Thevet - Portraits From the French Renaissance and the Wars of Religion

Habent sua fata libelli

EEARLY MODERN STUDIES SERIES

GENERAL EDITOR

MICHAEL WOLFE

St. Johns University

EDITORIAL BOARD OF EARLY MODERN STUDIES

Copyright 2010 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri USA

All rights reserved

tsup.truman.edu

Cover: LAssassinat de Coligny. copyright Socit de lhistoire du protestantisme franais, Paris.

Cover design: Teresa Wheeler

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thevet, Andr, 15021590.

[Vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres. English. Selections]

Portraits from the French Renaissance and the Wars of Religion / by Andr Thevet; foreword by T. K. Rabb; translated by Edward Benson; edited, with introduction and notes, by Roger Schlesinger.

p. cm. (Early modern studies series ; 3)

Thirteen selections from Andr Thevets Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres, originally published in 1584.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-931112-98-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-935503-60-6 (e-book)

1. FranceBiography. 2. RenaissanceFranceBiography. 3. FranceHistoryWars of the Huguenots, 15621598Biography. I. Benson, Edward. II. Schlesinger, Roger, 1943 III. Title.

CT1010.T48 2009

944'.029dc22

2009039072

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means without written permission from the publisher.

EB: For Maureen

RS: For Mary, again

MONARCHS

ARISTOCRATS/WARRIORS

SCHOLARS

T. K. RABB

Collections of brief biographies are among the most ancient of the enterprises of the historian. Thus, although the magisterial accounts of Rome by Livy and Tacitus occupy a central place in our understanding of the government and society they portrayed, many of the most interesting insights into the age come from the pioneering practitioners of the art of multiple biography, Plutarch and Suetonius. What they perfected was the brief, incisive portrait of the great and famousin Suetonius case, they were all emperors. And what their short biographies permitted was an attention to the telling detail that brings a period as well as a person to life by means that the more ambitious historians would only rarely employ. Thus Suetonius, after having presented Germanicus as an ideal and heroic figure, cuts him down to size and reveals the effort behind the image in one incisive sentence: His legs were too slender for the rest of his figure, but he gradually brought them to proper proportions by constant horseback riding after meals.

For the France of the sixteenth century, Andr Thevet was Plutarch and Suetonius combined. Although his renown was primarily as the writer of travel accounts and geographic treatises, his massive collection of biographies is not only a brilliant window into the development of historical writing, but also an unrivalled source for the understanding of his era. His portraits may not have the critical bite of his Roman predecessors, but they rest on an effort of meticulous research that the ancients did not match. Thevet found out everything he could about his subjects, and he offered his readers both a sweep through the past and a virtual encyclopedia of his age. Unlike his Florentine contemporary Giorgio Vasari, who compiled the lives of famous artists, Thevet was not trying to promote a particular party line. And unlike his famous successor in England a century later, John Aubrey, he was not on a constant lookout for scandal and juicy stories. This was the sober work of a deeply learned man who wanted the world to know about those whom he considered significant figures of the past, and especially of his own time.

That the information about his contemporaries is especially invaluable is, at least in part, because of the momentous developments of the period through which he lived. For this was not only the century of Europes first major encounter with the rest of the worlda topic Thevet made his own through his travels and writingsbut also the century of the Reformation. The cataclysmic effects of the religious change launched by Martin Luther in Germany and expanded in France by Jean Calvin were felt in every sphere of life: politics, society, literature, and the arts. Every aspect of the history of Thevets native land in the 1500s was affected by these changes, and for that reason alone his account of the lives of those who had to struggle with the consequences of the Reformation (whether or not he takes up this theme) is essential reading.

One story in particular is illuminated by the biographies collected in this book. Starting in the second half of the fifteenth century, the French monarchy had begun the long and slow process of consolidating its authority over all of France. Following the disasters and disruptions of the Hundred Years War with England, the reign of Louis XI (14611483) had witnessed a reassertion of royal authority that was to be expanded by his successors for almost a century. They were often involved in foreign wars, but these served as an excellent distraction for a kings chief rivals, the landed nobility. What was particularly impressive was the relentless rise in taxation, in the central governments legal powers, and in the size of the bureaucracy and the army, all of which enhanced the monarchs stature.

That process mirrored similar advances by kings in England and Spain at this time, but in France it was brought to an abrupt halt by the effects of the Reformation. In England, Henry VIII and Elizabeth co-opted the religious reforms and brought their realm into the Protestant fold without major upheaval. Spain remained a vigorous and watchful adherent of Catholicism, where religious dissent could gain no foothold. But France was torn apart by confessional dispute. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Calvinism had won hundreds of thousands of adherents, particularly in south-central and southwestern regions of the country, far from the center of royal authority in Paris. With the death of the determined and forceful Henri II in 1559, soon after the conclusion of yet another foreign war, France came under the rule of a succession of weak and uncertain kings. It was inevitable, therefore, that both nobles and Protestants (known to the French as Huguenots) should have reasserted themselves, and by 1562 civil war had broken out.