The
Ranums'
Panat Times
Volume 1, redone Dec. 2014
Jacques-Auguste de Thou: Taking off the Toga
II C: Hesitant findings about legal culture
I - Taking off the Toga, Reflections
II A - Searching for Legal
Perspectives in de Thou's dedication to Henry IV
II B - Searching for Legal
Perspectives in de Thou's History, books I-LXIV
II
C - Hesitant findings
III - Brief bibliography
De Thou's brief remarks about changing jurisdictions, for prosecuting heresy (Parlement, ecclesiastical courts, provincial governors, to mention only one example), indicates an acute alertness to how powers are distributed among the various institutions that acted in the king's name. Tensions between the conseil du roi and the Parlement over the latter's membership, gages, etc., were noted several times, as a parlementaire might well do. De Thou's royalism was constantly being put to the test by the activities of councilors that impinged on the Parlement's jurisdiction.
Civil war, war with the Hapsburgs, and religious division unleashed a near state of panic in the Conseil as de Thou perceived the Lorraine-Guise faction as taking advantage of crises in order to increase their own powers to control expenditures and appointments to royal offices. He also perceived these clashes over jurisdiction as "structural," that is, built into the distribution of powers in the Monarchy, in what W. Ullmann would characterize as a "descending" order of powers. Chancellors and ministers did what they thought they had to do; quarrels with the Parlement were inevitable. I see no decline in de Thou's interest in these matters, although he seems to want to avoid larding his narrative with excessive detail on these matters.
De Thou's thinking about his world and his History certainly evolved over the many decades about which he wrote, and in which he wrote. What he perceived as the advancement of learning throughout the republic of letters gave him cause to move toward less somber emotions, although he occasionally included quite harsh, even nasty judgments, notably about Paolo Giovio's career. He idolized the research, the preparation of critical editions, and the commentaries of the learned; and he remained an intimate friend of the intellectual heirs of Cujas and Baudoin, namely Pithou and Casaubon. De Thou also continued to idolize his own father, a jurist-activist-royal official whose courage in defending the "ancient constitution," he believed, exceeded his own.
De Thou gave special attention to attempts to redress injustices, notably in the case of Condé, and also in that of his friend Paul de Foix. As various scholars have suggested, Jotham Parsons most recently, a Gallican-parlementaire outlook could foster disenchantment with the Roman Catholic Church as it had developed in the most recent centuries. There are a few anti-clerical and anti-Roman barbs in the History, but more interesting is the research into the history of the early church and the Bible, sometimes mentioned in the eulogies of republicans of letters, one example being Melanchton.
With Descimon's initial charting of de Thou's beliefs always in mind, was de Thou striving for a studied vagueness about a historicized Catholicism (not Roman), or did he also include a Hermetic-Neoplatonist dimension on the origins of Christianity? D.P. Walker's The Ancient Theology (Oxford, 1977) provides a frame for understanding some aspects of de Thou's faith, but the silences remain so important that it is impossible to go beyond what Bruno Neveu refers to as a "nostalgie d'un passé lointain idéalisé qu'on voudrait surimposer au présent ...," Erudition et religion (Paris, 1994), p. 334. De Thou uses the word conscience in ways not unlike the usage by both Catholics and Protestant in those same decades.
In translation, commonplaces may lose their a-temporal dimension and become almost unrecognizable. A remark about how law courts ought to be predisposed to the person indicted in a criminal case may be stated in an a-temporal voice, but it is not a commonplace.
De Thou does not seem to have had a mind that was stocked with commonplaces. His passionate need to express himself in verse, and his frequent attention to changes in the meanings of words and contexts (e.g., La Boëtie's Servitude) occupied his mind, as did an immense quantity of historical facts; yet he rarely sought to parallel these with some "event" in the present. His reading left in his mind few tags or stories that he felt a need to recount when a name came up. Nor does he seem to have wanted to shape his thought along the lines of a phrase from Virgil or Dante, or indeed of any other author. Analogies are not proposed, in order to persuade.
As for rhetoric, the boutade about how great writers and orators learned their rhetoric and then forgot it, seems to characterize de Thou's personalization of learning. He could be harsh toward critics and bitter after disappointments, but a sense of fulfilment is conveyed on occasion.
Retz's critique of the research and writing of historians has much to commend it, when you compare de Thou's History with those of Mathieu, Sorel, or even Mezerai. It is certainly no compliment to characterize de Thou as an "author." We take him at his word, in the inscription on his tomb: Jacobi Augusti Thuani Historiarum Sui Temporis Libro CXXXVIII.
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Atticist that he was, as a thinker and a writer, and conciliator as a man of action, de Thou's great enterprise extended and satisfied his own longing to understand his own times, a longing that he shared with the republicans of letters throughout Europe. On an emotional level, the republic's growth and high purpose mitigated the pain of a patriot whose own country of origin prompted despair. Obedient and at least formally respectful of papal authority, like so many other humanists across Europe and across the century, de Thou believed that his History project had been, not inspired, but sustained and in a sense authorized, by God. The Preface to Henry IV is not only sincere, it is heartfelt. De Thou was not a humble man, either about the workings of his mind or about the high rank with which his birth and his office had endowed him in society. From where else, he might have asked, could have come the strength to pursue Truth? The human mind shared, with the divine, a capacity for understanding and reasoning. As he wrote to Jacques Dupuy in Rome, April 9, 1604:
... Il n'est possible de contenter en tels sujets, et au temps où nous vivons, tous les humeurs et esprits du siècle. Je m'efforceray y neantmoins de me justifier de ce dont l'on me voudra noter. Dieu veuille que ceux qui jugeroit de ce mien travail y apportent pareille candeur et sincerité que j'ay fait en escrivant. Ma conscience, qui m'est un grand temoin devant Dieu, et devant les hommes, me dit que je n'y ay rien apporté hors ce qui touche l'honneur et la liberté de ce royaume en intention d'offenser ni blesser autrui (History, London Latin ed. of 1733,VII, pt. 1, p. 4).
The words "... me justifier .... jugeroit ... temoin ..." frame his views of his History. The framework is juridical. (1)
Conscience, a link between the divine and the human, like the "real presence" of his two wives in his life after their deaths, and in his will, and his natural enthusiasm (yes, in a religious sense), for the life of the republic of letters and the sharing of life through his friends suggests that de Thou was a Burckhardtian Renaissance Man.
How to delineate secularization and/or laïcisation (they are not the same things) from religious innerlichkeit or interiorization? With the Early Church as his guide, and his celebration of the Monarchy's laws and institutions, de Thou's faith had become settled in the Gallican Church, not secularized. Laïcisation in the France of today denotes thought and action in conformity with the ideals and the historic values of the French Republic. His patriotism was in no way diminished as a result of the Wars of Religion; but in contrast to the contemporary mode, the Gallican Church remained an integral part of that identity. The Providential in the History appears rarely as overt divine action, a typical sense of the Providential. In the duel between Jarnac and La Châtaigneraie, there appeared a divine hand more direct than Providential (London edition of 1733, Book III, p. 115). Thus de Thou did not become ready to abandon a medieval-legal rite for determining innocence or guilt.
His overarching argument about the evil of appeal to secular authority in matters of conscience coheres with an interiorized faith sustained by a historicized divinity as found in the primitive church. His eagerness to read the volume on the early Greek conciles that was going to be published in Rome is a testimonial to that synthesis of faith and history. (See his letters to Cardinals Joyeuse, du Perron, and de la Rochefoucauld, as well as to Jacques Dupuy, London, 1733 ed., VII, pt. I.)
De Thou would write Jacques Dupuy in July 1606:
Il est bien difficile de dire la verité comme la loy de l'histoire le requiert et qu'elle est prescrite par Polybe, et vouloir plaire aux Grands. C'est un grand malheur aujourd'huy qu'il faille faire banqueroute à sa conscience, ou desplaire à ceux que chacun desire avoir pour son ami. ... Mais il y a une puissance plus grande que tout ce que nous voyons, qui nous fera un jour raison à tous. (London ed. of 1733, VII, pt. 1, p. 21)
Are we to understand that speaking (dire) and writing were fundamentally the same thing for de Thou? And that the phrase "loy de l'histoire" brings to mind the "first law of history" mentioned in the Preface? Reference to Polybius intrigues, especially since the great Renaissance editor of that historian was de Thou's friend, Isaac Casaubon. We might imagine de Thou and Casaubon meeting at the house of their publisher, Drouart, and de Thou going home with a draft of the monumental Introduction that Casaubon was preparing for the Polybius. Casaubon's text, like Baudouin's, Bodin's, and La Popelinière's, escapes from the ars-historica genre to become fundamental philo-historical programmatic statements for a truly modernizing historiography. Casaubon's Polybius would appear chez Drouart in 1609, the very year that Books I-LXV of the History (Kinsner, 4-1, to ix) were printed by the same publisher!
On June 12, 1606, de Thou wrote Cardinal du Perron: "Il y a difference de la Religion, et de la Doctrine hors la Religion. J'ay loué l'un, et passe légerement l'autre, de peur de violer les loix sous lesquelles nous vivons en paix ..." (London ed. of 1733, VII, pt. 1, p. 22).
I admit to uncertainty about how to interpret this passage. Religion tout court might include references to Islam or to Waldensians. Doctrine and laws make a strong synonymous link, but by the word hors does de Thou wish to imply that there are "teachings" that are made obligatory in the Church but that are not religious at all? Why write this to the zealous convert du Perron, whose support de Thou is seeking for gaining Rome's approval of his History? Why put du Perron's Gallicanism to a test? I can only infer that de Thou believed that he had the right on his side, so much so that he could flaunt it. He is more deferential in subsequent letters.
A year later (August 22, 1607), he wrote du Perron: "Vous qui estes né François, et avez tousjours suivi le parti François, excuseray aisément cela, mais je crains fort que ceux qui ignorent nos droits et nos libertez, ne le prennent de si bonne part" (London ed. of 1733, VII, pt. 1, p. 29). There is courtesy, but no deference. This is not friendship, and only the typical marks of respect. It seems not to have occurred to de Thou that du Perron's red hat and his favor with Henry IV might have gone to his head. Seen from Rome, de Thou was a mere président in a severely weakened sovereign court. The year 1609 would also bring a more explicit condemnation of the History by the prevailing powers in Rome.
I am only seeing the tip of an iceberg. Someone with the competence of Anne Teissier-Ensminger on the Vita, and Ingrid de Smet on the poetry, must come along, with Samuel Kinsner in hand, to write about the History from the perspective of the history of historical thought. Together, William Bouwsma's, Jean-Marc Châtelain's, and Robert Descimon's articles, and Jotham Parsons's and Ingrid de Smet's books provide the concetto for research on de Thou's mind and his work, as a historian. Citations to these works are in the Bibliography to this piece.
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Like Rabelais, Montaigne, and Pasquier, de Thou's presence in his reader's mind becomes intimate and deeply personal. Reading and learning about his great civic quest for understanding his own times has been very rewarding for me. Like Montaigne, de Thou has become a friend in the ways that Paulinus of Nola lived and experienced friendship, reading, and writing. (See the older but not yet superceded Pierre Fabre, St. Paulin de Nole et l'amitié chrétienne [Pairs, 1949].) An exemplum.
Good Friday 2011
Postscript:
When Agrippa d'Aubigné writes "Par ce moyen les gens de guerre (en faveur et à l'honneur desquels j'escri principalement) pourront sauter outre, pour cercher ailleurs ce qui est de leur mestier" (Histoire universelle, ed. A. Thierry [Geneva, 1981], I, p. 131), he has a strong awareness of his overarching theme. De Thou would occasionally note someone's bravery (Condé's) or success in battle (Guise's!); but he did not concern himself with scoring or evaluating individual success or failure in war, as Agrippa does. The robin did not write about war except to narrate its impact on institutions and, on occasion, individuals.
Notes:
1. For the richness and complexity of the concept, particularly in Gerson's thought, H. Braun and E. Vallance, eds., The Renaissance Conscience (Oxford, 2010).