, as much as the Continuation increases in potency, it still seems to have been more in response to the events of the time, trying to correct their trajectory that is leading to division, and not in response to personal attacks on Ronsard. This is logical since Ronsard’s tone and style in the Continuation still displays the posturing of a court poet who interprets the foreign interference of the English as proof of the insidiousness of the Protestant movement.26 It is not until after the Remonstrance au peuple de France (1563) that things get truly personal. One of the first texts to attack Ronsard is the Palinodies, probably composed around the end of 1562 by Antoine de la Roche-Chandieu.27 The first palinode is a parody of the Elegie a Guillaume Des Autelz, while the second gives similar treatment to the Discours des Miseres de ce temps. Both of them only slightly change Ronsard’s own wording, but they deliberately play with an alternative history in which Ronsard has converted to Protestantism. In general, the parodies themselves mock the poetry more than the poet, but there is an opening epigram that sets the scene and also attempts to discredit Ronsard the Poet and the person. The author of the Palinodies writes: Ronsard qui fut naguere un Poëte menteur, Fait ores rechanter sa lire bien sonante, Plus ne veut estre veu un avare flateur, Contrechantant ses vers de voix bien acordante. Ce qu’il avoit chanté fut d’une ambition D’Atheisme poussé, et raison caphardée : Mais son esprit gentil, de droitte affection Commence à renoncer sa prestrise fardée.28 Ronsard who was at one time a Poet liar, Now makes his well sounding lyre sing again, 26  See Ronsard, Continuation des Miseres, vv. 319–26 (11:54): “L’autre jour en pensant que cette pauvre terre / S’en alloit (ô malheur) la proye d’Angleterre, / Et que ses propres fils amenoient l’estranger / Qui boit les eaux du Rhin à fin de l’outrager, / M’apparut tristement l’idole de la France, / Non telle qu’elle estoit lors que la brave lance / De Henry la gardoit, mais faible & sans confort / Comme une pauvre femme atteinte de la mort.” Laumonier explains that this particular passage is in response to the occupation of Le Havre, Rouen, and Dieppe by English troops in August 1562 and the signing of the Treaty of Hampton-Court on September 20th of that same year (54n1). 27  See Jacques Pineaux, La Polémique protestante contre Ronsard, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie Marcel Didier, 1973), 2. The authorship is in doubt, but this is who Ronsard thought had written it. 28  Pineaux, Polémique, 4.

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No longer wanting to be seen the flattering miser, Countersinging his verses with a harmonious voice. What he had sung was of an ambition For a profound Atheism, and a hypocritical speech: But his genteel mind, with right perception Begins to renounce his make-upped priesthood. Several assumptions in the author’s irony guide the reader to seize upon the attack. Firstly, Ronsard’s faux conversion has saved him from his ways as a “Poet liar.” He is no longer the “flattering miser” who simply tries to be agreeable. His ambition, as well as his Atheism and “hypocritical reason” are his downfall. This first half attempts to destroy the Prince of Poets. His role is reduced to simple flattery motivated by money. Moreover, the author claims to expose his faith as false. In other words, the author contends that Ronsard’s defense of Catholicism in the face of the Reformation is anything but sincere; it is a function of his position at court, nothing more. Thus, he calls into question not only Ronsard’s worth as the Prince of Poets, but he also implicitly attacks Ronsard’s personal character, especially with respect to religion, a salvo that helps him transition into an accusation that will reemerge over and over again. The mention of Ronsard’s purported priesthood seeks to pull Ronsard down from his poetic role and to attack him on more explicitly ecclesiastical terrain. While commentators confirm this trend, it might be useful to ask why the author might have seen this as an effective way to discredit him.29 According to Pineaux, the connotations surrounding the priesthood allowed many kinds of assumptions about the deficiency of one’s character, most notably in this case, the allegiance to a “foreign” power thanks to the benefices he receives as a member of the clergy.30 In addition, since I am arguing that Ronsard desires to preserve his persona in order to lend credibility to his poetic and political narratives and since the clergy during this period had either lost or was suffering from a lack of authority, the decision to taint Ronsard by highlighting his identity as clergy would seem quite logical and potentially more effective.31 Ronsard’s priesthood will continue to be an issue in subsequent polemical texts against him. Following upon the Palinodies, another text in its very title will zero in on the subject, in fact. Composed in late 1562 and published in early 1563 by “Zamariel” or Antoine de la Roche-Chandieu and “B. de Mont-Dieu” or 29  See Pineaux, introduction to Polémique, xviii. 30  See Pineaux, introduction to Polémique, xix. Pineaux pithily states that Ronsard as priest allows his enemies to accuse him of being “serviteur de la panse plus que de la France.” 31  As a reminder, see my discussion of French clergy in Chapter One.

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Bernard de Montméja, the Response aux calomnies contenues au Discours et Suyte du Discours sur les Miseres de ce temps, Faits par Messire Pierre Ronsard jadis Poëte, et maintenant Prebstre (Response to the calumnies contained in the Discourse and the Continuation of the Discourse of the Miseries of this time, Done by Monsieur Pierre Ronsard, one-time Poet, and now Priest) hits out at Ronsard from the very start.32 The antithesis in the title between “one-time Poet” and “now Priest,” emphasized by the alliteration and opposition of the sound of the two words, signals to the reader where the author stands on the matter: Ronsard has lost his status as poet and is now a mere priest. From the moment he transformed his verses into sectarian advocacy, he lost his poetic authority. The title also emphasizes the distinction between Ronsard as poet and as person and brings the discussion back down to the level of a very personal attack. Around verse 330, the author deploys an image that Ronsard will take up when it is time for him to defend himself. The author comes back multiple times to the change or the metamorphosis that occurs from Ronsard the poet to Ronsard the priest; he sees “Ronsard en un prestre changé” (Ronsard into a priest has changed). Ronsard was never ordained a priest, and Zamariel probably knew this to be the case. This shifts our understanding of what the author sees unfolding before his eyes. “Ronsard” has not changed into a priest on a literal level. Rather, his poetic persona has undergone a metamorphosis into something less dignified and less worthy of authority and respect. Subsequently, the author of the Response metonymously refers to Ronsard’s status through the image of the poetic crown: La couronne il n’a plus, marque d’un grand Poëte, Mais la couronne il a, marque de la grand beste. La couronne il n’a plus, pour chanter doucement, Mais la couronne il a pour braire horriblement. La couronne il n’a plus, dont meilleur il puisse estre, Mais la couronne il a d’un fauls et meschant Prebstre.33 The crown he no longer has, mark of a great Poet, But the crown he does have, mark of the great beast. The crown he no longer has, in order to sing sweetly, But the crown he does have, in order to bray horribly. The crown he no longer has, with which he might be better, But the crown he does have, of a false and evil Priest. 32  This is as the title appears in the Pineaux edition. 33  Pineaux, Polémique, 48.

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Ronsard’s laurels are not simply withered; they have been replaced completely, transformed into something beastly. He will no more sing, but he will bray. He has become worse than a poet, even worse than a human being; he has become a “false and evil Priest.” The poet places Ronsard in the shadow of one more metonymy to assert once and for all that the metamorphosis is complete: “Et sentant les effects de sa metamorphose, / A l’ombre d’un clocher il se veautre et repose” (And feeling the effects of his metamorphosis, / In the shadow of a bell tower he crouches and reposes).34 The poet employs the bestial transformation one more time, but he adds an interesting detail. In the shadow of the bell tower—in the shadow of the Church whose side he has chosen—the changed Ronsard rests. The use of the “se vautrer” hearkens back to an animalistic change; twisting one of Ronsard’s favorite images, that of metamorphosis, the poet’s use of the bell tower and the restful state suggest that Ronsard’s poetic persona has indeed undergone a transformation, but instead of being from poet to animal, Ronsard has made the transformation to death. What is left is finite and will no longer be able to enjoy the immortality or the glory of the Poet. Pierre de Ronsard has a response to the Response. In short, he more or less falls into the trap that Zamariel sets. While he does respond both as the Poet and as the man, his response as the latter undermines the former. In the race to shore up his poetic authority, Ronsard stumbles a bit while still allowing several glimpses of his brilliance to shine. Ronsard introduces his Response de P. de Ronsard Gentilhomme Vandomois, aux injures et calomnies, de je ne sçay quels Predicans, & Ministres de Geneve (Response of P. de Ronsard, Gentleman from Vendome, to the insults and calumnies, of I don’t know which Preachers, and Ministers of Geneva) with an épître au lecteur (epistle to the reader). Already, he raises questions about the strength of his authority in his need to preface for the first time one of his political texts. One of those aforementioned glimpses of brilliance that reflect what would have likely been a more effective strategy—and one that would have kept him firmly ensconced in the domain of Ronsard the Poet—comes at the end of this epistle where Ronsard goes head to head with Zamariel in a tightly constructed quatrain. Here follows the original: Ta Poésie, Ronsard, ta verolle, et ta Messe, Par raige, surdité, et par des Benefices, Font (rymant, paillardant, et faisant sacrifices) Ton cœur fol, ton corps vain, et ta Muse Prebstresse.35 34  Pineaux, Polémique, 49. 35  Pineaux, Polémique, 32.

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Your poetry, Ronsard, your pox, and your Mass, By rage, deafness, and by benefices, Make (rhyming, debauching, and offering sacrifices) Your heart crazy, your body vain, and your Muse Priestess. And Ronsard responds: Ton erreur, ta fureur, ton orgueil, & ton fard, Qui t’esgare, & t’incense, & t’enfle, & te deguise, (Devoyé, fol, superbe, & feinct contre l’Eglise) Te rend confus, felon, arrogant, & cafard.36 Your error, your furor, your pride, and your deceit, That get you lost, and incense you, and swell you, and disguise you, (Led astray, crazy, haughty, and fashioned against the Church) Makes you confused, felonious, arrogant, and hypocritical. In these “vers rapportés,” both poets create a sequence that is repeated in each line. Zamariel takes for themes Ronsard’s poetry, his body, and his church. He mocks all three in order to demonstrate the complete degradation of what was once a great poet. Responding with greater virtuosity, Ronsard takes not three but four themes: error, fury, pride, and deceit. The addition of a fourth element already demonstrates Ronsard’s fearlessness in face of the attack, but it demonstrates his superiority as a poet as well. Ronsard increases the complexity of the game to show that Ronsard the Poet is indeed quite alive and well. While still recognizably Ronsard, he reduces the subject matter of his counterattack to that of the corporeal. This is nothing new, of course; his love poetry dared to explore this aspect of human experience with great success. However, in this instance, it draws him into an implicit refusal of the immortality that Zamariel is already trying to take away from him. Beginning at verse 211, the Responce takes a turn: “Or sus changeon propos & parlon d’autre chose, / Tu dis qu’une sourdesse a mon oreille close” (Go ahead, let’s change the subject and speak of something else, / You say that a deafness has closed my ear).37 From the first word, Ronsard affirms the turn away from one subject to another; something is going to change in the poetry of the Response, at least for 36  Pierre de Ronsard, Response de P. de Ronsard Gentilhomme Vandomois, aux injures et calomnies, de je ne sçay quels Predicans, & Ministres de Geneve, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Paul Laumonier (Paris: STFM, 2015), 11:115. 37  Ronsard, Response aux Injures, vv. 211–12 (11:128).

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the time being. In this instance, it is a turn toward the physical and personal, and more specifically to Ronsard’s own body and mind. Granted, his “deafness” poses such a significant problem because it prevents him from hearing the Gospel, but Ronsard leaves no doubt in responding that the original attack was part of a dismantling of his person: “Quoy ? moquer l’affligé sans t’avoir irrité / Est-ce pas estre Athée & plain d’impieté ?” (What? Mock the afflicted without having angered you / Is it not to be Atheist and full of impiety).38 Anyone who has truly heard the Word of God would have never mocked a deaf man, and yet, this is exactly what Ronsard claims his opponents do. Ronsard’s attempt at reconstructing the whole of his person and ultimately his image continues with a defense concerning his purported pox (v. 267), his old age (v. 281), and his atheism (v. 290).39 When he wades into this particular subject matter, Ronsard comes off as anything but reconstructed but as feeble and defensive. Focusing on himself as a person, rather than as the Poet, saps his cleverness. His defense of his life’s story against the accusation that he lives a “vie lascive” (lascivious life) (v. 507) solidifies this trend. Ronsard describes programmatically his day and all the ways in which his life is almost boring. Only in a brief quatrain does the clever Poet resurge: “J’ayme à faire l’amour, j’ayme à parler aux femmes, / A mettre par escrit mes amoureuses flames, / J’ayme le bal, la dance, & les masques aussi, / La musicque & le luth, ennemis du souci” (I love to make love, I love to speak to women, / To put into writing my amorous flames, / I love the ball, the dance, and masks too, / The music and the lute, enemies of worry).40 The persona of the Prince of Poets returns as he revels in his excesses and irreverence in order to call out his calumniators. Alas, this brashness is short-lived, save its reemergence one last time toward the end of the Responce. Ronsard attempts to reclaim the couronne that Zamariel contends that he has lost. At verse 1035, his tone switches to one of arrogance as he boldly proclaims: 38  Ronsard, Response aux Injures, vv. 225–26 (11:128). Notice the use of Atheism as an accusation. See George Hoffmann, “Atheism as a Devotional Category,” Republic of Letters 1.2 (2010): 44–55. 39  While this last quality is certainly not corporeal, his defense against it is quite embodied, since it is focused on how he lives his life and on the history of his own learning and erudition. See Ronsard, Response aux Injures, vv. 289–324 (11:132–34). 40  Ronsard, Response aux Injures, vv. 551–54 (11:145). See Laumonier, Œuvres complètes, 11:145n4, where Laumonier writes that in later editions, Ronsard deemed this passage too compromising and took it out. This demonstrates that Ronsard really was running from the Poet of the Amours, trying to rehabilitate his personal integrity in the face of the polemic against him.

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Tu ne le puis nyer ! car de ma plenitude Vous estes tous remplis : je suis seul vostre estude, Vous estes tous yssus de la grandeur de moy, Vous estes mes sujets, & je suis vostre loy […] C’est pourquoy sur le front la couronne je porte.41 You cannot deny it! for of my plenitude You are all filled: I am your unique study, You are all issued from my grandeur, You are my subject, and I am your law […] That’s why on my forehead the crown I wear. As a founding member of the Pléiade, Ronsard is right. He has a reasonable claim to be the forebear of the poets who seek to criticize him. Ronsard shows himself here at his fiercest, and the validity of his claim does reinforce the authority he needs in order to make it. He has more of a right than any of his calumniators to the identity of Poet, and yet, he still seems to leave it behind in favor of a more desperate and ultimately, from a poetic standpoint, bland defense. The case of Ronsard and his foray into political poetry challenged what it meant to be a Poet during the latter sixteenth century. At a time when formerly reliable systems of authority ceased to be so, the court poet who captured the spirit of the time and who had the talent to back it up seemed like a good candidate to dip his toes into the political waters and to make an attempt at influencing a newfound unity. Ronsard wanted to succeed where the Church and the monarchy had failed, if only that both sources of authority might be revived. Instead, he saw his status deteriorate because of the polarized nature of the times, itself a result of the authority vacuum of the period, and also because his strong support of a unified Catholic France felt like a betrayal to those who had thought that as Poet, Ronsard would never act so authoritarian. The Protestant response was to discredit Ronsard the Poet as best they could and even to call into question Ronsard the man. Both sides of the exchange, by shifting their focus outside the text, demonstrate the increased importance, if not influence, of the figure and person of the poet. Ronsard was not the only one who relied on this influence, and as a turning point in the evolution of the 41  Ronsard, Response aux Injures, vv. 1035–38, 1043 (11:168–69).

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authority of the poet, he remains the father figure he claims to be as others follow his example. 2

Teaching through Drama: Jean de La Taille and Saül le furieux

Other writers shared Ronsard’s belief that their personal credibility or that of their authorial persona could steer the political sphere and the king himself in the right direction. Jean de la Taille was never as famous as Ronsard, and so he had to work harder at creating and building up that persona so that his warnings to the king would be properly received. While discussing the rhetoric of extremes in the second chapter, I analyzed at length the recurring usage of the image of King Saul from the Old Testament. The life of a king who teeters on the edge of sanity while losing God’s favor proved an irresistible model within which to test the limits of the representation of royal authority and its consequences. At the same time, this image also warns the king that his authority and its legitimacy could quickly and easily disappear. This message to the powers that be constitutes one aspect—and a very important one—of the “but édifiant” (edifying goal) of La Taille’s 1572 play entitled, Saül le furieux. Begun in 1562 at the very dawn of the wars of religion, Saül retells the story of King Saul’s fall from grace in the First and Second Books of Samuel. While La Taille’s masterpiece reflects a desire to combat the crisis of representation, trying to define a more authentic image of the king, it also positions its author as both teacher and prophet, calling the king back to a more proper understanding of his role. La Taille’s project assumes a proper retelling of the biblical story while also relying upon a proper interpretation of the king’s behavior to that point. As with Ronsard, the focus on the authority of the author or his persona reflects a desire to rehabilitate civil authority through that same author’s definitive interpretation of the events of the time. Within the action and the poetry of the play and in the paratextual material, La Taille constructs for himself the image of a theoretician of drama, playwright, and prophet to give urgent advice to the king. La Taille is not perhaps as convinced in his adherence to the Reformation as will be the case with a poet like Agrippa D’Aubigné, and so he advocates a moderate stance toward the new Christians, by which he seeks to maintain a unified France, even under a Catholic sovereign.42 This is perhaps why La Taille chooses the approach that 42  See Forsyth, introduction to Saül, xix. Forsyth emphasizes what could be characterized either as La Taille’s ambivalence or as his desire for moderation. Forsyth writes: “[L]’attitude changeante adoptée par La Taille dans le conflit même n’est pas due à l’opportunisme : elle

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he does. He presents himself as a tragedian but one who uses his tragedy primarily to teach; he presents himself as a moderate but one who speaks with an urgent prophetic voice. He conceals the firmer hand with which he wants to correct the king, but he also gives that hand a better chance at being effective. By the authorial persona that he creates, he seeks legitimacy and credibility for himself and for his text as a means to bend the king’s ear. La Taille takes a first step toward authority and balance by introducing his dramatic text not with any ordinary preface but with a theoretical essay on the art of tragedy. Even before that begins, however, the author speaks as if the play has already started.43 Under the rubric, “L’Autheur” (The Author), a sonnet appears: J’ay trop long temps esté sans me faire cognoistre, Il fault sortir au jour, il fault qu’à ceste fois J’esclarcisse mon nom, fin que le François Sçache au temps à venir que le Ciel m’a fait naistre. Loing, loing de moy sois tu Peuple ignorant et traistre, Qui envieusement delachant tes abboys Grinces la dent dépite aussi tost que tu vois Quelqu’un de qui l’honneur peu à peu vient à croistre : Sçaches que je ne suis de ces imitateurs, Enflez de mots obscurs, qui serfs admirateurs Haussent les grands aux Cieux par flatterie avare : Je ne veux point ainsi les Muses valleter, Ny en tonnant des mots si haultement vanter Ceulx qui les princes sont d’ignorance barbare. I have for a long time been [here] without making myself known, I must come into the daylight, I must at this time Shed light upon my name, so that the French person Know in the time to come that the Heavens made it so that I was born. Far, far from me may you be, ignorant and traitorous People, Who enviously unleashing your barks Gnash your teeth, causing rancor as soon as you see était dictée plutôt par les exigences d’une situation politique qui évolue rapidement.” And later, “[L]’attitude religieuse et politique de La Taille est très éloignée du fanatisme […] il est français et chrétien avant d’être huguenot” (xxiii). 43  This is as the text appears after the title page in the 1572 edition, published by Frédéric Morel.

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Someone whose honor little by little has come to grow: Know that I am not of these imitators, Puffed up with obscure words, for whom servile admirers Raise the great ones to the Heavens by greedy flattery: I do not at all want in this way to serve the Muses, Neither in shouting words so haughtily vaunt Those for whom princes are of a barbarous ignorance. From the very outset, the author proclaims his noble intentions and his integrity using a language that evokes the clarity that he desires the reader—or the spectator, as the case may be—to have. The author makes this opening personal; he declares that he must illuminate his name so that the French know that the heavens have brought him into the world. This entire opening monologue in sonnet form mentions neither the play nor the theoretical text that precedes it. It focuses on the construction of an image, the image of an author who rejects ignorance and betrayal. The sonnet constitutes at a certain level a rejection of extant authorities, both poetic and civil, but not one that would see these authorities disappear. On the contrary, it creates a distance that is for the sake of the dramaturge’s credibility. In the latter two tercets, he employs a lexical field that repeatedly evokes the theme of service, but an obsequious one of which he wants no part. He uses valleter for “serve,” a word choice that emphasizes his refusal of service that looks anything like a prince’s valet. In listing and then discarding all of these other possible sources for the content of his work or for its patronage, the author forcefully asserts his independence from any motives that might compromise his integrity, especially as he tries to critique the king for the king’s own sake. This neutrality puts La Taille at the service of clarity and truth, an ideal that his treatise on the art of tragedy will try to reinforce. The text of La Taille’s De l’art de la tragédie (On the Art of Tragedy) that follows the sonnet maintains this balance and attempts to do what the title indicates, namely, to explain how the tragedian goes about writing tragedy. By including this text as prefatory material for Saül, La Taille wants the reader to believe that this is the very rulebook he used in creating his play.44 Ostensibly, this text is to teach the reader about the art of tragedy so that they might perhaps enjoy it more. However, in examining the treatise I believe that its content and its placement before the text of the play indicate that La Taille also wanted 44  See La Taille, De l’art de la tragédie, vv. 22–25: “Or à fin que du premier coup vous y rencontriez le plaisir que je desire, j’ay pensé de vous donner auelaue ouverture, et quelque goust d’une Tragedie.”

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De l’art de la tragédie to assist in creating an authorial persona that would lend credibility to himself and therefore to the critiques of the king within the play. He wanted to present himself as a tragedian and not as a court critic while still being able to admonish and warn the king. In the opening paragraphs of the treatise, La Taille explicitly mentions how tragedy should both please and move the spectator. The latter of the two he singles out as being of principal importance.45 Despite this stated goal, he implies elsewhere and by his careful choice of subject matter in the play that it is instead teaching that motivates him to write this tragedy.46 Laura Kreyder notices the confusion: “Il est vrai que La Taille n’assigne apparemment comme but à la tragédie que le plaisir du spectateur […] La Taille en revanche méprise le ‘menu populaire’, ‘ce vulgaire ignorant et barbare’, et accorde ailleurs au théâtre une fonction didactique pour les grands de ce monde” (It is true that La Taille apparently assigns as a goal to tragedy only the pleasure of the spectator […] La Taille at the same time has contempt for the ‘meager popular,’ ‘this ignorant and barbarous vulgar,’ and accords elsewhere to theater a didactic function for the great ones of this world).47 Elliott Forsyth, in his commentary on the treatise, gives a possible explanation for the contradiction. For La Taille, these three functions work together since in pleasing and in moving the spectators, he can better get them to discover and assimilate the moral message. Forsyth writes: Tel est le but que se propose notre dramaturge, et l’on verra plus loin que les deux tragédies, fondées sur des histoires ‘que la Verité mesme a dictées’, répondent nettement à cette intention […] La Taille pense non seulement au plaisir que [les émotions éprouvées] peuvent procurer, mais aussi au fait que de telles émotions […] tendent à renforcer la leçon morale et religieuse qui se dégage de la pièce.48

45  La Taille, De l’art de la tragédie, vv. 39–46. 46  See La Taille De l’art de la tragédie, vv. 18–22. In his exposition, La Taille never actually uses the word “teach.” However, he does explain that he is writing in order that “je puisse quant et quant monstrer à l’œil de tous un des plus merveilleux secrets de toute la Bible, un des plus estranges mysteres de ce grand Seigneur du monde, et une de ses plus terribles providences.” It seems to me that the goal for revealing the Bible’s secrets in this case is to teach a moral lesson to the spectator. 47  Laura Kreyder, “Sur la dramaturgie de La Taille: L’art de la tragédie,” in Le Théâtre biblique de Jean de la Taille: Etudes sur Saül le Furieux, De l’art de la tragédie, La Famine ou les Gabéonites, ed. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998), 139. 48  Forsyth, introduction to Saül, xxxi.

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Such is the goal that our playwright proposes for himself, and one will see further along that the two tragedies, founded on stories ‘that Truth itself has dictated,’ respond clearly to this intention […] La Taille thinks not only about the pleasure that [the emotions experienced] can procure, but also to the fact that such emotions […] tend to reinforce the moral and religious lesson pulled out of the play. The playwright wants to move and to please, but this should be at the service of the moral message. La Taille recommends a docere cum delectatione, as Forsyth characterizes it; in the words of Ronsard, “[S]i les sentences sont trop fréquentes en ton œuvre Heroique, tu le rendras monstrueux” ([I]f the lessons are too frequent in your Heroic work, you will make it monstrous).49 To teach effectively and authoritatively, the playwright needs to offer the lesson with a dose of pleasure and emotion for fear of coming off as moralizing. And so that Saül be given a proper hearing and not be seen as the admonishment it was, La Taille presents himself as a tragedian and frames his play with his treatise to ensure that it is received as such along with its critiques. As Kreyder notes in her analysis, this didactic function is to be received among the “greats of the world,” i.e., the king and his court. Thus, the focus of the subject matter and the “edifying goal” (but édifiant) of the work both strongly signal that the play is directed to the king, or at the very least, to those with political power of some kind.50 For this reason, it is all the more important that La Taille present the right persona behind the text, while offering a firm message within. La Taille’s true intention to teach the king is evident in the text itself. In Act III of Saül, after the prophet Samuel has reappeared on scene through the sorceress, the chorus of Levites pronounces: “O que maintenant le Roy / En un merveilleux desarroy, / Lequel git tout évanouy / Pour le propos qu’il a ouy” (O that now the King / In an awesome disarray, / Who remains all passed out / Due to the words that he has heard).51 This commentary on the play’s action reflects a possible meta-textual reality. The entire play constitutes a prophecy, much like the utterance of Samuel, and the king as spectator will possibly be greatly—and negatively—affected by what he has just seen and heard. Granted, the king has not necessarily sought the playwright’s advice as Saul has sought advice from the dead prophet Samuel. Nevertheless, the chorus of the 49  Ibid. 50  See Raymond Lebègue, “La vie, les œuvres et les idées,” in Le Théâtre biblique de Jean de la Taille: Etudes sur Saül le Furieux, De l’art de la tragédie, La Famine ou les Gabéonites, ed. Yvonne Bellenger (Paris: H. Champion, 1998), 20. Lebègue affirms that La Taille, from the moment he started writing the play, wanted the king to see it. 51  La Taille, Acte III, vv. 783–86.

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Levites speaks beyond the text, emphasizing the presence of a moral message, even though the playwright has demurred on that topic in his theoretical introduction. In this complex structure that bridges the action on stage and the moral and perhaps political goals of the dramaturge, La Taille also constructs for himself a prophetic persona, one that he alluded to in De l’art de la tragédie by proposing that he would reveal the Bible’s secrets. This prophetic role does not necessarily contradict that of the disinterested expert tragedian of the introductory treatise or the neutral observer who seeks clarity and truth in the opening sonnet. Both work quite well for the prophet. In fact, neutral observations or a desire to move the people often form the foundation of a prophetic utterance.52 In addition, the prophetic role possesses the didactic component that the playwright seeks. In Chapter Two, I already examined how the content of Saül’s message addresses the proper image of what it means to be king, but that same content contributes to La Taille’s prophetic persona. While in the play, Samuel observes and articulates where Saul goes astray, not only with respect to sorcery, but also with respect to his kingly rule, the dead prophet also predicts Saul’s end, which is a logical consequence of his actions. In his introduction, Forsyth articulates what La Taille’s goal is, namely, “Dieu punit sévèrement ceux, quel que soit leur rang, qui désobéissent à sa sainte Loi et aux injonctions de ses prophètes” (God punishes severely those who, whatever their rank, disobey his holy Law and the injunctions of his prophets).53 And more specifically, he includes “une leçon sur une forme particulière de la désobéissance, à savoir l’emploi de la sorcellerie pour la divination de l’avenir” (a lesson on the particular form of disobedience, namely the use of sorcery for the divination of the future).54 The character of Samuel gets quite specific in what he predicts for Saul, a specificity that directs the spectator’s attention toward the political realities of the time. Samuel predicts: Mais tu veux, adjoustant offense sur offense, Que je prononce encor ta derniere sentence. Sçaches doncques, que Dieu est ja tout resolu De bailler ton Royaume à un meilleur Esleu, C’est David.55 52  See the Book of Amos, for example. The content of this book and that of some of the other minor prophets do not really predict other than to say that the behavior they observe will lead to ruin. In this sense, their observations about the profligacy of their audience constitute their critique. 53  Forsyth, introduction to Saül, xlv. 54  Forsyth, introduction to Saül, xlvi. 55  La Taille, Acte III, vv. 755–59.

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But you want, heaping offense upon offense, That I pronounce again your final sentence. Know therefore, that God has already decided To give your king to a better Chosen One, It is David. Within the play, this prediction makes perfect sense because it foreshadows the transition of Jewish rule from Saul to David, as the First Book of Kings indeed attests. However, outside of the play, this particular prediction proved quite prescient, for the image of King David becomes associated with Henry of Navarre, the future Henry IV, whose Bourbon line will replace that of the Valois. La Taille seems to indicate this larger shift in dynasty about ten lines later: “Car tes Fils, tes Nepveux et ton genre total, / Avec mille malheurs verront leur jour fatal” (For your sons, your Nephews and your whole kind, / With a thousand ills will see their fatal day).56 In this instance, was La Taille attempting prophecy or spewing polemic? In other words, was the prescience of his dire warning taken from the First Book of Kings simply a coincidence? I prefer not to think so, since the specificity of the prediction clearly comes from La Taille, not from the biblical sources. In 1 Samuel 28, we do read, “The Lord has done accordingly as He spoke through me; for the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, to David.”57 This statement corresponds more or less to the first part of what Saül’s Samuel says. However, with respect to Saul’s heritage, the Samuel of the Bible is more or less silent: “Moreover the Lord will also give over Israel along with you into the hands of the Philistines, therefore tomorrow you and your sons will be with me.”58 The prediction of Saul’s death, along with that of his sons, at the hands of the Amalekites fits, but La Taille emphasizes that the “race entiere” (entire race) will perish because of Saul’s disobedient ways. La Taille’s nuances with respect to the biblical text, along with his attachment to a moral message, very likely for the king, all indicate that he does indeed fancy himself a prophet to the court, one who is capable and has the authority to speak truth to power. Forsyth, in his introduction to Saül, discusses the significance of variations in the text that personalize it for a Valois audience. He writes: Il nous semble donc que la situation décrite dans Saül le furieux et l’enseignement moral qui se dégage de la pièce présentent assez de 56  La Taille, Acte III, vv. 769–70. 57  1 Samuel 28:17. 58  1 Samuel 28:19.

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parallèles avec la situation qui existait à la Cour de France aux environs de 1562 […] pour nous permettre de considérer cette tragédie comme un avertissement sur les sciences occultes adressé par un sujet loyal et pieux, inquiet de l’état du royaume, à la reine-mère et à son entourage.59 It seems to us therefore that the situation described in Saül le furieux and the moral teaching that comes out of the play present enough parallels with the situation that existed at the French court in the years around 1562 […] so that we are able to consider this tragedy as a warning about the occult sciences addressed by a loyal and pious subject, worried about the state of the kingdom, to the queen mother and her entourage. While certainly loyal and pious, the retelling of 1 Samuel 28 follows the model of the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 18, where he challenges the false prophets of Baal who had been tempting King Ahab away from the God of Israel.60 This, of course, is yet another example among many, but the message and means of Saül strongly suggest that La Taille saw himself as prophetic and did not necessarily disabuse the spectator of this notion surrounding the text so as to amplify its impact and solidify its authority. With these particular prescriptions for moral behavior in mind, along with his predictions about the fate of Saul’s family, it is difficult to believe that La Taille was not attempting to admonish the royal family at the time the play was written or first performed, even while trying to maintain the image of disinterested playwright. He wanted the king to see it, and he tries to maintain his independence as a neutral observer. And yet, he still wants to be able to challenge the king from a position of authority in order to reinvigorate the king’s rule. Just as La Taille’s play comes out, however, the polemics will intensify after the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in August 1572. The rehabilitation of civil and ecclesiastical authority will seem like less of a possibility, and the focus will shift more and more to the author as an alternative source of authority that does not seek to reform or buttress the king’s authority but to undermine it since it poses a threat to the author’s or publisher’s ideology or political goals.

59  Forsyth, introduction to Saül, liv. 60  1 Kings 18:20–46. Conveniently, the queen, Jezebel, to whom Catherine de’ Medici was sometimes compared (for example, see D’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, “Misères,” Book I, v. 747), figures prominently into this passage.

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Experience Knows Best: Finding Authority in Foreignness

As supporting the king, even through critique, mattered less and less, authors turned to the support of their own ideology or political goals as a worthy cause to which they could lend their credibility. The profusion of political literature and libelles showed how important it had become to get the word out at all costs.61 Sometimes named but more frequently anonymous, the authors of these short texts still tried to position themselves as having a credible voice even amid the polemic. Moreover, since these authors frequently had no personal renown on which to base their credibility, nor any authorial persona to speak of, they nevertheless attempted to attribute to themselves an identity that would make their text more effective. Louis Dorléans, a lawyer and selfprofessed supporter of the Catholic League, represents himself as an English Catholic who has endured the trials of the Church in England and lived to tell about it.62 Rather than give his name, he identifies himself only indirectly in the title of his text as he claims to speak for all English Catholics to those of France, in order that those in France might still preserve themselves from the same fate as their English brothers and sisters. In his Avertissement des Catholiques Anglois aux François Catholiques, du danger où ils sont de perdre leur Religion, & d’experimenter, comme en Angleterre, la cruauté des Ministres, s’ils reçoivent à la Couronne un Roy qui soit Heretique (Advisory from English Catholics to French Catholics, on the danger whereby they are to lose their Religion and to experience, as in England, the cruelty of Ministers, if they accept to the Crown a King who would be a Heretic) (1587), Dorléans uses the history of what occurred under Elizabeth I to warn Catholics in France about what they can expect under a Protestant sovereign. On the Protestant side, authors mostly cited Italy and Spain in their fight to represent ideas, behaviors, or politics as foreign and therefore illegitimate. From a rhetorical standpoint, however, the stain of the Other did not always disqualify an argument. Dorléans takes advantage of foreignness in his interventions to strengthen his position; no one wants to hear such opinions from a Ligueur partisan. The arguments contained in his text are 61  For a comprehensive study on the pamphlet culture of the period of the wars of religion, see Debbagi-Baranova, A coup de libelles. For why they are technically not “pamphlets,” see Yvonne Bellenger, “Le pamphlet avant le pamphlet: le mot et la chose,” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises 36, no. 1 (1984): 87–96. 62  See De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:240. De l’Estoile identifies Dorléans as the author of the text: “Ce beau livre, intitulé Le Catholique Anglois, et imprimé à Paris en cest an 1586 […] estant, au reste, bien fait pour une mesdisance, une mauvaise cause aiant rencontré un bon advocat, qui estoit Loïs d’Orleans, advocat au Parlement de Paris.” See also Debbagi-Baranova, A coup de libelles, 306.

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therefore less important than who is pronouncing them, for many of them are routine polemic that might have come from any Catholic author. Instead, it is the authorial persona that Dorléans creates that infuses his arguments with a power that they otherwise would not have had. Through paratextual materials and through rhetorical sleight of hand, he attempts to make his fear mongering more convincing, backed by the experience of someone who should know. Dorléans begins his positioning on the title page with a quote from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. While such a move would certainly be ripe for analysis in its attempt to direct the reader’s interpretation, it is equally pertinent in constructing the authorial identity of the wise and concerned foreigner who has a moral duty to speak. This citation answers the first question that a French Catholic might have to an English Catholic willing to comment on the divisions afflicting France, namely, “Why does he care?” The citation from Ezekiel reads: “Celuy qui verra tomber le cousteau sur la terre & l’annoncera au peuple, si le peuple n’en tient pas compte, & le cousteau le frappe & le mette à mort, son sang demeurera sur sa teste” (He who will see the knife fall upon the land and will announce it to the people, if the people do not take it into account, and the knife strikes them and puts them to death, their blood will remain on their head).63 This prophetic passage serves less to characterize the author as a prophet and more to outline his motivation for speaking in the first place. If someone sees the blade falling and tells the people and this people does not heed the warning, it is the people’s own fault for not listening. Having seen what happened in England, the author cannot presumably remain silent as the same blade falls on France, but they condemn themselves if they do not listen. In order for this to work, however, the author needs a relationship with his French brothers and sisters. Such a relationship is founded on their shared beliefs, to be sure, but he nevertheless embarks in his first words upon a statement of solidarity to solidify his interest in providing a remedy to the French situation. In other words, he explains why his foreignness in this instance does not present a problem. While his interest is certainly in guaranteeing the peace and prosperity of Europe and of France, he also speaks about the closeness of the two countries that encourages him to speak out:

63  [Louis Dorléans], Avertissement des Catholiques Anglois aux François Catholiques, du danger où ils font de perdre leur Religion, & d’experimenter, comme en Angleterre, la cruauté des Ministres, s’ils reçoivent à la Couronne un Roy qui soit Heretique (1587), t. p. (Arsenal, 8-H-3767). The quote itself comes from Ezekiel 33: 3–4. The actual biblical verse is slightly different; it speaks also about the sound of the trumpet blast. In this case, I am not sure that the omission makes any real difference in the meaning.

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La France & l’Angleterre sont deux Royaumes proches, & seulement divisez d’un traject de mer : comme sont deux voisins, d’un ruisseau qui tranche le millieu de leur ruë. L’un & l’autre autresfois se sont veus grands & florissans : & peut on dire, que sous la Religion Catholique, Apostolique & Romaine, ils sont parvenus en une santé telle, qu’on la peut desirer aux Royaumes de plus longue vie.64 France and England are two close Kingdoms, and are only divided by a sea journey: as are two neighbors, by a stream that divides the middle of their street. The one and the other were at one time grand and flourishing: and, one can say, that under the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Religion, they reached such a health, that one can wish it upon Kingdoms of longer life. His benevolence is borne out of neighborly charity that goes beyond borders and a desire to see both kingdoms flourish again in the heart of the Catholic Church. Here, Dorléans does seem to share the goal of a reinvigorated monarchy, but on his terms, and certainly not under a Protestant king. As a member of the Catholic League, Dorléans has surely learned to temper his invective in the beginning of his avertissement. It is all part of the traditional captatio benevolentiæ; he calms the rhetoric to pull the reader in and to maintain the charade of a suffering English Catholic reaching out to his soon to be oppressed French neighbor. Now that he has established his motives, nay his imperative, in warning the French Catholics, the author sets his genteel hand aside, especially when he gets to the substance of his warning. What he offers is a frenzy of consequences for doing nothing about Henry of Navarre or about those of his ilk. The author piles it on: Et quoy (Messieurs les Catholiques) voyez vous point le danger de vostre maladie ? Sentez vous point la defluction qui vous estouffe: que pensez vous ? qu’attendez vous, que le cousteau sous vos gorges, les heretiques en vos maisons, le feu dans vos temples, & les soldats en voz villes, Qu’attendez vous, si vous recevez le Roy de Navarre, sinon de voir par tout vostre Royaume ce que quelques villes on veu durant les troubles : vostre religion opprimée, vostre devotion esteinte, vos Eglises pollues, vos Sanctuaires prophanez, vos autels demolis, vos maisons pillees, & bref vous voir comme forças reduits sous la licencieuse 64  [Dorléans], Catholiques Anglois, 4–5.

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arrogance des Ministres, Imaginez vous ce que nous experimentons en Angleterre, que si vous allez à la Messe, si vous retirez des Prestres si vous avez des chapellets, si vous ne reverez les Ministres, vous serez crimineux de leze majesté. Le jour, la nuict, en toutes saisons, & en toutes heures, vos maisons seront foullées, vos meubles desrobez, vostre argent pillé, sous ombre qu’on y cherchera les Prestres. Si vous n’allez au Presche, si vous n’y faites baptiser vos enfans si vous n’y celebrez vos mariages, on vous mulctera de grosses amendes : les tortures, les questions extraordinaires, les corbeaux & les gibets ne vous manqueront jamais : Bref estimez vous les plus miserables creatures qui furent onques.65 And what, Catholic sirs, do you not at all see the danger of your sickness? Do you not at all feel the inflammation that stifles you: what do you think? what do you expect, the knife under your throats, the heretics in your houses, the fire in your temples, and the soldiers in your cities, What do you expect if you accept the King of Navarre, except to see everywhere [in] your Kingdom what some cities saw during the troubles: your religion oppressed, your devotion extinguished, your Churches polluted, your Sanctuaries profaned, your altars demolished, your houses pillages, and in short, to see yourselves as hard laborers set aside under the licentious arrogance of Ministers. Imagine for yourselves what we experience in England, that if you go to Mass, if you protect Priests, if you have rosaries, if you do not revere Ministers, you will be criminals [having committed] lèse-majesté. Day, night, in all seasons, and at all times, your houses will be ransacked, your furniture stolen, your money pillaged, under the pretext that they are looking for Priests. If you do not go to Sermons, if you do not have your children baptized, if you do not celebrate your marriages, they will multiply for you big fines: tortures, extraordinary questions, crows and gibbets you will never miss: In short, you will consider yourselves the most miserable creatures that ever were. The key sentence in this passage comes in the middle where the author appeals to the reader to imagine what has happened in England, for his credibility rests upon it. The presumption throughout is that the author only recounts his real lived experience; he describes the tribulations he and his fellow English Catholics have endured under a Protestant monarch and ministers. He retells the history of the suppression and persecution of the Catholic Church in England as the essential content of his warning. At the same time, while his 65  [Dorléans], Catholiques Anglois, 38.

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rhetorical questions at the beginning of the tirade seem absolutely plausible from the mouth of an English Catholic, the sense of urgency that they convey and the implication that the author knows well the French experience, gives him away. In asking what the French expect, whether or not they feel what is happening to them, or what they think of their current situation, the text resituates the author back to the French side of the Channel, for he sounds much more like the native prophet trying to wake up his own people rather than the concerned foreigner. Overall, Louis Dorléans’s text, and his idea behind it, is a compelling one, but it relies on the reader believing that an actual Englishman wrote it. This is what moves the poetic “I” beyond the text such that it depends on a real person and his personal history and identity. One can imagine the same warning coming from a member of the Catholic League, but in that case, it would tilt toward political vendetta rather than to the authenticity and authority of one who has already lived through a similar horror and dreads to see it happen again.66 Dorléans’s text did not go unnoticed. Denys Bouthillier wrote a response to the text, but it was not to contradict what Dorléans had proposed but to confirm and reassure that French Catholics had indeed received the message.67 Bouthillier’s text sustains the fiction upon which the Avertissement was founded, for he responds as if an Englishman had indeed written the Avertissement. Nothing all that interesting or surprising comes out of Bouthillier’s text; it is Catholic League boilerplate. However, as a residual effect, it tries to 66  The framework of Dorléans’s Catholiques Anglois raises a question about the role of experience in the late Renaissance. Montaigne will later speak about it at length in his final essay, “De l’expérience.” About this final essai, see W.G. Moore, “Montaigne’s Notion of Experience,” in The French Mind: Studies in Honour of Gustave Rudler, ed. Will Moore, Rhoda Sutherland, and Enid Starkie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952), 51. Moore writes: “The age in which [Montaigne] wrote was bookish and pedantic. It seemed to be fast losing that taste for the particular and the individual which we associate with the Renaissance. The decline in the reputation of Ronsard, the strictures of Malherbe upon Desportes, are signs of a preference for lucidity over poetry, for the concise and the general over the concrete and the fragmentary, perhaps for ‘art’ in the narrow sense over life. Such an essay as this on Experience seems to perform the miracle of focusing the intelligence on this neglected domain of the particular and the temporal.” Moore is noticing here the reaction against the uncertainty that nominalism had created, of which I have already written at length. Nevertheless, Dorléans’s appeal to his particular experience upon which he relies for his credibility ironically rejects the particular in favor of a general principle about the rule of Protestant monarchs. His experience is not about creating nuance but about the wholesale condemnation of sovereigns who share this salient characteristic with Elizabeth I. 67  Denys Bouthillier, Responce des vrays Catholiques François, à l’avertissement des Catholiques Anglois, pour l’exclusion du Roy de Navarre de la Couronne de France (1588) (Arsenal 8-H-6744).

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solidify the disinterested authority of the Avertissement. Dorléans’s strategy and Bouthillier’s response suggest a reasonable expectation that the authority of the author, properly constituted, could allow a text to influence political and religious matters, could rally the people, and could maybe even serve to effectively protect France from a Protestant monarch. While arguing for a particular political outcome, the Avertissement focuses on the “François Catholiques,” on the people of France. Unlike Ronsard and La Taille, the goal is no longer to influence the monarch. Dorleans represents a shift in focus as he creates his own authority for the sake of his text alone, a shift in the evolution of the relationship between the author and authority that Agrippa D’Aubigné will sustain. 4

Prometheus and Prophet: Stealing the Truth for the Reader

Before his poetic dedication of Les Tragiques that I examined in the previous chapter, Agrippa D’Aubigné inserts a second paratext to buttress the authority of the epic poem that followed, as well as his own authority in writing it. In his “Aux Lecteurs,” D’Aubigné focuses less on managing the reader’s interpretation of the text as he does in the preface and more on positioning himself as not just the author of the text but as one who graciously bestows it on the reader. The gesture is not as subtle as it sounds. In fact, the frontispiece of the 1616 edition of Les Tragiques emphasizes the role that D’Aubigné wants to play, for it is subtitled: Donnez au public par le larcin Promethee (Given to the public by the thief, Prometheus).68 The text that he offers is a gift, and the implication is that it is as important as the gift of fire given by the thief-titan, Prometheus, to ancient humans. Of course, the gods also punished Prometheus for his generosity, and the gods’ warning about the dangers of fire was eventually realized. Thus, the title suggests that the text is a fundamental gift, but it announces danger for he who gives it and for those who receive it.69 This vivid 68  Agrippa d’Aubigné, Les Tragiques, Donnez au public par le larcin Promethee au Dezert par L.B.D.D. (Paris: Jean Moussat, 1616). 69  The text of Les Tragiques reflects this danger, but it is an ambiance surrounding the text that D’Aubigné deliberately fosters. Moreover, it is one that is intimately tied to his person and his autobiography. See Marie-Madeleine Fragonard, La pensée religieuse d’Agrippa d’Aubigné et son expression (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004), 26: “La parole juste est aussi un risque accepté : Risque très concret d’abord, puisqu’on risque une mort matérielle, par la persécution des Princes qu’on offense en disant vrai, de l’Eglise catholique qui pourchasse tout protestant […]; les lettres et l’autobiographie évoquent seules ces dangers par trop réels. La poésie évoque plutôt le risque métaphorique, et décrit la dévotion à la vérité comme une dévotion à la mort : on ne peut connaître les secrets de Dieu sans excéder les limites de la vie humaine, sans en rester brûlé et marqué, mort à une certaine forme du

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image—one that has loomed so large throughout the Renaissance70—surely jolts the reader upon picking up the volume. This striking image of the author immediately infuses an element of the divine into the ensuing text, which is, of course, D’Aubigné’s intention. He distinguishes his text from a mere eyewitness account, a framing that might have proven a valid alternative for D’Aubigné at the time.71 He elevates the text above a mere historical account, giving it a divine nature that does not just take the form of Promethean fire; D’Aubigné also positions himself throughout the text and even in the “Aux Lecteurs” as a prophetic voice, especially one with apocalyptic overtones.72 The combination of the Promethean myth with the role of one of God’s prophets makes for an interesting duality, for Prometheus steals from the gods while the prophet receives God’s word as a gift. Moreover, D’Aubigné could be suggesting that the prophetic word poses as much danger as the Promethean fire, since the text that he chooses to bestow on the reader announces a new and yet an old reality, one that will present danger for those that are not among the chosen and the responsible. It is a reality that it is as purifying as fire and as substantive. This particular authorial context gives Les Tragiques its power and creates for it an authority akin to scripture so that it may better serve the Christian community as D’Aubigné envisions it. monde, à une certaine forme de soi.” Death to the world and to oneself is that to which apocalyptic prophecy calls its listeners, not least because it is an appeal to the truth. This is the risk to which D’Aubigné will witness himself and into which he will invite the reader. 70  See Raymond Trousson, Le thème de Prométhée dans la littérature européenne (Geneva: Droz, 2001). 71  For more on a prominent but subtle use of the eyewitness account by Montaigne, see Andrea Frisch, “Montaigne and the History of His Time,” Montaigne Studies 29 (2017): 109–129. 72  For the various types of prophets, see Samuel Junod, Agrippa D’Aubigné ou Les misères du prophète (Geneva: Droz, 2008), 12: “[L]e terme est à coup sûr galvaudé, aujourd’hui comme autrefois, signe qu’il désigne une réalité qu’il est malaisé de définir, un être improbable, une fonction suspecte. Le même mot peut aisément se rapporter à un devin homérique, de préférence aveugle, comme Calchas, à un paysan rugissant de l’Ancien Testament, tel Amos, à l’initiateur d’une nouvelle doctrine (Luther par exemple), à un astrologue relativement compétent dans son domaine comme l’était Michel de Nostredame, ou encoure à un personnage public suffisamment ‘visionnaire’ pour que son projet audacieux se réalise, de son vivant ou non (Henry Dunant, Jean Monnet, Steve Jobs, etc.).” What I propose is yet another permutation: the apocalyptic prophet whose tradition is rooted in the figure of Daniel in the eponymous book or in St. John in the Book of Revelation. Both are prophets, but not in a traditional sense. However, D’Aubigné reflects, embodies, and recreates their role as retellers of a particular history for a persecuted people that announces that same people’s ultimate victory over oppression.

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The very first sentence of the “Aux Lecteurs” (To the readers) sets the stage but is at the same time a bit confusing and disorienting: “Voicy le larron Promethée qui au lieu de grace demande gré de son crime, et pense pouvoir justement faire present de ce qui n’est pas a luy” (Here is the thief Prometheus, who instead of pardon asks for thanks for his crime, and thinks he is able to properly make a gift of what does not belong to him).73 It is not the author of Les Tragiques who speaks, but Prometheus, who, as the title page has announced, is the one who actually gives the text to the public. The titan does not here apologize for his crime. Rather, the alliteration and opposition of “grace” and “gré” immediately signals that Prometheus instead seeks recognition for his gift and for the satisfaction its beneficiaries experience for having received it. The gré that he seeks over and above the grace begins this letter to the readers with the defiant attitude for which Prometheus is known. As a figure of transgression, he suggests that by offering the gift and consequentially with the reader’s acceptance of it, some law is being broken, or better yet, some authority is being defied. In this manner, the “Aux Lecteurs” introduces a problem with authority from the very outset, but upon further reading, the Promethean image does not quite play out as one would expect. For example, one can wonder whom Prometheus defies exactly or whose grace he does not need. The nature of Les Tragiques might normally suggest that the titan is here substituting some sort of earthly authority for that of the Olympian gods. Perhaps he means to defy ecclesiastical or royal authorities. While this scenario is logical and while nothing in the text necessarily precludes this idea, the problem is a bit more complex. In insisting that the text he gives does not actually belong to him—he makes a gift “de ce qui n’est pas à lui” (of what does not belong to him)—Prometheus raises the question as to whose text it is. It belongs to the author, who, in this set-up, opposes the dissemination of his own text. The “Aux Lecteurs” sets up an opposition between Prometheus and the author, which in fact reflects two faces of the same person. D’Aubigné is the author of Les Tragiques, but he is also writing as Prometheus. Michel Jeanneret explains: L’épître en prose [“Aux Lecteurs”] donne à ce combat une allure dramatique en confrontant deux instances du moi : d’un côté l’auteur, tenté par le repli, coupable d’enterrer son talent, et de l’autre le larron Prométhée, l’éditeur qui a arraché son manuscrit au poète, afin de le publier. S’opposent le parti du silence et celui de la parole, le choix de la 73  D’Aubigné, “Aux Lecteurs,” vv. 1–3. All citations taken from Fanlo edition (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1995).

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solitude et celui de l’action publique, le réflexe de cacher l’horreur et l’urgence de la dénoncer : C’est déjà le face-à-face de Jonas qui se dérobe et du Seigneur qui l’oblige à s’exposer.74 The epistle in prose gives to this combat a dramatic appearance in opposing two instances of the self: on one side the author, tempted by withdrawal, guilty of burying his talent, and on the other, the thief Prometheus, the editor who tore the manuscript away from the poet, in order to publish it. The side of silence is opposed to that of speech, the choice for solitude against public action, the reflex to hide horror and the urgency to denounce it: It is already the face-to-face of Jonas who hides himself and of the Lord who obliges him to be exposed. D’Aubigné presents a battle within himself regarding the text, but at the same time, this authorial identity crisis serves the legitimacy of the text. Jeanneret has already suggested the answer in the figure of Jonas, the reluctant prophet to the Ninevites. The author is experiencing the lot of most prophets, namely that of a conflict between service to oneself and service to God’s word. On the one hand, the author knows that he has an important and effective message. On the other, it may reflect poorly on him, or worse, it may get him killed.75 Introducing Prometheus as an alternative “instance du moi” allows the author to recognize the power and danger of the epic while still summoning the courage to publish it, whatever the consequences. The titan’s presence highlights the author’s anxieties while equating his text to the Promethean fire, giving it a sacred and divine quality. The opposition between Prometheus and the author also highlights an opposition between the author and God, sealing the author’s positioning as the Jonas-like reluctant prophet but also offering Prometheus a chance to admonish the readers, lest they make the same mistake about the text that the author 74  Michel Jeanneret, preface to Poétiques d’Aubigné: Actes du colloque de Genève, Mai 1996, ed. Olivier Pot (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 10 (emphasis mine). 75  The image of Jonas is a loaded one, especially with respect to the prophet’s personal authority. In fact, this was the whole issue with Jonas’s reluctance. He was anxious about being proved a bad prophet. Deuteronomy 18:20–22 states that if a prophet’s message does not come to pass, that prophet does not speak in the name of the Lord and should be ignored or even killed. See Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 245, where he writes that the Book of Jonah is about “a prophet who balks at his call for fear of being discredited by Yahweh’s regrettable tendency to be moved by a repentant sinner.” Jeanneret uses the image of Jonah because it engages the conflict between the insecurity of the prophet with the command to announce God’s word, whatever the consequences may be.

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does. Later in the “Aux Lecteurs,” the titan introduces an important image drawn from the Gospel of Matthew that brings together the fire of the text, the reluctance of its author, and an appeal to the reader all in one: “ce feu que j’ay volé mouroit sans air, c’estoit un flambeau sous le muy” (this fire that I stole was dying without air, it was a torch under the basket).76 The Promethean fire will die for lack of air, much like a lamp under a bushel basket. Prometheus quotes the passage that reminds all disciples of Christ not to conceal their light but to allow it to shine forth brightly and proudly.77 This act of theft is, therefore, a “charitable péché” (charitable sin), and he emphasizes “charitable à vous [les lecteurs] & à son Autheur” (charitable to you [the readers] and to its Author).78 While he may be guilty of a transgression, the Prometheus who speaks performs a service to the reader and to the author of the text whose apprehension about how the text will be received must be overcome. This act of charity soothes the author’s timidity and uncertainty by making the decision for him as to whether or not to present the text to the public while at the same time giving an anticipatory admonishment to the public about how to receive it and then pass it on, once they have had the chance to receive its message. Prometheus surely believes that the light of this fire is necessary, for by it, the reader will both be able to see clearly the truth and to interpret his or her own time and its events. In the subsequent pages of the “Aux Lecteurs,” Prometheus gives an assessment, by voices of others near and far, of the situation in which this gift will be bestowed, and he recognizes in his own way the semiotic crisis and the crisis of authority that elicits the authorial framework in which D’Aubigné chooses to present his work. From all over, people speak in these terms: Nous sommes ennuyez de livres qui enseignent, donnez-nous en pour esmouvoir, en un siecle où tout zele Chrestien est pery, où la différence du vray et du mensonge est comme abolie, où les mains des ennemis de l’Eglise cachent le sang du quel elles sont tachees soubs les presens, et leurs inhumanités sous la liberalité.79 We are bothered by books that teach; give us some that move, in an age where all Christian zeal has perished, where the difference between the true and the lie is as if abolished, where the hands of the enemies of the 76  D’Aubigné, “Aux Lecteurs” in Les Tragiques, vv. 5–6. 77  Fanlo confirms this as a citation of Matthew 5:15. See Fanlo, Les Tragiques, 3n. 78  D’Aubigné, “Aux Lecteurs” in Les Tragiques, vv. 6–7. 79  D’Aubigné, “Aux Lecteurs” in Les Tragiques, vv. 12–17.

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Church hide the blood of which they are stained under the present works and their inhumanities under generosity. Truth is a lie; inhumanity is liberality; up is down. The remonstrances that Prometheus recounts center on an inability to trust the words of others. When people can no longer distinguish between the truth and lies, they are experiencing a semiotic crisis. It is in this kind of environment that the light of Les Tragiques is going to shine, by moving people and not by teaching, since teaching relies so much on signs and traditions that have lost their authority. This cry for help is of course all part of the plan. It allows D’Aubigné to clearly outline in an exchange between Prometheus and the author the state of affairs that risks rendering the author’s text ineffective. Prometheus recounts the response of the author to his invocation of the above passage from the Gospel of Matthew: “Mon maistre [the author] respondoit, que voulez-vous que j’espere parmy ces cœurs abastardis, sinon que de voir mon livre jetté aux ordures avec celuy de l’estat de l’Eglise, l’Aletheye, le Resveille-matin, la Legende Saincte Catherine, et autres de cette sorte” (My master responded, what do you want my hope to be among these bastard hearts, except to see my book thrown on the garbage heap with that of the State of the Church, the Aletheye, the Resveille-matin, the Legend of Saint Catherine, and others of this type)?80 The author lists four Protestant texts that he suggests have been thrown out with the trash and asks Prometheus why he should submit himself to the same miserable fate, since he also risks having his text meeting a similar end. Would that they wait until he is dead so that he might not be accused of lèse-Majesté, an indictment that could potentially snuff out his text.81 All the better that this darkness surrounds the author, since it means that the text will seem all the brighter. If the double-identity of author and Prometheus evokes the prophet Jonah, the author in his description of his times has just constructed the city of Nineveh. He is here positioned as the unwilling, but still virtuous and reliable prophet, and the more daring Promethean voice promises to pass along the message no matter the risk. D’Aubigné augments the importance of the text by elucidating the challenges that it faces. In response, the reader may want it all the more because it is forbidden and because it risks being thrown out or condemned. D’Aubigné in the “Aux Lecteurs” positions himself as a truthteller and a bearer of the light—someone whose talent will not be hidden, per Matthew 25—in the service of renewing Christian zeal, highlighting the difference between truth and fiction, and reversing the uncertainty that has caused 80  D’Aubigné, “Aux Lecteurs” in Les Tragiques, vv. 21–25. 81  D’Aubigné, “Aux Lecteurs” in Les Tragiques, v. 32.

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pernicious forces to endure for too long. In the exchange between these two identities in the “Aux Lecteurs,” D’Aubigné creates authority for his text, for as the message of the conflicted and reluctant prophet, the text grows in importance and legitimacy the more the author struggles with what he has been given. Ultimately, D’Aubigné as Prometheus is willing to make the sacrifice so that the message goes out, and the consequences for D’Aubigné as author, for good or for ill, witness to the truth of what he writes. On the title page of the 1616 edition, in addition to highlighting Prometheus’s role, the author—or possibly the publisher—emphasizes this great personal cost at which this epic poem is circulated. Curiously, the four initials “L.B.D.D.”, meant to indicate the author, appear below the title that also indicates where Prometheus will deliver the text. L.B.D.D.’s text will be proclaimed in the desert. This final bit of paratextual material serves to complete the persona of the author of Les Tragiques and helps to bring together the dual representation of the author as Prometheus and prophet. These four initials refer most likely to “Le Bouc du Désert” (The Goat of the Desert).82 This Old Testament image comes from an episode in Leviticus 16 where the priest places all the sins of the people on the goat and sends the goat out into the desert to die, an image which anticipates Christ’s sacrifice for humanity’s sins. Prometheus, in his continual and willing suffering for humanity, also evokes Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The desert setting, however, contributes to the prophetic nature of the author and of the text, for it is traditionally from the desert that the voice of the prophet speaks.83 Does D’Aubigné wish to lend a salvific quality to the text by combining this multivalent texture to the framing of his text? He certainly does, but more importantly, he combines the Promethean image with that of John the Baptist as prophet and precursor in order to elevate himself and therefore the text to a bearer not simply of the truth but of God’s message as well.84 82  Frank Lestringant, “Le Mugissement sous les mots,” in Poétiques d’Aubigné: Actes du colloque de Genève, Mai 1996, ed. Olivier Pot (Geneva: Droz, 1999), 52. 83  John the Baptist and the principal prophecy that refers to him announce, “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3)! This prophecy is appropriated by the evangelists, here from the Gospel of Matthew: “It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: ‘A voice of one crying out in the desert, “Prepare the way of the Lord” ’ ” (Isaiah 3:3). 84  I must here distinguish between D’Aubigné’s perception of himself and the persona that he creates surrounding Les Tragiques. See Marguerite Soulié, L’Inspiration biblique dans la poésie religieuse d’Agrippa d’Aubigné (Paris: Klincksieck, 1977), 90: “Au lendemain de la Saint-Barthélemy, tous les chefs militaires de quelque importance ont échappé au massacre sont présentés dans les mémoires comme mis à part, sauvés par une bénédiction particulière de Dieu qui les destine à relever son peuple; A. d’Aubigné partage cette

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D’Aubigné moves the Promethean persona to the background once the body of the epic poem begins, all the while continuing to play up his prophetic character. A prophet’s message is only as good as the prophet himself. Thus, the numerous prophetic moments within Les Tragiques depend on the author/ prophet’s legitimacy as a mouthpiece for God’s message and will. D’Aubigné exemplifies this role in multiple ways that correspond to the movements of the epic. As the poet moves from “Misères” (Miseries) to “Les Feux” (Fires) to “Les Fers” (Irons) to “Jugement” (Judgment), he embodies the apocalyptic prophet, ready to usher in a new era of peace and unity. For D’Aubigné, his read on the history of the wars of religion and on their conclusion constitutes more wishful thinking than it does prophecy, but as an apocalyptic text, it fits in with the poetic persona that he wishes to create. Both the legitimacy of his text and his legitimacy as an author are important and reinforce one another in proclaiming a particular message about the wars of religion, namely that they were a struggle between a righteous and oppressed minority against a devilish and misguided authority. In any case, by carving out his position as apocalyptic prophet, D’Aubigné can attain his ultimate goal of proving that in the fight between Protestants and Catholics, the former constitute the one true Church.85 In the opening of the first book of Les Tragiques, the poet speaks as a prophet while allowing echoes of his Promethean identity to resonate, mostly through the repetition of the image of fire. The first 35 lines or so do not really mention any particularly religious or Christian themes, which would normally be unusual for a self-proclaimed prophet. Nevertheless, since the poet writes at the time of the Renaissance when secular images form Greek mythology or from Roman history draw the reader into the text, it seems appropriate. And so, he begins with Hannibal, who had to burst through the Alps in order to get to the Romans. The poet certainly adds another layer to his persona by identifying these obstacles, but more importantly, he repeats the image of fire not only to describe his disposition—“mon courage de feu” (my courage of fire) (v. 5)— but also to discuss the ways in which God guides him: “J’ay de jour le pilier, de nuict, les feux pour guides” (I have during the day the pillar, by night, fires for guides).86 In other words, the fire guides him as an internal and external necessity in following the right path. The inference, of course, is that the text can be conception : sauvé lui aussi contre toute espérance humaine, il se reconnaît mis à part pour tenir un rôle précis dans le plan de Dieu.” Did D’Aubigné believe that he was set apart by God to be a prophet to his people? It is likely, but that does not mean that he did not rely upon this particular role from a rhetorical standpoint in order to lend credibility and authority to his text. 85  See extended note on apocalypticism in Chapter Three. 86  D’Aubigné, “Misères,” Book I, v. 22. Cf. Exodus 13:21.

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that for the reader as well. For this reason, the poet must break through at all costs in order to combat for the “captive Eglise” (captive Church): Mais dessous les autels des Idoles j’advise Le visage meurtry de la captive Eglise, Qui à sa delivrance (aux despens des hazards) M’appelle m’animant de ses trenchans regards. Mes désirs sont des-ja volez outre la rive Du Rubicon troublé.87 But underneath the altars of Idols I notice The bruised face of the captive Church, That at its liberation (from the costs of dangers) Calls me, energizing me by its poignant looks. My desires are already carried off to the other bank Of the stirred-up Rubicon. The plight of the Church will lead the poet to cross the Rubicon; he proves his courage in his commitment to the cause and to never going back. This commitment later manifests itself in language that more explicitly identifies the poet with a prophet. At verse 35, the language turns from the secular to the religious, and at verse 43: Dieu, qui d’un style vif, comme il te plaist, escris Le secret plus obscur en l’obscur des esprits […] De ce zele tres-sainct rebrusle moi encore, Si que […] je sois propre à ta verité, Ailleurs qu’à te loüer ne soit abandonnee La plume que je tiens, puis que tu l’as donnee.88 God, who with a lively stylus, as it pleases you, write The more unknown secret in the unknown of minds […] Of this very holy zeal, burn me up again, Such that I might be ready for your truth, Other than to praise you, may it not be abandoned The plume that I am holding, since you gave it. 87  D’Aubigné, “Misères,” Book I, vv. 13–18. 88  D’Aubigné, “Misères,” Book I, vv. 43–44, 49–50, 52–54.

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The secret obscur (unknown secret) signals both prophetic and apocalyptic language, and in this passage, the poet makes it clear, so to speak, that the fire burning within him will reveal the secret. The fire purifies him and makes him ready to see it; it disposes him toward the truth. But he also holds a pen that will help reveal these secrets through his poetry. The poet’s obsession with the truth shows itself throughout the poem, as we have already seen in the previous chapter in the discussion of the preface. This fixation, however, is also one of the qualities that define the poet’s prophecy. His insistence on the truth helps to distinguish his prophetic utterances as such. Moreover, the way in which he speaks about the reception of that truth further highlights his role as God’s mouthpiece. In Book IV, “Les Feux,” the poet speaks: Ô Chrestiens choisissez, vous voiez d’un costé Le mensonge puissant, d’autre la vérité : D’une des parts l’honneur, la vie et recompense, De l’autre ma premiere, et derniere sentence : Soiez libres ou serfs soubs les dernieres loix Ou du vray, ou du faux, pour moy, j’ay faict le choix. Vien Evangile vray : va t’en fausse doctrine. Vive Christ, vive Christ : et meure Montalchine.89 O Christians, choose: you see on one side The mighty lie, on the other the truth: On the one hand, honor, life and reward, On the other, my first and last sentence: Be free or slaves under the last laws Either of the true or of the false: for me, I made my choice. Come true Gospel: be gone false doctrine. Long live Christ, long live Christ: and may Montalchine die. The poet constructs a clear dichotomy between truth and deceit within the wider Book IV in which he asserts the many aspects on which the Reformation differs from the Roman Church.90 He embeds this call to make a choice within 89  D’Aubigné, “Les Feux,” Book IV, vv. 699–706. Montalchine (Giovanni Mollio, from the village of Montalcino in Italy) was burned at Rome in 1553. Apparently, D’Aubigné has quite embellished here the story of Montalchine’s martyrdom for the faith of the Reformation. For a fuller explanation on the identity of Montalchine, see Fanlo, Les Tragiques, 395n. 90  See Fanlo, Appendice V in Les Tragiques, 865–66: “Le discours des Feux  […] distingue clairement huit points de désaccord—1) le sacrifice de la messe 2) le sacrement reçu par foi ou le dogme de la présence réelle 3) Jésus seul médiateur ou la médiation de la Vierge et des saints 4) la justification par la foi ou par les œuvres 5) la grâce en Christ ou les

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his exposition of the divide between the real and the false Gospel in order to make a prophetic point. The poet both delivers the divine message and calls the reader to accept it or choose slavery, dishonor, and falsity. The poet echoes other prophets before him. For example, in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, the prophet in question reminds the ancient Israelites that they must choose a life of righteousness and not lies lest God drive them out of Jerusalem and the Temple.91 At the same time, the poet positions himself further as the apocalyptic prophet in the subsequent verses. After exhorting the people to commit themselves, he veers away from violence, just as in the Old Testament prophets and as in the Book of Revelation: Tels furent de ce siecle en Sion les agneaux Armez de la priere et non poinct des couteaux : Voicy un autre temps, quand des pleurs et des larmes Israel irrité courut aux justes armes : On vint des feux aux fers, lors il s’en trouva peu Qui de lions agneaux, vinssent du fer au feu : En voicy qui la peau du fier lion poserent, Et celle des brebis encores espouserent.92 Such were the lambs of this age in Zion Armed with prayer, and not with knives: Here is another time, when excited with cries and tears Israel ran to proper weapons: One went from fires to irons, when few were to be found Who, lambs from lions, went from iron to fire: Here are some who set down the skin of the proud lion, And that of the sheep they again adopted. This passage opens the second part of the book in which the poet is going to tell the story of the community’s martyrs. The poet begins by evoking Zion, where there are lambs armed not with knives, but with prayer. While there was a time when “iron” was possible, the poet is going to tell the story of the indulgences 6) la sola scriptura ou les traditions apostoliques 7) Le Paradis et l’enfer ou le Purgatoire et les limbes 8) le Pape evêque de Rome ou chef de l’Eglise visible.” 91  Jeremiah 7:1–15. 92  D’Aubigné, “Les Feux,” Book IV, vv. 711–18.

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return to “fire.” The poet and his reader embody the apocalyptic perspective here, namely that of encouraging or clinging to perseverance and resolve in the face of persecution. Fighting back, even though it has had its time, will not save them now. A period of martyrdom will serve only to affirm their position as God’s chosen people. It is on this encouragement that the prophet-poet’s authority hinges. As one who articulates the truth, he reveals to the reader where to find what really matters. Pointing out the existence of martyrs and the truth for which they died flows from the poet’s prophetic role. Relying on this particular interpretation of the past, he reinforces a collective identity of the present and future. The prophet’s attribution of martyr gives their deaths meaning, and despite the unpleasantness of the suffering and death, martyrdom reminds the community that it is a grace and a sign that God continues to choose them as his own. No matter how many people die, the prophet can still announce that the people are winning the ultimate battle; this always constitutes the convenience of apocalyptic prophecy. In a time when authority has already been so eroded, the poet constructs and relies upon an authority that can never really be tested. If martyrs emerge, it is a sign of God’s favor. If there is peace—as there will be with the arrival of Henry IV—it is also a sign of God’s favor, since it signifies a taste of the ultimate victory. It is a disingenuous kind of authority, but in its versatility lies its effectiveness. While scriptural references are everywhere in the poem, the text’s authority does not rely so much on the authority of these references but on the poet’s interpretation and application of them. In this manner, the poet is able to remain in the acceptable parameters of prophecy for a sixteenth-century audience, another way for him to reassure the reader of his prophetic authority.93 In Book VII, entitled “Jugement,” the last book of the epic poem, the poet gets more explicit about his role and relies a little more heavily on scriptural sources, both in the positioning of his poetic persona and in the actual text. There are few better places to be an apocalyptic poet than in a book entitled “Judgment.” The book begins with a prayer out of the mouth of the poet himself:

93  See Junod, 86–94. He writes on page 87: “[L]e rôle du prophète, dans sa définition d’interprète éclairé des textes sacrés, est, de façon conservatoire, de valider une doctrine qui pourrait apparaître nouvelle, qui pourrait être « suspecte de nouveauté », comme le dit Jean Calvin.” This is ultimately what the poet is doing here; he is interpreting Scripture. However, there is the added component of also interpreting recent history in light of the Scriptures. This is what turns the poet/prophet more toward the apocalyptic, since these interpretations encourage and console the elect.

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Donne aux foibles agneaux la salutaire crainte, La crainte, et non la peur rende la peur esteinte : Pour me faire instrument à ces effects divers Donne force à ma voix, efficace à mes vers.94 Give to the feeble lambs a salutary fear [crainte], The fear [crainte] and not the fear [peur] renders fear [peur] extinguished: In order to make me an instrument of these different effects Give strength to my voice, efficaciousness to my verses. Several key words signal the poet’s desired role: “instrument” and “voix,” for example. But his repetition of the etymologically related “effects” and “efficace” also express his desire that the role he has constructed for himself be efficacious. At the beginning of this last book, he prays not just for his reader, but also for himself, that he will be appropriately seen for what he wants to be, therefore amplifying the effect of his words. If they are eventually so, to what end, then? First and foremost, he wants to instill fear of God into the reader. He plays on the distinction between two types of fear: holy fear (crainte) and cowardly fear (peur).95 The former is at the center of innumerable prophetic exhortations in the Old Testament, and for the poet, it is at the center of his consoling message. There is only one fear that counts, and that is one’s reverence for God. There is no place for the cowardly fear that would cause one to run from persecution or martyrdom. The fear of the Lord will get one through difficulty because it keeps one focused on the ultimate justice that will wipe away God’s enemies and bestow salvation on the faithful. The climax of the book and perhaps of the entire poem occurs with the apocalyptic language at verse 1055: Sainct, sainct, sainct le seigneur, ô grand Dieu des armees De ces beaux cieux nouveaux les voutes enflammees, Et la nouvelle terre, et la neufve Cité, Jersualem la saincte annoncent ta bonté.96

94  D’Aubigné, “Jugement,” Book VII, vv. 5–8. 95  For an especially helpful volume on scriptural references in Les Tragiques, see Elliott Forsyth, La Justice de Dieu: Les Tragiques d’Agrippa D’Aubigné et la Réforme protestante en France au XVIe siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005). Forsyth cites Psalm 111 as a possible echo in the text: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; prudent are all who practice it. His praise endures forever” (v. 10). 96  D’Aubigné, “Jugement,” Book VII, vv. 1055–58.

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Holy, holy, holy Lord, O great God of the armies The vaults set on fire of these beautiful new heavens And the new earth and the new City, Holy Jerusalem, announce your goodness. The poet repeats the word sainct, which evokes not only Old Testament prophecy in the Book of Isaiah, but which also echoes the Catholic Eucharistic liturgy, when the Lord is declared, “Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.”97 This citation of the Mass reflects nothing more than a coincidence, for as a Protestant, the poet uses the formulation to recall the holiness of God and his heavenly host who then proclaims God’s glory in this way.98 What makes the trisagion (“thrice holy”), as it is called, significant here is twofold: first, along with the language that follows referring to the heavenly Jersualem, it makes the trisagion forward-looking to a moment when God’s plan will be realized. Secondly, it corresponds to an earlier repetition in Book IV, from which I have partially quoted above, where the poet plays on a trifold repetition of the word “seul” in order to distinguish between God’s chosen and heretics.99 The poet expands on his description of the community of the elect to include forward-looking prophecy. The poet, after having identified the community of the righteous announces the coming of God’s armies from inflamed skies and the heavenly Jerusalem, announcing God’s goodness. In the Book of Revelation, we read similar passages. In fact, the next forty verses or so repeat much of the language and many of the images of this last book of the Bible. In Chapter 21, the author writes that one of the angels “took me in spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.”100 This passage from Revelation describes the Church, but it is an idealized Church that has realized the fullness of what it is supposed to be. Apocalypticism attempts to reassure a broken or oppressed community of the fullness of God’s favor. The motion of the heavenly Jerusalem descending emphasizes that this favor comes from above, not 97  See Isaiah 6:3. On the use of this passage from Isaiah in the Book of Revelation, see Jan Fekkes III, Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation: Visionary Antecedents and their Development (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 145–46: “John’s use of Isaiah’s vision in other parts of Revelation transcends liturgical applications and reveals his interest in it as a visionary, rather than a liturgical model.” As a Protestant poet trying to position himself as an apocalyptic prophet, the trisagion forms a solid connection to the prophetic and apocalyptic tradition in Sacred Scripture. 98  See Revelation 4:8. 99  D’Aubigné, “Les Feux,” Book IV, vv. 655–59. 100  Revelation 21:10.

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from below. Since the difficulty comes in the here and now, the poet attempts to reassure his reader in the same manner as the Book of Revelation by announcing the descent of the “nouvelle terre” (new earth) and the “neufve Cité” (new City). The other reassurance that Revelation gives and that the poet of Les Tragiques also offers is the blessing of a common identity. At the beginning of Chapter 22 of Revelation, the author writes, “Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of its street. On either side of the river grew the tree of life that produces fruit twelve times a year, once each month; the leaves of the tree serve as medicine for the nations.”101 Compare this to the following verses that come after the description of the heavenly Jerusalem: Là nous n’avons besoing de parure nouvelle, Car nous sommes vestus de splendeur eternelle : Nul de nous ne craint plus ni la soif ni la faim, Nous avons l’eau de grace, et des anges le pain.102 There we have no need of new dress, For we are clothed in eternal splendor: None of us will again fear thirst nor hunger, We have the water of grace and the bread of Angels. First and foremost, the poet has changed at this point to the first-person plural. While the poet uses this particular collective in other places in this book and in the larger poem, it takes on more intensity as he evokes the passages from Revelation. The specific mention of water and bread evokes a core characteristic of a reformed Christian community, namely a focus on only two sacraments, baptism and eucharist.103 The poet builds walls around the heavenly Jerusalem to determine who is in and who is out. He wants the reader to see his or her own reflection in those who are inside and are clothed in splendor.

101  Revelation 22:1–2. 102  D’Aubigné, “Jugement,” Book VII, 1063–66. 103  See Fanlo, Les Tragiques, 720n. Fanlo attributes the image of the bread to “la communion spirituelle.” This may be, but I think that the presence of water seals the reference to a distinctly Protestant sacramental identity. For more on the Protestant vision of these two sacraments, especially with respect to Les Tragiques, see Chapter IX, entitled “Sacrements,” of Fragonard, La pensée religieuse, 553–93. Fragonard’s description of a “doctrine sacramentelle […] forcément réduite” (554) suggests that this interpretation is possible.

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Finally, the poet emphasizes that death—which only seems like death—has no power over the chosen ones: La pasle mort ne peut accourcir cette vie, Plus n’y a d’ignorance, et plus de maladie, Plus ne faut de soleil, car la face de Dieu Est le soleil unicque, et l’astre de ce lieu.104 Pale death cannot shorten this life, There will be no more ignorance and no more sickness, The sun will no longer be necessary, for the face of God Will be the one and only sun and the star of this place. Being able to leave death behind, not in a literal sense, but in a spiritual sense, is of course a central theme to Revelation. It culminates in the author’s statement in Chapter 22 that “Night will be no more, nor will they need light from lamp or sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever.”105 This statement gives the ultimate consolation; not even death poses a problem for the “nous” in question. As long as the sun that is God shines on the people, ignorance, sickness, and even death do not matter. The poet in Les Tragiques, realizes fully his role with this passage since he not only foretells the paradise that awaits the chosen, he reminds them and interprets for them that the trials and tribulations of the present time are meaningless with respect to God’s shining light. In his commentary on Book IV, Elliott Forsyth writes: “C’est ainsi que D’Aubigné, suivant l’enseignement de Calvin, explique l’inaction de Dieu devant l’iniquité flagrante des oppresseurs de son peuple. La justice de Dieu n’ignore pas leur méchanceté : elle se manifestera lorsque Dieu décidera que les péchés des méchants sont à leur comble” (This is how D’Aubigné, following the teaching of Calvin, explains God’s inaction before the flagrant iniquity of the oppressors of his people. The justice of God does not ignore their misdeeds: it will manifest itself when God decides that the sins of the bad are at their height).106 It is not so much the content of D’Aubigné’s message that is striking, although it is important. Instead, he seeks to provide an authoritative interpretation of what the Protestant Christian community has endured over the previous forty years or so. The victims of Catholic violence would have of 104  D’Aubigné, “Jugement,” Book VII, 1067–70. 105  Revelation 22:5. 106  Forsyth, Justice de Dieu, 295.

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course been looking for meaning in their experience, and weakened centers of authority, that in many cases perpetrated the violence against them, can no longer sufficiently or legitimately interpret their experience or its relationship to God’s plan. It is not that these former centers of authority do not have an interpretation: with respect to the Catholic Church, they are heretics, and with respect to the King or the Court, they are dissidents. In either case, they deserve their just punishments. Crown and crosier, however, no longer retain unique possession of the fire of truth. D’Aubigné as prophet and as poet has shared that fire with his readers and has positioned himself as such, in the line of the many prophets before him as a legitimate voice of God’s will for his chosen. The poet ends his epic with an exclamation point on his prophetic role: Chetif je ne puis plus approcher de mon œil L’œil du ciel, je ne puis supporter le soleil, Encor tout esblouy en raisons je me fonde Pour de mon ame voir la grand’ ame du monde, Sçavoir ce qu’on ne sçait, et qu’on ne peut sçavoir, Ce que n’a ouy l’oreille, et que l’œil n’a peû voir : Mes sens n’ont plus de sens, l’esprit de moy s’envolle, Le cœur ravy se taist, ma bouche est sans parolle : Tout meurt, l’ame s’enfuit, et reprenant son lieu Extatique se pasme au giron de son Dieu.107 Sickly, I can no longer bring my eye closer to The eye of Heaven, I cannot endure the Sun, Still all blinded, in words I base myself To see with my soul the great soul of the World, To know that which one does not know and cannot know, What ear has not heard, and what eye has not been able to see: My senses no longer make sense, my spirit takes flight, The heart in awe is silenced, my mouth is without speech: All dies, the soul flees, and retaking its place Ecstatic, swoons in the bosom of its God. Tired at the end of his long gaze into the sun, the poet fades into the knowledge that he has conveyed. In a final acknowledgment to the crisis that his poem combats, he insists that his journey has led to knowing what is not or cannot 107  D’Aubigné, “Jugement,” Book VII, vv. 1209–18.

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be known. This knowledge that is so difficult to obtain is not to be feared, for he cites St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:9: “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him.” Overcoming an epistemological problem lies at the heart of his mission; this is the reason for which prophets exist, namely, to reveal to God’s people what they cannot figure out for themselves but is more beautiful than anything eye has seen or ear heard. Having set the reader on that course, the poet can now end the mission in an exit that recalls that of Elijah in the Second Book of Kings: “As [Elijah and Elisha] were going along and talking, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire which separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind to heaven.”108 The poet does not ride up into heaven on a chariot, but the flight of his soul upwards signals the confirmation of his divinely sanctioned prophetic mission through his reward, a reward that, he reminds the reader, is beyond imagination.109 It is the poet’s way of enjoining one final commitment of trust from the part of the reader that his authority is good and that his prophecy is truth and that it is or will be fulfilled. 5

Conclusion

In the Old Testament, prophecy became more and more apocalyptic as the power structures that ruled the Hebrew people were swept away. It reached its height under the authority of the Seleucid Greek dynasty that persecuted them just before the arrival of Christ.110 Both God and any sort of legitimate earthly authority seemed distant. Thus, it was up to the apocalyptic prophets, like Daniel, to claim their own authority and to make the connection between episodes from Israel’s graced past and the difficulties of the present. The history of Hebrew apocalyptic texts was meant to frame the present and to reassure the populace that God was indeed still in charge. It is a difficult proposition, since everywhere, it looks like total defeat. D’Aubigné takes advantage of its themes and structure to make an attempt. At the same time, the text does not have to be apocalyptic prophecy in order for the author to be constructing authority. With Ronsard, La Taille, and Louis Dorléans, a rudderless world was sufficient 108  2 Kings 2:11. 109  The poet does cite directly 1 Corinthians 2:9. 110  See Anathea E. Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2014). The entire second part of the book is devoted to the Jewish reaction to Seleucid rule in the Book of Daniel and elsewhere.

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to incite them to intervene, relying on what little authority they themselves could create in order to persuade their readership of the credibility of their texts and of the interpretation of current and recent events that they propose. This entire phenomenon depends on the merging of the poetic “I” with that of the authorial persona or of the author himself. While this fusion did not emerge out of nothing during the wars of religion, Ronsard represented a turning point in its evolution. With his particular renown and poetic skill, he accelerated this trend in order to heighten the influence of his political poetry. He sought to use his position as the Prince of Poets to try to settle the debate and bring unity to France once and for all. Protestant critics rebuffed Ronsard’s grasp at authority by seizing upon Ronsard’s personal appeals in the political sphere with correspondingly personal criticisms. These forces caused Ronsard’s person, his poetic persona, and the poetic “I” to become more and more assimilated such that Ronsard’s poetic reputation began to suffer for the personal attacks. His example shows the dangers of trying to fill the absence of authority during the semiotic crisis, namely the danger that one’s personal authority could just as easily come under scrutiny and that others might call into question the historical details of the life of the author himself. This never really stops Ronsard from returning to his personal authority again as he seeks to defend himself with his usual poetic flourishes. In this sense, he demonstrates how, even amid a crisis of authority, the poetic “I” can still reinforce one’s words. If anything, the case of Ronsard shows that the recombination of the different authorial identities creates a sort of symbiosis between all three rather than the building up of one at the expense of another. In Saül le furieux, La Taille uses the biblical story of King Saul to warn the king, and he adds his theoretical text on tragedy as well as some other paratextual material to position himself on the one hand as a disinterested observer, but on the other a prophet whose dire warning could potentially be as divinely sanctioned as Samuel’s predictions to the fallen Saul in the tragic play. Saül is particularly pertinent since the play challenges the authority of the king while at the same time trying to strengthen it; the playwright attempts to solidify his own authority by making it one that not only counsels kings but presents them with an opportunity to refound their authority in response to the prophet’s warning. It is an interpretation of history that suggests that the king’s reign is unfolding as Saul’s did and that the king must therefore act to reverse course. Like Ronsard, La Taille is still interested in using the authority that he claims for himself to support the king as a means to unite his subjects. With Louis Dorléans’s text, the concern for maintaining traditional sources of authority is less of a concern. He decides rather to appeal directly to the people, but in order to do so, he stakes his credibility on the identity of an English

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Catholic speaking to French Catholics. This persona of someone who has endured the trials of a Protestant monarch is necessary so that the text does not come off as just another example of Leaguer polemic. The reader must understand that the different levels of the “I” have been subsumed into the speaker in the text, regardless of whether or not the reader knows who wrote it. In fact, the gambit only works if the reader does not know that it is Louis Dorléans. The author builds his credibility on a foundation of personal and historical experience of Elizabeth’s Protestant reign in order to warn against the coming persecution that would come with Henry of Navarre. D’Aubigné takes this prophetic positioning to another level, attempting through his epic poem to prophesy about the future of the Church and possibly even humanity. Through his dual positioning as both poet-prophet and Prometheus, he proclaims simultaneously that he has a message and that the message is one that is like the fire that Prometheus has stolen from the gods. In addition, it is one that, like for Prometheus, comes at great personal cost. D’Aubigné appeals to this authorial positioning throughout the text as he continually pronounces on what the previous forty years of civil wars mean for the future of his fellow Protestants and therefore for the true Church. While La Taille’s prophecy focuses on bestowing authority back onto the king, D’Aubigné focuses more on creating a newfound authority for the reformed religion. It is ultimately a political battle, since the peace that comes with Henry of Navarre’s ascent to the throne is only a confirmation that the “New Jerusalem” has arrived and that the poet, like John the Baptist, can now decrease in the face of the advent of a new, more solid authority. All of these movements in the search of authority where authority has failed politically, religiously, and textually try to offer another way out of the semiotic crisis beyond representation and interpretation but while still having recourse to some of the other phenomena that we have examined in chapters two and three. These movements reflect a moment in the relationship between the text, the author, and the author’s own authority whose evolution accelerated beginning with Ronsard and culminating with D’Aubigné. Remedying the crisis of authority takes on a new urgency, and it is necessary to not only repair but to augment the authority of the “I” in the text with help from the authorial persona and the author behind it. At first, this newly credible authorial voice sought to build up civil and religious authority, but ultimately the focus centered more on the author himself and what his text could do for the community of readers. Civil and religious authority had been so wounded, that this was where the focus had to be. Authors needed to be authorities unto themselves, and their texts attempted to perform the social and political function of bringing together communities by presenting a prophetic view of history that

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lent an air of divine sanction to their view of the present. In the case of France and her people, this interpretation of the ancient past as it corresponded to the present could give them the cohesion necessary to overcome the conflict that divided them and move forward in the direction that they, according to these various authors and poets, were destined to go.

Chapter 5

The Mémoire of the Advocate David and the Discrediting of the Guises It began with a murder.* While the identity of the victim is not under dispute, how he was killed, and where, is anything but clear. In 1576, Jean David, a Parisian advocate, was returning to Paris from Rome, where he had supposedly met with the pope about matters relating to France and to his clients’ role there. At some point in the journey, perhaps even while he was making a stop in the city of Lyon, he was the victim of an attack. Some sources hint at a random robbery by brigands; others insist that it was the Huguenots themselves who targeted David.1 In either case, the papers that were found on his person would quickly prove useful to the Huguenot cause. In a France still trembling from the reverberations of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, an atmosphere of mistrust between Catholic and Protestant persisted. The peace of Beaulieu, approved by Henry III in May 1576, had brought a temporary and fragile respite in the French wars of religion, but Catholic rage at the king’s leniency, along with Huguenot resolve to defend this new promise of tolerance, sustained the tension.2 When the content of David’s papers, soon to be known as his Mémoire, became public, both sides had reason to attribute the worst of motives to the opposition.3 Initially, the incident would be of enough interest *  An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “The Mémoire of the Advocate David and the Discrediting of the Guises,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 50, no. 2 (2019): 421–447. 1  Elisabeth Feist only mentions that it was an “attack” that took David’s life in her vague account of the incident. Elisabeth Feist, “Le ‘Mémoire’ de David: Etude critique du préambule des Etats généraux de 1576,” Revue du Seizième siècle 18 (1931): 231. Ralph Giesey and J.H.M. Salmon state that not only was it a murder, but that the Huguenots were the perpetrators. Ralph E. Giesey and J.H.M. Salmon, introduction to Francogallia, by François Hotman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 91. Contemporary sources are equally vague. Jacques-Auguste De Thou (1553–1617) for example, only states that “Mais [l’Avocat David] étant mort à son retour en France, cet écrit tomba, je ne sçais par quel accident, entre les mains des Protestans, qui ensuite le rendirent public.” Jacques-Auguste De Thou, Histoire universelle (The Hague: Henri Scheurleer, 1740), 5:341. 2  See Barbara B. Diefendorf, “Waging Peace: Memory, Identity, and the Edict of Nantes,” in Religious Differences in France, ed. Kathleen P. Long (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2006), 26–28. 3  Marco Penzi suggests that the authenticity of the text may have been suspect from the start, emphasizing that the reputed content of the Mémoire may have been a ploy to create further division between Catholic and Protestant. Marco Penzi, “Les Pamphlets ligueurs et la

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004440814_007

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to register with one of the chroniclers of the time, Pierre de l’Estoile. At the end of his entries for October 1576 in his Registre-journal du Règne de Henri III, De l’Estoile includes the following item: Sur la fin de ce mois, commencèrent à courir les mémoires de défunt maître Jean David, Avocat, trouvés entre ses papiers après son décès, à Rome, où il était allé pour l’effet de la Ligue sainte, fondée sur le prétexte de la Religion en apparence, mais en effet sur les prétentions de ceux de la Maison de Lorraine, qui se disaient de la race de Charlemagne, et en cette qualité, comme bien fondés, prétendaient : Antiquum exscindere Regnum / Et magno gentem deductam Rege Capeto.4 At the end of this month, the memoirs of the deceased master, Jean David, Advocate, began to circulate, found among his papers, after his death, in Rome, where he had gone for the cause of the [H]oly League, founded ostensibly upon the pretext of religion, but in reality upon the claims of those from the House of Lorraine, who have been saying that they are from the race of Charlemagne, and according to this quality, [they], as if on solid ground, have been aspiring: To destroy an old kingship / And the people descended from the great Capetian King. David’s misfortune hardly seems worth a mention. Even if the document was indeed authentic, and the Guise family, the youngest branch of said house and the most associated in the popular memory with the Catholic League, was planning to use it to make their case for accession to the throne, the fact that this particular advocate was involved might have cast into doubt the legitimacy or the significance of the effort.5 Regardless of the humble advocate’s true status, either in Rome or with respect to the Guises, two versions that give account of the purported meeting between David and the pope were published around the time of De l’Estoile’s polémique anti-ligueuse: Faux-textes et ‘vrais-faux’,” in La Mémoire des guerres de religion, ed. Jacques Berchtold and Marie-Madeleine Fragonard (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 138–39. 4  Pierre de l’Estoile, Registre-journal du règne de Henri III, ed. Madeleine Lazard and Gilbert Schrenck (Geneva: Droz, 1996), 2:60. 5  Penzi, “Pamphlets ligueurs,” 139, addresses the question, “Why Jean David?”: “Il est d’ailleurs difficile à croire, comme le font Pierre de L’Estoile, De Thou, et le Cardinal d’Ossat, que le duc de Guise ait recruté un avocat marginal du barreau de Paris, sujet de railleries de la part de ses collègues, pour défendre ses droits auprès du pape. Ce choix est d’autant moins crédible, sachant que le duc pouvait faire appel aux cardinaux de Guise et Pellevé qui jouissaient d’un vaste réseau d’influence à la Curie romaine.”

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notice of the incident.6 In both editions, the publisher surrounds the chosen excerpts of the Mémoire with other texts that serve to frame the conspiracy described within. These paratexts create a slightly different character to the papers of the Advocate David in each case, and while both editions constitute a clear political attack on the House of Lorraine and on their very real aspirations to the throne of France, the respective editions line up along different fronts.7 In its focus on the Guises’ claims to royal succession, one version, whose precise place of publication is unknown, targets the political legitimacy of the self-proclaimed leaders of the Catholic League. The other version, published in the city of Lyon, hints at a motive that comes from beyond France’s borders. Moreover, the Lyonnais version, with its explanatory preface, will show itself to have a more lasting impact in the Protestant, and eventually royal, campaign against the Guises. The House of Lorraine’s enemies kept returning to this seemingly minor episode in the period of the French wars of religion and to the papers of the humble and bumbling Advocate David to whom they are attributed. Both versions of this text initiate a complex political attack on the principal authors of Huguenot opposition. Whether coordinated, or more likely, simply a product of its time, this attack gained quite a bit of attention and had the intended effect of discrediting the Guises. Published in the same year as the alleged incident, the Mémoire exemplifies the age of nothing said too soon: in its rhetoric of extremes, it reminds the reader of the very plausible fanaticism of the perpetrators; it adeptly employs paratextual elements to dramatically discredit a false text in favor of the overall historical narrative that it proposes; finally, it creates authority in its subtle attempts to portray the text as a historical artifact that the author or publisher has simply discovered and has a humble obligation to present to the reader. The many reactions to the content of David’s papers affirm their significance and credibility as authentic history, regardless of whether the narrative they propose is true. After all, the plan outlined therein to pursue the Guises’ claim to the throne of France did indeed end up weakening the Guises’ political position. Henry III, for example, wary of the Guises’ potentially treasonous influence, declared himself head of their newly

6  The question of genre poses a significant problem here, especially since many critics, including some referenced here, use the word “pamphlet” when referring to these short defamatory texts from the period of the French wars of religion. None of the texts individually or as collections really qualifies as a pamphlet. Once again, see Bellenger, ‘Le pamphlet avant le pamphlet,” and Debbagi-Baranova, A coup de libelles, 33–37. 7  For a discussion of paratexts and their editorial role, see Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987).

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founded League, presumably to keep watch on it and its motives and actions.8 At the time, however, the authenticity of the document was far from settled. In a classic case of plausible deniability, the Guises protested that David was crazy and acted on his own, a likelihood only confirmed by the absurdity of what his Mémoire proposed.9 Either way, it is precisely the confusion about the authenticity of the Mémoire and about the veracity of its content that makes it susceptible to appropriation as an effective defamatory tool. Goulart might have reminded the reader to excuse the imperfections and take the central accusation against the Guises as true. Taking advantage of these machinations that the Guises had difficulty denying, the two versions of David’s Mémoire, each with their own history and presentation, construct a picture that resonated and enjoyed a prolonged impact despite the ephemeral character of this new medium. In the battle between the Huguenots and the Catholic League, the various authors and publishers of the Advocate David’s Mémoire and its associated texts demonstrate by their rhetorical and editorial strategies a reasonably successful attempt to definitively write the history of a current event that may or may not have happened in order to isolate, stigmatize, and delegitimize a political and religious adversary. 1

The Treason of the Guises: The Mémoire and Papal Authority

At first glance, the remnant of the Mémoire that appears in print defies plausibility by the extreme nature of what it proposes. Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553–1617) says about its contents in the fifth volume of his Histoire universelle from 1608: “[L]e projet parut si atroce, le Roi étoit encore si prévenu en faveur des Guises, et si animé contre les Protestans, qu’on n’y ajouta d’abord aucune foi” ([T]he project seemed so atrocious, the King was still so disposed in favor of the Guises, and so energized against the Protestants, that one gave to it in the beginning no credence).10 The Mémoire emerges in print for the first time in 1576, published in Lyon and in one other version whose place of publication 8  See De Thou, Histoire universelle, 5:341, and Guy de Brémond d’Ars, Jean de Vivonne: Sa vie et ses ambassades près de Philippe II et à la cour de Rome (Paris: Plon, 1884), 76. Both De Thou and Brémond d’Ars assert a causal connection between Henry III’s belief in the authenticity of the Mémoire and his decision to make himself head of the League. For a more recent treatment, see Robert J. Knecht, Hero or Tyrant? Henri III, King of France, 1574–89 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), esp. 148. 9  H. C. Davila, Histoire des Guerres Civiles de France, trans. J. Baudoin (Paris: Pierre Rocolet, 1657), 1:398. 10  De Thou, Histoire universelle, 5:341.

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is unknown. Both versions were to be reprinted in 1585, and the Lyonnais version will be published in a preliminary edition of Simon Goulart’s Mémoires de la Ligue in that same year.11 In 1576, the version whose publishing details are unspecified appeared in a small bound volume of twenty-one pages, along with two other texts that announce a distinct orientation toward attacking the Guises’ presumptions to the throne and their legitimacy as political actors in the future of France. From the first page, the nature of this attack reveals itself, namely through its lengthy and descriptive title: Abrégé d’un discours faict avec sa Saincteté par aucuns de ses confidans, apres le departement de M. l’Evesque de Paris, de Rome, pour ruiner la maison de France par elle mesmes, & rendre un nouveau Roy vassal du Pape: trouvé es papiers & memoires de l’advocat David, avec un advertissement à tous bons & naturels François.12 A relatively concise formulation for the time, the title for the entire collection, and that of the first text in the collection are identical.13 It is this first text that constitutes the actual remnant of the Mémoire, and the publisher acknowledges when he labels it an abrégé that this remnant is incomplete. The text neither includes all of the Advocate David’s papers, nor does it in fact include the entirety of what the confidant of the pope said to the Holy Father. From a rhetorical perspective, these lacunae suggest to the reader the possibility that there is even more to the conspiracy that the fragmentary nature of the document prevents the reader from knowing. Historical evidence exposes this as a likely fiction, however, on the part of the publisher or author and as a strategy to create an ambiance of a wider plot. The pope in question would have been Gregory XIII (1502–1585), and while it is virtually impossible to know the precise identity of the “confidant,” two possibilities present themselves. One could be Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio (1527–1607), who was an intimate advisor of Gregory XIII and acted more or 11  Feist, “Le ‘Mémoire’ de David,” 232, states that the first time the text appears publicly is in 1576 in Simon Goulart’s Mémoires de la Ligue. However, even the primitive versions of Goulart’s history of the Catholic League did not begin to appear until 1585, at which time, Goulart was yet to be associated with it. For the complex development of this compilation, see Amy Graves-Monroe, Post tenebras lex: preuves et propagande dans l’historiographie engage de Simon Goulart (1543–1628) (Geneva: Droz, 2012), 178–84. 12  Summary of a speech given with his Holiness by one of his confidants, after the departure of Monsignor the Bishop of Paris, from Rome, to ruin the house of France by [his Holiness himself ], & make a new King vassal to the Pope: found among the papers and memoirs of the advocate David, with a warning to all good and natural French people (1576) (BnF 8-LB34-146). 13  It is important to note here that the foliation and pagination of the Abrégé, in addition to the reference on the title page of the two accompanying texts, confirms that their publication together was coordinated and intended. The nature of this intention is of course the subject of this study.

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less as the Pontiff’s secretary of state.14 The Venetian diplomat, Paolo Tiepolo (1523–1585), in a letter to his home court affirms that in affairs of state, there is no one of more importance to the pope and that Gallio is his “one and only advisor.”15 The second and perhaps more compelling possibility for this confidant was someone closer to the Guises and further removed from Gregory’s inner circle: the Cardinal Nicholas de Pellevé (1518–1594). Historians have attributed to Pellevé various levels of involvement in David’s mission, anywhere from a simple courier of documents to a Guise partisan who had the ear of the pope.16 It is difficult to determine whether it was likely that Gallio, Pellevé, or another advisor would have given such a discourse in Gregory’s presence, for the diplomatic picture is mixed. On the one hand, it seems that Gregory XIII had a particular fondness for Henry III, thinking that the French sovereign was enduring a difficult situation and was in need of the Holy Father’s indulgence.17 Moreover, multiple sources stress Gregory’s holy but easily persuadable nature.18 On the other, anger had indeed erupted at the papal court at this time in response to the peace of Beaulieu struck in May 1576; both the head of the Holy Office, Cardinal Giulio Santori (1532–1602), and Gregory himself expressed profound displeasure that such a peace was concluded between the Valois king and the Protestant seditionists and heretics.19 In either case, an actual conspiracy does not seem to make sense, especially since Gregory even seems to have withheld his sanction of the League.20 But as a way to suggest

14  The day after Gregory XIII’s election, he handed to Gallio the direction of his political and diplomatic affairs, but Gallio is never actually named Secretary of State, even though he functions as one. For an explanation of Gallio’s role, see Per Olof von Törne, Ptolémée Gallio, Cardinal de Côme: Etude sur la cour de Rome sur la secrétairerie pontificale et sur la politique des papes au XVIe siècle (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1907), 107–35. 15  As cited in Törne, Ptolémée Gallio, 130. 16  For a more superficial involvement by Pellevé, see Joseph de Croze, Les Guises, les Valois et Philippe II (Paris: Amyot, 1866), 1:426, and René de Bouillé, Histoire des Ducs de Guise (Paris: Amyot, 1850), 3:516. For a more active Pellevé, see Davila, Guerres Civiles, 1:396, and Brémond d’Ars, Jean de Vivonne, 73–74. 17  Törne, Ptolémée Gallio, 154–55. 18  See Davila, Guerres Civiles, 396, who writes of Gregory XIII, “Personnage dont la candeur & l’integrité estoient merveilleuses ; mais qui pour la bonté de son naturel se laissoit facilement persuader les choses.” See also Brémond d’Ars, Jean de Vivonne, 74, who attributes to Gregory a bit more savvy and opportunism: “J’incline à penser que Grégoire reçut l’avocat, fut aimable, ne le découragea pas, mais ne s’engagea point non plus, se réservant de l’utiliser selon le cours des événements futurs.” 19  Saverio Ricci, Il sommo inquisitore: Giulio Antonio Santori, tra autobiografia e storia (Rome: Salerno, 2002), 287–88. 20  Davila, Guerres Civiles, 397.

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and affirm Protestant fears about the Guises as agents of the pope interfering in French affairs, the mere suggestion of a conspiracy suffices. The sheer outrageousness of what the Abrégé proposes compounds these fears but also raises the question about how any reasonable person could have believed that David or his alleged sponsor, Henry, the Duke of Guise (1550– 1588) expected the plan to go unnoticed beyond such an intimate audience.21 A careful—or perhaps even cursory—reading confirms this, for it proposes a comprehensive and rigorous program to radically change the state of affairs in France, a state of affairs that the author of the Abrégé admits in the opening sentence has not been good for the Church. The author writes: “It is a certain thing that the wars in France have brought more damage than advancement to the holy Church, if only for the freedom to write about and defame at one’s pleasure the Holy See, which has caused the heretics to toughen and most Catholics to be despised and mocked.”22 This opening sentence, meant to be an observation about what the wars of religion have wrought to this point, resembles more closely an accusation against those who seem to have taken advantage of the wars to malign the Church.23 To the Protestant reader, this represents a subtle encouragement that they are having an effect on Catholic leaders, to the extent that said leaders have reacted with an elaborate plan to take over. In other words, the Huguenots’ work is not yet done; the Catholic League is capable of so much more, and the reader needs to react appropriately by way of further resistance. This is all the more the case, since the text that follows this opening lament about the state of France and the Church assumes 21  Penzi, “Pamphlets ligueurs,” 140, expresses just such a state of disbelief: “Le texte, d’ailleurs, est d’un radicalisme et d’un ultramontanisme exacerbés, trop manifestement anti-monarchiques. Un tel programme, bien plus radical que les écrits attribués à la Ligue de 1576, aurait pu causer la perte d’Henri de Guise.” 22  Abrégé, 3: “C’est chose certaine que les guerres de la France ont plus apporté de dommage que d’avancement à la saincte Eglise, quand ce ne seroit que pour la liberté d’escrire & detracter à plaisir du sainct Siege, dont est advenu un endurcissement aux heretiques, & un mespris & mocquerie à la pluspart des Catholiques.” 23  See Denis Crouzet, Les Guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525–vers 1610 (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990) 2:239–49. Crouzet describes a post-Saint Bartholomew’s Day atmosphere of violence characterized not by massacre but by pillaging and a constant nuisance afflicted upon the population by soldiers of both sides. He writes: “La violence a été et est insupportable parce que, la confession des hommes étant indifférente aux violents, elle les agressait et agresse encore sans discernement. Le monde d’après la Saint-Barthélemy se noircit et s’imprègne d’une vision désespérée, parce que ses frontières reconnues se dissolvent : les soldats catholiques agressent des populations catholiques, des populations huguenotes sont maltraitées par la soldatesque huguenote” (239–40). This glimpse of the everyday reality of the wars seems to correspond with the assessment of the situation at the beginning of the Abrégé.

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that there lies in wait a Catholic majority that will take up arms and stand behind the Guises in defense of the Church against their Protestant enemies. The real enemy, however, sits on the throne. The recognition by the author that things are not going well in France finds its blame ultimately in the Capetian king: “In addition, the result of the victories [that were] reduced to a peace shameful to the King and prejudicial to the Church has finally made known that even though the Capetian race has succeeded to the temporal administration of the kingdom of Charlemagne, it has not at all succeeded to the apostolic benediction, attached alone to the posterity of the aforementioned Charlemagne.”24 Once again, observation turns to accusation; the purported peace between Catholics and Protestants not only hurts king and Church, but it is a consequence—a sign, even—of the illegitimate authority of the Valois line. The continued rule of the descendants of Hugh Capet (940–996) has brought not just bad fortune but a “perpetual curse” that has rendered the Capetians “refractory and disobedient to the Church.”25 Thus, it is no wonder that errors such as the idea of an independent Gallican Church, the Albigensian heresy, the Poor of Lyon (the Waldensians), Lutherans, and now the Calvinists were able to flourish.26 True peace has not yet come because everything that these illegitimate kings touch fails to last.27 Fortunately for all true Catholics, God, after this last peace of the previous May, is providing an opportunity to remedy the situation, not only because of the increased prominence of the Guises, who happen to be the legitimate heirs, but also because of the concrete manifestations of the Capetian curse, which include descendants born with bad habits and disposition and many 24  A  brégé, 3: “Aussi l’issue des victoires reduittes à une paix honteuse au Roy, & prejudiciable à l’eglise, a finalement fait cognoistre que combien que la race de Capet ait succedé à l’administration temporelle du royaume de Charlemaigne, elle n’a point toutesfois succedé à la benediction Apostolique, affectee à la posterité dudict Charlemaigne tant seulement.” The peace in question was the Edict of Beaulieu, signed by Henry III on 6 May 1576. See Knecht, Hero or Tyrant?, 108–10. Henry’s brother, François, the Duke of Anjou, was supporting the Huguenots, forcing the King’s hand and pressuring him to reach an accord that was less favorable to Catholics. The creation of the Catholic League was a direct response, and this was presumably yet more evidence that the Valois did not enjoy the “apostolic blessing” discussed in the Abrégé. 25  Abrégé, 4: “malediction perpetuelle”; “refractaires & desobeissans à la saincte Eglise.” 26  Abrégé, 4. 27  Curiously, this line of argumentation more or less originates on the Protestant side just after the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. See [Eusebe Philadelphe Cosmopolite], Le Reveille-Matin des François, et de leurs voisins (Edinburgh: Jaques James, 1574), 97 (BnF 8-LB33-344). For the political implications, see Jean-Raymond Fanlo, Marino Lambiase, and Paul-Alexis Mellet, eds., Le Reveille-matin des François (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2016), 29–30.

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who die at a young age without issue, leaving no possibility for heirs anyway. The Guises, on the other hand, have had many successes during the wars, which not only prove their worthiness but are also a sign of God’s favor.28 Therefore, it is a propitious time to bring about change through a program of action that represents a quasi-revolutionary call for resistance from the ground up. It starts with preaching: “[W]e will order all the Catholic cities to move the people by salutary preaching in order to prevent by force that the sermons of the abominable sect be established according to the permission contained in the Edict.”29 These words will not fail to be turned into action, as the author also exhorts pastors to draw up lists of parishioners who can take up arms that they will then send to the Duke of Guise who will assign captains to these parish militias.30 From the top down, the king will convoke the Estates General; it will be a “grave made by the heretics into which they will fall,” while his mother the queen will go after the king’s wandering brother, Francis (1555–1584), the now designated Duke of Anjou, as well as Henry of Navarre (1553–1610) and Henry (1552–1588), Prince of Condé, in order that they be present at the Estates, lest they be accused of being rebels and condemned in their absence.31 These Estates will of course require all members to observe complete obedience to their prescripts, which will in turn be required to be “authorized, ratified, and approved” by the Holy See.32 In addition, all will swear obedience and fidelity to the pope and to the declarations of the Council of Trent, while the heretics will proclaim their repentance before ecclesial magistrates for the crimes they have committed.33 Once the king, his brother, and their mother have performed these services, the king’s brother will be brought to trial for his crimes, and the king and the queen mother will be exiled to a monastery, but not before the Duke of Guise has had the chance to put down any last resistance or rebellion.34 Curiously, what the text does not explicitly say is that the Duke of Guise will become king; it only implies it. The exile of Henry III and Catherine, executed by the Duke of Guise, will be “like what Pepin [the Duke’s] ancestor

28  A  brégé, 6. 29  Abrégé, 6: “[O]n donnera ordre par toutes les villes Catholiques d’esmouvoir le peuple, par predications salutaires afin d’empescher par force que les presches de l’abominable secte, ne soyent pas establis suyvant la permission contenue en l’Edict.” 30  Abrégé, 7. 31  Abrégé, 7–8: “fosse faicte par les heretiques en laquelle ils tomberont.” 32  Abrégé, 9: “authoriser, ratifier, & approuver.” 33  Abrégé, 10. 34  Abrégé, 11–12.

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did to Childeric.”35 Obviously, the Duke of Guise is Pepin the Short (r. 751–768) in this scenario, and “by this means, he will have reunited the temporal heritage of the crown with the apostolic benediction.”36 The Abrégé certainly reads like a Guise wish list: the heretics will be crushed, Catholicism will be restored, and the Duke will be king. However, in addition to being a bit too perfect, it is also unrealistic. The opening sentence acknowledges the divisions that exist in France, potentially even among Catholics. A simplistic program of preaching and parish conscriptions will likely not heal these fissures.37 In almost every way, the document could have served as a dream path to victory for the House of Lorraine or just as easily as an indictment of their overzealous plans to depose Henry III. While it is doubtful that the Guises would have been so careless and even treasonous, the Abrégé nevertheless makes a plausible case for itself not necessarily as an authentic document but as an authentic representation of what the Guises might do. Its verisimilitude suffices as fuel to the fire of its political attack: the Guises disqualify themselves as legitimate political actors through their fanaticism and their perfidy. The subsequent text in the collection contributes to the Abrégé’s believability, since it is one that reminds the reader of a claim the Guises have been making for some time, and while to this point it has been fairly innocuous, the polarization of the wars has all of a sudden rendered it more dangerous. 1.1 The Gesta Stephani papæ The Abrégé itself references the Gesta Stephani papæ only indirectly, either by its citation of the apostolic benediction or by its invocation in the last sentence of the forced exile of Childeric III (r. 714–753) at the hands of Pepin. Thus, the Abrégé assumes certain knowledge about French history and the lineage of French kings that legitimizes its proposal of the Duke of Guise as king. The inclusion of the Gesta as an accompaniment to the Mémoire of the Advocate David provides this information more explicitly to the reader, or at 35  A  brégé, 12: “comme Pepin son ancestre fit à Childeric.” Pepin the Short dethroned Childeric III in 751 with the sanction of Pope Zachary (741–752). Childeric spent his remaining days in a monastery. See Pierre Riché, The Carolingians: A Family who Forged Europe, trans. Michael Idomir Allen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 67–68. 36  Abrégé, 12: “par ce moyen ayant reuny l’heritage temporel de la couronne avec la benediction Apostolique.” 37  Historically, Roman interference at the parish level fed the Gallican defense of the French Church’s rights. For more on Gallican controversies from this era, see Claude Bontems, Léon-Pierre Raybaud, and Jean-Pierre Brancourt, Le Prince dans la France des XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), and Jotham Parsons, The Church in the Republic: Gallicanism and Political Ideology in Renaissance France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004).

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the very least, reminds the reader of the actual purported historical basis of this legitimacy. At the same time, from a Huguenot perspective—and perhaps even from a Gallican one—it constructs an interpretive lens through which one is supposed to read the Abrégé and also to dismiss the ridiculousness of the Guises’ claims. The title given to this ninth-century text reveals a great deal: Epistre contrefaicte & ridicule du Pape Estienne, sur laquelle est fondee la benediction Papale cy dessus mentionnee, fidelement extraitte & traduitte en François des Chroniques de Rheginon, moine de sainct Benoist, & Abbé de Prunay.38 Amid the inflammatory nature of this contemptuous introduction, there lies some truth. The text here reproduced is indeed a more or less accurate version of a text included in the chronicles, which the Benedictine monk, Regino of Prüm (d. 915), compiled and that first appeared in 908.39 Regino dates the episode described in the Gesta to 753, but the text was not written until 835, likely by the abbot of St. Denis.40 The text recounts in the first person a vision that Pope Stephen II (715–757) experienced on a visit to the Abbey of St. Denis while he was seeking refuge from the persecution of King Aistulf of the Lombards (r. 749–756). While on that visit and in a state near death, Stephen saw before him St. Peter and St. Paul, along with St. Denis himself at Peter’s right hand. Paul then tells Denis that he has the power to heal Stephen, which Denis in turn undertakes, saying, “Peace be with you brother, and do not be afraid: you will not die before you successfully return to your see. Rise in health and dedicate this altar in honor of God and his apostles Peter and Paul, whom you see, and perform masses of gratitude.”41 While Stephen vows to carry out everything that Denis has asked of him, the actual letter by Stephen finishes rather abruptly after he accepts his commission and is no more precise about what Stephen plans to do in thanksgiving for his healing other than the “masses of gratitude” that Denis requests. Nevertheless, after the letter attributed to Stephen ends, the document continues with the specifics of the recompense that Stephen offers his Frankish protectors: he anoints as king both Pepin and his two sons, Charles (r. 800–14) 38  C  ounterfeit and ridiculous epistle of Pope Stephen, on which is founded the Papal benediction here-above mentioned, faithfully excerpted and translated into French from the Chronicles of Regino, monk of St. Benedict, and Abbot of Prüm (1576) (BnF 8-LB34-146). 39  For a detailed exposition of the text’s composition, see Simon MacLean, History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 9–10. 40  According to MacLean, History and Politics, 127n20, the actual date of the events described is 754, but Regino reduced it by one year to make it fit with what he had read in the Annales Regni Francorum. 41  Translation from MacLean, History and Politics, 127–28.

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and Carloman (751–771); in the name of the Lord, he consecrates Pepin’s wife, Bertha; and finally, the most pertinent to the Abrégé, “by the apostolic blessing, he blessed and sanctified all Princes and Barons, obliging them and making them swear by the authority of Saint Peter given to him by Jesus Christ, that they should never presume, neither they, nor their descendants after them in the years to come, to establish a King over them of another race than that of Pepin.”42 The original text of the Gesta from Regino of Prüm varies quite a bit at the end from what is presented in the Epistre, providing a bit more detail and not mentioning Pepin by name: “[…] to make a king over them from any family other than the descendants of that one which divine providence had seen fit to choose to protect the apostolic see and through him, that is the representative of St Peter, and indeed of the Lord Jesus Christ, to raise to royal power and to consecrate with the most sacred unction.”43 The omission of these last few lines is potentially significant since it might help place the Epistre, and therefore, the Abrégé, firmly within a developing Protestant narrative on the Guises. In 1573, François Hotman (1524–1590) published his political treatise, the Francogallia, which I will present in the next chapter and that included the full text of the Gesta in Chapter XIII on the election of Pepin. Hotman’s text matches the text of the Epistre in the two principal ways in which the Epistre differs from the Gesta as it appears in Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle. Firstly, both Hotman and the Epistre omit the aforementioned fifty words or so that end Regino’s entry from 753 on this episode. Secondly, once the letter from Pope Stephen ends in Regino’s text, the subject pronouns change from first to third person, emphasizing that Stephen no longer speaks. In both Hotman’s version and the Epistre, however, the first person continues for exactly two more main verbs, at which point both texts then switch to the third person for the remainder of the text.44 At the same time, the Epistre differs from Hotman’s text in 42  E pistre, 15: “par la benediction Apostolique il benit & sanctifia tous les Princes & Barons : en les obligeant & adjurant par l’authorité de sainct Pierre à luy donnee par Jesus Christ, qu’ils ne presumassent jamais, ny eux, ny les leurs apres eux au temps à venir, d’establir Roy sur eux d’ature race que de celle de Pepin.” The translation here is the author’s, since there are a few variants between the text of the Epistre and its equivalent as it is found in MacLean, History and Politics. In addition, the Epistre uses Queen Bertrada’s nickname, Bertha. 43  MacLean, History and Politics, 128. 44  There are two other possible sources for the Epistre that the publisher of the Abrégé could have used. See also Rosamond McKitterick, “The Study of Frankish History in France and Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Francia 8 (1980): 556–72. On 569–70, McKitterick explains that the royal library was transferred to Fontainebleau in 1544, and that it did include contributions from the abbey of St. Denis, the likely source of the Gesta, according to MacLean, History and Politics, 127n20. However, McKitterick

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that it gives a different date for the occurrence of this episode—the thirteenth of August versus the ninth of August—and in the explicit mention of Pepin’s name at the very end of the text.45 Given the confusing nature of dates written in the Roman style and the probability of errors in translating from the Latin, these inconsistencies do not preclude the possibility that the publisher of the this version of David’s Mémoire took his textual and ideological lead from Hotman, and as I will show in the next chapter, his rhetorical one as well. The inclusion of the Gesta with the Abrégé certainly corresponds with the opinion that Hotman expresses, who denounced it in the sharpest of terms. He writes, “So wrote Pope Stephen, and, while his absurd folly ought to be apparent to us all, so too should we abhor the curse he placed upon the head of those who might acquire the kingdom without being descendants from the stock of Charlemagne.”46 His condemnation of both the pope’s interference and the Guises’ pretensions to the throne anticipates the character and focus of the Abrégé and its associated texts. The publisher or author inserts the Epistre to confirm what it is exactly the Guises are purported to believe as well as to signal to the reader exactly what to think of this ancient document: it is counterfeit, ridiculous, and a fraud. Whether intentional or not, the publisher of the Abrégé builds on a debate about the Guises that was already raging, further attacking them with evidence that the Guises have taken what was merely theoretical in Hotman and have put it into action by way of a conspiracy.47

does not specify the date at which the royal library took possession of these texts and what texts were included. Presumably, it is possible that the manuscript was accessible, whatever its location in this period. Another possible source could have been a print edition of Regino’s Chronicle, published at Mainz in 1521, the first of its kind, according to McKitterick, “Study of Frankish History,” 562. Hotman’s Francogallia, which knew three editions in 1573, 1574, and in 1576, and whose version of the Gesta matches the Epistre so closely, is the likeliest source. 45  No other extant version of the Gesta lists the date as the thirteenth of August. The 1521 Mainz edition gives the ninth of August—in Latin, “DCCLIII.V. Id. Aug.” Hotman, in his Latin text gives the exact same date, suggesting that the Mainz text of Regino’s Chronicle was a possible source for Hotman. MacLean, who bases his translation on an edition of Regino from 1890 by Friedrich Kurze, gives the date as “DCCLIII. V. Kal. Aug.”, or the twenty-eighth of July. While MacLean, History and Politics, 58–59, acknowledges some problems with Kurze, he affirms that it is ultimately trustworthy. 46  Hotman, Francogallia, 367–69. This particular exposition on the Gesta first appears in the 1576 edition, according to Giesey and Salmon’s notations on these same pages. 47  Giesey and Salmon, introduction to Francogallia, 77–78, summarize the debate that arose due to Hotman’s citation of the Gesta. The mention of this debate and its refutation in the body of the Francogallia first appears in the 1576 edition.

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1.2 A Direct Response and a Call to Action In order to make explicit the purpose of publishing David’s Mémoire along with the Gesta and to seal its transformation from developing narrative to outright political attack, the author or publisher finally offers up the last of the three texts in the collection. Its full title reads: Advertissement a tous vrais & naturels François des legitimes occasions qu’ils ont de pourvoir à leur juste defense contre les ennemis du repos de la France.48 With yet another verbose title, he reveals in this paratext much about the nature of the text and the biases that bring into focus the fronts on which it will push against the Guises. The Advertissement is addressed to all “true and natural French [people].” The first adjective suggests of course that the opinions expressed within reflect those of an authentic French person, and conversely, that there are those—obviously in this case, the Guises and their allies—who purport to be true French but, in fact, are false. The second term reflects a contemporary meaning of what it means to be natural, namely, that one is autochthonous. The use of natural is indeed xenophobic: the shadow of Spanish influence constantly loomed over the Guises and a surging Gallicanism that saw Rome as a foreign enemy to be chased not only out of the Church in France, but also out of the kingdom as a whole, was becoming more prominent.49 At the same time, the term could simply refer to the Guises traitorous behavior. In other words, they have renounced their French-ness as a consequence of their scheming against the king and at their attempts to undermine his desire to hold France together. The very end of the title seems to affirm this latter interpretation, since the Advertissement constitutes a justification of the true and natural French in their defense against the “enemies of the peace of France.” In the middle of these charged, accusatory buzz words, one can discern the focus of the document that follows, a focus that lies at the center of the 48  W  arning to all true and natural French on the legitimate occasions that they have to provide for their just defense against the enemies of the peace of France (1576) (BnF 8-LB34-146). 49  In the same month as the discovery of David’s Mémoire, the Duke of Guise met with Philip II’s brother, Don Juan of Austria (1547–78), the latter of whom was on his way from Spain to take up his governorship of the Netherlands. See Henri Forneron, Les Ducs de Guise et leur époque (Paris: Plon, 1893); Charles Petrie, Don Juan of Austria (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1967); George Slocombe, Don Juan of Austria: the Victor of Lepanto (1547– 1578) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1936). According to Forneron, Ducs de Guise, 215–17, the two became intimate friends and hatched a plan for Guise to take over the throne of France. More contemporary sources, however, fail to confirm either such a deep intimacy, or such a developed plot between the two. Petrie, Don Juan, 278–79, mentions a brief meeting between the Duke of Guise and Don Juan in early November 1576 at Joinville. Slocombe, Don Juan, 311, cites a letter from Don Juan to Guise promising him twelve thousand men.

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entire collection: legitimacy. Its use in the title is not necessarily revelatory of its use throughout the Advertissement, but it hints at it. It asks under what circumstances should Protestants and other Catholics who might want to defend themselves fight back, or at what point might they have the legitimacy to do so. In short, it is permitted when those who seek to command them have lost their own legitimacy. The opening sentence sets up the contrast: “All those who make or who have until now made profession in the reformed Religion in this Kingdom, or who have fallen into suspicion of wanting to favor [the aforementioned] or to maintain the state in peace can easily judge that ecclesiastical authorities and others who are associated with them have conspired for their complete ruin.”50 The conspiracy of Churchmen and of their allies has delegitimized these self-proclaimed arbiters of France’s religious freedom. Not only have they ignored the latest edict, “solemnly made, published, and sworn, and that should be like a fundamental law of the state,” they have stifled liberty in order to maintain their “pernicious designs.”51 They are the enemies of peace who have attacked anyone in their way, as they demonstrate in their open declaration of war against followers of the Reformation, whom they call heretics, and those who would seek to help them.52 Echoes of the beginning of the Abrégé resonate in this characterization of the Guises. In other words, it is no wonder that the Holy See has noted a hardening by heretics and a contempt and mockery for the majority of Catholics, if its surrogates in France have decided to “lead them to fires and inquisitions of consciences.”53 The enemies of France have sided against her with foreign enemies and have delegitimized themselves in disrupting what has been recently a peaceful state of affairs, legitimately reached at Beaulieu. These divisive designs reach beyond just the people toward a target that should cause grave concern both within and outside of French borders. Nothing defines legitimacy in the French system—or in any monarchy—more than blood, but to the enemies of France’s peace, not even this matters. The author cites their contempt both for the Princes of the blood and for the blood of our kings, “impugning their holy and legitimate vocation in order to transfer the crown to another family, or to introduce another way of government than 50  A  dvertissement, 16: “Tous ceux qui font ou qui ont fait par cy devant profession de la Religion reformee en ce Royaume, ou qui sont tombez en soupson de les vouloir favoriser ou maintenir l’estat en paix, peuvent aisément juger que les Ecclesiastiques & autres leures adherans, ont conspiré leur entiere ruine.” 51  Advertissement, 17: “solennellement faict, publié & juré, & qui doit estre comme une loy fondamentale de l’estat”; “pernicieux desseins.” 52  Advertissement, 18. 53  Advertissement, 18: “feux & inquisitions des consciences.”

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the one under which we and our fathers have lived for twelve hundred years.”54 His decision to focus on blood is a compelling one, since it represents a direct strike against the whole Guise argument about hereditary legitimacy. Since the Epistre is, according to the author, no doubt counterfeit, this blood that sits on the throne ensures proper order and lends all the more legitimacy to the peace that has been established. In response, he hints at the dire consequences, not only for the relative tranquility that prevails, but also for any number of political systems. He appeals to all good Catholics, followers of the Reformation, and even neighboring powers, that they join in France’s defense for “the conservation of states and governments that have been legitimately established.”55 The text’s call to action wisely attempts to build an extraterritorial solidarity, and in doing so makes another intelligent rhetorical move: it makes assurances that the so-called heretics and their allies are trying to achieve their ends “by good and just means, under the authority of the King [their] sovereign Prince, for his preservation, for the defense of [their] laws, life, and goods, of [themselves], [their] wives, children, & fellow citizens & especially for the glory of God.”56 This position lies in stark contrast to those who plot “but violence, blood, cruelty, and the subversion of the state.”57 The former undertake legitimate means, while the latter actors disqualify themselves in undermining what allows peace to exist in the first place. By the simple act of labeling the Guises and their allies as enemies from the title in the very beginning, the author of the Advertissement isolates them and reinforces their status as being in opposition to this peace. From a practical standpoint, this rhetoric is an important and effective one, for those who have had enough of violence and want to see France’s unity restored and her peace preserved have before them a clear choice. The three texts considered as a whole, however, reach further still, beyond practical concerns about effective politics, toward a more profound polemic against the Guises that seemed to resonate into and through the 1580s. The Guises and their plots pose an existential threat to France. The Abrégé and its associated texts, even though they certainly acknowledge the threat of interference of foreign powers, undertake what is principally a defense of the 54  A  dvertissement, 18: “impugnans leur saincte & legitime vocation pour transferer la couronne en autre famille, ou introduire une autre façon de gouvernement que celle sous laquelle nous & nos peres avons vescu depuis douze cens ans.” 55  Advertissement, 19: “la conservation des estats & gouvernemens legitimement establis.” 56  Advertissement, 19–20: “par bons & justes moyens, sous l’authorité du Roy nostre souverain Prince, pour sa conservation, pour la defence de nos loix, vies & biens, de nous, de nos femmes, enfans, & concitoyens, & specialement pour la gloire de Dieu.” 57  Advertissement, 19: “que violence, sang, cruauté, & subversion d’estat.”

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French system of government. In this way, the Abrégé further aligns itself with the work already being done by those such as Hotman. The fact that the Guises have no legitimate claim to the throne, while pretending as if it were so, destabilize the only possibility of maintaining unity and keeping the peace. Moreover, the Abrégé and its arguments create a diversion that deflects a standard attack against Protestants: it is not the Huguenots who are responsible for division and disunity; it is rather the Guises, who are worse than merely a political faction but who are opposed to France itself, at least as it has been constituted to this point. 2

Lyon Looks South: An Alternative Emphasis for the Mémoire

The Abrégé makes a complex and relatively clear argument about the nature of the threat that the Guises pose, but what is merely present in the collection of texts becomes central in another version of David’s Mémoire that emerges in the city of Lyon, also in 1576. Visually, several differences distinguish the Lyonnais version from its relative: the title, a named publisher, a short preface to the text of the Mémoire, and finally, a second text printed with it that recounts the 1576 siege of Antwerp. No version of the Gesta, nor any Protestant response to David’s Mémoire appears. The publisher has organized the two texts that do appear in a similar fashion to the collection that appeared in the Abrégé. Firstly, there is a main title page with the general title and two subtitles.58 Then, within the collection, each text is individually titled, with the first having an identical title to the entire bound volume. Similar to the Abrégé, the first word of the main title emphasizes that the text that follows only constitutes a partial account of whatever might have happened in Rome, but the similarities end there. In contrast to the Abrégé, what seems to have been a simple audience during which a confidant to the pope lays out a possible plan to address the crisis in France, the Extraict attributes a much more active role to those who might have been involved. For example, the Bishop of Paris is now seemingly in attendance; instead of an audience, it is now a secret council. The publisher has removed as much doubt as possible about the intentions of those involved, as well as their more active role, and consequently, 58  E xtraict d’un conseil secret tenu à Rome peu apres l’arrivee de l’Evesque de Paris. Traduict d’Italien en François. Avec description de la prinse d’Anvers (Excerpt of a secret council held in Rome just after the arrival of the Bishop of Paris. Translated from Italian into French. With [a] description of the taking of Antwerp) (Lyon: Jacques Pharine, 1576) (BnF 8-LB34-147).

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he highlights the conspiratorial nature of the meeting and of the papers that serve as evidence of its occurrence. At the same time, the writer of this title remains more reticent to outline exactly what this secret council has decided; there is no mention of ruining France or making the king a vassal to the pope. The threats to France’s system of government are downplayed, yielding to the emergence of a conspiracy orchestrated by a foreign power. The first subtitle, which explains that the text has been translated from Italian into French, confirms this focus. One can assume that any such document would have been written in Latin, not Italian. However, since Latin would have seemed more familiar to the French reader, an emphasis on the original language of Italian further frames the text and its content as being foreign to the France that it seeks to undermine.59 The shift in focus of the Extraict toward extra-territorial threats emerges from the start. The title page of the Extraict gives another small bit of information that could potentially help to understand better the text that follows as well as its origins, all the while signaling its future as a central text in the narrative against the Guises, especially when it is reprinted at a later date to sustain the campaign against them. Unlike the Abrégé, the Extraict lists its publisher, Jacques Pharine. Unfortunately, in this case, the likelihood of this actually being the publisher is uncertain. The rolls of Lyonnais publishers of the time name three with this particular surname who had been taxed in the years 1544–1571: Jean, César, and Jacques, the last of whom appeared in 1571 and is the most likely candidate.60 Nevertheless, it seems that this might be a red herring, designed to throw off any pro-Guise authorities from their pursuit of the real culprit.61 The actual publisher might have been Jean Portau who used Pharine’s name for this very reason. Moreover, it seems that Portau changed the spelling of the lowly Pharine’s name, replacing an “F” with a “Ph,” in order to make it seem less Italian.62 While all of these fictions and paratextual framings engender confusion when looking back upon them, they likely serve another purpose other than to protect the publisher or author from retribution.63 They give the reader 59  Penzi, “Pamphlets ligueurs,” 139–40, discusses the text’s purported original language as a mark of its likely inauthenticity. In addition, see Henry Heller, Anti-Italianism in Sixteenth-Century France (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 139–40. Heller identifies the pamphlet as a reflection of “ongoing hostility to both the Guise and the Italians in Huguenot and Malcontent circles.” 60  Eugénie Droz, L’imprimerie à la Rochelle (Geneva: Droz, 1960), 3:61. 61  Ibid. 62  Ibid. 63  On the religious environment in the city of Lyon at the time, Droz, L’imprimerie, 3:61, cites Arthur Kleinclausz’s Histoire de Lyon (1948): “[O]n demandait à Lyon l’exercice exclusif du culte catholique, l’obligation pour les protestants d’assister aux prédications et

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an idea of how they are to interpret David’s Mémoire, a suggested interpretation that is further solidified in an address to the reader that gives more detail about how these papers came into the hands of the publisher and what they mean not just for Huguenots but also for France. As the title does through its invocation of the secret council, the preface to the Extraict identifies the plans outlined therein as a great conspiracy: “Dear Reader, If ever there was a conspiracy made with prejudice to the King or the Kingdom, it is this one whose excerpt I now show to you and that was taken from a larger discourse on the things earlier designed at the Roman Consistory just after the arrival of the Bishop of Paris.”64 The author’s hyperbole, along with his restatement of the title’s accusation, certainly sets the tone for the rest of the address. In his justification for not including the entire content of the Advocate’s papers, he goes even further, signaling to the reader that the conspiracy is indeed quite vast, for from the lengthy text that apparently has designs on other states, he has chosen only to include that which concerns France. He then arrives at the crux of his warning and of what the reader can learn from this short sample: “It will be easy to judge how much the counsel of foreigners is often pernicious to a neighboring State.”65 This statement about the nefarious interference of foreign powers has the benefit of excluding neither Italy nor Spain, even though the preface will continue to focus on Vatican meddling. Among the ruin that this conspiracy seeks to cause, the reader can count on the oppression of the great families of France, the king and the House of Valois, and finally, the privileges of the Gallican Church. Lest one think that this prediction of the destruction of France’s storied institutions is “fabricated,” the author then identifies the source: “[T]hose who found themselves at the opening of a chest belonging to a so named David, advocate at the parlement of Paris, who made the voyage to Rome with the aforementioned Bishop, can give witness to what it is about.”66 Moreover, part of what was decided at this council has already been put into action, and thus, the threat is very real. Finally, the author states his purpose in publishing the Mémoire: la publication du Concile de Trente … Les Lyonnais firent encore mieux : dès que se manifesta dans les provinces un mouvement d’adhésion à la Ligue, ils s’y précipitèrent…” 64  Extraict, sig. Aijr: “Amy lecteur, S’il y est jamais conjuration faicte au prejudice du Roy & du Royaume, c’est celle dont à present je te fay veoir l’extraict qui a esté prins d’un plusample discours des choses naguère desseignées au Consistoire Romain peu après l’arrivée de l’Evesque de Paris.” 65  Extraict, sig. Aijr: “Il sera aisé à juger combien le conseil des estrangers, est souvent pernicieux à un Estat voisin.” 66  Extraict, sig. Aijr: “[C]eux qui se sont trouvez à l’ouverture d’un coffre appartenant à un nommé David advocat au parlement de Paris, lequel feit le voyage de Rome avec ledit Evesque, peuvent rendre tesmoignage de ce qui en est.”

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“[S]o that on the one hand all good and natural French people oppose themselves courageously to such pernicious designs […] And also, that the greatest ones do not allow themselves to be tricked by the pernicious council of foreigners, who never esteem to establish well their own affairs, but by the ruin and subversion of their neighbors.”67 This address to the reader is then dated 15 November 1576. If it has not been evident to this point, that of which the author makes no mention at all is the Guises, nor the House of Lorraine. He does not tie David to the family, only to the Parlement of Paris and to the Bishop. When suggesting that a part of the conspiracy is already in motion, the author does mention that “the majority of rowdy and factious men of the Kingdom are expecting to see very soon the rest [of the council’s plan] put into effect.” While this reference no doubt includes the Guises—and the reader also most likely would have assumed to include them—it targets more the Catholic League as a group and as an extension of papal interference in a neighboring state. The text that follows is more or less identical to what appears in the Abrégé, except a short subtitle that appears between a shortened version of the main title and the body of the text. It reads: “Regarding the affairs of France.”68 Following upon the prefatory material and its character, this introductory fragment once again shifts the focus of the discussion away from the Guises themselves and toward foreign intrigue as the power behind them. The content of David’s papers does not pose any less of a threat to the French system of government, but it constitutes a menace that attacks from without, rather than from within. It will thus be necessary to exclude the Guises from what is considered to be France and to taint them with an air of foreignness in order to put their legitimacy into doubt and to weaken their opposition to the throne and to the Huguenots. The Advertissement already hints at this strategy, but the one text printed with the Extraict builds on it, citing the Spanish attack on Antwerp as evidence of what these foreign powers may eventually pursue on French territory. 2.1 The Sack of Antwerp of 1576 In November 1576, thousands of Spanish troops garrisoned at the Citadel of Antwerp grew frustrated and angry at not being paid by the Spanish crown. As a means of retribution, they decided, under the commander of the Citadel, 67  E xtraict, sig. Aijv: “[A] ce que d’un costé tout bon & naturel François s’oppose virilement à si pernicieux desseigns […] Et d’ailleurs, que les plus grandz ne se laissent ainsi pipper, par le pernicieux conseil des estrangiers, qui n’estiment jamais bien establir leurs affaires, que par la ruine, & subversion de leurs voisins.” 68  Extraict, sig. Aiijr: “Quant aux affaires de France.”

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Sancho d’Avila (1523–83), to sack the city.69 The Sommaire Description du sac, & pillage de la ville d’Anvers recounts this brutal incident in the history of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) and in the fight for Dutch independence.70 Given the date of the publication of these texts by the author of the address to the reader, the sack would have only occurred eleven days prior. There is no doubt that this Sommaire is crude in its details, but it is clear that providing a precise historical account of this attack on one of the most prosperous cities of Europe at the time is not the goal. The publisher seems to draw a comparison to the situation in France and convey a warning. According to the author of the Sommaire, the impetus for the siege was the city of Antwerp’s decision to take sides with the Dutch States General. In other words, the cause of Dutch independence, not the dissatisfaction of an unpaid Spanish infantry, elicits the sack for the author of the Sommaire. The Dutch and their desire for independence are analogous to the French and their fight against the presence and interference of a foreign power. In addition, the author emphasizes the gravity of the Spanish attack that results in the burning of the city, the destruction of all commerce, and the displacement and also death of thousands.71 The author’s intention to warn the French based on this aggression is not subtle; in fact, he explicitly states what the French should learn from it in a series of conclusions that he draws from these reports of Spanish perfidy. Firstly, they must be wary of the construction of citadels, which, according to Timoleon (c. 411–337 BCE), are “the Nest of Tyranny”; secondly, the garrisoning of troops under the influence of one of two religion’s leagues will result in the oppression of both religions; and finally, the French must mistrust any counsel given by the Spanish who “have rendered themselves so cruel toward the position of subjects of their king[;] one hopes for a gentler treatment between us, against whom [the Spanish] have an ancient and irreconcilable enmity.”72 69  See Geoffrey Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567–1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 185–206. Parker outlines much of what caused the discontent among Spanish soldiers in the Netherlands, including, of course, wages that were in arrears. 70  Summary description of the sack and pillaging of the city of Antwerp (Lyon: Jacques Pharine, 1576) (BnF 8-LB34-147). 71  Sommaire, n.p. 72  Sommaire, n.p.: “le Nid de la Tirannie”; “se rendans si cruelz à l’endroict des subjectz de leur Roy, on doibt esperer un plus doux traictement entre nous, contre lesquelz ilz ont une inimitié ancienne, & irreconciliable.” James D. Tracy, The Founding of the Dutch Republic: War, Finance, and Politics in Holland, 1572–1588 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 136, explains the religious context in which the sack took place. On 29 October 1585, in Ghent, it had been decided that all heresy trials should cease and that all property of the Catholic Church that had been seized would not be returned. This policy of religious

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As with the associated texts of the Abrégé, the Sommaire helps the reader to interpret David’s Mémoire for its potential consequences for France but also as a political attack. The Guises, whose claims to the throne figure little into the editorial position of the Extraict’s publisher, are more shadowy figures, lurking in the background as leaders behind the Catholic League that they have recently founded in response to the Peace of Beaulieu and as conduits of foreign influence, both papal and Spanish, in French political life. Both the Abrégé and the Extraict attempt to answer why the Guises, their claims to the throne, and their Catholic League constitute a threat to Protestants and to France. Respectively, they outline both the internal and external implications of the conspiracy purportedly agreed upon in Rome. The two-pronged attack both renders the Guises enemies of France and the French, and the recurrence of these accusations, especially in subsequent reprints of David’s Mémoire and in the conversation around it, suggests that it was an effective one, at least insofar as it created a narrative by which the House of Lorraine and the Catholic League would continue to be judged until the assassination of the Duke and Cardinal of Guise in 1588. 3

Making It Stick: The Enduring Nature of the Mémoire as a Political Attack

For the twelve years between 1576 and 1588, the political attack that was the publication of the Mémoire and its associated texts would prove fairly durable on the political scene. Suspicions about the Guises, their motives, and their allies were not necessarily new at the time of the first publication, and several realities of the French context before, during, and after 1576 gave resonance to the conspiracy exposed in the Mémoire. Some of these realities were political or cultural, while others were the direct result of the Guises’ own extreme behavior that they sought neither to conceal nor temper. On the one hand, the Abrégé’s characterization of the House of Lorraine as an internal threat only makes sense in light of evolving conceptions of history. Early Renaissance humanists, for example, encouraged research into family genealogies that would

tolerance established by the States General might have served as a model to the publisher of the Extraict for areas where Huguenots had gained a foothold and a type of compromise that the Catholic League would have threatened. For a treatment of religious conflict during the Dutch revolt, see Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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yield clear connections between France’s noble families and an epic past.73 However, when Henry III’s authority had begun to weaken and the years passed without the king having any legitimate issue, the Guises’ claims about their lineage easily morphed into pretentions to the throne. On the other hand, the Extraict’s focus on the external threat will find traction in the Guises continued flirtation with foreign powers, giving credence to the implicit accusations in the publication of the Mémoire that the Vatican and Spain were interfering in French affairs through the Guises and the Catholic League. Finally, the threat to Gallicanism straddles both the Abrégé and the Lyonnais version, since the preservation of the rights of the Gallican Church gave Protestants the best possible chance for tolerance while at the same time making common cause with those who valued France’s independence from any authority beyond its borders. A brief look at several salient examples of these contextual realities will help understand why publishers kept returning to the Mémoire as a means to curb Guise influence. The long-term impact on the Guises becomes clearer when examining the Mémoire’s continued reemergence beginning in about 1582 and continuing up until the assassination of the brothers Guise at the very end of 1588. Political actors and readers clearly seemed to understand the text as a credible accusation against the Guises and their allies. One of these political actors who understood its power was none other than Henry of Navarre. The importance of the Mémoire to the future king of France centers on the Peace of Beaulieu, which, according to its terms had granted control of several cities to the Huguenots, who were already occupying them.74 In 1582, when this particular condition was set to expire, a dispute arose as to how to count the six years prescribed in the Edict. According to an account of this dispute by the Jesuit, Pierre Matthieu (1563–1621), published in 1594, Henry of Navarre proposed at the time that because so many “surprises and open wars” had interrupted the Peace, the Huguenots’ rights had not yet reached their full term.75 73  For an example of this trend, see Jean Lemaire de Belges, Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye (Lyon: 1549). The first appearance of Les Illustrations in 1511 was contemporary to another text that explicitly addressed the Guise’s lineage. See Symphorien Champier, Le recueil ou chroniques des histoires des royaumes d’Austrasie ou France orientale, dite a present Lorraine: de Hierusalem de Cicile: et de la duchesse de Bar: ensemble des faictz contes et cuelaues de tou contenant sept livres tant en latin que en françoys (1510). 74  For the exact terms of the Peace of Beaulieu, including the location of the cities accorded to the Protestants, see Pierre Chevallier, Henri III, roi shakespearien (Paris: Fayard, 1985), 323–24. 75  Pierre Matthieu, Histoire des derniers troubles de France, sous les regnes des rois tres chrestiens Henri III, Roy de France, & de Pologne, & Henri IIII, Roy de France & de Navarre (Lyon: 1594), 1:75 (BnF 325386).

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This prompted a fierce reaction from the Catholic League that Henry III would be acting in favor of heretics were he to give in. Matthieu, initially a partisan of the Guises, but then later a supporter of Henry IV, writes: “As the King of Navarre saw these rumblings and that the adversary was rising up, he recognized that the storm would likely fall upon him, under whatever pretext. This is why he pleaded with the king to remember again the warnings that he had given to him since the year 1576, by a gentleman envoy, on the treaties of the League in Spain and Italy, and that he was vigilant against the shards of the mine once it was discovered.”76 A printed marginal note to the left of this passage reads, “These are the memoirs of the Advocate David.”77 This image of the mine evokes the explosive and destructive nature of the conspiracy that the Mémoire described, but Navarre recalls it to the king as a way to remind him that in 1576, in response to its discovery, the king had made moves to combat it, such as the decision to make himself head of the League. A similar response against the Guises may yet again be in order. The Mémoire reappears in another printed marginal note three years after the events described in Matthieu’s history, but this time, it is at the hand of Henry of Navarre himself. In the Declaration du Roy de Navarre sur les calomnies publiees contre luy és Protestations de ceux de la Ligue qui se sont eslevez en ce Royaume (Declaration of the King of Navarre on the published calumnies against him in the Protestations of those of the League who have raised themselves up in this Kingdom), Henry addresses the king as he responds at length to the various accusations leveled against him. However, there is only one marginal note that appears in the entire text. In the midst of Henry’s discussion of the League’s resistance to the Peace of Beaulieu, he writes: “And concerning [His Majesty] personally, were then discovered the Memoirs* that are being realized today, ending in his death, and of My Lord the Prince your cousin, and of all their blood: in order to make more easily a path for themselves, as it is favored expressly, to the invasion of this Kingdom.”78 The note to 76  Matthieu, Derniers troubles, 1:76: “Comme le Roy de Navarre voit ces remuemens & que la partie se dresse, il recognoit que l’orage doit tomber sur luy, quelque pretexte qu’on prenne, c’est pourquoy il supplie le Roy, de se resouvenir des advertissemens qu’il luy avoit donné dés l’an 1576. par un Gentilhomme expres, sur les traictez de la Ligue en Espagne & Italie, & qu’il se print garde aux esclats de la mine puis qu’elle estoit descouverte.” On the change in Matthieu’s allegiance, see Feist, “Le ‘Mémoire’ de David,” 235, who cites Henri Hauser, Les Sources de l’Histoire de France (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1912), 3:53. 77  Matthieu, Derniers troubles, 1:76. 78  Henry of Navarre, Déclaration du Roy de Navarre sur les calomnies publiees contre luy és Protestations de ceux de la Ligue qui se sont eslevez en ce Royaume (A. Ortés, 1585), 14–15 (BnF 8-LB34-255): “Et pour son particulier, furent alors descouverts les Memoires* qui s’effectuent aujourd’hui, concluant sa mort, & de Monseigeur le Prince son cousin, &

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the above asterisk simply adds, “of the Advocate David.” In the same year, both versions of the Mémoire would again be published. The reprint of the Abrégé no longer includes the Epistre or the Advertissement.79 Similarly, the reprint of the Extraict no longer includes the Sommaire, which recounted the siege of Antwerp. These stand-alone copies of the text, as well as a reprint of the Extraict in the predecessor to Goulart’s Mémoires de la Ligue, highlight again the urgency with which it was necessary to discredit any claim to power that the House of Lorraine might have.80 It also suggests the effectiveness that publishers and compilers attributed to the Mémoire as a political tool against the Guises. As the opposition of the Catholic League against both the king and Protestants began to intensify, this particular text once again re-emerges in the fight against the Catholic party’s legitimacy. In order to understand, however, what exactly it targets ten years later, one might once again turn to Pierre de l’Estoile’s Registre-journal and his entries for 1585, which give a sense of why a response to the actions of the Guises was important. In his entry for March 1585, De l’Estoile writes, “En ce temps, se commence à descouvrir l’entreprise de la Sainte Ligue, de laquelle ceux de la maison de Guise, joints à ceux de la maison de Lorraine, leurs parens, estoient les chefs, secourus et assistés par le Pape, par Le Roy d’Hespagne et par le duc de Savoie son gendre” (In this time, the undertaking of the Holy League begins to be discovered, of which those of the house of Guise, joined with those of the house of Lorraine, their relatives, were the leaders, helped and assisted by the pope, by the King of Spain and by the duke of Savoy his relative).81 One can notice familiar themes that were certainly present in 1576 and that once again make the Mémoire and its suggestion of treason pertinent, namely the influence of the pope and the interference of foreign powers in French politics, especially those that threaten France’s unity. Whereas in 1576, Henry III, in an effort to tame the League, was able to take control of it by orchestrating his ascendance as its leader, De l’Estoile’s account suggests that in the present crisis, such a maneuver may prove elusive, principally because of Henry’s weakness, even blindness, in the face of the Guises’ aggression:

de tout leur sang : pour se faire voye plus aisément, comme il est porté expressement, à l’invasion de ce Royaume.” The asterisk appears in the original text. 79  Abrégé d’un discours faict avec sa saincteté, par aucuns de ses confidents, apres le despart de Monsieur de Paris, trouvé entre les papiers de l’Advocat David (1585) (BnF Ms. Fr. 15833). 80  The Histoyre du présent, which Goulart will later appropriate for his text, reprints the prefatory address to the reader, along with a title that matches exactly the one in the 1576 Lyonnais version, with the account of the sack of Antwerp removed. See BnF 8-H-6488 (1). 81  De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:15.

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Le Roy, adverti de tous ces remuemens de divers seingneurs et endroits de son roiaume et mesmes par le duc de Bouillon, qui lui donna advis de la grande levée de gens de guerre que sous main faisoit le duc de Guise, pendant qu’il s’amusait à baller et masquer, fist responce qu’il ne le croioit ni tenir ni ne craingnoit.82 The King, warned of all of these rumblings of different lords and places in his kingdom and even of the duke of Bouillon who advised him of the large raising of men for war put under the hand of the duke of Guise, while [the king] had fun dancing and masquerading, responded that he neither believed nor feared it. This ignorance might prove costly, especially considering the Guises’ explicit designs. De l’Estoile recounts that they are now able to see the coming end of the Valois line—the younger brother of Henry III, Francis, the duke of Alençon (1555–1584), had died a year earlier—and were once again arguing the illegitimacy of those descended from Hugh Capet and preparing the extermination of any possible heirs to the throne from the avowedly Protestant House of Bourbon.83 In short, the Guises see a clear opportunity while the king chooses to act as if nothing were wrong. De l’Estoile’s characterizations of the machinations of the Guises and the League make it easy to understand why publishers once again turned to the Mémoire. Unfortunately, it is impossible to know whether the events that De l’Estoile describes in March of 1585 confirm Protestants’ fears or elicit the republication of the Mémoire as a direct response; the title page of the Abrégé again indicates only the year and nothing else, while the Extraict’s title page has dropped any reference to a publisher and adds only that it is being printed anew.84 Whether it precedes or follows the events, the Guises’ opponents were again looking for an effective weapon against them. With respect to the reprint of the Abrégé, slight changes from the 1576 version speak to the events of 1585 and more pointedly and precisely highlight the Guise threat to France’s sovereignty at this later moment. The changes in the updated version attack more intensely on two fronts: on the king and on the independence of the Gallican Church. With respect to the former, some small changes occur here and there. For example, instead of advising the king not to stand in the way of any uprisings in 82  De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:16. 83  Ibid. 84  Extraict d’un conseil secret tenu à Rome peu apres l’arrivee de l’Evesque de Paris. Traduict de l’Italien en François (1585): “Imprimé nouvellement.”

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favor of the Catholic cause, a decidedly passive stance, the 1585 Abrégé counsels him not just to get out of the way but also not to oppose them, a warning that subtly demands the king’s submission to them.85 This reflects an alteration in tone that could either reflect a Protestant publisher’s exasperation with the ineptitude of Henry III, or then again, it could also reflect an increasing antagonism on the part of the Guises against the king. De l’Estoile spends a good deal of his entries for 1585 outlining the Guises’ increasing popularity, especially in the city of Paris, versus the king’s weakness and frustration in the face of their many victories.86 The more glaring change comes in the form of a fairly substantial omission in the 1585 version. Early in the 1576 Abrégé, the author or publisher recounts the travails of the Valois branch, a predicament that makes it a propitious moment for replacing them with the Guises, who enjoy the benefit of the apostolic benediction anyway. This passage, excised in the 1585 reprint, suggests, of course, that one of the reasons the Valois branch struggles so much is that they do not enjoy said benediction. At the time of this reprint, however, Henry III, without an heir, found his reign languishing, as it would until his assassination in 1589. Since the Guises were not an alternative, the choice falls to Henry of Navarre, the option that the Protestants have always wanted and at this moment seems ever more likely. However, Navarre remains at this time married to a member of the Valois branch, Henry III’s sister, Marguerite (1553–1615). De l’Estoile happens to note in his last entry from May 1585 that Marguerite has joined the League and has gone to Agen to get help for the city against “l’effort du Roy, de son mari et de tous ceux du parti contraire” (the efforts of the King, her husband, and all those of the opposing party).87 Perhaps the mere suggestion of Henry’s association with the sickness of the Valois, even in mocking Guise pretensions to the throne, was too much in the face of Protestant hopes for the future Henry IV. Thus, what was likely a Protestant publisher would have been content with the absence of this passage, an absence that endures in the 1585 versions of the Extraict, even while some of the other changes that address the king’s situation do not. In renewing this particular attack on the Guises, the publisher now benefits from ten more years of history, ten more years of self-interested Guise interference in French affairs on behalf of the Catholic Church. The 1585 Abrégé 85  A  brégé, 6 (1576): “Le Roy sera conseillé de ne s’empescher aucunement des esmotions qui se seront.” Abrégé, 2 (1585): “Le Roy sera conseillé de ne s’opposer & n’empescher aucunement les esmotions qui se seront.” 86  De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:11–52. De l’Estoile’s penultimate entry for December of that year is entitled, “Le peuple, au lieu de murmurer contre la Ligue, murmure contre son Roy, tant il est sot.” 87  De l’Estoile, Registre-journal, 5:29.

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further emphasizes the independence of the Gallican Church, an advantage to Protestants, but a threat to the Guises. One slight change occurs when the text mentions the Concordat of Bologna from 1516. It comes up in the discussion of the Estates General, which in the original text was making reference to their imminent meeting that eventually occurred beginning late in 1576 at Blois.88 In this original version, the text reads: “And his Holiness will be required to authorize, ratify, and approve the decrees of the aforementioned Estates in the form of a pragmatic sanction between the [H]oly See and the Kingdom, just as have been the Concordats.”89 By contrast, in the later version, a change depicts a more adversarial state of affairs: “[H]is Holiness will be required to authorize, ratify and approve the decrees of the aforementioned Estates, in the form of pragmatic Sanction, between the Holy See, against the Kingdom, just as have cited the Concordats” (my emphasis).90 A more collaborative relationship with the Holy See has yielded to a more contentious one since the pope acts in opposition to France, seemingly no matter what he decides. The later version is assuming a Guise position that sees no hope for any comity between the Church and France, as it was in these latter years of Henry III’s reign. Similarly, while even the Catholic party may have recognized a certain collegiality in the decision to adopt the Concordat of Bologna, here the 1585 Abrégé makes the assumption that this more adversarial relationship is in fact by design according to what the Concordats have previously established. The author of these changes attributes a more dismissive attitude to both the House of Lorraine and to the Holy See toward France and its monarchy. While a deepening of the Catholic party’s well-demonstrated antagonism may be hard to imagine, it coincides with what even De l’Estoile’s perception was of public opinion toward Henry III in 1585 and how the Guises’ position had hardened since the original appearance of the Mémoire. Quite simply, they had given more cause to believe such accusations based on their actual behavior.91 88  Edward Armstrong, The French Wars of Religion: Their Political Aspects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904), 54, mentions that when the Estates opened at Blois in December 1576, the Mémoire of David was read to the assembly. 89  Abrégé (1576), 9: “Et sa Saincteté sera requise d’authoriser, ratifier, & approuver les arrests desdicts Estats en forme de pragmatique sanction, entre le sainct Siege & le Royaume, comme ont esté les Concordats.” 90  Abrégé (1585), 4: “Et que sa Saincteté sera requise auctoriser, ratifier & approuver les Arrests desdicts Estats, en forme de pragmatique Sanction, entre le Sainct Siege, Contre le Royaume, comme ont citté les Concordatz” (my emphasis). 91  See Crouzet, Guerriers de Dieu, which is of course an excellent source on the Guises’ constant antagonism. See also Jean-Marie Constant, Les Guise (Paris: Hachette, 1984), 116–41. Constant introduces the chapter, entitled “Henri, Prince de la subversion,” with the following statement: “En 1576, les Guise avaient été pris de court par l’éclosion des

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The earlier version of the Abrégé that included the Gesta Stephani papæ suggests that the publisher expected it to be effective primarily given the Guises’ well-documented pretensions to the throne. In this 1585 version, the publisher seems to think that the accusations of a widespread campaign to take over France politically constituted sufficient evidence against them. In its final iteration, emerging two years later, altogether different material will appear around David’s Mémoire that hints at an evolution in what the compiler and publisher think may assist in discrediting the Guises. Goulart, in his 1587 compilation, the Mémoires de la Ligue, includes the Mémoire in its Lyonnais form. Goulart is attempting to write the history of the Catholic League and sees fit to place this document first in his account. He—or better yet, those from whom he inherited the seed of his compilation—sees it as foundational and reflective of the Guises struggle against the Huguenots.92 It did after all lay out a plan for how the newly formed League planned to proceed in 1576. In the role similar to that of the Epistre, there follows a genealogical text that claims to prove the House of Lorraine descended directly from Charlemagne.93 These texts that did not accompany the first published version of the Extraict perform more or less the same function as the Epistre did with regard to the Abrégé: to delegitimize the Guises by pointing out the preposterousness of the Guises’ claim to the throne, but this time by using more contemporary texts.94 Goulart’s dissemination of the Mémoire comes at a crucial moment, as impatience with the Guises and the League was building and as blame needed to be increasingly deflected away from the king toward the real enemy, the Guises.95 The Mémoire’s publication in Goulart’s historical compilation now gives it extra weight, and brings associations de défense, puis par l’initiative du roi de prendre la tête du mouvement. En 1585, ils déclenchèrent une véritable insurrection et gardèrent continuellement l’initiative des opérations.” 92  See Graves-Monroe, Post tenebras lex, for the full development of the Histoyre du présent into Goulart’s Mémoires de la Ligue. 93  This document is entitled in Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue (Amsterdam: Arkstée & Merkus, 1758), 1:7, “Discourse on the supposed right of those [of the House] of Guise to the Crown of France.” It includes a summary of François de Rosières’s 1580 justification for this claim, Stemmatum Lotharingiæ, as well as a “Genealogy of the House of Lorraine.” 94  The Epistre and the Advertissement both appear in a subsequent volume of the Mémoires de la Ligue, but they are not presented as being in any way related to the Extraict. See Goulart, Mémoires de la Ligue, 2:151 95  Penzi, “Pamphlets ligueurs,” 138, suggests that the king encouraged the Mémoire’s republication for this reason, but De l’Estoile seems to undertake a similar campaign. See Registre-journal, 5:294, for example, where his entry from April 1587, entitled “Le roy descharge sa colere contre les Huguenos, encores qu’il soit moins offensé d’eux que de la Ligue,” where the king criticizes the Huguenots but also others who are defaming him with incendiary texts that encourage rebellion.

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together the articulation of both the internal and external threat to French political stability that the Guises pose. The conspiracy is a matter of historical record and seems to have never really gone away, at least as long as the Huguenots, and even Henry III himself, need a narrative that emphasizes and exposes that threat.96 4

Conclusion

Soon after the Guises denied their involvement in the Advocate David’s mission, Henry III’s ambassador to Spain, Jean de Vivonne, Lord of Saint-Gouard (1530–1599), seems to have caught them in a lie. Saint-Gouard forwards to Henry III a copy of the Mémoire sent from Rome and received by Philip II (1527– 1598). This diplomatic communiqué is supposedly what prompted Henry III to act after initially dismissing the Mémoire’s veracity.97 It is difficult to know whom to believe, but in the context of the French wars of religion, this begins to answer why authors, publishers, and even Henry of Navarre himself kept returning to the Mémoire. Plausibility is part of the answer; as has been the case over again with the phenomenon of nothing said too soon, the reader does not have to be sure of the document’s veracity, but rather only sure that it might be true. It would not have been difficult to believe that the Guises, rather than trying to protect France’s unity, sought to divide it for their own personal political gain and having a text in hand that describes what the Mémoire describes only seals those perceptions in the reader’s mind. If the Mémoire is a fabrication, a spurious accusation against the House of Lorraine, it demonstrates on the part of the publishers or author a foresight or perhaps an incisive perception of the state of the political and religious context in which the Mémoire would appear in print. Through their rhetorical and editorial strategies, they effectively created a narrative by which the Guises would continue to be judged until their 96  Feist, “Le ‘Mémoire’ de David,” 233, states that a manuscript of the Mémoire was added to the royal library on the precise date of the Duke of Guise’s assassination at the order of Henry III: “Écrit environ de l’An 1576 pour détrôner le Roy et couronner le duc de Guise, Placé au 23 Xre 1588.” Feist identifies the manuscript as Ms. Béthune 5866, fol. 161, which in her note she writes is the same manuscript that Bouillé uses. However, Bouillé, Ducs de Guise, 3:33n2, cites Ms. Béthune 8748, fol. 135 (BnF Ms. Fr. 3239), which bears only the title, “Mémoire que l’on dict de l’advocat David.” This latter manuscript was at one time part of the royal library, but its precise date of insertion remains unclear. 97  For a dramatic telling of this development, see Brémond d’Ars, Jean de Vivonne, 75–76, who relies heavily on De Thou, Histoire universelle, 5:341. Brémond d’Ars contends that this communication likely took place but that it cannot be proven due to a lack of documentary evidence.

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deaths in 1588 and by which the Catholic League would be judged even after.98 They knew that fiction or not, it would be convincing. The attitudes, presumptions, and pretentions built into the Mémoire had already manifested themselves in the behavior of the Guises in 1572 and would continue to do so in the ensuing years. The Abrégé portrays the Guises as a threat to the political system, but for the Huguenots, this threat was not really about the legitimacy of the hereditary monarchy; it was more about making sure that the Guises were not in charge.99 With regard to foreign powers such as the Vatican or Spain, Huguenots also had something to fear, especially if the Guises acted as a means for these foreign powers to interfere. In any case, the Guises were dangerous, and the Mémoire offered a political attack on multiple fronts that was able to inform, or perhaps remind, the reader why they and the Catholic League must be resisted. Through various textual and rhetorical strategies, authors and publishers repeatedly took the same historical incident, which may or may not have happened, and shaped useful versions of it. The slight variations that are put forth demonstrate how the discursive environment of the late sixteenth century made the perception of historical realities malleable. The authors and publishers take advantage of this environment to make their narratives seem real. While the Mémoire may or may not be spurious, the manner in which it speaks to its time in order to shape the representation of a historical event and to discredit a political enemy can only be described as authentic. 98  The historiography confirms this in the ongoing debate on the significance and the authenticity of the Mémoire. Additional sources include Matthieu, Histoire de France soubs les regnes de François I. Henry II. François II. Charles IX. Henry III. Henry IV. Louys XIII. (Paris: [L]a vefve Nicolas Buön, 1631), 435–36; G. Daniel, Histoire de France depuis l’établissement de la monarchie françoise dans les Gaules (Paris: Libraires associés, 1755), 11:74–75; M. Capefigue, La Réforme et la Ligue (Paris: Charpentier, 1843), 3:454–58; Henri Martin, Histoire de France depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’en 1789 (Paris: Furne, 1858), 9:440–42; Jean Mariéjol, Histoire de France depuis les origines jusqu’à la Révolution (Paris: Hachette, 1911), 6:176–77. 99  Giesey and Salmon, introduction to Francogallia, 42, summarize what Hotman was thinking about the French political system and how the Protestant viewpoint could change depending on the circumstances: “[T]he Francogallia argued that under the ancient constitution the succession to the crown was at the disposal of the public council. In later editions Hotman changed his ground by distinguishing between the opinions of the civilians and the national practice of the French. He only did so, however, under pressure of a new shift in political circumstances that occurred in 1584, the need to support the claim of the Protestant Henry of Navarre to succeed to the throne in preference to his uncle the cardinal of Bourbon. This in itself obliged him to admit that the elective practices of the ancient constitution had long been replaced by hereditary succession.”

Chapter 6

The Truth at the Source The Mémoire of the Advocate David shocked many, but among those whom it surprised was François Hotman (1524–1590), an ardent Protestant political theorist, jurist, and historian who found one of his central theories spewing forth from the mouths of his political adversaries.* Born on the eve of St. Bartholomew’s Day (August 23) in 1524, the first of eleven children to Pierre Hotman and his wife Paule, François descended from German stock. His grandfather, Lambert, was a Silesian burger who had come to France in 1470, but despite this origin, François was thoroughly French and thoroughly a proponent of the monarchy.1 The Reformation eventually intervened in what would have otherwise been the typical career of a bourgeois Catholic jurist, and just as his father labored for the Chambre ardente, Henry II’s “burning chamber” where accused heretics were judged, François was discovering the teachings of John Calvin. In 1573, Hotman published for the first time his pivotal political text, the Francogallia, which meticulously outlined the historical case for replacing the king by popular initiative.2 It was a version of this idea that Hotman saw reflected back to him in David’s Mémoire. Only this time, it was the central point in the alleged Guise plot to overthrow Henry III. What was for Hotman an ironclad historical and political argument to bring about greater tolerance for him and for his Protestant coreligionists was now providing cover for his most hardened opponents to seize the crown for themselves and usher in a uniformly Catholic France, as intolerant as those who had perpetrated the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre only four years before. Hotman seems to have realized very soon the importance of what had happened, for he sent the Memoire, along with the articles of the newly established Catholic * Research for this chapter was funded in part by the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA) at the University of Notre Dame. 1  Donald R. Kelley, François Hotman: A Revolutionary’s Ordeal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), 12. 2  From the outset, it is important to recognize that what Hotman proposes is not anything akin to direct or even representative democracy as is common today. Hotman seeks to rediscover an ancient version of monarchy according to which checks on the king exist in a formal sense. This is the whole point of his argument. Nevertheless, what he proposes is popular in a minimal sense. For a nice summary of how Hotman relates to other constitutionalist perspectives at the time, see Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 2:310–13.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004440814_008

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League to associates in Hesse.3 These articles also called for the restoration of “les droits, preeminences, franchises et libertés anciennes telles qu’elles estoient du temps du roy Clovis, premier roy chrestien, et encore meilleures plus profitables si elles se peuvent en enter, sous la protection susdite [de la ligue]” (the rights, pre-eminences, franchises and ancient privileges as they were in the time of Clovis, the first Christian king, and inventing even better and more profitable ones, if such be possible, under the protection of said association).4 From this point forward, a by now familiar pattern develops between the two sides of the debate, both promoting a similar idea but by different means and for different reasons. The same arguments and even the same words have completely different meanings for the respective parties to the discussion. The Catholic side will be happy to retroactively apply some of Hotman’s ideas as justification for the assassination of Henry III in 1589 by Jacques Clément. Protestants, on the other hand, have a more muted reaction to the removal of Henry III, even though Henry of Navarre will likely accede to the French throne.5 Perhaps this is because they fear the same fate for their preferred replacement. Either way, there is little doubt that after so many promises of tolerance have rung hollow amid the shedding of Protestant blood from the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre forward, royal authority has progressively delegitimized itself through its attacks on its own subjects, leaving many to search for alternatives or for ways of reestablishing its credibility. Ideas already in progress quickly reach a more definitive articulation in response to the crisis of 1572. Hotman, for example, had been working on the text that would become the Francogallia as early as 1567, when he undertook a study of the antiquities of France.6 This discovery of France’s unique political origins will inform Hotman’s particular approach to the question of the king’s status. Others will follow him as the discussion of the question makes its way into print. Most notably, Theodore Beza (1519–1604) will make his own contribution in 1574 with his text, Du droit des magistrats (On the right of magistrates), and an anonymous author, most likely either Philippe Du Plessis-Mornay (1549– 1623) or Hubert Languet (1518–1581) or a combination of both, will publish 3  Giesey and Salmon, introduction to Francogallia, 91. 4   As quoted in Giesey and Salmon, introduction to Francogallia, 91. Translation from J.H.M. Salmon, Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ernest Benn, 1975), 201. Salmon gives his translation in the context of his discussion of the Catholic League’s political designs as articulated in the Mémoire. 5  For more on Henry of Navarre’s consolidation of power in the days after Henry III’s assassination and reactions to the latter event, see Nicolas Le Roux, Un régicide au nom de Dieu: L’assassinat d’Henri III (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), 290–302. 6  See Kelley, Hotman, 192.

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Vindiciae contra tyrannos (Defenses against tyrants) in 1579. These two texts, together with that of Hotman, were part of the body of work produced by a coterie of writers called the Monarchomachs who questioned the authority of the monarchy after the betrayal of St. Bartholomew’s Day. As the Catholic party becomes more and more friendly to the idea of replacing Henry III, the Monarchomachs will correspondingly adjust their arguments in order to protect their own political interests. As for Hotman, his notice of the Mémoire suggests curiosity and surprise but not yet alarm. His relative calm might have sprung from a belief that he had constructed a text and an argument that would resist yet another appropriation or even distortion of one ideological viewpoint’s discourse by another. Hotman, in his particular approach to the question of the king and his presence on the throne, believed that he had found a way to rise above the crisis of discourse in order to create a stable, reliable, and authoritative text that would be able to resist the ongoing tumult that sapped stability and authority from the words and historiography of so many others. He thought that he had found the solution to the problem, and the Francogallia and its rhetorical strategy embody it. Hotman was not only reacting to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre; he was also reacting to the endless onslaught of partisan declarations about the meanings of words or of historical events that were inhibiting the accessibility to the truth. In its rhetoric and in its detail, the Francogallia, much like Protestantism as a whole, returns to a primitive ideal, in this case, of France and its political structure. Explicitly, Hotman’s narrative expresses a hope that this primordial and therefore unassailable version of the monarchy that is rooted in French identity and is unique to it will bring about the necessary unity that will end the violence plaguing France and bring everyone back to some consensus.7 Implicitly, Hotman fights against the malleability of meaning that has plagued discourse up through the first ten years of the wars of religion.8 After witnessing the systematic killing of his fellow believers, he 7  See Paul-Alexis Mellet, Les Traités Monarchomaques: Confusion des temps, résistance armée et monarchie parfaite (1560–1600) (Geneva: Droz, 2007), 459–60. Mellet quotes Claude-Gilbert Dubois: “Il ne s’agit plus de produire une conscience nationale ou de célébrer une unité passée, mais de restaurer une tradition politique ancienne. L’histoire constitue alors ‘une sorte de modèle pour étayer ou réfuter des choix politiques et sociaux déterminés en fait par l’actualité’, et produisant ‘l’image utopique d’un peuple régénéré’ par la redécouverte de sa ‘personnalité’, c’est-à-dire de son image ou de sa préfiguration. La recherche de l’âge d’or se situe au point de convergence entre ‘investigation de textes anciens’ et ‘projection de problèmes présents’.” See Claude-Gilbert Dubois, Celtes et Gaulois au XVIe siècle (Paris: J. Vrin, 1972), 90, 110–13. 8  For more on how Hotman saw his text resisting this tendency, see Ralph E. Giesey, “When and Why Hotman Wrote the ‘Francogallia’,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 29,

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could have answered with yet another contribution to the fire and invective that constituted so much of literary and political discourse that was in print at the time. Instead, he uses the opportunity to reverse this trend, offering a well-reasoned text with the potential for a wider appeal. Obviously, some of the deepest partisans will not be convinced, and perhaps, given the eventual arrival of the Mémoire, a bit naïve. Nevertheless, Hotman undertakes in this era a two-front battle against the two crises of language and politics whose victory will mean tolerance for a confessional pluralism and a return to French unity. 1

From Calumny to Exaltation: Seeking Unity and Truth in the Wisdom of the Past

It might sound arrogant or utopian or both for Hotman to think that he could transcend the difficulties and nastiness of what passed for political discourse at the time in order to bring his fellow French, whether Protestant or Catholic, together. Only a year earlier, his coreligionists were being hunted in the streets, and Hotman himself fled to save his life, leaving France definitively for Geneva.9 Perhaps this is why he did not succeed in completely banishing polemics from his famous text. Nevertheless, his decision to send along the Memoire and the articles of the Catholic League reflects an obvious curiosity and interest in what the other side was thinking, especially when it seemed to correspond so closely to what he was proposing. And yet, his interaction with the text also highlights the differences in approach. For example, if what the Mémoire contained was indeed true, the Guises had chosen an approach that further risked undermining the reliability of discourse as well as their authority, namely in their decision to overtly claim that they had no designs on the throne while secretly plotting to do the opposite. Hotman, on the other hand, brought his case to the masses. And it is this very idea that figures most prominently into Hotman’s strategy to restore credibility to his text and authority to the king: the people. The Francogallia, as the very title indicates, is about France. The text represents a call to reconstitute the reality of France based on a historic ideal rooted in the identity of the French people as Franks and

no. 3 (1967): 581–611. Later, Giesey quotes Hotman: “It is an historical book, the history of a fact. The whole controversy concerns a fact. They deny this fact” (585). This suggests that Hotman saw his book as bare and neutral history that the reader was to use to draw the proper conclusions that would lead to some sort of action. 9  See Kelley, Hotman, 218.

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Gauls.10 Hotman’s rhetoric returns to this idea over and over again as a means of inviting the reader into a particular shared history that leads to particular political consequences. 1.1 The Language is the Message After a brief preface and an equally brief opening chapter on pre-Roman Gaul, Hotman expends a considerable amount of time discussing the Gallic tongue. Anything speaking of Gaul certainly evokes the ancient and the immutable, a mythic past that supplies for the reader a particular approach to history.11 It is also uniquely tied to the French identity. Hotman, in his discussion of the Gallic tongue, distinguishes it from the two most reputed ancient languages, Greek and Latin. He addresses different rumors about the Gauls’ use of the Greek alphabet and whether or not they spoke Greek, proving that they did not, all the while expressing ambivalence about the Greek language and its ability to carry with it the disease of undesirable ideas. Not so for Latin, for the language of the Romans bore with it Roman custom and its own legal tradition. While the Gauls seem to have shared a certain degree of enthusiasm for Roman custom and language, Hotman contends that it belies a deeper indifference that resulted from Rome’s own desire to assert itself over conquered peoples. He writes: “For, apart from the fact that it was natural for the Gauls, as subjects of the Romans, willingly to adapt themselves to Roman customs and language, it is clear enough that the Romans were most assiduous in disseminating their tongue and inducing greater respect for it among all peoples.”12 Hotman adeptly excuses the Gauls for adopting the Roman language while he undermines the Roman language by highlighting it as a foreign element imposed on the Gauls. They only submitted because the Romans had already conquered 10  For a recent study on memory and the power of ancient history in the sixteenth century, see Judith Pollmann, Memory in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 11  For a brief study of the idea of Gaul in Renaissance France, see Michel Beaujour, “Astéryx à la Renaissance: Les Gaulois chez Jean Lemaire, Jean Bodin, Etienne Pasquier et quelques autres,” in Le Signe et le texte: Études sur l’écriture au XVIe siècle en France, ed. Lawrence Kritzman (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1990), 91–100. Interestingly, Beaujour raises the question of how Lemaire’s work was received: “Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye relèvent-ils du roman ou de l’historiographie ? Du roman, certes, du moins au sens où le roman médiéval est roman. De l’historiographie ? Le livre repose sur une documentation historique, il fait appel à des sources autorisées anciennes et modernes, et sa chronologie n’est pas, pour l’époque particulièrement aberrante” (93). Beaujour suggests a blurry line between “novel” and “historiography,” which is of course at the center of the problem that Hotman is trying to correct. 12  Hotman, Francogallia, 167, 169.

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them and because it was a necessary political move. It demonstrates the Gauls’ pragmatism, if anything. Nevertheless, history, according to Hotman, shows that the Gauls always bristled under such an arrangement, not only because it facilitated the introduction of “fraudulent legal practices introduced into Gaul from the court of the popes of Rome,” but also because of the flourishing of the vernacular after the ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539.13 St. Jerome had even recognized that “the richness and luster of the Gallic tongue” was tempered by Roman severity. This severity endured as “[r]eligious learning and doctrine had come to resemble litigation” and as Charlemagne accepted that Roman custom would continue to guide the Church’s chant and ritual.14 This had disastrous consequences: This is a matter one can hardly bear to mention, so great was the darkness it spread over the Gallic churches. It conceded authority to the Roman pontiffs in religious matters, and its authors wronged the kings of France in a manner scarcely to be credited. Their own authority was regained by King Charles V, known as the Wise, who, in about the year 1370, became so incensed against the tyranny of the popes that he arranged the translation of the holy scriptures into French. Here, Hotman relates a situation in which religious and political authority is compromised and would not be remedied until there was a return to the vernacular, that is, away from Latin. Hotman uses his discussion of the yoke of Roman language as a proxy discussion for the deleterious effects of Roman influence. In other words, the language infuses everything with romanità, foreign to the Gauls, and therefore to the French. The return to the vernacular language, though half Latin, translates into a liberation of sorts. If the Roman language carries with it the corruption of political and religious systems, then this liberation from it will return France to a more French form of both. The other half is divided with a third going to the ancient Gauls, a third to the Franks, and a third to “Greek influence.” It is the first two that really interest Hotman, while the last, he only cites as “influence,” lacking the willingness to call it the Greek language, lest he compromise his project. Hotman’s ploy approaches the tendentious, but his analysis ultimately expresses an acceptance of the origins of the French language while distinguishing it from its purer, more Roman ancestor.

13  Hotman, Francogallia, 169. 14  Hotman, Francogallia, 169, 171.

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Hotman’s rhetoric on the history of the French language proclaims a strong Gallicanism from the very outset of the Francogallia. His title certainly evokes this point of view, as well as this particular chapter that sets up a distinct opposition between the language of the native Gauls and their foreign and Roman conquerors. As a fundamental element in Hotman’s attempt to create a stable and credible historical discourse, however, it suggests a particular strategy that seeks credibility not only through an air of meticulous accuracy—Hotman’s fractional explanation of the origins of the French language presages the rhetoric of the statistic in later centuries—but also from the probable chance of his argument having wide appeal. In his study on Gallicanism, Nicolas Sild argues that Gallicanism satisfied the nascent sense of a French “Nation,” to which many clung as religious unity dissolved. He writes about the latter in the sixteenth century: “Mais progressivement, la religion ne paraît plus capable de constituer le seul ciment de l’unité, et c’est le sentiment national qui vient s’y substituer” (But progressively, religion no longer appears capable of constituting the cement of unity, and it is national sentiment that comes in to substitute for it).15 Hotman concentrates on what he believes will unify, and since religion can no longer do this, Gallicanism, despite being born out of religious independence, translates into a particular political reality whereby the monarchy preserves the particular freedoms that guarantee the Church’s independence from Rome but that also make it favorable for the Church to uphold the monarch’s sovereignty.16 In other words, for protecting the Church’s freedoms, the Church agrees to protect the king. From a practical standpoint, if the adherence to Gallicanism continues, the idea of France rises above that of the Church when it comes to political priorities. This could potentially lead to greater tolerance, since under a Gallican structure, a legal particularism allows local authorities to interpret Church law as they see fit.17 Traditionally, those who adjudicate such cases do so as civil authorities on behalf of the Church meaning that the interests of the king and those same civil authorities, namely ensuring a peaceful and unified France, would prevail.18 Hotman’s discussion of the Gallic tongue certainly echoes Gallican ideology, but this extensive discussion of language seems a bit out of place in the context of the broader discussion of the Gallic political tradition. However, its presence so early in his treatise suggests that Hotman saw language as a 15  Nicolas Sild, Le Gallicanisme et la construction de l’Etat (1563–1905) (Clermont-Ferrand: Institut Universitaire Varenne, 2016), 220. 16  See Sild, Le Gallicanisme, 214. 17  Sild, Le Gallicanisme, 210. 18  For more on the jurisdiction of heresy cases, see James K. Farge, Orthodoxy and Reform in Early Reformation France: The Faculty of Theology of Paris, 1500–1543 (Leiden: Brill, 1985).

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key political question. This emphasis echoes Du Bellay and his Deffence in its assumption that language, along with its richness and vitality, determines political realities.19 While Du Bellay focuses much more on the ability of French to compete aesthetically with ancient languages and texts, both men directly or indirectly also attest to the language’s ability to reliably convey meaning. Language is therefore important to Hotman’s discussion for two reasons: first, it further burnishes his point that a return to the vernacular and the move away from Latin means a move away from Roman influence, political or otherwise, and second, it represents Hotman’s first attempts to reverse the instability of discourse that has developed in the vernacular context. To this second point, if the reader is going to find Hotman’s text more believable, more reliable, and more authoritative than others that have preceded it, the reader must first believe that a more authentic discourse is possible. Highlighting French’s local origins and circumscribing its Roman elements gives the French in the sixteenth century the chance to access an earlier and purer form of their language and in turn an earlier and purer form of government. Limiting Roman language and influence expands the space that the Gallic can fill. The recognition of France’s Gallic origins will bring greater independence; France can and will stand alone just as its language was unique, contrary to some popular opinions that Hotman refutes at length. For example, according to Saint Jerome, the “Gallic mode of expression” had a “richness and splendor” to it that Roman severity tempered.20 This comment that Hotman repeats a second time later in the chapter echoes the aesthetic arguments of Du Bellay but emphasizes the independence of the Gallic tongue, since it had its own unique character. It is not only rich and splendid, but it is also free and independent. This free and independent spirit is reflected in Gallic resistance to Roman authority, an authority that Roman language helped to corrupt. In the first chapter of his narrative, Hotman makes this clear in quoting Caesar’s own impressions of Gaul. Even though he will criticize Roman language, he acknowledges the Roman leader’s prominent role in describing Gallic principles of government. These written accounts composed in Latin nevertheless lend legitimacy to the ancient quality of the Gallic principles that clearly preceded Caesar’s military success over Gallic territory. Hotman presents what was the ideal and ancient reality of Gallic governance:

19  For a discussion on Du Bellay’s patriotism, especially as it is tied to poetic production, see D.J. Hartley, “Patriotism in the ‘Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse’,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 83, no. 1 (1982): 83–95. 20  Hotman, Francogallia, 159 and 169.

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It should be realized that in those days the whole of Gaul was not ruled by a single man, nor were particular regions under the control of populace or aristocracy. Rather was the entire country so divided that many regions were ruled by a council of nobles, and were termed free, while other regions had kings. All, indeed, accepted the general practice of holding a public council of the nation at a fixed time of the year, and there they decided whatever seemed appropriate for the greatest good of the commonwealth.21 Hotman cedes that forms of government were indeed diverse under the umbrella of the “public council,” which will figure quite prominently in the overarching theory of the Francogallia. For now, he reminds the reader that it was a reality that stood above the many discrete jurisdictions, some monarchical, some more popular in their structure. Hotman makes his point early on and imprints upon the reader both the variability among entities and the one element that unites the whole. And even when it came to kingly rule, the Gauls placed significant checks upon it, as Caesar himself observes. Hotman concludes: It is to be noted, and this is not a point to be lightly passed over, that, in the first place, these kingdoms were not hereditary but conferred by the people on someone who had a reputation for justice; and, in the second place, the kings did not possess an unlimited, free and uncontrolled authority, but were so circumscribed by specific laws that they were no less under the authority and power of the people than the people were under theirs.22 Hotman of course gives many historical examples from Caesar’s own pen that recount the ways in which any one king’s authority was limited by the people. Hotman multiplies the examples and makes his point, all in the context of pre-Roman Gaul. The point is that this is the unadulterated and natural state of Gallic government, authorized by the people with limits on absolute power in order to prevent tyranny.

21  Hotman, Francogallia, 147. 22  Hotman, Francogallia, 155.

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1.2 Here Come the Franks In describing Gaul under the yoke of Roman rule, Hotman laments: [I]t is difficult to conceive both the shame and bitterness with which the Gauls endured the plundering of the Romans and the frequency with which they rebelled against them. Since they had not enough of their own men to throw off the Roman tyranny, they took to that ancient custom of hiring German mercenaries to come to their aid. In this way the first Frankish colonies began.23 Hotman persists in constructing a history of independence in the face of Roman oppression, even as he recognizes that the Gauls needed assistance. The Gauls, who had previously enjoyed a form of self-government that varied in the extent of its democratic character valued above all else their ability to determine what that form of self-government would take. In this his third chapter, he again invokes one of the central themes of his rhetoric. The custom of hiring German mercenaries is “ancient” (vetus institutum). Even the Gauls, themselves the ancient French, turned to their own ancient traditions to begin the union of the Gauls and the Franks that would usher in the return to Gallic independence. This desire to throw off Roman rule is so great that the Gauls are even willing to compromise their ethnic identity in order to do so. Hotman’s text once again takes some interesting rhetorical turns in this regard: The works which Salvianus, the bishop of Marseille, wrote on providence best enable us to understand how cruel and oppressive was the rule of the Romans, how violent were their exactions, how abominable and obscene was the manner of their living, and how bitterly they were hated by the men of Gaul, and especially by the Christians. Thus it is far from surprising that such multitudes of Germans should pour into Gaul and that the Gauls, far from hindering the flood should actively encourage it.24 In this passage, he first emphasizes the gravity of the Roman oppression, but he nearly ventures into allegory as he describes the Gallic strategy to move out from under Roman rule. Readers are meant to see themselves and their contemporary French compatriots as the Gauls in this scenario, inviting Germans, who stand in for the Protestants, into their territory in order to rise up against the Roman Church. Hotman is sure to point out that Roman rule was detested 23  Hotman, Francogallia, 179. 24  Hotman, Francogallia, 181.

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“especially by the Christians,” and he cites the bishop of Marseille as proof. He is suggesting quite rightly that in his own time there are Catholics who would risk the purity and integrity of their own community rather than continue to live under Roman oppression. This is a story that many readers would likely have recognized, and it opens the discussion of what benefits the Franks might newly bring so that the Gauls can return to a more ancient and therefore more Gallic form of government. I would argue that this quasi-allegorical construction of his historical narrative lends credibility to his argument and makes it more appealing. It also sets up the discussion of the advantages that the Franks brought to the Gallic context, especially in ridding them of Roman influence. To pursue this discussion, Hotman turns to a familiar methodology for the Protestants that helps to get back to ancient truths through the purifying of the language. Philology as a rhetorical strategy is nothing new, as the discussion of David’s Mémoire and the accompanying Epistre, has made clear, but in this case, Hotman takes an onomastic approach, turning to it as a way of illustrating the intimate connection between names and the things or people to whom they refer. In the case of the Franks, their name conveys a distinct meaning that reflects the reality of who they are and how they can assist the Gauls in regaining their independence. As a sign of the value and importance of philology in affirming what is real and true, Hotman even cites one of the greatest triumphs of philology in his discussion of the origin of the Franks. He cites Otto of Freising (1114–1158) who, regarding the donation of Constantine, writes, “Hence the Western Roman Church maintains that the right to exact tribute even today is not doubted, except for the two Frankish kingdoms.”25 Hotman’s cleverness here highlights for the reader two very important facts. More obviously, readers, even if they take the donation of Constantine as legitimate, learn that the Frankish kingdoms had the right to their independence from the Pope’s authority. The deeper signal on Hotman’s part, however, is that most readers will realize that thanks to the philological prowess of Lorenzo Valla, they now know that the donation of Constantine was likely a fabrication. The French may take comfort in the fact that they are free from Roman authority, and doubly so. As descendants of the Franks, it is their right, and since the donation is an invention and Constantine’s gift to Pope Sylvester never occurred, they are free from Roman authority by that justification as well. The subtext of this citation reminds the reader of the importance of philology in getting to the truth. This lays important groundwork for what will come in the following chapter of the Francogallia in which the etymology of the name “Frank” is explored. 25  Hotman, Francogallia, 185.

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In the meantime, Hotman’s invocation of the donation of Constantine raises another important question about the advantage of his particular historical narrative. He seeks to outline a legitimate rendering of the origin of Francogallia and how it relates to the contemporary French people. His strategy for affirming the credibility of his narrative over and against others manifests itself in his derision and dismissal of other purported histories of the origin of the French people. He singles out the legend of France’s Trojan origins, as is illustrated by so many both contemporary to Hotman and earlier in the sixteenth century.26 He writes: “As to nearly all those others who take delight in fables and would relate the origin of the Franks to the Trojans and to a certain hypothetical Francion, son of Priam, we can only say that such an argument provides material for the work of poets, not of historians.”27 Hotman makes a claim to history that distinguishes his narrative from fiction or fantasy. His story of France’s origins is not artifice; it is fact. And his use of philology and other classical sources lend integrity and reliability to it. At the same time, his refusal of the story of Francion places France’s lineage outside of classical antiquity and takes it to a freer and more savage milieu. It fills out the etymology of the “Frank” in the Francogallia. 1.3 Better than Troy Hotman does better than to discredit or to distinguish himself from others, such as Jean Lemaire de Belges, who told the story of France’s Trojan origins. After all, Troy was the story of a defeated people at the hands of the Greeks. While Hector certainly offered a noble and glorious example in life and in death, his offspring would still suffer the taint of Troy’s ignominy. Hotman recounts a better history, one that is rooted in French territory and combines the best of the freest peoples in Europe at the time of the Roman empire. To make his case, he begins with the origin of the Franks’ name. Hotman quotes Tacitus, who describes the Franks’ first victory against the Romans: “That victory proved to be a very famous one at the time, and of great use later, for it enabled them to obtain the arms and ships they had lacked, and they were celebrated with great renown throughout Germany and 26  See Jean Lemaire de Belges, Les Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye, 2 vols., ed. J. Stecher (Louvain: J. Lefever, 1882), and Pierre de Ronsard, The Franciad, ed. and trans. Phillip John Usher (New York: AMS, 2010). There is no direct connection, per se, between these works and the work of Hotman, but they demonstrate the prevalence of the idea of France’s Trojan origins in the sixteenth century and its political implications. See also Judy Kem, Jean Lemaire de Belges’s Les illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye: The Trojan Legend in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (New York: P. Lang, 1993). 27  Hotman, Francogallia, 197, 199.

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Gaul as the authors of liberty. The Germans at once sent envoys to offer assistance.” It was surely a valuable omen for the future when they were truly and properly named free [Franci].28 Through Tacitus’s pen, Hotman gets to affirm Frankish strength against Rome, demonstrating how they strongly and successfully resisted Roman tyranny. This spirit infuses the French name and the French blood with the same desire and will for freedom to “thro[w] off the servitude imposed by tyrants.”29 Moreover, this yearning for freedom tends toward the active rather than the passive. Tacitus labels them the “authors” of liberty. In other words, they more than claim it; they create it by their strategy and military prowess against the Romans. Despite his convincing case for the origin of the Franks’ name, Hotman recognizes that, as in the case of the fabled Trojan origins, there are still those who tell a different and no less fabled history. Hotman returns again to the familiar rhetoric of debunking others’ history as legend while promoting his as the reliable and credible alternative. He derides the story of one Johannes Turpinus “(who was as stupid as he was ignorant and wrote not a biography but a fairystory of Charlemagne) that the word ‘Frank’ came from some trifling play upon words, wherein a man who contributed money to the building of the church of Saint-Denis was called ‘Frank’ or free.”30 Hotman then proceeds to list five other sources, including Gregory of Tours (c. 538–594) and Godfrey of Viterbo (c. 1120–c. 1196), who confirm that his account of the Franks’ name reflects not only their character but also how others at the time saw them. The Frankish will for freedom was so well known that “neighbouring peoples, who copied both the courage and the example of the Franks and claimed their freedom from Roman tyranny, thought that they should also use their name.”31 They earned a reputation for liberty and became a symbol thereof, especially in the face of Roman tyranny. As others took on their mantle, the Franks themselves authored liberty in other lands as well, most notably for Hotman’s purposes, in Gaul. The union between the two peoples that respected the unique heritage of the other culminated in the designation of their first king. Hotman introduces the monarch in a way that draws upon their respective heritage but that results in a single state:

28  Hotman, Francogallia, 203. Emphasis in the original. 29  Hotman, Francogallia, 203, 205. 30  Hotman, Francogallia, 205. 31  Hotman, Francogallia, 207.

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Merovech, king of the Franks, did not disdain the opportunity for action. He crossed the Rhine with the large force he had assembled, and, when many of the states turned to him for help in recovering their liberty, he took possession of the Celtic towns in the centre of the country. By the time of his death a single state had been created by the two people, the Gauls and the Franks, and with a common mind they all elected Childeric, the son of Merovech, as king.32 This particular section of the narrative gives a concise summary of the blessed union that Hotman wants to promote as France’s unique heritage. However, he insists upon several elements in this summary with further explanation and precision that are meant to remind the reader as to what will suffice for a French structure that reflects these noble and ancient origins. First, while Merovech is a man of action, he is only the king of the Franks and not the Gauls as well. Earlier, Hotman writes that others have commonly mistaken him to be so, but he was “a foreigner and stranger who was not made king in Gaul, not, at least, by the Francogallians through the choice and will of their joint and associated peoples.”33 Hotman solidifies historically the conditions under which one can legitimately be considered the ruler of Francogallia, and it requires the popular acclaim of the people. While he mentions that Merovech is a foreigner, what makes him ineligible is that only the Franks acknowledged him as king. While Merovech is to be admired for his desire to set the Gauls free from Roman rule, his legacy ends with this embodiment of the Frankish spirit that the descendants of the Francogallians have inherited. Their political leadership instead begins with Childeric. The fusion was not just political or centered only around their newly elected leader. Hotman quotes Hunnibaldus: “Thus the Franks intermingled with the Gauls and took their daughters to wife. The children of these unions assimilated both their language and their customs, with which they have become increasingly familiar down to the present day.”34 The two great traditions of independence and freedom have become something more than a political reality; it is now an ethnic identity. Hotman notes: “In this way, as various writers agree, the Gauls and the Franks came to be called in those times by a mixed name.”35 A new word was invented to describe this new reality, and Hotman has made his case for this cultural identity through his debunking of legend 32  Hotman, Francogallia, 217. 33  Hotman, Francogallia, 215. 34  Hotman, Francogallia, 217, 219. 35  Hotman, Francogallia, 219.

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and appeal to ancient and classical sources. Now that he has established their identity as a free and independent people, he explores for the reader the nature of the political system that this people instituted. Hotman yet again returns to his rhetoric of debunking in order to address one of the central misunderstandings of the history of the French political system that similarly involves some false impressions as to the origin of its name: the Salic Law. This uniquely French and Frankish tradition so integral to the identity and composition of the French monarchy has mistakenly aided and abetted in sustaining the hereditary monarchy, a purpose for which it was never meant and that deliberately contravenes the Francogallian political structure. Much like his discussion of the origin of the word “Frank,” Hotman sets about disproving many popular impressions that even historians of Francogallia have perpetuated. While such a debate may seem nitpicky, it has serious implications for Hotman’s argument about the election of kings. It is therefore necessary for him to debunk some of these impressions in order for his argument to prevail. A tone of debunking, which comes off as haughty, in the text is present from the start when Hotman points out that the Franks had two capitals and two kingdoms, one in Gaul and one beyond the Rhine near the River Sala.36 This latter capital is now extinct, but it is the origin of the adjectives “Salian” and “Salic” and of one of the bodies of Frankish law. Much like the election of kings, the Salic Law was drawn up and promulgated by a council of great men, one of whom was named Salogast. Moreover, they enacted this law before conversion to Catholicism, which lends it a further air of immutability. Hotman’s contempt reaches its greatest intensity when he dismisses what he perceives to be the principal alternative explanation of the origin of the name Salic. He writes: “The ancient chronographers express these opinions, which allow us to refute the error of those who would either derive the name of the law from the word sal, that is to say ‘prudence’ or ‘good sense’, or would claim the name has been corrupted from ‘Gallic’, which is more absurd than anything that can be imagined.”37 Hotman is sure to make a distinction between those whom he cites and those who have propagated a patently and obviously ridiculous alternative. He proves again that not only does this important name have its origin in the same Frankish traditions that gave France an independent and somewhat democratic political system, but also that many of the contemporary or recent sources are grossly mistaken. The erroneous explanation that he quotes comes from a text that was published only twenty years earlier.38 36  Hotman, Francogallia, 271. 37  Ibid. 38  See Giesey and Salmon, Francogallia, 270n9.

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This rather superficial misunderstanding of the origin of the name Salic pales in comparison to other misunderstandings of the law itself that lead to serious complications for Hotman’s main argument about the transmission of rule from one king to another. He refers to “greater errors” that have led people to believe first and foremost that “the Salic Law was part of the public law of the commonwealth and empire, and the law of hereditary succession to the kingdom.”39 Hotman’s rhetoric of debunking is in full force as he states what the long-term impression has been and then proceeds to replace it with a tale from which a hint of the legendary emanates. Hotman writes: Not many years ago the tables of this Salic Law were discovered and brought to light, and it is known from these records that they were first written down and published about the time of King Pharamond. Moreover it is clear that all the main elements of the Salic and Frankish Law were enacted in the context of private law, and not of the public law of the kingdom and commonwealth.40 This rediscovery of the tables of the Salic Law has fortunately allowed Hotman and the reader to learn the truth that it was never a prescription for hereditary kingship, that is, that the realm is part of the king’s property that he then passes on to his son. Instead, only the king’s private wealth is governed by this ancient tradition. This fortunate discovery profits Hotman, but it also further complicates matters. Since the Salic Law is such a traditional and immutable part of French political identity, he must preserve it. At the same time, however, he cannot allow it to complicate his argument for non-hereditary kingship. Thus, he relies on the real history and text of the Salic Law as he presents it since it clearly allows for both. At the same time, his interpretation of this real history creates a complication with respect to women rulers. If one can no longer see the Salic Law as governing the inheritance of the crown and only the inheritance of private property, then women are only excluded from the inheritance of private property and not the possession of the crown. Hotman is not at all ready to dispense with this limitation and so he appeals yet again to the real history he has discovered in order to justify maintaining the crown for men only. His motivation for this comes from his and other Protestants’ fear of Catherine de’ Medici who is always lurking near the levers of power.41 While 39  Hotman, Francogallia, 273. 40  Ibid. 41  For more on Catherine de’ Medici’s role in the discussion of the Salic Law, see Matthieu Gellard, Une reine épistolaire: Lettres et pouvoir au temps de Catherine de Médicis (Paris:

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women may be excluded from regal power, it is not because of the Salic Law since it has nothing to do with the transfer of legal power. Instead, women are excluded from power because “the practices and customs of the nation have acquired the force of written law.”42 Since these practices include the stipulation that only men may rule, then only men can rule. These laws “have been preserved for so long by the consent of succeeding generations and especially since they have been confirmed through acceptance by those who had denied them.”43 Several examples that Hotman cites confirm this tradition, and it should stand. Even though he has debunked the traditional understanding of the Salic Law and its relationship to the designation of regal power, the crown still cannot pass onto a female head. At this point, Hotman has disabused his reader of several supposedly historic notions regarding the French political system, whether it be with respect to the origin of the Francogallian people or the idea of hereditary kingship. He has certainly taken the opportunity along the way to deride Roman influence and to diminish its importance within that history. To this point, however, he has focused on the secular Romans who invaded and ruled Gaul. While the reader will of course understand that the discussion of the ancient Romans might refer metaphorically to the Catholic Rome of the sixteenth century, Hotman still feels the need to address the question directly. To do so, he turns to a text that will appear three years later as part of published versions of the Advocate David’s Mémoire. This account of a gift made by Pepin the Short to Pope Stephen threatens Hotman’s argument. In chapter thirteen of the Francogallia, Hotman addresses this text so directly that he ends up reprinting it in its entirety. His engagement of the episode begins with the deposition of Childeric III (c. 717–c. 754) and the installation of Pepin in his place. Hotman desires to know by whose authority this was done. He cites a text in Canon Law written by Pope Gelasius II (c. 1060/1064–1119): “A Roman pope, namely Zacharias, deposed the king of the Franks, not so much on account of his misdeeds, but rather because he was incapable of exercising such great responsibility and he replaced him with Pepin, father of the Emperor Charles, absolving all the Franks from their oath of allegiance.”44 To show his good faith, Hotman then uses his method of excessive citation against himself, citing seven sources that seem to affirm this particular course of events. Nevertheless, he proposes in Garnier, 2014), 158. Of course, the Discours merveilleux is also a clear manifestation of the fears surrounding any possible ascendancy of the queen mother. 42  Hotman, Francogallia, 275. 43  Ibid. 44  Hotman, Francogallia, 361.

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the next paragraph: “But let us see whether or not the truth of this story may be satisfactorily established.”45 Hotman takes on once again his investigatory and debunking tone in order to disprove a long-held but erroneous belief about the relationship between French political institutions and Roman authority, whether secular or religious. To open his counterargument to this established belief, he reminds the reader of what he has already shown, namely, that “the entire right to make and unmake kings lay with the solemn council of the people, so that it can scarcely be believed that the Franks would have neglected to exercise their right in this single instance.”46 It is a logical conclusion to draw, but it is based on Hotman’s own arguments and research. Just so, he provides research that recounts the transition to Pepin’s reign in accordance with everything he has outlined in the Francogallia to this point. Moreover, one of the historians, Venericus Vercellensis, whom Hotman had previously included on the list of historians who affirmed the traditional version of the story, now gives more detail as to exactly who was responsible for the transition. In fact, Pope Zachary only gave his blessing after Pepin was substituted for Childeric by the common council and according to the usual custom. Vercellensis quotes “an ancient historian” who gives testimony to the process that guaranteed the transfer of power: With the advice and consent of all the Franks, a report had been sent to the apostolic see, and the papal opinion had been received, and then that most distinguished man, Pepin, was elevated to the throne by the choice of the entire nation, and with the consecration of the bishops and the submission of the princes.47 Hotman does not fail to choose here another passage that emphasizes the advice and consent of the people in this abrupt change of power. The bishops are only there to provide the consecration, but the will is located with the common council. After his citation of numerous sources that relegate Pope Zachary to a consultative role in the election of Pepin the Short, he finally arrives at the main target of his discussion of this historical event: “I therefore believe it to be obvious to all men that the claim of the popes to a right to appoint or depose kings is an impudent fabrication. But besides this fabrication, which in itself is the most certain proof of dishonesty and malice, it is worth the trouble to cite a 45  Ibid. 46  Hotman, Francogallia, 363. 47  Ibid.

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certain remarkable letter of Pope Stephen, which has been tailored to fit this fiction.”48 Hotman deploys a rhetorical technique here that resembles Simon Goulart’s when he wrote his apology for inaccurate history. This technique constitutes an exhortation to the reader not to be left on the outside looking in when it comes to reasonable conclusions about the historical account he is about to discredit. Hotman has gone to great lengths to show that an overwhelming number of sources agree with his own conclusion that the pope had no authority over the appointment and deposition of French kings. One would never want to continue to believe erroneous sources or superstitious and legendary texts, of which the Epistle of Pope Stephen is one. The story recounted in the letter again reflects the tradition of legend, and while it does not attribute to the pope the power to determine who is king of the Franks, it does allow him to give a curious blessing by which Stephen attributes to himself the right to interfere in the appointment of Frankish kings: “And I [Stephen] blessed the Frankish nobles with the apostolic benediction, and under the authority bestowed by Christ upon Saint Peter himself they were obliged and adjured, themselves and their descendants, never to take upon themselves in any way the constituting of a king from any other stock through all subsequent ages.”49 This binding benediction seems to preserve the Frankish tradition of the common council electing the king while totally undermining it. Hotman has previously pointed out that the rights of the Franks to elect their king extends beyond the family of the current king or even the nobles to the stranger. As Hotman comments, “So wrote Pope Stephen, and, while his absurd folly ought to be apparent to us all, so too should we abhor the curse he placed upon the head of those who might acquire the kingdom without being descendants from the stock of Charlemagne.”50 Hotman seems to take the letter at face value, only attributing to Pope Stephen the sin of audacity in the face of Frankish political tradition. Earlier, however, he definitively labeled it a fabrication. He adroitly leaves a little bit of space just in case the letter is authentic, as unlikely as that may be, but insists upon the Pope not respecting his proper role in either case. 2

Excessive and Repetitive Citation

What allows Hotman to speak with authority in correcting these false notions about France and its history, whether having to do with the Salic Law or the 48  Hotman, Francogallia, 367, 369. 49  Hotman, Francogallia, 371. 50  Ibid.

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authority of the Pope, is the amount of evidence that he offers. He offers proof that France’s freedom, independence, and unity reflect an ancient ideal, and since the election of kings preserved this ideal for the Francogallians, it should recreate it for the French of the sixteenth century as well. Hotman articulates a fairly straightforward political argument that he constructs from reliable and presumably well-known sources, such as the aforementioned Gregory of Tours and Godfrey of Viterbo. While this argument for how the monarchy and the status of kings is to be organized is certainly central to the Francogallia, his rhetorical strategy in arguing his point and in presenting his evidence reveals his awareness of and his pushback against the lack of credibility of discourse in general and of history more specifically. He has previously alluded to this in the debunking of ancient histories of Gaul that point to a Trojan origin. In order to clearly distinguish his own history and to distinguish it from such legend, Hotman undertakes a project of excessive and repetitive citation of ancient sources as a rhetorical strategy in order to reassure the reader not only of his good faith but also of his unassailable research.51 One of the points on which Hotman fixates speaks to the manner in which the people confirmed a king’s election. He first mentions this moment in chapter five when he describes the election of Childeric, the son of Merovech, and the accompanying ritual: “They placed him upon a shield according to their custom, bore him thrice upon their shoulders round the assembly, and saluted him as king of Francogallia with enthusiastic applause and the greatest rejoicing of all present.”52 This episode ends the chapter as the Franks have now fully integrated themselves into Gallic territory, before Hotman has gotten to his extensive proof for the system by which kings in Francogallia are elected. In the subsequent chapter, Hotman belabors the point as he goes on to describe the election of a king in a veritable catalogue of examples beginning with Charlemagne (742–814) and his successors but then jumping around from the period of the earliest Frankish king, Pharamond (c. 365–430) to Charlemagne’s more immediate predecessor, his father Pepin the Short (c. 714–768). While he uses many permutations of a similar expression, Hotman is sure to cite text from his ancient sources that highlights the king’s election by the people. The Franks “elected themselves a king”; they “unanimously chose” “Pharamond”; they “established [a certain clerk called Daniel] […] as ruler and named him Chilperic”; the sons of Pepin “were made kings by the consent of all the

51  For a discussion of the evolution of the approach to documentary evidence in the sixteenth century, see Nicholas Popper, “An Ocean of Lies: The Problem of Historical Evidence in the Sixteenth Century,” Huntington Library Quarterly 74, no. 3 (2011): 375–400. 52  Hotman, Francogallia, 217.

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Franks.”53 Many other examples of this language follow from Gregory of Tours, the abbot of Ursperg, the manuscript chronicle of the monastery near Dijon, and from Liutprand of Tessino, Sigebert, and Ado of Vienne. The details of all of these examples serve to prove Hotman’s main point: “I think it is abundantly clear from these references and from many other similar ones that the kings of Francogallia were constituted by the authoritative decision and desire of the people, that is, of the order, or, as we are now accustomed to say, of the estates, rather than any hereditary right.”54 Elsewhere, he writes that certain references “should be the more carefully noted and observed, because they show that the right of the people was supreme, not only in choosing kings but also in repudiating the sons of kings and adopting strangers.”55 All of the sources—and there are many—are consistent in this language of acclamation, consent, or election. How could so many be wrong? Similarly, Hotman’s use of repetition helps him insist upon the validity of his narrative. In citing multiple times, both in chapters five and six, the ritual of the raising of the designated king upon the shield, he roots the election of the king in Frankish tradition. He notes this tradition briefly at the end of chapter five, but in chapter six he repeats it twice with respect to the election of Sigebert and then at the end of the chapter, with respect to Clovis and Gundovald. Hotman’s point in all this is to change—or more to his point, revert to—the system by which kings ascend upon the throne, but he also wants to reassure his reader that he is in the right when it comes to the unique tradition that has at this time been lost to the French. Through his excessive citation and occasional repetition of the same reference, he reinforces its reliability and credibility as the true history of the French political system. In chapter seven, on the condemning and deposing of kings, Hotman more or less follows the same rhetorical template, bombarding the reader with references to support his argument. Hotman later combines this method of excessive citation with his rhetoric of debunking and the correction of false history. In his discussion of the pope’s role, or lack thereof, in the appointment of Frankish kings, he does not content himself to find key research or one particular document or source that overturns previous misunderstandings on the part of Catholic partisans. He insists upon his point with another series of citations from the typical and reliable historical sources: Ado of Vienne, Aimon of Fleury, Godfrey of Viterbo, Sigebert, Otto of Freising, Marsiglio of Padua, and Hunibaldus. He also cites 53  Hotman, Francogallia, 223, 225. 54  Hotman, Francogallia, 231, 233. 55  Hotman, Francogallia, 229.

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several anonymous sources, but in any case, they all agree: “[A]lthough the Franks created Pepin king after seeking the opinion of the pope, he was not created so by the sovereignty and authority of the pope.”56 Through his investigation, on which he has so politely invited the reader to accompany him, he has demonstrated that his argument about the French monarchy is indeed historical but that so many other sources back it up. He uses his technique of citation along with his rhetoric of debunking in another curious and compelling way. At the beginning of this chapter on the pope’s authority, he cites several of his regular sources against his own argument. Thus, when the reader discovers that these same sources eventually come to the same conclusion as Hotman, it seems so surprising that it simply must be true. It all lends good faith to the author and credibility to the text. 3

Arming the Resistance: Differing Approaches Among Monarchomachs

Scholars often group the Francogallia with other Monarchomach texts when characterizing them as a response to St. Bartholomew’s Day.57 Obviously, being first published in 1573, the Francogallia spoke to the circumstances in which the French Protestants found themselves and to the possible solutions that could help them emerge out from under what they perceived as the yoke of the monarch’s tyranny. And yet, the timing of the Francogallia cannot be underestimated as a factor in distinguishing it from other Monarchomach treatises, principally in that it had no timing; his call for the return to the tradition of electing kings was not said too soon. In fact, he had been ruminating over the proposition since he began a study of the antiquities of France as early as 1567. The Francogallia, while singularly focused on the French context, speaks very generally about the status of the king and how to hold him more accountable. St. Bartholomew’s Day lurks in the background, but one of Hotman’s strategies to maintain his characteristic level-headedness is to compose a text that seemed timeless, that obviously spoke to very specific circumstances of the year or so following August 1572 while re-establishing timeless principles of French 56  Hotman, Francogallia, 365. 57  See Philippe Desan, “La conscience et ses droits: les Vindiciae contra Tyrannos de Du Plessis-Mornay et Hubert Languet,” in La liberté de conscience (XVIe–XVIIe siècles), ed. Hans R. Guggisberg, Frank Lestringant, and Jean-Claude Margolin (Geneva: Droz, 1991), 115. Desan is not alone, but he then goes on to talk about what distinguishes the Vindiciae, especially with respect to the liberty of conscience.

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government.58 The emphasis for Hotman is clearly on the latter. Perhaps this is why he felt comfortable focusing on the king’s political legitimacy and how to better guarantee it rather than explicitly working through theories of armed resistance. The timing of the composition and publication of the Francogallia seems to affirm Hotman’s intention to produce a more reasonable, persuasive, and ultimately unifying text. It sidesteps the events of the day in order to appeal to a past when France was united politically against Roman influence and for the tradition of electing kings. In guarding against the descent into the violence and tumult of the latest skirmishes, it attempts to remove itself to a more stable and disinterested plane. It makes the argument that the structure it proposes is eternal and immutable, the fact that this hallowed structure seems to have been lost notwithstanding. Other Monarchomachs had a more difficult time following Hotman’s example. Even though the overall historical context may have been the same, two Monarchomach texts directly address very specific historical and political circumstances related to St. Bartholomew’s Day, and in both instances, the authors felt compelled to abandon any similar attempt at Hotman’s overall equanimity of discourse.59 Theodore Beza’s Du Droit des Magistrats (On the Right of Magistrates), first published in 1574, and the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos (Defenses against Tyrants), first published in Latin in 1579 and then in French in 1581, both take a rhetorically sharper approach as they reason toward the possibility of armed resistance to the king. 3.1 Propagandistic and Reactionary Among the historical realities of the post-St. Bartholomew’s Day environment was the creation of Protestant refugees who quickly fled to more tolerant jurisdictions. In order for these refugees to return to France and to reclaim their land and possessions, they needed justification, and a victory—or at least a strong showing—in the battle for the historical narrative that could help them plead their case. Theodore Beza, a principal advisor to John Calvin who had 58  See Giesey, “When and Why,” 583: “It is, in fact, almost the genius of the Francogallia that the author refrained from any explicit argumentation about contemporary affairs. [Hotman] achieved the maximum effect because he used the best of all pedagogical devices, that of allowing the reader to make his own inferences and thus flatter himself about his own intellectual prowess.” 59  See Robert M. Kingdon, ed., introduction to Théodore de Bèze, Du droit des magistrats (Geneva: Droz, 1970), xxv. According to Kingdon, the Genevan censors, not wanting to offend the French authorities, prohibited the publication of almost all texts offering Protestant counternarratives to the events of St. Bartholomew’s Day. Hotman, however, succeeded in getting his text published since “[i]l présenta son livre comme une étude historique sur l’origine des institutions de la France.”

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his own history as a Protestant propagandist, was in a position to help them.60 While Beza, like Hotman, had already published on the question of armed resistance, the events of August 1572 and its consequences helped to focus his argument and to motivate him to compose a response.61 In 1573 in Geneva, he was party to discussions among noble refugees that ostensibly had as their goal to call upon the Protestant Swiss cantons to intervene on their behalf with the French crown. However, the legitimacy of an armed resistance on the part of the refugees was surely mentioned, especially since Beza went to great lengths to exclude the Council of Geneva lest it be implicated in any subsequent action and incur retaliation from France.62 Beza’s involvement in the election of the king of Poland in 1573 also affected the composition of Du droit des magistrats in that it gave Beza a concrete experience of limitations on royal power. Finally, his witness to the negotiations with other Swiss cantons for the protection of Geneva against any further attacks like that of St. Bartholomew’s Day suggested that Swiss solidarity with Geneva had be accompanied by some degree of discretion for fear of offending French sensibilities.63 Beza himself risked upsetting this balance, since he himself had been implicated as an agitator in a pamphlet distributed in Switzerland by a disaffected Protestant. The Lettre de Pierre Charpentier, published in 1572, argued that royal authorities in France had only sought to quash a conspiracy against them on that fateful August day, a conspiracy purportedly led by Beza as head of a militant wing of Protestants.64 Beza had to refute this accusation, but given the conditions and objectives of the moment, he had to do so carefully. As a counternarrative to texts such as this letter of Pierre Charpentier, Du droit des magistrats implies that the actions of royal authorities constitute a crime against the king’s subjects and not an attempt to put down a conspiracy. However, it is presented in the context of a political treatise that makes innumerable appeals to scripture and to the ultimate authority of God’s law over and above that of the king. 60  See Kingdon, introduction to Magistrats, xii. Kingdon notes that Beza served as the propagandist for the Prince of Condé from 1562–1563. 61  For the first sketches of Beza’s argument, see Theodore de Bèze, Confession de la foy chrestienne (Geneva: Guillaume Forest, 1563) (Bibliothèque de Genève Bc 3321). 62  Kingdon, introduction to Magistrats, xvii–xviii. 63  See Kingdon, introduction to Magistrats, xviii–xxi. Kingdon suggests an economic motivation behind the desire not to offend France: “les subsides versés par la France pour le service des mercenaires donnaient à la Confédération des ressources et des buts communs non négligeables” (xxi). 64  See Lettre de Pierre Charpentier, juriconsulte, addressée à François Portes, Candiois, par laquelle il monstre que les persecutions des Eglises de France sont advenues, non par la faulte de ceux qui faisoient profession de la Religion, mais de ceux qui nourrissoient les factions & conspirations qu’on appelle la Cause (1572).

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The Vindiciae contra tyrannos is a text rooted in the political moment as well. Settling upon who precisely authored this text would certainly be helpful in determining the extent to which the Vindiciae was a response to St. Bartholomew’s Day. The details of this debate lie beyond the scope of this analysis, and many have already examined them thoroughly enough. The consensus seems to have settled on Hubert Languet (1518–1581), and assuming he did indeed compose it, it is likely that he did so sometime in the years 1575–1576.65 These years coincide with the rebellion of Francis, Duke of Anjou and of Alençon, against Henry III.66 Languet, who was working at the court of Augustus of Saxony (1526–1586) at the time, became increasingly radicalized as he saw the opportunity to encourage change on the French throne. This rebellion by the Duke of Anjou presented an opportunity not to be missed. Alas, it was not meant to be, for the Duke of Anjou eventually abandoned his partnership with the Huguenots and returned to the fold of the royal family. The moment had been lost, and so the text did not appear until 1579 amid another political and diplomatic dalliance on the part of the Duke of Anjou. William of Orange (1533–1584) needed leverage against Spain in 1579 and found a willing participant in the French king’s youngest brother. While William maintained a firm hold on the northern half of the Low Countries, he ceded stewardship of the southern portion to the Duke of Anjou, thus forcing Spain to fight a two-front war against two traditional enemies. While not as ideal a situation as the Huguenot-Malcontent rebellion of 1576, it apparently sufficed, for the Vindiciae was indeed published in Basel sometime in 1579.67 As a response to the alliance between the Huguenots and the Malcontents, as the author intended it to be, the Vindiciae was likely attempting to intervene in the rebellion against Henry III in order to propose his replacement. For its author, the Vindiciae could not be published too soon, a political argument that sought to convince the French people that current events were suggesting a providential moment during which France could return to a more peaceful and unified state. For these reasons, both the Du droit des magistrats and the Vindiciae take on a reactionary tone that is less prevalent in Hotman’s text. While Hotman on occasion succumbs to a polemical outburst, both of these latter authors’ texts reflect the violence and the armed resistance that they propose. One example 65  M  artin N. Raitière, “Hubert Languet’s Authorship of the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos,” Il Pensiero Politico 14, no. 3 (1981): 398. 66  For more on this incident, see Mack P. Holt, The Duke of Anjou and the Politique Struggle During the Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 48–52. 67  See Raitière, “Authorship,” 401–02.

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of this rhetoric centers around the image of the Antichrist. In section three of Du droit des magistrats, in which Beza addresses the extent to which one must be resolved not to obey irreligious or iniquitous commands, he gives one particularly inflammatory instance in which he admonishes the reader to disobey: Ainsi aujourd’hui que nous voions tant de magistrats, ensorcelez par l’Antechrist Romain, commander à leurs subjets de se trouver à cest execrable service de messe, le devoir de tous les fideles est non seulement de ne leur obeir en cela, mais aussi, à l’exemple d’Elie et d’Elisee et de toute l’ancienne, vraie et pure Eglise, de se trouver aux saintes assemblees pour ouir la parolle de Dieu et participer aux Sacrements, comme le Seigneur a commandé qu’il soit fait en son Eglise.68 And we also see today so many magistrates, bewitched by the Roman Antichrist, commanding their subjects to be present at this execrable service of the mass, the duty of all the faithful is not only to not obey them in this, but also, according to the example of Elijah and Elisha and of the ancient, true, and pure Church, to be present at the holy assemblies to hear the word of God and to participate in the Sacraments, as the Lord commanded that it be done in his Church. Beza’s choice of example, namely the obligation to attend Catholic Mass, already puts him on territory where he most has an opportunity to offend the opposition, but he also derides the Catholic liturgy with inflammatory adjectives and with the presentation of the Protestant alternative that, in keeping with the Protestant value of the return to the source, is more ancient, true, and pure. The epithet of the “Roman Antichrist” makes his position abundantly clear and emphasizes the impossibility of obeying such a command so opposed to what in the author’s mind it means to be a follower of Christ. This type of command is personal and doubles as an opportunity for the unjust magistrate to ensnare the follower of the true Church. In section five, however, Beza broadens his gaze and his invective in order to make a point similar to one found in Hotman’s Francogallia. Beza in this section describes a usurper who after a certain time is able to manipulate the system such that his tyranny is then deemed legitimate: L’estat présent de la Chrestienté nous fournit de deux exemples sur cela, et tous deux de grande consequence. Le premier est ceste du tout injuste 68  Bèze, Magistrats, 6.

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et irreligieuse subjection, par laquelle les Rois et Peuples se sont par serment obligez à l’Antechrist Romain; par lequel serment je di qu’ils ne sont non plus adstreints que s’ils s’estoient manifestement obligez à Satan lui mesmes en personne de renverser tous droits divins et humains. L’autre exemple est de ceste jurisdiction temporelle, qu’on appelle, que les Prelats ecclesiastiques se sont attribuee: chose directement repugnante aux mandemens et exemples notoires de Christ et de ses Apostres.69 The present state of Christendom furnishes us with two examples of this, and both of them of great consequence. The first is that of the totally unjust and irreligious constraint, by which Kings and Peoples have obliged themselves by oath to the Roman Antichrist; by which oath I say that they are no more constrained than if they were manifestly obliged to Satan himself in person to overturn all divine and human law. The other example is of that so-called temporal jurisdiction that ecclesiastical Prelates have attributed to themselves: a thing directly repugnant to the notable mandates and examples of Christ and his Apostles. Hotman more or less undertakes this precise argument about the role of the Roman Church in French affairs at various points throughout his treatise. He looks at the philological evidence, as well as the historical and political tradition, in order to demonstrate that Rome has little or no role to play in the selection of the prince. Beza, on the other hand, while arguing the same point leaves behind Hotman’s reasoned argument and turns to polemic. In addition to the repetition of the famous epithet, “Roman Antichrist,” he denies outright the legitimacy of any oath that would obligate the people to such an evil entity. His comparison of the oath to the Roman Church to an oath that one might make to Satan inflames his rhetoric and further impugns the Church by analogy. Finally, the clear distinction that he notes between the rule that prelates have seized for themselves and the rule of Christ and his apostles not only dismisses any right that these prelates would have in the temporal realm, but also those in the spiritual realm as well, since he seems to doubt any legitimacy can be gained from claims to apostolic succession. Junius Brutus, as the author of the Vindiciae labels himself, is equally concerned with recentering the law on God rather than on his earthly rulers. While he in no way denies that earthly rulers have legitimacy, he, like Beza, outlines an argument for when a subject is justified in ignoring the commands of his or her king. It is in the discussion of scriptural texts where the opportunity 69  Bèze, Magistrats, 14–15.

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to defame his opponents arises, and Junius Brutus—or Languet—does not hesitate to take advantage. In the discussion of his second question, whether it is legal to resist a prince who wants to contravene God’s law or to ruin the Church, he targets not only the prince but others who seek to ruin or to imitate what he calls the true Church. In a particularly bold insult to the opposition, the author of the Vindiciae, after briefly discussing the Turkish custom of imposing their religion on the peoples whom they subjugate, writes: Mais celuy est beaucoup plus grand adversaire de Christ & de la vraye religion, avec tous les Rois qu’il a enchantez, qui opposent le feu à la lumiere de l’Evangile, les tortures à la parole de Dieu, les armees equippees au glaive de l’Esprit, contraignans par gehennes & supplices, entant qu’en eux est, toutes personnes d’estre idolatres : & qui au reste n’ont point de honte de maintenir & avancer leur foy par perfidie, & leurs traditions par continuelles trahisons.70 But that one is a much bigger adversary of Christ and of the true religion, with all the Kings that he has enchanted, who [together] oppose fire to the light of the Gospel, tortures to the word of God, equipped armies to the sword of the Spirit, obliging everyone by torments and sufferings, inasmuch as it is in them, to be idolatrous: and who moreover have no shame in maintaining and advancing their faith by perfidy, and their traditions by continual betrayals. The author’s confident assertion that Catholics pose a bigger threat to Christ and to true religion than the Turks echoes Hotman’s evocation of tyranny by popes and within the Church since the association of the Turks with tyranny was for Hotman and for others commonplace.71 However, the author further alienates the Catholic prince by linking the two in this comparison. The author considers such a ruler to be a clear enemy for their allegiance to, and cooperation with, the Church. A truly good prince or magistrate uses the sword and shield to protect the adherents to true religion rather than to destroy them.72 Both Beza and the author of the Vindiciae, by their heightened polemics, show much less interest in preserving national unity, Hotman’s primary motivation 70  Etienne Junius Brutus, De la puissance legitime du prince sur le peuple, et du peuple sur le Prince (1581), in Vindiciae contra tyrannos: Traduction française de 1581, ed. Henri Weber, et al. (Geneva: Droz, 1979), 92. Internal pagination and that of the edition are identical. Hereafter cited simply as Vindiciae. 71  See Hotman, Francogallia, 415. 72  Vindiciae, 93.

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for writing the Francogallia the way he did. In fact, the former authors’ devotion to the sectarian point of view is reflected in their implicit adherence to a more international coalition of Protestants whom they would like to see France tolerate rather than on a united France in which Catholics and Protestants can live together.73 3.2 A Change in Rhetoric and a Change in Evidence This heightened polemical rhetoric seeps down into the very choice of evidence that both Beza and the author of the Vindiciae employ to defend their arguments. It is not that they refrain from citing some of the ancient and secular sources. Quite the contrary.74 Nevertheless, they rely more heavily on biblical citation than does Hotman, an aspect that continually reinforces the sectarian bent of these later Monarchomach texts. In any text of this period, the use of scripture and even religious language can already signal a polemical orientation, since, as I have already suggested, biblical exegesis presented an easy opportunity to malign the ignorance or foolishness of the other side, as well as their theological ideas. In addition, their use of the Bible brings into relief some assumptions that further distance the texts from Hotman and also from any desire to appeal to a Catholic audience. The rhetoric of the texts in their formulations of ideas about God and God’s nature returns to a discourse that is easily disputable or interpreted in ways diametrically opposed to the author’s intent. They repeat a discourse that exudes an overwhelming confidence but that leaves itself open to varying interpretations. Thus, the reliability of the discourse is in doubt as Beza and the author of the Vindiciae choose not to imitate Hotman’s attempt at a reliable discourse in order to speak exclusively to their sectarian counterparts and to continue to taunt the Catholic opposition. The use of scripture to justify armed resistance is not a new idea and by default easily inflames the opposition. Both Beza and the author of the Vindiciae hew closely to Calvin’s overall principle as he articulated it in the Institution de la religion chrétienne (1560). In Book IV, Chapter 20, Calvin writes:

73  See Raitière, “Authorship,” 408. One of Raitière’s arguments against Du Plessis-Mornay as the author of the Vindiciae is that Du Plessis-Mornay, as opposed to Languet, valued national unity over sectarian difference, a standard Politique position that the Vindiciae does not reflect. I have already argued that Hotman deliberately sought to appeal to this demographic with the Francogallia, but here it is rejected in favor of a sectarian identity. 74  See Henri Weber, ed., introduction to De la puissance legitime, (Geneva: Droz, 1979), v: “Plusieurs idées contenues dans les Vindiciae ont déjà servi à justifier la résistance huguenote au pouvoir royal, mais la réflexion systématique qui les relie s’inspire à la fois de sources antiques et médiévales.”

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The fall from kingdom to tyranny is easy; but it is not much more difficult to fall from the rule of the best men to the faction of a few; yet it is easiest of all to fall from popular rule to sedition. For if the three forms of government which the philosophers discuss be considered in themselves, I will not deny that aristocracy, or a system compounded of aristocracy and democracy, far excels all others: not indeed of itself but because it is very rare for kings so to control themselves that their will never disagrees with what is just and right; or for them to have been endowed with such great keenness and prudence, that each knows how much is enough.75 Clearly, both authors believe that there are magistrates in power who have not known how much is enough or who have consistently agreed with what is just and right. God’s law has indeed been contravened since both treatises construct their respective arguments upon this foundation. Beza entitles his first section, “Un seul Dieu doit estre obey sans aucune exception” (One God alone must be obeyed without any exception), and in the Vindiciae, “Première question, asavoir si les sujets sont tenus & doyvent obeir aux princes, s’ils commandent quelque chose contre la Loy de Dieu” (First question, to know whether subjects are beholden and must obey princes, if they command something contrary to the Law of God). Both titles obviously imply that the authors envision in their own time a situation in which princes or magistrates would do just that. To illustrate their point, both of them turn to an obvious example from scripture in which someone rightly resists a ruler who has broken God’s immutable law. The case of David and Saul has already figured into many works of literature leading up to the late 1570s, an example of which is Jean de la Taille’s Saül le furieux (1572). Beza takes a more moderated approach on the passage in the discussion of his sixth section entitled, “Quel est le devoir des subjets envers le souverain legitime estant devenu Tyran manifeste” (What is the duty of subjects toward the legitimate sovereign who has manifestly become a tyrant). Beza introduces his discussion of this essential biblical and political episode by calling the readers’ attention to what he claims are “certain and irrefutable” examples from sacred history; the interaction between Saul in his last days and David is the first of these irrefutable examples that he wants to address.76 75  John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 4.20.8 (2:1493). For a nice summary and analysis of Calvin’s political thought, especially with respect to tyranny, see Matthew J. Tuininga, Calvin’s Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 321–54. 76  Beza, Magistrats, 22.

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In his very first sentence he characterizes Saul as cruel and disloyal, and he also does not hesitate from the beginning to label him a tyrant. At the same time, he recognizes David’s restraint in the face of Saul’s tyranny, citing David’s refusal to kill Saul when he has the chance or to invade the kingdom and take over. In fact, he notes about David’s disposition, “Ce neantmoins il appert que son intention a esté de se garantir, voire mesmes par les armes, à l’ocasion que dessus” (This nevertheless it appears that his intention was to protect himself, even by arms, because of the above [situation]).77 This is Beza’s guiding principle, namely David’s self-defense. He makes it clear by what he chooses to recount regarding David’s situation that this particular motivation justifies David taking up arms, even though he ultimately decides not to use them against Saul. David’s behavior while in the city of Keilah proves this, for David only mulls garrisoning himself in the city as a means to defend himself from Saul. Otherwise, one could have considered David to have acted traitorously: “Lequel fait ne peut estre condamné sans tenir David pour seditieux et rebelle (ce qui n’est pas) et sans reprendre la sage Abigail comme mensongère, quand elle a dit que David injustement assailli menoit les guerres de l’Eternel, c’està-dire usoit d’une juste defense” (This fact cannot be condemned without taking David for being seditious or a rebel (which is not the case) and without reprimanding Abigail as a liar when she said that David, unjustly assailed, was fighting the battles of the Eternal One, that’s to say exercising a just defense).78 This passage emphasizes that all of David’s actions, whether actively engaging in the collection of arms or in the recruiting of men, serves only the purpose of his justifiable self-defense. David enjoys “la promesse de la succession du Royaume” (the promise of succession to the kingdom), and he refuses to yet invade the kingdom until after the king’s death “auquel il s’asseuroit de succeder” (to whom he was assured to succeed).79 David’s claim to the throne is united with God’s divine purpose for him and for Israel, and yet, he commits to only fighting in order to defend and not to attack. To this limitation on David’s ability to act, Beza adds an interesting nuance that he purports to glean from scripture. David “ne fait pas un pas pour approcher du throne Royal, que Dieu ne l’y pousse et que le consentement du peuple ne l’appelle” ([will] not make one step to approach the Royal throne, unless God pushes him to it and the consent of the people calls him).80 The death of Saul, if and when it does occur, 77  Ibid. 78  Ibid. 79  Ibid. 80  Kingdon, in his note on this passage, refers to 2 Samuel 2:1–4, which states, “After this, David inquired of the Lord, ‘Shall I go up into one of the cities of Judah?’ The Lord replied to him: Go up. Then David asked, ‘Where shall I go?’ He replied: To Hebron. So David went

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only allows for the possibility of David taking over what Beza correctly states has become David’s divine right. However, this plan can only be realized on the two conditions that God reasserts his will and that the people consents to it. Given all of these aspects of Beza’s use of this episode in sacred and scriptural history, one can conclude that Beza is arguing that a new candidate for the throne will emerge who is sanctioned by God, but who will not be able to take possession of it until the current king, tyrant though he may be, has died. This does not preclude the taking up of arms in self-defense against such a tyrant, but he must wait for the tyrant’s death and for the consent of the people. This seems a reasonable position, but the text nevertheless keeps its polemical edge since it attributes to Saul, who corresponds to the Valois king, the designation of tyrant. At the same time, the many conditions that Beza places upon the tyrant’s replacement, in light of scripture, lends to Beza’s analysis an air of restraint that David himself exemplifies. Beza’s polemical exegesis of these passages from 1 and 2 Samuel addresses arguments from the opposition. Thomas Beaux-Amis (1524–1589) exemplifies this alternative emphasis and therefore interpretation of the same biblical history in his text entitled Remonstrance au peuple francois, qu’il nest permis à aucun subjet, sous pretexte que ce soit, se rebeller ne prendre les armes contre son Prince & Roy, ny attenter contre son Estat, le tout prouvé par l’Escriture sainte, which I discussed in Chapter Three on paratexts. Beaux-Amis, a Carmelite and doctor of theology, logically raises the issue of David’s restraint to support his own opposing claim. To do so, he focuses on David’s repeated refusal to seek his vengeance against Saul and his attempts to kill him. Beaux-Amis paraphrases an account of David’s decision not to kill Saul when Saul was pursuing him in the desert near Ein Gedi and then again when David spared Saul’s life at Gibeah.81 Between his descriptions of the two opportunities David had to kill Saul, Beaux-Amis writes as an aside, “Je ne peux icy omettre un autre fait de David envers Saül, pour la confusion des rebelles, qui se couvrent du manteau de l’Escriture en leurs entreprises” (I cannot here omit another act of David toward Saul, for the sake of the confusion of the rebels, who cover themselves up there, with his two wives Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the wife of Nabal of Carmel. David also brought up his men with their families, and they dwelt in the towns of Hebron. Then the men of Judah came there and anointed David king over the house of Judah.” 81  Thomas Beaux-Amis, Remonstrance au peuple francois, qu’il n’est permis à aucun subjet, sous pretexte que ce soit, se rebeller ne prendre les armes contre son Prince & Roy, ny attenter contre son Estat, le tout prouvé par l’Escriture sainte (Paris: Guillaume Chaudière, 1575), 7–8 and 9–10. (Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon FC122–13). As I mentioned in Chapter Three, this text was likely first published in 1567 (BnF 8-LB33-199). For the scriptural references, see 1 Samuel 24 and 1 Samuel 26.

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with the mantle of Scripture in their undertakings).82 Beaux-Amis sees his own accounts of this scriptural history as a response to those who would use it to justify armed resistance.83 He never calls Saul a tyrant, even though he lists some of his atrocities, and he references obscurely and only in passing that David has any soldiers backing him up. For example, when Beaux-Amis mentions that Saul was coming after David at Ein Gedi, he writes only that “David et ses hommes” (David and his men) had taken the advantage, giving David the opportunity to assassinate Saul.84 In the end, the problem takes care of itself as Saul takes his own life and an Amalekite comes to David claiming to have killed Saul, an act that David labels inexcusable and that elicits a curse from him.85 At the end of his account, Beaux-Amis summarizes his argument and outlines what is at stake: Que si les rebelles objectent, qu’il se dit entre les barbares, Si jus violandum est, regnandi gratia violandum est : & là-dessus bastissent leurs esperances, & cauterizent les consciences, pour par tous moyens illicites, s’emparer de la grandeur royale : si sous couleur de ce masque tyrannique, ils persuadent que le fils doit entreprendre sur son pere, le frere sur son frere, & le cousin, sur son cousin : que restera-il d’asseurance entre les hommes ?86 Just as if the rebels object, than if it is said between barbarians, if the law must be violated, it may be violated to seize power: and upon that they build their hopes and cauterize their consciences, in order by all illicit means to seize for themselves royal grandeur: if under the color of this tyrannical mask, they persuade that the son ought to usurp his father, the brother his brother, and the cousin, his cousin: what assurances will remain between men? 82   Beaux-Amis, Remonstrance, 9. 83  See Calvin, Institutes, 4.20.28–32 (2:1515–21). Calvin quotes 1 Samuel 24 favorably, namely that the “Lord’s anointed” should not be harmed, seemingly agreeing with Beaux-Amis. Punishment can come from God for tyrants, but “[I]f the correction of unbridled despotism is the Lord’s to avenge, let us not at once think that it is entrusted to us, to whom no command has been given except to obey and suffer” (4.20.31 (2:1518)). See also Tuininga, Political Theology, 345–54 who explains the evolution of Calvin’s thought on resistance and the debate on it. 84   Beaux-Amis, Remonstrance, 7b. 85   Beaux-Amis, Remonstrance, 10b. Beaux-Amis’s account jumbles some of the details of the biblical narrative. In fact, the Philistines cut off Saul’s head, whereas Beaux-Amis implies that the Amalekite did this. Instead, the Amalekite stole Saul’s crown and armlet, supposedly after having slain Saul. See 2 Samuel 1:10. 86   Beaux-Amis, Remonstrance, 10b–11.

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Beaux-Amis insists on proper limits to guard against the descent into chaos when it comes to problematic rulers. His account of scriptural history highlights David’s motivations for preserving Saul’s life, even while trying to protect his own. David knew that if he failed to respect Saul’s status as the anointed one of God, no matter how seriously Saul had strayed from God’s will and law or no matter how much Saul sought to kill him, he could not kill Saul lest David’s enemies feel justified in doing the same to him. Later, Beaux-Amis will go on to cite the story of David and Absalom to reinforce this point.87 Moreover, this comparison between the rebels and the barbarians comes in the text just after the Amalekite’s false admission to having killed Saul. Beaux-Amis’s interpretation of the scriptural history here makes a polemical slip. Whereas Protestants would like to compare themselves to David, whose honor Beaux-Amis and others like him would have never called into question, Beaux-Amis seems to liken Protestants to the Amalekite who thinks himself noble for having killed Saul but instead is to be deplored at David’s command as a traitorous rebel. The references to familial relationships add another layer and anticipate the coming reference to Absalom in Beaux-Amis’s text. It amplifies the gravity of such rebelliousness and likens it to fratricide or parricide. Since most or all of the candidates who to take the king’s place are fellow nobles or relations at some level, this series of rhetorical questions that end in utter chaos further distance David from Protestants as a possible image for them in their resistance to the king. David, who had married Saul’s daughter Michal, acts as an exemplary relation, refraining from any strike against his father-in-law.88 Beaux-Amis sees David’s succession as the natural course of God’s will; it is unexceptional in this debate, save for David’s example of seemingly non-violent evasive maneuvers that might remind Saul of the disfavor into which he has fallen but certainly seek to do Saul no harm. The author of the Vindiciae approaches this episode in biblical history in a similar manner to Beza, but perhaps reflects a few more years of accusations of sedition from the opposition. The Vindiciae, in its extended treatment of this question of being rebellious or seditious, comes off rhetorically as an apologia for those whom the opposition has labeled as such. Furthermore, he writes with the assumption that the image of David corresponds to him and to his coreligionists. Early in the treatise, the author gives a straightforward articulation of the king’s responsibility to follow God’s law, using the image of Saul. Speaking as the prophet Samuel, the author writes:

87  See Beaux-Amis, Remonstrance, 11b–12b. For the story of David and his son, Absalom, see 2 Samuel 15–18. 88  1 Samuel 18:20–29.

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Ne pensez pas toutesfois que Dieu vueille qu’on rongne quelque chose de son droit : ains sachez que le Roy est obligé à observer la Loy d’iceluy aussi bien que vous, & que s’il ne le fait, mesme chastiment luy est appresté qu’à vous : brief que Saul vous est donné pour Roy pour marcher devant vous en guerre, selon vostre desir : mais à condition qu’il suive aussi la Loy de Dieu.89 Do not think however that God wants that anything of his law be eaten away: but know that the King is obliged to observe the Law of this one just as much as you are, and that if he does not do so, the same chastisement will be given to him as would be to you: in brief, [know] that Saul is given to you as King to march before you in war, according to your wish: but on the condition that he follows also the Law of God. God eventually rejects Saul in favor of David, and David is justified in opposing him. From the story of David and Saul and of other Israelite kings, the author arrives at a general principle: “[S]uivant ce que nous avons desja touché, si [les Rois] violent leur serment & transgressent la Loy, nous disons qu’ils perdent le royaume” (Following what we have already touched upon, if [Kings] violate their oath and transgress the Law, we say that they lose the kingdom).90 This extrapolation is artfully worded: these kings will lose their kingdom, but it does not say who will effect this change. Neither does the text present a justification for David’s self-defense at this particular moment. The author of the Vindiciae presents his angle on David’s succession that instead focuses on Saul and his failures especially with respect to his observance of God’s law. This does not mean that the author’s discussion of Saul and David has run its course. He raises this episode again when addressing his second question, “Asavoir s’il est loisible de resister à un Prince qui veut enfraindre la Loy de Dieu, ou qui ruine l’Eglise” (To know whether it is legal to resist a Prince who wants to impede God’s law, or who ruins the Church). The author begins his justification of David’s self-defense when addressing the more particular circumstance of the conflict between God’s law and the king’s earthly rule. He asks, “Mais si le Roy passe outre, & envoye des lieutenans qui nous contraignent d’estre idolastres, & s’il nous commande de chasser Dieu du milieu de nous, fermerons nous pas la porte au Roy & à ses officiers plustost que chasser hors de nostre ville le Seigneur Dieu qui est Le Roy des Rois ?” (But if the King goes too far, and sends his lieutenants who oblige us to be idolaters, and 89  V  indiciae, 27. 90  Vindiciae, 28.

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if he commands us to chase God from among us, will we not shut the door to the king and to his officers rather than chase from our city the Lord God who is the King of Kings).91 The author introduces a separation between religious and political authority, favoring the former, as a justification for opposing the latter. While he does not necessarily efface the religious character of the king, he reminds the reader that the king is capable of turning against himself, his people, and his god. The author of the Vindiciae wants to explore what to do when this unfortunate situation arises, and the scriptural history of Saul and David, among others, will assist him in illustrating it. About David, he writes quite simply, “David opprimé de calomnies & faux blasmes, aguetté de toutes parts, se retire & conserve es montagnes inaccessibles, & s’appreste pour opposer les murailles de Ceila à la fureur du Roy. Mesmes il attire à son parti tous ceux qu’il peut, non pas pour oster la vie à Saul, comme il est bien aparu puis apres, ains pour conserver la siene” (David, oppressed by calumnies and false blames, hunted down at every turn, draws back and protects himself in inaccessible mountains, and prepares to pit the walls of Keilah against the fury of the King. He even draws to himself all those he can, not to deprive Saul of his life, as it is quite clear from then on, but to preserve his own).92 The characterization of David is very telling and confirms him as a stand-in for Protestants. First, the language of his enemy oppresses him, with its calumnies and false accusations. His enemies chase after him and are therefore responsible for his flight and for his attempt to use the city of Keilah as a garrisoned refuge. His principal enemy for the sake of this discussion is his king, but when that king tries to take over God’s throne, David is among the ranks of those who at that point find that they are in the right to avoid obeying Caesar, as he puts it.93 Moreover, for those who take this stand, one should never call them a fugitive or seditious, for they, like David, simply lie in wait, “estans prests de faire ce qu’il leur commandera, apres s’estre repenti & avoir repris son bon sens” (being ready to do what he will command, after he has repented and come back to his senses).94 The author portrays David as a loyal and suffering servant who would be only overjoyed to return to a position of obedience, as long as the king returns to God. This stance does not constitute rebellion but loyalty to God and to the king, for nothing is more loyal than hoping that the king returns to virtue. While presenting David’s disobedience and armed resistance—the author labels David the chief of Israel’s army—in the best possible light, he 91  92  93  94 

 indiciae, 73–74. V Vindiciae, 78. Vindiciae, 76. Vindiciae, 77–78.

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resists also the calumnies that have come from the enemy, among which are accusations of sedition against the legitimate king. The image of David, along with other uses of scripture in the text, masks many polemical assumptions about both sides, Protestant and Catholic, and they revolve around one being virtuous and the other dishonest in its accusations or even tyrannical. The certainty with which the author presents his analysis of this scripture further indicts the opposition for supporting a tyrannical prince and for backing it up with erroneous interpretations of scripture. In this sense, the Vindiciae picks up Beza’s general approach to using scripture in a political treatise.95 It is a polemical use that antagonizes the opposition, to be sure, but it also serves to build solidarity with like-minded Protestants, regardless of their political or ethnic identity. It no longer matters whether one is French, but only if one is Protestant, if one has the right approach to scripture, or if one hates tyrants. Beza and the author of the Vindiciae build their argument around obedience to God’s law, which transcends any nascent national identity. It is not that they are choosing to disregard French law, but unlike Hotman, they rely heavily on scriptural and patristic evidence. They justify their resistance to the king by insisting that the king has broken God’s law, which is universal and applicable beyond French borders. Moreover, they question his legitimacy by pointing out that he does not enjoy the benefit of the consent of the people. On this point, they agree with Hotman, but when arguing it, they continue to use scriptural examples, among others, to prove the people’s role in the ascendancy of kings to the throne. In the Vindiciae, for example, the author returns to the image of Saul and David and attempts to demonstrate that both, while elected by God and anointed by prophets, only ruled thanks to the consent of the people.96 Obviously, an author such as Beaux-Amis would ardently disagree with this interpretation. But with what by now should be familiar as a classic polemical technique, the author of the Vindiciae alienates any reader opposed to his exegesis of these key passages from 1 and 2 Samuel. He writes: Je sçay que les amis & fideles serviteurs des Rois aprouveront & seront accueil à ce discours, & ne craindront de maintenir ce qui y est contenu. Selon donc que le lecteur esmeu de joye ou de despit en lisant, qu’il sache que ce sont les marques de la haine ou de la faveur qu’il porte aux tyrans.97 95  On the commonalities between the use of scripture in Beza and the Vindiciae, see Raitière, “Authorship,” 411–12. 96  Vindiciae, 96–99. 97  Vindiciae, 95–96.

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I know that the friendly and faithful servants of the Kings will approve and will welcome this discourse, and that they will not be afraid to hold fast to what is here contained. According to, therefore, whether the reader is moved to joy or to spite in reading this, may he know that these are the marks of the hate or the favor that he carries toward tyrants. Before he even begins his use of the evidence, he clearly articulates the proper conclusion. If the reader agrees with him, he hates tyrants; if not, the reader is favorably disposed to them. This short preface to his interpretation of Saul and David’s election comes in the discussion of the third question of the Vindiciae, where the argument reflects a more legalistic tone. Nevertheless, this legalistic argument depends on this polemical interpretation of scripture. Yes, the relationship between the king and the law limits the king, but since even that control can break down—for example, in the king’s capricious altering of the law—the people must have recourse to their own check on the king’s authority. Similarly, Beza employs David’s example in the context of his discussion of the many nations who accept their king only under certain conditions, namely that “ceux qui ont eu puissance de bailler [aux Rois] telle authorité, n’ont eu moins de puissance de les en priver” (those who have the power to give such an authority [to Kings], do not have less authority to deprive them of it).98 For Beza and the author of the Vindiciae, the example of Saul and David fits into their argument as a clear example of a justified armed resistance, on the one hand, and as proof that the consent of the people is necessary for the king’s legitimacy on the other. However, neither use speaks to Hotman’s overall argument that the election of kings is rooted in the French tradition. In fact, it supports the idea that necessary consent is universal, or nearly so. Beza, for example, includes Saul and David in a series of examples drawn everywhere from Roman and Greek antiquity to the more contemporary Holy Roman Empire to explore, as he writes, whether or not this principle was practiced in every place and by every nation.99 None of this is by accident since Beza and the author of the Vindiciae are not particularly interested in convincing their fellow French subjects to unite behind a duly elected king beholden to the estates and to the people. Rather, they seek to convince their fellow Protestants to resist in the face of the Catholic enemy. Having rid themselves of this obstacle, they will then be able to stand united and govern according to these universal 98  Bèze, Magistrats, 24. 99  See Bèze, Magistrats, 24: “Et de fait voyons si de tout temps et par toutes les nations les mieux cognues cela n’a pas esté ainsi prattiqué.” His answer to this query is of course in the affirmative.

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principles, illustrated by the story of Saul and David, but also found throughout history and in many places. These other Monarchomachs have therefore moved from an argument from French cultural or political history to a sectarian one, whereby solidarity with other Protestants across borders is more important than any French political identity.100 The polemical interpretation of scripture exemplifies this lack of interest in convincing their fellow French who are Catholic, and it further hints at a prophetic quality present in both texts.101 The point of this prophecy, though, is not to call the other side to conversion. In keeping with a sectarian point of view, both Beza’s text and the Vindiciae possess a latent apocalypticism that declares the opposition a permanent enemy whose ultimate end should only be condemnation. Many of the scriptural examples point to this. The correspondence between Saul and his family and the Catholic party in both Beza and the Vindiciae certainly suggests an ignominious end for those ruling France at the time, and the attraction to the Maccabean revolt from the second century BCE lend an apocalyptic tinge to their political argument.102 The Protestants, like David and the Maccabees, are a persecuted minority in exile. Both Beza and the author of the Vindiciae focus on the obedience to God’s law as the mark of the righteous, even though the interpretation of that law may be in dispute. They confirm this apocalyptic view by referring to their Catholic opposition as the “Antichrist.”103 In these different scenarios, both authors spur their fellow Protestants on toward revolt, assuring them of the final victory, when all will be according to God’s will. David and his house will rule forever, while God will exterminate Saul’s. The Maccabees will prevail against Antiochus and the other Seleucids. Armed resistance is appropriate and acceptable and is an instrument of God’s will as it helps to set up a monarchy according to true biblical principles and that includes members of the true Christian religion.

100  This is in fact one of the reasons why Raitière believes that Du Plessis-Mornay did not write the Vindiciae; he would have never made such a sectarian argument. See “Authorship,” 407–08. 101  See André Tournon, “La rhétorique des Vindicae,” in Vindciae contra tyrannos (Geneva: Droz, 1979), xxiii. Tournon writes: “Il ne s’agit pas ici des passages scripturaires allégués comme preuves ou pris pour matière d’analyse juridique […] mais de paroles sacrées textuellement transcrites et prolongées parfois en méditations ou en interpellations, pour donner aux propos une résonance prophétique.” 102  See Bèze, Magistrats, 46, 59, 61–62, and Vindiciae, 67–68, 78–79, 234. 103  See Bèze, Magistrats, 6, and Vindiciae, 78.

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Obstacles to Hotman’s Success

Beza and the author of the Vindiciae have a story to tell, a history to recount. As with other examples of apocalyptic, this history comes in coded language, but just beneath the surface lies a version of the history of the St. Barthomolew’s Day Massacre and the ensuing years, filled with conflict and bloodshed and with the exile of Protestants from French politics and territory. Both of these Monarchomach texts, while arguing for reform of the French political system that will result in greater tolerance for Protestants, resemble much more the unreliable discourse and history of the period of the French wars of religion than the attempt at a credible discourse and long-view history as Hotman presents it in the Francogallia. The latter is a history of France in ancient times that happens to bear upon the present. It is difficult to discern the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and its consequences in Hotman’s text. The reader knows it is there, but perhaps only because of the time at which it was published, not because there is anything significant in the text that explicitly identifies it as a response to the events of August 1572. Giesey and Salmon note: “When [the Francogallia] did appear, a year after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, its purpose was understood in terms as different from the spirit in which it had been drafted as that spirit was different from Hotman’s original interest in constitutional history.”104 The spirit in which Hotman wrote his treatise was one of conciliation and concord, not one of vengeance and reprisal. His rhetoric reflects that, as does his attempt to propose a history that all reasonable French people would find credible and with which they would potentially agree. In the end, Hotman’s project fell short of creating a unifying history that would lead to political reform and religious tolerance. Even though it was not necessarily meant as a response to St. Bartholomew’s Day, I argue that it was perceived as one, and it did little to dampen the furor of the Protestant response or to bring all French people together toward the cause of the reform. Hotman opened himself and his text up to this result in several ways, and the response of these other Monarchomachs, as well as that of the Catholic side when the politics of the situation had changed, demonstrate that Hotman’s attempt to salvage discourse and a reliable history was overwhelmed by the preference for a winning discourse rather than one that conveyed the truth. Even Hotman was not immune from this preference, and it led to some inconsistences, as well as some polemical outbursts, that compromise the success of his project. His narrative breaks down when he addresses several important issues with respect to the French monarchy that make his discourse 104  Giesey and Salmon, introduction to Francogallia, 8.

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and his stance unconvincing.105 As a first example, his treatment of Hugh Capet and his accession to the French throne compromises Hotman’s reliability. His depiction of this pivotal event in the history of the transfer of power seems discordant, especially given Hotman’s aims. He acknowledges that in 987, when Louis V dies, and Hugh Capet ascends to the throne, “a revolutionary change occurred.”106 He then proceeds to recount the history of the military dispute between Charles of Lorraine and Capet, which resulted in Capet’s victory and in the imprisonment of Charles and his wife. Only after Charles’s remaining progeny die does Hotman state, “Thus Capet acquired the whole of France freely and without dispute, and, making his son Robert his consort in the kingdom, he saw to it that the latter was designated as his successor.”107 Moreover, Capet had the “astute plan” of ensuring that the magistracies and offices of the kingdom, which had formerly been conferred in assemblies of the people, were now perpetual, in order to “conciliate the nobles and retain their sympathy for himself.”108 It therefore seems disingenuous that Hotman, at the beginning of the subsequent chapter, maintains that “the authority of the public council was in all respects virtually no less under the Capetians than it was under the preceding dynasties.”109 One can draw more than one conclusion from that statement: either the public council continued to enjoy great authority, or it never really had much, a situation which endured under Capet. In either case, this would seem to contradict Hotman’s statement that a “revolutionary change” accompanied Capet’s ascendancy, as well as the last sentence of the previous chapter, in which Hotman writes, “Through this act of the authority of the public council was very considerably reduced, yet it does not seem likely, in the context of those times, that Capet would have been able to effect this reduction by himself, without the consent of the council.”110 According to Hotman’s own history and to his commentary thereupon, it would seem that the legacy of Hugh Capet poses a distinct problem for his argument and for his attempt to create a credible discourse. Hotman comes off as anything but in his attempt to convince the reader of a long French tradition of recognizing the authority of the public council and the people.

105  Contemporaneous sources also found fault with Hotman’s historical interpretations. See Mellet, Traités, 342–45. Mellet writes: “Ce n’est donc plus seulement la nature des sources historiques qui pose problème, mais bien l’interprétation qui en est donnée” (343). 106  Hotman, Francogallia, 407. 107  Hotman, Francogallia, 409. 108  Hotman, Francogallia, 411. 109  Hotman, Francogallia, 415. 110  Hotman, Francogallia, 413.

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Capet presents a political and a historical problem for Hotman, but as evenhanded as Hotman tries to be, he still cannot resist hitting out at his enemies, a frequent mistake that compromises his credibility.111 In his discussion of the Salic Law, reasoned argumentation yields to vendetta as he tries to argue for the exclusion of women from rule. To review, Hotman argues in Chapter VIII that over time, the Salic Law has become misunderstood. Instead of being a matter of public law and as governing the transfer of hereditary kingship, it is instead a matter of private law governing the transfer of allodial lands. This reinterpretation, or rediscovery, of the original meaning of the Salic Law poses a problem, however. If it has nothing to do with hereditary kingship and only with allodial lands, then it only excludes women from the transfer of private property. Women would therefore not be excluded from ascending to the French throne. Hotman decides, however, that he must maintain this tradition for several reasons. Besides it being an unpopular argument in general, it leaves open the possibility for one particular woman to rule, if she were to be duly elected. Catherine de’ Medici, the queen mother, must be legally excluded from the throne, lest she be able, through her Machiavellian designs, take advantage of the political system that Hotman is proposing in order to seize power.112 Peripherally, Hotman reminds his reader what a bad idea this would be by evoking the history of Edward III of England (1312–1377) and his claim to the throne of France after the death of Charles IV (1294–1328). The French crown went to Philip of Valois (1293–1350), but Hotman insists that this argument cannot be made upon the basis of Salic Law. Instead, “the supporters of Philip of Valois would have been much better advised had they argued on the basis of feudal law, by which the inheritances of fiefs are passed to the subsequent children of the male lines only, and women are excluded.”113 Hotman’s reasoning is curious, given his assertions that the role of the public council in the accession of kings continued. While it is possible that here, Hotman is only addressing the issue of eligibility, he is imprecise with his words, since the discussion of inheritance would seem to assume hereditary kingship alone. Hotman, therefore, as he contorts the little evidence he offers in order to have everything he wants, loses credibility and his discourse and his argument falter. 111  See Mellet, Traités, 303–05. Mellet distinguishes the Francogallia from Hotman’s more polemical texts, such as Le Tigre (1560). Nevertheless, I maintain that Hotman cannot fully stay away from this type of rhetoric. 112  For an example of the connection between Catherine de’ Medici and Machiavelli, see Discours merveilleux, esp. 212, where the queen mother is identified as possessing a “[t]rait que la Roine a bien retenu de son Marchiavelli.” See also Mellet, Traités, 251–59, where “la légende noire de Catherine de Médicis” is addressed. 113  Hotman, Francogallia, 275.

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Superficially, he remains in the distant past, but it is clear that he is addressing the present, which is the trap for Hotman in trying to propose a neutral and credible discourse. This drift toward the present despite trying to remain removed from it also persists in several of the polemical slips that appear in Hotman’s text and taint its impartial presentation of ancient French tradition and history. In Chapter II, Hotman writes: It was especially so [that Roman rites and ceremonies were introduced into Christian churches] when, after obtaining the kingdom of Gaul by the influence and advice of Pope Zachary, Charlemagne repaid so great a favor by declaring that both the rites of the church and the chants to be used should follow the Roman custom […] This is a matter one can hardly bear to mention, so great was the darkness it spread over the Gallic churches. It conceded authority to the Roman pontiffs in religious matters, and its authors wronged the kings of France in a manner scarcely to be credited. Their own authority was regained by King Charles V, incensed against the tyranny of the popes that he arranged the translation of the holy scriptures into French.114 Hotman recounts this unfortunate incursion of Roman power in the midst of his discussion of the Gallic tongue and its importance. The resistance to papal authority appeals to a Protestant or even a Gallican audience, but Hotman employs an inflammatory language that will surely alienate a Catholic audience. Roman influence over French religion was no doubt divisive, but in his attempt to supersede religious concerns with French ones, Hotman fails to resist getting drawn into contemporary disputes about Rome’s role. An argument can be made against the encroachment of Roman legal principles on French government without calling the Pope a tyrant, especially since Charlemagne so willingly offered his deference as a favor to Pope Zachary, who Hotman does not seem to think as being so inimical to French sovereignty. Nevertheless, this particular polemic satisfies the Protestant reader but compromises the objectivity for which Hotman is striving. The issue comes up again when Hotman includes the entirety of the letter of Pope Stephen. When introducing it, he writes: I therefore believe it to be obvious to all men that the claim of the popes to a right to appoint or depose kings is a fabrication. But besides this 114  Hotman, Francogallia, 169, 175.

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fabrication, which in itself is proof of dishonesty and malice, it is worth the trouble to cite a certain remarkable letter of Pope Stephen, which has been tailored to fit this fiction. By it one may judge the stupidity and madness of that old fox.115 Hotman fails to offer any reasoned philological or historical arguments as to why Pope Stephen’s letter does not count as evidence in his eyes. Instead, he only attributes malicious intent to those who would adhere to the fabrication, and he calls out the stupidity, even madness, of those who would believe such a letter to be authentic. Hotman stigmatizes those who hold this particular position, but the obvious nature of the claim’s falsity is in doubt. Proof that it was not at all obvious is the existence of David’s Mémoire. Among the options for what the Mémoire means as a text, two stand out: either David’s papers are both real and an accurate portrayal of what Catholics were thinking in 1576 as the Catholic League was forming, or that they are simply a representation of what Protestants thought Catholics believed in 1576 as the Catholic League was forming. According to either explanation, someone, somewhere, thinks that Pope Stephen’s letter has some degree of credibility, or either option falls apart. On its face the letter, while stupid and absurd to Hotman, may not have been to others. It exposes Hotman’s characterization as partisan, and he declines to discredit it in any meaningful way. Hotman’s decision to glide over Capet’s seizure of the French throne also hurts him. Without a clear refutation of this characterization of Capet’s ascendancy, this pivotal moment in the history of the monarchy presents an opportunity to Catholics who then want to see the Valois as usurpers. The letter of Pope Stephen is their proof, or at least it supports other evidence that was circulating in the Catholics’ favor.116 All of this allows Catholics to present a reasonable and historical alternative to the Francogallia, one that is rooted in French tradition but that also firmly recognizes a role for the Pope in French political affairs. The Catholic argument in David’s Mémoire might just be another polemic, but it reflects Hotman’s rhetoric. Thus, instead of giving a template for how to construct a reasonable political argument that appeals to both sides and that draws upon a common French history, Hotman instead creates a template for just another type of polemic. An author can construct a narrative built around ancient evidence and imitate a more reasonable and stable discourse, but in the end, it is a familiar strategy. The author learns another rhetorical method to 115  Hotman, Francogallia, 369. 116  See, for example, François de Rosières, Stemmatum Lotharingiae (Paris: Guillaume Chaudière, 1580), which provides a genealogical justification for the Guise claim.

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give himself and his text the veneer of authority while yet again manipulating history for political ends. Hotman may never have fully intended to rise above the polemics and the manipulations of his era. It is possible that the rhetoric of his treatise, rather than being an attempt at reinvigorating a credible and stable discourse, only seems that way because it results from a research that had already begun many years before its publication.117 Hotman just happened to publish the fruit of his labors in 1573. And yet, it is not as if Protestants had not been besieged before St. Bartholomew’s Day or that their desire to enforce a check on the king’s power began on August 24, 1572. Hotman was confronting a neuralgic political issue, and he thought he had found a solution rooted in the Francogallian political tradition, backed by abundant evidence from reputable historians who had no interest in Hotman’s contemporary political environment. He hoped to transcend the political and religious polarization of the 1570s and to bring all French people together behind a unifying cultural and political reality. The solution itself, however, did not suffice in convincing others, both Catholic and Protestant, to go along. The reader also had to be convinced that Hotman was making his argument in good faith, that his evidence was reliable, and that he was not just another Protestant writer manipulating history for his own political ends. This was asking too much. Whether the distant past or the events of the present, the political and discursive environment of the time overtook Hotman’s project. Hotman could not get out from under the shadow of the partisanship that more obviously plagued his fellow Monarchomachs, whose polemical and even sectarian rhetoric is often indistinguishable from any other partisan texts from the era. The push to build a consensus with a reliable and credible discourse failed to catch on, and Catholics entered the fray with similar rhetoric and texts when the political situation had flipped. They showed a similar reticence to build consensus, and so the inflammatory language suited them. It presages Jean Boucher’s De justa Henricii Tertii abdicatione e Francorum regno, for example, which was a partisan Catholic text that also calls for the abdication of Henry III and accuses the king of ruining the State and the Church. One of the things that makes these arguments so easy to appropriate by the opposing side is the clarity of their point of view, aided by a manipulative and unnuanced view of the stories they tell. The need to hit out at one’s enemies or to justify one’s latest political move proved too strong to resist, and the reliability of discourse suffers yet again. 117  While this is possible, it is unlikely. See Giesey, “When and Why,” 582–87, where Giesey carefully outlines Hotman’s project, a project that Hotman believed distinguished itself from other polemics at the time.

Conclusion

Finding a Way Out I would like to conclude where I began, that is, with L’Histoire de Jean Guy. At the end of the text, the author writes of the fruit that he wishes the reader to pluck from his story. He also enjoins the reader, “[R]equerons à Dieu estre recueilli de cette Histoire” (Ask God to be composed in contemplation by this History).1 It is a lofty goal for the author, and a desirable but difficult goal for the reader. For Protestant believers, the story might have engendered a spirit of reverence for God’s mercy or of the wonders of the miracle he worked in the poor parricide. On the other hand, Catholics, if not enraged by the accusations therein, might have easily dismissed the interpretation of events or even the facts themselves due to its unabashedly partisan point of view. The author’s story of Jean Guy was certainly said too soon and without sufficient balance or credibility to foster any newfound unity, no matter the appeal to God’s grace and mercy. This text was yet another symptom of a problem that had begun many years prior. On the eve of the wars of religion, Joachim Du Bellay (c. 1522–1560), the lyric poet and member with Ronsard of the poetic guild, the Pléiade, observed while he was on a diplomatic mission in the Eternal City what he called a “mondaine inconstance” (worldly inconstancy) at the confluence of a Rome of ancient times and a Rome of today.2 He was expressing a disillusionment in his encounter with the past and a disappointment with what that encounter has yielded in the present. The Pléiade’s ideals have failed to bring unity, cultural or otherwise, to France in the face of religious division. Discourse, whether in poetry or history, has descended into petty rhetorical sniping such as that which appears in the Histoire de Jean Guy or in the commentary of Simon Goulart. When he looked around his beloved France and saw the divisions as they manifested themselves in the destruction not only of his people but also of the language that he and others had been so desperately trying to bring to prominence, Ronsard felt that he had to intervene. When confronted with this inconstancy, when confronted with the fear that all that will remain of one’s cultural achievement is a ruin like Du Bellay’s Rome, of what never was or what could have been, one must react and try to do so as quickly and effectively as possible. One must find the right story to tell to surmount divisions that go to 1  L’Histoire de Jean Guy, 4. 2  Joachim Du Bellay, Les Antiquitez de Rome, ed. Henri Chamard (Paris: STFM, 1993), 6.

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the heart of principles, language, and signs. These writers had set themselves up for an impossible task. As we have seen, the confusion surrounding words and their meanings was profound. Montaigne, toward the end of the sixteenth century, had started to seize upon some of the consequences of this confusion. Strangely, it was a confusion of which he had taken advantage in his own writings. While I did not address Montaigne directly, his discursive style and his seemingly shifting opinions make his Essais somewhat of an expression of what was ailing discourse at the time. Montaigne, of course, did not see his writing as something that would cause violence; it was merely an opportunity for Montaigne to think, to allow the “cheval eschappé” (escaped horse) to run free for a little while.3 Montaigne often pursues reflection without any particular ends; it is the reflection that counts. This type of exercise is precisely what Du Bellay saw on the horizon in his sonnet on Rome: only that which flees, as does the flowing Tiber, resists the imposition of time.4 These images of the flowing Tiber or of the wild horse running free do not announce the death of human flourishing. On the contrary, they symbolize a time when human thought was pushing itself beyond staid intellectual processes that, while fruitful in their own way, had serious deficiencies that Renaissance humanism had attempted to resolve. The overuse of the sacred and its terminology had rendered it meaningless, thus beginning a long decline in the relationship between the sign and the signified. Nominalism, for example, sought to move away from the idea of immutable substances of which everything was an exemplar. Approaching the world as a series of original incarnations of the created world could perhaps remedy the banality in which language had fallen by recognizing the uniqueness of what God had created. And yet, this same uniqueness drew signs toward unintelligibility; as nominalist theology resulted in a greater perceived distance between God and creation, the sign became so distinct that it detached itself from any independent reality or even common understanding that would allow it to stably represent that to which it was referring. In debates between scholastics and humanists and between the Ancients and the Moderns, there was yet another attempt to rehabilitate discourse after the Middle Ages. However, just as with nominalism, the remedy was often worse than the cure. On the one hand, with their style, these intense and polemical debates set the stage for the contentious discourse that occurred in the late sixteenth century, and on the other, with their content, they raised many objections about what language was able to do. Both aspects

3  Montaigne, “De l’Oysiveté,” Essais, ed. Jean Balsamo, et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 55. 4  Du Bellay, Les Antiquitez, 6.

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of these heated discussions about humanity’s next step in thought and in language reduced the efficacy of signs at the level of representation. The difficulty with which words represented meaning relates directly to the way in which readers interpreted those words. Readers are writers and vice versa. While the distinction between the two is not always clearly defined, interpretation generally speaking happens at the level of discerning the sign’s relationship to the signified, rather than the act of creating the sign to signify. In the sixteenth century, many of these connections, once thought to be quite settled, suddenly became uncertain. Modes of writing during the Renaissance leaned heavily on imitation, a function that certainly has consequences for representation, but that primarily dislodged source texts from their original meaning. When authors and poets appropriated those source texts, they became indistinct units that only had meaning in whatever the poet decided was the latest assemblage. The combination of this appropriation with the obscurity of references and the confusion about whether the source texts did or did not matter meant that sixteenth century texts might have become indecipherable. Striking at the very heart of fundamental beliefs and first principles were some of the discoveries about Sacred Scripture. In a way, it too had become indecipherable as long-settled interpretations took on new meanings as philological and humanist scholars studied and retranslated scriptural texts. It would be too simplistic to say that one could reduce the Protestant Reformation down to a translation issue, but the newfound flexibility in exegesis and biblical interpretation opened the door to questioning established thought on the meaning of God’s word. If this most essential of medieval and Renaissance realities was suddenly up for debate, then any truth very well could have been. What makes Sacred Scripture so compelling in any argument is its aura of authority. As the inspired word of God, it is not easily contestable. With the tumult in scriptural exegesis, the authority of even Sacred Scripture weakens with the fracturing of biblical interpretation. In previous eras, theologians and the faithful could rely on ecclesiastical authorities to reinforce correct interpretations or bring everyone to a consensus. The Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation revealed how the relationship between the authority of Scripture and the authority of the Church were intertwined. As the former suffered, so did the latter, especially since the medieval consensus on Scripture seemed to have been based on translation errors. In addition, the excesses of clerical life as well as, in France, a poorly formed clerical class eroded respect for ecclesiastical authority and removed it as a last redoubt in the fight against confusion about doctrine or about words. Amid the religious and political divisions of the late sixteenth century, the Church was of little help in restoring unity. Equally, actual political authority proved itself inept, as ruled as it was by self-interest

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and less than noble motivations. Many of the authors that I have presented, as well as others from throughout the Renaissance, made it their duty to attack both ecclesiastical and political authority, and since they did so credibly, whether by debunking historical validations of authority or by simple satire, these authorities were all the weaker for it. When things fell apart, not just with respect to political unity, but also with respect to language, a word from a bishop or a king could have hardly helped to guarantee the integrity of discourse. All of these three smaller crises weakened the sign and its relationship to the signified, and authors responded with the creativity and energy that had partially contributed to the difficulty in the first place. Much of what made the Renaissance great had also led to bloodshed; much of what made it great became a tool in the war of words, or perhaps the war for words and for a credible discourse. In the examples that I presented—zeal, tyranny, and martyrdom— authors tried simultaneously to limit the meanings of these ideas as well as to villainize their linguistic and ideological opponents. For this reason, I spoke of the rhetoric of extremes, since the rhetorical methods that writers and poets employed neatly favored one partisan definition at the exclusion of all others. Where they intended this war against nuance to be particularly effective was in excluding anyone who would seek to define fanaticism—or martyrdom— differently. If any challenger offered an alternative meaning, that challenger would find himself outside of the conversation altogether. If your zeal is really fanaticism, if the king is guilty of tyranny for favoring you, if my brothers and sisters in the cause are martyrs, then you are wrong.5 If these images only mean one thing, then anathema are those who would believe otherwise. While I primarily see these techniques as a response to the crisis of representation, there is certainly room for manipulation of interpretation.6 Martyrdom is the perfect example. There was little dispute about what it meant to be a martyr, but the way in which the term was attributed, which requires a certain interpretation of events, is. The narrative of certain people’s deaths as martyrdom had to be clearly fixed at the exclusion of any other in order to guarantee that those deaths affirmed the righteousness of the cause, whatever the cause may have been. The rhetoric of extremes seeks to do to discourse what it does to words: unify and strengthen while excluding that which opposes it. 5  On a linguistic level, I believe this to be a precursor to another later phenomenon of pushing possible interlocutors outside the realm of acceptable society. See Dan Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 6  There is no doubt an echo or a harbinger of the arrival of propaganda. In fact, the development of propaganda is central to Amy Graves-Monroe’s analysis of Goulart. See Graves-Monroe, Post Tenebras Lex, 87–103.

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Opposition from ideological foes was not the only concern of authors. To combat the crisis of interpretation, authors went to great lengths to control their message. With the loss of the sign’s ability to represent, with the general confusion about the proper hermeneutical approach, and without traditional authority to guide them, readers could have easily missed or misinterpreted the meanings of texts, and with such important messages to transmit, authors could not risk that their texts would fall on deaf ears, or on a clueless hermeneutic, as it were. Through mostly paratextual material, authors initiated a conversation with the sixteenth-century reader in order to make sure that the message that the author wanted to send was indeed received. Simon Goulart in his compilations showed himself particularly adept at this technique, and among the many ways in which he sought to have this conversation, the preface was principal among them. Agrippa D’Aubigné also took advantage of the preface to frame his epic text and to ensure that its significance would be seized. Other less obvious paratextual material also played a significant role. Taking advantage in many ways of the confusion over biblical exegesis, many authors and publishers introduced texts with a poignant scriptural citation, often sloppily transcribed or translated or taken out of context, in order to summarize the crux of the matter. Frequently, these scriptural citations, although short, went a long way toward defining the thrust of the text. Before the reader ever laid eyes on the content, the author had attempted to set the reader on a particular course toward interpreting the text. Finally, through the use of poetic prefaces, postfaces, and interludes, authors and compilers ornamented their texts with verse, a powerful form of literary discourse in the sixteenth century. These poems served as interpretive keys to the text and could take the best of what the sixteenth century had offered in the development of language and rhetoric and put it at the service of managing the interpretation of texts. When so much was at risk and with seemingly no one to arbitrate interpretation other than the author himself, these different tools allowed authors to influence the reader and to make sure that the message was heard, especially as they tried to use their literary discourse to intervene in politics. This management of interpretation presumes a certain degree of authority on the author’s part, and after the crisis thereof, authors positioned themselves to take a more important role in the broader society and culture by using the written word to reinforce their own personal authority and also the authority of the king and religious authority. What makes this particular turn to authority in the latter sixteenth century so interesting is that it relies on the fusion of the poetic “I” with the historical person of the author, creating a symbiotic relationship that allows the person of the text and the person of the author to speak with credibility. Ironically, the persona that the text is reinforcing is not

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always a true representation of the author, but one of the author’s creation, that then reflects back on the text to infuse it with efficacy. The first example of this phenomenon involved Louis Dorléans’s plea to the French people from an English Catholic. Dorléans was of course not English and was a member of the League, but he had to create a real, live Englishman, who had lived under the persecution of the Protestant Elizabeth I, in order to credibly predict and warn the French about what would be coming under a Protestant Henry of Navarre. The text simultaneously creates an authorial persona, presumed to be real, that then reinforces the text’s message. In the case of Ronsard, who, just before the breakout of the wars of religion, decided to direct his poetic talents toward the political arena, wrote his Discours, for which he was later personally attacked. Ronsard relies more and more on his personal reputation and authority as he delves deeper into political discourse. It backfires, and his personal authority suffers while he does not really have much effect on political or ecclesiastical authority either. In a combination of both the real and imagined, Jean de la Taille in Saül le furieux attempts to create a prophetic authority for himself, but lest he be selfish, he does put it to good use by speaking his prophecies to the king. He means the play to be a prophetic warning to the king so that he may preserve his power and his kingdom. Finally, in probably the most daring use of the author’s own authority, Agrippa D’Aubigné takes on the role of apocalyptic prophet, who announces by his epic history of the years of the wars of religion, that the time for peace and the New Jerusalem has come. The villains have been vanquished, and the true Church can thrive. D’Aubigné’s epic is one of the more successful from the period, but in presenting the text, the poet portrays himself both as the reluctant creator of verse and the Prometheus who is bold enough to bestow the text on humanity. The aura of a divine messenger and prophet hangs heavily around and within the text, and D’Aubigné’s ultimate goal was likely that of many other apocalyptic prophets: to reassure the Protestant community that the worst is over and that everything will be alright. D’Aubigné emphasizes his own personal authority as prophet to proclaim the message and likewise, this enhanced message confirms in the reader’s mind that with the coming of Henry of Navarre, the new kingly authority has the capability of bringing peace. The two examples of David’s Mémoire and Hotman’s Francogallia illustrate well how different parties dealt with the rhetorical and textual dynamics of nothing said too soon. The Mémoire, which told the story of the Advocate David’s return to Rome and the plot against the king that his papers contained, recounted along with the other printed texts associated with it a sensational history of political intrigue and possibly treason. As a reliable instrument to discredit the principal opponents to Huguenots, the Mémoire surfaced

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at multiple moments over time from 1576 onward and credibly accused the Guises of trying to claim the throne for their own. While the truth behind the text remains elusive, the text appropriated many of the strategies of philologists and historians to convince the reader that what the author or publisher presented was indeed true. On the other hand, François Hotman tried to remove any semblance of doubt about the story he tells in the Francogallia as a means to unify France under a common political history. Through a return to ancient sources and through an excessive and repetitive citation thereof, through a thorough debunking of misconceptions about France’s history, and through a relatively neutral rhetoric, Hotman attempts to show that his history is reliable and accurately represents the Francogallian origins of France’s monarchy. For many reasons, he falls short in his project to bring reliability back to such a narrative. Too many other polemical voices that mildly resonate within Hotman’s own text call into question the non-partisan presentation of it. Eventually, when Hotman’s political opposition takes up his political project and Hotman is forced to pull back on what he proposes, the Francogallia seems all the more as just another text in the sea of texts that tries to define history for partisan ends. With the ascent of Henry IV to the throne and the Edict of Nantes in 1598, tolerance finally sticks. Authors more or less put away their polemics and they, along with the wider French society, seem to move on.7 The phenomenon of nothing said too soon fades. And yet, the cycle would repeat. During the French Revolution, and of course, into our own time, one sees the intervention of not just literary discourse but other types of creative and artistic discourse doing their best to intervene in politics following a time of semiotic crisis. After the creativity and tumult of the Enlightenment, I would argue that another destabilization of meaning occurred. Combined with the rise of the 7  I am not arguing that attempts by authors to intervene in the political sphere suddenly ceased during Henry IV’s reign or beyond, just that during and after a period of crisis, it displayed certain distinct characteristics. In this sense, one could look at D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques as a transition text from the violent period of the wars of religion to a calmer but absolutist era. While certainly polemical and undoubtedly Protestant in its perspective, D’Aubigné announces and confirms a reality that had already come to pass. Henry IV indeed brought about peace and stability to France. The creation of epic and the presence of epic elements in literature ideally serve as a stabilizing force in the political sphere. Les Tragiques may ultimately have performed this function for Henry IV, but it was during the later seventeenth century, with the arrival of classicism, that literary discourse in the political sphere, would no longer try to redefine but to confirm extant meaning and authority. One need only think of Corneille’s Horace (1640) as an example of literary discourse again attempting to have an effect in the political sphere. In this case, literature continues to be “socially purposive” as Timothy Reiss defined it.

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écrivain engagé, this uncertainty provided particularly fertile ground for the phenomena of the late sixteenth century to reoccur. As in the late Renaissance, established traditions like the Church and the monarchy once again experienced the deterioration of their authority. In form as well as in content, the literature of the French Revolution took up anew the task of reestablishing an uncontestable meaning of images such as tyranny and martyrdom.8 In a period of uncertainty, the desire to clarify and solidify meaning flowed from and intensified the violence of the age. It is perhaps, therefore, unsurprising that authors like Marie-Joseph Chénier (1764–1811) chose to represent pivotal events of the late sixteenth century as a way to think through his own. While he does not reach as far into the past as La Taille did with Saül, he relies in his play, Charles IX, on the events of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre to intervene in the political sphere. While first performed privately in January 1789 on the eve of the Revolution, the play would have a tumultuous history once the events of July 1789 had taken place.9 Nevertheless, Chénier’s retelling of the events of 1572 helped to interpret and to shape the history of the Revolution as it was happening: “Il est clair […] que l’œuvre ne cesse de se construire au fil du temps, qu’elle s’élabore conjointement aux réactions qu’elle provoque, aux élans qu’elle suscite : jamais véritablement achevée, elle embrasse les querelles de l’époque, se nourrit d’une histoire en train de s’écrire et dont la scène n’est, à bien des égards, qu’une vaste métaphore” (It is clear […] that the work does not cease constructing itself over time, that it develops together with the reactions that it provokes, with the energies that it elicits: never really completed, it embraces the debates of the day, nourishes itself with the story being written and whose sitting, in many ways, is but a vast metaphor).10 I would argue that in imitation of the history that he was rewriting, Chénier continuously altered his work not just in response to the questions of the time but also in an attempt to use this “vast metaphor” in order to shape it. 8  For an example, see Julia V. Douthwaite, “Martyrdom, Terrorism, and the Rhetoric of Sacrifice: The Cases of Marat, Robespierre, and Loiserolles,” in Martyrdom and Terrorism: Pre-Modern to Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Dominic Janes and Alex Houen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 109–130. Douthwaite does not make any arguments about the semantic environment that permitted the molding and shaping of martyr narratives, as I do, but she nevertheless describes an eighteenth-century phenomenon that mirrors closely that which I described in Chapter Two. 9  For a summary of the “querelle littéraire et politique” of this work, see Gauthier Ambrus and François Jacob, introduction to Théâtre, by Marie-Joseph Chénier (Paris: GF Flammarion, 2002), 14–24. Unlike the texts of the late sixteenth century, Chénier’s text can be said to have been effective in contributing to the “freedom of the theater” established in January 1791. 10  Ambrus and Jacob, introduction to Théâtre, 21.

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Chénier was one among many during his time and also throughout the centuries in the West since the Renaissance. In fact, the West has just endured a semiotic crisis in the 1960s and 1970s.11 Like the Renaissance, this period was creative, dynamic, and humanist. It was a time when religious and political authorities were weakening in the face of rapid change and innovation. Information technology has also experienced a period of acceleration that has been as destabilizing as it has been exciting. At the same time, this creativity also brought about crisis, a crisis of representation, interpretation, and perhaps, most of all, authority. Many of the rhetorical techniques toward defining words and narratives have in our age found a broader appeal and are not reserved to literary discourse. Journalists, commentators, users of social media, politicians and public intellectuals have appropriated them for their own use. Defining words and narratives has become more important than arguing the issues, if only to exclude one’s enemies and shut them off from discourse.12 Simon Goulart defined the social media age five hundred years ahead of its arrival by declaring that there is nothing said too soon, for those who arrive first at defining history have a better chance of winning the final word on it.13 It is this process that I have sought to bring into focus. While authors may still be interested in the effectiveness of what they write, who is saying it takes on ever more importance. The crises of representation, interpretation, and 11  French theorists embody in a particular way this crisis, although it is certainly not limited to them. I am thinking particularly of Jacques Derrida or Michel Foucault. For example, in Les mots et les choses, which I cited in Chapter One, Foucault discusses at length the problems in the relationship between sign and signified, concluding that a sign’s “arbitrariness” is not necessarily opposed to its connection to the natural. Moreover, he sees it as an avenue by which one arrives at a fundamental analysis of choses. See Foucault, Les mots, 75–77. Innumerable other scholars have followed Foucault’s lead and have developed these ideas further, and regardless of their goals, critics and scholars who have explored deconstruction and postmodernism have contributed to an instability against which contemporary authors and polemicists are fighting in their rush to contest, deconstruct, and ultimately redefine political and historical narratives. 12  For an excellent analysis of a contemporary version of this phenomenon, see Cécile Alduy and Stéphane Wahnich, Marine Le Pen prise aux mots (Paris: Seuil, 2015). For example, Alduy and Wahnich discuss how Marine Le Pen appropriates the words of her political opponents and redefines them according to her own agenda. In addition, she alters her lexicon without changing her ideas in order to make the latter more palatable to a wider audience. 13  See J.H.M. Salmon, “Clovis and Constantine: The Uses of History in Sixteenth-Century Gallicanism,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 41 (1990): 584–605. At the service of Gallican ideology, various authors attempt to frame Clovis’s baptism as a means of validating the French Church’s independence. What Salmon describes presages what historians like Goulart will do to manipulate the narrative of history as it happens during the Wars.

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authority ultimately lead to who has the authority to speak and to influence in literature. When neither words, nor church, nor king has any authority, someone needs to stabilize discourse in order to move the discussion forward. In detaching words from religious or political authority, as late Renaissance authors began to do, they launched the independence and secularization of literary discourse that, while worthwhile, resulted in the recurrence of the crisis/ reaction phenomenon that I describe. In addition, as religious and political authorities represent less of a threat, nuance emerges as a potential enemy of the author’s ability to control discourse and its meaning. If the audience cannot recognize what he or she intends—or interpret it—the author has lost the authority to convey meaning. The war on nuance in response to a crisis in representation or interpretation also merits further discussion, if only to find solutions to ending it. In examining some of the discursive outliers from the period—and early on in the Discours, I believe Ronsard to be one of them— one might see emerge some authors who try to reconcile nuance with a credible and reliable discourse that moves things forward, or, at the very least, allows discourse to be effective without having to jettison nuance. Confusion can be frustrating, especially when it seems to create political instability as it did in the late sixteenth century. Nevertheless, surely literary discourse, which is so often steeped in nuance, can offer an alternative other than a rhetorical resistance to nuance that tries to exclude it. At the same time, I am not talking about simple tolerance either. As literary discourse intervened in the political sphere in the sixteenth century, as historical narratives were shaped, was there any type of discourse, form, or genre that overcame these obstacles and temptations and was effective in conveying meaning that resulted in meaningful cultural, political, and religious exchanges? This is a difficult question to answer, but as society reflects on the state of discourse and of the stories it tells and when, it is a question whose answer must come, but not too soon.

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Index Abigail (wife of King David) 300 Absalom (son of King David) 303 Aistulf of the Lombards 249 Ancients Moderns and 49–54, 316 Aneau, Barthélemy 53 Antwerp, Siege of 255, 258–260 Apocalypticism 148n25, 308, 320 See also D’Aubigné, Agrippa Augustine of Hippo, Saint 70 Beaulieu, Peace of 239, 244, 246n24, 253, 261 Beaux-Amis, Thomas 140–142, 301–303 Beza, Theodore 271, 292–296 Bible Apocrypha 158 Citation of 156–159 Poetry and 167–170 Biblical exegesis 64–68, 298, 317, 319 Marguerite de Navarre and 69n105 Bologna, Concordat of 81, 84, 92 Boucher, Jean 129–130, 314 Budé, Guillaume 95–96 Calvinism Letters of remission and 2 Calvin, John Bible and 62, 66–69 Capet, Hugh 246, 310, 313 Carloman 250 Catherine de’ Medici 16, 91, 247, 311 Life of 142–146 See also Ronsard, Pierre de Catholicism Errors of 5–7 Roman influence and 312 Catholic League 140, 160, 173–174, 177–179, 213–218, 240, 273 See also Henry III Cave, Terence 30, 69n105, 70 Charlemagne 249, 251, 286, 289, 312 Charles IX 16, 114 Charles of Lorraine (Cardinal) 83–84 Charles of Lower Lorraine (953–993) 310 Chénier, Marie-Joseph 322

Childeric I 283, 289 Childeric III 248, 286–287 Ciceronianism 58 Cicero 59 Discussion of zeal and 101–102 Clément, Jacques See Assassination of Henry III Coligny, Gaspard de Family of 3, 11 Jean Guy and 2–3 Martyrdom and 126–127 Crespin, Jean 4, 124–125 D’Ailly, Pierre 45n43 Daniel (prophet) 235 D’Aubigné, Agrippa 22, 319 Apocalyptic prophet, poet as 190, 225, 229, 230–231 Prefaces and 146–154 Prometheus, poet as 187, 218–224, 237, 320 Prophetic voice and 224–228 David, Jean (Advocate) 22 Death of 239 David (King of Israel) 114–115, 211, 299–308 D’Avila, Sancho 259 Da Vinci, Leonardo 88 De l’Estoile, Pierre 176–179, 240, 263 Denis, Saint 249 Des Autels, Guillaume 191–193 De Thou, Jacques-Auguste  242 Dionysius the Elder 116–117 Dominicans (Jacobins, Order of Preachers) 109–111 Dorléans, Louis 22, 190, 213–218, 236–237, 320 Du Bellay, Jean (Cardinal) 85 Du Bellay, Joachim 52–54, 171–172, 315 See also Petrarchism Du Plessis–Mornay, Philippe 271 Eclecticism 58–60 Edict of Nantes 15, 321 Edward III of England 311 Eighty Years’ War 259

349

Index Elizabeth I of England 213, 320 Erasmus, Desiderius 86 Biblical exegesis and 64, 69n105 De copia 56–57 Forsyth, Elliott 208–209 Francis, Duke of Anjou (1555–1584) 246n24, 264, 294 Francis I 88 Affair of the Placards and 78, 90 Tolerance and 15, 78 Franks (people) 280 Etymology of name 280, 282 Government 290–291 Gallicanism 84, 92, 246, 252, 266, 276 Gallio, Tolomeo (Cardinal) 243–244 Gauls (people) Language 274, 276 Government 277–278, 279 Gelasius II (pope) 286 Genette, Gérard 21, 136–137, 182 Gerson, Jean 36 Gibier, Éloy 1, 8–9 Godfrey of Viterbo 282, 289 Good Samaritan, Parable of the 45–47 Goulart, Simon 135, 267, 323 Assassination of Henry III 106 Historiography and 13–14, 288 Prefacing in compilations 139–141, 315, 319 Gregory of Rimini 45n43 Gregory of Tours 282, 289, 290 Gregory XIII (Pope) 243–244 Guy, Jean 315 Conversion of 99 Letters of remission and 1–2 Parricide 1 Hampton, Timothy 30, 56–58 Henry, Duke of Guise (1550–1588) 16, 22, 245, 247 Assassination of 121, 179, 183 Poetic praise for 167–170 Pretentions to the French throne 241, 260 Henry II 91, 270 Henry III 22, 239, 247, 314 Accession to throne 104–105 Assassination of 105–111, 160–167, 173–175, 178, 265, 271

Atheism and 121–122 Catholic League and 262–263 Opposition to the Guises 241 Henry IV (King of France and of Navarre) 151, 211, 229, 262 Accession to throne 265, 271 Hotman, François 23, 251, 270 Huizinga, Johan 36–37 Nominalism and 40 Humanism 77, 80, 316 Scholasticism and 47–49, 134, 316 See also Rabelais, François Imitation (theory of) Interpretation and 56–62 Jeanneret, Michel 30, 55, 65–66, 220–221 Jerome, Saint 64–65, 163, 275, 277 John Chrysostom, Saint 166–167 Jonah (prophet) 223 Juan of Austria 252n49 Judith Book of 160–161 Holofernes and 161–164 Junius Brutus 296–297 Langer, Ullrich 133 Languet, Hubert 271, 294 La Taille, Jean de 22, 111–115, 189, 236, 320 Art of tragedy and 206–209 Prophetic voice and 205, 210 Lefèvre d’Etaples, Jacques 69n105 Literature Definition of 23–25 History and 26–28 Lombard, Peter 59 Louis II, Cardinal of Guise Assassination of 121, 130–131 Louis, Prince of Condé (1530–1669) 9 Louis V 310 Luther, Martin 79–80 Biblical exegesis and 81 Lyon 241 Marguerite of Valois 265 Marot, Clément 89–90 Matthieu, Pierre 261 Melanchthon, Philip 66 Merovech 283, 289

350 Mirror of the prince (miroir du prince) 87 See also Ronsard, Pierre de Moderns See Ancients Monarchomachs 23, 25–26, 121n48, 272, 309 National identity and 306–308 Montaigne, Michel de 316 Essay “On glory” 29, 31–33 Moses 165 Nominalism 19–20, 133 Definition 39 Realism and 41 Theology and 42, 45n43, 316 Paratext (theory of) 136–138 Pasquier, Estienne 178–179 Paul of Tarsus, Saint 235, 249 Discussion of zeal and 103–104 Pellevé, Nicholas de (Cardinal) 244 Pepin the Short 248, 286, 289 Peter, Saint 249 Petrarchism Du Bellay and 60 Ronsard and 61 Pharamond 289 Pharine, Jacques 256 Philip VI of Valois 311 Philology Sacred Scripture and 62–66, 80 Pinselet, Charles 179–183 Plato 17n22 Pléiade 51n61, 59, 171, 315 Politiques 156–157, 176 Poliziano, Angelo 58 Polycarp, Saint 131–132 Polyphemus 187 Portau, Jean 256 Prometheus See D’Aubigné, Agrippa Protestant Reformation Martyrs and 8 Rabelais, François Christian charity and 43–47 Humanism and 70–72 Scholasticism and 70–72 Reiss, Timothy 23–25, 30, 65, 321n7

Index Revelation, Book of 228, 231, 233 Ronsard, Pierre de 22, 185, 188–189, 236, 320 Catherine de’ Medici and 195–197 Henry III and 104–105 Marquetry and 61 Mirror of the Prince and 193–194 Protestant attacks on 197–202 See also Petrarchism Salic Law 284–286, 311 Samuel (prophet) 114, 205, 209–210 Santori, Giulio (Cardinal) 244 Saul (King of Israel) 111–116, 205, 210–212, 299–302, 304 Savanarola, Girolamo 125 Scève, Maurice 185–186 Scholasticism 58, 77 See also Humanism; Rabelais, François Scripture See Bible Sébillet, Thomas 50–51 Semiotic crisis 17, 30 Sophistry 72–75 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre 111, 141–142, 212, 239, 270, 272, 309 Stephen II (pope) 248–251, 286, 288, 313 Sylvester (pope) 280 Tacitus 282 Tiepolo, Paolo 244 Tomkins, Thomas 126 Trent, Council of 82, 84, 86, 247 Troy (city in ancient Greece) French legendary origins in 281–282, 289 Turpinus, Johannes 282 Tyranny Atheism and 120–123 Removal of king because of 118–120 Valla, Lorenzo Donation of Constantine and 79, 93–95, 280 Latin language and 63 Vercellensis, Venericus 287 Vivonne, Jean de 268 Wars of religion (French) 2 Discourse of 16, 19–20, 24n30, 33, 43, 50, 189

351

Index Historiography and 146, 155, 225, 309 History of 6n7, 18n25, 320 Politics of 17, 83 See also Beaulieu, Peace of; Edict of Nantes

William of Ockham 41–42w William of Orange 294 Zachary (pope) 286–287, 312