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Renaissance

and
Reformation

Renaissance

Réforme

New Series, Vol. XV, No. 1 Nouvelle Série, Vol. XV, No 1

Old Series, Vol. XXVII, No. 1 Ancienne Série, Vol. XXVII, No. 1
Winter 1991 hiver

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Victoria University Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS), 1990.

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Winter / hiver 1991 (date of issue: February 1992)

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Renaissance Renaissance

and et

Reformation Réforme

New Series, Vol. XV, No. 1 Nouvelle Série, Vol. XV, No. 1

Old Series, Vol. XXVII, No. 1 1991 Ancienne Série, Vol. XXVII, No. 1

CONTENTS / SOMMAIRE

ARTICLES

1
Courtiers of Beauteous Freedom: Antony and Cleopatra in its Time

by Paul Yachnin

Marguerite Reads Giovanni: Gender and Narration in the

Heptaméron and the Decameron

by Elizabeth C. Wright

Guillaume Budé à son médecin, un inédit sur sa maladie

par Guy Lavoie

Dissolution and the Making of the English Literary Canon:

The Catalogues of Leland and Bale

by Trevor Ross

BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

John A. Marino. Pastoral Economics in the Kingdom of Naples

reviewed by Carola M. Small

Carter A. Daniel, ed. The Plays of John Lyly

reviewed by J. Michael Richardson

Robert Aulotte. Montaigne: Essais

recensé par Jean Larmat

Margaret Loftus Ranald. Shakespeare and His Social Context: Essays in

Osmotic Knowledge and Literary Interpretation

reviewed by Barry Thorne

Claude V. Palisca. Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought

reviewed by Maria Rika Maniâtes

Hilary Gatti. The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge:

Giordano Bruno in England

reviewed by Germaine Warkentin

David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Tuscans and Their Families:

A study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427.

reviewed by Daniel Bornstein

"Courtiers of Beauteous Freedom": Antony
and Cleopatra in its Time

PAUL YACHNIN

In terms of the political culture of the early Stuart period, Antony and
Cleopatra's account of the shift from the magnificent but senescent Egyptian
past to the pragmatic but successful Roman future can be seen as a critical
register of the symbolic constructions and political ramifications of the shift
from the Elizabethan to the Jacobean style of rule. In this paper, I want to
suggest that the meanings of the play in 1606-1607 were on the whole more
political and certainly more topical than they are now. To locate Antony and
Cleopatra in the linguistic, symbolic, and literary fields which comprised
the context for the play's first audiences will require a survey of a broad
range of texts — some literary, some political, some constructed as triumphal
arches in the streets of London. In such terms, Antony and Cleopatra
emerges as both contribution to and critique of the emerging Jacobean
political culture. I want to argue, then, that the Jacobean Antony and
Cleopatra possessed a level of political meaning which the twentieth-cen-
tury Antony and Cleopatra does not possess. This does not mean that the
modern play is in any sense poorer than its seventeenth-century counterpart.
Probably we appreciate the play's metatheatricality more than the first
audience did;' possibly we respond more seriously to the play's interest in
gender and power.^ Accordingly, the Jacobean Antony and Cleopatra — the
play I will try to recreate in some measure — cannot claim to be better than
our Antony and Cleopatra; it can only claim to be different. Taking the
measure of that difference is the principal purpose of this essay.

The contextualization of Antony and Cleopatra will reveal the politicized
resonances of the play's language, characterization, and handling of sources.
Contextualization suggests that Shakespeare's poetic styles are themselves
politically meaningful. Pompey's gorgeous phrase, "courtiers of beauteous
freedom," so long as it is interpreted without reference to the political
connotations of Jacobean language, can be little more than gorgeous (and a

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 1 (1991) 1

2 / Renaissance and Reformation

little puzzling: what have courtiers to do with freedom?); however the phrase
can be recast in an historicized linguistic field in order to clarify both the
connotative range of each word and the relationship between the words.

"Courtiers of beauteous freedom" is the crowning phrase in Pompey's
verbal attack on the triumvirate. Pompey denigrates his enemies by opposing
the mercantile and political present (Antony, Caesar, and Lepidus are
"senators" and "factors"; Julius Caesar's ghost saw them "laboring" at
Philippi) to the aristocratic and chivalric past ("all-honor' d, honest" Brutus,
Cassius, and the "armed rest" were "courtiers" who, when moved "to con-
spire" by their dedication to freedom, "drenched" the Capitol with Caesar's
blood — so that even the assassination was performed with characteristic
aristocratic largess). Pompey conceives the moment of his opposition to the
triumvirate as historically decisive: either he, as agent of the heroic past, will
revive aristocratic values or the triumvirate, the "senators alone of this great
world," will succeed in consolidating the new political culture and so enforce
the decline of true Roman values:

To you all three.

The senators alone of this great world,
Chief factors for the gods, I do not know
Wherefore my father should revengers want,
Having a son and friends, since Julius Caesar,
Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted.
There saw you laboring for him. What was't
The mov'd pale Cassius to conspire? And what
Made the all-honor'd, honest, Roman Brutus,
With the arm'd rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom.
To drench the Capitol, but that they would
Have one man but a man? And that is it
Hath made me rig my navy, at whose burden
The anger'd ocean foams, with which I meant
To scourge th' ingratitude that despiteful Rome
Cast on my noble father.

(II.vi.8-23)3

Pompey's rhetorical opposition of past to present and of an aristocratic,
chivalric ethos to a mercantile, political ethos adumbrates the ideational
framework of the play; in terms of the overall design, Antony and Cleopatra
belong to the aristocratic, chivalric, magnificent past whereas Caesar repre-
sents the mercantile, political, pragmatic present. In the world of the play, the
magnificent past persists only in Egypt, the exotic backwater of the empire.

Renaissance et Réforme / 3

"Courtiers of beauteous freedom" helps to situate this opposition in its
historical moment of the play itself since it intimates a parallel between the
chivalric and heroic past on the one hand and the Court of the late Queen on
the other. Just as Elizabeth presided over her splendid courtiers, so
"freedom" — "libertas" — was the beauteous queen of the freedom-loving
Roman courtiers. Pompey's evocation of the golden past summons the
Elizabethan Court out of the shadows in order to lend weight to his argument;
and in its turn, the political subtext of the play appropriates Pompey's
opposition of Roman past and Roman present to its treatment of the relation-
ship between the Elizabethan past and the Jacobean present. The play's
evocation of lost magnificence suggests its nostalgic fealty to the past;
however, the play also registers a pragmatic acceptance of the present. The
same is true of Pompey's speech: pale Cassius and Roman Brutus are more
attractive than the triumvirate, and "courtiers" are more appealing than
"factors" — even "factors for the gods" — but Pompey's position is not per-
suasive since he is driven by futile self-promotion rather than by a desire for
justice. Even with respect to individual words, the text imposes questions and
qualifications concerning Pompey's rhetorical position. "Courtier," for ex-
ample, is a word usually tainted by courtiers' proverbial preciosity and
sycophancy (this seems to have been so in spite of the popularity of Hoby's
Castiglione). English writers tend to handle the word gingerly and for satiric
effect: Spenser, for one, does not use it at all (in any form) in Faerie Queene
(although it appears seven times in the satirical and topical "Mother Hubberds
Tale." For Donne, "courtier" is virtually synonymous with venality:

He which did lay
Rules to make Courtiers, (hee being understood
May make good Courtiers, but who Courtiers good?)"*

Hotspur's "popinjay," Osric ("Dost know this water-fly?"), and the dis-
guised Autolycus represent Shakespeare's normal sense of the thing itself.
Autolycus, furthermore, provides an example of Shakespeare's sense of the
word's inescapable ironic tonality:

Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier.
Seest thou not the air of the court in these
enfoldings? Hath not my gait in it the measure
of the court? Receives not thy nose court-odor
from me? Reflect I not on thy baseness court-contempt?
{Winter's Tale, IV, iv 733-737)

4 / Renaissance and Reformation

The unironic sense of the word can be recovered only by insistence on the
courtly ideal (Spenser achieves this at one point in "Mother Hubberds Tale"),^
but some irony tends to inhere nonetheless. Pompey attempts to purify
"courtiers" by projecting the word back into the golden past when gallants
worshipped Freedom rather than Vanity; however the text enforces an ironic
undercurrent both by collocating "courtiers" with the "poetical" word
"beauteous" (OED) and by virtue of Pompey ' s own folly and self-destructive
submission to the antiquated discourse of "honour" (see II.vii.62-85)

The word "freedom" also is politicized within the context of the phrase
"courtiers of beauteous freedom." In the first place, "freedom" acquires the
sense of "being free and noble; nobility, generosity, liberality" (0ED,3) in
addition to its primary meaning, "exemption or release from slavery"
(0ED,1). That is, "freedom" has in this phrase an aristocratic resonance in
addition to its primary meaning, "Freedom's" multivalent significance
mediates between the aristocratic past (in which noble rank is signalled by
conspicuously unconstrained, or "free", expenditure), and the mercantile
present (in which the freedom of the individual is an attribute of contractual
political relations).^ Specifically, as I have already suggested, "freedom" is
feminized, invested with a courtly ethos, and even enthroned (by virtue of
having courtiers); projected, that is, into the symbolic matrix of the
Elizabethan court.

Pompey 's ideas about past and present belong and have reference to the
imaginative world within the play, but the words and images which he uses
to express those ideas embody particular political biases and references which
have immediate and unavoidable pertinence to England in 1606-1607. The
ghost of the magnificent Queen Elizabeth shadows Pompey 's speech, lending
strength to his rhetorical attack on the triumvirate; however, as a consequence,
Pompey' s speech constitutes a reflection upon the perceived shift from
Elizabethan magnificence to Jacobean "measure."

Recent historical and literary research has made us increasingly aware of two
movements in early seventeenth-century political culture which constitute
important contexts for Antony and Cleopatra. One concerns the nostalgia for
Elizabethan Protestant militancy which appeared early in James's reign,
specifically in response to the peace James concluded with Spain in 1604.^
The other comprises James's own formulation of an innovative "Roman
style" of rule.^ James's revival of the Augustan ideal constituted a "symbolics

Renaissance et Réforme / 5

of power" which shaped the public displays of his peace-making and his plans
to unify Scotland and England. A third element consists of two plays which
connect Cleopatra with Queen Elizabeth — one by Fulke Greville and another
by Samuel Daniel (the first we know only be Greville' s own report; the second
is extant and was probably known to Shakespeare).^

Emrys Jones has observed that Antony and Cleopatra's emphasis on
Octavius — later Augustus — Caesar's role as peacemaker, and its cloaked, and
apparently slighting, allusions to Queen Elizabeth, make the play a somewhat
sycophantic tribute to King James:

... the play is an imperial work in a special sense; it was written by the leading
dramatist of the King's Men, whose patron was James I, the "Emperor" of
Great Britain. Although no records survive of the early performances of
Antony and Cleopatra, it is hard to resist the notion that this most courtly of
Shakespeare's tragedies must have been performed at James's court.
James was England's, or rather "Britain's", own modern Augustus, for
whom Caesar's lines in the play —

The time of universal peace is near.

Prove this a prosperous day, the three-nooked world

Shall bear the olive freely —
IV.6.5-7
would have had a special significance: James was himself an imperial,
quasi-Augustan, peacemaker. So the British also, one supposes, have
relished the allusions to his predecessor Elizabeth in Cleopatra's scenes with
the Messenger — for Elizabeth in Cleopatra's had questioned her ambassador
about Mary Stuart in a remarkably similar way.)^^

Jones would agree that the Jacobean Antony and Cleopatra possessed a
political significance which was lost soon after its initial performances, but
he would say that this meaning is an excrescence, an unfortunate product of
the need to flatter the King, and hence an aspect of the play we are better off
without, indeed an aspect the play is better off without. "Fortunately for us,"
Jones comments, "the play transcends the circumstances of its composi-
tion."^^ While I agree with Jones about the presence of a political level of
meaning in the Jacobean Antony and Cleopatra, I want to disagree with his
devaluation of its importance to the design of the play. I want to suggest that
it is not an excrescence, but an integral part of the play's meaning; and that
it is not essentially court flattery directed at King James, but a representation
of contemporary politics directed towards a diverse audience. This, I think,
is the crucial point to be made about the play's topicality. After that point has
been made, I would certainly agree with Jones that Shakespeare would not

6 / Renaissance and Reformation

have been unhappy if, in addition to the theatre audience, King James also
had found the play gratifying.

I want to adjust Jones's assessment of the Jacobean meanings of Antony
and Cleopatra by pursuing two lines of argument, one pertaining to the
"politics" of the Jacobean theatre and another concerning the relationship
between Shakespeare's play and the broad range of texts representative of
both Jacobean popular nostalgia for Elizabethan magnificence and Jacobean
government attempts to develop an original and effective symbolics of power.
In general, the politics of the stage were shaped by the conflicting demands
of commercialism and censorship. The heterogeneous audience and the
tradition of the drama's engagement with political and social issues help make
sense of the topical meaning of a play like Antony and Cleopatra}^ Were
Emrys Jones right about the bias of Shakespeare's topicality, that is, were it
true that the play was intended primarily to flatter King James by paralleling
him to Octavius Caesar, we might expect to find a more consistently attractive
portrait of the future emperor. Instead we find a complex figure whom most
critics find — to quote A. P. Riemer — "unattractive, perhaps sinister";*^ and
yet a figure whom, as actors such as Keith Baxter and Jonathan Pryce have
shown, can be played sympathetically, even as a hero.''^ Such opposite
reading of the character of Octavius show how effectively Shakespeare has
contrived to leave unanswered the central questions about Octavius' motiva-
tions and morals. To a degree, Shakespeare has surrendered the production
of meaning to his audiences: royalist members of the audience — perhaps even
a royal audience — are empowered by the text to focus on Octavius' peace-
making; members of the audience disenchanted with the King or nostalgic
for an earlier reign can emphasize Octavius' machiavellian pursuit of power.
Subtle shifts in the actor's presentation of the character will tend to foreground
one or the other interpretation so that the play can be adapted for different
audiences. The interpretive openness of the characterization of Octavius
dovetails with the requirements of a play which was to be performable both
at the Globe and at Whitehall. The conditions of production, in short, helped
determine the characteristic "balance" (or, more accurately, two-facedness)
of Shakespeare's handling of Octavius.

The necessity of writing for different audiences and the pressures of
censorship constitute the extrinsic causes of the balance and complexity of
Shakespeare's treatment of politics, both Roman and Jacobean. Of course,
extrinsic factors are not sufficient in themselves to bring about a balanced
view of politics (as the nostalgic works of Dekker, Heywood, and Chapman
make clear); however, insofar as the pressures of commercialism and censor-

Renaissance et Réforme / 7

ship provide the ground for Shakespeare's penetrating critique of the histori-
cal competition between opposing symbolics of power, they should be seen
as liberating rather than as constraining.

That Antony and Cleopatra can bear comparison with plays explicitly
concerned with the memory of Elizabeth has been established by Geoffrey
Bullough, Helen Morris, Kenneth Muir, and Keith RinehartJ-^ The proposed
parallels between the Queen of Egypt and the Queen of England have become
familiar to students of the play and have been widely accepted, if only because
the claims made for their importance to the play have been so modest. The
argument runs something like this: details in the characterization of Cleopatra
such as her militancy, her likening herself to a milk-maid (Elizabeth had done
likewise in a speech before Parliament), her fiery temper, her fondness for
travel in a river-barge, her wit, her immense charm, (all prominent aspects in
contemporary accounts of Elizabeth) reveal a characteristically Elizabethan
handling of classical source-material. It is as if Shakespeare had used what
he knew about Elizabeth in order to work towards an understanding of
Cleopatra.

All this is true enough, but we must go further. At the moment of creation
and reception, the meaning of the products of imagination is determined
largely by political, literary, and linguistic context, and by audience and
authorial expectations and modes of understanding attendant upon context.
In other words, recollections of Elizabeth in Antony and Cleopatra must take
on a particular coloration during the reign of her successor. Recollections of
Elizabeth must mean something.

The meaning of these recollections of Elizabeth in Antony and Cleopatra
can be elucidated by measuring them against Jacobean nostalgia for "Good
Queen Bess's Golden Days." According to Anne Barton, nostalgia for the late
Queen appeared very soon after James came to the throne of England: there
are indications of it in Chapman's Bussy DAmbois (1604); as well as
full-scale tributes to the Queen in Heywood's If You Know Not Me (1604),
and Dekker's Whore of Babylon (1606).^^ There is, of course, no surprise in
the fact that, once a king is dead, his people often wish him back again, even
though they hated him while he was living. It seems to be the very nature of
the populace to lackey the varying tide of events, and the very nature of rulers
to become deared only by being lacked. Shakespeare's contemporary. Bishop
Godfrey Goodman, explained the Jacobean revival of Elizabeth's memory in
similar terms:

8 / Renaissance and Reformation

... in effect the people were very generally weary of an old woman's
government. . . . But after a few years, when we had experience of the Scottish
government, then in disparagement of the Scots, and in hate and detestation
of them, the Queen did seem to revive; then was her memory much mag-
nified,— such ringing of bells, such public joy and sermons in commemora-
tion of her, the picture of her tomb painted in many churches, and in effect
more solemnity and joy in memory of her coronation than was for the coming
in of King James. '^

Late in James's reign and largely in response to the Kings' "appeasement"
of Catholic Spain, recollections of Elizabeth became weapons in the hands of
Protestant propagandists like Thomas Scot; and nostalgia even figured in the
plays which both expressed and promoted popular dissatisfaction with
English non-involvement in the Continental wars — plays such as Massinger's
Maid of Honour (1621) and Drue's Duchess of Suffolk (1624). This propagan-
distic nostalgia belongs both to the last years of James's reign and to the early
Caroline period; however, several early instances do seem politically pur-
poseful, and one of these in particular (Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra) is relevant
to the present discussion.

When Daniel revised his play early in James's reign, he added a new first
scene patently intended to express his unhappiness with the 1604 cessation
of hostilities against Spain. Daniel's Cleopatra becomes in this scene a
despairing mater patriae, to whom her son, Caesario, holds out hope of their
ultimate victory over Roman hegemony. Cleopatra irresistibly evokes the
memory of the militantly anti-Catholic Queen of England. Caesario's speech
is transparent political allegory in which ancient Rome stands for the Spanish-
Catholic domination of Europe and the Roman Provinces stand for the
besieged Protestant Provinces of the Netherlands:

Deare soveraigne mother, suffer not your care

To tumult thus with th'honor of your state:

These miseries of our no strangers are.

Nor is it new to be unfortunate.

And this good, let your many sorrows past

Worke on your heart t'inharden it at last.

Looke but on all the neighbour States beside,

Of Europe, Afrique, Asia and but note

What Kings? what States? hath not the Roman pride

Ransackt, confounded, or els servile brought?

And since we are so borne that by our fate.

Against these storms we cannot now bear saile,

Renaissance et Réforme / 9

And that the boisterous current of their state
Will beare down all our fortunes, and prevaile:
Let us yet temper with the time: and thinke
The windes may change, and all these States opprest,
Colleagu'd in one, may turne again to sincke
Their Greatnesse, who now holds them all distrest
And I may lead their troupes, and at the walles
Of greedie Rome, revenge the wronged blood
And doe th'inthralled Provinces this good.
And therefore my deare mother doe not leave
hope the best. I doubt not my returne.^^

It might seem as if Daniel though any vehicle would serve to bear his
anti-Catholic message, but in allegorizing Cleopatra he was in fact following
the example of his friend Fulke Greville. According to his own account,
Greville wrote and then destroyed an Antony-and-Cleopatra play because he
feared it might be construed as a criticism of Elizabeth's destruction of her
own great general — the Earl of Essex. Greville sacrificed his manuscript to
the fire, he says, because he thought it might be "strained to a personating of
vices in the present Governors, and government. . . . And again in the practice
of the world, seeing the like instance not poetically, but really fashioned in
the Earle of Essex then falling; and ever till then worthily beloved, both of
the Queen, and people ... "'^ There is, of course, no reason to think that
Shakespeare knew Greville's play. But Shakespeare certainly knew, and was
influenced by, the 1594 version of Cleopatra. Some scholars think that
Daniel's 1607 version was in turn influenced by a production of Antony and
Cleopatra; others disagree. ■^^ Such precise questions of literary indebtedness
will probably remain unanswered. The crucial point to be made, however, is
that London was a tightly-knit literary community, and that men like
Shakespeare and Daniel were likely to be interested to see what each had done
with the same material.

The literary connexion between Cleopatra and Elizabeth is complimented
by James's self-representation as Caesar Augustus. ^^ James's coronation
medal was inscribed: "lAC : I : BRIT : CAE : AVG : HAE CAESARUM
CAE. D. D." ("James I, Caesar Augustus of Britain, Caesar the heir of the
Caesars").^^ Panegyric poems on the occasions of James's accession to the
English throne introduced an imperial motif: and royal encomium became
explicitly Augustan when Jonson undertook to lionize the King in the 1604
royal entry. ^^ Here, in the streets of London on March 15, 1604, and in the
most elaborate and costly procession of the age, Jonson's Temple Bar Arch

10 / Renaissance and Reformation

(the last of seven) and his panegyric of welcome in The Strand heralded the
King as the new Augustus. A fourfaced head of Janus crowned the Arch; at
James's approach, the gates closed on Janus, signifying the peculiarly Augus-
tan peace-making attendant upon the onset of James's reign. On the gates was
written: "IMP. lACOBVS MAX. CAESAR AVG. P.P." ("Emperor James
the Great, Caesar Augustus, Father of the Country").-^"* In The Strand the
figure of Electra reiterated the comparison:

Let ignorance know, great king, this day is thine,
And doth admit no night; but all doe shine
As well nocturnall, as diurnall fires.
To adde unto the flame of our desires.
Which are (now thou hast closd up Janus gates,
And giv'n so generall peace to all estates)
That no offensive mist, or cloudie staine
May mixe with splendor of thy golden raigne;

This from that loud, blest Oracle, I sing.

Who here, and first pronounc'd, thee Britlt]aines king.

Lx)ng maist thou live, and see me thus appeare.

As omenous a comet, from my spheare.

Unto thy raigne; as that did auspicate

lasting glory to Augustus state.^^

The Augustan image-making associated both with James's peace-making
and with his plans to unite England and Scotland, the parallels between
Elizabeth and Shakespeare's and Daniel's Cleopatra, and the increasing
tendency to draw invidious comparisons between the late Queen and King
James constitute the political-literary context of Antony and Cleopatra.
Shakespeare organizes this complex material according to an idea of a Fall.
The originary period is figured as golden, but only from the postlapsarian
point of view; such a relationship suggests that the golden age is a product of
the iron age's imaginative formulation of its own etiology. That is,
Shakespeare understands that nostalgia for the golden past is normally a secret
legitimation of the present. Understanding this allows Antony and Cleopatra
to retain the late-Elizabethan critical view of the Queen within its own
nostalgic evocation of the Elizabethan era.

The extraordinary style of Elizabeth's rule is appreciatively evoked in
Antony and Cleopatra', moreover the regret which attends the play's rejection
of Elizabethan style is not feigned but rather is assimilated in the play's
qualified endorsation of the present. Cleopatra shares Elizabeth's mag-

Renaissance et Réforme /Il

nificence, her showiness, her ability to "caress" the people and "make them
good cheer" — to use the words of the Venetian ambassador.^^ Shakespeare's
Cleopatra, furthermore, evokes Elizabeth's militancy (and as Helen Morris
has pointed out, this trait is without warrant in Plutarch):-^

Sink Rome, and their tongues rot
That speak against us! A charge we bear i' th' war.
And, as the president of my kingdom, will
Appear there for a man.

(lII.vii.15-18)

However, whereas Cleopatra's "public body" is figured in terms of mag-
nificence (an attribute which Spenser had identified as the perfection of all
the virtues),^^ her private body is lapped in luxuria and vanitas. Her queenly
pleasure at her people's devotion (again the Venetian ambassador's words
about Elizabeth)^'^ is an expression both of her vanity and of the public,
"corporate," joy a ruler properly feels at the happy order of her common-
wealth. That is, the characterization of Cleopatra forces into the open the
contradictions attendant upon female rule in a patriarchal society .-^^ Cleopatra
upon the river of Cydnus, enthroned in the market-place ("in chairs of gold . . .
In th' habiliments of the goddess Isis" [Ill.vi. 4,17]), "levying/ The kings o'
th' earth for war" (Ill.vi. 68-69) is at once an evocation both of England's
great and "popular" Queen and of the demonized archetype of female rule —
the Whore of Babylon. Shakespeare has incorporated in on character the
fiercely contradictory aspects of Elizabeth's rule, aspects which Spenser had
been able to keep separate — had been compelled to keep separate — in pairs
of opposing characters such as Lucifera and the Faerie Queene, Malecasta
and Britomart, Radigund and Britomart. As an unfolding of the contradiction
attendant upon the Elizabethan symbolics of power, Shakespeare's Cleopatra
is a repudiation of female rule, a demonstration of its volatility and inefficacy .
While Cleopatra's splendid showy victory over Octavius encourages the
audience's admiration, it nonetheless leaves the loser master of the world. In
the wake of her suicidal leap towards the divine, the world, newly settled in
the Pax Augusta, can graciously acknowledge — and dismiss — her now dis-
armed charisma: "she looks like sleep,/ As she would catch another Antony
/ In her strong toil of grace" (V.ii. 345-7). Cleopatra has been transformed into
a monument; the world can return to business.

Antony and Cleopatra's repudiation of Elizabethan style would seem to
make the play — as Emrys Jones has suggested — a tribute to King James,
Elizabeth's successor and himself the engineer of the Pax Britannica. How-

12 / Renaissance and Reformation

ever Octavius' pacification of the "three-nook 'd world" precipitates a fall into
the mercantile (as opposed to the aristocratic). Augustan rule will not be
"royal"; on the contrary, it will be a factor's peace under the shroud of "the
unive'-sai landlord." Even on the eve of battle, Caesar parsimoniously adheres
to the principle of "measure" — "And feast the army; we have store to
do't,/And they have earn'd the waste" (IV.i. 16-17). By yoking the Augustan
ideal to mercantilism, Shakespeare is able to produce a subtle critique of
Jonson's figuration of James as Caesar. Further, Shakespeare's refiguration
of the Augustan symbolics of power includes James's well-known anti-
popularism: both Octavius and James are contemptuous of their people (this
trait in Octavius has little warrant in Plutarch; rather it seems to derive from
James):

He does not caress the people nor make them that good cheer the late Queen
did, whereby she won their loves: for the English adore their Sovereigns, and
if the King passed through the same street a hundred times a day the people
would still run to see him; they like their King to show pleasure at their
devotion, as the late Queen knew well how to do; but his King manifests no
taste for them but rather contempt and dislike.^'

Octavius' conquest is necessary since it brings peace and since it is destined
(in the real-life world, Elizabeth is dead, James is King) —

Be you not troubled with the time, which drives
O'er your content these strong necessities,
But let determin'd things to destiny
Hold unbewail'd their way.

(III.vi.84-87)

However manifest Octavius' destiny might or might not be (note the
Virgilian exigency is his words to his sister [see Aeneid, IV.331-61]), the
play's emotional endorsation of its own movement towards Augustan rule
remains burdened by Caesar's mercenary coldness. Both Octavius' and
James's special failing as rulers lies in their perverse response to public
celebration: they fail to give assent to the sense of joyful community which
had flourished — or which was beginning to seem to have flourished — under
Elizabeth. ^^ For this reason, Octavius' ideal version of a triumphal entry is
not celebratory but rather perverted and even sadistic:

The wife of Antony
Should have an army for an usher, and

Renaissance et Réforme / 13

The neighs of horse to tell of her approach
Long ere she did appear. The trees by th'way
Should have borne men, and expectation fainted,
Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust
Should have ascended to the roof of heaven,
Rais'd by your populous troops.
(in.vi.43-50)

Antony and Cleopatra then, considered in its context, may be seen to
comprehend the full range of comtemporary response to the shift from
Elizabethan to Jacobean rule, from Daniel's disappointment and hostility to
Jonson's reverential approval. The play's range of response represents the
fullest possible treatment of the complex state of political culture in 1606-
1607. The reiterated off-stage immanence of the nativity of Christ lends
positive value to Octavius' peace-making, however suspect it might be on its
own account,^^ and Cleopatra's engaging magnificence is tempered by our
knowledge of her vanity and her failure. Antony and Cleopatra's endorsation
of Jacobean imperial rule is shadowed by the emerging myth of the militant
Protestant Queen, a formulation of feminized and millenarian power which
would harass James throughout his reign. ^^

The language of Antony and Cleopatra resonates most clearly in the linguistic
milieu of the early seventeenth century. Thus the word "business" in
Octavius' truncated eulogy for Antony (V.i.50) seals the demise of Roman —
and Elizabethan — chivalry, signalling by its degraded status the ascendency
of the new "political" style of rule.^^ However, the play's language has special
attachments with culturally privileged texts such as the Bible, Horace, Virgil,
and Spenser. These connexions, especially those with the Book of Revelations
and with the style of the Augustan poets, contribute importantly to
Shakespeare's contrasting treatment of Elizabethan and Jacobean rule.

To put the matter in broad terms, the poetic framework of Antony and
Cleopatra consists in an opposition between Augustan style and apocalyptic
allusion.^^ This stylistic opposition subsumes the ethical opposition (as
adumbrated in Pompey's speech) between new, "political," mercantile (as-
sociated with the Jacobean reign) and old, chivalric, aristocratic (that is, as it
was in "good Queen Bess's golden days"). This opposition between Augustan
and apocalyptic, moreover, crystallizes in a peculiarly literary way the com-
peting claims of two distinct systems of propagandistic symbolism. Jacobean

14 / Renaissance and Reformation

royal propaganda, as it emerged in 1604, was this-worldly and "civic,"
coloured by the Jonson's recollections of the pacific achievements of Caesar
Augustus. Elizabethan propaganda, in contrast, as developed by Bale, Foxe,
Spenser, and others, was other-worldly and cosmic — indeed the apocalyptic
myth of the Elect Nation and the myth of Elizabeth were of a piece. -^^ The
propagandistic contexts of the two monarchs were opposed: James's was
largely classical, Elizabeth's mostly biblical.-'^ In its own struggle between
classical and biblical modes of expression, Antony and Cleopatra registers
and critiques this competition between the politicized allusive fields as-
sociated with Elizabeth and James.

Augustan style is characterized by weight and authority; it is forthright,
decorous, regular, and balanced; each phrase and each syllable is "wrought
in season" (Jonson's phrase).^^ Poetry of this kind is urbane rather than
metaphysical; it deals with what can be known and expressed, and does not
attempt to utter what Carew called (in praising Donne's poetry) "the deepe
knowledge of darke truths.'"^^ Urbanity and balance distinguish much of the
verse in Antony and Cleopatra. In the play's first speech, for example, words
and phrases are doubled and even trebled in order to lend the verse sentence
the weight and authority characteristic of Augustan poetry:

Those his goodly eyes,
That o'er the files and musters of the war
Have glow'd like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front.

(I.i.2-6)'*'

At its best, the play's Augustan verse is expressive of the exigencies of
power (as in Antony's "strong necessity of time" speech [I.iii.41-56]); at its
worst, it remains business-like even if self-important (as in Octavius' first
speech [I.iv.1-10]). In every instance, it is realistic and this-worldly; and in
this respect it is differentiated from the series of allusions to Revelations.

The allusions to Revelations, first noted by Ethel Seaton, introduce the
possibility of a transcendent level of being into the materialist world of the
play."^^ In general terms, the possibility of transcendence can be taken two
ways — either as an indication of the fundamental and undermining limitations
of Antony and Cleopatra or as a sign of their nascent spiritual superiority over
a pagan world."*^ In terms of the topicality of the play, however, the pertinence
of Revelations becomes clear once we understand the millenarian cast of most
Elizabethan propaganda (indeed Dekker's Whore of Babylon — which

Renaissance et Réforme / 15

portrays the godly struggle of Elizabeth and her English against the Spanish
Antichrist — was produced in 1606, that is within a year of Antony and
Cleopatra).

The allusions to Revelations are excessive in form as well as in content.
Antony's first two lines in the play contain the first such allusion; they are
hypermetrical and breathless, and are set off against Cleopatra's curt pen-
tameters:

CLEOPATRA

If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
ANTONY

There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
CLEOPATRA

I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.
ANTONY

Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
(I.i.14-17)

Antony and Cleopatra on the one hand and Octavius Caesar on the other
compete for advantage in the play's intertextual arena. Both the lovers and
the emperor-to-be attempt to claim the protagonist's role in a struggle whose
principal lineaments derive from Revelations. Most of the biblical references
belong to one or the other lover: Antony wishes to find "new heaven, new
earth" in order to define his and Cleopatra's extraordinary romance; when
Antony is discovered on his sword, his soldiers echo an apocalyptic lament —

SECOND GUARD

The star is fall'n.

FIRST GUARD

And time is at his period.

ALL

Alas, and woe!

(IV.xiv.l06-107)4'*

And when Cleopatra remembers Antony ("His legs bestrid the ocean, his
rear'd arm / Crested the world" [V.ii. 81-91]), he assumes the proportions of
an Angel of the Apocalypse —

And I sawe another mightie Angel come downe from heaven, clothed with
a cloude, and the rainebowe upon his head, & his face was as the sunne, and
his feete as piliers of fyre. And he had in his hand a litle boke open, and he
put his right fote upon the sea, and his left on the earth. And cryed with a

16 / Renaissance and Reformation

lowde voyce, as when a lyon roareth: and when he had cryed, seven thondres
uttered their voyces ... And the Angel which I sawe stand upon the sea and
upon the earth, lift up his ha[n]d to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for
evermore ... that time should be more.^^

In Cleopatra's struggle for ascendency over Octavius, reminiscences of
Revelations serve to enhance her self-portrayal by figuring her political
position as the Faithful threatened by the Roman Antichrist. Once she has
outwitted Caesar and has costumed herself for a grand suicide, Cleopatra goes
to meet Mark Antony, whom, for the first time, she addresses as "husband":
"Husband, I come! / Now to that name my courage prove my title!" (V.ii.287-
8). The "trimming" of her diadem (341), the conjoined elements of sacrifice,
loyalty, "immortal longings," and transcendent marriage after long trial all
enforce the parallel with Revelations; and the imagined marriage in the
afterlife crowns and completes the lovers' initial paradisal intuitions, so that
(from Cleopatra's point of view) the span of her relationship with Antony can
be summed in two crucial verses from Revelations:

And I sawe a new heaven, & a new earth: for the first heaven, and the first
earth were passed away, & there was no more sea. And I John sawe the holie
citie newe Jerusalem come down from God out of heaven, pared as a bride
trimmed for her housband.'*^

From the Roman point of view, on the other hand, Cleopatra is the Whore
of Babylon rather than the Bride of the Lamb (this is, of course, wildly
out-of-place, but is nonetheless quite explicit in the text). Octavius echoes the
Bible in decrying Cleopatra as "a whore" who is "levying / The kings o' th'
earth for war" (III.vi.68-69).'^'^ It follows that the destruction of Cleopatra is
a necessary precondition of Augustan "universal peace" (note that this
peculiarly apocalyptic view of the struggle between Caesar and Cleopatra
dovetails with the Augustan view set forth in Horace's Ode on the fall of
Cleopatra and in Virgil's ekphrastic rendering of the Battle of Actium in the
Aeneid)^^

The doubleness and struggle which attends Shakespeare's use of Revela-
tions in the play, the opposite and conflicting ways in which apocalyptic
allusion can colour that play's central conflict, contributes to the complexity
of the play's evocation of Elizabethan rule, and matches — as I have already
suggested — the bifurcated allegorial presentation of Elizabeth in Faerie
Queene. Spenser's poem, written during Elizabeth's reign, plays out the
cuhural struggle to come to terms with a Queen who was both the leader of

Renaissance et Réforme / 17

the Elect Nation and also a notoriously vain woman, enacting the wider
controversy in its own divided allegorization of the Queen and in its wealth
of incriminating detail (Lucifera is "A mayden Queene" [I.iv.8], Malecasta's
robes are uncannily like those of "the virgin Eliza" [III.i.59]).^^ Shakespeare's
Jacobean play is able to force together these contrary qualities in the character
of Cleopatra, and to invest that character with the Jacobean nostalgias for the
millenarian aspirations of the Elizabethan era. The play suggests, then, that
the death of the great Queen and the accession of the peacemaker has tamed
the violent energies of female rule, but that it has also precipitated a fall into
secular — as opposed to apocalyptic — history.

It is the distinguishing feature of great drama that it can make itself at home
before different audiences, that it can adapt to radically differing modes of
response. This, as I have argued, was true of Antony and Cleopatra in
1606-1607 when — possibly — it was performed both at the Globe and at
Court; it is certainly true now since the play continues to flourish even though
it has lost the topical level of meaning which I have argued it possessed at
first. The first audiences of Antony and Cleopatra would not, I think, have
felt any more intensely than we the fierce contraries embodied in Egypt's
Queen, but they would have apprehended these contraries more complexly
than we, as political as well as moral, responding to the play as they were out
of a specific, immediate, and deeply-felt political frame of reference.

University of British Columbia _f

Notes

1. See Janet Adelman, The Common Liar: An Essay on Antony and Cleopatra (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 102-68.

2. For a recent discussion of the play's treatment of gender and power, see Theodora A.
Jankowski, "'As I Am Egypt' Queen': Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, and the Female Body
Politic," in Assays. Critical approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts, 5 (1989),
91-110.

3. All Shakespeare quotations are from Complete Works, ed. David Bevington, 3rd ed.
(Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1980).

4. John Donne, Poetical Works, ed. Herbert Grierson (rpt. London: Oxford University
Press, 1966), Satyre V, II. 2-4.

5. "Prosopopoia: or Mother Hubberds Tale," in Poetical Works, ed. J.C. Smith and E. de
Selincourt (rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), II. 717ff. Note that even in
this passage, Spenser reverts to the phrase "Courtly Gentleman" (1. 753).

18 / Renaissance and Reformation

6. See also Troilus and Cressida, I.iii.235-6, where the collocation of "courtiers" and
"free" also highlights the aristocratic sense of the word.

7. See Anne Barton, "Harking Back to Elizabeth: Ben Jonson and Caroline Nostalgia,"
ELH, 48 (1981), 706-31; for a dissenting view, see D. R. Woolf, "Two Elizabeths?
James I and the Late Queen's Famous Memory," Canadian Journal of History, 20:2
(Aug. 1985), 167-91.

8. For a brilliant discussion of James's Roman style, see Jonathan Goldberg, James I and
the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and Their Contemporaries
(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), pp. 27-54; see also
Graham Parry, The Golden Age Restor'd: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603-42
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), pp. 15-20; Howard Erskine-Hill,
The Augustan Idea in English Literature (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), pp. 99-178;
H. Neville Davies, "Jacobean A«/o/jy and Cleopatra,'" Shakespeare Studies, 17 (1985),
123-58.

9. The connexion between Greville's lost play and Antony and Cleopatra was noted by
Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols. (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957-75), 5:216-17.

10. Emrys Jones, "Introduction," A/jfowy and Cleopatra (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1 977),
pp. 46-7. I should note that the dates are against the Melville/Messenger parallel. The
incident itself happened in 1564 (the year of Shakespeare's birth), and Melville's
Memoirs were not published until 1683; it is unlikely that the exchange between
Elizabeth and Melville would have still been a matter of public knowledge in 1606-07.

11. Jones, p. 47

12. For an extensive discussion of the politics of the Jacobean Theatre, see the present
author's "the Powerless Theater," forthcoming, in ELR.

13. A. P. Riemer, A Reading of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (Sydney: Sydney
University Press, 1968), p. 39.

14. See Margaret Lamb, A/i/o/jy and Cleopatra on the English Stage (Rutherford: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1980), p. 164; and Davies, "Jacobean Antony and
Cleopatra," p. 123-4.

15. Bullough, Sources of Shakespeare, 5:216-17; Helen Morris, "Queen Elizabeth I
'Shadowed' in Cleopatra," HLQ 32 (1968-69), 271-8, Kenneth Muir, "Elizabeth I,
Jodelle, and Cleopatra," Renaissance Drama, ns 2 (1969), 197-206; and Keith
Rinehart, "Shakespeare's Cleopatra and England's Elizabeth," SQ, 23 (1972), 81-6.

16. Barton, "Caroline Nostalgia," p. 712.

17. Quoted in Robert Ashton, éd., James I by his Contemporaries: An Account of his
Career and Character as Seen by Some of his Contemporaries (London: Hutchinson,
1969), p. 77.

18. Samuel Daniel, Cleopatra, in The Complete Works in Verse and Prose, ed. Alexander
B. Grosart, 5 vols. (rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 3:5.

19. Quoted in Bullough, 5:217.

20. Those who have argued that the 1607 Cleopatra was influenced by Antony and
Cleopatra include J. Leeds Barroll, "The Chronology of Shakespeare's Jacobean Plays
and the Dating of Antony and Cleopatra," in Essays on Shakespeare ed. Gordon Ross

Renaissance et Réforme / 19

Smith (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1965), pp. 138-45; and
Lamh, Antony on the Stage, pp. 180-5. Those who disagree include Ernest Schanzer,
"Daniel's Revision of his Cleopatra," Res, ns 8 no 32 (1957), 375-81; and Bullough,
5:231-2.

21. See note 7; the present author's argument was presented in a paper, "Egyptian Past,
Roman Future: The Jacobean Artro/j>' and Cleopatra," at the meeting of the Shakespeare
Association of America, April 1986.

22. See Davies, 125, 149^4.

23. For a good account of this pageant, see Parry, Golden Age, pp. 1-21.

24. Ben Jonson, ed. CIH. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, II vols. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1925-52), 7:105.

25. Ben Jonson, 7:107-109.

26. Quoted in Ashton, p. 10.

27. Morris, 276-7.

28. See Spenser, Works, p. 407.

29. Quoted in Ashton, p. 10

30. See Jankowski "Female Body Politic"; see also Louis Adrian Montrose, "'Shaping
Fantasies' : Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture," Representations,
1 (1983), 61-94. For a brilliant discussion of Shakespeare's figuration of the Queen in
1 Henry VI, see Leah S. Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its
Discontents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 51-92.

31. Quoted in Ashton, p. 10. Note that Antony's fondest desire in his dotage upon Cleopatra
is to "wander through the streets and note / The qualities of people" (I. i. 54-5), and it
is precisely this princely enthusiasm for the people that draws Octavius' most nauseated
criticism: "Let's grant it is not / Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy, / And keep
the turn of tippling with a slave, / To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet / With
knaves that smell of sweat" (I. iv. 17-21).

32. See Goldberg, Politics of Literature, pp. 30-2.

33. For a discussion of the implied Christian ethos in the play, see Andrew Fichter,
"'Antony and Cleopatra': 'The Time of Universal Peace,'" Shakespeare Survey, 33
(1980), 99-111.

34. For a good discussion of the effects of the myth of Elizabeth upon James's relations
with the English, see R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist
Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1987), pp. 15-37.

35. Caesar's bathetic shift from a noble eulogistic tone highlights the degraded sense of
the word "business." A few examples of the degradation of this word include the
following: Winter's Tale, I. ii. 227-8 (where the word has not uncommon sexual con-
notation); "On Don Surly" (Ben Jonson, 8:35,11.7-8); "The Praises of the Country Life"
(Jonson, 8:289,11.1-2); and "Breake of Day" (Donne, Poetical Works, p. 22, 11.13,
16-17). The choice of the word "business" constitutes a weak and self-betraying
moment in Caesar's attempts to appropriate the heroic language which belongs to the
past generation.

20 / Renaissance and Reformation

36. See Jones, "Introduction," Antony and Cleopatra, p. 46, for the suggestion that
Shakespeare's style is reminiscent of Horace. For a discussion of Shakespeare's
"transvaluation" of the Augustan ethos, see Barbara J. Bono, Literary Transvaluation:
From Virgillian Epic to Shakespearean Tragicomedy (Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1984), esp. pp. 140ff.

37. See William Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1963); and Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England's Eliza (rpt. London: Frank Cass,
1966), esp. 3-95.

38. See Goldberg, Politics of Literature, p. 33.

39. BenJonson, 8:245, IL 60-61.

40. The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), p.
72, 1. 19.

41. Cf., for example, Horace, "Ode XXXVII," in The Odes and Epodes, trans. CE. Bennett
(rev. London: Heinemann, 1968), p. 98, esp. II. 104; and Vugû, Aeneid, bk. I, II. 1-7,
in Virgil, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, 2 vols. (rev. London: Heinemann, 1974), 1:240.

42. Ethel Seaton, ^'Antony and Cleopatra and the Book of Revelation," RES, 22 (1946),

219-24.

43. See Fichter, "Time of Universal Peace," pp. 99-111; and Seaton, esp. p. 224.

44. See Revelations, 8.10, in The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition, ed. Lloyd
E. Berry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969); cited by Seaton, pp. 219-20.

45. Revelations, 10. 1-6; cited by Seaton, pp. 220-1.

46. Revelations, 21. 1-2.

47. See Revelations, 17. 1-2; cited by Seaton, p. 223.

48. See Franklin M. Dickey, Not Wisely But Too Well: Shakespeare' s Love Tragedies (San
Marino: Huntington Library Publications, 1966), pp. 146-8.

49. See The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton (London: Longman, 1977), gloss on 111.1.59.

Marguerite Reads Giovanni: Gender and
Narration in the Heptaméron and the
Decameron

|| ELIZABETH C. WRIGHT

X he theory of poetic "imitation" in sixteenth-century France stressed the
assimilation of foreign words into French literature, using metaphors of
natural processes. Joachim Du Bellay, for example, in his Deffence et
Illustration de la Langue Françoyse (1549), called for French writers to
"digest" Greek and Latin works, transforming them into their own "blood
and nourishment," as Latin writers had done with Greek authors (I.vii); and
Ronsard, borrowing from Horace, compared the process to that of a bee
making honey from the nectar of various flowers,^

By contrast. Marguerite de Navarre, in the "Prologue" to her Heptaméron,
while referring to a recent French translation of Boccaccio's Decameron as
her source and inspiration, took pains to emphasize the difference between
her work and his, to distinguish it from the previous one.

Boccaccio's tales are first described by Parlamente as the object of ex-
travagant praise at the French court:

[J]e croy qu'il n'y a nulle de vous qui n'ait leu les cent Nouvelles de Bocace,
nouvellement traduictes d'ytalien en françois, que le roy François, premier
de son nom, monseigneur le Daulphin, madame la Daulphine, madame
Marguerite, font tant de cas, que si Bocace, du lieu où il estoit, les eut peu
oyr, il debvoit resusciter à la louange de telles personnes.^

However, when Parlamente evokes the French court's decision to imitate
the tales, they establish their difference from Boccaccio's work through a
series of negatives:

se délibérèrent d'en faire autant, sinon en une chose différente de Bocace:
c'est de n'escripre nulle nouvelle qui ne soit veritable histoire. Et prosmirent
les dictes dames et monseigneur le Daulphin avecq d'en faire chascun dix et

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 1 (1991) 21

22 / Renaissance and Reformation

d'assembler jusques à dix personnes qu'ilz pensoient plus dignes de
racompter quelque chose, sauf ceulx qui avoient estudié et estoient gens de
lettres; car monseigneur le Daulphin ne voulloit que leur art y fut meslé, et
aussy de paour que la beaulté de la rethoricque feit tort en quelque partye à
la vérité de l'histoire (9; emphasis added).

Marguerite's protagonists adopt this project of the French court as their
own, and the proposal to tell only "true" stories becomes a principle guiding
their narrations. Boccsiccio'' s Decameron is thus presented as both model and
anti-model for the tales of the Heptaméron; a work to emulate, but one that
by implication is false and deceptive.

The opposition between "truth" and "rhetoric" is of course a rhetorical
strategy in itself, and is frequently repeated as a theme in the discourse of the
work. In addition, Marguerite's alteration of the Decameron'^ narrative
structures — occulting the first-level narrator and adding extensive debates
following the stories — creates a tension between "objective" and "subjective"
narration on a formal level. Some critics have emphasized Marguerite's
spiritual or didactic purpose in these transformations-^, while others have
analyzed the complexity of her form as a mark of modern narrative."* The role
of gender in shaping this relationship, however, has not been fully explored
in the critical literature, neither as it informed the cultural context in which
the two writers worked, nor as they inscribed it in their narratives.^

In analyzing Marguerite's stance in relation to Boccaccio's tales, it is
important to note that the European novella genre was practiced almost ex-
clusively by male authors. Before Marguerite's tales, only one other work of this
type was presented as authored by a woman, the Comptes amoureux attributed
to "Jeanne Flore," published in Lyon before 1540, and Claude Longeon has
presented evidence that this pseudonym may have covered the identity of a male
author, Etienne Dolet.^ It is perhaps not accidental that Marguerite did not attempt
to publish her own tales during her lifetime, nor that they were attributed to an
anonymous male author in their first printed edition.^

Indeed, Vives' influential treatise on "The Instruction of a Christian
Woman" specifically forbade women even to read "Boccaccio's tales and all
like his".^ In his opinion, books on love written in the vernacular were fit only
for "idle folk".^ Marguerite's sponsorship of a new French translation of the
Decameron certainly went counter to this injunction, and in his prefatory
epistle dedicating the work to her, Emilio Ferretti insisted on the high moral
value of the work as well as its art, directly addressing the condemnation of
it as unfit for "chaste and honest minds". ^^

Renaissance et Réforme / 23

Since Ferretti's was in fact the prevailing humanist view of the work in
Marguerite's time, her interest in the Decameron may have been supported
by it. An additional prohibition, however, might have dissuaded Marguerite
from daring to imitate Boccaccio's "art," for the study and practice of
"rhetoric" was also forbidden to women by many male humanist educators. ^^
In this context. Marguerite's presentation of her work as the "truthful"
narrations of a mixed-sex group of aristocrats, untrained in "rhetoric," appears
to echo the gender prohibitions of her time.

Boccaccio's work, however, presented female narratorial voices at the second
narrative level, and addressed the tales to a public of women, features also found
in some of his Italian followers, in contrast to the French practitioners of this
genre, whose narrators were often men addressing an all-male public.

The representation of women's voices in the Decameron text thus may have
encouraged Marguerite to add her own, but when she adopted Boccaccio's
text as a model, she also set up an impersonal first-level narrator, who rarely
intervenes with any direct commentary. ^^ By contrast, the Decameron's
first-level narrator is a male authorial persona, whose playful discourse on
gender differentiation serves to motivate the storytelling and continues to
inform his interventions throughout the work.

The narrator of Boccaccio's "Proemio" expresses his desire to reciprocate for
the help offered him by male friends when he was suffering from a buming
passion conceived for a lady of superior rank. In a sudden switch, however, he
states that it is "ladies" ("donne") who are more in need of this sort of comfort
than men, due to their weaker and more delicate nature, and the social restrictions
imposed upon them. The stories will thus be his way of expressing compassion
for these differences, and of bringing solace to the less fortunate sex.^-^

By now placing all "ladies who love" ("quelle che amano") in an inferior
position to all men, and giving himself the power to provide "support and
diversion" ("soccorso e rifugio") for them through his tales, the narrator reverses
the gender configuration of his initial story, where his lady was in a superior
position, and he was in need of comfort. Thus while he claims to be telling the
stories in order to make up for "Fortune"' s lack of kindness to women, they are
also a way for him to compensate for his own lack of fortune in love. Narration
becomes a kind of surrogate for love-making between himself and his previously
inaccessible lady; "Love," now that he is no longer imprisoned by it, has granted
him "il potere attendere a' loro piaceri" (Proemio 13-15).^'^

In the "Introduction to the Fourth Day," the narrator/author continues his
theme of narrating for the ladies, but here they are once again in a superior
position to him and to all men. He uses a fable of a boy whose father tried to

24 / Renaissance and Reformation

hide him from the temptations of women to prove that all males are irresistibly
attracted to them, and he further claims that ladies have provided the source
of inspiration for his poetry rather than the Muses (IV, Introduzione 12-36).

In the "Author's Conclusion," however, he returns once again to an attitude
of condescension towards women, justifying imperfections in the style of his
stories by the fact that he had to transcribe them as they were told by the lady
narrators, and also by the need to address an audience of "semplice giovinette"
who had not "sharpened their wits" ("gl'ingegni assottigliati") by studying in
Athens or Bologna or Paris (Conclusione dell'Autore 16-21; Musa and
Bondanella 687-88).

The narrative motivation for the tales of the Decameron is thus directly
linked to gender differentiation. The male narrator justifies addressing his
stories to "ladies" based on their difference from men. They need consolation
from him since they are more fragile and more oppressed by society than men,
yet they are also irresistibly attractive to him and inspire his work.

By contrast, in the Heptaméron's "Prologue," the first-level narrator does
not identify itself by gender and has no story of its own to tell; the only direct
interventions by this voice in the "Prologue" deal with narrative technique (1;
10). In addition, this narrator gives over to the second-level narrators the task
not only of telling the stories but also of writing them down, for Parlamente
suggests that they present them as a gift to the French court upon their return
(10). Further, the initial motivation for the storytelling is not attributed to this
narrator's desire, as in the Decameron, but rather to a project formulated by
members of the French court, as described above.

While the first-person narrator does not then claim to be the initiator of the
work, the "madame Marguerite" named as one of the court members who
formulated the project most likely designates the author herself, perhaps
constituting a residue from earlier manuscripts where a single female narrator
recounted the tale (Fontanella 375-78). Since the erasure of a personal
narrative voice coincided with the organization of the tales into a format
echoing the Decameron's, Marguerite's move away from it reads both as a
critique of Boccaccio's male authorial persona's playful ideology of gender
differentiation, and as a strategy to circumvent the gender prohibitions of her
time — against women's reading of Boccaccio's work and practicing the art
of rhetoric. ^^

Marguerite further transforms the gender of the Decameron's narrative
voice in her depiction of the second-level narrators, the storytellers. Where
Boccaccio again plays with gender reversals on this narrative level. Mar-

Renaissance et Réforme / 25

guérite once more subverts his emphasis on gender differentiation, this time
by establishing equality between her male and female narrators.

In the "Introduction to the First Day," Boccaccio's authorial persona
presents the second-level narrators through a tale set in the time of the 1348
Plague in Florence. He emphasizes that during this catastrophe there was a
general abandonment of traditional customs, including those regulating dif-
ferences in men's and women's behaviour, and the breakdown of gender
differentiation is presented as a symptom of social disorder. Due to the
scarcity of servants, for example, ladies who were ill allowed themselves to
be tended by male servants (I, Introduzione 29), and women forgot their
traditional role in mourning rites, instead engaging in witticisms and laughter
in situations of bereavement (I, Introduzione 32-34). Further, when the
narrator introduces the seven ladies who have gathered in the church of Santa
Maria Novella, he gives them fictional names because the present "laws
relating to pleasure" are somewhat "stricter" than at the time of the Plague
("essendo oggi alquanto ristrette le leggi al piacere"), and the ladies might be
shamed in the future for having narrated and listened to the tales (I, Intro-
duzione 50; Musa and Bondanella 12).

The narrator thus emphasizes that any transgressions in gender boundaries
that occur in the story of the narrators is a temporary phenomenon, taking place
within a general breakdown of social order, and different from both past and
present moral codes. Indeed, the initial daring suggestion by Pampinea, the oldest
of the group, that the seven ladies leave Florence with only their servants, is
tempered by the counsel of Filoména and Elissa, who remind the group that they
are "women" ("femine"), and thereby unable to act wisely without guidance from
men (I, Introduzione 74-76). Nevertheless, the seven ladies outnumber the three
young gentlemen they invite to join them, and Pampinea' s leadership role is
evident, for it is she who invites the men, and who suggests once they are in the
countryside that they should bring order to their enterprise by choosing a leader
for each day. She is unanimously elected as the first Queen, and it is she who
proposes the activity of storytelling as a pleasant diversion for the hotter part of
the afternoon (I, Introduzione 87, 94-102, 109-12).

These ladies of action might seem then to represent compensatory figures
to the confined ladies depicted in the "Proemio," who form the fictional
audience for the narrator.*^ The emphasis on the plague setting, however,
points up the loosening of gender roles depicted here as essentially a "car-
nivalesque" phenomenon without lasting consequences. Their liberated be-
havior is not a lesson to be learned nor a model to follow, ^^ but a symptom
of social disintegration.

26 / Renaissance and Reformation

Marguerite's "Prologue" also tells the story of a catastrophe that leads to
the narrators' gathering together in a setting where they will tell stories, but
the assembled group of ten contains an equal number of men and women
whose behavior is not differentiated by gender. Having improved their heahh
through their stay at a Pyrénées spa, they are dispersed by a flood just as they
were planning to return home, and the adventures that lead to their eventual
reunion in a monastery demonstrate that women and men show equal courage
and strength in the face of adversity.

Oisille, the oldest female character, walks through difficult mountain paths in
order to arrive at a monastery, and Nomerfide and Ennasuite are able to escape
from a bear by running swiftly down the mountain. While the other two female
characters, Parlamente and Longarine, are saved from an attack by bandits by
their two gentlemen suitors, Dagoucin and Saffredent, the linking of their victory
with their sex is contradicted by the fact that the ladies' husbands are also victims
of the attack, one of them dying from it. In addition, the group of bandits includes
both the host and hostess of the lodging, and the gentlemen do not hesitate to kill
her along with her husband. The narrator thus seems to be going out of its way
not to link either virtue or strength to sex in this scene. Indeed, the last two male
characters to be introduced also have to be saved by others. Geburon, pursued
by bandits, is rescued by the three previously introduced gentlemen, and Simon-
tault, who narrowly escapes drowning while attempting to cross the swollen river,
is saved by a shepherd and guided by a monk to the monastery where he rejoins
the other (2-6).

Male and female characters in this preliminary story are thus portrayed as
equal in courage, physical strength and moral virtue, and the reunion of the
aristocratic protagonists is arranged so as to bring together equal numbers of
each sex: five and five, in contrast to Boccaccio's seven female and three male
storytellers. The story, rather than representing a scene of social disorder and
gender reversals as did Boccaccio's Plague, echoes instead the Biblical tale
of the flood, where one creature of each sex was saved to begin life anew.^^

Further, in the discussions concerning how to pass the time during their
stay in the monastery, one sex is not given preeminence over the other. Oisille
is first consulted as to how the group might avoid "ennuy" during its stay, but
after she states that reading from the Bible is the only remedy she has found
for her troubles, it is one of the male characters, Hircan, who intervenes with
the suggestion that the group listen to Oisille' s readings in the morning but
also find a more physical pastime for the afternoon. Although he notes that
he is "parlant pour la part des hommes," he has included women in his
declaration of the group's need for physical exercise (8), in a passage which

Renaissance et Réforme / 27

both echoes and modifies the Decameron narrator's vision in the "Proemio"
of the restrictions placed on women's activities J ^

Oisille defers to Hircan and asks him to name his choice of activity. He
alludes to the idea that making love to his wife Parlamente would be his first
choice, to which she responds by saying that they should eliminate activities
in which only two people can participate and instead choose one suitable for
a group (8-9). When he directs her to guide them, she suggests they complete
the work based on Boccaccio's one hundred tales previously begun by
members of the French court. The rest of the group happily accept this plan,
and Simontault begins the first story (9-10). Thus while Oisille is singled out
from the others to lead the morning activity of Bible reading, the choice of
storytelling is arrived at through a dialogue between both sexes, and the
direction of the groups passes alternately from female to male characters.^^

By her portrayal of genuine equality between men and women in the
narrative of her storytellers. Marguerite thus radicalizes Boccaccio's loosen-
ing of gender roles and reversals of sexual hierarchy on the second narrative
level. This Utopian vision is tempered, however, by her representation of
gender roles in the tales themselves, where the storytellers have sworn to "tell
the truth." Here, where Boccaccio's stories again emphasize comic and
temporary reversals of gender imbalance. Marguerite's depict with equal
force both individuals' attempts to assert sexual equality and the social
obstacles they encounter.

The Decameron tales emphasize individual acts of liberation, temporary
reversals of inequality whether based on gender or rank, at the same time that
the status quo of law and custom is reaffirmed.^^ While many of the stories
depict intelligent and resourceful female characters who successfully chal-
lenge the social restrictions imposed upon them, Radcliff-Umstead points out
that males "retain an institutional dominance" in the work.'^^ Women triumph
in specific situations through their wit and/or trickery,^^ but they generally
do not challenge the laws and customs themselves which determined
women's subordination to their parents or husbands. As Marcel Janssens
points out, "the underlying myth of most tales concerns plainly the subser-
vient position of woman, who is bound to submit to Nature, custom and law,
but who succeeds in eluding all sorts of restraints, provided she is beautiful,
witty and tricky".^'*

Even in the tale of Madonna Filippa (VI.7), for instance, which would seem
to be an exception to the above generalizations in that she openly challenges
the law, her success is attributed to her "ready and amusing reply" rather than
to a principle of equality .^^

28 / Renaissance and Reformation

Indeed, the scene is already set for Filippa' s exoneration before the questioning
begins. The statute she defies, which mandated death for any woman caught in
the act of adultery by her husband, is already criticized as harsh and reprehensible
("non men biasimevole che aspro") by the storyteller (VI.7, 4). When Filippa's
husband has her summoned to court under this decree, the narrator emphasizes
the courage she manifests by her decision to appear and confess to the charges,
risking death, despite the advice of many friends and relatives (9- 1 0). Her beauty,
breeding and courage also immediately gain her the sympathy of the podestà,
who hopes not to be forced to condemn her to death (11).

While boldly acknowledging the truth of the charges, Filippa challenges
the statute on two grounds. First, that while it applies only to women, no
women consented or were even consulted about its passage; and second, that
it unjustly restricts women, "le quali molto meglio che gli uomini potrebbero
a molti sodisfare" (14).

She then has the podestà ask her husband if she has ever refused him
gratification, to which he replies that "senza alcun dubbio la donna ad ogni
sua richiesta gli aveva di se ogni suo piacere conceduto" (16). Her next
question to the official, justifying her affair as a way to avoid wasting what
was "left over," provokes great mirth from the citizens of Prato gathered to
hear the case: "io che doveva fare o debbo di quel che gli avanza? debbolo io
gittare ai cani? non è egli molto meglio servirne un gentile uomo che più che
se m'ama, che lasciarlo perdere o guastare?" (17).

Following her witty remark, the crowd unanimously declares her both
"right" and "well-spoken," and then proceeds to modify the statute to punish
only women whose infidelity is venal:

udendo cosi piacevol riposta, subitamente, dopo moite risa, quasi ad una
voce tutti gridarono la donna aver ragione e dir bene: e prima che di quivi si
partissono, a cic confortandogli il podestà, modificarono il crudele statuto e
lasciarono che egli s'intendesse solamente per quelle donne le quali per
denari a' lor mariti facesser fallo (18).

Her husband, embarrassed and ashamed ("confuso"), leaves the scene of
judgment, and Madonna Filippa, having won her freedom, returns trium-
phantly ("gloriosa") to her house.

Thus Madonna Filippa successfully challenges the law, but she wins not
so much by her argument about the need for women to take an equal part in
making the law, as by her own personal merit, and her witticism demonstrat-
ing women's superiority to men in the area of sexual drive. The principle is
again one of reversal of gender hierarchy rather than abolition of it. The

Renaissance et Réforme / 29

modification of the statute also does not uphold the principle of equality
between women and men, for it still applies only to women, and punishes
only women for the crime of aduhery.

Marguerite's tales also depict many female characters who defy the customary
roles imposed on their gender, but while their eloquence is often admirable, their
actions are generally thwarted by those in power. This only serves to emphasize,
however, the arbitrary nature of gender definition, and the debate which follow
the stories further to develop this point, by presenting opposing views on gender
distinctions which are never resolved. Thus the Heptaméron tales depict the
enforcement of gender roles by those in power, and the impossibility for women
to successfully negotiate more just treatment for themselves, at the same time
that they point out in a more radical and absolute manner than the Decameron's
the arbitrariness of gender distinctions themselves.

The Fifteenth Tale, for example, can be compared and contrasted to that of
Madonna Filippa, for its female protagonist pleads eloquently for her right to
love a man other than her husband. The tale is designed to portray women as
equal to men, for Longarine introduces it as one that will show that there are
women "ayans aussi bon cueur, aussy bon esprit, et aussy plaines de finesses
que les hommes" (116).

A rich young woman married to a gentleman at the Court of Francis I is
completely ignored for three years by her husband, who spends all his time
with a woman who is also the King's lover. The young woman begins to
develop a friendship with a prince of the Court, but he is reprimanded by the
King, and told to cease pursuing her, which he does. When her husband learns
of this, he begins to notice his wife and attempts to get back in her good graces,
but she is now determined to take her revenge, "désirant luy rendre partye des
ennuictz qu'elle avoit euz pour estre de luy peu aymé" (119). She finds
friendship with another gentleman, and her husband promises to kill her if he
learns of her speaking to the man she loves either in public or private; when
he discovers that she has asked her lover to come to her chamber at night, he
summons her immediately to his room.

On this occasion she, like Madonna Filippa, gives an eloquent speech in
her own defense, confessing that she has sought out this man and loves him
(although her pleasure has been limited to talk and kisses). She condemns her
husband's behavior while excusing her own, though her reasoning is moral,
rather than an argument for women's sexual superiority as in Filippa's tale.
She affirms her ultimate equal status with her husband, not in human law but
before God: "Et combien que la loy des hommes donne grand deshonneur

30 / Renaissance and Reformation

aux femmes qui ayment autres que leurs mariz, si est-ce que la loy de Dieu
n'exempte poinct les mariz qui ayment autres que leurs femmes" (123).

Since her husband is this woman's only earthly judge, however, she is not
vindicated, for he is "tant surpris d'estonnement" by her courage and eloquence
that he can only reply by reiterating the double standard for men's and women's
honor (124), Totally isolated at the Court, without any community support of the
type Filippa enjoyed (the King remains loyal to her husband), this young woman
continues to be persecuted by her husband in her attempts to find love.

Where Boccaccio's story of Filippa makes us laugh by showing how a
superior woman can successfully flaunt an unjust law imposed on her by men.
Marguerite's tale demonstrates that a woman can desire love and sexual
fulfillment on an equal basis with a man and, despite her cleverness and
beauty, still be thwarted in her attempts to break out of the submissive role
assigned her. Madonna Filippa is able to resolve her situation by confronting
the law and reversing the balance of power, but the only forum where it is
suggested that the woman of the Fifteenth Tale will win the equality she
desires is in God's judgment. The tale is much more troubling than funny, for
it portrays a rigid enforcement of gender differences at the same time that it
proves them to be completely arbitrary.

Further, the discussion which follows emphasizes the woman's transgres-
sion of her gender. Longarine, the narrator of the tale, seconded by Parla-
mente, condemns the woman's behavior as unworthy of "une femme de bien,"
who must remain loyal to her husband no matter how he treats her. SimontauU
then actually challenges the woman's gender characterization by saying that
she had abandoned a woman's role by taking revenge on her husband rather
than maintaining her honor: "celle dont le compte est faict a oblyé, pour ung
temps, qu'elle estoit femme; car ung homme n'en eust sceu faire plus belle
vengeance" (128).

This discussion of a different moral standard for men's and women's
behavior is an elaboration of the husband's comment in the tale, and in the
debates following the Twenty-First, Twenty-Sixth, and Forty-Third Tales, the
narrators engage in similar discussions where the difference between men's
and women's "honor" is defined in a like manner; i.e., that men's honor
consists in seeking pleasure, while women must restrain their sensual nature
and remain chaste. A remark similar to Simontault's is made by Parlamente
in the discussion of the Forty-Third Tale:

[C]elles qui sont vaincues en plaisir ne se doibvent plus nommer femmes,
mais hommes, desquelz la fureur et la concupiscence augmente leur honneur;

Renaissance et Réforme / 31

car ung homme qui se venge de son ennemy et le tue pour ung desmentir en
est estimé plus gentil compagnon; aussy est-il quant il en ayme une douzaine
avecq sa femme. Mais l'honneur des femmes a autre fondement: c'est
doulceur, patience et chasteté (301).

These statements also indicate that women's behavior often does not
correspond to the standards enunciated by their code of honor, however, and
this code is also characterized in the debate as a cover-up, or mask, for
women's "true nature." Further on in the discussion following the Fifteenth
Tale, Saffredent contradicts Simontault by saying that to be a woman does
not consist in the trappings of honor but rather in the sexual desire hidden by
women's dress, a point also made by Hircan after the Twenty-First and
Twenty-Sixth Tales: "Toutesfois, dit Saffredent, si estes-vous toutes femmes,
et quelques beaulx et honnestes accoustremens que vous portiez, qui vous
chercheroit bien avant soubz la robbe vous trouveroit femmes" (128).

In this discussion, as in the others, these two opposing definitions of women
are allowed to co-exist without resolution. On the one hand, they are said to
lose their womanhood if they fail to adhere to the standards for women's
"honor"; on the other hand, they are seen as essentially sensual in nature.
Closure occurs only when one of the narrators demands that they go on to the
next story to avoid spending all day in argument. Thus while the discussions
which follow the tales in fact highlight the systems of gender differentiation
posited by society, the clash of contrasting definitions of gender actually
negates the absolutism of the viewpoints presented, and gender is revealed as
an arbitrary social construction.^^

The Fifteenth Tale is typical of the Heptaméron in its presentation of the
conflict between women's behavior and the code of honor which demands
chastity from them. Women are shown to have the same desires as men, but
must obey a different standard which forbids them to act on these desires, and
the debates following the tales further emphasize this point by presenting
conflicting definitions of what it is to be a "woman." Women who realize
their illicit sexual desires in the Heptaméron tales do so most often not by
open challenge but by secrecy and silence, and are still condemned in the
narrators' judgment (Tales 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 30, 43, 48), while those who openly
challenge the restrictions on their sexual freedom are either dishonored or
punished when their actions become known, whether or not they have
justification (Tales 21, 36, 40, 53, 60, 6\)?'^

In the Decameron, by contrast, this dilemma is generally resolved through
comic reversals of gender roles, as in Filippa's story, and only exceptionally

32 / Renaissance and Reformation

treated tragically, as in Ghismonda's story (IV.l) and other tales of the Fourth
Day. Boccaccio's work thus shows compassion for women's plight, but
generally cuts through their conflicts with an ease and freedom available only
to men in his society.

The Heptaméron instead leaves the reader troubled by the conflicts ex-
perienced by women in Marguerite's society. While equality between the
second-level male and female storytellers is established in the frame story, the
erasure of a personalized authorial persona at the first level of narration, as well
as the unresolved dilemmas posed in the tales and their commentary, serve to
point up the difficulties women encountered in attempting to assert their desires.

The strategies Marguerite de Navarre used in rewriting the gender of
Boccaccio's narrative voice point to the restrictions on women's speech in
her society, and both her submission to and portrayal of these restrictions
convey certain painful "truths" about women's situation which were glossed
over by the "rhetorical beauty" of the Decameron. Her rewriting of the gender
of narration and the narration of gender in the Decameron depicts a very
modern viewpoint on equality between the sexes, challenging the notion of
gender itself by portraying it as an arbitrary social construction, at the same
time that it describes the thwarting of this potential equality in the social
reality of her time. She both uses the Decameron as nourishment for her work
and also "remains elsewhere," revising and subverting it to portray her own
personal vision. ^^

San Francisco State University

Notes

1. Cited in Henri Weber, La création poétique au XVle siècle en France, de Maurice
Scève à Agrippa d'Aubigné, 2 vols. (Paris: Nizet, 1955), 1:123. For a full discussion
of Renaissance imitatio, see Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and
Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).

2. Marguerite de Navarre, L'Heptaméron, éd. Michel François (Paris: Gamier, 1967) 9.
All subsequent references will be to this edition.

3. Luigi Monga, in "Misogyny or Feminism? A Topos in the Early Renaissance Novella,"
Fifteenth Century Studies, 10 (1984) 121-33, concluded that marguerite "adds a
spiritual stress" to Boccaccio's "healthy, but too naturalistic viewpoint" (130), and
Donald Stone also pointed out Marguerite's greater emphasis on educational values,
in From Tales to Truths: Essays on French Fiction in the Sixteenth Century, Analecta
Romanica Heft 34 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1973), 21-28. Yves Délègue, in
"L 'Heptaméron est-il un anti-Boccace?" Travaux de linguistique et de littérature de
l'Université de Strasbourg, IV. 2 (1966) 23-37, while viewing Marguerite's work as
"exempt de tout didactisme," found in it an expression of disquieting conflicts specifi-
cally opposed to Boccaccio's theme of consolation (37).

Renaissance et Réforme / 33

4. Volker Kapp (Trier), in "Der Wandel einer literarischen Form: Boccaccios Decameron
und Marguerite de Navarres Heptaméroiu ^'Poetica, 14 (1982), 24-44, has viewed the
greater complexity and openness of Marguerite's form as an adaptation to the more
complex demands of her courtly environment and an historically later level of con-
sciousness (43-44). Philippe de Lajarte, "Le Prologue de VHeptaméron et le processus
de production de l'oeuvre," in Lionello Sozzi, éd., La nouvelle française à la Renais-
sance (Genève: Slatkine, 1981) 397-423, and John D. Lyons, "The Heptaméron and
the Foundation of Critical Narrative," Yale French Studies, 70 (1986), 150-63, have
characterized Marguerite's break with Boccaccio as the beginning of modern, self-con-
scious "critical" narrative; and Colette H. Winn, "An Instance of Narrative Seduction:
The^ Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre," 5>'mpo5/M/n, 39.3 (1985), 217-226, relates
it to both sixteenth-century and modern narrative strategies.

5. Deborah N. Losse's article, "Authorial and Narrative Voice in the Heptaméron,'''
Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, 1 1 .3 (1987), 223-42, treats the
impact of gender on narrative voice in the novella genre, and its inscription on the
various levels of Marguerite's work, but does not fully develop the contrast to the
Decameron. Monga's article demonstrates the way in which Marguerite develops a
woman's viewpoint more fully by alternating "misogynistic" and "feminist" statements
in her narrations and discussions, but does not fully elaborate the comparison with the
Decameron in terms of the various levels of narrative voice in the two works. Emile
Telle's study, in L'Oeuvre de Marguerite d'Angoulême, Reine de Navarre, et la
querelle des femmes (1937; Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), is limited by his insisting
that Parlamente is Marguerite's spokesperson in the work, thus narrowing the
"authorial voice" to this one character's viewpoint.

6. "Du Nouveau sur les Comptes amoureux de Madame Jeanne Flore," Bibliothèque
d'humanisme et renaissance, 44.3 (1982), 605-13.

7. Histoire des Amans fortunez, éd. Pierre Boaistuau (Paris: G. Gilles, 1558). Boaistuau
does not name the author of the tales, but refers to "him" with masculine pronouns
("Introduction", iii).

8. De institutione feminae Christianae, cited in Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the
Renaissance (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1956), 73. First published in
Latin in 1523, Vives' treatise, dedicated to Queen Catherine of England, and written
as a guide for the education of Princess Mary, appeared in French translation in 1542,
1543 and four times in 1545 (Kelso 421, #864).

9. Cited by Gloria Kaufman, "Juan Luis Vives on the Education of Women," Signs, 3.4
(1978), 894; this article analyzes in more detail the ambivalence of Vives' "feminism."

10. Anthoine Le Maçon, trans.. Le Decameron de Messire Jehan Bocace, Florentin (Paris:
Roffet, 1545), iii v. This is the new translation invoked in the Heptaméron "Prologue"
previously cited. Glyn P. Norton, in "The Emilio Ferretti letter: a critical preface for
Marguerite de Navarre," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 4.2 (1974),
287-300, has analyzed the importance of this epistle for the composition of
Marguerite's "Prologue," but without reference to Vives' treatise. See also nl4 below.

11. Lionardo Bruni, for example, in De studis letteris (c. 1405), stated that "rhetoric in all
its forms" lay "absolutely outside the province of woman," cited by Ann Rosalind
Jones, "Surprising Fame: Renaissance Gender Ideologies and Women's Lyric," in The
Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986),

34 / Renaissance and Reformation

75. The first part of the article (74-81) gives a full presentation of the proscriptions on
women's rhetoric by humanist educators.

12. In certain manuscript versions of Marguerite's tales, considered to be an earlier stage
of the work, a single female narrator recounts the stories, with no "Prologue," nor
division into days, nor reference to Boccaccio as a model. For a history of the text, see
Lucia Fontanella, "Un codice sconosciuto delle 'Nouvelles" de Margherita de Navarra:
contributo alio studio della genesi della raccolta," 361-78 in Sozzi, and Marie-Paule
Hazera-Rihaoui's unpublished thesis, "Les premiers contes de Marguerite de Navarre
(édition commentée du manuscrit français 1 5 1 3 de la Bibliothèque Nationale)," 2 vols.,
diss., Lyon H, 1989, which is a detailed study of the single-narrator version.

13. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1965)
Proemio 1-12, and Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. Mark Musa and Peter
E. Bondanella (New York: Norton, 1982), 1-2. All subsequent references will be to
these editions, using division names and sentence numbers from Branca, and page
numbers from Musa and Bondanella, as above. Although Marguerite refers to Le
Macon's French translation in the "Prologue" as the source for her imitation, she
probably was familiar with the Italian version as well.

14. The role of the narrator/author as an intermediary for love is also figured before the
"Proemio" in the book's subtitle, "PRENCIPE GALEOTTO," referring to Lancelot's
friend who acted as intermediary for him with Guinevere, and specifically evoking a
passage in Book V of Dante's Inferno where Francesca identifies "Galeotto" as the
book and author responsible for the consummation of the love between herself and
Paolo (Branca Inl).

In commenting on this aspect of the work, recent twentieth-century critics have tended
to refute Francesco de Sanctis' naturalistic thesis, that the stories are "real panders to
pleasure and to love," in History of Italian Literature, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt,
1931), 1: 336. They instead interpret both the narrator's addressing the work to "ladies
in love" and the "Galeotto" subtitle as ironic stances on Boccaccio's part; for example,
Giuseppe Mazzotta, "The Decameron: The Marginality of Literature," University of
Toronto Quarterly, XLII.l (1972), 68-69; Robert Hollander, Boccaccio's Two Venuses
(New York, Columbia University Press, 1977), ch. 4 esp. 106-07; and Janet Levarie
Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta: The Narrator as Lover (Urbana, University of
Illinois Press, 1986), 202 esp. n78.

However, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Decameron interpreters seemed to regard
these aspects of the text in their more literal, scandalous sense, since they dismissed or
eliminated them in order to arrive at their interpretation of Boccaccio as a Christian
moralist. Emilio Ferretti, for example, in his dedication of Le Macon's 1545 translation
to Marguerite, did not mention that the book was addressed to an audience of women,
and refuted the title of Galeotto at the same time that he defended the work as proper
for "chaste and honest minds": "mi son forse piu maravigliato che doluto di quelli che
o, hanno dato titolo di principe Galeotto a questo sanctissimo libro, o, I'hanno stimato
indegno desser rappresentato a le caste, & honeste menti" (iii v).

In fact, both the subtitle and the "Proemio" were eliminated in the most commonly
reproduced French version of the Decameron before Le Macon's 1545 translation: Le
Decameron de Messire Jehan Bocace Florentin, trans. Laurent de Premierfait (Paris:
Vérard, 1485), reprinted eight times between 1485 and 1541. Le Maçon, however,

Renaissance et Réforme / 35

despite the Ferretti letter, did accurately translate the subtitle and the entire "Proemio,"
as did some manuscripts- of the Premierfait translation, such as BN mss. fr. 240 and
1122; the latter was in the library of Marguerite's grandfather Jean d'Orléans, comte
d'Angouiême. Marguerite thus had access to both a faithful translation of these aspects
of the work, and to their dismissal or elimination by the interpreters of her time.

15. Cautions about damage to a woman's honor through first-person narration of sexual
incidents is also the theme of both the Fourth and Sixty-Second Tales of the
Heptamérotu neither of which are found in the manuscript versions with a single female
narrator.

16. This is Shirley S. Allen's point of view in "The Griselda Tale and the Portrayal of
Women in the Decameron,^' Philological Quarterly, 56 (1977), 7.

17. Joy Hambuechen Potter, Five Frames for the Decameron: Communication and Social
Systems in the Cornice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 24.

18. Délègue (32 and n35), as well as Betty J. Davis, The Storytellers in Marguerite de
Navarre's Heptaméron, French Forum Monographs 9 (Lexington, KY: French Forum,
1978) 192-93; Judith D. Suther, "Marguerite of Navarre's Quiet Victory over
Misogyny," Explorations in Renaissance Culture 2 (1975) 45-54; and Claude-Gilbert
Dubois, "Fonds mythique et jeu des sens dans le 'Prologue' de V Heptaméron,'^ Etudes
seiziémistes offertes à V.-L Saulnier,cd. Robert Aulotte (Genève: Droz, 1980), 164n40,
have pointed out the equality Marguerite establishes between male and female
storytellers, but do not derive this from her depiction of their behavior in the narrative
events which serve to bring them together. Both Paula Sommers, "Marguerite de
Navarre's Heptaméron: The Case for the Cornice," French Review, 57.6 (1984), 787,
and Dubois 156-60, discuss the "Prologue"'s relationship to the Genesis flood, but
without relating this to the play of gender in its narrative.

19. This is pointed out by Délègue 31-32 and n35.

20. Lajarte has shown how Oisille's theoretical preeminence as the leader of the morning
Bible-reading activity is effectively subverted in the work by the substantially greater
space and importance given to profane discourse — the storytelling and debates — where
her words carry no more weight than those of the other narrators. I find his argument
more convincing than Paula Sommers', in "Feminine Authority in the Heptaméron: A
reading of Oysille," Modern Language Studies, 13.1 (1983), 52-59, who sees Oisille
as an "authoritative presence" in the work.

21. See Thomas M. Greene "Forms of Accommodation in the Decameron," Italica, 45.3
(1968), 297-313; Janet Levarie Smarr, "Symmetry and Balance in the Decameron,"
Mediaevalia, 2 (1976), 159-87; and Marga Cottino-Jones, Order from Chaos: Social
and Aesthetic Harmonies in Boccaccio's Decameron (Washington: University Press
of America, 1982).

22. "Boccaccio's Idle Ladies," in The Roles and Images of Women in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, ed. Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, University of Pittsburgh Publications on
the Middle Ages and Renaissance Studies at University of Pittsburgh, 1975), 76-79.

23. 1.5; II.9; III.3,.9; VI.4; VII. 1-9; IX. 1-2; and see Radcliff-Umstead, 78-97.

24. "The internal reception of the stories within the Decameron," Boccaccio in Europe:
Proceedings of the Boccaccio Conference, Louvain, December 1975, ed. Dr. Gilbert

36 / Renaissance and Reformation

Tournoy, Symbolae A.4 (Leuven/Louvain: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1977).
145.

25. The tale's summary states: "Madonna Filippa dal marito con un suo amante trovata,
chiamata in giudicio, con una pronta e piacevol risposta se libera et fa la statute
modificare."

26. Similar unresolved conflicting viewpoints exist in Marguerite's allegorical play, par-
ticularly in one of the last ones, "Comédie de Mont de Marsan" (1548), written not
long before her death. Robert D. Cottrell's study. The Grammar of Silence: A Reading
of Marguerite de Navarre's Poetry (Vs/ashington: Catholic University Press of America
Press, 1986), emphasizes her attempts to "sec through words" in order to perceive the
ultimate divine "Silence" (311-12); the debates in the Heptaméron also show that
human narrative codes can provide no absolute answer.

27. Colette H. Winn discusses this in "La Loi du non-parler dans VHeptaméron de
Marguerite de Navarre," (Kentucky) Romance Quarterly, 33.2 (1986), 157-68. By
contrast, two articles in Chimères 15.2 (1982), by Robert Bernard, "Feminist Rhetoric
for the Renaissance Woman in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron'', 73-89 and
Martha Perrigaud, "The Self-Made Cuckold: Marguerite de Navarre and Parole
féminine", 55-71, emphasize the ways in which female protagonists assert their rights
through rhetoric in the Heptaméron. While I agree that Marguerite has depicted female
characters in the tales who forcefully and convincingly express their desire, my
argument is that the tales and commentary show very clearly that this mastery of
"rhetoric" by women only increases the social obstacles and ostracism they face.

28. The reference is to Luce Irigaray's description of women's "mimesis" of male-authored
discourse in "Pouvoir du discours, subordination du féminin," Ce sexe qui n 'en est pas
un (Paris: Minuit, 1977), 74:

Jouer de la mimesis, c'est donc pour une femme, tenter de retrouver le lieu de son
exploitation par le discours, sans s'y laisser simplement réduire. C'est se resoumettre
... à des "idées", notamment d'elle, élaborées dans/par une logique masculine, mais
pour faire "apparaître", par un effet de répétition ludique, ce qui devait rester occulté:
le recouvrement d'une possible opération du féminin dans le langage. ... elles ne se
résorbent pas simplement dans cette fonction. Elles restent aussi ailleurs. ...

Guillaume Budé à son médecin: un inédit
sur sa maladie

GUYLAVOIE

''est, semble-t-il, dans le Catalogue^ de l'exposition sur Guillaume Budé
tenue à la Bibliothèque nationale en 1968 qu'est signalée pour la première
fois l'existence de la copie d'une lettre du célèbre humaniste à son médecin
et ami Guillaume Cop^. Cette lettre compte parmi les plus intéressantes de
l'humaniste français et il vaut la peine, après une description de la copie,
d'en faire une brève analyse avant d'en présenter la traduction.

La copie retrouvée figure dans l'exemplaire personnel de Budé de son De
Philologia publié en 1532. A la fin du volume, en dessous du privilège royal
imprimé sur les deux tiers de la dernière page, commence la lettre qui se poursuit
sur les trois pages blanches suivantes pour se terminer sur la garde. Après
quarante-cinq lignes en latin, entrecoupées de quelques mots grecs, Budé utilise
le grec jusqu'à une conclusion de vingt lignes oii grec et latin alternent à parts
égales. Attribuable à deux mains inconnues, dont l'une est plus soignée que
l'autre, la copie est parsemée de ratures — plus de deux cent cinquante — et retient
quelques fautes suggérant que les copistes n'ont pas bien compris le texte grec.
En outre, les lignes 16 et 17 de la demière page souffrent d'une lacune ou d'une
erreur de transcription qui les rend incompréhensibles. De la date de la copie, la
seule chose dont nous puissions être certains est qu'elle est postérieure à 1532,
année de la publication du De Philologia.

La lettre elle-même n 'est pas datée, mais on peut connaître approximativement
le moment oii elle a été écrite par le détail suivant que fournit Budé: "il y a déjà
presque sept ans que je souffre de ce mal"^. Or, le 14 mars 1510, Budé avait noté
dans une lettre à Lascaris: "voilà déjà cinq pleines années que je suis affligé d'une
mauvaise santé presque continuelle'"*. Indication confirmée dans la lettre à
Erasme du 7 juillet 1516: "... cette funeste maladie qui, depuis onze ans, m'a
embarrassé de tous les ennuis possibles"^. De Même, le 2 février 1520 il écrit à
Louis Vives: "J'ai aussi été malade depuis le début de l'hiver, ce qui, depuis 15
ans, m'arrive à peu près tous les deux ans"^. Le début de la maladie de Budé

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 1 (1991) 37

38 / Renaissance and Reformation

prend donc place en 1505^. On peut ainsi situer la lettre à Cop en 1512, puisque
Budé est malade depuis sept ans au moment oii il l'écrit.

Cette date explique que la lettre ne figure ni dans les Epistolae de 1520, ni
dans les Epistolae Posteriores de 1522. Le 10 janvier 1521, Budé explique en
effet à Louis Vives que son premier recueil contient seulement des lettres
écrites au cours des deux années précédant la parution et il note: "je ne garde
pas de copie des lettres que j'envoie à mes amis les plus intimes"^. Celle qu'il
avait adressée à Cop compte pourtant parmi ces textes soignés, parmi ces
morceaux d'apparat dont les humanistes étaient fiers et souhaitaient la cir-
culation, comme le suggère la remarque de Budé vers la fin: "Je serais certes
digne de votre indulgence, à toi et aux autres savants qui verront cette lettre"^.

Par son allure générale, la lettre à Guillaume Cop est déjà ce que seront
les longues missives adressées quelques années plus tard à son frère Louis,
à Christophe de Longueil ou à Tunstall'°. Encore en 1529, l'épître "aux
jeunes hellénistes" qui termine les Commentarii linguae graecae présentera
des ressemblances frappantes avec elle". Le vocabulaire comporte nombre
de mots fort rares comme /làjuaxa, ou encore des mots forgés, comme
ooXoiKOyWaoTiYcov, et le style en est particulièrement soigné, avec à
l'occasion d'interminables périodes. Mais, surtout, on y retrouve déjà
nombre de thèmes qui s'avéreront des constantes sous la plume de Budé.

Ecrivant à son médecin, celui-ci traite naturellement longuement de cette
maladie sur laquelle il reviendra sans cesse. Tout comme reviendront con-
tinuellement sa passion pour la philologie, son dévouement pour la cause des
lettrés, l'indulgence qu'il sollicite de leur part, l'inquiétude de posséder une
maîtrise insatisfaisante de la langue grecque, la comparaison avec les
compétitions du stade où il ne peut manquer d'être vaincu, le rôle joué par
l'étude dans sa maladie, l'impossibilité de tirer de la pratique des lettres un
revenu convenable, son indignation contre les adeptes d'une langue négligée,
ses plaintes contre l'aveuglement injuste du sort, la soumission à la
Providence, l'incapacité oii il est de contenir sa plume une fois lancée. Par
rapport à la correspondance publiée en 1520 et 1522, cette lettre fait presque
figure de programme en ce qui touche les thèmes d'ordre général.

Bien qu'elle soit omniprésente dans l'oeuvre de Budé, la maladie y plane
en quelque sorte comme une ombre aussi insaisissable que menaçante. On
sait que tout son entourage s'en inquiétait vivement, aussi bien ses proches
que son épouse, sans compter les médecins qui le menaçaient de mort^-. Mais,
contrairement à son inséparable pendant hollandais, Budé ne donne jamais
d'indices sur la nature de son mal'^. Pourtant, il est certain que Budé
s'intéressait vivement à la médecine et en possédait des connaissances

Renaissance et Réforme / 39

sérieuses. Son père, Jean Budé, "grand acheteur de livres"^'^, qui approchait
les soixante-dix ans au moment où Budé se mit à l'étude, "avait été malade
sans répit depuis l'âge de cinquante ans et, partant, avait étudié la médecine
et s'y connaissait"^^. Sur quarante et un manuscrits retracés par H. Omont
comme ayant appartenu à Jean et à Guillaume Budé, neuf sont d'ordre
médicaP^. Relevons aussi la lettre du 14 mars 1510 à Jean Lascaris, où Budé
écrit: "J'escompterais grandement, si tu jouissais d'un loisir un peu suivi, que
tu voies à me faire copier quelques livres de Galien (...). De nombreux titres,
je voudrais surtout une copie des suivants:De differentia morborum, De
optima corporis nostri constitutione, De elementis secundum Hippocratem,
De facultatibus naturalibus, Ars Parva." Et plus loin: "la lecture de la
Thérapeutique m'a intéressé aux théories de cet auteur"^^. On sait aussi que
Budé tenait en haute estime Linacre qu'il avait connu à Paris et dont il avait
lu des traductions de Galien ^^. En outre, parmi ses amis parisiens, Budé
compte non seulement le médecin Guillaume Cop, mais aussi Jean Ruel,
"étroitement associé à mes études", dira-t-il^^.

Dans ce contexte, le silence de Budé sur la nature des maux dont il souffrait
peut étonner et la lettre à Guillaume Cop occupe une place particulière, puisque
c'est le seul endroit où Budé fournit des précisions sur les maux qui l'acca-
blaient^^. A la page deux de la copie, les lignes 23 à 25 rappellent que la maladie
remonte à sept ans. Ce rappel ne s'explique vraiment que si l'accès décrit est la
manifestation habituelle du mal. Il faut toutefois se demander si la description
que Budé fait de ses maux à son ami est compatible avec les symptômes relevés
par Louis Le Roy dans sa Vita Budaei, parue en 1540, année même de la mort du
grand humaniste, et seul autre endroit où l'on trouve des détails sur cette maladie.
Malgré sa longueur, ce texte vaut d'être cité. En voici la traduction:

"Quand son amour de l'étude finit par l'emporter sur son attachement à la vie,
quand la découverte de ce bien l'amena à n'accorder aucun prix à l'existence, il
fut atteint d'une longue et grave maladie dont il fut affligé pendant plus de vingt
ans^*, au point que toute gaieté disparut de son visage, toute jovialité disparut de
son âme, tout sourire disparut dans son accueil, toute urbanité et toute affabilité
dans son commerce, au point aussi que son amour des lettres de jour en jour plus
grand en était brimé. Si bien qu'il n'était même plus le reflet, l'ombre de
lui-même, mais présentait l'aspect d'un mort vivant. Voici comment se présentait
sa maladie. Sa gorge, qui enflait, lui causait une terrible douleur et il se mettait
à tousser bruyamment^^. Il en éprouvait la nuit une telle frayeur que le matin il
s'étonnait d'être indemne en pensant à sa respiration bloquée et soudain
libérée. Bien au fait, son épouse pressentait l'arrivée des crises et soulageait
le mal de son mari par de fréquents changements de position et par des tapes

40 / Renaissance and Reformation

aux épaules. De cette maladie venait une grande pâleur, la chute des cheveux,
la maigreur et l'engourdissement de tout le corps, une extrême faiblesse de
tous les membres. Les médecins, à qui il l'avait maintes fois exposée, ne
pouvaient croire à un si grand mal dont ils ne retraçaient aucun exemple. Les
crises survenaient à peu près tous les deux mois. Il souffrait en outre d'un mal
de tête incessant, qui le tourmentait terriblement quand il lisait ou rédigeait.
Comme on attribuait cette maladie aux humeurs qui lui alourdissaient la tête,
les médecins lui promettaient un grand soulagement de son mal si celles-ci
trouvaient au sommet de la tête une issue par où s'échapper. Ils lui
conseillèrent donc de se prêter à ce qu'on ouvrit au fer rouge une voie à travers
l'épaisse enveloppe du dessus de la tête. Le crâne, disaient-ils, possède des
ouvertures qui permettent aux vapeurs de s'échapper vers le haut. On procéda
selon leur recommandation, ce qui fut un grand supplice^^. Mais aucun
soulagement ne résulta d'un traitement aussi risqué et pénible. En effet, les
vapeurs denses et lourdes montaient au cerveau et s'y accumulaient, faute
d'un passage vers le haut. En même temps, elles s'y épaississaient, puis se
liquéfiaient pour être entraînées par leur propre poids dans le front, les tempes
et les yeux, de sorte que la somnolence le gagnait sur son livre et que les plus
grands efforts ne pouvaient l'empêcher de s'endormir^'*.

La description de Budé et celle de Louis Le Roy ont toute l'apparence de se
compléter. Si l'on met ensemble les deux textes, on peut comprendre que Budé
a souffert d'un mal chronique de l'âge de trente-sept ans jusqu'à, semble-t-il,
l'âge de 61 ans environ^^. Un violent mal de tête était installé pour ainsi dire en
permanence. La pâleur et la maigreur de Budé se remarquaient. Les crises
commençaient par une vive douleur à la gorge, avec enflure et difficulté à
respirer. S'ensuivait une forte toux qui se terminait par des expectorations
purulentes amenant un brusque soulagement. Budé éprouvait alors des nausées
"à en défaillir". Il était ensuite vaincu par une insurmontable somnolence pendant
quelques jours. Enfin, se manifestait une douleur qui frappait tantôt les yeux,
tantôt les gencives, tantôt le ventre et tantôt "toutes les parties à la fois". La seule
divergence porte sur la fréquence des crises. Tandis que pour Le Roy elles
surviennent "à peu près tous les deux mois", Budé, dans la lettre à Vives du 2
février 1520, parle d'une maladie qui revient "à peu près tous les deux ans".
Peut-être la contradiction est-elle plus apparente que réelle. De l'ensemble des
lettres de Budé, en effet, on croit comprendre que, dans sa maladie, il connaissait
régulièrement des accès particulièrement graves. Il n'est pas impossible que
la remarque de Le Roy rappelle ces accès.

Si Budé se tait sur la nature de son mal, il nous éclaire abondamment sur
les circonstances oii il se manifeste. Les médecins, dit-il, établissent un lien

Renaissance et Réforme / 41

étroit entre l'activité intellectuelle et son mal: "La pratique de la philologie
en était alors tenue responsable par les médecins... "^^. De même, il écrit à
Longueil: "Je passe sous silence les fréquentes interruptions de mon travail
dues aux médecins qui me menaçaient de trépas si je ne modifiais incontinent
mon régime de vie et ne renonçais pas aux livres"-^. L'avis des médecins est
partagé par son entourage: "Et, répètent proches et parents, (...) je me meurs
misérablement pour elle (la philologie). En effet, comme ils disent, depuis
que je l'ai introduite chez moi, je n'ai pas l'apparence d'avoir pris de sages
décisions, ni pour ma fortune ni pour ma santé. (...) Dans la lassitude
engendrée par une maladie si longue et si pénible, qui n'aurait pas cédé aux
ordonnances des médecins, aux supplications de sa femme ou aux conseils
de ses amis, comme s'il avait fait son deuil de ses espérances littéraires?"^^.

Il semblerait que l'intensité des crises allait de pair avec l'intensité du travail
intellectuel. Quand, en 1508, il rédigea ses premières Annotations aux Pandectes
"en plus ou moins sept mois"^^, il entend leur donner une suite "si seulement me
le permettent ma disponibilité et une santé qui me contraint non seulement à
interrompre l'oeuvre commencée, mais même à y renoncer, à l'abandonner"-^^.
De même, le travail gigantesque que constituent les Commentaires de la langue
grecque a produit des effets désastreux sur sa santé: "Je tendais plus loin", écrit-il
dans la postface, "lorsque le mal m'a frappé avec une telle violence que, si je ne
m'étais arrêté aussitôt, le destin m'aurait emporté"-^'. Par contre Budé est
manifestement en bonne santé quand il s'occupe de l'aménagement de sa
propriété de Saint-Maur^^ et, sauf erreur, ne connaît jamais de manifestation de
ce mal quand il se livre à des activités autres que l'étude. Même que, lors de sa
participation à l'ambassade qui devait réunir à Montpellier les ambassadeurs de
François F"^ et de Charies Quint, il écrit à Guillaume du Maine: "J'ai pris la
décision (...) de ramener à la pratique des lettres mon esprit depuis longtemps
déjà absent de son poste (...). Mais, pauvre moi, je crains qu'elle ne me cause
encore des tracas, cette vieille maladie"^^. C'est dire assez clairement qu'il se
porte bien quand il se tient loin de sa chère philologie.

D'ailleurs, sa santé se rétablira quand il lui aura fait ses adieux. Après les
Commentaires de 1529, il se tourne vers une réflexion philosophique qui, en
1533, aboutira au De transitu hellenismi ad christianismum. Ce traité avait été
précédé, en 1532, du De philologia où Budé note: "... cette maladie qui m'a
accablé pendant presque vingt-huit ans"^"^. La formule ne peut qu'indiquer
que le mal ne se manifeste plus. On en trouve la confirmation dans Louis Le
Roy: "... il se trouva plein de vigueur à la fin de sa vie et il affichait une bien
meilleure santé dans sa vieillesse qu'au milieu de son âge et son tempérament

42 / Renaissance and Reformation

sec et sa vigueur lui auraient assuré plusieurs années encore si une maladie
fortuite ne l'avait emporté"^^.

Un dernier aspect de la maladie de Budé doit être mentionné: c'est l'insistance
avec laquelle il répète que celle-ci a constitué un obstacle à des réalisations plus
considérables. Nous avons dit déjà qu'il la présente comme cause de
l'interruption des Annotations aux Pandectes et des Commentaires. Mais II y
revient également à maintes reprises dans des contextes plus généraux. Dans ces
cas, la maladie est généralement associée à sa situation d'autodidacte-^^, pour
expliquer la modestie de son savoir. Voici un passage caractéristique: "Le destin
et les circonstances m'ont désavantagé, privé que je suis de livres d'abord, de
maîtres ensuite et, enfin, de compagnons d'études — c'est là le pire. Je passe sous
silence les fréquentes interruptions de mon travail dues aux médecins qui me
menaçaient de trépas si je ne modifiais incontinent mon régime de vie et ne
renonçais pas aux livres"^^. Ces remarques s'accompagnent le plus souvent d'un
appel à l'indulgence pour la modestie de ses réalisations.

C'est ce que nous savons de la maladie de Budé. Laissons à plus compétent
le soin d'en percer la nature^^ et voyons la lettre à Guillaume Cop.

G. BUDAEUS G. COPPO S.

P. 1 Dudum cum me inuiseris aegrotantem: eo eram corporis animique / habita:
ut mihi tussim tandem tabificam metuendam prae me / ferrem. postera lui
aduentus nocteusque eo inualuit morbus ut / perpeti eademque
5 acerrima tussi nullo ferme screatu uexatus / conuulsusque: matutino etiam
nausea ad deliquium/ ferme animi exagitatus: aut exanimationem potius:
cum grauissimum /atrocissimumque quoddam exemplum numen (ut ita
dicam) ipsum / tussis editurum in me exputarem:
10 repente intra biduum / grassatoria illa mali atrocitas concidit elanguitque,
ita/ demum screatu iam facili ac purulento recreatus: defun/ctum me
pernicie haud dubia spe ferebam. quoad (ex / insomnia arbitror diuturna)
in gravedinem delapsum, aut / etiam relapsum cum ueterno quodam me
sensi: hoc génère dies /

P. 2 aliquot marcescens: cum mihi non iam homo: sed ursus:// aut xœv
(t)(oXot5T(ov àXko XI ^â)OV esse viderer: (tametsi som/niculosus
magis dormitatorque etiam et oscitator, quam tenore ullo / memorabili: aut
gravitate somni oppressus)
5 cumque mihi displicens: / nulli iam ^ikox^vxiaç, incolumi retinaculo:
animum (prope dixe/rem: atque adeo eL ôé/iiç ècrrl >cÉyeiv)
apocarteresmo impetu caeco / animi subinde mihi consciscerem: "kà^ov
Kal âX-cytaç â/iEipôvrœv / akXr\ka, âpxi /ièv xô ôpxi
ÔÈ xô, ôiaYvoîJç Kal xà av bEboyjutva nakiy I
10 âvaOÉ/iEvoç, xâ)v xe ôo^avOcov auOiç àjioôo^âvOwv.

Cum igitur / huiusmodi fere essem mortis quidem securus: morbi uero /

Renaissance et Réforme / 43

anxius: in universum autem nulla lucis cupiditate affectus: / ibi vero
consilii tui memor: clystere prius usus jitJEX.ov BepZ/n^v, id est solium
uaporatum ingressus: hemisphaerico

15 machi/namento capiti supposito, quo super solium eminebam: ut ea /

quoque parte ex animi tui meique sententia uaporem excipe/rem: cum diu
ac multum (tamen citra lassescen/tiam) desudassem: eo die toto clausum
me continui, modo / aliquantisper commodiorem aut commodiusculam

20 ualetudinem / adeptus: iamque blandiende profectu

jtE())povr|//aTia//£voç ô ÔEi/>^aioç èyw, ecce autem tertio in
aliud; atque inde in aliud / malum eiuscemodi generis incido: nunc in
oculos: nunc / in gingiuas: nonnunquam decumbente in ventriculum /
morbo: interdum etiam in omnes simul partes:

25 ut mihi / [veni] rem ad triarios rediisse iure dicere possim, praesertim

septen/ni iam ferme pernicie confecto: id quod ex me coram audisti / Cum
interim nihil non expertus, ne morbi quidem cau/sam deprehendere
potuerim: (ut mihi xfiv èjioxriv r&v oKEJt/TiKcàv capessere
lubeat: et in causam pyrrhoniorum

30 incumbere) / duntaxat absque te foret: qui mihi a fervore cerebri

metuendum esse / admonuisti: quod tantopere miser confouendum esse
rebar: / quamquam iam pridem iecinoris praecalidi uitium in causa esse
mali / haud dubia coniectura existimarem. Év xoiatJXT] ôf| cuiopiçi
KaÔEcrrriKwç, âxE ék xov

35 KaxaXriTtTiKoû é(j)£/ktlkôç tlç â:io(})av0E tç, oi)K exiûv ôxi Kal

XPTiaat;ir|v xolç jrapoijoi, âjiâvxwv yè /uoi xwv jiEJiEipa/zEvcov, eIç xô
XEÎpov jiEpiEX,/6ôvxcL)v, juôvoç aoi JtEpiX,oi:ioç ÉoïKaç, xô ye vîjv
Êxov, Eivai, È(|)'ôv Ka/9ajiEpEl Kpr\0(^vyzx6v xi EÛJipôaixov
àva(^vy6)v, xfiv è/^v ÔEivojiâ/eEiav èv ÔÉovxi av ôÔDpot/ir|v" ejieI

40 xoiyE yMÉXPi TotJxou â;ioaKETja/aa//Evoi xô (j)opxiKÔv xfiç (t)ap/iaK£ taç
Tr]vakX(i)ç ènorvi&>jU£Qa, xfjv Kapôtav / É(j)'ÈaDxâ)v oi^ Kaxà xô
napayyeX/ua xô JiuOaYOpou éôtiôgkôxeç. xt / ovv ôf] (3oîjX,ei JipôxEpov,
xi ô'ijcrxEpov //E//ipi//oipf)aa). apa ye ôxi/ Jiâvxcov juôXicna ijjiâpxojv
ÉycoyE (j)L>iôajiODÔoç, Kal xf|c Êpco//£vr|ç / oijk àv£v Jiôvcov àjur\xàv(jùv
ôaœv xDxwv, vî)v fièv éjriKpaxoîJvxoç / zv fiàka xov Éptoxoç,
KEKpaxTiKutaç
P. 3 ô'Épacrxoî) o<^6àpa xf|ç // Êp(o//£vr|ç Kal ôf) â(j)Ti//EpEÎ)£iv âvaYKâÇo//ai
((bç olaOa) juf\ xi ôf] / àjioKoixEÎv; f| ôxi /uexà oov xe Kal xâ)v àKko)v
xâ)v ojiGuôatcov [oxaôioôpo]/ xô xf)ç KO/iii)f)ç jiaiÔEtaç oxâôiov
ôiaxpÉxojv, £v xoTJXOLç ÔÈ lawç oi)xl xf|v /
5 èaxâxr|v ôô^av £V£YKd//EVoç, Kalxoi Jtap'ôXov oxeôôv xôv ôpô/iov /
cruxvolç XE Kal ôeivoîç àppwcnfyuaoïv napevoxXovjuevoç, vvv év
juÉOip I xô) TOvœ KaxajiEoœv, /uakXov ôè avxcb xô) Ka/mxf)pi
pocncpGijaaç / xœv akXoiv Evryiepibç, (^EpojuévMv juôvoç, ky(b
ànoXziKOjuai ovàe xà Êaxaxa yoijv / oîôç xe œv èXjtîaai oi/ioi xfiç

10 âxDxtaç, oiaç xf)ç è^ariôoç é^ÉJtEaov./ Kal ék xoîj Kaxa?vÔYOD ofjOEV
jiapaipEef)ao/iaL, ô Kal xoîjç koXKovç, I jiapEiJÔoKL/^f)OEiv otô//EVOç
xfjç rux^lÇ ÉJifjpEia xf\ç xà I jrdvxa f| xâyE jiX-Eicrxa àxâKxœç

44 / Renaissance and Reformation

^paÇ)Evovor\ç' cà xfiç OKXripâç / el/iap//Évriç Kal vf| ôta (àjieiri ôè
âôpacn:£ia<)>Tf)ç àyvo)juocfvvr\<; ty]ç //oipaç / x] xavxà

15 juoi evQvç (ô ov y'ûv ô//o>\.oyoîi-|ç) yEvojuèvip èkékXmoe, âvai/xio) ye
ôf), Kal àKâKO) £Ti ôvTi. vîjv YOtpxoi crijvoiôâ juoi TcoXkà rà/ juèv
£KÔ£ÔiTiTTXMÉva, xà Ô£ jiapav£vo/ir|//£va" (^iXeI juèvzoï £ji£a6ai / xtp
nXr]jLijutkf]juaTi r\ xi//copia, oijk £xi ôè Jipor|Y£Îcj0aL. oiJx ^^^ / ^È ô^wç
£K xf\ç (t)i?vo:toviaç ôxœ xœ £(j)OÔi(p xfiv jiapr|K/iaKuîâv x£

20 Kal / K£KOJico//£vriv fi>^iKiav Yr|pa)Ko//£lv £l60aaiv oi £ijxux£îç fcôv
(|)iXoÀ.o/Yoi)vxa)v. KatxoL xoaoijxov xpôvov âcjjEiôoàç x£ Kal V£avLKâ)ç
éjiioixL/oâ^£voç. xt ovv (t)atr| xiç av, œ àp£X,x£p£, £YKaX,£lv crÛY£ xf|
jipovoLçi / //f) YÉvoixo, jLCY]àè ox3xco juaiveir\v. Jiœç Y^tp; ôç ye EûXaPcbv
ànôyovoçj àno xy\ç jtaiôaYOYiaç év xr|

25 ôp9r| ôôÇri cruÇœv ovv Qe(b àieyevôfir\v./ ox£pKxÉov ovv Eivai

ji£jrEio//ai xoLç xoij acoxfipoç xoD iyiôiv jiapaYYÉV/zaoïv, xoûye xf|v
KapxEptav rialv //â>Lioxa £lar|YTloo//£vou./ àkXà jueyàkr] ^ïv
ÔEivojiaÔEiçt CTuvwv, oiJK ^x^^ ^È xà Jid9r|/ Kaxaoxfiaai Kax'E/zaDxôv
xà jiapEVox^oDvxa xô) Xoyiojuib oIoveî xiç / oôijuaxi xe Kal ij^uxtl

30 V£VoaT]K6ç, àjiavxfiaai ôy) Jipôç oe xôv (j)i>vô/oo(t)ôv xe Kal laxpôv
f)^ia)aa, ôià xf|aÔ£ xfiç ÉJiioxoXfiç, £({)'^ xfiç / làoEcoç KaO'ÈKàxEpov
TUXEÎv. xà Y£ jur\v juexà xaûxa éwoeîv ooi Éàoco,/ œ<a>jiEp oij
jipoafiKov xô) voooijvxi ^)Jlo/^l/^vf|aKElv xôv laxpôv xôv jipôç xoî) I
iJYioioovxoç. ov jUY\v akk'ÔKiaç ào)bEKajLcf]xcLv6v, (j)aoi,

35 xf)v ÉJitvoiav / jipooE^Eic. ôeî yàp av ev oiôa ôxi xoioijxou xivôç,
Kal (bç ELJiELV jiaiœviKoî) / EvOu^fi/^axoç eïç xt)À,ikoî)xov xô ÔEIVÔV.
(|)ÉpE ôf) O) ôai/^ôviE Jipôç xoDxovl / àjtôôuoai xôv àycôva xôv
ÔDOKaxajiàXaioxov, xfiv ûôpav, (bç à>ir|eâ)ç / ÉK£ivr|v, xf\v àoibijuov,
xf)v nakijU(^và. r|ç eI RpaKÀ-fiç Geiçi xivl juoipç. I

40 YÉvoio, Kal aijxôç ye ôf|JtoD ' IôXewç xiç Êao//ai, àjiavxà aoi év
ÔÉovxi / iJjiovpYcôv. oTÛÔÉJtoxE ovôÈ àKoXaoxatvcov, otjôè
èKÔiaixw/^Evôç xi,/ oiJÔ'ôÀ,a)ç Jiou àxaKxcov jiapà xoijjitxaY//a xô aôv.
f|v ÔÈ xoîjxo Kaxop/Owariç, xô ÉJiixEtpTy/a, Kai jlie f|xoi vyify, f\ Kal vr\
ôta Ti/iixpr|oxov / Kal oIoveI fi/ziavôpov àjto(j)fivTiç,

45 (ùjtèp Yàpxoi xf)v laxpiKfiv ol/iai / xô, àKÉpaiov àjioKaxaoxf|oai
xôv oûôÈ ôX,ÔKX,r|pov vno xwv yovécov / yEyovçyza.) àv yoûv ;tEpl
xfivÔE xf)v KaxE^iav eoke/^evoc,/ ôpOcàç Éoxoxcxo//£voç xiJXHÇ, Kal
oloç xfjv alxlav KaxiÔEÎv xf)ç / vôood, Kal KaOajiEpavEl xô
ôp//Tixf)piov ÉYKaxaoKfiH^avxoç xou
P. 4 ÔEivoî) / ôiEpEDvfiaai xe Kal KaxaX-a^Eiv, juàKkov ôè èàv oloç // f\ç
f|xoi XY)v jir)Yf|v aTJxfjv xf)v ^pvovoav xalç vôaoïç à(j)aDaivEiv, f| xà
/ fiàjuaxa yoîjv xoî) pEvpiaxoç xoîjôe, xov àEvàou xe Kal xàxot JiEp
ôiijiExoûç / LoxàvEiv, laOi où Jiapaxpfy/a à^ia(j)îiYTlxôv xe
5 juioQôv, Kal / oijx yyxxw xoaoûxou Kaxop66/^axoç olaô/^Evoç. etjOùç
Yàp àv KLVÔDVEtJaatç / EiJoxoxTicjaç xov okokôv ' IjtJioKpàxr|ç àvxl
xoiîxou ô vîJv KaX,f| //Exo/vo/ià^Ea6ai. oijxco aoi xoi)jtixEUY/^ot
ÔLaxE6pTj>Lf)OExai, àvco Kal Kàxco / xf|c jiôXecoç ji£pip6r|xov, Kàv eI
àjioaKo:i(î)T]v àjuèkEi xô l>tapôv juov Kal / àôpôv xov Kpooojnov xov

Renaissance et Réforme / 45

10 Jipô TOI), KaxeKTLKOTJ, 6aD//aaéiVTa)v cuiav/xcav, Kal xf]v te alxîav Tf|c
EiJE^taç Tfiç àf]Qovi„ Kal xôv ElariyiTCTiv / àvanvQojuèvwv, amô ôf) xô
jipay/za, Kaôauxô xfiv EVEpyEatav oov I KaxTiyopfiaEiEv av. odç Kal
KivôuvETJOEiv âv OE, ^y\ jioxE xE6vEâ)xa/ ôô^riç è^ (xbov àvaoxfioai,
Kal Jia>itvavôpôv xiva, eI ôè Poi)>iei, ptpPiov /

15 âjiEipyâaôai, àjuoia âjioÔEt^aç xf|c xÉxvr|ç xô) âpxiiyw. xoûxô yE fif\v
j jravxEç ôaoi yE tov X,f\^aaxoç où/ tÎtxouç xuyxavouaiv ôvxeç / Kal
xô) ôvxi (J)lXôxexvoi, oijx o^oi i^tôv jiEpivooxoiJvxcov ol jio>t>uOi, xfiç /
(j)i>^oao(t) iaç âjtôxpojioi. cmvzkùyv ôè (j)aiTiv av, ôaoi xfjv
âvxEcn;pa/i//iÉvriv aoi xf)v àyœyfiv, Kal /^f) Kaxà xfiv jiaiÔEtav

20 xfjv ÊyKv/KX,ov fly/^Évol EÎatv. oi)XOl ôf) JtâvxEÇ ol xolç

jipojtaiÔEiJ/iaaiv / xotç £X,Eu9Eptoiç ori3vxpo(|)OL, àvxl noïXibv, zv
oiôa ôxi, Kal vf) ôta / âvxl jtâvxcov xpilwctTcav àXXaÇaivx'âv. ôôl of|
jrpônrôç aoi Kal /léyioxoç / xf|ç âyxivotaç xe Kal (()i>^oxExvtaç
/ziaOôç. Eixa xoi Kal aœaxpâ ooi ôià / ptou KEXPEwoxrioô/iEva

25 àjioxtao), vjtEpEKaivcbv, âvxEVJtoicôv, ék xœv / iJjiapxôvTcov

âvxEUEpyExtov, âvxEJti//Expâ)v xf)v xotpiv ÔJtoTj XE av Kal/ ÔTIT] TÔXXl-
cbv bf\ aoi ÉvÉxvpov xfivÔE xfjv £JtLoxoX,f)V xjjtoxlOïXMi. èô)/ ôè XÉyEiv,
eI xî jicoç Kal xà r\fitxzç>a éoikev[ov] xfjv Koivf)v ôvivdvai / Tf|v xtôv
(i)iXoKaX,oiJvxa)v ajioDÔf|v, Kal Kaxà xoijxo of| xô

30 //Époç ov I a/iLKpâv oe xôtpiv oloEaOai âv. Kal ôf) Kal (j)L>^oKaX.ta yE
aûxfi / aE|3a^o/^£vr| aoi Oeô) jie({)i>ioxi//ti/^év(jl)ç oîjxcoç âv xâxcx Jicoç
Ka>^>aEpfi/aaiç, eI xwv |3ap|3apo(t)ôv(ov Iva Kal ao>^oiKo/iaaxîy(ov ék
/^£oo^) / xoî) ôÀ,É0pou âvaKxf|oaio â(j)ELÔf)aavxa èauxoîj. xiOel ô'éjiI
xoijxoiç / Kal ôxi aoi aEooaqwÉvoç, xpeîâv xiva ÔEiy//axoç

35 XOV Kaxà xf)v / xéxvt^v EÏaaûOiç JiapéÇo/iai, xœv âKkoiv ÛJi'àjioptaç
fieQe/uèvoiv I vko oov àveikr\Lmèvoç. noKkà ôè Kal âXXa exojv cjuvEipai
eIç x'aûxô / âvf|Kovxa, ô/icoç œÔE âvajiaûaai xôv Kokoi^ov ti^iodv eIç
xà Jiôppo) xf| / juèv ôi'Eporcâ oov, xfj ôè, xf|ç ùjroOéaEcoç
:rpo0u/ioi)//£vov à£t, ÔEÔiœç / jur\ JiÉpa Ikvod^évoij

40 jUEyèQovç xà yeypajufitva èÇfiKoi (bç Kal / jur\KÉxi xovvojua xy]v

£7iioxo>ifiv ocô^Eiv. xaijxa /uÈv ovv ypâipai / aoi otjk oIô'ôjicoç £:n;fiX.6É
juoi, nf] juèv, mnaiy/uèva, I nx\ ÔÉ, éajrouôaa/iÉva, ov /Lcf\v à(^opjuf\ç,
X,a|3o//£vo) xf|ç eIç xf]v / èmÔEi^iv, oîjxe ai; ooi xoû
àvx£jiiox£>u>iEiv kvàôoijuov yXixojuÉVM I Kaçyaoyjdv. ov juà xfjv
TjytEiàv XE xf|v xpiJiôOîixov vOv éfioi Kal / xfiv (^iX.oX,oytav xf\v jipô

XOIJ

P. 5 JtEpiojroiJÔaoxov. Jtcbç yàp; ôç y£ // ovôè xov ènaÎEiv iKavtbç xf|c
xâ)V £À,À.f)va)v yK6ya:r\ç e/uaQov, juryti ye ôf) / cnjyypàii^ai. oîjxe jur]v
oiJxcDç âyvwxa kjuol xà aà, wotte Kal àjiô xœv ajiovôatcov / fiyEÎaOai
oiJxcD OE axoX,fiv âyEiv, cbç Kal evedoxoX-eIv âv xolaÔE
5 xoîç JiaiyviôÔE/aiv. àXXà yàp Êv yuvaiKcovlxioi à;iô xwv ptpX,a)v
KaOEipxOÉvxi XE Kal yuvai/KOJipEKcbc olKoupoiJvxî //oi, xoioûxô xi
JiapÉoxr) Év ajiouôfiç juoipa I xiOEaOai, xoDxo /lév, îv'elxov
ôiEyEÎpai xô âvExov xoû Qvfiov, xov ànô xe xov voof]/juaxoç Kal xf|ç

OXO>^f|Ç É^EpyTlKÔXOÇ, XOiJXO ôè xf|V XV71Y]V èOÉXoOV XOLOIJXœ /

46 / Renaissance and Reformation

10 Jiapwoaaôai xœ ÊvacTxo>ifxMaTi. jrpôç ôé, Kai aol àvôpwjwp /

(t)iX,É>^Xr|vi ovx TlKiora âv oûxcoç xctpieîaôai ù)6jur\v, ôv ôjtœç ôf) jtoxe /
OEpajiEiJEiv /loi ÔÉÔoKxai, Kal Kapa^£^Xr{uÉv(ûq ye. y\ kqI ôiKaioç ôv
eIt^v / CTUYYva)/<r|ç ôfiJiou xux£îv, xfiç xe Jiapà oov Kal xœv àKkwv
oo{()â)V / xâ)v xavxri evxed^o/zevcov, jiapaixoîJ/iEvoç eI

15 xf|ÔE KâKEÎ ^Evî^œv, noKka/xoQi xe Kal noKkaxxi êo^akjuai. haec animi
causa ad te scripsi: ac cum morbi / ludificandi gratia: morbidaeque
molestiae per avocamentum animi transmittendae / tum vero abigendi
cubicularis taedii. interim dum spatium recreandae / valetudini praebeo vel
potius dum aliène

20 arbitratu xf)v + (j)i>^o;rovîaç crimini atque invidiae quam noxiam et

tabificam eximere cupio. / oûk ecjxlv ôjicdç év xoaoïjxa) (l)iXoao<t)fioa) ôxi
//f) n:EpiJiaxr|XLKcôç. xwv èôpatcav yàp xexvwv xœv / èv xœ yuvaiKEto)
nàvv à^aQr]ç z'i/ui, àôuvâxcoç Éxœv, cbç èjil xô / jiXEÎcrrov Ka6f|a8ai,
ji>^fiv fizxa^v avayvovc. latere hoc te nolo

25 me / ex quo sane epistolam scribere adorsus sum: interdiu quidem certe
satis / ac certe quidem ualuisse: ut iam prorsus Kaxa(j)opiKÔç esse
desierim ac / Kco/iaxiKôç: siue illa affectio ex animi intentione ex
operis oblectamen/to tantisper laxamentum mihi praebuit: siue morbi
materia penitus / aut

30 consumpta aut discussa est. Ceterum quidem, ut nonnulla ex / parte
ludicram hanc epistolam, veluti seriosam habeas: quo mihi / aliquando
succisiuis horis KapayytXjuarà xiva xfiç / ôiaixriç aut fortasse xov
//Exaôiaixfxaaxoç perscribas. eI ôè //fi, / nokXà xatpEiv (^pâoaç xw xe
èXkr\vio^(b Kal vjuiv xolç /

35 ekXryvojuaQovoi, Kal xô ÉJiiJiav xr| (j)iXoXoYtçt, àXko xi ÉJtixTiÔEÛoo). /
xoiJxo ovv bia^apxvpojuai, f\v //f) aoi juèkri xf|ç vy^^^Laç xfjç Ê//f|ç, /
Jipiùxôv OE Kal vcjxaxov vvv z}Jkr]\i(jzi :ipooEiJi6v. Ippcoao.

CORRECTIONS

En plus de ses abondantes ratures, le texte semble conserver quelques erreurs.
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Renaissance et Réforme / 47

GUILLAUME BUDÉ À GUILLAUME COP, SALUT!

Quand tu m'as récemment visité au cours de ma maladie, j'étais de corps et
d'âme dans un état tel que je présentais une toux dont on pouvait craindre
qu'elle ne m'emporte. La nuit suivant ton arrivée, le mal a pris une ampleur
telle que j'ai été péniblement secoué par une toux violente, ininterrompue et
toujours égale, pratiquement sans aucune expectoration et que, le matin venu,
j'ai finalement subi les assauts d'une nausée propre à me faire défaillir, ou
plutôt à me faire rendre l'âme. Et au moment où je m'attendais à ce que la
toux en personne, pour ainsi dire, montre en moi un modèle d'une gravité et
d'une cruauté extrêmes, soudain, en deux jours, l'acuité tenace de ce mal est
tombée et s'est évanouie. Finalement, soulagé par des expectorations
désormais aisées et purulentes, c'est avec une confiance sans réserve que je
me considérais à l'abri du danger — jusqu'au moment où (à cause, je pense,
de longues insomnies) je me suis senti tombé ou, enfin, retombé dans une
lourdeur accompagnée de somnolence.

J'ai langui dans cet état pendant quelques jours. Alors que j'avais le
sentiment de n'être plus un humain, mais un ours ou quelque autre animal
dans sa tanière (bien que je fusse engourdi et même somnolent et alangui
plutôt que vaincu par un sommeil d'une durée ou d'une profondeur notables),
alors aussi que, las de moi-même chez qui ne restait intacte aucune attache à
la vie, j'allais céder (pourrais-je pratiquement dire, si toutefois il est permis
de dire telle chose) à une pulsion aveugle de l'âme et décider de mon sort en
me laissant mourir de faim — raison et déraison alternaient, c'était tantôt ceci,
tantôt cela, je prenais une décision sur laquelle je revenais, ce qui avait paru
opportun paraissait désormais inopportun — alors donc, dis-je, que je me
trouvais dans cet état, à l'abri de la mort mais inquiet de la maladie et, en
somme, sans aucun désir de vivre, je me suis souvenu de ton conseil: après
le recours à un clystère, je me suis plongé dans un bain chaud, avec sous la
tête un appareil hémisphérique pour me maintenir au-dessus du bain de sorte
que la tête aussi reçoive tout plein de chaleur.

Après une sudation longue et abondante (sans toutefois me rendre à
répuisement),j 'ai gardé la chambre toute la journée, éprouvant pendant quelques
temps une amélioration, du moins une certaine amélioration, à mon état. Tout
fier, pauvre moi, d'un progrès encourageant, voilà que le troisième jour je me
mets à tomber d'un mal à l'autre selon l'enchaînement suivant: le mal allait tantôt
dans les yeux, tantôt dans les gencives, parfois il descendait dans le ventre et
même à l'occasion partout en même temps. Si bien que je serais justifié de dire

48 / Renaissance and Reformation

que j'en étais réduit à mes ultimes réserves, surtout qu'il y a bien sept ans
déjà que je suis atteint de ce mal, comme tu me l'as entendu dire de vive voix.

Et pourtant, après avoir tout essayé, je n'ai pas été capable de trouver la
cause du mal (si bien que je me suis laissé aller à embrasser la retenue des
Sceptiques et à adopter la cause des Pyrrhonien-^^), du moins si je ne tiens pas
compte de toi, qui m'as prévenu du danger pour moi d'un réchauffement du
cerveau, que moi — quel malheureux! — ^je croyais devoir également
réchauffer. Il y avait d'ailleurs longtemps que j'attribuais hors de tout doute
la cause du mal à l'anomalie d'un excès de chaleur au foie.

Placé dans un tel embarras, vu le scepticisme auquel m'a mené mon
analyse, ne sachant que faire dans cette situation, puisque tous mes efforts ont
empiré le mal, j'ai l'impression de n'avoir plus que toi, du moins pour le
moment, vers qui me tourner comme vers un refuge accueillant, pour me
plaindre utilement de mes souffrances. Car jusqu'ici, l'intestin vidé, c'est en
vain que j'ai eu recours aux désagréments des purgatifs — le coeur maintenant
rongé, mais pas dans le sens du précepte de Pythagore"^^.

A ton avis, donc, à quoi m'en prendre d'abord, à quoi ensuite? Est-ce parce
que moi, ardent entre tous, ne profitant de mon amante qu'au prix d'efforts
pratiquement impossibles, parce que, donc, maintenant que cet amour est
absolument souverain et que l'amante a pleine domination sur l'amant, me
voici contraint de m'en éloigner pendant le jour, comme tu le sais, et, à plus
forte raison, de délaisser sa couche? Ou encore, parce que, alors que je
parcourais avec toi et les autres enthousiastes le stade de la belle éducation —
mais sans peut-être y avoir atteint les sommets de la renommée et en butte
tout au long de ma course à de terribles et fréquentes défaillances — parce que,
dis-je, maintenant tombé en plein élan, ou plutôt brisé contre la borne pendant
que les autres poursuivaient avec bonheur, me voici laissé seul en arrière, sans
espoir possible d'atteindre le but'*^ Hélas! quel revers! De quel espoir j'ai été
frustré! Et sans doute serai-je rayé du palmarès, moi qui croyais m 'élever
au-dessus de la masse: perfidie de la fortune qui mène tout, ou presque, dans le
désordre! O rigueur du sort et, par Zeus (loin de moi Adrastée'^^), ô aveuglement
du destin qui (ce dont tu conviendrais) m'a ménagé tout cela dès ma naissance,
alors que j'étais encore ignorant de l'erreur et du mal. Bien siir, je suis conscient
qu'aujourd'hui mes errements et mes fautes abondent. Mais le châtiment suit
habituellement l'offense, il ne la précède pas.

De mon attachement au travail, je ne tirerai pourtant pas le viatique par
lequel ceux qui pratiquent la philologie"^^ avec bonheur ont l'habitude
d'assurer la maturité, le déclin de leur âge'^^. C'est pourtant sans ménagement,
avec vaillance, que j'ai peiné à accumuler mes provisions. "Mais, quoi!"

Renaissance et Réforme / 49

dira-t-on, "pauvre sot, ne va pas t'en prendre à la Providence!" Dieu me garde
de telle folie! Et comment donc? Moi qui suis né de parents pieux, depuis
mon enfance je n'ai cessé de vivre dans la droite voie près de Dieu. Je suis
donc convaincu qu'il faut s'attacher aux préceptes de notre Sauveur, lui qui
certes nous insufflera la constance.

Mais, accablé par une maladie terrible, incapable par moi-même de mettre fin
aux souffrances qui entravent mes facultés, comme un dont le corps et l'âme sont
attaqués, j'ai voulu par cette lettre m 'adresser à toi, philosophe et médecin, dans
l'espoir de trouver la guérison tant du corps que de l'âme. Je te laisserai réfléchir
à ce qu'il faut faire, puisqu'il ne revient pas au malade de dicter le traitement
au médecin. Néanmoins, veille à porter à la question une attention aux mille
astuces, comme on dit, car, je le sais bien, il faut un homme de cette sorte et,
pour ainsi dire, doué de la perspicacité de Paeon'^'', face à un tel mal. Allons,
mon brave, retire tes vêtements pour affronter cet adversaire coriace, l'Hydre
en vérité, si célèbre, sans cesse renaissante. Si par un plan divin, tu devenais
pour elle un Heracles'*^, je serai moi-même un lolaos, qui t'assistera en tout
opportunément, qui jamais ne se permettra de dérèglements, jamais le
moindre écart de régime, jamais, bref, la moindre dérogation à tes ordres.

Si tu mènes à bien cette entreprise et que, ou bien tu me guérisses, ou bien,
par Zeus, tu me rendes une demi-utilité, tu fasses de moi en quelque sorte un
demi-homme (car cela dépasse la médecine, je pense, que de donner
l'intégrité à celui que ses parents n'ont pas engendré complet), si donc, après
un examen de cette affection, tu arrives à un juste diagnostic et parviens à
identifier la cause de la maladie et, en quelque sorte, à découvrir, à surprendre
le repaire du mal qui m'a frappé, ou plutôt, si tu parviens à sécher la source
elle-même d'où jaillissent les maladies, ou du moins à tarir l'aliment de ce
flot ininterrompu et peut-être bien d'origine céleste,"^^ alors sache qu'à
l'instant tu toucheras un salaire digne de mémoire et non en reste d'un tel
succès. Car, sur-le-champ, tu risquerais, le but atteint, de prendre le nom
d'Hippocrate'*^ à la place de celui que tu portes maintenant, tant on clamera
ta réussite, célébrée d'un bout à l'autre de la ville. Et si l'on m'examinait —
tous s'étonnant de la gaieté et de la santé de mon visage auparavant maladif
et s 'informant de la cause de cette vigueur inaccoutumée et de son auteur — ,
d'elle-même la chose révélerait ton bienfait. De la sorte, tu aurais des chances
de passer pour avoir ramené de l'Hadès un défunt et, si tu veux, de l'avoir
rétabli dans la condition d'homme avec une seconde vie'*^, faisant preuve d'un
art comparable à celui du Créateur.

Voilà certes chose que tous ceux qui, insensibles à l'appât du gain, ont la
véritable passion de l'art — à la différence de ces amateurs d'artifices, de la

50 / Renaissance and Reformation

masse étrangère à la piiilosophie, en somme, dirais-je, de ces gens dont la
formation s'oppose à la tienne et qui n'ont pas suivi la voie de
l'encyclopédie'^*' — chose donc que tous ceux qui ont été nourris des éléments
d'une éducation libérale échangeraient, j'en suis convaincu, contre bien des
richesses et même, par Zeus, contre toutes les richesses. Et ce sera là pour toi la
première et la plus appréciable rémunération de ta perspicacité et de ton amour
de l'art. Ensuite, la rétribution à laquelle tu auras droit pour toute ta vie, je te la
verserai en te couvrant d'éloges, en te comblant à ton tour de bienfaits, en
employant mes ressources à te rendre tes bons procédés, en te témoignant en
toute circonstance et par tout moyen qui s'offrira une reconnaissance sans
borne. Je t'en donne comme gage la présente lettre. Je passe sous silence que,
si j'ai quelque apparence d'avoir soutenu l'ardeur commune des adeptes des
belles lettres, en cela aussi ce n'est pas une mince gratification que tu
récolterais. Et précisément, cet amour de l'art pour lequel ta vénération
rivalise avec celle de Dieu, peut-être bien la plus belle offrande que tu pourrais
lui faire serait-elle d'arracher du sein de la ruine un pourfendeur des barbares,
un châtieur des béotiens-^', lui qui a agi au mépris de son propre bien. Ajoute
à cela que, sauvé par toi, je servirai par la suite à illustrer la puissance de ton
art, puisque tu m'auras recueilli quand les autres à bout de ressources
m'avaient abandonné.

Bien que j 'aie matière à m 'étendre encore longuement sur ce sujet, j ' ai jugé
bon mettre ici un frein à ma plume toujours poussée de l'avant par mon
affection pour toi et par le sujet lui-même. Je crains que, si je m'étends
davantage, ce texte tourne de telle sorte que ma lettre ne mérite plus son
nom^^. En fait, je ne sais trop comment il m'est venu à l'esprit de t'écrire tout
cela -en partie plaisanteries et en partie propos sérieux. Je n'en ai certes pas
trouvé l'inspiration dans le goût de l'étalage, non plus que dans le désir de te
fournir une occasion de m 'écrire à ton tour. Non, par la Sante-*"-^ aujourd'hui
trois fois désirée et par la Philologie hier si affectionnée! Comment donc
l'aurais-je pu? moi qui n'ai pas suffisamment appris à comprendre la langue
des Grecs — et encore moins à l'écrire — et qui n'ignore pas non plus ta
situation au point de croire que tes obligations te laissent assez de loisir pour
que tu puisses t'adonner à ces amusements.

Mais, comme je suis confiné aux appartements des femmes, loin de mes
livres et oisif comme les femmes, il m'est venu à l'idée de remplacer l'étude
par ce genre d'occupation: d'un côté, je pouvais de la sorte secouer l'engour-
dissement de mon esprit endormi par la maladie et le désoeuvrement et, de
l'autre, chasser l'ennui par ce passe-temps! En outre, philhellène comme tu
l'es, j'estimais que ce n'était pas le moindre moyen de t'être agréable, à toi

Renaissance et Réforme / 51

envers qui il me semble justifié d'avoir tout l'empressement possible — et
avec un dévouement aveugle. Je serais certes digne de votre indulgence, à toi
et aux autres savants qui verront cette lettre, si je reconnais que, ballotté ici
et là, j'ai trébuché en maints endroits et à maintes reprises.

C'est pour le plaisir que je t'ai écrit cette lettre, tant pour tromper le mal et
en oublier les désagréments en distrayant mon âme que pour chasser l'ennui
de ma chambre. Alors que je donne à ma santé le temps de se refaire, ou plutôt
que, sur l'avis d'autrui, je cherche à réparer-^'* le tort causé par ma passion du
travail, il ne m'est pas possible, pendant ce temps, de m'adonner à l'étude,
sauf en marchant. Je suis en effet tout à fait étranger aux travaux sédentaires
des appartements des femmes, étant incapable de rester presque toujours
assis, si ce n'est pour lire.

Je ne veux pas te cacher que, depuis que j'ai commencé à écrire cette lettre,
ma santé a pris assez et même beaucoup de mieux, de sorte que j'ai cessé de
me sentir profondément somnolent et léthargique: ou bien l'état créé par la
tension de l'esprit due au plaisir de la tâche m'a procuré une certaine détente,
ou bien la matière de la maladie est totalement épuisée ou dissoute. Pour le
reste, dans cette lettre écrite pour l'agrément, puisses-tu voir un peu de
sérieux, de sorte que tu profites de moments libres pour me coucher par écrit
quelque ordonnance sur mon régime, ou peut-être sur un changement de
régime. Sinon, je ferai bien des saluts à l'hellénisme, à vous, adeptes du grec,
et surtout à la philologie, puis je m'adonnerai à autre chose. Mais, crois-en
ma parole, si tu ne te soucies pas de ma santé, c'est aujourd'hui la première
et la dernière fois que je m'adresse à toi en grec. Au revoir.

Université de Montréal

Notes

1 . Voir le n" 102 de ce Catalogue, préparé par M. Gasnault, conservateur au Département des
Manuscrits, et Mme Vcrrin-Forrer, conservatrice au Département des Imprimés (Paris
1968).

2. Ernest Wickersheimer a consacré à Guillaume Cop (c. 1466-1532) une substantielle
notice biographique dans le Bulletin de la société française d'histoire de la médecine
(1913, XII, pp. 336-342). Cette notice est reprise en substance dans son Dictionnaire
biographique des médecins en France au Moyen-Age (Paris, Droz, 1935). Rappelons
ici brièvement que ce médecin humaniste originaire de Bale était lié d'amitié avec les
plus grandes figures de son époque, dont Lefèvre d'Etapes, Jean Lascaris et Jérôme
Aléandre (tous deux lui avaient enseigné le grec), Erasme, qu'il eut l'occasion de
soigner et qui lui dédiera son De Senectute. C'est d'ailleurs sans doute en vertu de cette
amitié que François F^ chargera Cop de faire venir Erasme en France en 1517 pour
diriger le collège projeté. A partir de I5I3, peut-être de 1512, il sera le médecin de Louis
XII et, ensuite, de François l^^ Les commentaires de la Faculté de médecine de

52 / Renaissance and Reformation

l'Université de Paris (publiés par E. Wickersheimer, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1915)
permettent de suivre sa trace dans cette institution, d'abord comme étudiant, puis
comme professeur. Guillaume Cop a publié des traductions, maintes fois rééditées,
d'Hippocrate, de Galien, et de Paul d'Egine.

3. Lignes 23-24 à la page 2 de la copie.

4. Emile Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique II, Maisonneuve et Larose, 1962, pp. 332-333
(Réimpression de l'édition de 1885).

5. Opera omnia G. Budaei I, p. 378, Bale 1557 (réimpression Gregg, Farnborough, 1966
et 1969).

6. Ibid., p. 251. Curieusement, trois semaines plus tard, le 21 février, Budé écrira à
Longueil: ". . . le mal incrusté en moi que je traîne pour une quatorzième année déjà
sans pouvoir m'en défaire. "(/èirf. p. 273)

7. Budé est moins précis dans une lettre à Nicolas de la Chesnaye en date du 5 juillet 1519:
"Rien ne m'est plus à coeur que de recouvrer la bonne santé que j'ai perdue il y a quatorze
ans et plus." (ibid. I, p. 265). De même, dans le De philologia, Budé dit avoir souffert
pendant "presque vingt-huit ans"(ibid., p. 95). Ce qui, compte tenu du presque, n'exclut
pas absolument l'année 1505. Il est encore plus vague dans le De asse — dont la préface
est datée du 15 mars 1514 — où il fait remonter le début de sa maladie à "plus de sept ans"
(ibid. II, p. 306). Restent deux références plus problématiques. D'abord, une lettre à Nicole
Bérault, datée du 25 mars 1511 dans \esEpistolaede 1520, où Budé écrit: "Voici maintenant
quatre ans que je livre un combat incertain contre un mal absolument terrible." (ibid. I, p.
260). Ensuite, dans la lettre à Tunstall du 19 mai 1517, il estime sa maladie "d'autant plus
pénible qu'elle est responsable des calomnies répandues depuis quinze ans aussi bien par
les médecins que par mon entourage." (ibid., I, p. 362). Dans ce dernier cas, la maladie
remonterait à 1503 et, dans l'autre, à 1507. Pour diverses raisons, toutefois, il me semble
légitime de se demander s'il n'y aurait pas eu erreur de typographie dans la date de la lettre
à Béreault. Notamment, sans compter qu'une date aussi tardive est contredite par tous les
autres documents, elle suppose que Budé a connu une crise qui, éclatée pendant la rédaction
ût^ Annotations aux Pandectes terminées en novembre 1508, durait toujours en mars 1511,
puisque Budé note dans cette lettre: "cette mauvaise santé ne m'a pour ainsi dire pas laissé
une heure depuis la parution de mon livre jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Malgré ces contradictions,
je tiens comme probable qu'il faille placer en 1505 le début de la maladie de Bubé et,
conséquemment,accepter de la même façon la date de 1512 pour la lettre à Guillaume Cop.

8. Opera Omnia I, p. 329 B.

9. Lignes 11-12, page 5 de la copie.

10. Opera Omnia I, pp. 402-405; 356-364; 406-409.

11. Ibid. IV, les deux pages suivant la colonne 1560.

12. Voir notamment les lettres à Tunstall et à Longueil mentionnées plus haut.

13. Voir H. Brabant: Erasme, humaniste dolent, Presses académiques européennes, 1971.
Cette étude est reprise en substance dans: "Erasme, ses rnaladies et ses médecins",
Colloquia Erasmiana Turonensis I, Paris, Vrin, 1971, pp. 539-568.

14. Librorum emacissimus, dit Budé dans la lettre à Tunstall (ibid. I, p. 362).

15. De philologia, dans Opera Omnia I, p. 35.

Renaissance et Réforme / 53

16. Henri Omont, "Notice sur les collections de manuscrits de Jean et Guillaume Budé",
Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire de Paris XII, 1885, pp. 100-113.

17. E. Legrand, op. cit., tome 11, pp. 332-333. La Thérapeutique de Galien avait été publiée
par Nicolas Vlastos à Venise en 1500. Il est intéressant de noter que la faculté de
médecine de Paris n'achètera les oeuvres de Galien qu'en 1526 et celles d'Hippocrate
qu'en 1527 (voir Ernest Wickersheimer, La médecine et les médecins en France à
l'époque de la Renaissance, Paris 1905, p. 42 (Slatkine Reprints, 1970).

18. Voir lettres à Thomas Linacre du 10 juillet 1517 {Opera omnia 1, pp. 248-250) et du 9
septembre 1518 (ibid., p. 250), à Erasme du 7 juillet 1516 (ibid., pp. 366-368) et à Lupset
du 31 juillet 1517 {The Complete Works of Thomas More, éd. E. Surtz et J. H. Hexter,
Yale Univ. Press, IV, pp. 5-14) et du printemps 1519 {Galeni Methodus Medendi, Paris
1519 r$ du feuillet 2).

19. Voir lettre du 31 juillet 1517 à Thomas Lupset citée dans la note précédente, p. 14.
Jean Ruel (1479-1537) est l'un des deux premiers titulaires nommés aux chaires de
médecine créées en 1505. Médecin de François l", Ruel sera nommé chanoine à
Notre-Dame de Paris vers la fin de sa vie. Henri Estienne publia de lui en 1516 une
traduction de Dioscoride souvent reprise. En 1536, Ruel donna chez Simon de Colines
son De natura stirpium dont le seizième siècle a connu quatre réimpressions.

20. Il faut toutefois signaler un passage d'une lettre à Erasme en date du 14 décembre 1522
{Opera Omnia I, p. 378). Venant d'être nommé Maître des Requêtes, Budé écrit: "Mais je
n'ai pu paraître dans cette dignité à cause d'un mal nouveau-né, rejeton de cette ancienne
maladie si familière. Cette année, une humeur plus acre et mélangée de bile s'est mise à
descendre aux intestins en y provoquant des coliques accompagnées de vomissements
violents, si bien que personne n'ose me promettre la moindre prolongation de ma vie". Dans
une autre lettre à Erasme du début de 1523 (ibid., p. 379), Budé rappelle cette maladie, qu'il
distingue encore explicitement de son mal habituel: "C'est de la tête jadis, de l'intestin
récemment et de partout où loge la vie que je souffre à en défaillir."

21. Il faut considérer que la maladie de Budé a effectivement duré plus de vingt ans,
puisque, commencée en 1505, elle a connu une de ses pires manifestations lors de la
préparation des Commentaires terminés en 1529. Cette crise, particulièrement grave, a
vraisemblablement pu être la dernière. Budé avait alors 61 ans.

22. "Tousser bruyamment" repose sur une interprétation de "tumultuose" dans
l'expression "jugulum tumultuose appetens" par laquelle Louis Le Roy qualifie la
maladie. Je crois que cette interprétation ne fait pas de doute. Outre que "avec bruit"
est le sens premier de "tumultuose," il est pratiquement impossible d'expliquer les tapes
dans le dos ("humeros feriendo") dont il sera question plus loin si Budé ne toussait pas.
Je dois toutefois noter que, à ma connaissance, ceux qui ont auparavant examiné ce
passage ne l'ont pas compris ainsi. Eugène de Budé {Vie de Guillaume Budé, Paris
1884, p. 23), Louis Delaruelle {Guillaume Budé. les origines, les débuts, les idées
maîtresses, Paris 1907, p. 84), David O. Me Neil {Guillaume Budé and Humanism,
Genève 1975, p. 7) et L.F. Flutre (" L'étrange maladie de Guillaume Budé", Aesculape,
janvier 1938, pp. 3-6), ne parlent que d'un mal de gorge, pas de toux. McNeil estime
que les tapes dans le dos avaient comme but d'amener Budé à se retourner pendant son
sommeil pour éviter la suffocation, ce qui semble peu vraisemblable.

23. Faut-il ajouter foi à ce détail? Que la Vita ait été publiée l'année même de la mort de
Budé et, en plus, soit dédiée à Guillaume Poyet, intime de Budé, rend difficile une

54 / Renaissance and Reformation

invention susceptible d'être aussitôt démentie. Eugène de Budé (op. cit, p. 24) rapporte
que la cautérisation du dessus de la tête était pratiquée pour certaines maladies.

24. La Vita Budaei de Le Roy figure au début du tome 1 des Opera Omnia. Le passage cité
commence au bas de la deuxième page du feuillet EE4.

25. Voir note 21.

26. Lettre à G. de Brie, 2 sept. 1521 {Opera Omnia I, p. 413)

27. 15 octobre 1518, Opera Omnia I, p. 407. On notera avec intérêt que, en juin 1500, Erasme
relate à Lord Mountjoy avoir écrit ses premiers adages pendant une maladie, "en
trompant pendant ce temps mon médecin, qui me menaçait d'un châtiment si je touchais
seulement à un livre." {La correspondance d'Erasme 1, trad. Marie Delcourt, Bruxelles
1%7, p. 264). Ce médecin était précisément Guillaume Cop.

28. Lettre à Tunstall du 10 juin 1517. Opera Omnia 1, p. 358.

29. Lettre-préface aux Annotations., feuillet a2, r$.

30. Ibid., feuillet a3, v$.

31. Opera Omnia IV, page suivant la col. 1560.

32. Voir la lettre à son frère Louis déjà mentionnée.

33. Lettre écrite à Pierrelatte, le 22 avril 1519, Opera Omnia I, p. 409.

34. (Ibid. I, p. 95: "... quae mihi annos fere duodetriginta infestior fuit."

35. "Dans les grandes chaleurs de juillet, qui furent cette année-là les plus extrêmes de
mémoire d'homme, le Roi s'était retiré sur la côte de Normandie pour fuir la chaleur
et Budé, attaché à Poyet, l'avait suivi par ce même ciel si hostile. Soit à cause du vice
de l'air, soit à cause de l'excès de chaleur qui brillait alors tout, soit à cause de la
faiblesse due à un âge avancé, il contracta une fièvre intense et continue dont il ne se
remit pas. Malgré toutes leurs assurances et leurs promesses de guérison, les médecins
ne purent jamais le convaincre que cette maladie n'allait pas mettre un terme à sa vie."
(Louis Le Roy, op. cit., FF4 v$). Le dernier détail entre en contradiction, au moins
apparente, avec ce que Budé écrit à Poyet le 8 aoiit pour prendre congé: "Je rejoindrai
ta suite (...) dès que ma santé me le permettra. D'un même coup, en effet, j'ai confiance
que, à moi, ma santé d'hier, à toi, ma personne seront rendues." (Lettre inédite, B.N.
Mss, nov. acq. françaises 22338, F. 12).

36. Dès les premiers textes que nous avons de Budé (en 1503, dans la lettre à Germain de
Ganay, Opera Omnia I p. 509, et dans la lettre à Pierre de Courthardy, ibid., p. 484),
le désavantage d'avoir étudié seul est mis en relief. Budé y reviendra sans cesse, jusqu'à
la postface aux Commentaires inclusivement.

37. Lettre à Longueuil du 15 oct. 1518 {Opera Omnia I, p. 407).

38. Il pourrait être tentant de comprendre comme psychosomatique la maladie de Budé.
Un collègue longtemps professeur de pathologie le suggère. La sensibilité de Budé à
l'opinion qu'on se fait de lui peut nourrir cette hypothèse. Rappelons, parmi tant
d'autres, ce passage d'une lettre du 21 avril 1527 à Erasme: "... depuis huit mois déjà
il me pèse de secouer mes papiers (les brouillons des Commentaires) déjà couverts de
poussière, même si je m'étais lancé dans ce travail avec détermination. Que ne m'est-il
possible de les abandonner sans craindre le déshonneur!" (Opera omnia 1, p. 381). La
maladie présente toujours une justification étanche. Mais sans doute est-il sage

Renaissance et Réforme / 55

d'écouter les appels à la prudence de Léon-E. Halkin dans sa Psychohistoire et critique
historique: le cas d'Erasme (Université de Liège. 1984.).

39. Le sentiment qu'il était impossible de connaître la vérité amenait les adeptes du
scepticisme à suspendre leur jugement. Pyrrhon d'Elis (c. 360-275), dont on connaît
la pensée seulement par ses disciples, a été le principal théoricien de cette école.

40. Mot cité par Plutarque (2.12e), qui pour en expliquer le sens rappelle les mots de Thétis
à Achille: "Mon enfant, jusques à quand resteras-tu à gémir et à t'affliger, à te ronger
le coeur?" (//. 24, 128-129). Une scholie à ce passage de Vllliade commente: "Pythagore
exhorte à ne pas se ronger le coeur, c'est-à-dire à vivre sans chagrin et sans trouble."

41. Cette comparaison avec les compétitions du stade — autre lieu commun chez Budé —
sera particulièrement développée dans la lettre à Longueil du 15 octobre 1518 {Opera
Omnia I, p. 406 ss.).

42. Adrastée avait d'abord été une épithète de Némésis, personnification de la vengeance
divine qui frappait l'homme oublieux des limites propres à sa condition. L'exemple le
plus célèbre est celui d 'Agamemnon.

43. Budé définit la philologie comme suit: "... et s'appelle philologie: c'est-à-dire, désir
et amour des bonnes lettres, et fervente inclination à l'estude des sciences, qui se
nomment libérales, pour ce qu'elles requièrent l'homme de franche condition et estime,
hors de servitude, cupidité, et ambition." {Institution du Prince, Arrivour 1547.
Réimpression Gregg, Farnborough, 1966).

44. Plainte qui reviendra souvent. Budé rappellera à plusieurs reprises ses espoirs déçus
quand il cherchera à obtenir des avantages du roi. Le plus bel exemple figure dans la
lettre du 14 septembre 1521 à Jean Lascaris, dans laquelle Budé raconte comment il a
été frustré d'une pension promise par François 1^"^ (cf. Opera Omnia I, p. 424 s.).

45. Les poèmes homériques présentent Paeon comme un dieu guérisseur. Toutefois, par la
suite, le nom apparaîtra en général comme simple éphitète d'Apollon.

46. Parmi les douze travaux d'Héraclès figure sa victoire sur l'Hydre des marais de Lerne,
en Argolide. lolaos, qui était son cocher, l'assista dans cette entreprise.

47. Il est difficile de saisir la pensée de Budé, mais il s'agit très probablement d'une
référence à l'influence des astres sur les maladies. Très répandues, ces croyances ont
même retenu l'attention d'un médecin aussi rationaliste que Jean Fernel (cf. Léon
Figard, Un médecin philosophe au XVIe siècle, Paris 1903, Slatkine Reprints, Genève
1970). L'adjectif grec ôiijiexfiç a comme sens étymologique "tombé de Zeus". Budé
pourrait donc vouloir dire "envoyé par Dieu". Mais c'est très improbable. Dès l'époque
homérique, ôiijiexfiç était employé dans un sens purement matériel, essentiellement au
sujet de l'eau ou de la lumière qui tombent du ciel.

48. Dans une lettre à Jacques Wimpfeling en date du 21 septembre 1514, Erasme appellera
justement Cop "l'Hippocrate de notre temps" {La correspondance d'Erasme II, traduite
par M. A. Nauwelaerts, Bruxelles 1974, p. 31).

49. Le texte donne ptpPiov, mot incompréhensible. L'hypothèse la plus satisfaisante à
laquelle j'arrive est de lire ôîopiov. Le mot serait alors un néologisme (ils sont
fréquents chez Budé) faisant pendant à Ôio0avf)ç {Od. 12.22). Puisque le mot explique
jia>^ivavôpov, cette hypothèse est du moins satisfaisante pour le sens.

56 / Renaissance and Reformation

50. Le mot n'a évidemment pas encore le sens qu'il prendra avec Diderot. Il s'agit ici
essentiellement de la connaissance de l'Antiquité. Voir Marcel François,
"Encyclopédie", Renaissance Quarterly XXIII, 1970, pp. 276-277.

51. Littéralement: "un fouetteur des Soloikoi" (du nom de la ville de Soloi en Cilicie), dont
le mauvais parler est à l'origine du mot solécisme.

52. L'habitude qu'avait Budé de se laisser entraîner par son sujet a donné au De asse
"quatre fois la taille prévue" {Opera Omnia II, p. 106). De même, dans les Commen-
taires, "l'enchaînement continuel des idées allongeait la toile" (postface aux Commen-
taires, Opera Omnia IV, page suivant la col. 1560). On trouve des remarques analogues
dans \t?, Anotations (v.g. Opera Omnia III, p. 217 et 218).

53. Les Grecs personnifiaient la Santé dont ils faisaient une déesse.

54. Ce passage comporte manifestement une lacune. Le signe + se trouve dans le texte.

Dissolution and the Making of the English
Literary Canon: The Catalogues of
Leland and Bale

TREVOR ROSS

1 he formation of literary canons involves acts of both valuation and
preservation. This much was understood in the medieval period, by scholars
and clerics who maintained an order of auctoritas by continually reproduc-
ing and providing commentaries on the works of the dead, and by poets like
Chaucer and Skelton who, in their self-presentations, hoped to create condi-
tions in England favourable to authorship and to their own survival. The
existence of written works in a manuscript period was nonetheless
precarious. All authors were at the mercy of scribes, who, like Chaucer's
"Adam Scrivein," were notorious for their textual "negligence and rape."
Worse yet, all writings were vulnerable to the effects of random destruction:
the accidents of survival, the wages of state and religious censorship, and
the violent eruptions of iconoclasm and mass plundering of library holdings.
Most early historians and scholars responded to this destruction with a
resignation that may seem to us galling: Alcuin saw the Viking raid on
Lindisfarne and its great library in 793 as a sign of God's displeasure with
a purportedly corrupt Northumbrian people.^ Modern canon-formation ar-
guably begins with the refusal of such resignation, and with the first sys-
tematic efforts to bring neglected writings under the care and stewardship of
an established authority or institution. It begins, that is, with the efforts of
those who take it upon themselves to ensure the adequate reception of
writings that are neither their own nor obviously essential to a productive
cultural economy. In a pre-modern or "rhetorical" culture, writings are
valued for a variety of instrumental or occasional functions. Canon-makers
in a rhetorical culture, such as the medieval clerics and poets, are usually
concerned to perpetuate past traditions in order to safeguard their own
vocations and beliefs, to perpetuate an auctorial order, or to call attention to

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 1 (1991) 57a

57b / Renaissance and Reformation

poetry's utility as a vehicle of fame and cultural memory: they canonize the
literary past in order to ensure further production. In a modem or "objec-
tivist" culture, in contrast, writings are prized for their "intrinsic" value and
are not felt to perform any specific utilitarian function in society. Modern
canon-formation is therefore veered toward reception, and while modern
critics and teachers have a professional interest in reproducing the literature
of the past, their acts of preservation are not meant to benefit anyone in
particular, other than future readers or scholars.^

Modern canon-formation, by this definition, is inaugurated in England at
the moment of most intense destruction, the Dissolution of the Monasteries
in the first decades of the Reformation. The unlikely pioneers in this case were
the antiquaries John Leland and John Bale, who, in the massive bio-bibliog-
raphical catalogues they compiled in the 1540s and 1550s, produced the first
full-scale objectif ications of the canon of British letters. I say "unlikely,"
because both Leland and Bale were hardly modems, and were very much
concerned to argue for the instrumental value of the literature of the past.
Sadly for them and for leaming in England, the destruction was of such a scale
that it simply overwhelmed their arguments, as well as the antiquarians
themselves. Bale wrote that he was moved to tears at the sight of the
destruction: "thys is highly to be lamented, of all them that hath a naturall
loue to their contrey. ... That in turnynge ouer of ye superstycyouse
monasteryes, so lytle respecte was had to theyr lybraryes for the sauegarde
of those noble & precyouse monumentes."^ And Leland, who went mad
before he could complete his work, lamented how English books were being
stolen and their glory unjustly appropriated by foreign scholars: "the Germans
perceiving our desidiousness and negligence, do send daily young scholars
hither, that spoileth them, and cutteth them out of libraries, returning home
and putting them abroad as monuments of their own country."*

The catalogues that these antiquaries eventually assembled are haunted by
the Dissolution. One of the main functions of these works, and the source of
their enduring value for later bibliographers, is to provide a documentary
record of as many dispersed items as possible, which explains the antiquaries'
overriding concern both for accuracy and comprehensiveness.^ But the Dis-
solution also haunts these catalogues as a noticeable absence: nowhere in

Dissolution and the Making of the English
Literary Canon: The Catalogues of
Leland and Bale

TREVOR ROSS

.odern canon-formation, by this definition, is inaugurated in England at
the moment of most intense destruction, the Dissolution of the Monasteries
in the first decades of the Reformation. The unlikely pioneers in this case
were the antiquaries John Leland and John Bale, who, in the massive
bio-bibliographical catalogues they compiled in the 1540s and 1550s,
produced the first full-scale objectifications of the canon of British letters. I
say "unlikely," because both Leland and Bale were hardly moderns, and
were very much concerned to argue for the instrumental value of the
literature of the past. Sadly for them and for learning in England, the
destruction was of such a scale that it simply overwhelmed their arguments,
as well as the antiquarians themselves. Bale wrote that he was moved to tears
at the sight of the destruction: "thy s is highly to be lamented, of all them that
hath a naturall loue to their contrey. ... That in turnynge ouer of ye super-
stycyouse monasteryes, so lytle respecte was had to theyr lybraryes for the
sauegarde of those noble & precyouse monumentes."^ And Leland, who
went mad before he could complete his work, lamented how English books
were being stolen and their glory unjustly appropriated by foreign scholars:
"the Germans perceiving our desidiousness and negligence, do send daily
young scholars hither, that spoileth them, and cutteth them out of libraries,
returning home and putting them abroad as monuments of their own
country.'"*

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 1 (1991) 57

58 / Renaissance and Reformation

these works do Leland and Bale make statements, like those I have just
quoted, declaring their regret over the destruction that followed in the wake
of the suppression of the abbeys. The above statements, and others like them,
appear in the antiquaries' private letters, or in Bale's preface to his edition of
Leland's New Year's address of 1546/7 to Henry VIII. ^ These catalogues
trace a map of dispersal, as Leland and Bale try to keep track of the many rare
items they came accross during their researches, but the causes of this
dispersal are not discussed. The antiquaries' compelling silence on this matter
was for them a difficult trade-off, for the established authority to whom they
addressed their appeal was the very same authority, the Tudor Court, that had
initiated the Dissolution in the mid- 1530s. ^ It was also the very same authority
that had for a time enlisted Bale as an anti-clerical propagandist, and that had
granted Leland his famous commission "to make a search after England's
antiquities."^ The Court, through its tightly organized network of patronage,
exercised full control over the national culture. There was no other possible
authority the antiquaries could turn to.

Leland and Bale both acknowledged that they were working within a long
tradition of medieval cataloguers dating back to St. Jerome.^ Their immediate
inspiration was the work of the Continental bibliographers Johannes Trithemius
and Conrad Gesner, whose exhaustive indexes of classical and patristic auctores
proved both exceptionally valuable and widely popular within Europe's bur-
geoning print culture.'^ The English antiquaries openly borrowed the format of
Trithemius' s Liber de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis (1494) as the model for the
entries in their catalogues: an annotated list of works prefaced by a brief life of
the author. But what Leland and Bale ultimately produced were no mere
booklists. Bale's catalogues, the 1548 Summarium and the much-expanded
second edition, the Catalogus of 1557-59, just as much as Leland's (assembled
in the 1530s and early 1540s, and referred to extensively by Bale, but not
published until 1709,) differed from earlier bibliographies in that the urgency of
the situation, the possible loss of England's literary heritage, impelled the
antiquaries to bolster the aura of their canons with a number of imperialistic and
religious myths. ^^ Refurbishing the old writings through such allegorizing
commentary, they hoped, would signal the ideological necessity of preserving
the British literary canon in its entirety, as a harmonious whole. The dispersal
of the libraries was indication enough that, outside the cloisters, the reasons for
having a learned tradition were not self-evident. What they come up with, then,
are polemics for British letters, bibliographies animated by the sense that the
writings they record may already be lost. The desperate tone of the polemics is
a reflection of the marginal status of antiquarianism in a rhetorical culture, where

Renaissance et Réforme / 59

the value of any activity involving literary texts is measured in terms of its
utility in the present; saving the old books merely for the sake of learning
would not have seemed to Leland and Bale a very persuasive argument. More
specifically, the polemics are of interest because the context of the Dissolution
has rendered acute the task of resolving the central problem in all canon-for-
mation, that of defining how it is the writings of the distant past retain their
value in change. In remaining silent on the Dissolution, on the troubling fact
that the event involved the deliberate and authorized actions of their contem-
poraries in rejecting their past, the antiquaries suppress the temporality of
their own endeavours. As a consequence, their polemical claims for the
productive value of the endangered writings are uttered without any sure sense
of an economy wherein such claims might be considered meaningful. The
canons they therefore construct are harmonious, expansive, and almost utterly
without modernity.

Leland and Bale mythologize their nation's literary history because they
are unwilling to confront directly the politics of Dissolution. Both antiquaries
elsewhere pledge their support for Henry's reformist policies. In a late
unpublished tract, the Antiphilarchia, Leland affirms his undying loyalty to
the king, and even credits him with inaugurating antiquarian research into the
"independent" origins of the English Church. Bale, one of the Reformation's
most prominent controversialists, loudly applauded "the moste lawfull
ouerthrow of the sodometrouse Abbeyes and Fryeryes." "Fyrst," he ex-
plained, "for so much as they were the professed souldyours of Antichrist, &
next to that, for so muche as they were moste execrable lyuers [sic]. For these
causes, I must confesse them most iustly suppressed."^^ Yet Bale also made
clear his view that the king's commissioners had been reckless in carrying
out the suppression: "would I haue wyshed ... that the profytable corne had
not so unaduysedly and ungodly peryshed wyth the unprofytable chaffe, nor
the wholsome herbes with the unwholsome wedes."^^

Leland was rather more reluctant than Bale to offer criticisms of the
suppression, perhaps because, unlike Bale, he was not simply committed to
the goal of Reformation but felt a strong personal allegiance to Henry VIII.
Evidence suggests that Leland acted as Henry's scout in acquiring selected
items for the Royal Library. *"* Leland also voiced admiration for the New
Learning that had come to be associated with the king.^^ But the ascendancy
of the New Learning created a situation where the universities did not
discourage the spoliation of medieval documents. As Bale noted, the schools
were "not all clere in this detestable fact."^^ In a letter dated 12 September
1535, Cromwell's most ruthless henchman, Richard Layton, proudly reports

60 / Renaissance and Reformation

that he had seen the works of Duns Scotus "banished" from Oxford, the
"leaves of Dun" left to blow in the wind or used as "blawnsherres" (scare-
sheets) to frighten away the deer.^^ For Leland, torn between his love of
antiquities and his devotion to his master and all that he represented, it was
an impossible situation. James P. Carley speculates that Leland "was unable
to get a perspective on his conflicting loyalties or to find a philosophy which
might reconcile the two."^^ Whatever the case, Leland refused to assign blame
to any of his countrymen or to link the destruction to the policy of Dissolution.

The antiquaries are equally ambivalent about iconoclasm, the impetus for
much of the destruction. Bale rightly notes that a good part of the wastage was
due to the avarice of the nobility, who, having taken possession of the suppressed
houses, abused their contents or sold them off for profit. These opportunistic
lords, says Bale, "reserued of those lybrarye bokes, some to seme theyr lakes,
some to secure theyr candelstyckes, & some to rubbe their bootes. Some they
solde to the grossers and sope sellers, & some they sent ouer see to ye
bokebynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shyppes fuU."^^ But Bale
also admits that some of the violence may be attributed to "men godly mynded,"
who, in their iconoclastic zeal, laid waste indiscriminately to all they could get
their hands on in the abbeys.^^ His "declaracyons" appended to Leland's "New
Year's Gift" are meant in part as a plea to the English not to emulate the harmful
"fury or frantycke madnesse of the Anabaptistes" and other fanatical groups.^'
Yet Bale himself is impassioned in his condemnation of Catholic "idolatry" and
image-making, and seems quite happy to allow the mutilation of books he
dislikes: "Of the byshop of Romes lawes, decrees[,] decretals, extrauagantes,
Clementines and other suche dregges of the deuyll, yea of Heytesburyes sophys-
mes, Porphyryes uniuersals, Aristotles olde logy ekes and Dunses dyuy nyte, wy th
other lowly legerdemaynes, and frutes of the bottomlesses pytte, had leaped out
of our libraries, and so become couerynges for bokes comminge from the foren
nacyons, we might wele haue ben therwith contented."^^ Leland, likewise, is
known to have defaced a tablet in York Minster that purportedly identified an
English king as having taken "this kingdom of the Pope by tribute to hold of the
Church of Rome."^^

Presumably Leland and Bale have no difficulty with the notion of iconoclasm
because they share the Protestant belief in the separation of word and image. But
that separation is not always clear-cut. Many books, such as service-books, were
often targets of the violence not for any images they may have contained but for
the doctrines they expressed. In addition, an increasing number of Protestant
authors were discovering the utility of illuminating their texts with woodcuts and
engravings: the image, it was believed, was not idolatrous if it served the printed

Renaissance et Réforme / 61

word.^"^ The first edition of Bale's catalogue contains laudatory woodcuts of
the author and of Wyclif, the hero of Bale's narrative. Bale's inclusion of
these woodcuts anticipates the work of later Protestant polemicists who turn
this iconographie canon-making into a rather sumptuous art. Bale himself is
among the Reformation worthies included in one of the most popular of these
portrait galleries, Henry Holland's Heroologia (1620).

Given their ambivalence toward the political, doctrinal and emotional
dimensions of Dissolution, Leland and Bale are hard-pressed to come up with
convincing arguments for preserving the old books. Both make conventional
appeals to patriotic sentiment by asserting that their antiquarian efforts will
add "honour to this realm. "^^ Yet their patriotism is qualified by the
knowledge that the dispersal of England's literary heritage has seriously
undermined their nation's reputation among Europe's intellectual élites. Bale
wonders aloud how badly it looks upon England "to haue it noysed abroade,
that we are despysers of lernynge."^^ An undeclared function of their
catalogues — written in Latin for a European audience, and containing no
mention of the Dissolution — is to divert foreign attention away from the
destruction. Such propaganda, Leland tells Henry, may help "the old glory of
your renoumed Britaine to reflorish through the worlde."^^

However effective this attempt at damage control may be within the interna-
tional community, it does not respond to the more pressing need to counter the
indifference and outright hostility for letters still-prevalent at home. Though
Leland and Bale disagree over how best to defend individual authors, their
arguments on behalf of the literary tradition as a whole rely on three related sets
of allegorizing myths: myths of cultural origins, myths of empire, and myths
about the continuity of Protestant thought in England. Concern over their nation's
low reputation in the world may underlie the antiquaries' willingness to embrace
the first set of myths, those having to do with Britain's pre-history. Leland's
catalogue opens with several entries describing the civilizing influence of bards
and druids, while both editions of Bale's work contain an elaborate fiction about
Britain's colonization, complete with a epic genealogy that extends from Adam
and Seth, to Samothes Gigas (Homer's brother, no less) and "Bardus," the bringer
of poetry and song, to the Trojan Brutus, from whose name was derived
"Britain."^^ These imaginative accounts of England's origins are a rejoinder to
similar propaganda made on behalf of other nations, such as a number of French
claims that had declared the erudition of Gallic bards superior even to Roman
leaming.^*^

The myth-making is equally a holdover from an earlier period when the
Tudor monarchy had sought to strengthen his shaky claim to the throne by

62 / Renaissance and Reformation

declaring direct descent from Arthur and other semi-legendary figures of the
English past. By linking this royal genealogy to England's literary tradition,
the antiquaries are clearly hoping to appeal to Tudor anxieties, and to save
the tradition by upholding the legitimizing power of antiquities. In the same
spirit, the antiquaries promise that their catalogues will establish England's
reputation as an imperial power, which is the common theme of their second
set of myths. The grandeur of the antiquaries' imperial vision is reflected in
the size of their catalogues. Bale, in his attempt to include every figure who
could conceivably have some connection with British letters, seems to have
lost sight of the original aim of preservation, with the resuh that the final,
bloated version of his catalogue contains some 1400 entries, many of which,
like those for Merlin and Pope Joan, have little to do with saving old
manuscripts and much to do with portraying England as an elect nation. With
a little under 600 entries, Leland's catalogue is shorter yet no less far-reach-
ing, as Leland expends a good deal of energy trying to refute other nations'
claims on writers, many of them legendary, who he believes are quite properly
British. His catalogue of writers was originally intended as the first part of a
much larger and systematic survey of Britain's land, nobihty and history, a
project whose ideological tenor Leland was only happy to make clear: just as
Charlemagne had among his treasures silver engravings of Rome and Con-
stantinople, Leland tells his master, "so shall your Maiestie haue thys your
worlde and impery of Englande so sett fourthe in a quadrate table of silver. "^^
The third set of myths represents the most powerful argument for preser-
vation the antiquaries have to offer, and the point of most profound disagree-
ment between the two. Both assert that their research is intended to provide
evidence of the persistence of reformist thought and activity in England. The
old writings are worth preserving, they maintain, because some long-con-
cealed verities of primhive Christianity may yet be found among them. Says
Bale to his patrons, "ye might parauenture se many unknowne wonders. "-^^
Leland, likewise, assures King Henry that his efforts will bring "full manye
thynges to lyght, as concernynge the usurped autoryte of the Byshopp of
Rome and hys complyces, to the manyfest and uyolent derogacyon of kyngely
dygnylQ."^^ The Antiphilarchia notwithstanding, however, Leland's commit-
ment to reformist ideals is not as intense as Bale's, and seems less a reflection
of deep religious convictions than an extension of his loyalty to Henry. Bale
even expressed dismay at how Leland had treated many works in his catalogue
"with no discrimination between doctrines or testing of spirits, and the fact
that evil things are taken as holy."^^

Renaissance et Réforme / 63

In contrast to Leland, Bale believed strongly in the need to recover and
publicize suppressed works of radical theology, though his first priority in his
catalogue is to legitimize the Reformation by retracing England's history so as
to confirm its unique destiny as a continuator of the early Church.^"^ Bale is among
the first English exponents of a powerful Protestant eschatology that rejects the
Augustinian separation of divine from worldly existence, and sees instead the
possibility of human history coinciding at some future time with the re-emer-
gence of a true Christianity. J. G. A. Pocock has described some of the features
of this apocalypticism and has noted how it often posits a historical line of
divinely-inspired authors: "God has pronounced, through the mouths of
prophets, certain words in time; the occasions of these pronouncements, together
with other happenings to which they refer, constitute a series of divine acts in
past time; we believe that these acts were performed by believing the authors and
the words they have relayed to us. ... All is logos, and logos is a system of
communications through time."^^ The goal Bale sets for himself in his catalogue
is to identify this logos from among all the writings ever produced in England,
and to write the narrative of its history: "what continuaunce, what darkeninges,
what decayes, what falle, and what rayse againe."!!-^^

The antiquaries' ideological differences translate into two distinct ap-
proaches to canon-making. Where Leland erects a pantheon to honour king
and empire. Bale desires the enabling continuities of a tradition. And where
Leland is apt to lavish praise indiscriminately. Bale styles himself a discerning
judge of what he calls England's "elected heritage. "-^^ Yet both antiquaries
are confronted with the same problem, one that must inevitably be considered
in any attempt to claim for the texts of the past the power to transcend their
historical origins and to survive the test of time. For Leland and Bale, this
problem is not simply one of defending the enduring value of the old books
in the face of their widespread destruction. It is equally a problem of
representing this living value, the timeless modernity of literary works, while
at the same time relating each of these works to a particular historical context,
to the occasions of their pronouncements, and to the life and times of the
author. In essence, the problem is one of reconciling literary history, with its
emphasis on change and historical specificity, with the anti-historicism of
canon-formation.^^ This dialectic of permanence and change is obscured
somewhat by the medieval form of the biographical catalogue, which recog-
nizes important individual accomplishments without necessarily situating
these in a historical narrative. The antiquaries, for reasons that have to do with
their divergent personal motives for preserving the old books, are nonetheless
concerned to identify patterns of change in their catalogues, whether this

64 / Renaissance and Reformation

change involves the concept of human agency, the use of periodization, or a
narrative of decline and rebirth. Yet, in a rhetorical culture, to call attention
to historical change in this way cannot but heighten the sense that the books
belong to the past and are best forgotten. It becomes incumbent on the
antiquaries to suggest how these writings retain value in altered circumstan-
ces, including the circumstances of Dissolution, the one context Leland and
Bale feel impelled to suppress in their narratives.

It has been argued that Leland's interest in antiquities predates the Dissolu-
tion, and develops out of his early acquaintance with Continental humanist
scholars.^*^ Certainly Leland has absorbed the codes of humanist polemic and
rhetorical culture by the time he sets about defending his nation's canonical
literature. In the often quoted opening to his "New Year's Gift," Leland
informs Henry that he is in the midst of fulfilling his commission to deliver
"the monumentes of auncyent wryters ... out of deadly darkenesse to lyuelye
lyght.'"^ Light, for Leland as for all humanists, signifies eloquence. His task,
as he sees it, is to enliven England's sense of its own past by rescuing its letters
and chronicles from the "darkness" of medieval expression. The lives of
English kings and poets, he maintains, have been "hitherto sore obscured,
bothe for lacke of empryntynge of such workes as laye secretely in comers. . . .
And also because men of eloquence hath not enterprised, to set them fourth
in a floryshynge style. '"^^ Leland's idealization of eloquence suggests how
much closer in spirit his catalogue is to Petrarch's biographies of famous men
than to the booklists of St. Jerome. The bibliographical import of Leland's
catalogue is secondary to the Petrarchan goal of overcoming contemporary
ignorance of the glories and personages of the distant past. As Leland suggests
at the end of his defense of King Arthur, the triumph of antiquarianism will
come when "at lengthe (those same most thicke mistie cloudes in deede of
ignorance beeing shaken off, & vtterly dashed aside) the light of British
Antiquitie with displayed beames farre and wide shall shine forth. "'^-

Leland's use of these luminary metaphors differs in one respect from
Petrarch's. The latter's valorization of a radiant eloquence versus a medieval
obscurity corresponded to a deliberate periodization of history, a symmetry
of illustrious ancients and barbarous moderns."*^ Such periodization is unhelp-
ful to Leland, as he is trying to exalt not the works of the ancients, but those
of the very moderns whose inelegant style he maligns. Leland nonetheless
finds the codes of renaissance light and medieval dark appealing for the
clarity, the styles of certainty, they offer, even if their use entails periodizing
away a large chunk of recent English literary history. His researches, he tells
Henry, will "open this wyndow, that the lyght shal be seane, so long, ye is to

Renaissance et Réforme / 65

say, by ye space of a whole thousand yeares stopped up.'"^ Leland's heavy
reliance on such discriminatory language indicates the degree to which he is
steeped in rhetorical culture and, as well, the degree to which such thinking
cannot help him to deal seriously with historical change and contingency.
Leland's florid rhetoric suggests that his evaluative certainties are largely
emotional.'*'^ This raises the question of what, if anything, does Leland find
of value in the old writings. In his "New Year's Gift," Leland writes as though
the antiquities themselves were not so important as the general project of
antiquarianism. Leland's self-service is perhaps understandable, his "Gift"
being a progress report to the king in which Leland is expected to do little
more than to outline his research and to say how his efforts will add to the
king's majesty. Yet it remains unclear whether Leland's interest in antiquities
involves anything other than emotion.

Leland's belief that the writings of the English past constitute enduring
monuments of learning stems from his fervent patriotism but equally from a
concern his own poetry, which he wrote throughout his career. Leland's love of
antiquities carries with it a high emotional investment, as he must prove their
lastingness to confirm the immortalizing power of his own verse. Leland's
self-service in this respect is no worse than that of earlier poets, though Bale says
he found his colleague's quest for authorial self-determination regrettable: "I
muche do feare it that he was vaynegloryouse, and that he had a poetycall wytt,
whyche I lament, for I iudge it one of the chefest thynges that caused hym to fall
besydes hys ryghte dyscernynges.'"*^ Leland's personal stake in sustaining the
mythology of authorial fame determines in large measure the nature of his canon,
a Pamassus founded on the self-authorizing and secular agency of the scholar-
poet; it is, in other words, a canon founded on the conflicting principles of
inclus iveness and revisionism. Leland's canon is meant to be all-encompassing
in its listing of all identifiably British bookmen, but its operative mythology is
that of the Petrarchan laureate whose self-determination and modernity rest on
his ability to displace the literary achievements of the recent past. Leland has
therefore to show how his canon retains its integrity and value even as the writers
he esteems continually strive to surpass their precursors. Perhaps more troubling,
any Pamassus, no matter how expansive, must appear to remain meaningful in
changing times, or else it will seem a foolish and anachronistic pretension.
Thomas M. Greene has described this phenomenon and has suggested that those
texts which do appear to last without seeming too dated are those which
incorporate an idea of historicity: "to dramatize in art a survival of the past into
an altered present, would seem to provide a text with a certain resilience in
confronting its own survival.'"^^ It is this balance, between affirming the moder-

66 / Renaissance and Reformation

nity of literature and insisting on its historicity, which Leland must achieve
if his canon-making is to be at all credible.

It is not an easy balance to sustain. A devotee of Chaucer, Leland includes in
his entry on the poet three of his own verse compositions, the second of which
compares Chaucer to Homer and Virgil yet which states the English poet could
not achieve true greatness because he happened not to live in an age as fortuitous
to learning as the classical period.'^^ In what, then, does the value of Chaucer's
work consist? Leland hesitates in specifying that value. He repeats the com-
monplace that Chaucer "refined" the vernacular, but for Leland this accomplish-
ment is only important in a historical sense, and does not attest to Chaucer's
enduring value as a poet. Leland subscribes to a notion of a "progress of letters,"
and believes the standard for poetic excellence in the vernacular rests no longer
with Chaucer but with Wyatt, whom Leland, in an eulogy on the poet, calls "the
stream, light and lightning of eloquence.'"*^ Leland goes on to compare Chaucer
to the classical poets, a canon whose sempitemal authority is incontestable and
that therefore offers an example of past values and meanings surviving in change.
Leland thinks several of Chaucer ' s compositions are likely to endure, being equal
in merit to the best of the Latins.^^ But the assertion fails to persuade because
Leland has not specified what is of instrumental or, for that matter, intrinsic value
in Chaucer's writings, what it is about those writings that will allow them to
survive now that a later generation of authors has surpassed the medieval poet's
verbal achievement. Chaucer's high standing in the English canon seems unac-
countable, but Leland cannot afford to deny the poet his rank or his permanence.
The difficulty Leland has created for himself is one of reconciling a desire for a
harmonious, fully inclusive and imperishable canon of British letters, with an
equally compelling need for evaluative certainty, for prescribing meaningful
criteria by which to judge formal and qualitative differences between works, and
for persuading his patrons of the worth and utility of his canon as a whole.

In an attempt to reconcile these divergent aims, Leland has recourse to one
final rhetorical construct, the discriminating reader. In a sympathetic entry on
Gower, Leland again writes contemptuously of the Middle Ages, but adds
that the poet's preeminence can yet be recognized by those who are prepared
to make allowances for Gower' s age:

he cultivated the humanities and labored much in poetry. This is testified to
by his poems of which he wrote many in Latin, zealous rather than felicitous
in imitating Ovid. That should seem no wonder, especially in a semi-bar-
barous age. With difficuhy even in our so flourishing time can anyone imitate
the overflowing beauties of Ovid's poetry. ... Accordingly, we overlook

Renaissance et Réforme / 67

certain infelicities in the poems of Gower, and we hold him up as the first
refiner of our native language. For before that time the English language lay
uncultivated and nearly wholly raw. Nor was there anyone who could write
in the vernacular, works suitable for a discriminating reader. Thus the value
of his works lies in their careful cultivation, that, the rude weeds stamped
out, instead of thistles arise the pliant violet and purple narcissus.^'

Leland is working hard to transform his Tudor patrons into reflections of
himself: his discriminating reader appreciates the desirability of having an
extensive literary canon, and his courtly humanist discretion does not disallow
him from enjoying works from England's uncultured past. The "discriminat-
ing reader" (or, more usually, the "learned reader") is a figure common to the
agonistic structures of classical rhetoric, and routinely appears in early critical
evaluations of English literature. But there is something peculiar about
Leland's use of the figure, something that reveals Leland's own contradictory
impulses. In accordance with the dialectical codes of rhetoric, a discriminat-
ing reader must be able to discriminate against something, or else his asser-
tions will seem empty. Leland's discriminating reader lacks this Other; he is
an unlikely figure who combines humanist sophistication with a predisposi-
tion to look with a favourable and uncritical eye upon the works of long-
departed national authors. The only Other Leland can identify is history itself,
the medieval context in which the old writings were first produced. Leland's
reader dissociates the literature from its semi-barbarous history, plucks the
flowers from their surrounding, weedy garden. Such canon-making, in
Leland's narrative of cultural rebirth, will benefit an already "so flourishing
age" by helping it to emerge from the dark "clouds of ignorance." What
Leland is saying finally is that the preservation of the literary past will help
to defeat the pernicious influence of the past. Attempting to court the favour
of his patrons, Leland is forced to flatter them in their superiority over the
very period and literature he is making claims for. The trade-off deprives his
canon of any serious claim to modernity, and leaves Leland with little more
than emotion to defend his literary tradition.

If Leland's canon is empowered by the antinomic energies of rhetoric,
Bale's is secured in the Word. Preserving the old books is a moral duty for
Bale. As his vision of history insists on the role of secular life in human
spiritual development, he sees the English people as responsible for the
eventual re -establishment of a true Church. According to this argument, the
English, as an elect race, must believe in the logos of prophecies and promises
contained in the writings of their ancestors in order to achieve their salvation.

68 / Renaissance and Reformation

And even if these writings do not reveal long-buried divine pronouncements,
they may offer indispensable information on the occasions to which the
writings of the reformist prophets may refer. Hence, in Bale's view, the
English must save their literature to save themselves. When he laments the
harm the Dissolution will bring to future generations, he is referring not
simply, as Leland might, to England's reputation but to its people's spiritual
redemption: "to put our auncient Chronicles, our noble hystoryes, our learned
commentaryes & homelyes upon ye scriptures, to so homely an office of
subieccyon & utter contempte we have both greatly dishonoured our nacyon,
and also shewed our selves very wycked to our posteryte."^^

Given his belief in the continuity of British letters. Bale looks more
favourably upon medieval literature than does Leland, and shows particular
interest in English poetry. He discusses Caedmon and other Anglo-Saxon
minstrels, and includes an entry on "Gildas Cambrius," who is reputed to be
Britain's first poet, and whose works Bale greatly regrets not having come
across in the course of his research: "O that we had now the floryshyng workes
of Gildas, surnamed Cambrius, that most noble Poete and Historyane of the
Britaines, which wrote in the tyme of kynge Aruiragus, when S. Peter yet
preached to the dispersed bretherne."^-^ The seriousness with which Bale
relates the story of Gildas is owing to his theory of history, which is based on
a principle of reductive periodization. Bale is predisposed to believe in the
actuality of the first-century Gildas for that would mean a British writer had
flourished during the period of the primitive church. He is likewise prepared
to assume that the late fourteenth-century English poets were sympathetic to
reform because they happen to fall into the one "century" that also included
Wyclif — "century" being Bale's term for the roughly-chronological groups
of one hundred lives that make up each of his chapters. Bale had in fact
initially ascribed the authorship of Piers Plowman to Wyclif himself, but later
corrected his error in the Catalogus. He reports, as well, that Chaucer, whose
canon of works had by this time been enlarged to include the virulently
anti-clerical Plowman's Tale, wrote many works "in which he showed his
disapproval of that great multitude of mumblers, the monks, of their idleness,
their unintelligible prayers, their relics, pilgrimages and ceremonies. "^'^

As Frank Kermode has suggested, periodization can serve canon-formation
to the extent that it may "enable us to package historical data that would
otherwise be hopelessly hard to deal with."^^ Such packaging not only
facilitates the task of assessing the works of the past but diminishes their
alterity and in so doing makes them seem modern, in harmony with contem-
porary values. In reducing the later fourteenth century into an age of Wyclif,

Renaissance et Réforme / 69

Baie turns history into a mirror of his own times, for Wyclif, he believes, is
the "morning star" of the Reformation.^^ Chaucer and Gower become Lollard
poets, whose message is as relevant to sixteenth-century Protestants as it was
to audiences of their day.^^ Bale's periodization works in the other direction,
too, as Catholic authors are condemned to their benighted "centuries," yet in
a sense these authors are equally modernized, since the conflict of the two
churches dominates Bale's narrative as a transhistorical phenomenon. There
is an apocalyptic dimension, as well, to the way Bale packages the sum of his
centuries. While the quality of a work is dependent on the context of its
production, the complexion of that context has itself been wholly preordained.
Many "famouse and notable workemen," he writes, "wrote in this nacyon
from age to age, some wele some yll, accordynge to the dyuerse nature of
their times, like as the holy Ghost forejudged of theyr doynges in S. Johanns
reuelacion."^^ Hardly a relativist. Bale nonetheless speaks powerfully of the
judgment of history: "what thynge more clerely tryeth the doctrynes of men,
what they are, than do their ages or times?"^^ Bale transposes Leland's
dialectic of light and dark ages into a stark historical drama of warring
centuries, where the sole criterion of judgment is the age when a work was
first written. Bale's canon is thus marked by radically prescriptive period
divisions, yet within each historical period there is perfect harmony.

Such reduction is finally too deterministic even for Bale, who is concerned
to show the political courage of those like Wyclif who saw through the
sophistry of the Roman Church and brought the "light of truth" to their age.^
Just as Protestants of the present age are responsible for ensuring their salvation,
so were individual acts of conscience in the past instrumental in helping to bring
about reform. However pre-ordained, the Reformation is a historical break
realized through human agency and, in particular, through the power of the
written word. The theme of Bale's catalogue, much more so than Leland's, is the
historical and moral centrality of writing in human affairs. Though Bale is often
unclear as to how exactly particular works contributed to the larger history of
true Christianity, his theme requires that he pays close attention to the historical
specificity of authors and their works: "Their ages are as necessary to be knowne
as their doctrynes, and the tytles of their bokes so wele as their manyfest actes,
to them that wyl throughly iudge things as they are, & not be deceiued by
colours. "^^ As a result, his catalogues juxtapose the seemingly irreconcilable
narratives of historicism and providence, authorship and auctoritas',^^ Bale is
faced with much the same problem that worried Leland, the problem of how to
write and judge authoritatively about both the uniform and the divergent values
of texts from the past.

70 / Renaissance and Reformation

Bale's concern to present "things as they are" leads him to reject Leland's
call to embellish the English chronicles. On the contrary, Bale argues, the
writers of the past should be allowed to speak for themselves in their own
words, "For undoubtedly, authoryte it woulde adde unto them, to apere fyrst
of all in their owue [sic] simplycyte or natiue colours without bewtie of
speche." To make these works available to all English readers, he suggests,
is a much more laudable aim than to refurbish them with a florid style that
appeals only to a select few. "And," he adds, "for that purpose (I thynke) God
hath iu [sic] thys age geuen the noble art of prentynge."^-^ If for Leland "light"
denotes eloquence, it symbolizes for Bale, as for other Protestant polemicists,
the disseminatory and democratizing powers of print. As Bale's friend John
Foxe declared, "through the light of printing the world beginneth now to have
eyes to see, and heads to judge. "^"^ Darkness, according to this scheme, is not
medieval inelegance but the widespread illiteracy of a manuscript age. Bale,
who spent his final years lobbying for the publication of pre-Reformation
manuscripts, including works antithetical to his own thinking, blamed this
illiteracy on a papist conspiracy that "hath alwayes ben busied, seking
contrary wyse to obscure all thynges, that contayned any veryte neces-
sarye."^^ Ironically, the coming of the printed book may have added to the
prejudice against the aging, tangibly wnmodern manuscripts during the period
of their wholesale destruction.

The reality of this destruction points to what is missing from Bale's
narrative, a coherent account of how literature survives in change. The
absence is even more apparent from his commentary on Leland's "Gift,"
where he repeatedly insists on the existence of "thynges lastyng & durable"
while at the same time loudly deploring their loss.^^ Just as a historicist inquiry
can never be perfectly accommodated to a providential, harmonizing design,
so metaphysical truths can never be fully coextensive with physical contin-
gencies. Bale's transcendent logos is not an image of survival because it fixes
value outside of change, beyond the historicity of authors and their works.
Though Bale's pleading for political action places him among the humanists
as well as the reformers of his age, his theory of change is as absolutist as
Alcuin's theodicy. And although his arguments for the continuing utility of
past literature provides his canon with an evaluative certainty that Leland's
pantheon lacks, his catalogues seem far more obsolescent than his
colleague's, very much the productions of a particular time and place. It is
this very susceptibility to anachronism that makes Bale's totalizing canon
seem even less modern than Leland's unfinished, conflicted pantheon.

Renaissance et Réforme / 71

The catalogues of Leland and Baie belonged to possibly the last period
when the entire indigenous literary canon could be so boldly "co-opted" on
behalf of nationalist or religious propaganda. The strokes could never again
be so broad.^^ The Elizabethan antiquaries, for their part, would not seem as
concerned with the role of literature in English cultural history, and considered
the literary canon a topic best left to the margins of their texts.^^ Stow, though
he edited Chaucer's works, offered no more than passing references to the
English poets in his Chronicles of England (1580), leaving the task of assessing
the canon up to his "continuator," Edmund Howes, who contributed a sizable list
of writers "such as were most famous, in the high misterie of POESEY: by whose
singular paines, and industry, our native language, hath from time to time, beene
much refined: and at this time, directly by them, brought to great perfection: and
the abuse of time, & popular absurdities many wayes disciphered, and amended."
Howes' s register of names is remarkably full, extending from Roger Bacon to
George Wither, but the very miscellaneousness of his list points up the inade-
quacy of his critical generalizations. Unable to spell out why canonical poetry
endures, Howes appeals to mystification and platitude, citing poetry's high
mystery as well as its more mundane usefulness as a corrective of popular
absurdities. And rather than assess the merit of individual works, Howes, a
self-styled "gentleman," presents a harmonious canon of authors ranked "accord-
ing to their priorities," that is, their social class.^^

Camden, who has many more things to say about British literature, presents
a more intriguing contrast to Leland and Bale because it is clear that he struggles
with the very problem his predecessors try to avoid, the problem of defending
the enduring value of literature while acknowledging the role of historical
change. Camden appears to like poetry a great deal, but seems uncertain as to
how to deal with it. It is among those subjects treated in the Remains (1605),
Camden's topical assortment of what he calls "the rude rubble and out-cast
rubbish ... of a greater and more serious worke," the Britannia (1586).^° Under
the generic headings of poems, epigrams, "rhythmes" and epitaphs, Camden
compiles brief anthologies of mainly Anglo-Latin verse, and prefaces his selec-
tion with a short defense of poetry's didactic and pleasure-giving utility. Yet
Camden also feels the need to apologize for his selections and claims to offer
only "a taste of some of midle age, which was so overcast with darke clouds, or
rather thicke fogges of ignorance, that every little sparke of liberall learning
seemed wonderfuU: so that if sometime you happen of an uncouth word, let the
time entreate pardon for it, when as all words have their times."^^

Camden is torn between asserting the timeless values of poetry and making
allowances for the different ages and modes of poetic expression. When he

72 / Renaissance and Reformation

says that the Latin epigrammatists Neckham and Giraldus Cambrensis "were
not inferior" to those of his own period, he is speaking as a critical historian
who upholds the merit of forgotten poetry while recognizing the differences
between the ages7^ But when he states it was Surrey and not Chaucer who
"first refined our homly English Poesy," he begins to speak as more a judge
than a defender of poets, and makes claims for a particular idea of poetry
within a statement about literary history 7^ That idea finally overwhelms
Camden's original presupposition that "all words have their times," and
Camden the antiquary gives way to Camden the arbiter elegantiae for all
times: "if I would come to our time, what a world could I present to you out
of Sir Philipp Sidney, Ed. Spencer, [nine more] ... & other most pregnant
witts of these our times, whom succeeding ages may justly admire."^"^ It is
only by setting history aside, and by ignoring his introductory remarks on the
social utility of poetry, that Camden can so positively affirm the contemporary
canon's chances of being admired throughout the ages.

The antiquaries' failure to deal conclusively with the question of how the
writings of the past survive the test of time illustrates the limitations of rhetorical
culture in the face of historical change. These limitations may account for the
antiquaries' profound anxiety about the temporality of their own enterprise.
Insofar as they record for posterity's sake the lives and works of hundreds of
disparate authors, both catalogues can be seen as objectifying the age-old belief
that literature holds the keys to memory and immortality, a topos that mns
throughout Leland's writing, if not Bale's. But the very act of recording these lives
presumes the need for such a register. Were it not for the catalogues, it seems, all of
these long-dead authors would be left to oblivion. Leland and Bale were responding
to what they perceived to be a crisis, the dispersal of the monastic collections, which
they felt threatened to obliterate England's heritage of letters. Their chosen response,
massive catalogues of authors, served two purposes: to supply important information
on the whereabouts of the dispersed items, and to secure for British letters the
protection of fame through the framing of a literary canon. If, as Curtius maintains,
canon-formation "serves to safeguard a tradition,"^^ then the motive behind canon-
formation springs from the feeling that a tradition needs this safeguard, that the works
of the past are not in themselves immortal, that they are frequently subject to neglect
or outright censorship, that all literature, catalogues of authors included, cannot
ultimately survive without the help of canon-makers. Though canon-formation may
posit the transhistoricism of literature, it is itself a fundamentally historical act, an
often political or emotional response to what is perceived to be a situation detrimental
to the survival or right appreciation of literary works, or of authorship itself. What
Leland and Bale are anxious to preserve are the conditions for aU writing, conditions

Renaissance et Réforme / 73

that can ensure the continuance of British letters and, in particular, the
safeguarding of the very works of Leland and Bale.

There is equally a measure of anxiety in the antiquaries' almost obsessive
determination to persuade through the sheer size of their canons. One of the
reasons why these directories seem so unlike an assured production like
Johnson's Lives of the Poets, which is itself a biographical catalogue of
authors, is that there exists the very real sense that Leland and Bale are
working in a cultural vacuum, that there is no evaluative community backing
up their efforts. It is no wonder that they speak from emotion and desperation.
Without any confirmed and widespread positive opinion on their side, they
can be assured of nothing, not even an end to the Dissolution. It is thus a sad
conclusion to Bale's work that he should see his own library, made up of
books salvaged from the Dissolution, sacked and dispersed within five years
of the publication of his SummariumP^

To be sure, Leland and Bale are trying to generate a consensus of opinion, but
therein lies the paradox at the heart of their endeavour. For there is a very real
problem of coming to terms with the reality of the Dissolution. In effect, Leland
and Bale must simultaneously affirm and deny that reality, its extent and its
meaning. On the one hand, Leland and Bale want to make it known that the writings
of the past do contain much that is valuable for England ' s sense of itself as a nation.
But that value is itself contingent upon the willingness of the English to define their
identity in terms of their history and literature. It therefore becomes the task of
these antiquaries to convince their patrons and fellow reformers of the legitimizing
power of tradition, and to make them feel that it is in their best interest to honour
the nation's literary heritage. "I haue accuratelye celebrated the names," Leland
tells King Henry, of "your progenytours," the former rulers, scholars and poets of
England whose line is worth commemorating ostensibly because it culminates in
Henry's reign. ^^ And yet it was Henry who sanctioned the Dissolution in the first
place. Leland mentions neither the sanction nor the Dissolution in his "New Year's
Gift," but can only speak mistily of the glory that will come from bringing the
monuments to light.^^ Addressing the English people rather than the king in
particular, Bale can afford to be more explicit than Leland in his condemnation of
"the malyce or els slouthfuU neglygence of thy s wycked age, whych is muche geuen
to the destruccyon of thynges memorable."^^ Yet no matter how hard he tries to
persuade contemporaries of the possible consequences of their actions, he cannot
account for the manifestation of this wickedness among a generation that has also
brought about Reformation. The "dark" conspiracy against letters that is a feature
of his own age may well be a direct repercussion of Reformation, but that is

74 / Renaissance and Reformation

certainly not something which Bale is prepared to acknowledge, particularly
in his catalogue.

On the other hand, what gives these catalogues their urgency, if not their
lasting value, is the Dissolution itself. The dispersal of the monastic collec-
tions is a great shameful episode in British history, and bitter confirmation of
the nation's enduring lowly stature among European countries: "For so lytle
estemynge our true Antiquytees, the proude Italyanes have alwayes holden
us for a Barbarouse nacyon."^^ The work of the antiquaries is worthwhile
because the situation is so bad, the destruction so deplorable. By extension,
the worth of the old books is itself magnified by the threat of extinction. The
writings of the past are, it seems, no more valuable than at the very moment
when they are in danger of becoming scarce. These so-called "monuments"
acquire an aura of irreplaceableness and rarity out of contrast with the spectre
of destruction and oblivion. Ultimately, the canons of Leland and Bale derive
their rhetorical force and seeming harmoniousness less from elitist or
religious discriminations than from the very magnitude of the ongoing
catastrophe: the greater the number of old writings that can conceivably be
lost, the greater the potential shock value. Once the danger of destruction is
lessened, however, it becomes harder to dramatize the worth and utility of the
old texts, or to see them as constituting a single, uniform literary tradition.
Gone are the powerful evaluative certainties that are tenable only in a crisis
like the Dissolution. Only when the objective, non-utilitarian value of past
writings and past learning is widely accepted will there be a history of
literature in England that is not also insisting on the enduring relevance of
texts sunk virtually without a trace. And only then, in the eighteenth century,
will the catalogues of Leland and Bale begin to receive the serious attention
of scholars and critics. An anonymous 1785 redaction of passages from
Warton's History of English Poetry is among thé first literary histories to see
Leland's canon-making as a symbolic act of preservation, and as an unlikely
admonition against modern complacency: "When we look into the accounts
of the British writers which have been given us by Leland and other biog-
raphers, and observe the multitude of persons whom these biographers have
rescued from oblivion, together with the praises they have bestowed upon
them, ... we are ready to believe that the times preceding the Reformation
were much more learned than has usually been imagined."^^

University of Toronto

Renaissance et Réforme / 75

Notes

1. Alcuin's epistles on the taid have been edited by Colin Chase, in Two Alcuin Letter-
Books (Toronto: Centre for Medieval Studies, 1975), 50-56.

2. Walter J. Ong is the most notable historian of shift from a "rhetorical" to an "objec-
tivist" culture. See, in particular, his Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1971), 2inA Interfaces of the M^ort/ (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1977). On the shift from "instrumentalist" to "intrinsic" theories of literary value,
see E. D. Hirsch, Jr., "Two Traditions of Literary Evaluation," Literary Theory and
Criticism, ed. Joseph P. Strelka (Bern: Peter Lang, 1984), 283-298. See also M. H.
Abrams's remarks on "pragmatic theories" in the introductory chapter to The Mirror
and The Lamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), and Abrams's revision of the
chapter, as well as his important essay on "Art-as-Such: The Sociology of Modern
Aesthetics," in Doing Things with Texts (New York: Norton, 1989), 3-30 and 135-158.

3. John Bale, The laboryouse Journey & serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes
Antiquitees, ... with declaracyons enlarged (London, 1549; rpt. Amsterdam: Theatrum
Orbis Terrarum, 1975), sig. A7v.

4. John Leland, letter to Thomas Cromwell, dated 16 July 1536, quoted in part in Anthony
à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Philip Bliss, 3 vols. (London, 1813), 1: col. 198.
Wood notes that he saw the original letter "among the papers of state," but it has since
been lost.

5. Though these catalogues offer generally reliable information, especially about post-
Conquest writings, their utility for modern scholars has been eclipsed by the
antiquaries' notebooks, which contain valuable library references and some tantalizing
quoted extracts unobscured by commentary. As James P. Carley notes, "palaeographers
and textual historians are more interested in manuscripts Leland saw and where he saw
them than in his interpretations of the data contained in them," in "John Leland and the
Contents of English Pre-Dissolution Libraries: Glastonbury Abbey," Scriptorium 40
(1986): 108. One of Bale's notebooks has been edited by Reginald Lane Poole and
Mary Bateson under the title Index Britanniae Scriptorum, in Anecdota Oxoniensia 9
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902).

6. See notes 2 and 3 above, and Bale's letter to Matthew Parker, dated 30 July 1560, edited
by H. R. Luard in Cambridge Antiquarian Communications 3 (1864-76): 157-73. It is
impossible to get even an approximate figure on how many books were destroyed or
dispersed, but it is clear that the losses were very heavy. See the articles by C. E. Wright,
"The Dispersal of the Monastic Libraries and the Beginnings of Anglo-Saxon Studies.
Matthew Parker and his Circle: A Preliminary Study," Transactions of the Cambridge
Bibliographical Society 1 (1951): 208-37, and "The Dispersal of the Libraries in the
Sixteenth Century," in The English Library before 1700, ed. Francis Wormald and C.
E. Wright (London: Athlone Press, 1958), 148-75.

7. My argument here agrees in general terms with Margaret Aston's in her essay "English
Ruins and English History: The Dissolution and the Sense of the Past": "The agonizing
sight of wholesale destruction spurred people into activity — even those whose Protes-
tant convictions made them wholly endorse the process at large," in Lollards and
Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London: Hambledon Press,
1984), 314.

8. Wood 1: col. 198.

76 / Renaissance and Reformation

9. There had been previous attempts in England at producing bibliographical records of
library contents. In the fourteenth century, a monk at Bury St. Edmunds compiled a
catalogue which surveyed the lives and works of 674 authors, "for the use and
convenience of students and preachers." See R.H. Rouse, "Bostonus Burienses and the
Author of the Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiae," Speculum 441 (1966): 471-499. Bale's
catalogue includes an entry describing the "Herculean labours" of one Alan of Lynn,
. a fifteenth-century Carmelite prior who is reputed to have indexed all available copies
in England of important medieval works (Illustrium Maioris Britanniae Scrip-
torum ... Summarium ["Ipswich," i.e. Wesel, 1548], 185). And Bale, before his con-
version, wrote a sizable "bio-bibliographical" study of the literature of his fellow
Carmelites, the as yet ViVi^\xh\\%htû Anglorum Heliades (1536). On this work, see Leslie
P. Fairfield, /o/irt Bale, Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, Ind.:
Purdue University Press, 1976), 50-53.

10. On the popularity of these booklists, see Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press
as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979),
1:88-107.

11. In his New Year's Gift {laboryouse Journey, sig. C7v), Leiand indicated that he had
given his catalogue the Petrarchan title "De Viris Illustribus," though it would be later
retitled as Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis (2 vols., 1709) by the Oxford
printer Anthony Hall.

12. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. A2v, A7v.

13. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. A7v. Antonia McLean has noted "there is no proof that
the state was directly responsible for the loss or destruction of books on a large scale.
The monastic libraries were dispersed through government indifference rather than by
deliberate intention." Humanism and the Rise of Science in Tudor England (New York:
Neale Watson Academic Public, 1972), 90. Yet clearly the policy of Dissolution
helped to undermine the entire system of book collecting and preservation that had
existed throughout the Middle Ages.

14. On Leland's activities on behalf of the Royal Library, see J. R. Liddell, " 'Leiand's'
Lists of Manuscripts in Lincolnshire Monasteries," English Historical Review 54
(1939): 88-95.

15. See Leland's verses on the English New Learning ("a festal crown of men!") in Hoyt
H. Hudson, "John Leland's List of Early English Humanists," Huntington Library
Quarterly 2 (1939): 301-04.

16. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. Bv.

17. In the same letter, Layton also reports that he had helped institute the king's reforms
at Oxford by establishing lectures in Greek and Latin to which "every scholar," upon
penalty, was required to attend. Reprinted in G. H. Cook, éd.. Letters to Cromwell and
others on the Suppression of the Monasteries (London: John Baker, 1965), 46.

18. James P. Carley, "John Leland's Cygnea Cantio: A Neglected Tudor River Poem,"
Humanistica Lovaniensia 32 (1983): 234.

19. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. Br.

20. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. G2v.

21. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. E8v.

Renaissance et Réforme / 77

22. Baie, laboryouse Journey, sig. G3r.

23. Quoted in Sidney Lee's entry for Leland in DNB.

24. On this, see Ernest B. Oilman, Iconoclasm and Poetry in the English Reformation:
Down Went Dagon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 36-7.

25. Leland, in Wood 1: col. 198.

26. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. B2r.

27. Leland, "New Year's Oift," in Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. D7v.

28. Bale, Summarium 6-8.

29. Herbert Weisinger surveys this contest of bards in "Who Began the Revival of
Learning?" Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts and Letters 30 (1944):
625-638. See also the so-called "Debate of the Heralds," where spokesmen for both
England and France boast of their respective nation's glories, canons of learned men
and women included. One of Bale's contemporaries, John Coke, fired one of the last
shots in this debate, in The Debate between the Heralds of England and France, rptd.
with Le Débat des Hérauts D'Armes de France et D'Angleterre, éd. Leopold Pannier
and M. Paul Meyer (Paris, 1877).

30. Leland, "New Year's Gift," in Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. D5v. Bale, well aware of
the prescription of only four empires in the Book of Daniel, is uneasy with calling
Britain an "empire." In his annotations to Leland 's "New Year's Gift" {laboryouse
Journey, sig. D6r.), he tries to excuse Leland's suggestion that England is an "impery"
by appealing to patristic authority; Josephus and other historians. Bale maintains,
thought the prescriptions did not apply to England because it was for them another
world beyond the sea.

31. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. H5v.

32. Leland, "New Year's Gift," in Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. C5v.

33. Bale, manuscript note in his epitome of Leland's De Viris Illustribus, quoted in
Fairfield 116.

34. Once the reformers had achieved political power, observes F. Smith Fussner, it became
incumbent upon Protestant apologists like Bale "to justify the origins of authority by
appealing to history, largely because Protestant churches were not institutionally
legitimized by tradition or history in the sense that the Roman Catholic Church was,"
in Tudor History and the Historians (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 293 n.92.

35. J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and
History (New York: Atheneum, 1971; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1989), 179-80.

36. Bale, The vocacyon ofJohan Bale to the bishoprick of Ossorie in Irelande ("Rome,"
i.e. Wesel, 1553), sig. B3r.

37. Bale, vocacyon, sig. B7r.

38. Lawrence Lipking's contradistinction between "canons and surveys" (or professional
evaluation and definition of the arts versus empirical fact-gathering by scholars and
men of leisure) does not apply here: the catalogues of Leland and Bale represent the
moment just prior to the realization of this split between criticism and antiquarianism
{The Ordering of the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England [Princeton: Princeton

78 / Renaissance and Reformation

University Press, 1970], 13). Leland and Bale are trying to raise the stock of British
literature, and are presenting it for comparison with the literatures of other nations, all
within a documentary survey of England's literary history.

39. This view is supported by Joseph M. Levine, who states flatly that the "antiquarian
impulse was born of the revival of antiquity," in Humanism and History: Origins of
Modern English Historiography (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1987), 73. Antonia

" Gransden offers the counter-argument that "ultimately the alterations which took place
in historical writing were less the result of ideas derived from the study of the classics,
than of political and religious exigencies," in Historical Writing in England, 2 vols.
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974-1982), 2:469.

40. Leland, in Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. B8r.

41. Leland, in Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. C2r-C3r.

42. Assertio inclytissimi Arturii Regis Britanniae (London, 1544) fol. 37; rpt. in The
Famous Historié ofChinon of England by Christopher Middleton, ed. William Edward
Mead (London: EETS, 1925) pt. 2:146. Mead also reprints Richard Robinson's 1582
translation of Leiand's text, where the quote appears in pt. 2:89-90.

43. See Eisenstein 1:294-8, and Theodor E. Mommsen, "Petrarch's Conception of the
'Dark Ages'," Speculum 17 (1942): 226-242.

44. Leland, "New Year's Gift," in Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. D7v.

45. On Leland writing mainly from emotion, see Herschel Baker, The Race of Time
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 91.

46. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. B4r.

47. Thomas M. Greene, The Vulnerable Text: Essays on Renaissance Literature (New
York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1986), 223. Greene examines how the humanists dealt
with the question of how it is that ancient works retain their meaning through change,
in The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1982), 4-53.

48. Leland, Commentarii 422.

49. Leland, Naeniae in mortem Thomae Viati equitis incomparibilis (London, 1542), sig.
A4v.

50. Leland, Comme/ifani 421.

51. Leland, Commentarii 428. Quoted from translation given in John H. Fisher, John
Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (New York: New York University
Press, 1964), 14.

52. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. G3r.

53. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. F8r.

54. Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae ... Catalogus, 2 vols. (Basel, 1557-
1559), 1:526. Quoted from translation given in Caroline F.E. Spurgeon, éd.. Five
Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, 1357-1900, 3 vols. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1925), 3:26. It is worth speculating whether the Reformist
booksellers who enlarged Chaucer's canon with anti-clerical tracts were not using
Chaucer's canonical authority to shield these tracts from official censorship. Was
Chaucer above censorship? "Canterburye tales. Chancers bokes Gowers bokes" were

Renaissance et Réforme / 79

among the few items exempted from prohibition in a 1542/3 "Acte for the Advancement
of true Religion and for the Abolishment of the Contrary" (Statute 34 and 35 Henry
VIII, quoted in Spurgeon 1:84-5.) Bale's assertions about Chaucer's anti-clericalism
are echoed by subsequent polemicists, reaching a peak of outrageousness in Antony
Cade's claim that Chaucer was known to call the pope "an idle Lawrell, a Marshall of
Hell, a pround, envious, covetous Lucifer, and Antichrist," in A Justification of the
Church of England (1630), 63-4.

55. Frank Kermode, History and Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 109.

56. Bale, Summarium, fol. 154v.

57. Bale is not entirely insensitive to literary values and he will, like Leland, occasionally
compare the works of the moderns against the standard of the ancients. His entry for
Skelton (Catalogus 1 :65 1 ) deals mainly with the poet's confrontations with the Church,
but Bale also stresses the affinities between Skelton's satires and Horace's, and calls
the poet another Lucan or Democritus.

58. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. H5v.

59. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. H6r.

60. Bale, 5Mm/ManM/7i, fol. 154v.

61. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. H5v.

62. As Donald A. Pease has suggested, author and auctor are necessarily opposed. Whereas
the long-standing doctrine of auctoritas posited a universal order whose ultimate
authority was divine rather than secular, the emergence of authorship in the early
modern era represented the self-authorization, or "self-determination" in writing, of
the autonomous human subject. See Pease's entry for "Author" in Critical Terms for
Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1 990), 1 05 - 1 1 7.

63. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. "Cvr-v", i.e., C3r-v.

64. John Foxe,^c/^ and Monuments, ed. George Townsend, 8 vols. (London, 1843-1849),
3:720.

65. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. F6r.

66. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. F8v.

67. Bale and Leland are by no means the last to produce ideologically-inspired catalogues
of authors. The Anglo-Catholic canon, for example, is defended in John Pits's
Relationum historicarum de Rebus Anglicis (Paris, 1619). Among the nationalists,
Thomas Dempster, in his Historia Ecclesiastical Gentis Scotorum (Bononiae, 1627),
and Sir James Ware, in his De Scriptoribus Hiberniae (Dublin, 1639), defend the
honour of Scotland and Ireland, respectively.

68. On the antiquaries' relucant acceptance of the Albion myths, see T. D. Kendrick, British
Antiquity (London: Methuen, 1950), 99-133.

69. John Stow, The Annales, or Generall Chronicle of England, continued and aug-
mented... by Edmund Howes (London, 1615), 811.

70. William Camden, Remains Concerning Britain, ed. R.D. Dunn (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1984), 3.

71. Camden 288.

80 / Renaissance and Reformation

72. Camden 295.

73. Camden 344.

74. Camden 294.

75. Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard
R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 256.

76. For more on the dispersal of Bale's library, see Honor McCusker, "Books and
Manuscripts Formerly in the Possession of John Bale," The Library, 4th ser., 16 (1936):
144-165.

77. Leland, "New Year's Gift," in Bale, laboryouse Journey , sig. Dr. Nothing reveals more
clearly the antiquaries' desire to combine valorization with documentation than this
notion of "accurate celebration."

78. Leland refers only very briefly to the destruction in his "Gift": "I haue conserued many
good authors, the whych otherwyse had ben lyke to haue peryshed, to no small
incommodyte of good letters. Of ye which parte remayne in the most magnificent
libraryes of your royall palaces" (in Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. C2r.)

79. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. D3v.

80. Bale, laboryouse Journey, sig. C5r.

81. "A Short View of the State of Knowledge, Literature, and Taste, in this Country, from
the Accession of King Edward I to ... Henry IV," New Annual Register for the year
i78^ (London, 1785), xii.

Book Reviews / Comptes rendus

John A. Marino. Pastoral Economics in the Kingdom of Naples, Baltimore and
London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. pp. xii, 381.

This is a formidable work containing a vast amount of information on the history
of the Dogana or Customs house of the kingdom of Naples, the institution through
which the crown controlled transhumance of all animals in South Italy. Indeed the
dogana was central to the general economy of much of the kingdom, since through it
the crown could to some extent control how much land was devoted to grain production
and how much to pastoralism. It was the major source of crown revenue, theoretically
raising taxes on all sheep in the Regno. Marino, aiming at "total history" in the tradition
of the Annales school, deals with the Dogana in its social, economic and political
contexts, showing the interrelationships between them. He emphasises that the Dogana
was, from its inception in the fifteenth century, a capitalistic enterprise in as much as it
was a large scale, profit-oriented organization of state control of transhumant pas-
toralism was much older and was dictated as much by a concern for good government
as for the maximisation of profits. Hence a perennial tension in the organization as the
authorities tried to maintain the ideals of equality of treatment and opportunity for all
members of the Dogana while, at the same time, inevitably responding to the demands
of the wealthy, to ordinary market pressures and to the need to make a profit from
doganal taxation.

Among the most pressing problems confronting the officers of the Dogana was
how to maintain a balance between agriculture and pastoralism. A tendency to
favour the latter arose partly from an ideology of pastoralism somewhat influenced
by its literary image which, as the author insists, hardly reflected either the harsh
realities of a shepherd's life or the sophistication of some sheep owners and even
shepherds.

The book deals extensively with the organization of the dogana. It sorts out the
details of some of the more peculiar doganal practices — for example that of
encouraging sheep owners to ensure adequate pasture in time of shortage by
declaring and paying tax on more sheep than they really had; or the voce price
system whereby an official price for wool and other products was set and paid in
advance to the producers (in effect a kind of concealed loan), a system which
became almost standard in the late seventeenth century.

82 / Renaissance and Reformation

A substantial part of the book deals with the effect of the Dogana on the general
economy of the kingdom of Naples. The profitability of the dogana fluctuated and
latterly, as the population of Naples rose, its monopoly became very harmful to the
prosperity of the kingdom generally; but it always brought in sufficient profit to the
crown to make its abolition unlikely. It also, by its very nature, encouraged
corruption in the administration despite the efforts to eliminate this, and the author
traces in some detail the attempted reforms and the forces working against them
throughout its history.

One section of the book is devoted to the sale of pastoral products, and the profits
made from this. The main markets were in northern Italy, with Venice the most
important buyer. Locally the sale of pastoral products was channelled through the
fair of Foggia and the records of this supply the author with a mine of fascinating
information on the economics of this aspect of South Italian sheep raising. The book
concludes with a section on opinions of critics writing for and against pastoralism
in South Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, setting them in the context
of changing ideas of political economy generally.

In a book which contains so much useful material, it may seem churlish to ask
for more. There are, however, a few points which need to be dealt with more
fully in what claims to be a complete study of south Italian pastoralism. Marino
concentrates rather excessively on the main grazing grounds of the Tavoliere
and the most important graziers, the Abruzzesi. He makes it clear that there were
doganal pastures away from the Tavoliere, but we get very little idea of how this
part of the system worked. There were various "overflow" pastures in Basilicata
in addition to some which were used regularly, notably at Monte Sellicole. But
there were also numbers of sheep which migrated between the hills and the
Metapontine plain. The owners of these, after considerable argument, bought
what was in effect exemption from the Dogana for an annual payment of 3000
ducats. (G. Racioppi, Storia dei popoli delta Lucania e delta Basilicata, vol. 2,
Rome, 1899, pp. 220-222.) though they were still supposed to declare their sheep
until the mid-eighteenth century; and even this caused resentment. Marino does
not quite ignore the "transazione di Basilicata" but his treatment of it is so cursory
as to be almost misleading and he says nothing about a similar one for Montepeloso
(Irsina). These are perhaps minor points (the numbers of sheep in Basilicata were
small compared with those using the Tavoliere and the stations linked with it) but
the effect is to make the account seem rather one-sided. Similarly the competition
for the Abruzzi sheep posed by the papal Dogana dei pascoli is barely discussed,
though the early Neapolitan kings made efforts, not wholly successful, to lure
graziers from outside the kingdom to their own pastures, presumably to the
detriment of the papal institution. (A. Ryder, The Kingdom of Naples under Alfonso
the Magnanimous. Oxford, 1976, pp. 361-2)

The other main lacuna lies in any discussion on the proprietors of the land
allocated as pasture to the sheep owners and shepherds. Much of this land was royal

Renaissance et Réforme / 83

patrimony but other land was in baronial hands or formed part of church estates.
The owners received rent for it but, on the usual pastures, the dogana had complete
control over its allocation. In times of high demand, the dogana could also allocate
land normally held by the barons for their own use. The author indicates that this
led to tension between landowners and the dogana, but gives no real discussion of
the issues involved.

The problem of baronial tolls also needs to be discussed. These were disliked
by the royal authorities, and in the sixteenth century orders were issued to
eliminate many illegal tolls. (G. Galanti, Nuova descrizione storica e geografica
delle Sicilie, Naples, 1788, vol. 2, p. 381) These, however, had to be repeated later,
so the tolls obviously remained a problem. Moreover, some were legal and con-
stituted part of the declared income of a fief in the sixteenth century. (Account of
the estate of Gravina publ. N. Cortese, "Feudi e feudatari napoletani della prima
meta del CinquecQnto," Archive Storico delle provincie Napoletane, 1930, p. 59 ff.
on tolls raised on animals going to the Murge through Garagnone.) Some assessment
of how far these were a factor in the economy of transhumant sheep rearing would
have been in order.

In all, then, the main criticism of the book is that it concentrates perhaps
excessively on the mechanisms and accounts of the dogana itself and on the
records conserved in Foggia and Simancas — an understandable bias in view of
the dispersed nature of the other Italian evidence since the destruction of the
Archive at Naples, but one that might have been made a little clearer in, at least,
a sub-title. Another improvement in the title would be some dates. There is very
little here (three pages) on pastoralism prior to the establishment of the Dogana
in 1447.

The book is densely packed with information and its style does not lend itself
to easy reading. It contains several infelicities — what, for example, does "the
Saccione above or Barletta below Puglia" mean? Some of the tables, particularly
those on the credits and debits of the Dogana could have been more precise, both
in date (it would have been useful to have fluctuations in the doganal budget
over the whole period presented in tabular form) and in categories of expenditure
and receipt. But these are minor problems in a book as useful and interesting as
this one. A more serious flaw is the lack of a bibliography. There are 58 pages
of endnotes which indicate that the author has done an immense amount of
reading but, though second citations refer the reader to the first and full citation,
later ones do not, so that a good deal of the utility of the reference material is
lost to all but the most painstaking reader. No doubt the publishers are respon-
sible for this omission but it was a serious error.

That said, however, this is an admirable book and the sheer volume and erudition of
what it does contain make it an important contribution to the history of South Italy.

CAROLA M. SMALL, University of Alberta

84 / Renaissance and Reformation

The Plays of John Lyly, edited by Carter A. Daniel. Lewisburg: Bucknell Univer-
sity Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1988. Pp. i, 374.

The rise in John Lyly's reputation as a dramatist over the last thirty years or so is
clearly seen in the work of scholars such as Jonas Barish, G.K. Hunter, Robert Y.
Turner, Michael Best, Joseph W. Houppert, Peter Saccio, Susan D. Thomas, and
David Bergeron: it is no longer considered fashionable or just to dismiss Lyly on
the grounds that his delicate, graceful, and often carefully-crafted plays are flimsy
and insubstantial. Oxford's 1967 reprinting of R.W. Bond's The Complete Works of
John Lyly (originally published in three volumes in 1902), and Anne B. Lancashire's
1969 edition of Gallathea and Midas for the Regents Renaissance Drama Series (to
which Daniel nowhere refers) are further signs of a lively academic interest in this
too-often underrated dramatist. Nonetheless, Lyly's plays remain largely the
preserve of specialists; to others Lyly is little more than the man who bestowed the
dubious gift of euphuism on the world. It is the educated general reader's neglect
and misconstruction of Lyly as a playwright that Carter A. Daniel's new edition of
Lyly's plays is primarily designed to rectify.

More specifically, Daniel's purpose, as explained in his bibliographical notes
(25), is "to make Lyly's plays conveniently available to the modern reader without
any more scholarly encumbrances than are necessary." Although "is it not intended
to provide variant textual readings or complete variorum commentaries or to break
any new bibliographic ground," Daniel has in fact "completely reedited" these plays
"from microfilm copies of the printed quartos of the 1580s and 1590s and the
collected Sixe Court Comedies of 1632," so his edition is of interest to the specialist
in Lyly as well as to the more general reader to whom the introduction, the
afterwords to the plays, and the endnotes are directed.

On the whole, Daniel achieves his stated purpose quite well: Lyly's plays are now
made generally accessible by virtue of Daniel's being a modern-spelling edition and of
its being in one attractively-printed, eminendy-readable volume (the first one -volume
edition of the plays since Edward Blount's in 1632, in fact). The level of language and
the tone in Daniel's own prose are well-suited to the goal of making Lyly attractive and
meaningful to the modem non-specialist reader: his writing is relaxed, informal, and,
on occasion, colloquial. Only a strict purist would respond with outrage to his rendering
natura naturans as "Nature doing its thing" (362, note 25 to Campaspe). Still, three
features in the overall presentation of the volume impede its ease of use by, for example,
undergraduate students: first, the lines are not numbered, so one is virtually forced to
refer to individual passages by page number rather than by the conventional act, scene,
and line numbers, and, of course, finding a passage alluded to by a critic but not quoted
by him is made more difficult; second, the act and scene numbers are not indicated at
the top of the page, so locating a passage takes longer than it should; and third, the notes,
though fairly numerous, are not generally lengthy, and should have been presented
as footnotes rather than as endnotes.

Renaissance et Réforme / 85

The introduction (divided into a section on euphuism, one on children's plays and
court plays, a biographical slcetch of Lyly, an encomiastic account of Lyly's role in
the evolution of Tudor drama, and a discussion of the nature of the plays) provides
the modern reader with a brief but serviceable orientation to the plays that follow,
and to the circumstances of their original composition and production. Daniel is
especially concerned to alert his readers to the constraints in theme, tone, subject
matter, emotional range, etc., imposed on Lyly by the fact that most of these plays
were written for child rather than adult actors and for presentation before Queen
Elizabeth I. He dismisses the rather passé view that Lyly's plays depict Elizabethan
court intrigues in allegorical form, and sees as the source of their importance Lyly's
ability to make theme the unifying and organizing forced in a play, his use of a
principle of "graduated spectacle" whereby the most spectacular scene is reserved
for the end of the play, and his ability to delineate character through dialogue. The
least satisfying part of the introduction is Daniel's defense of euphuism as essen-
tially the expression of Lyly's comic spirit, as a "sort of smiling parody of over-
earnest innocence" (12), and as, because self-mocking, a "built-in protection against
ridicule" in all Lyly's works (13). This defense is not adequate to account for the
variety of contexts in which euphuism is found nor the subtlety of effects Lyly often
achieves with it; Daniel's discussion would have profited from a serious considera-
tion of Jonas Barish's study ("The Prose Style of John Lyly", ELH 23 (1956),
(14-35), but nowhere does he direct his readers to this acute analysis.

The afterwords, which range from two to four pages in length, are too brief for
detailed critical treatment of plays. However, Daniel does a creditable job, on the
whole, of illustrating Lyly's organizing his plays by themes rather than by plot
exigencies or by slavishly following his sources, of arguing for Lyly's use of
dialogue for differentiation of character, of suggesting Lyly's versatile use of the
stage resources at his disposal, and of providing a quick survey of some of the major
readings of the plays. The only major lapse is his claim that none of the earlier
versions of the Endymion story portrays Endymion as the lover rather than as the
beloved (195-196). As Susan D. Thomas points out in an article not mentioned by
Daniel Ç'Endimion and Its Sources," CL 30 (1978), 35-52), this version of the story
can be found in Pliny (Natural History, II. vi. 41^3).

The notes are often very good (e.g. the explanation of points in note 11 to
Gallathea), but there are some strange lapses and some inconsistent assumptions
about the intended audience. Some references are too imprecise to be of much
practical use to the reader. For example, note 45 to Sapho andPhao tells us that the
"stories of Cupid's love for Psyche, and Venus's for Adonis, were widely told;" it
is not clear how this is to help the reader, since those who know the stories
presumably know that they were widely told. Note 1 1 {o Midas tells us that "Phaeton
lost control of the sun 's chariot and nearly burned up the world," but not that Phaeton
met a fiery end, and it is Phaeton's end that is the point of Lyly's allusion. Note 92
to Gallathea tells us that in ''Oyid's Metamorphoses, Iphis and lanthes were indeed

86 / Renaissance and Reformation

sex-changed — although not by Venus." Again, one wonders whom this note is
designed to help; readers who need to be told, for example, who Psyche and Circe
are (Gallathea, note 67), will be very much in the dark about Iphis and lanthes.
Surely a recounting of the main lines of the story would help the curious decide for
themselves about Lyly's purpose in alluding to it. Daniel typically refers to classical
authors by name only, with the occasional title included; more complete references
would not constitute undue "scholarly encumbrances" to the general reader who is
tackling Lyly in the first place. A few notes contain errors that should be corrected
in any subsequent edition; note 6 to Campaspe mistakenly identifies Pallas as Venus
rather than as Athena; note 27 to Sapho andPhao has the Greeks themselves actually
taking the wooden horse into Troy; and note 64 to Gallathea assumes that Silenus
is supposed to be an artist, whereas what Lyly is alluding to, and wittily reversing,
are the ancient images of the ugly satyr, Silenus, which concealed within themselves
wondrous images of the gods. Note 80 to Gallathea ("'Jovialist' and 'Venerian'
mean born under the signs of Jupiter and Venus") is misleading since Jupiter and
Venus are not zodiacal signs, nor are the signs ruled by them the whole story; a
better note that would still avoid the complications of astrological theory would
read: "one whose character and destiny are strongly influenced by the planets
Jupiter and Venus,," or "are born when the influences of the planets Jupiter and
Venus were especially strong." Finally, there are a few typographical errors: 106,
"betwween;" 145, "Diana's numphs;" 370, note 74 is missing the slash between the
lines of verse; 372, note 18, "King" should read "Queen," and 381, note 180 seems
to be missing a word.

Lyly as dramatist deserves a wider and more sympathetic audience than he has
hitherto received this century, and Daniel's edition, despite the limitations noted
above, is generally well-tailored to fostering that renewal of appreciation.

J. MICHAEL RICHARDSON, Lakehead University

Robert Aulotte, Afonffl/gne; "Essais", Paris, P.U.F., 1988.

Chaque fervent des Essais s'y mire et, plus ou moins, les fait siens. Le danger est
de s'y enfermer. Aussi, pour qui aime Montaigne, est-il tonique de savoir comment
les lisent leurs meilleurs commentateurs. Le diligent lecteur qui ouvrira le Mon-
taigne: Essais de Robert Aulotte ne quittera l'ouvrage qu'après l'avoir terminé.

Dans sa concision, qu'exige la collection, cet ouvrage renferme une subtile et
rare richesse. Son titre n'a pas été choisi à la légère; les deux points qui séparent
les deux noms montrent assez que ni l'auteur, ni l'oeuvre ne seront oubliés. "Essais "
et non "les Essais ", car nous voyons page 1 que la forme la plus couramment utilisée
date de l'édition posthume. Donc le texte en formation ou achevé, mais dont
Montaigne fut uniquement responsable. Robert Aulotte porte ainsi un double regard

Renaissance et Réforme / 87

sur les Essais et sur leur auteur, qu'il accompagne surtout pendant les vingt années
au cours desquelles l'oeuvre s'est constituée. Comme elle est consubstantielle à son
auteur, il est peu de remarques qui ne le concernent, peu d'observations sur
Montaigne qui ne servent à expliquer le livre. C'est de loin le meilleur parti, car ce
serait un vain débat de se demander qui parle dans les Essais. La réponse est
évidemment Montaigne, mais Montaigne dans sa librairie, en train de lire ou de
relire ses écrivains préférés, réfléchissant sur ce qu'il vient d'y découvrir ou d'y
apprendre: faits curieux, beaux vers, sentences, vues profondes ou qui s'examine,
se regarde vivre et penser, se sent vieillir, se souvient de l'allégresse de sa jeunesse
ou qui dicte ou bien écrit un essai; c'est aussi l'auteur qui ne se contente pas de
"mettre en rôle" ses songes ou ses idées, mais cherche à leur donner leur plus juste
expression, se pare. Cela, Robert Aulotte le fait merveilleusement sentir: il passe
sans cesse de Montaigne aux Essais, des Essais à Montaigne, puisque, matière de
son livre, l'auteur s'est vu façonner par lui.

La présentation rappelle l'évolution de la critique depuis Villey. Le premier
chapitre suit Montaigne jusqu'en 1579 dans une démarche naturelle, où une parfaite
information sur l'époque et sur l'auteur laisse à Robert Aulotte toute liberté de se
limiter à ce qui pour lui est essentiel. L'ouverture en est belle: "Sur les confins du
Périgord et du Bordelais, une demeure seigneuriale avec un large "prospect" sur un
environnement de forêts et de vignobles: c'est là... " (6). Elle donne le ton, crée un
climat de poésie que viennent bientôt entretenir de brèves citations de Montaigne.
Le chaptire II présente clairement les Essais de 1580, fournissant des réponses
toujours pertinentes aux questions qu'ils posent: "le matériau premier des Essais
n'est pas constitué de simples "notes de lecture" enregistrées sans idée directrice,
mais bien d'éléments regroupés pour servir à la réalisation, par Montaigne, de son
projet de se connaître, et de se faire connaître dans sa réalité vraie" (16-17). Il étudie
l'ordre des chapitres, passe en revue les hypothèses qui le concerent, signale les
liaisons, les "massifs", les associations thématiques, en insistant sur le fait que
l'oeuvre est "a-systématique" (19). Pour Robert Aulotte, dans cette édition de 1580,
la pensée de Montaigne, qui est vraiment personnelle, "se nourrit pourtant toujours
de lectures" (21), et les sources privilégiées sont, avec les oeuvres morales de
Cicéron, Sénèque, Lucrèce et Plutarque dont l'influence est majeure. Le chapitre
III est consacré à la pièce maîtresse du Livre II, 1' "Apologie de Raymond Sebond".
C'est l'occasion pour Robert Aulotte de définir le "pyrrhonisme personnel" de
Montaigne qui l'empêche de tenir pour vraies les idées reçues sans les avoir au
préalable examinées, mais ne l'empêche pas d'avoir son propre jugement, méthode
qui lui fait découvrir que "dans un monde inconstant et inconsistant, les données de
sa conscience avaient, elles, une réelle et solide existence" (37). Se concilie fort
bien avec ce pyrrhonisme le fidéisme souvent mis en doute et soupçonné parfois
d'hypocrisie. Un fiat parmi d'autres, l'importance que Montaigne déclare attacher
à l'oraison dominicale, prouve à mes yeux sa bonne foi ("le patenostre", I, Ivi).

88 / Renaissance and Reformation

Transition nécessaire, le chaptire IV se nourrit de biographie explicative. Il fait
une large place au voyage en Italie, Journal de voyage. Il rappelle les expériences
qui ont singulièrement mûri Montaigne: la guerre vue de près pendant le deuxième
mandat municipal, les responsabilités du pouvoir, la fréquentation de civilisations
et de cultures différentes, la peste avec ses horreurs et avec l'héroïsme tranquille
des paysans. Ce n'est plus tout à fait le même homme qui parle alors. Il a une vue
plus large, plus universelle des hommes et du monde; il se connaît de mieux en
mieux. Et si son moi, champ d'étude privilégié depuis longtemps, l'intéresse chaque
jour davantage, il ne s'abstient pas — il ne s'était jamais abstenu — de regarder autour
de lui et de donner des conseils. Les Essais sont aussi l'oeuvre d'un témoin de son
temps et d'un moraliste.

Voici l'édition de 1588, in 4" cette fois, mais toujours "massive, compacte" dans
sa typographie. Robert Aulotte note ce qui unit certaines parties du Livre III:
"l'honnête" pour les premiers chapitres, "la dangereuse et vaine suffisance de nos
esprits boiteux [ . . . ] et la naturelle sagesse des "simples" et de Socrate" (57-58) pour
les derniers. Il insiste sur le fait qu'une seule voix domine désormais "dans les
Essais: celle de Montaigne" (59) qui était devenu pleinement indépendant dans
1 '"Apologie" "chapitre charnière ou coupure".

Le chapitre VI voit le temps s'accélérer pour Montaigne, qui n'en laisse rien
perdre. En dépit de la maladie, son activité politique comme son activité littéraire
ne diminuent pas. Il relit ses auteurs préférés, en découvre d'autres, reprend son
livre, dont il développe telle phrase, tel paragraphe, cherchant souvent à donner plus
de force ou d'élégance à sa pensée, trouvant toujours de nouvelles citations pour
l'illustrer. Quand il le juge bon, Robert Aulotte explique, commente, justifie, avec
finesses, d'un trait sûr. Des contradictions se rencontrent chez Montaigne, "parce
que l'essai passe et repasse sans cesse de la description à l'axiologie", parce que
1 '"autoportrait est tout ensemble déchiffrement et construction" (63). Il estime que
Montaigne "était souvent un passionné, un impatient et presque toujours un inquiet"
(63). Si Montaigne n'a jamais caché son admiration pour les âmes d'élite:
Alexandre, Julien, Caton le jeune, Epaminondas, la femme du voisin de Pline le
Jeune, Arria, femme de Cecinna Paetus, Pompeia Paulina (II, xxxv, xxxvi), son
modèle est évidemment Socrate (68). Et si Montaigne a voulu que le chapitre "De
l'Expérience" fût le chapitre final, c'est qu'"en dehors de l'expérience de soi, il n'y
avait plus, pour lui, de voie nouvelle à frayer vers la vérité, vers la sagesse, vers le
bonheur" (72).

Asa mort, Montaigne laissait son exemplaire des Essais couvert d'additions (plus
de mille). Robert Aulotte fait l'histoire de ce fameux exemplaire de Bordeaux,
depuis les copies jusqu'aux éditions de Marie de Gournay, de 1595 et des années
suivantes, jusqu'à la dernière qu'elle ait surveillée en 1635. Quarante ans consacrés
au culte de Montaigne et aux monuments destinés à en assurer la durée.

Robert Aulotte réserve un chapitre à la sagesse de Montaigne, "sagesse du
plaisir", "art de vivre heureux", qui ne peut éviter les "pensements de la mort" mais

Renaissance et Réforme / 89

sait les apprivoiser et les dominer. Quelques mots suffisent à Robert Aulotte pour
énumérer les principes qui aiiiment "la morale personnelle" de Montaigne: "aimer
la vie" et, pour cela, "accepter le temps", "accepter les autres", "s'accepter soi-
même", "étendre la joie", "apprécier à sa juste valeur le bonheur présent" (92-93).

Tout le monde s'accorde pour célébrer l'art de Montaigne, mais ce n'est pas
une entreprise aisée de l'analyser correctement. Robert Aulotte y réussit avec
bonheur. Il admire le "jeu polyphonique des citations et du moi" et les "multiples
harmoniques d'une écriture particulièrement poétique" (101). En deux formules,
l'essentiel est dit. Suit l'étude des emprunts, des citatins et de leur intégration
au texte, qu'elles soient choisies pour leur autorité ou pour leur valeur
décorative. Place est faite à la rhétorique, condamnée par Montaigne et pourtant
souvent utilisée dans Velocutio; mais les figures qui constellent les Essais ne
sont jamais de vains ornements; elles donnent plus de force et de lumière à la
pensée. Quant au "parler" qu'aime Montaigne, Robert Aulotte le définit comme
"une écriture de l'intériorité, unissant prose et poésie" (119). Tout est excellent
dans ce chapitre qui n'oublie aucun aspect de l'art de Montaigne, car Robert
Aulotte possède un diagnostic sûr, la sensibilité, le sens des nuances, le goût.
Dans les dernières pages, il dégage les grandes tendances de la "réception" des
Essais en se réservant quelques lignes. J'y élève une belle remarque: "le livre
s'ouvre sur une attente de mort, mais il se ferme sur un salubre souhait de vie
vouée à la poésie, harmonieusement vécue" (122) et un voeu: "Puissent tous ses
lecteurs lui être dans leur entière liberté de jugement, les "faux amis" que lui
méritent ses loyaux Essais!" (123).

Robert Aulotte observe d'un oeil amical et perspicace au long des années et
des pages Montaigne et ses Essais; il se fait pour nous le guide le plus attentif et
le mieux informé, s'attardant tantôt sur le maître, tantôt sur le livre, s'identifiant
presque à l'auteur. Et, dans cette exploration qui, en apparence, a la nonchalance
d'une promenade, il va au fond des choses, ne cessant pas de chercher la vérité, la
réalité des Essais. Le charme du style pourrait faire négliger la qualité historique
et philosophique de l'étude, qu'il ne faut pas hésiter à relire: on y découvre toujours
de nouvelles richesses. Pour ne pas en citer la plus grande partie, je me limite à
trois exemples. Ecoutez Robert Aulotte parler de l'Apologie de Sebond (p.29-38),
de Socrate (p. 68-70), des conditions du "sainement et gayement vivre" (p. 91). Les
Essais sont un monde. Le voyageur qui s'y aventure seul peut le parcourir avec
enthousiasme. S'il prend Robert Aulotte pour pilote, il y découvrira avec admira-
tion des cités, des régions inconnues et y verra, plus vivant que jamais, Montaigne.
Ce livre devient vite un ami dont on ne se sépare pas aisément, d'abord parce qu'il
vous aide à comprendre la pensée de Montaigne, à mieux apprécier son art, mais
aussi parce que le style de Robert Aulotte, par un miracle de sympathie ou de
symbiose, a pris la "semblance" de celui de son auteur d'élection.

JEAN LARMAT, Université de Nice

90 / Renaissance and Reformation

Margaret Loftus Ranald, Shakespeare & His Social Context: Essays in Osmotic
Knowledge and Literary Interpretation. New York: AMS Press, 1987. Pp. 288.

Shakespeare & His Social Context, by Margaret Ranald, reproduces her articles,
published over some twenty-five years, surveying Shakespeare's reliance on a
"shared background of knowledge and assumptions" hypothetically typical of his
day (xi). This osmotic knowledge includes the information, the moral and be-
havioral assumptions, and the shared identity and religion of Shakespeare and his
contemporaries. To expose this cultural frame of reference, Ranald draws on
semiotics, matrimonial law, precepts of feminine behavior, manners and mores,
ritual, the rules of siege warfare, and the laws of chivalry.

The book is organized in four parts: The Pathway into Marriage; The Way of
Wifely Behavior; Women Without Power; and Men Who Lose Power. The first and
largest part surveys the comedies, identifying A// '5 Well as a precursor to the late
romances. Part Two examines Errors, Shrew, and "The Indiscretions of Des-
demona," linking these comedies and Othello through socially-perceived roles for
women in wooing, wedding, and wifely behavior. Part Three allies Lucrèce and
"three historical ladies," Ranald's label for representative stages in female life:
maid, wife, and widow. Part Four engages the dichotomy of masculine power and
feminine powerlessness in an examination of Richard II and Macbeth, focussing on
the inverted ritual in the degradation of Richard and the divestiture in Macbeth,
King Lear, Timon of Athens, and Henry VIII.

Part I reveals Shakespeare's dependence on the fundamental impediments to
marriage in Elizabethan law and custom. Though she denies him "revolutionary
credentials," Ranald concludes that Shakespeare's comedies indicate "his apprecia-
tion of women as teachers of love, as partners in marriage, and above all as friendly
equals and companions" (239). In the histories and tragedies, however, she affirms
that Shakespeare's feminine characters revert to more traditional roles to become
systemic victims of masculine power. Clothed in words, Shakespeare's comic
heroines stand at the moral centre of the action. Conversely, women in the tragedies,
and those male figures construed as essentially feminine, resort to words as expres-
sion and confirmation of their frustration and powerlessness.

"The education of young men into love-worthiness," Ranald observes, "is a
pervasive theme of Shakespeare's comedies" (51). Even in The Two Gentlemen
Ranald finds Julia at the moral centre of the action, for she functions as "expositor,
commentator, servant, go-between and above all else as educator" (56). In Mer-
chant, she identifies Portia similarly as the "moral, educative centre of the play"
(61), whose dual mission is to save Antonio from death while defining the limits of
friendship and love. Increasingly, Ranald finds Shakespeare interprets marriage as
a basis for mutuality, tolerance, and reciprocity.

In Part Two, Ranald examines social convention in Errors, arguing that Shakespeare
establishes his own pattern for marriage comedies: a matrimonial relationship is

Renaissance et Réforme / 91

challenged by an independent woman. The woman usually accommodates her outward
conduct to that of the man, but she shows such freedom of spirit that roles and attitudes
are redefined in a marriage evolving toward mutuality and companionship. As expected,
The Shrew exemplifies the formula. In it, Ranald finds an amalgam of two approaches
to taming: falconry and the conduct books of Elizabethan England.

Next, Ranald reminds us that Othello's theme of love and marriage is traditionally
the province of comedy, and the mistaken cuckold, the jealous husband, and the
January-May marriage belong to farce rather than Italianate revenge tragedy (135).
Ranald then assesses Desdemona's conduct against the behavior of the Elizabethan
ideal woman. Like the comic heroines preceding her, she demonstrates self-confidence
and enterprise, qualities counter to the traditional Elizabethan code of ideal feminine
behavior. Ranald argues that an understanding of Elizabeth conventions of female
behavior indicates Desdemona's partial responsibility for the tragic resolution.

In Part Three, Ranald examines the vocabulary and practices of siege warfare in The
Rape of Lucrèce where Lucrèce is a citadel of honor, both her own and her husband's.
Her defence of the citadel is based, Ranald finds, on legal and quasi-legal imperatives:
"knighthood and gentility, the obligation of office, the laws of morality, holy human
law, and matrimonial law" (164). Lucrèce 's description of Troy acts as a paradigm of
the action, "pulling together the central concepts of rape, treachery, siege, and the
helplessness of women in a world of masculine power" (168). This reading enables
Ranald to introduce three of Shakespeare's historical feminine characters: Margaret of
Anjou, Constance of Brittany, and Katherine of Aragon. In plays portraying men as the
action principle and women as passive, nurturing and docile, each woman is victimized
by a masculine drive to power. Shakespeare portrays cruel Margaret as a violation of
stereo-typical femininity, Constance as a maternal figure of lamentation and Katherine
as a sacrifice for the future of a greater England.

In Part Four, "The Degradation of Richard II," Ranald demonstrates that
Shakespeare draws on rituals of chivalric, military, and ecclesiastical degradation
for the inverted rite of Richard's discoronation (192). She finds a counterpart to
Richard's ritual degradation in at least four other Shakespearean plays, most notably
Lear, where the theme of stripping encompasses both divestiture and development
of self-knowledge. Ranald identifies similar degradation in Timon, where, reduced
to the lowest quality of existence, Timon reaches a "nihilistic conclusion in the
centre of his own private hell" (230). While the significance of clothing imagery in
Macbeth has long been recognized, Ranald finds in it an index of Macbeth's moral
state, and determines that clothing and unclothing form a clearly-defined pattern
through which major characters undergo a process of reduction.

As a source of information about English social law and chivalric and ecclesias-
tical ceremony, Shakespeare & His Social Context is an invaluable reference.
Moreover, as a moderate examination of marital practices, social attitudes, and the
role of women in Shakespeare's drama, it represents the best of recent feminine
scholarship. In readable, attractive prose, Ranald explicates the arcane wordings of

92 / Renaissance and Reformation

Elizabethan law, courtesy and behavior handbooks, and fine distinctions between
professional terms. Unfortunately, her coordination of articles written over decades is
occasionally arbitrary, as Ranald struggles to integrate materials as diverse as imagery
in tragedy, "plaints" in Lucrèce, and the nature of powerlessness. Inevitably, an
imbalance occurs, for Part One occupies almost half the text, moving eclectically
through the comedies, especially the lyrical. Part Two, in returning to beginnings and
examining Errors and The Shrew, is reminiscent of a flash-back. Lucrèce and Des-
demona share similarities, to be sure, but there is a giant step for woman between The
Rape of Lucrèce and Othello. The fourth part,a catch-all for men who lose power, argues
strenuously for analogy between loss of power by men and the contemporary power-
lessness of women but seems basically an add-on rather than a completion. Occasional-
ly, too, "osmotic knowledge" becomes simply a convenient rationalization for feminist
thematics without a contemporary political agenda. At other times, it relies unrealisti-
cally on the hypothetical understanding of the average Elizabethan.

Ranald's collection rewards close study, however, if only for Part One, for her
rehabilitation of All's Well and Lucrèce, and for her examination of representative
women and the degradation of men without power. Supporting generally-accepted
moderate interpretations of Shakespeare's plays, Shakespeare & His Social Context
demonstrates the indispensability of a knowledge of Elizabethan civil law and
contract, particularly matrimonial law, and the manners and mores associated with
relations between the sexes in the dramatist's day.

BARRY THORNE, Queen's University

Claude V. Palisca. Humanism in Italian Renaissance Musical Thought. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987. Pp. xiii, 47L

Occasionally, the scholarly community celebrates the appearance of a truly sig-
nificant and magisterial study written by an acknowledged specialist — in this case,
the publication of Claude Palisca's monograph on musical humanism. The book
caps a life-long engagement with music discourse from the fifteenth to the early
seventeenth centuries. And the result is a virtuoso performance, a recreation of the
issues by means of the meticulous investigation of primary sources. This is evident
in the myriad citations presented throughout the book, citations in which the original
languages have parallel-column translation into English. The citations are there not
so much to demonstrate Palisca's humanistic erudition (which of course they do)
but rather to illustrate points raised in the text itself. There is thus a continuous
narrative, although context and investigative apparatus are not always correlated
from chapter to chapter.

The Preface is a preface to Chapter One, the exordium proper, "Introduction: An
Italian Renaissance in Music?" In these sections we read that attempts to explain

Renaissance et Réforme / 93

the stylistic elements of the music in terms of any kind of renaissance, let alone a
revival of ancient music— ^which was (and probably still is) impossible — will
always be inadequate (pp. 4-5). Palisca maintains that such explanations penetrate
no further than the "audible surface of a musical culture, the essence of which must
be sought beneath." For those unacquainted with sacred cows in musicology, it must
be mentioned that this statement is for some the matador's cape or at least the
picador's lance, for it dismisses an entire class of literature that either attacks,
defends, or simply assumes a range of concepts about the existence of renaissance
style/s in music. The dialectical tactic here is not a coup de grace but a veronica as
the author invites us to sidestep the horns of this dilemma and to consider instead
the "Renaissance musical scene ... in cultural terms." This avenue of ingress should
lead us to "the essence" of musical humanism because "the objects of revival were
ancient attitudes and thoughts about music" (p.xi). The author mentions those
strands which in his view make up the cultural complex of renaissance music, and
it can be shown that humanist activities are interwoven in the fabric. However, the
warp in this case is the history of ideas, and very rarely does one find any wefts of
the other cultural strands. It is left to the reader to weave the whole cloth.

In Chapter Two, "The Rediscovery of Ancient Sources," Palisca offers a provoca-
tive comparison of music to mathematics with respect to their status in educational
curricula during the early stages of humanist activity. He repeats the traditional
subdivision of the artes libérales whereby music is placed alongside of mathematics
in the quadrivium, and after an informative survey of the growth of library holdings on
music, goes on to review the writings of Boethius, Macrobius, Capella, Cassiodorus,
Cleonides, Ptolemy, and Aristoxenus. Although this generalization may be accurate
enough as far as university studies went, music was not totally divorced from subjects
of the trivium — grammar, rhetoric and dialectic. (See for example Mathias Bielitz,
Musik unci Grammatik: Studien zur mittelalterlichen Musiktheorie. Munich:
Katzbichler, 1977.) If the humanistic revival of ancient sources was responsible for the
quadrivial emphasis in antiquarian discourse on music, this phenomenon should be
compared to humanism in other disciplines.

Chapters Three to Seven concentrate on the contributions of such humanists as Pietro
d'Abano, Giorgio Valla, (the latter accorded a penetrating assessment). Carlo Valgulio,
Giovanni Francesco Burana, Nicolo Leoniceno, Giovanni Battista Augio, and Antonio
Gogava, men whose work took the form mainly of translations of Ptolemy 's/Zarmon/^e
by Leoniceno, Augio, and Gogava. It turns out that the least accurate of the three,
Gogava's Latin version of 1562, was also the most influential. One wonders why
Valgulio 's eloquent defense of Aristoxenus in terms of "the broader wisdom of mathe-
matics, particularly geometry, in which continuity, infinite division, and irrationality
were ubiquitous phenomena" (p.99) did not inspire any response since it was so readily
available in the preface to his popular translation of pseudo-Plutarch's De musica.

After an intriguing chapter on "Harmonies and Disharmonies of the Spheres,"
which ranges from the positive views of the Ferrarese prelate Ugolino da Orvieto

94 / Renaissance and Reformation

to the negative views of the mathematician Giovanni Benedetti, Palisca devotes one
chapter to a painstaking examination of Franchino Gaffurio's humanist learning in
the antiquarian treatise. De harmonia musicorum instrumentorum opus (Milan,
1518). It is in this book that one can see both the good and bad results of Gaffurio's
readings in the Greek sources available in Latin or Italian and the translations he
commissioned himself.

The last five chapters of the book settle into a series of thematic studies. Chapter
Ten, "The Ancient Musica Speculativa and Renaissance Musical Science," is
subdivided into individual writers: six music theorists (starting with Gaffurio and
finishing with Vincenzo Galilei, the son of the astronomer), two mathematicians
from either end of the time-span (Ramos de Pareja and Benedetti), one medical
doctor (Girolamo Fracastoro), and one humanist scholar (Girolamo Mei). It is
difficult to single out highlights in this masterful examination of a complex topic.
However, Palisca's discussion of the shortcomings of Gaffurio's philosophical
assumptions and his evaluation of the merits of Zarlino's conception of sonorous
number stand as exemplars of cogent exegesis.

Exceptional lucidity also marks Chapter Eleven on another very abstruse subject,
"Greek Tonality and Western Modality." Except for a section subtitled "The Tonoi
and the Waning of Melody," the chapter again concentrates on individuals: five
music theorists (from Johannes Gallicus through to Galilei), one mathematician
with tenuous connections to Italy (Erasmus of Horitz), and four humanist scholars
(Giorgio Valla, Leoniceno, Mei, Giovanni Bardi, and Giovanni Battista Doni).

The last three chapters present different aspects of the humanistic conception of
music and language. By way of introduction. Chapter Twelve whets our appetite
with its intriguing caption, "A Natural New Alliance of the Arts." Whereas the last
two sections focus on the linguistic theories of individuals, in this case Mei and
Pietro Bembo, the introductory paragraphs and the first section on grammar range
more widely from well known figures such as Coluccio Salutati to relatively
unknown ones such as Matteo Nardo. In particular, the discussion of concepts of
modal ethos in terms of "humanism gone awry" (p. 346) is refreshingly candid even
though one may question its placement under the rubric of grammar.

Unlike the final chapter, "Theory of Dramatic Music," which is divided into three
major sections, each devoted to one person (Francesco Patrizi, Girolamo Mei, and
Jacopo Peri), Chapter Thirteen on "The Poetics of Music" is an amalgam of three
topical and two personal sections. The latter concentrate on the mimetic theories of
Galilei and Patrizi. The former deal with music as poetry, the poetics of imitation,
and the expression of the affections. In the first, Palisca reviews the work of poets,
literary critics, and one music theorist (Gioseffo Zarlino). In spite of the detailed
examination of Bembo's "Cantai hor piango" as set to music by Bardi, this section
seems more like a survey of the literature than an assessment of its meaning. Such
is also the case for the short section on imitation. Here brief descriptions of Plato,
Aristotle, and Horace are connected to the writings of three literary critics: Gian-

Renaissance et Réforme / 95

giorgio Trissino, Giovanni Pietro Capriano, and Agnolo Segni, with a nod towards
Benedetto Varchi as well. This discussion lacks a context and is perhaps overly
dependent on Bernard Weinberg as a secondary source. For instance, the author did
not use the facsimile edition of Trissino 's La poetica (Munich: Wilhelm Fink,
1969) — not that this is crucial inasmuch as Trissino was not widely read in the
sixteenth century. The final section on the affections consists of an examination of
the theories of Lorenzo Giacomini. Surely this subject deserves more attention, even
if it is agreed that the trivial side of the humanist revival of ancient attitudes and
thoughts did not rival the quadrivial side.

Given the complexity of Palisca's book, the overall accuracy of the text is
remarkable. And yet the antics of word-processing gremlins can be spotted here and
there. They erased the translation of the excerpt from Cornazano's La Sforziade (p.
373), divided the references to Cardinal Niccolo Ridolfi into two persons in the
index, and interfered with a few entries in the bibliography: for example, Barbaro's
Italian edition of Vitruvius first appeared in 1566 and not 1567, the date of his Latin
edition; the correct title of Bk. II of Cassiodorus's work is Istitutiones saecularium
Utterarum; and the entries of Giambattista Giraldi Cintio's Discourses and Isidore
oi Stv'xWt'?, Etymologies have disappeared.

However, it makes little sense to rehearse minor cavils when one assesses a work
of this magnitude. Palisca's book is a major achievement and a challenging standard
for scholars working not only on Renaissance discourse on music, but also on
writings from various cultures, for it demonstrates what sorts of things may be
drawn from primary sources, how one draws them out, and the contexts in which
one evaluates them as primary texts. Any research done in the future on individual
writers, cultural contexts, or reception history must take into account this stellar
contribution by Claude Palisca.

MARL\ RIKA MANL\TES, University of Toronto

Hilary Gatti. The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge. Giordano Bruno in England.
London and New York: Routledge, 1989. Pp. xvi, 228.

The problem of the relationship between the thought of Giordano Bruno and the
plays of William Shakespeare has been a vexed one ever since German scholars
raised it in the mid-nineteenth century. The concluding chapter of Hilary Gatti's
new book proposes an answer, at least for Hamlet, a play which she believes is
suffused both with the Nolan's vision of an infinite universe and his tragic awareness
of the cost of questioning the accepted doctrine of a finite one. In leading up to this
point Gatti considers not only Shakespeare's response to Bruno, but Bruno's
impress on the small group of Englishmen — courtly, literary, and scientific — who
seem to have read him closely. This group, she contends, included Marlowe, and as

96 / Renaissance and Reformation

a result she is able to bring together in a single argument the two greatest dramatists
of their age — one a hard-working bourgeois, the other a radical intellectual — and
to juxtapose with considerable insight the two plays in which Bruno's spirit has
been most closely felt: Hamlet and Doctor Faustus. Her book thus reaches into
several disciplines: history, cultural analysis, literary interpretation, and drama.
Despite points where the demonstration wavers, the result is convincing, not least
because she rigorously includes an appendix chronicling the controversy itself,
making it possible for us to test her argument in its setting.

"Setting is a non-committal word she uses frequently, aware of the subtle way
often contradictory forces pull at each other when new ideas are coming to birth.
We begin with a chapter on "the Brunian setting," by which she means the
continental context within which Bruno's extraordinary intellectual egotism
operated. Gatti is clearly in deep sympathy with her subject; she accepts his egotism
calmly, not as a disadvantage which has to be overlooked but as the expectable
bulwark of a proud mind philosophically embattled. Bruno bluntly insisted on the
obvious rightness of his views, and fiercely attacked whoever did not concur, and
there is no denying it or defending him. Gatti is skeptical enough where she needs
to be, but her sympathy enables her to trace without excuse the inherent tragedy (in
the full dramatic sense of that term) of Bruno's career. "What gives his work its
particular power and impetus both within his own times and more generally within
the modern world is the nature of his response," she writes. "For Bruno, placed in
front of a newly entrenched and often obscure rigidity on the part of the traditional
cultural institutions, both academic and religious, takes upon his own individual
intellect the task of repudiating an old and worn-out world order and of opening up
new vistas of knowledge and understanding." It is this situation which she sees
dramatized in the dilemmas of Faustus and Hamlet, and which links the two plays
together.

Gatti traces Bruno's conflict with three important institutions: the Church, the
universities, and the Courts of Princes. In every case he was fated, not only because
of his own contentious personality, but because his insistence on the necessity of
autonomous inquiry in philosophy affronted the interests of those he addressed.
The problem around which Bruno's thought constantly revolved was not itself a
new one: the relation between "the divine unity, inscrutable to man and ... the
richness and abundance of universal variety which it is given to man to approach
and comprehend through dedicated search and inquiry." Both Louis Le Roy (at a
low level) and Francis Bacon (at one much higher) were to address it, and escape
the stake. For Bruno, however, autonomy of inquiry became the fundamental
condition for such speculation, and it was this conviction that he brought to London
in 1583, a London ruled in his imagination by two images, that of the Queen and
of Sir Philip Sidney.

Gatti has less to say of the Sidney-Bruno link than one would wish, perhaps
because a cool-headed survey of the evidence would make another chapter — or a

Renaissance et Réforme / 97

different book. It is his connections with the Northumberland circle she investigates,
in two closely argued chapters in which his influence is tracked from one passage
to another of Northumberland's own writings and papers, those of Thomas Harriot,
and William Warner. Her exposition is too closely tied to this evidence to recapitu-
late fairly here. It is both extremely suggestive and not in every case totally
convincing; there are a few places where it might have been fairer to give up trying
to extract connections from the limited body of evidence and instead rely confident-
ly on the resources of interpretation. Nevertheless it emerges that a close textual
knowledge of Bruno's writings indeed united the Northumberland circle, and that
Marlowe shared in this knowledge.

The case she builds not only illuminates the philosophical position and moral
conflicts of Faustus, but the dramatic structure of the play Marlowe wrote about
him. Gatti renounces the traditional moral interpretation of Faustus' final
monologue, with its stress on his failure to repent. Rather, she argues, contact with
the ideas of Bruno made it possible for Marlowe to depict his character making "an
irrevocable intellectual choice: to embrace an alternative metaphysic which implied
alternative concepts of knowledge but also of the soul and death." It is in the tensions
between these conflicting images, these two concepts of knowledge and of death,
that Marlowe writes Faustus' last speech. But "the attempt to escape from the
metaphysic which dominates his culture has failed," and Faustus, recognizing this,
"has no choice but to die in terms of the inevitable scenario."

Gatti's treatment of Hamlet has equal interpretative insight, but here the
attempt — plausible within the circle of the Wizard Earl — to create a documented
connection between playwright and philosopher founders for the lack of docu-
ments. Gatti relies primarily on an elaborate explication of the image of the
antique Silenus-box, with its ugly exterior concealing images of divinity, to
connect the play's fascination with inner and outer (being and seeming, plays
within plays) and the Brunian mentality. The closest connection she can make
between Shakespeare and Bruno is the long-ago noted one between Polonius
and the pedant Polinno of Bruno's De la causa, principio et uno. Here the
argument of what is otherwise a very stimulating book becomes thin-spun. It is
not that Hamlet cannot be placed in her Brunian setting; it is that the job cannot
be done by these means. It might have been better to accept that Shakespeare's
magpie knowledge differed in kind from Marlowe's, and to consider how much
Doctor Faustus itself may have done to transmit Brunian concerns to someone
who was ever a quick study.

This is nevertheless a thought-provoking book; though Gatti honourably points
out how many of the things she says have earlier been said by others, the order she
sets them in is fresh, and she adds much of her own. It is too bad that the price
($79.95 Cdn.) of this modest-sized volume is a scandal.

GERMAINE WARKENTIN, University of Toronto

98 / Renaissance and Reformation

David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Tuscans and Their Families: A Study
of the Florentine Catasto of 1427. New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1985. Pp.xxiv,404.

When Les Toscans et leurs familles first appeared in 1978, it was immediately hailed
as a major contribution to two previously disparate fields: historical demography and
Renaissance studies. David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber had selected a
marvelous source — the registers of the Florentine catasto of 1427, which recorded in
minute detail the tax declarations of Florence and its subject territories — and applied
to this source all the conceptual and mechanical tools of systematic statistical analysis.
They described the political and fiscal setting in which the catasto was created, the
values and limits of the data it contains, and the methods they used to examine that data.
They considered the distribution of wealth, population movements, birth rates, mor-
tality, age distribution, marital patterns, life stages, residential units, gender imbalances,
and more. They laid out their results in 39 graphs, 85 tables, 69 maps, and over 600
pages of lucidly written text.

The publication of an English version, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the
Florentine Catasto of 1427, in hardcover (1985) and in paperback (1989), spurs reflection
on the lasting value of Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber 's work. The English version is less
dauntingly monumental: the number of graphs, tables, and maps has been reduced, the
appendices have been eliminated, and the text has been shortened by a third. It is also more
precisely focussed on matters of historical demography, where the authors made their most
original and most enduring contribution. For the English version they have sharply reduced
their discussion of fiscal politics and the making of the catasto, the geographical distribu-
tion of the population, the distribution of wealth between urban and rural areas and among
different segments of the population, and literary images of infancy, childhood, maturity,
and old age. In contrast, they have retained in their fullness the chapters devoted to men
and women, young and old, marriage, births, death, and household structure — in short,
the hard core of demographic data.

Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber have demonstrated beyond any doubt the utility
of the computer in collating and manipulating this data, gathered from scores of
volumes registering the depositions of some 60,000 heads of households, regard-
ing over 260,000 persons. They have devised ingenious ways of overcoming in
part the synchronic nature of this mountain of data, which was compiled in a
remarkably brief span of time, and extending their analysis over several genera-
tions to demonstrate the perduring consequences of episodic outbreaks of
plague. They have conscientiously described in quantitative terms poor as well
as rich families, rural as well as urban; within those families they have paid as
much heed to women, children, and the aged as to adult males. Because the
thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and care with which Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber
analyze the catasto matches that with which the catasto was created, the scope, detail.

Renaissance et Réforme / 99

and insight of Tuscans and Their Families is likely to remain without parallel as a
study of premodern population.

Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber 's contribution to the field of early modern history
has been equally important. They have provided an inescapable quantitative
framework for all future studies of fifteenth-century Florentine society. This is
most obviously true for the flourishing sub-field of family studies: future
examinations of the particular marriage strategies and household arrangements
of specific families or lineages will inevitably consider them in the context of
the global figures provided by Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, just as studies of the
social and demographic structure of other Quattrocento cities will take the
Florentine pattern elucidated here as a secure reference point. But Herlihy and
Klapisch-Zuber's data also provide a framework for Bernardino of Siena's
sermons on marriage and household, Giovanni Dominici's treatise on family
management and childrearing, and Boccaccio's stories of adultery. Provocative
w hypotheses are advanced here (and will no doubt be tested elsewhere) about the
connections between the advanced age at which Florentine men married and the
incidence of violence, prostitution, and sodomy in Florence; between the strik-
ing concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few leading families and
humanist praise of munificence; between fiscal exemptions and the building of
elegant and richly furnished palaces and villas.

When Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber move from headcounts to culture, however,
their achievement appears more equivocal, and not simply because it is hard to
document clear causal connections between demographic data and cultural ethos,
fiscal policies and artistic production, quantities of lives and quality of life. In fact,
Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber generally do a persuasive job of suggesting linkages,
and the passages in which they suggest them are among the most stimulating (if
least conclusive) ones in the book. At issue is a broader and subtler problem: the
intellectual confusion that has beset the concept of "the Renaissance" as a result
of the rise of social history.

Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber bear no direct responsibility for this confusion.
For the most part, they carefully avoid using the term "the Renaissance,"
preferring instead neutral chronological designations such as "the fifteenth
century." Their terminological care is laudable, for their informative discussion
of demographic characteristics, social distinctions, and the distribution of
wealth has nothing to do with any turning to classical antiquity for inspiration
or exemplars. Was there a Renaissance fiscal household consciously crafted on
the model of republican or imperial Rome? Was there a Renaissance family, a
Renaissance dowry, or birthrate, or senescence? Clearly, when "the Renais-
sance" is stretched this far, it loses all value as a heuristic category. And that is
the disquieting legacy of Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber's magnificent achieve-
ment. So long as less reflective historians casually equate the fifteenth century
with the Renaissance and extend a designation suitable for cultural and intellec-

100 / Renaissance and Reformation

tuai developments to include all aspects of the period from Petrarch to Cas-
tiglione — so long, in short, as Tuscans and Their Families is hailed as "a major
contribution to Renaissance studies'" — "the Renaissance" will be merely a conven-
tional label, employed out of intellectual inertia though devoid of any coherent
sense.

DANIEL BORNSTEIN, University of California, San Diego

Renaissance
and

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Renaissance Renaissance

and et

Reformation Réforme

New Series, Vol. XV, No. 2 Nouvelle Série, Vol. XV, No. 2

Old Series, Vol. XXVn, No. 2 1991 Ancienne Série, Vol. XXVH, No. 2

CONTENTS / SOMMAIRE ^% «4^

ARTICLES I ' APR 20 ^gg

101 '"^

The Politics of Conscience in Reformation Erî
by Meg Lota Brown

115

De la nouvelle à l'essai, au seizième siècle
par André Berthiaume

123

Cromwell's Message to the Regulars: The Biblical

Trilogy of John Bale, 1537

by Seymour Baker House

139

The Family of Love and the Church of England

by Mark Konnert

BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

173

Ralph Berry. Shakespeare and Social Class

reviewed by Lorelei Cederstrom

178

Johannes Cochlaeus. Responsio Ad Johannem Bugenhagium

Pomeranum

reviewed by P. Joseph Cahill

179

Etudes sur la Satyre Ménippée, réunies par F. Lestringant

et D. Ménager

compte rendu par Nadine Mandel

181

Nancy G. Siraisi. Avicenna in Renaissance Italy

compte rendu par Joseph Shatzmiller

184

Christopher F. Black. Renaissance Confraternities in the

Sixteenth Century

reviewed by Konrad Eisenbichler

185

Francesco Guardiani. La meravigliosa retorica

dell'Adone di G. B. Marino

reviewed by Paul Collili

The Politics of Conscience in
Reformation England

MEG LOTA BROWN

J\ response to uncertainty about the compass of law and reason, casuistry
was an important factor in Reformation debate about authority and interpre-
tation. Also called case divinity or practical theology, casuistry is a system
of defining, interpreting, and applying law and ethics according to the
circumstances of a specific case. Practical theologians consult conscience,
Scriptural principles, and reason, in order to determine the relation of general
laws to particular experience. When public code unduly restricts private
conduct, case divinity provides a system of equitable sanctions that protects
the integrity of the individual.^ Case divinity constitutes a significant body
of Renaissance literature, and its appeal in seventeenth-century England was
considerable. From 1560 to 1660, over 600 collected cases of conscience
were published in England and Europe. Douglas Patey observes that "every
major divine of the period wrote or spoke on conscience," and he describes
the controversy between Protestant and Catholic casuists as "one of the
greatest paper wars of the age."^ Attention to practical theology was more
widespread during the seventeenth century than at any time before or since.
Casuistical epistemology influenced a great deal of post-Reformation
thought; indeed, one intellectual historian claims.

There was no aspect of action or belief which was not in one way or another
affected by the crisis over probabilism. . . . Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes,
Pascal, and other founders of modem science and philosophy (not excluding
Newton) cannot be fully understood except in the light of the controversies
(philosophical, theological, juridical) among probabilists and anti-probabi-
lists on the nature of knowledge, opinion, certitude, ignorance, hypothesis,
etc.^

Clearly, a full examination of the influence of casuistry is inappropriate to
the scope of this study, but the following pages will suggest some of the

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 2(1 99 1) 101

102 / Renaissance and Reformation

reasons for the appeal of practical theology in seventeenth-century England,
for the transformations of continental casuistry in Britain, as well as ways in
which casuists responded to political and religious controversies of the period.

The publication history of William Perkins' works provides a measure of
Protestant casuistry's popularity in England. The first to systematize a Re-
formed version of practical theology, Perkins (1558-1602) was the mainstay
of English casuists. During the first half of the seventeenth century, as many
as eleven editions of Perkins' collected works, both pirated and authorized,
were printed. Further evidence of Perkins' reception can be deduced from the
number of his works included in anthologies; one collection, A Garden of
Spiritual Flowers, underwent nine printings from 1609-38.'^ According to a
modem editor of Perkins' casuistical treatises, the author was better known
to his time than Hooker. His works were translated into six languages, and
"in an age when the literature of piety was exceedingly popular, he was
probably read more widely than any other preacher of his day."^ Later writers
of cases — William Ames, Richard Baxter, and Jeremy Taylor, for example —
acknowledged their enormous debt to Perkins. But his influence was not
limited to England; in inventories of colonial American libraries, "one of the
commonest entries is the work of William Perkins. . . . [His] works are found
listed in Virginia inventories almost as frequently as in books of New
England."^

Perkins' popularity is partly attributable to the accessibility and practicality
of his material. Stressing the application of Scripture to quotidian activities,
he wrote about marital problems, godly speech, family duties, etc. His treatise
on how to die well not only discusses preparing one's soul for death, but also
offers more immediately practical advice about selecting a physician. Above
all, Perkins translated into simpler terms the technical language and subtleties
that characterized Catholic cases. His work, like that of his successors, made
a system of addressing moral uncertainty available to all.

Thus one reason for the appeal of Protestant casuistry in England was the
wide audience at which it aimed. Unlike Catholic cases of conscience, which
were written in Latin for the priest's use in confessional. Reformed casuistry
was almost always in the vernacular, and was intended for every Christian.
Just as Protestant clergy were not intercessors between the faithful and God,
Protestant casuists did not interpose themselves between individuals and their
consciences. Rather, endorsing Luther's declaration of "tiie priesthood of all
believers," they insisted that the answers to dilemmas should be sought in
Scripture before they are sought in institutions or other individuals. All
Christians were encouraged to be their own casuists. Directly accountable to

Renaissance et Réforme / 103

God for their conduct, laymen were more engaged in their own moral
direction than ever before. The audience of Protestant casuistry, then, was all
believers, and the subject was all their actions.

But if individuals were to determine their own cases of conscience, what
function did the hundreds of pubUshed cases serve? And what was the role
of moral theologians who preached unmediated consultation of Scripture?
Protestant casuists perceived themselves as advisors rather than legislators.
Cases served as paradigms of deliberation, procedural manuals that readers
could consult while adjudicating their own decisions. Because the reader's
circumstances often varied from those of published cases, moral theologians
pointed out that their resolutions were only provisional. Protestant casuists
wrote not as absolute judges, but as reasonable investigators into all sides of
an ethical dilemma. Jeremy Taylor explains in Due tor Dubitantium: "Where
I had not certainty in a case, or that the parts of a question were too violently
contended for, with sufficient evidence on either side, I have not been very
forward to give my final sentence, but my opinion and reason."^

Opinion and reason were the province of Reformed casuists. Their role
consisted of quieting or aggravating conscience, of setting forth alternatives
and consequences, of providing models for weighing moral responsibilities.
The judgments of their Catholic counterparts, however, were less tentative.
The Roman Church allowed its casuists complete jurisdiction over con-
science. As early as the third century, the Didascalia proclaimed that priests
"are in the place of God and have received power to bind and loose. This
power applies to all sins."^ The priest's jurisdiction combined with mandatory
confession to strengthen the authoritarianism of Catholic casuistry. Reform-
ers objected to such control over conscience; Perkins, for example, criticizes
the Roman assumption that casuists

are made by Christ himselfe judges of the Cases of Conscience, having in
their owne handes njudicarie power and authoritie, truely and properly to
bind or loose, to remit or to retaine sinnes, to open or shut the kingdome of
heaven. Whereas the Scripture uttereth a contrarie voyce, that Christ onely
hath the keyes of David. . . . And the ministers of God are not called to be
absolute Judges of the Conscience, but onely Messengers and Embassadours
of reconciliation .^

While the resolutions of Catholic cases were authoritative, English casuists
maintained that individuals' final decisions must be their own. Protestant
"Embassadours of reconciliation" insured the popularity of casuistry by
including the laity in the diplomacy of conscience.

104 / Renaissance and Reformation

Still another appeal of casuistry was its ability to address the political and
religious perplexities that beset seventeenth-century England. In the battles
among Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans, pope and monarch, foreign and do-
mestic governments, each faction warned that obedience to the other could
imperil one's soul — and in some cases, one's family, livelihood, and posses-
sions. "Surplices became scruples and devotional practices doubts, so that not
only in moral questions, but in allied matters of ecclesiastical authority and
obedience, the necessity for clear expositions of conscience, its nature, its
doubts and its perplexities was obvious." ^^ Casuistry met a concrete need for
guidance of the conscience; it enabled individuals to measure their options
and to govern their actions when confronted with conflicting authorities of
the period.

The Reformation engendered numerous cases of conscience. EngUsh Cath-
olics during the Armada threat, for example, had to determine whether treason
or disobedience of the Pope was a greater violation. On one hand, the Papal
Bull "Regnans in Excelsis" had excommunicated Elizabeth, and had declared
that those who defended her not only sinned, but were in jeopardy of
excommunication themselves. On the other hand, allegiance to Rome meant
supporting the invasion and overthrow of their country. The vast majority of
English Catholics chose in favor of Elizabeth. Patrick McGrath suggests that
their reasoning is represented in a casuistical tract which asks, "Whether
catholics in England might take up arms to defend the queen and country
against the Spaniards?" The author of the tract, a priest named Wright, argues
that Philip's motive for attacking was political gain and not defense of the
Faith. Since Christians owe political allegiance to the State and spiritual
allegiance to the Church, and since Spain's chief objective was not religious,
English CathoUcs were bound in conscience to resist a foreign aggressor. As
if often true in practical theology, Wright gives decisive importance to the
motive of an act, and he hmits his judgment to the specific case. "He did not
repudiate the papal deposing power, but he argued that in this particular case
Catholics were not bound to obey the Pope" (my emphasis). ^ ^ Always rooted
in the occasion, casuistry enabled a concrete resolution without forcing
English Catholics to betray their faith or to renounce the Pope.

In a period when antagonistic factions required oaths of obedience, the
extent of an individual's duty to civil and ecclesiastical authorities was a
common subject of casuistry. Bishop Sanderson's "Case of the Engagement"
tries to reconcile a Royalist's conscience with the 1649 oath of loyalty to
Parliament, and John Donne's Pseudo-Martyr examines why English Cath-
olics should take the Oath of Allegiance to their Anglican king.*^ Both cases

Renaissance et Réforme / 105

argue for avoiding confrontation with the ruling powers, while taking great
care that the conscience remains inviolate. For some in seventeenth-century
England, casuistry was a means of physical as well as spiritual preservation.
But practical theology also provided less scrupulous means of self-preser-
vation. From 1580, when the first Jesuits arrived in England, equivocation
and mental reservation became associated with Roman casuistry. Both prac-
tices were intended to deceive authorities, and both could be enlisted when
swearing oaths. Under the aegis of mental reservation, one could swear to the
truth of a statement while mentally denying it. The Jesuit Campion promised
his captors that his name was Butler, and then silently added, "It is the name
that I have assumed for the moment in order to avoid persecution."^^ Simi-
larly, equivocation allowed one to deceive an interlocutor by withholding
information or misrepresenting facts. Robert Sanderson gives several exam-
ples of this practice in his De Juramenti Obligatione:

It is as if a Jesuit apprehended, should swear that he were a Smith, meaning
that his Name was Smith; or an Apprentice commanded to tell where his
Master is, should swear he died a month ago, meaning that he then died

Stockings This Jesuitical doctrine licenseth the Lust of Lying and Perjury

unto all impious Men. ^^

While mental reservation and equivocation may have popularized casuistry
for those who were able to insure their safety without betraying their alle-
giance, most casuists condemned the two practices. Donne likens equivoca-
tion to "a Tower of Babel . . . because therein no men can understand one
another," and Juan Caramuel, a Catholic casuist, protests that "Mental reser-
vations deprive human society of all security; they open the way to all lies
and perjury; the wickedness of mendacity is not changed by calling it mental
reservation, it is merely enveloping a poison with sugar and disguising vice
as virtue."'^

Clearly, practical theology was vulnerable to abuse, and not all aspects of
the doctrine met with approval. Indeed, by 1656, when Pascal wrote his
Provincial Letters, casuistry had acquired the notoriety that still attends it.^^
But earlier in the century, case divinity was often a valued resource for the
conscience torn between conflicting obligations. Protestant casuists, in par-
ticular, responded to the crisis of authority and interpretation that accompa-
nied the Reformation. Their emphasis on practicality and accessibility, their
role as advisors to conscience and reason, and their attention to the ethical
problems that arose from contemporary debate insured them a wide audience
in seventeenth-century England.

106 / Renaissance and Reformation

One of the most publicized controversies between Catholic and Protestant
casuists concerned the doctrine of probabilism. As noted earlier, the contro-
versy exerted an enormous influence on post-Reformation philosophy. Prob-
abilism states that if one has the support of authority, one may disregard a
law, even though conceivably there are stronger arguments and more author-
ities in favor of the law. In its simplest form, the doctrine grants: "We may
use a probable opinion even though the contrary be more probable"; however.

the more probable arguments which may be discounted are not the known
but the unknown arguments for the law. Once you have a reasonable and
weighty doubt, you need not become involved in the interminable discus-
sions which would be necessary to weigh up the balance of probability on
either side.' ^

Such, at least, was the original conception of the doctrine. But the practicality
of probabilism quickly yielded to opportunism, and the theory became a
notorious vehicle for moral sophistry.

Bartholomew Medina of Salamanca, a Catholic casuist, formulated prob-
abilism in 1577. His intention was to offer a solution for those who must
decide a case of conscience without the time or resources to weigh all
arguments for and against the decision. The doctrine was to aid the overly
scrupulous who were unable to act because of fear that an unanticipated
argument may prove the action sinful. To circumvent such paralysis, Medina
asserts, "if an opinion is solidly probable, the bare possibility that it might in
the end prove less probable than its opposite need not deter us from acting
upon it."^^ The definition of a probable opinion was any view sanctioned by
the Catholic Church — its popes, councils, traditions, theologians, casuists.
The greater the number of authorities that endorsed the view, the more
probable the view was.^^ Francisco Suarez, also a Spanish casuist, stipulates
that a probable opinion "must not run counter to any truth universally accepted
by the Church; it must be in agreement with common sense . . . and supported
by good authority, and if it has not the support of the majority of authorities,
it must at all events not be an opinion generally abandoned. "^^ From its
inception, probabilism was an authoritarian doctrine.

Despite limitations imposed on probabilism, the theory was vulnerable to
exploitation. Gabriel Vazquez, a Jesuit casuist, attempted to forestall misap-
plication of the doctrine when he declared that one may not invoke it at the
expense of charity. And Medina warns: "For an opinion to be probable, it is
not enough that specious reasons can be adduced on its side, nor that it should

Renaissance et Réforme / 107

have champions and defenders — any error might be adjudged probable at that
rate. It must be asserted by wise men and confirmed by the best arguments."'^^
Nevertheless, probabihsm became a means of escaping moral law and ration-
alizing misconduct. The most publicized abuses were those of Jesuits who
taught that one may act upon any probable opinion, despite one's knowledge
of more probable arguments to the contrary. Moreover, revising Medina's
stipulations that several reputable authorities must support one's decision,
Jesuits countenanced as probable the judgment of a single Church official,
even if the respected majority disagreed. In allowing one to choose the least
probable of a number of conflicting opinions, the doctrine enabled actions
that received no support from conscience. Juan Azor's Institutionales morales
(1600) states that one may act upon what an established authority has adduced
to be lawful, even when one's own sense of rectitude is otherwise. In many
cases, then, "we may follow a probable opinion against our best judgment.
... No longer bound to follow his own judgment, one no longer acts in his
own right; in electing to follow a probable opinion, he assumes a role or mask
to which his self is largely irrelevant. "^^

The irrelevance of conscience to probable judgments was precisely what
Reformers objected to. By the time Protestants developed their own system
of casuistry, Jesuitical probabilism had eclipsed Medina's original formula-
tion. Not only did probabilism enable one corrupt authority to legitimate error,
but it relieved the laity from the responsibihty of adjudication. It enforced
opinions in which the individual neither participated nor even necessarily
believed. Reformers claimed that the self is disqualified from moral deliber-
ation when external authority is the source of all decisions. Taylor summa-
rizes the Protestant position on probabilism: "By this principle, you may
embrace any opinion of their doctors safely . . . and you need not trouble
yourself with any further inquiry . . . and Christ is not your rule — but the
examples of them that live with you, or are in your eye and observation, that
is your rule."^^ Probabilism constituted yet another skirmish in the battle
between Reformed and Catholic casuists about proper criteria for judgment.

The Protestant alternative to probabilism was probabiliorism. As its name
suggests, the Reformed doctrine required that one choose the more probable
solution to a case of conscience — that is, the solution that best corresponds
to one's understanding of Scripture. Ductor Dubitantium declares, "the
greater probabiUty destroys the less. "(p. Ill) The Protestant standards of
reason, conscience, and Revelation determined whether one act was
'probabilior' than another. Emphasizing inquiry and deliberation, Ames
writes: "everyone ought to follow the opinion which (after due diligence to

108 /Renaissance and Reformation

search the truth) he judges to be more probable out of the nature of the thing
and the law of God compared together,"^'* Reformed casuists further insisted
that one's decision have the full persuasion of conscience. A convinced
conscience need not believe that it has arrived at immutable truth, but it must
be assured that of the options discernible to fallen reason, it has chosen the
one that best conforms to Biblical principles. A convinced conscience intends
virtue, even if it is in error. To the Catholic objection that inner persuasion is
a subjective standard, Protestants replied that Scripture and conscience are
God's instruments; together, they create a "divine spark" which it is sin to
disregard.

Despite their different priorities in assessing moral choices. Reformed and
Catholic casuists agreed that probability is a sufficient basis for judgment.
They recognized that absolute truth may not be within the province of fallen
reason, but they maintained that grace and Revelation enabled one to achieve
practical assurance. Casuistry offered a method of weighing authorities, of
evaluating laws and circumstances so as to guide the uncertain in righteous-
ness, if not to guarantee deliverance from all error. Taylor remarks in Ductor
Dubitantium, "This heap of probable inducements is not of power as a
mathematical and physical demonstration, which is in discourse as the sun is
in heaven, but it makes a milky and a white path, visible enough to walk
securely."(pp.36-7) The epistemological concessions of casuists, their con-
structive response to doubt, their concern with enabling action, and their belief
in the importance of reason to faith and virtue earned them a prominent
position among practical philosophers of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
Europe.

Perhaps the most important contribution of casuistry to post-Reformation
thought was its response to the "rule of faith" controversy — a debate between
Protestants and Catholics which challenged received notions of authority and
raised far-reaching questions about criteria for judgment. Central to the
development of Reformed casuistry, the rule of faith crisis posed an episte-
mological problem: how can we justify the foundation of our knowledge?
Both Protestants and Catholics agreed that Scripture is truth; their argument
was how to determine whether one had correctly interpreted that truth.
Catholics insisted that Scripture is obscure, and that reason alone is unable to
fathom God's Word. Consequently, as Erasmus maintains in De Libera
Arbitrio, man's fallen judgment needs the guidance of the Church, whose
authority for interpretation derives from Scripture and tradition.^^ Protestants
agreed that reason is fallible. Indeed, they argued that very fact to undermine
the reliability of Popes and council, whose interpretation of Scripture was

Renaissance et Réforme / 109

mere opinion derived from corrupted reason. Reformers added that tradition,
far from authoritative, consisted of more than a thousand years of controversy
about even the most essential articles of faith. Truth, they argued, is perfect
and unified; the Catholic tradition was neither. Concerning the Roman
Church's claim that its interpretation of God's Word had Biblical authoriza-
tion, Protestants pointed out that the controversy itself was about exegesis,
and that therefore an objective criterion outside the debate was necessary.
This criterion, they argued, was conscience, combined with faith. God places
in us an undeniable conviction which authorizes the judgments of conscience.

The Catholics countered on their antagonists' own grounds: since all
individuals are corrupted, individual conscience and reason are unable to
dispense absolute truth. Erasmus (and later counter-Reformers, Pierre Char-
ron, Gentian Hervet, François Veron) contended that while Church authorities
are subject to error, the consensus of all the orthodox faithful, the saints,
scholars, martyrs. Church Fathers, bishops, popes, and councils outweighed
the self-professed authority of Luther or any other individual. ^^ Catholics
further objected that the standards of conscience and inner persuasion fostered
religious anarchy; there were as many different interpretations of Scripture
as there were Christians. Only the established Church could rightfully teach
the ways to salvation.^^

While legitimate criteria for judgment continued to be a source of debate,
the fallibility of canon law. Church officials, and tradition was not the primary
objection of Reformed casuists to Catholic standards. Indeed, Protestants
weighed all three factors in their deliberation of cases, just as Catholic casuists
referred to Scripture and right reason in theirs. The chief contention between
the two systems was how to apply their standards; at issue were emphasis and
accountability. In Reformed casuistry, individuals were accountable for their
own moral deliberation and for the reasons that fortified their decision. They,
and not Church appointed authorities, were the final arbiters of their cases.
Jeremy Taylor's Dissuasive From Popery reminds its audience, "We are
commanded to 'ask in faith', which is seated in the understanding, and
requires the concurrence of the will."^^ Faith, understanding, and will: none
of these are exercised when theologians make our decisions for us. Those who
govern conduct solely by the dictates of tradition. Church officials, or canon
law do not necessarily comprehend the moral principles on which they act.
Not only must ratiocinative effort precede action, but to commit an act without
the persuasion of reason is to sin.^^ According to Protestants, Roman author-
itarianism excluded the laity from the process of reasoning; those in doubt
consigned judgment to their priest, and thus abjured their Christian duty to

110/ Renaissance and Reformation

participate in their own salvation. Reformed casuists objected that the Cath-
olic policy left the faithful more dependent on human intercession than on
God's Word in conscience. As William Ames remonstrates, conscience "is
immediately subject to God, and his will, and therefore it cannot submit it
selfe unto any creature without idolatry. "^^

The rule of faith controversy established the positions that Protestant and
Catholic casuists would later take in adjudicating cases of conscience. At the
outset of controversy, however, Protestant casuistry did not exist, and the
debate evinced the Reformer's need to develop a system that governed actions
according to the criteria they supported. In addition to charges of ethical
relativism, Protestants faced the problem of guiding conscience without the
sacrament of penance, the confessional, or the Catholic system of casuistry. ^^
The latter, with its dependence on Church authorities as the final arbiters of
truth, was inimical to Reformed standards of evaluating judgment. Luther's
burning Angelo de Clavasio's Summa concerning the Cases of Conscience
dramatized the Reformed attitude toward existing practical theology. Thomas
Merrill observes:

What was needed, and needed desperately, was a system of morality to
complement Reformation dogma. The formulation of such a system would
have enormous influence in shaping the character of English social and
political attitudes, for it would be in fact nothing less than the practical
instrumentation of the revolutionary changes that had already been brought
about in theory .^^

During the first half of the seventeenth century, Protestants responded to
the need that Merrill describes by formulating a Reformed version of case
divinity. Defining itself against the Cathohc system of applied morality.
Reformed casuistry implements the ideology set forth in the rule of faith
controversy. In the process, practical theologians provided a method of
evaluating the political and philosophical conflicts that beset the period. As
the most prominent figures of power — King, Pope, and later in the century.
Parliament — jockeyed for greater jurisdiction, each called into question the
very basis of the other's authority. Ironically, the more absolute their conflict-
ing claims of authority became, the more they forced the individual to judge
for himself the limits of their jurisdiction over his own experience. The
perplexity of allegiance, combined with Protestant emphasis on self-reflec-
tive determination of moral dilemmas, led seventeenth-century Reformers to
assume increasing authority for their own actions — led them, in other words,
to become their own casuists. While both James and the Pope claimed to be

Renaissance et Réforme /111

the highest authority on earth, Reformed casuists taught that no authority was
greater than the individual's understanding of Scripture. During the early
1600's, practical theology was the resource of moderates and conservative,
but its elevation of conclusions drawn in conscience over institutionally
mediated truths was potentially subversive. The role of casuistical principles
in the breakdown of traditional institutions of authority later in the century is
a promising subject for further study.

University of Arizona

Notes

1 . Casuists presuppose the inability of reason and language to formulate precepts com-
prehensive enough to solve all moral dilemmas. Consequently, they recognize that the
literal application of law is not always just. In his description of equity, Aristotle
outlines the foundation of case divinity; Aquinas, an authority for both Protestant and
Catholic casuists, reproduces the following passages from Nichomac he an Ethics in his
Summa Theologica:

Every law is expressed in general terms, and there are some matters that cannot
be dealt with in general terms. ... In such cases the law lays down what is right
for the majority of cases, without losing sight on the consequent inaccuracy
[in the remainder]. ... When, therefore, a law is laid down generally, but
manifest ground for exception appears in a particular case, it is right that this
failure of the legislator (due to his expressing himself in general terms) should
be made good exactly as he would make it good if he were present, or would
amend his law if he took the case into account.

Nichomachean Ethics, 1137b in The Basics Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon
(New York: Random House, 1941). See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, ed. Anton Pegis
(New York: Random House, 1948), 1 1 . 2. 120. See also Joseph Hall, Resolutions and
Decisions of Divers Practical Cases of Conscience, Vol. XII of Works ed. John
Downame (Oxford: D. C. Talboys, 1937), p. 311.

2. Douglas Lane Patey, Probability and Literary Form (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1984), p. 56.

3. Benjamin Nelson, "Response to Edward Grant," Daedalus, 91 (1962), p. 614. Casuistry
was not new to the Reformation. Nelson remarks that from 1215, when the Fourth
Lateran Council required Catholics to attend confessional at least once a year, collec-
tions of cases provided valuable instruction and precedents for priests. However,
confession and penance were practiced well before the Lateran decree, and in
confessors' manuals dating from the sixth century one can discover the prototype of
Catholic casuistry.

4. Louis B. Wright, "William Perkins: Elizabethan Apostle of 'Practical Divinity,'"
Huntington Library Quarterly, 3, No. 2 (1940), p. 193.

5. Wright, p. 196.

6. Wright, pp. 194-5.

112/ Renaissance and Reformation

7. Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, Vol. 3 of The Whole Works, 3 vols. (London:
Henry Bohn, 1844), p. 52.

8. John T. McNeill, and Helena M. Gamer, eds. and trans.. Medieval Handbooks of
Penance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938), p. 16.

9. William Perkins, The Whole Treatise of Cases of Conscience, ed. Thomas Merrill
(Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1966), p. 83.

10. H. R. McAdoo, The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology (London: Longmans, Green
and Co., 1949), p. 65.

11. Patrick McGrath, Papists and Puritans Under Elizabeth I (London: Blandford Press,
1967), p. 277.

12. For a fine discussion of Sanderson's case, see Camille Wells Slights, The Casuistical
Tradition in Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert and Milton (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981), pp. 43-59.

1 3. Quoted in Thomas Wood, English Casuistical Divinity During the Seventeenth Century
(London: Billing and Sons, 1952), p. 49.

14. Robert Sanderson, De Juramenti Obligatione in Works (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1854), p. 202.

15. John Donne, Pseudo-Martyr (London: W. Stansby, 1610), p. 48; and Wood, p. 108.

16. Although Pascal's criticism of Jesuitical casuistry is partisan, there is sufficient
evidence from the Catholics themselves that some Jesuits exploited case divinity. Popes
Alexander VII and Innocent XI officially condemned a number of abuses, among them:
"A son who has killed his father in a drunken brawl may rejoice at the fact without sin
if he has come into a large inheritance thereby"; and "calumniators, witnesses and
unjust judges may be murdered if there is no other way of avoiding their attacks."
Quoted in Kenneth E. Kirk, Conscience and Its Problems: An Introduction to Casuistry
(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927), p. 1 18.

17. Kirk, Conscience and Its Problems, p. 391 and p. 393.

18. Kirk, p. 392.

19. In his Responsa Moralia (1609), the Catholic casuist Comitolus states that when
reputable authorities "are found on both sides, the opinion which the greater number
of them support must be chosen." Quoted in Kirk, p. 392.

20. Quoted in Kenneth Kirk, Some Principles of moral Theology and Their Application,
(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926), p. 196.

21. Quoted in Kirk, Conscience and Its Problems, p. 392. Medina's restriction were often
unheeded. Taylor's Dissuasive From Popery, Vol. 2 in Works pp. 797-8, lists a number
of Catholic casuists who used probabilism to legitimate sin. Among them,

Martinus de Magistris says. To believe simple fornication to be no deadly sin,
is not heretical, because the testimonies of Scripture are not express. . . . Thus
the most desperate things that ever were said by any ... are doctrines publicly
allowed; they can also become rules of practice, and securities to the con-
science of their disciples.

Abuse of probabilism became so widespread that Popes Alexander VII, Innocent XI,
and Alexander VIII imposed increasingly severe restrictions on the doctrine.

Renaissance et Réforme / 1 1 3

22. A.E. Malloch, "John Donne and the Casuists," Studies in English Literature, II, No. 1
(1962), p. 67.

23. Taylor, Dissuasive, p. 798.

24. Ames, Conscience With the Power and Cases Thereof in Works (Ann Arbor: University
Microfilms, 1962), Bk. 1, p. 86. Protestants did not discourage consulting wise author-
ities about perplexed or doubtful actions. But they did insists that the final weighing
and choosing was the individual's own. In Ductor Dubitantium (p. 148), Taylor finds
greater moral value in the search for truth than in its discovery. Indeed, Taylor
acknowledges that truth can elude fallen man; therefore, "it is not necessary that truth
should be found, but it is highly necessary it should be searched for. It may be, it cannot
be hit, but it must be aimed at." Even if one is in error, "diligence to inquire, and honesty
in consenting" determine the virtue of one's judgment.

25. Desiderius Erasmus, "The Freedom of the Will," in Erasmus/ Luther: Discourse on
Free Will, trans, and ed. Ernst F. Winter (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1 96 1 ), pp. 1 2-20.
For a more detailed discussion of the rule of faith debate and its epistemological
ramifications, see Chapter One of Richard Popkin's History of Scepticism From
Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979). See also Chapter
Two of Henry Van Leeuwen's The Problem of Certainty in English Thought 1630-1690
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), and Chapter Three of Barbara Shapiro's Prob-
ability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton: University Press,
1983).

26. "The Freedom of the Will," pp. 10-20.

27. Inner persuasion was indeed a knotty standard. Popkin describes the circular reasoning
that supports it: "the criterion of religious knowledge is inner persuasion, the guarantee
of the authenticity of inner persuasion is that it is caused by God, and this we are assured
of by our inner persuasion" p. 10. The 1554 execution of Miguel Servetus dramatized
Catholic claims about the subjectivity of the standard (see Popkin, pp. 8-14). Inner
persuasion led Servetus to preach against the doctrine of the Trinity. The same criterion
convinced Calvin that anti-Trinitarianism is heresy, so he had Servetus burned at the
stake. Sebastien Castellio, a Swiss Protestant attacked Calvin in De Haereticis, arguing
that since fallen reason dims the truth, one is unjustified in killing another for
'misinterpretation.' Ages of debate, he asserted, prove that Scripture is obscure. In a
diatribe against Castellio's "scepticism," Calvin and Beza responded that religious
debate is not evidence of our inability to know truth; rather, it simply shows that some
interpretations are wrong. While Reformed casuists supported inner persuasion, they
objected to the dogmatism of Calvin's position.

28. Jeremy Taylor, Dissuasive From Popery, p. 799.

29. William Perkins, A Discourse of Conscience, ed. Thomas Merrill (Nieuwkoop: De
Graaf, 1966), p. 41, asserts: "Whatsoever is not of faith, that is, whatsoever is not done
out of setled perswasion in judgment and conscience out of God's word, howsoever
men judge of it, is sinne. . . . Therefore unlesse the conscience well informed first of all
approove the thing to be good and agreeable to Gods will, it can be nothing els but a
sinne."

30. William Ames, Conscience With the Power, Bk. 1, p. 6.

114/ Renaissance and Reformation

31. Slights, p. 4. In Ductor Dubitantium (p. 47), Taylor concedes that Reformed casuists
borrowed principles of law and interpretation from Catholic cases of conscience, but
he adds: "We cannot be well supplied out of the Roman storehouses; for though there
the staple is, and very many excellent things exposed to view; yet we have found the
merchants to be deceivers, and the wares too often falsified." The authority upon which
Catholic casuists base their judgments is the source of their "falsified wares":

the casuists of the Roman church take these things for resolution and answer
to questions of conscience, which are spoken by an authority that is not
sufficient; and they ... have not any sufficient means to ascertain themselves
what is binding in very many cases argued in their canons, and decretal
epistles, and bulls of Popes. ... Therefore either they must change their
principle, and rely only upon Scriptures and right reason and universal testi-
monies, or give no answer to the conscience in very many cases of the greatest
concernment; for by all other measures their questions are indeterminable. But
the authority of man they make to be their foundation: and yet ... the doctors,
whose affirmative is the decision of the case, are so infinitely divided, (p. 48).

32. Thomas Merrill, éd., Perkins' Discourse and Whole Treatise, p. xii.

De la nouvelle à l'essai, au seizième siècle'

ANDRE BERTHIAUME

V^et article voudrait alimenter tant soit peu la réflexion sur l'évolution des
formes littéraires au seizième siècle.

Convenons d'abord qu'il est à la fois plus facile et plus difficile d'étudier
un texte ancien qu'un texte contemporain. Nous avons le recul nécessaire,
mais au prix d'une disjonction d'avec le contexte socio-culturel de l'époque.
C'est sans doute en dépit de cette tension que nous proposons nos lectures . . .
et que je risquerai ici une comparaison entre deux oeuvres marquantes de la
Renaissance française: V Heptaméron de Marguerite de Navarre (1559) et les
Essais de Montaigne (1580-1595). Je devine sans peine ce qu'il peut y avoir
de périlleux à rapprocher deux oeuvres si différentes à maints égards, — mais
le sont-elles à ce point puisqu'une vintaine d'années seulement séparent leur
publication? J'ajouterai que des critiques ont déjà établi ce lien mais dans
d'autres perspectives que la mienne.

Les premières manifestations de la nouvelle française nous conduisent
inévitablement à V Heptaméron} texte inachevé qui parut dix ans après la
mort de Marguerite, avec un titre qui n'était pas d'elle mais de l'éditeur
Claude Gruget, recueil où par ailleurs on ne semble pas faire de différence
entre nouvelles, histoires et "comptes" (p.720). Comiques ou tragiques, les
histoires — dont certaines préfigurent les Chroniques italiennes de Stendhal —
développent les thèmes traditionnels de la "vertu d'amour qui se faict sentir
quand elle n'est point faincte" (p.724) et des tribulations prétendument
scandaleuses de l'état monastique.^ La structure du recueil retient l'attention,
on le sait, autant que son contenu. Structure, disposition redevable au
Décaméron, que Parlamente appelle "les cent Nouvelles de Bocace" (p. 709).
Son encadrement est remarquable par ce prologue qui accumule les anecdotes
dont, incidemment, la violence étonne le lecteur d'aujourd'hui: l'utiUsation
outrancière des armes stupéfie davantage que les dégâts somme toute mineurs
d'une inondation: c'est l'épée qui est à l'origine d'une véritable hécatombe.

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 2 ( 1 99 1 ) 115

116/ Renaissance and Reformation

pas I'eau.^ Mais l'examen de la dialectique des armes et des lettres nous
éloignerait de notre sujet.

Revenons à un autre aspect de l'organisation interne qui caractérise
VHeptaméron: les narrations d'histoires à pleurer ou à rire, dites et redites
"véritables," sont suivies de commentaires, plus spécifiquement d'échanges
entre dix "devisants" — ou "opinants" (p. 708), terme utilisé par Oisille.
Dialogues souvent animés, vifs, voix souvent discordantes, contradictoires.
Jean Rousset voit dans ces débats de "véritables protocoles de lecture, oij les
acteurs se font glossateurs de leurs récits.'"* Ainsi, VHeptaméron nous convie
à la rencontre de deux genres, sinon de deux styles.:^ d'une part, le récit court,
émanation du fabliau, de Vexemplum médiéval et de la novella italienne;^
d'autre part, l'entretien, dont les antécédents sont immémoriaux, platoniciens,
que l'on peut rapprocher du célèbre Cortegiano, plusieurs fois traduit en
français à partir de 1537.

On retiendra aussi dans VHeptaméron une certaine visibilité des "cou-
tures," pour utiliser un terme cher à Montaigne, c' est-à-dires une certaine
lisibilité des liaisons, de ces incessants passages du narratif au réflexif. En
effet, les codes narratif et argumentatif, tout en commandant des écritures
différentes, sont passablement étanches; les changements de narrateur sont
d'ailleurs ostentatoires: après chaque récit sagement linéaire, on donne ex-
plicitement sa voix à l'autre:

"Pour n'en debatre plus, je vous prie, Parlamente, donnez vostre voix à
quelcun. — Je la donne très volontiers, ce dist-elle, à Symontault; car après
ces deux tristes nouvelles, il ne fauldra de nous en dire une qui ne nous fera
poinct pleurer. — Je vous remercie, dist Simontault; en me donnant vostre
voix, il ne s'en fault gueres que ne me nommez plaisant, qui est ung nom
que je trouve fort fascheux ..." (p. 805)

Le don de sa voix ou la réception de ce legs est un leitmotiv qui court tout
le long du recueil. Donc importance des fonctions extra-narratives que Gérard
Genette a appelées d'attestation ou de régie.^ En revanche, on a déjà noté que
si les devisants sont bien présents dans leurs commentaires, ils sont plutôt
discrets quand ils adoptent le statut de narrateurs,^ sans doute pour laisser plus
de latitude, donner plus de relief aux interprétations qui suivent.

Étanchéité relative des codes, fonctions énonciatrices bien délimitées,
passage de l'objectivité à la subjectivité, on reconnaîtra que, dans une per-
spective homologique, ces caractéristiques conviennent fort bien à un univers
cloisonné, hiérarchisé, tant socialement que spirituellement, voué à
l'édification, à l'élévation, tendu vers le haut, sinon le Très-Haut: la femme

Renaissance et Réforme / 1 17

du muletier qui va mourir pour sauver son honneur a "les oeilz eslevez au
ciel" (p. 720). Une critique en arrive même à la conclusion que "l'action de
VHeptaméron [n'est rien d'autre que] l'histoire de la conversion, par Oisille,
des autres devisants."^

Ce qui frappe donc, c'est l'importance, quantitative autant que qualitative,
du réflexif, du doxologique'^ dans l'économie du recueil et, par voie de
conséquence, son caractère didactique: "Voylà, mes dames, proclame le
timide Saffredent, une histoire que voluntiers je vous monstre icy pour
exemple à fm que, quand vos mariz vous donnent des cornes de cheuvreux,
vous leur en donnez de cerf." (p. 726)^^ Il y a en effet accumulation d'exempla
mais, tout compte fait, absence de synthèse, ouverture puisque le
"passetemps" (p. 707), leitmotiv du prologue, doit persister; un passe-temps
utile, instructif, voire édifiant, sorte de succédané des lectures commentées
de la Bible, "leçons" justement louangées dans le prologue (p. 707). •^

Dans la première oeuvre intitulée Essais P où un "je" s'exerce en marge
de ses lectures, s'expérimente à loisir, le discours argumentatif,
enthymématique selon Roland Barthes,^'^ occupe évidemment une place
prépondérante, d'ailleurs annoncé par le titre. Mais il faut noter que le narratif
n'est pas évacué, il s'en faut. Antoine Compagnon voit même "deux écritures
dans les Essais, une écriture courte, pointue, elliptique, et une écriture longue,
balancée et prolixe, pour les anecdotes, intimes et historiques."^^ Même style
partagé que dans VHeptaméron. Soulignons l'importance de l'anecdote, du
petit fait curieux, de l'historiette pour stimuler la pensée, la rendre plus
concrète, relancer l'essai montaignien qui, en 1580, était remarquable par sa
brièveté.^^ Montaigne dira dans un ajout de 1588 "qu'il n'est rien si contraire
à [son] stile qu'une narration estendue" (I, 21, p. 105). Il existe d'ailleurs
plusieurs études sur le Montaigne conteur. ^^ Hugo Friedrich voyait même en
l'essayiste "un maître du récit anecdotique."^^

La thématique n'est évidemment pas la même chez la soeur de François 1"
et chez le gentilhomme de Bordeaux, mais il y a des traits communs: les deux
auteurs montrent leur intérêt pour les jeux aristocratiques de l'être et du
paraître, pour les motivations psychologiques: les ressorts de la passion
amoureuse sont scrutés chez Marguerite, ceux de l'ambition ou de la vanité
chez Montaigne. Et l'on peut imaginer sans peine que l'auteure de
VHeptaméron aurait apprécié et mis à profit maintes anecdotes rapportées
dans les Essais. Tout en préservant leur attachement aux valeurs
traditionnelles, religieuses et politiques, les deux écrivains accordent la plus

118/ Renaissance and Reformation

grande importance à "la pluralité d'opinions," expression utilisée par Oisille
(p. 708). La notion d'expérience est mise de l'avant dès le départ dans
VHeptaméron (Oisille est présentée comme une "dame vefve, de longue
experience," p. 702); elle donne son titre au dernier essai de Montaigne. ...
Curieusement les deux auteurs nobles se signalent par leur méfiance à l'égard
de "la beaulté de la rhetoricque" (p. 709), d'où son corollaire: l'adoption d'un
style bas, humble, "simple et naïf (I, 26, p. 171), proche de l'oral, de la
conversation, de cet "art de conférer" célébré par Montaigne.

Par ailleurs, l'essayiste, qui qualife VHeptaméron de "gentil livre pour son
étoffe" (II, p. 108), c'est-à-dire de noble livre pour sa matière, pour son
contenu, se préoccupe moins de l'authenticité de ses sources ^^ que la reine
de Navarre: "dira chascun, décrète Parlamente, quelque histoire qu'il aura
veue ou bien oy dire à quelque personne digne de foy." (p. 709) Encore que
Marguerite, selon Nicole Cazauran, ne fit là qu'obéir à une convention.^^

Il importe donc surtout de noter la proximité, la cohabitation du narratif et
du réflexif , du raconter et du persuader dans deux oeuvres importantes de la
seconde moitié du seizième siècle, avec des tonalités et des perspectives
propres à chacune. Le narratif et l'argumentatif sont ici dynamiquement liés,
en interaction dans une prose discontinue. Henri Coulet décrit ainsi la
dialectique propre à VHeptaméron: "... l'expérience, c'est-à-dire le récit,
suscite le heurt des convictions; le heurt des convictions renvoie à une
nouvelle expérience. "^^ On conviendra que cette description s'appUque aussi
fort bien à la dynamique inhérente aux Essais. En somme, ceux-ci ne sont-ils
pas déjà formellement présents, inscrits dans V Heptaméronl L'attitude
désinvolte de Montaigne à l'égard de son lecteur dont "dès l'entrée" (p. 9) il
prétend prendre congé ne doit pas nous donner le change, quant au caractère
apparemment non didactique de son oeuvre. Cet avis liminaire est démenti
tout le long des Essais par l'utilisation constante des pronoms vous et nous.
Comme si l'argumentatif pouvait se passer d'un destinataire!

Ainsi, de la nouvelle à l'essai, d'une forme parcellaire à une autre, on
retrouve la même double composante fondamentale, la même dialectique de
la narration et du commentaire, la même matrice rhétorique, avec un je
apparemment singulier chez Montaigne, — en réalité tout aussi pluriel, poly-
phonique que dans VHeptaméron, où, par ailleurs, les voix, "multiples et
incertaines,"^^ importent plus que les personnages, toujours selon Nicole
Cazauran.-^^

Il y a donc, me semble-t-il, continuité formelle entre VHeptaméron et les
Essais, même si les contextes socio-culturels diffèrent dans une certaine
mesure. Pour sa part, Montaigne met l'accent sur l'argumentatif, revendique

Renaissance et Réforme / 1 19

davantage "les discoursi" que "les exemples," préfère raconter "les choses
passées que présentes" (1,21, p. 104); enfin, il prend plaisir à gommer les
"coutures," ce qui amène Jean Terrasse, dans son excellent chapitre sur "Des
coches," à conclure de la façon suivante: "Comme les transitions sont aussi
importantes que les éléments qu'elles relient, le lecteur ne distingue plus les
idées principales des idées secondaires, car il n'y a plus entre elles de
hiérarchie. [...] Toutes les faces de l'objet sont étalées et mises sur le même
plan."-^"^ C'est comme si, de VHeptaméron aux Essais, l'on passait d'une
écriture verticale à une écriture horizontale. Tout compte fait, les lettres a,b,c
des éditions modernes des Essais nous leurrent car, avec ses "alongeails" et
ses citations éclairs, le discours montaignien abolit non seulement toute
hiérarchie de plans mais aussi toute temporalité.

Montaigne et Marguerite de Navarre sont à leur façon des compilateurs,
des praticiens d'un discours qui se nourrit d'additions, de juxtapositions; des
glossateurs qui se situent dans cette tradition humaniste du discours dis-
continu, "très longtemps considéré, comme le note Jean Lafond, que comme
l'échec du continu. "^^ Derrière la quête de l'anecdote qui nourrit l'oeuvre
fragmentaire, une pensée se cherche, une écriture se trouve. On sait que la
curiositas et le doute traversent toute la Renaissance, impliquant une remise
en cause d"'une certaine idée de la totalisation du sens.^^ "Friedrich relie le
fragmentarisme au scepticisme.^^ L'oeuvre narrative de Marguerite de
Navarre reste — involontairement, il est vrai — inachevée: 72 nouvelles sur les
100 prévues; par ailleurs, chez Montaigne comme chez d'autres auteurs de la
Renaissance, l'inachèvement est une forme d'achèvement. Marcel Tetel situe
volontiers l'auteure de VHeptaméron entre Rabelais — en particulier celui du
Tiers Livre, dédié précisément à Marguerite — et Montaigne,^^ à cause de leur
propension à l'ambiguïté. Mais ce n'est pas seulement une affaire de contenu.
UHeptaméron, qualifié par Montaigne de "gentil livre" pour sa matière, est
également intéressant pour sa manière: cette oeuvre ne contient-elle pas les
principaux traits formels de l'essai montaignien? Elle n'est évidemment pas
la seule à s'inscrire dans ce courant où le narratif va de pair avec
l'argumentatif — que l'on pense seulement aux Dialogues non moins profit-
ables que facétieux (1565) de Jacques Tahureau — mais il m'a paru important,
ne serait-ce qu'à cause de ses implications pédagogiques, de revenir
brièvement sur cette filiation particulière.

Université Laval

120 / Renaissance and Reformation

Notes

* Cet article a d'abord été lu dans le cadre de la rencontre annuelle de la Société canadienne
d'études de la Renaissance, le 31 mai 1989, à l'Université Laval.

1. Marguerite de Navarre, L'Heptaméron, dans Conteurs français du XVIe siècle, textes
présentés et annotés par Pierre Jourda. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade,
1965. Mes références renvoient à cette édition.

2. Voir Isida Cremona, "Les cordeliers et la notion de justice dans VHeptaméron de
Marguerite de Navarre, dans La Nouvelle, Montréal, Plato Academic Press, 1983. p.
218.

3. Sur le thème de la violence, voir Nicole Cazauran, L'Heptaméron de Marguerite de
Navarre, Paris, SEDES (Société d'Édition d'Enseignement Supérieur), 1976, p. 60,
135.

4. Jean Rousset, "La question du narrataire," dans Problèmes actuels de la lecture, Paris,
Clancier-Guénaud, 1982, p. 32.

5. Voir Raymond Lebègue, "Réalisme et apprêt dans la langue des personnages de
VHeptaméron," dans La littérature narrative d'imagination, Paris, P.U.F., 1961, p.
73-86; cité par Cazauran, op. cit., p. 95.

6. Voir Pierre Jourda, Conteurs français du XVIe siècle, préface, op.cit.

1. Gérard Genette, Figures lU, Paris, Seuil, 1972, p. 261ss. Exemples de régie par
Parlamente: "Et quant iil [Amadour] fut arrivé à Sauce, commencea la guerre grande
et cruelle entre les deux Roys, laquelle ne suis délibéré de racompter, ne aussy les
beaulx faictz que feit Amadour, car mon compte seroit assez long pour employer toute
une journée." (p. 765).

8. Voir Deborah N. Losse, "Modes du récit dans la nouvelle française du seizième siècle,"
dans La Nouvelle, Montréal, Plato Academic Press, 1982, p. 208-215.

9. Marie-Madeleine de la Garanderie, Le dialogue des romanciers, une nouvelle lecture
de l'Heptaméron, Paris, Archives des Lettres modernes, Minard, 1977, n° 168, p. 75

10. Terme utilisé par Philippe de Lajarte, qui désigne ainsi "tout discours exprimant une
doxa, une opinion (vraie ou fausse)": voir "Modes du discours et formes d'altérité dans
les 'Nouvelles' de Marguerite de Navarre," dans Littérature, n° 55, octobre 1984, p.
71

11. "La fonction d'exemple, certes, n'est pas la seule qui soit dévolue aux nouvelles de
VHeptaméron. Celles-ci assument également, on l'a vu, une fonction esthético-affec-
tive dont on aurait tort de minimiser l'importance. Mais c'est leur fonction exemplaire
qui, seule, établit un lien entre elles et les dialogues; c'est elle par conséquent qui fait
du recueil de Marguerite de Navarre une oeuvre structurée." Ibid.

12. En fait, nous avons affaire à un discours paradoxal, à la fois ouvert et fermé, comme
le montre bien Philippe de Lajarte, lequel, incidemment, conclut son article en
établissant une relations entre VHeptaméron et les Essais de Montaigne. Ibid., p. 72-73.

13. Montaigne, Oeuvres complètes, textes établis par A. Thibaudet et M. Rat, Paris,
Gallimard, "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade," 1962. Mes références renvoient à cette édition.

14. Roland Barthes, "Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits," dans Communica-
tions, n°S, Seuil, 1966, p. 4, n. 1

Renaissance et Réforme / 121

15. Antoine Compagnon, "La brièveté de Montaigne," dans Les Formes brèves de la prose
et le discours discontinu (XVF-XVII^ siècles), p. 22.

16. Voir Ibid., p. 10

17. Voir Maynor Hardee, "Sur l'art narratif dans les anecdotes de Montaigne, dans le
Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne, n° 7-8, juillet-décembre 1981 .

18. Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne, traduit de l'allemand par R. Rovini, Paris, Gallimard,
"Bibliothèque des idées," 1968, p. 181. Voir aussi p. 168.

19. "Caries histoires que j'emprunte, je les renvoyé sur la conscience de ceux de qui je les
prens [...] Aussi en l'estude que je traitte de noz moeurs et mouvemens, les tesmoi-
gnages fabuleux, pourveu qu'ils soient possibles, y servent comme les vrais." I, 21, p.
104.

20. Voir Cazauran, op. cit., p. 33, n. 32.

21. Henri Coulet, Le roman jusqu' à la Révolution, Paris, Armand Colin, 1967. p. 128.

22. Expression utilisée par Simone de Reyff dans son introduction à VHeptaméron. Paris,
Flammarion, collection Gamier-Flammarion, 1982, p. 23

23. Voir Cazauran, op. cit., p. 82 et 95.

24. Rhétorique de l'essai littéraire, Montréal, Presses de l'Université du Québec, 1977, p.
22.

25. Jean Lafond, "Des formes brèves de la littérature morale aux XVP et XVIP siècles,"
dans Les Formes brèves de la prose et le discours discontinu (XVI^-XVIF siècles),
Paris, Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, "De Pétrarque à Descartes," 1984, p. 116.

26. Jean Lafond, "Avant-propos," op. cit., p. 7

27. Friedrich, op. cit., p. 30.

28. Marcel Tetel, op. cit., p. 3 et 106. Voir aussi From Marot to Montaigne, Lexington,
French Forum, 1972, p. 125-135.

Cromweirs Message to the Regulars:
The Biblical Trilogy of John Bale, 1537'

SEYMOUR BAKER HOUSE

.s mother and midwife of the EngUsh Reformation, Thomas Cromwell
displayed remarkable ingenuity in his use of propaganda between 1535 and
1540. Anticipating the saturation techniques of modem politicians, he initi-
ated a country-wide campaign of preaching and publishing to sway public
opinion toward support for the government's emerging policies of reform.
In addition to press and pulpit, Cromwell used a company of actors to bring
his message of reform to distant parishes throughout the English countryside.
This paper will examine one particularly illuminating performance before
the Cluniac monks at Thetford in 1537 and argue that in this case,
Cromwell's troupe tempered their polemic in response to the recent uprisings
in defence of the English monasteries.^

From 1537 until his execution in 1540, Cromwell supported a troupe of
players headed by the notorious "biUous" John Bale, ex-Carmelite and later
Anglican bishop of Ossory. This group toured for three years, enacting Bale's
protestant drama in town halls, cloisters, and houses throughout England until
their patron's own brief candle was snuffed and Bale was forced to flee the
realm. Indeed, Cromwell was not alone in employing travelling players during
this time: by the late 1530s there were over a dozen such troupes and it is
certain that the plays they staged were, in some measure, as reflective of their
patron's relation to the quickly changing scenes as Bale's were of his. The
association of Cromwell and Bale permits us to investigate the parmership of
patron/playwright at a crucial juncture in the history of the English Reforma-
tion. In them we can see how a patron of the 'new learning' used a like-minded
dramatist to further public policy.^

Despite the relative abundance of his polemical prose, only five of Bale's
plays have come down to us from among the nearly two dozen he wrote
between ca. 1533 and 1538. All of his dramatic works were largely scriptural
and rooted in the vigorously expressed reformed theology for which he was

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 2 (1991) 123

124 / Renaissance and Reformation

famous. In Cromwell's hands, each became potential weapons in a program
of religious reform which was promulgated under the guise of a return to the
purity of the early Church, free from its medieval accretions — accretions
which included not only various sacramental and traditional matters, but also
the dramatic aspects of medieval Christianity such as pageants, cycle plays,
and processions.

Yet parish drama had become part of the very fabric of English life, and
could not be eradicated overnight. Early writers of Protestant plays may even
have benefited from the ready acceptance and universal familiarity of the
mystery and miracle plays which guaranteed them an audience for the
dissemination of their Protestant doctrine. Bale's Ufe of John the Baptist in
14 episodes was clearly an attempt to combat the medieval mystery plays
using the very form which would survive, protected by towns or church and
craft guilds, in parts of England well into Elizabeth's reign.^ Despite the
similarity in presentation, differences in theology could not be tolerated and
it was not long until legislation began to curtail Protestant interludes.

Because their plays were drawn largely from the Bible, reformers like Bale
could present their objections to Catholic praxis while emphasizing their
belief that scriptural fideUty — increasingly a literal fidelity — was the only
sure guide to theological verity. There is a further and scarcely less significant
aspect of this deepening literalism: it supported the conflation of the Divine
with the human and permitted a typological view of history in which Henry
VIII becomes another King David, in which all human actions are seen in a
Biblical context."^ Cromwell was not slow to recognise that such a view was
ideally suited for polemical purposes.

Bale's work with Cromwell, which coincides with the appearance of a
troupe of players under the Lord Privy Seal's protection, began in earnest in
January 1537 when, after plucking him from prison in Greenwich, Cromwell
set him to work producing plays for the reformation.^ Tudor drama has long
been known for its political nature, yet most pieces written during this period
have resisted precise dating and, by extension, a convincing assignation of
auspices. Bale's are an exception, although to date, known performances of
the propaganda plays he produced are few. Cromwell's men (led by Bale)
appear for the first time on 8 September 1537 at Kings' College, Cambridge.
Also in 1537/8 they appeared at Shrewsbury, Leicester, Thetford, New
College (Oxford) and Cambridge town hall. In addition to the royal perfor-
mance in September 1538, Bale was paid by Cromwell for putting on a play
before Cranmer in Canterbury during the Christmas season 1538/39. This was
most likely a staging of King Johan and proved more provocative than the

Renaissance et Réforme / 125

previous performance. They also appeared at Barnstaple in 1538/9, again
(perhaps) at Thetford between June 1539 and its suppression in January 1540,
and before 29 June 1540 in York, Maldon, and again at Cambridge.^ The only
known performance of his trilogy. The chefe promyses of god, Johan
Baptystes preachy nge, and The temptacyon of our lorde, led by Bishop Bale
himself in conservative Kilkenny in 1553 to counter the processions acclaim-
ing Mary Tudor as queen, resulted in his immediate exile. Other than on these
noteworthy occasions, no other venues for his dramatic works are known.
There was a practice for a performance of his Thre Lawes around Christmas
1550/1 near Bale's Hampshire cure of Bishopstoke, but it is uncertain whether
a performance ever resulted.^

It is clear that Bale's plays were tailored for different occasions, and that
his repertoire included many pieces written in response to single issues. Many
betray this essentially partisan nature and the specific application for which
they were intended through their titles alone: On the king's two marriages,
for example, may date from spring, 1534 when preachers were ordered to
uphold the king's marriage and certainly could not have been played after
May 1536 when proceedings against Anne Boleyn had begun, while On the
treasons ofBecket suggests the performance on 8 September 1538 when Bale
actually performed before the king and court in Canterbury the night after
England's most famous shrine had been dismantled there.^

There is, however, ample evidence, both internal and otherwise, to suggest
that it was his relatively mild trilogy that Bale played when touring those areas
of the country most hostile to the 'new learning' as well as to monastic
audiences. In particular, it seems to have been staged during the 1537 winter
dramas at the Cluniac priory in Thetford, Norfolk and presented in the
conservative northern cities of Leicester and Shrewsbury that same year in a
deliberate effort to preempt opposition to the anticipated suppression of the
greater religious houses and to induce the lay and regular members of the
audience to acquiesce in the king's ecclesiastical reforms. While the perfor-
mance at Leicester town hall is datable only to between Michaelmas 1537 and
Michaelmas 1538, at Shrewsbury we have two likely dates to choose from.
Bishop Hilsey, ever active in the suppression of the monasteries, preached
there for all of Rogation week 1537, and Dr. Legh, also a tireless campaigner
for Cromwell, visited the town's regulars around late August 1537 and was
feasted in the town hall. Either of these times would have been suitable for
the production, before the mayor, aldermen and regulars, of Bale's Biblical
trilogy.^

126 / Renaissance and Reformation

That Cromwell was facing stiff opposition in his planned reforms needs
scant mention. By March 1536, the religious houses in England worth under
200 pounds per annum were dissolved by act of parliament and some
surrenders of larger houses had occurred by the end of the year. The Pilgrim-
age of Grace, involving as it did over 30,000 men — by far the gravest threat
to Henry's reign — had specifically taken up the suppression as one of its main
points and despite its defeat by December 1536, new risings had followed in
the spring of 1537, notably in Somerset, Cornwall, and East Anglia itself.
Bale's own parish of Thomdon was particularly sympathetic to the northern
men and brought charges against Bale (which led to his arrest) when he
chastised them for it.^^ Rumors of still further risings were rife. After Easter,
1537, it was bruited that Walsingham was up and in Suffolk on May Day an
overtly political game was staged in which the duke of Suffolk, one of the
main agents of the king's victory over the rebels, was criticized. Cromwell
too had become the target of malicious songs and ditties and his resignation
had been foremost among the demands of the northern rebels in 1536.^ ^ More
threateningly, between March and October 1537, risings and rumors of risings
had been linked to the threat of further monastic suppressions in both
Shrewsbury and Leicester.'^ Although by mid- 1537 the wholesale suppres-
sion of all remaining houses had not yet been ordered, the monastic visitors
were making their rounds, visiting both Shrewsbury and Thetford in their turn
and the larger monasteries whose heads had been involved in the recent
uprisings were dissolved through the attainder of their leaders.'^ By late
autumn, Thetford must have known that its future was in jeopardy — two other
Cluniac priories had recently been suppressed, including the premier house
at Lewes which surrendered voluntarily to the king in November 1537.^^^

Into this climate of dangerous dissatisfaction and rebeUion, Cromwell sent
his players hoping to counter opposition to his ecclesiastical policies. Yet
plays like Bale's King Johan and Thre Lawes with their vituperous blas-
phemy, caustic anti-monasticism, and shocking liturgical parody, were inap-
propriate and could easily be counter-productive.^^ What was needed was an
appeal to the genuine reUgious impulse, evident among regulars and laymen
alike, that lay behind resistence to these suppressions. And Bale's appeal to
Scripture could easily be buttressed by gentle reminders that resistence was
treason and would be severely punished, as the recent mass executions of
rebels had shown. Although Cromwell could ill-afford a calamitous recep-
tion, let alone risk another disastrous year of armed uprising, at the same time
he could not back down from his commitment to the evangelical reform to
which he had already set his hand. For these reasons, the players he sent to

Renaissance et Réforme / 127

Thetford and other monasteries or into the troubled areas of the North had to
breathe the sweet odor of sincerity into the atmosphere of suspicion with
which regulars and conservatives would doubtless receive his messengers.

Thetford was an obvious target for Cromwell's dramatic propaganda.
Founded by the Bigod family in the early twelfth century and continuing
under the patronage of the earls and later the duke of Norfolk this Cluniac
priory was one of the wealthier houses in England, valued at over 400 pounds
at the time of its suppression in 1540,'^ It was a popular venue for drama,
welcoming touring companies under the patronage of various nobles almost
yearly from 1497 up to its suppression. There is also evidence suggesting that
members of the monastery assisted these players by acting in their plays or
aiding in their production. For example, in 1529/30 the players of the duke of
Norfolk performed "cum auxilio conventus" as did the king's players in
1532/33. Generally no more than two patronized troupes of actors appear in
any one year, but in 1537/38 payment was made to four travelling troupes
appearing under royal or noble patronage, among them those of the king and
Cromwell. ^^ Evidence from Bale's trilogy gives ample support for the view
it was these three plays which Cromwell's men staged during their visit to
Thetford in 1537/38, and that the monks themselves participated or were
expected to participate in the performance. Furthermore, the trilogy's rela-
tively soft appeal, coupled with the absence of contemporary iconoclastic
references with which Bale's other known plays were updated as the refor-
mation progressed, suggests that it was an ideal entertainment for northern
audiences like those in Shrewsbury Abbey and Leicester who lacked the
stomach for the more strident Protestantism of either King Johan or Thre
Lowes }^

Turning to the trilogy itself, we find three works of unequal length. The
chefe promyses of god occupies nearly 1000 lines while each of the other two
plays is less than half as long. Together they could have been performed in
under two hours. They all derive from Scripture and adhere closely to their
biblical sources.'^

In the opening prologue of the first play. The chefe promyses of god, Baleus
Prolocutor invites his audience to see God's hand in contemporary events:

If profyght maye growe, most Christen audyence,

By knowlege of thynges whych are but transytorye

And here for a tyme, of moch more congruence

Advauntage myght sprynge by the serche of causes heavenlye,

As those matters are that the Gospel! specyfye ... (II. 1-5)

128 / Renaissance and Reformation

God's guiding action, revealed in Scripture, provides the mainspring for
historical truth. From Adam's first disobedience through Isaiah's promises,
God's relationship with man is seen in the history of sin, its punishment, and
the opportunity for redemption. The chefe promyses of god summarizes this
history from the expulsion from Eden to the coming of John the Baptist with
continual foreshadowing of contemporary events. Bale relies heavily on his
scriptural sources in this tour through the Old Testament and concludes with
his own promise that "more of thys matter conclude herafter we shall" (1, 982)
which leads into the second play of the series. Each of the six acts contains
an example of man's turning away from God, his punishment, and a further
instance of Divine mercy. And each closes with a sung Latin antiphon taken
from vespers in the Advent liturgy — one of the Great O's, "prosequetur
chorus cum organis."^^ The invitation Bale extends to his audience and the
expectation that it was able and willing to sing these Advent antiphons in
Latin to the accompaniment of an organ strongly suggests that a monastic
setting during the Christmas season was part of his original staging.

The play is rich in allusions stemming from Bale's intention to provide a
Biblical context for current events as he stated in the preface. One specific
allusion can, however, provide evidence helpful in dating The chefe promyses
of god to sometime after July 1536. Further internal evidence in the other two
plays ties them to sometime following the general insurrection in the North
and Bale's imprisonment, hi act 5 Bale draws on the typographical association
of Henry VIII with Israel's King David found frequently in the works of
English reformers and royal pageant makers alike.^^ He highlights two
features of David's reign which point directly to events between July 1536
and Bale's own imprisonment a few months later. Supported by his develop-
ing view that biblical events were prophetic as well as historical. Bale welds
a link between Henry VIII and David which not only furthers his typological
view of history but prepares his audience for the later identification of Tudor
clergy with the Pharysees, and Satan as a regular.^^ David is rebuked by God
for his sexual sins with Bathsheba: "Of late days thu has mysused Bersabe . . .
(I. 606), and this sin has "defyelde" the otherwise godly king. (I. 608) The
punishment is death, not for David, but for his illegitimate son:

Thu shalt not dye, David, for thys inyquyte

For thy repentaunce: but thy sonne by Bersabe

Shall dye for as moch as my name is blasphemed

Among my enemyes and thu the worse estemed. (11.617-20)

Renaissance et Réforme / 129

David's other sin merits still further punishment: a "pestylence most vyle" (I.
632).

On 22 July 1536, Henry VIII's sole (and illegitimate) son Henry Fitzroy
died, a fact the monks of Thetford would well remember as the young duke
had been buried in their church.^^ Bom from the king's widely known liaison
with Elizabeth Blount and created duke of Richmond in the absence of a
legitimate male heir, Henry Fitzroy was a flagrant example of royal immoral-
ity, and neither Bale nor many other reformers could tolerate such flouting of
God's edicts. Shortly after the duke's death, a virulent plague broke out in
London, Oxford and elsewhere so that Lady Lisle 's servant wrote "they die
daily in the streets" and Oxford scholars fled to the countryside.'^'*

The chef e promises' s final scene with John the Baptist and its closing line
of, "more of thys matter conclude herafter we shall" (L 982) lead directly to
the second play of the trilogy, Johan Baptystes preachynge. Having estab-
lished the 'causes heavenlye' of man's present condition and the ongoing,
even contemporary action of God in history. Bale turns to his major theme —
the resumption of true religion among the people of God. Using historical
stereotypes, Bale casts the Baptist as a priest/preacher who anachronistically
receives the confession of three representative laymen and absolves each as
they turn to embrace his new message. His opponents are Sadducaeus and
Pharisaeus, who proudly resist the Christian invitation to repent humbly and
receive the message of salvation by faith in Christ. In the prologue. Bale had
emphasized the meekness and humility of true Christians (and indeed of
Christ himself):

Ye shall se Christ here submyt hymselfe to Baptym
Of Johan hys servaunt, in most meke humble wyse,
In poomesse of sprete that we shuld folowe hym (II 29-31)

in opposition to the "frowarde sectes [who] contynuallye rebell." (L 28)
Rebellion and pride, humility and godliness form the paired foci around which
the play's message revolves.

As the play begins, John the Baptist enters preaching to Turba Vulgaris,
Publicanus, and Miles Armatus. He urges them to 'flee mennys tradycyons'
and instead 'Gods hygh lawes fulfill.' (L 67) This is set out clearly in the play
when John warns Pharisaeus and Sadducaeus of the coming punishment due
those who wilfully turn away from God's word:

130 / Renaissance and Reformation

Neyther your good workes, nor merytes of your fathers,
Your fastynges, longe prayers with other holy behavers
Shall yow afore God be able to justyfye ... (11. 265-67)

In an explanation of the charges against him written around the same time as
this play. Bale explains that despite the lack of divine commandment for them,
such traditions can be 'lawdable' — yet the office of preaching, for which there
exists an irrefutable injunction, was neglected in favor of these 'con-
stytucyons of menne.' He develops this further by saying that he never
despised 'ceremonye of ye churche' but spoke against those curates who
permit such things to be 'superstycyoslye takyn in ye peple for want of good
techyng.'^^ Bale sets up the opposition, conventional in Protestant polemics
between Catholic traditions devised by men and the obligations imposed by
God. He will later speak more plainly, and include among those traditions the
various monastic rules against which Cromwell was then proceeding.

When it comes time for Miles Armatus to submit to John for his baptism.
Bale departs his biblical source in a scene depicting an idealized version of
confession (which significantly partakes of none of the parody Bale levels at
auricular confession in King Johan)?^

John warns the knight

The offyce ye have for the publyque unyte

Mynde to exercyse to the landes tranquyltye.

Ye maye thus please God in doyng your feate ryght well. (H. 179-181, my

italics), and further.

For the publique peace Gods lawe doth yow permyt

Stronge weapon to weare, but in no case to abuse it. (U. 183-83)

By invoking the fealty due to God in serving the 'landes tranquyllyte' Bale
has John condemn those knights who, having taken up arms against their king
in the recent conservative risings, siimed against God as well as their rightful
lord.

But Bale reserves his strongest criticism for the clergy, seen in the Phar-
isaeus and Sadducaeus. They are referred to throughout as crafty dissemblers,
wealthy and proud (which vices figure prominently in the Gospel) who
conspire against John and his 'newe lemynge'. John warns them that their
opposition to the Gospel involves them in the most dangerous sort of sin for
it cannot be forgiven as the product of ignorance.

Renaissance et Réforme / 131

I saye thys to unto yow, your observacyons are camall.
Outward workes ye have but in sprete nothynge at all ...

Synners offendynge of weakenesse, doubt or ignoraunce,

Of pytie God pardoneth; but were he fyndeth resystence

Agaynst the playne truthe, there wyll he ponnysh most . . . (II. 237-8, 241-43)

Mirroring the machinations that had lately led to Bale's imprisonment for
preaching the Protestant line, Sadducaeus promises that 'wyth a lytle helpe
of an heretyke [John] wyll smell.' (I. 298) The audience is thus invited to
identify the 'newe lemynge'^^ preached by persecuted reformers with the
'news' of the persecuted Baptist. Here Bale issues his broadest political
challenge: those who wilfully resist the Gospel message preached by John are
the forefathers of those who persecute his descendents.

The link between heresy and sedition is overturned in this analogy. Those
who suppress what they call heresy are merely feigning concern for the
realm's security. In a heavily ironic speech, Sadducaeus warns that

If we do not se for thys gere a dyreccyon.

This fellawe is lyke to make an insurreccyon;

For to hys [i.e. John's] newe lemynge an infynyte cumpanye

Of worldlye rascalles come hyther suspycyouslye. (II. 314-17)

All knew, of course, that it was not the preachers of the new learning but the
champions of tradition who had threatened the reahn's security in the recent
insurrections: treason was, in fact, more dangerous than the Protestant message.^^
The opposition of the haughty, scheming Pharisee, who resists John's call
to the office of preaching which constitutes the essence of the priestly call,
and lowly Jesus submitting himself to God's law lies at the heart of the
message to regulars. Bale's Christ teaches humble obedience:

Ye worldlye people, leme gentylnesse of me (I. 366)

Le te thys example be grafted first in your wytt.

How I for baptyme to Johan my selfe submytt. (II. 371-2)

and finally,

[I come] From my mothers house . . .

To obey and serve with most due reverence (II. 379-80)

132 / Renaissance and Reformation

Christ refers to himself as the 'great graunde captayne' (I. 400) of the people
and baptism as the 'lyverye token' of the faithful (I. 413), imagery aimed as
much at monastic dress as at the rebels who marched under the banner of
Christ's Five Wounds. The livery of Christians lay not in cowls or noblemen's
colours, nor in taking up arms against Gospel preachers but, under the token
of baptism, in submitting themselves in all humility to those, like Cromwell
and the king, who favor a sundering of 'mennes tradycyons' (II. 466-7) and
a return to true religion. Warnings are added that on the day of judgement,
such traditions will be unjustifiable without the inward conversion whose
absence was clearly testified by resistance to the new learning's solafideism.
Bale reiterates his theme in the closing monologue, directed specifically
against monastic founders, monastic practices and men who now defend
them:

The waye that Johan taught was not to weare harde clothynge,

To saye longe prayers, nor to wandre in the desart, . . .

Hys mynde was that faythe shuld puryfye the hart.

My ways, sayth the Lorde, with mennys ways have no part. (II. 472-76)

Give eare unto Christ, let mennys vayne fantasyes go.

As the father bad by hys most hygh commaundement

Heare neyther Frances, Benedyct nor Bruno,

Albert nor Domynyck, for they newe rulers invent. (II. 486-89)

The word of God becomes the focus of Bale's short sequel The temptacyon
of our lorde. In his prologue, he urges those who have a true vocation to accept
the Spirit as their guide and Jesus as their model. But Bale must interpret the
Gospel narrative of Jesus' s life for his audience, lest they find in it support
for practices now under censure. To the traditional view that mortification of
the flesh was a remedy for temptation. Bale urges, 'For the assaultes of Sathan
leme here the remedye; / Take the worde of God, lete that be your defence.'
(n. 29-30) And further, he has Jesus warn the audience,

Thynke, not me to fast bycause I wolde yow to fast.

For than ye thynke wronge and have vayne judgement.

But of my fastynge thynke rather thy s my cast:

Sathan to provoke to worke hys cursed intent.

And to te ache yow way es hys myschefes to prevent

By the worde of God, whych must be your defence

Rather thanfastynges, to withstande hys vyolence. (II. 43-49, my italics)

Renaissance et Réforme / 133

During the three temptations of Jesus, Satan is met by Scripture rather than
works (II. 138ff, 208ff, 318ff) and complains, 'Nothynge can I laye but ever
ye avoyde me / By the worde of God.' (II. 285-6)

Using terminology familiar to all regulars. Bale presents Christ's sojourn
in the desert and his subsequent preaching as the proper 'offyce' (H. 9, 143)
and likens the persecutions he suffered during his desert sojourn to those
experienced by all 'whom Christ doth call.' (II. 15-20, 28) Having rejected
the rule of Francis, Benedict and Bruno in the closing scene of the previous
play as well as in his own apostasy. Bale offers a Protestant alternative:

Gods worde is a rule for all that man shuld do

And out of that nile no creature ought to go. (II. 151-52)

The rule of the Gospel is the proper régula for Christians, and those religious
who scoff at the thought of life outside the cloister are told that ascetic
practices are nothing compared with the sufferings inflicted on true men of
God.29

To illustrate his belief that monastic orders and Scripture are not compat-
ible. Bale presents Satan 'simulata rehgione Christum aggreditur' 'semynge
relygyouse, devoute and sad in my geare' (I. 75), declaring

Scriptures I knowe non for I am but an hermyte, I.
I maye saye to yow it is no part of our stody;
We relygyouse men lyve all in contemplacyon
Scriptures to stodye is not our occupacyon;
It longeth to doctours. (II. 157-61)

Notwithstanding this admission of willed ignorance in Scriptural matters,
Satan's assaults on Jesus hinge on Scriptural interpretations — interpretations
easily refuted because of their very selectivity.^^ Jesus admonishes him;

In no wyse ye ought the scriptures to deprave

But as they lye whole so ought ye them to have. (II. 215-16)

Bale suggests that it is out of spiritual pride that men support monastic
orders, pride which tempts God. When Satan asks just what does it mean to
tempt God, Jesus replies:

To take of hys worde an outwarde experyment

Of an ydle brayne, whych God neyther thought nor ment.

When asked what persons do this, Jesus repUes:

134 / Renaissance and Reformation

All soch as forsake anye grace or remedye
Appoynted of God for their owne polycye.
As they that do thynke that God shuld fyll their bellye
Without their labours, whan hys lawes are contrarye;

and

Those also tempt God that vowe presumptuouslye.

Not havynge hys gyft to kepe their contynencye,

With so manye els as folowe their good intentes.

Not grounded on God, nor yet on hys commaundements; (II 255-64)

Just as Jesus resisted turning stones in to bread out of faith that God would
provide for his needs, Bale is asking the regulators to anticipate God's
providence once they are out of the cloister. In a restrained polemical flourish,
he includes references to monastic idleness and incontinency, but the mild-
ness with which he offers these assessments is significant when compared
with the catalogue of monastic abuses presented elsewhere in his writings.
This degree of tonal control, essential for effective propaganda, further
underscores the suggested appUcation for which these plays were intended.
Bale closes his play with a challenge to the regulars: there is no life as
rigorous as that to which the Gospel calls us. Satan is to be resisted

Not with your fastynges — Christ never taught ye so —
But with a stronge fayth withstande hys false suggestyon
And with the scriptures upon hym ever go. (II. 413-15)

In sum, we can see that this trilogy was written sometime after the death
of Henry Fitzroy in July 1536 and the end of the northern risings the following
winter (with particular reference to Advent.) That Bale's trilogy was ad-
dressed primarily to a clerical audience, for whom the Reformation posed the
most radical challenge, is clear from its content alone but is further borne out
by the stage directions in the first play calling for choral singing of Latin
antiphons with organ accompaniment and in later presentation of Christ's
message in terms deliberately echoing monastic language and criticizing
specific monastic practices. Bale speaks of Christ's 'office' (Johan Baptystes
preachynge 1. 425, The temptacyon of our lorde, 1. 9) the 'rule' of God's word
{Johan Baptystes preachynge II. 151-2), and frequently emphasises the
monastic virtues of obedience, patience, and humility, (e.g. obedience, Johan
Baptystes preachynge I. 380; humility Johan Baptystes preachynge II. 30,
366, 369, 461 , 464; patience. The temptacyon of our lorde 1. 33.) His reformed

Renaissance et Réforme / 135

theology, presented in the simplified terms essential for propaganda, is here
restrained and decorous, appeahng both to the desire for conventionally
expressed religious discipline (which Bale presented as the rule of God's
word) as well as to the Protestant notion that monastic orders were, in fact,
Satan's subtle strategems lacking scriptural support and therefore offensive
to true religion. In place of monastic observance. Bale offers the office of
preaching, for which he held up John and Jesus as examples.

Ultimately, Cromwell's efforts failed to contain the events they triggered.
Despite his far-flung network of agents and supporters, Cromwell himself
proved incapable of defusing the largely court-centered opposition to evan-
geUcal reforms, opposition which sent him to the block in 1540 and many of
his propagandists into exile. But the message his dramatists brought to the
fringes of the troubled North in 1537/38 and elsewhere may have had some
impact. There was no repeat of the Pilgrimage of Grace when the big abbeys
came down, and despite their ad hoc nature, the plays gained new relevance
following the imposition of the 6 Articles in 1539 and other legislation which
reaffirmed many practices repugnant to radical reformers. It was for this
reason that Bale took these works with him into exile, and saw to their
publication and later production.

University ofOtago

Notes

* I would like to thank Professor Alistair Fox for his helpful criticism during the writing
of this paper.

1. For Cromwell's propaganda campaign, seeG.R. EXXon, Policy and Police: The Enforce-
ment of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell, (Cambridge, 1972), pp.
171-216; J. Block, "Thomas Cromwell's Patronage of Preaching," Sixteenth Century
Journal VIII (April, 1977), pp. 37-50. For an introduction to political drama in this
p)eriod, see D. Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: a Critical Approach to Topical
Meaning (Cambridge, Mass. 1968); S Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor
Policy, (Oxford, 1969); A. Fox, Politics and Literature in the Reigns of Henry VII and
Henry VIII (Oxford, 1989); and R. Blackburn, Biblical Drama under the Tudor s (The
Hague and Paris, 1971). The author is currently working on a detailed analysis of the
use of drama during the Henrician Reformation, including the Cromwell/Bale partner-
ship.

2. For the most complete compilation of data concerning drama in England until 1558,
see I. Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records of Great Britain: a Chronological
Survey to 1558 (Toronto, 1984), esp. Appendix I, pp. 349-408 for dramatic companies
and their patrons.

3. For Bale's bibliography and biography, see W.T. Davies, "A Bibliography of John
Bale," Oxford Bibliographical Society, Proceedings and Papers V, pt.iv 1939 (1940),
pp. 201-279; H. McCusker, John Bale, Dramatist and Antiquary 1942 (rpr. Freeport,

1 36 / Renaissance and Reformation

1971); J.W. Harris, John Bale: a Study in Minor Literature of the Reformation (Urbana,
1940); to some extent these have all been replaced by L. Fairfield, John Bale:
Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, 1 976); for a critical introduc-
tion to Bale's plays, see T. Blatt, The Plays of John Bale (Copenhagen, 1968). Bale's
plays have received an excellent modem edition by P. Happe', Complete Plays of John
Bale, 2 vols., (Cambridge, 1985-6). All references to the plays in this article cite line
numbers from this edition; for the demise of cycle plays, see G. Wickham, Early
English Stage, London, 1980, 1, pp. 112-123.

4. See Fairfield, Mythmaker, chaps. 3 and 4.

5. Cromwell had come to Bale's aid before, which Bale credited to his playwriting ability.
But as Bale held no position other than that of a stipendiary curate in Suffolk until
1537, Cromwell's patronage must have been very active. For various accounts of Bale's
troubles until Cromwell began using his services in early 1537, see A.G. Dickens,
Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York (Oxford 1959) pp. 144-5; Fairfield,
John Bale: Mythmaker, pp. 36-49; and McCusker, John Bale, Dramatist pp. 6-13 who
prints Bale's own answer to the charges against him as well as letters from Bale and
Leland to Cromwell from around the same time. The calendered abstracts are unreli-
able, cf. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII
1509-1547, eds. J. Brewer et al. 21 vols plus Addenda, Vol. (London 1867-1920),
henceforth LP followed by volume, part, and document number) XL 1111 (which
should be re-dated to early 1537) and XII, i, 230.

6. Harris, John Bale, pp. 65-6; LP XIV, ii, p. 337; Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and
Records, p. 380; J E Cox (ed.) Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer
Parker Society (Cambridge, 1846) p. 388; Happe' Complete plays I, pp. 4-7; John Bale,
The Vocacyon of John Bale, Harleian Miscellany VI (London, 1810) p. 450; Records
of Early English Drama: Cambridge, ed. Alan Nelson (Toronto, 1989), i, pp. 112, 114,
119)

7. See Happe', Complete Plays, I, p. 6-7.

8. The cult was officially suppressed on 16 November, 1538 and the saint's name was to
be effaced from all service books. Tudor Royal Proclamations, eds. P. Hughes and J.
Larkin, Vol. I (New Haven and London 1964) no. 186. The shrine had begun to be
dismantled by Richard Pollard and others on 7 September, the night before Bale's
performance. LP XIII, ii, 302, 303, 417. The king and most of the court were present.

9. See Historical Manuscript Commission, 15th Report, pt. 10 (1899), p. 34 for Shrews-
bury; Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records #833 for Leicester.

1 0. See McCusker, John Bale, pp. 5 ff.

1 1. For introductory remarks on the Pilgrimage of Grace, see Guy, Tudor England {Oxford,
1989) pp. 149, 152; D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, v.III (Oxford, 1959)
pp. 320-335; and the useful but dated M. and R. Dodds The Pilgrimage of Grace,
1536-37 and the Exeter Conspiracy 1538 (2 vols., Cambridge, 1915); for political
songs sung at Thetford see LP XII, i, 424 and against Cromwell, LP XII, i, 318; for
uprisings in Wales, see LP XII, i, 1 148, 1271, 1272; for the offending May Day game
in Suffolk, see LP XH, i, 1212, 1284.

12. LP XII, i, 808; LP XII, ii, 800.

Renaissance et Réforme / 1 37

13. Dodds, Pilgrimage of Grace, ii, p. 155; G. Cook, Letters to Cromwell and Others on
the Suppression of thé Monasteries (London, 1965), pp. 129, 137; LP XII, ii, 190;
Lewes priory followed in voluntary submission to the king in November 1537, LP XII,
ii, 1101.

14. LP Xll,n, 1314, 1101, 1311(30).

15. Just to whom these plays would be acceptable in the late 1530's is a good question.
Bale seems to have put on King Johan before Cranmer but after the appearance of the
6 Articles in 1539, it would take a brave actor indeed to present its lines.

16. W. Dugdale Monasticon Anglicanum, eds. Calley and Ellis, 6 vols. (London, 1817-
1830), v (1825), pp. 141 ff.

17. R. Beadle, "Plays and Playing at Thetford and Nearby 1498-1540", Theatre Notebook
32 (1978), pp. 4-11; D. Galloway and J. Wasson, eds.. Records of Plays and Players
in Norfolk and Suffolk 1 3 30- 1 642, Malone Society Collections XI (1980), pp. 104-1 15.
The yearly accounts were kept from 24 June to 23 June. For 1537/38, the entries for
drama are spread across 6 pages. From their grouping one may only hazard the guess
that Cromwell's men were not accompanied by any of the other troupes to appear that
year.

18. For evidence that Bale updated King Johan and Thre Lawes, see Happe' Complete
Plays I, pp. 8-11; the added list of relics in these two plays seems to have rendered
them particularly appropriate for Cromwell's campaign against images in 1538; King
Johan was updated at least as late as 3 1 August 1538 because of the reference to John
Shome's boot (I. 1225); see LP 13, ii, 235; reference to St. Uncumber (I. 532) suggests
that Thre Lawes was updated as late as 16 July, 1538 when this shrine came down in
London, LP XIII, i, 1393. Bale added to these plays while in exile, but his alterations
mainly reflect the change in monarchs. See e.g. King Johan I. 2671, Thre Lawes II.
2040, 1575-76, etc.

19. For the series as a trilogy, see Happe' Complete Plays I, p. 12-13.

20. E.S. Miller, "The Antiphons in Bale's Cycle of Christ," Studies in Philology 48 (1951)
pp. 629-38; Happe' Complete Plays I, pp.23 ff.

2 1 . See S. Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy, p. 2 1 4; David was one of
Henry VIII's favorite biblical characters. Tyndale too made much use of David's
adultery to show what punishment results from flouting God's laws, even by pious
kings, in his 'Exposition of Matthew' V, VI, VII, (ed.) Duffield, The Works of William
Tyndale, Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics, I (Appleford, 1964) p. 228.

22. Throughout these three plays. Bale is largely faithful to the scriptural accounts. His
belief in Scripture's inerrancy and in the precision with which it could be applied to
the present is seen here in its earliest phase. Later, Bale relies heavily on Scripture to
formulate his understanding of the historical ages of the true Church — an understanding
shared by the Protestant martyrologist John Foxe.

23. Wriothesley' s Chronicle, ed. W. Hamilton, Camden Society (1875), i, pp. 53-54.

24. LP XI, 162,310,405,501,970, 1181.

25. McCusker, John Bale, pp. 10-1 1.

26. E.S. Miller, "The Roman Rite in Bale's King John," Publications of the Modern
Language Association, 49 (1959) pp. 802-22; Other literary priests used canonical or

138 / Renaissance and Refonnation

sacramental rites, particularly the confessional, as a basis for parody. See J. Wilson,
"Skelton's Ware the Hauke and the 'Circumstances' of Sin" Medium Aevum LVII
(1989) pp. 243-57.

27. The theme of newness illustrates the reformers' use of Gospel history to illuminate
contemporary events (cf. II. 17, 207-8, 211, 282, 275 etc.) John's news, which was
indeed new, becomes in Bale the 'newe lemyng' — that is, a return to what reformers
called Biblical Christianity.

28. Again, in his answer to the articles against him in 1536/7 Bale responds that he was
working in the king's cause, upholding the 10 Articles; McCusker, /o/i« Bale, pp. 6-11.

29. Using Christ (and the recent Protestant martyrs) as his models. Bale stresses the
persecutions in store for those who follow Christ: e.g. "If ye folowe Christ, with hym
ye must be beate" The temptacyon of our lorde, I. 28. Here he echoes Tyndale's call
for baptism in tribulation. The Obedie[n]ce of a Christen Man (Antwerp, 1528) fos,
vi-x.

30. English Bibles remained unavailable in England until Cromwell's injunctions of
September 1538 although it was not until sometime in 1539 that they were available
in any quantity. For a short account of the Bible in English, see S.L. Greenslade,
'English Versions of the Bible 1525-1611' Cambridge history of the Bible, 3 vols.,
(Cambridge, 1963-70) iii, pp. 149-53.

The Family of Love and the Church of
England

MARK KONNERT

1 he Family of Love is one of the relatively obscure groups of the Refor-
mation which has attracted a fair bit of historians 'attention in recent years.
Founded by a Dutchman, H.N. (a pseudonym for Hendrik Niclaes), it has
nevertheless been asserted that the Family of Love attracted its greatest
following in England. So great was this following, apparently, that the
Family of Love was singled out for persecution in a Royal Proclamation of
1580, the only sect to be so singled out.^

This proclamation was preceded and accompanied by a substantial body
of polemical literature which reflected a widespread concern with the Family
of Love. This literature, and the Royal Proclamation, assume that the Family
of Love was indeed large and growing, and was therefore a threat. This
assumption has persisted through the centuries and is now reflected in a
considerable body of historical literature. Is this assumption founded on
historical fact? Did the Family of Love indeed pose such a threat? If, as this
article will show, the historical evidence does not support this assumption, if
the Family of Love posed no real danger and was neither as large nor as
important as perceived at the time, then why did it provoke such a vehement
reaction?

The assumptions of English authorities in the sixteenth century towards the
Family of Love in England have influenced modem historiography in several
ways. The paucity of hard documentary evidence on the Family in England
has forced historians to rely on the anti-Family literature surrounding the
Royal Proclamation. Specifically, these works are: The Displaying of an
horrible Secte of grosse and wicked hérétiques (1578) by John Rogers; A
Confutation of Monstrous Heresies Taught by H.N. (1579) by John
Knewstubb; and A Confutation of Certain Articles delivered unto the Family
of Love (1579) by William Wilkinson. Together, these three works dictated
the attitude of the Church and the government towards the Family of Love,

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVI, 2 ( 199 1 ) 139

140 / Renaissance and Reformation

and their reaction to it. Through the works of eariier generations of historians,
the views expressed in these works have been transmitted to modem histori-
ans. Although modem historians have recognized the polemical nature of
these works, and have weighed their charges against the Family of Love very
cautiously, they are still accepted as historical evidence in very suspect ways.

The facts of H.N'S life are shrouded in mystery.^ Bom probably in Munster
in 1501 or 1502 he lived for a time in Amsterdam and Emden, being forced
to flee both places when suspicion of heresy was cast upon him. From his
flight from Emden in 1560 until his death in Cologne in 1580 or 1581, he
apparently led a peripatetic existence.

Niclaes wrote frequently and voluminously. His chief work, The Glass of
Righteousness (Den Spiegel der Gherechticheit) mns to over 800 folio pages.
His style is difficult and obscure, laden with Scriptural references and
mystical allegories. At the core of his doctrine is the concept of Vergottung
or "begoddedness," a mystical infusion of the Spirit of Love of Jesus Christ
in which the will of the believer is subsumed in the will of God. While the
purpose of this article is not to examine his teachings in any great detail, one
point is cmcial: these concepts are not unique to Niclaes and the Family of
Love. These spiritualist/mystical ideas have been common in Christianity
from the Early Church right down to the present. They were available to
Niclaes in such medieval sources as Joachim of Fiore, Tauler, Eckhart, a
Kempis, and the Theologica Germanica? Thus, there is an absolutely cmcial
distinction between "familist" and the "Family of Love;" that is, between
people and groups who exhibit certain of the same characteristics and those
who actually belong to the sect called the Family of Love. To identify the
two, as many have done, is to greatly magnify the sect's numbers.

It is a common assertion in the literature on the Niclaes and the Family of
Love that they found their greatest following in England. According to this
standard view, at some time during the 1560's or 70's, the sect began to
expand in England under the dual impetus of the translation of several of
H.N.'s works and the missionary activity of one Christopher Vitell (or Vitel,
Vittell, etc.)."* Eventually the sect grew to such an extent that it attracted
official notice and repression, culminating in the Royal Proclamation of 1580.
Though persecuted, the sect survived underground, for in 1604, its members
addressed a petition to the newly acceded James L The sect attracted more
followers in the seventeenth century, as home out by frequent hostile refer-

Renaissance et Réforme / 141

ences to it, including a Middleton farce called The Family of Love. During
the Civil War, H.N. 's works were reprinted, evidence of yet further growth.
Sometime in the later seventeenth century, the sect died out, possibly as a
result of its members joining other groups such as the Quakers.^

Yet what actual historical evidence is there to support his view of the Family's
history in England? The evidence for the history of the Family of Love in
England is of three major types: actual documentary sources (confessions of
Familists, government records, and the like); works attributed to members of
the Family of Love, including translations of H.N. himself; and works written
by authors hostile to the Family of Love.

The actual documentary sources for the history of the Family of Love in
England are very few. The first we come across is a confession taken in
Guildford in Surrey on May 28, 1561 by William More.^ This confession was
given by Thomas Chaundeler and Robert Sterete and included by John Rogers
in his Displaying of 1578. In it, the two men describe a group of sectaries
complete with secret conventicles, passwords, and an ethical code. Many of
the articles to which the two subscribed sound very much indeed like the
teaching of Niclaes. Significantly, however, neither the Family of Love nor
H.N. are once mentioned by name. However, in one article (omitted by
Rogers) there is a passing reference to "Henrike, a Dutchman, the head of all
the congregation."^ This, for some, is conclusive evidence that this Surrey
group was a cell of the Family of Love.^ The two men also allude to
connections that their Surrey group had with other cells "in divers places of
the realm ... as in the Isle of Ely, Essex, Berkshire, Sussex, Surrey, Hamp-
shire, Devonshire, and London."^ The references to the Isle of Ely and London
are especially tantalizing for, as we shall see, in these places there is evidence
that the Family of Love was active. ^^

Were these two men and the groups they describe Familists? Perhaps, in
the sense alluded to above: they did exhibit certain characteristics which are
similar to Niclaes ' teachings. Were they members of the sect called the Family
of Love? Probably not. Tempting as it is to identify the "Henrike" of the
confession with Niclaes, in the absence of more conclusive evidence, the
connection cannot be made. For one thing, the time frame is wrong. Niclaes'
works were not translated into English until the mid 1570's. The Surrey
sectaries are characterized by More as "all unlearned, saving that some of
them can read English and that not very perfectly."*^ So it seems impossible

142 / Renaissance and Reformation

that they could have read Niclaes in English, let alone in the original Low
German.

Additional evidence has been adduced by Joseph Martin to try to show that
this was indeed a cell of the Family of Love. ^^ Following the career of Thomas
Allen of Wonersh, identified in the confession as an elder, he concludes that
this must have been the Family of Love. Looking into the later papers of Sir
William More, Martin discovers that the Surrey magistrate found that Allen
possessed " ... a booke of h n prevelye hidden at the verye time of my
comynge for i sawe his wyfe when she dyd secretlie covere hit."^^ Neverthe-
less, this episode occurred some twenty years after 1561, and there is no
evidence that "Allen" (even if it is the same person — no Christian name is
given for the later Allen) was a member of the Family of Love in 1561. In
addition, Christopher Vitell, when confronted with this 1561 confession by
John Rogers in 1578, denied that they were at that time members of the Family
of Love: "of H.N. his doctrine at that time they knew not."^"* What is, of
course, entirely possible is that in the meantime they had become acquainted
with the Family of Love and become followers of H.N. This would account
for "Allen's" possession of H.N.'s books. Indeed, Alastair Hamilton seems
to be right on the mark when he says, "[t]he most we can say there fore, is
that the sectarians were ready to receive the Familist doctrine."'^

Then there is the case of Family of Love activity at Court. On September
28, 1578, the Privy Council sent a letter to Aylmer, then Bishop of London,
"requiring him to call unto him Robert Seale, Thomas Mathewe, Lewes
Stewarde, Anthony Enscombe and William Eling, Yeomen of the Garde,
persons noted to be of the secte called the Familie of Love, and to conferre
with them for their reformation in Relligion. ... "^^ However, a week and a
half later Aylmer informed the Council that "those of her Majesties Gard
suspected to be of the Family of Love ... are in all pointes of Religion verie
sound." Two years later, however, on October 9, 1580 (the Royal Proclama-
tion was issued on October 3), two Yeomen of the Guard identified as — Seale
and Mathewe — (obviously the same Robert Seale and Thomas Mathewe)
were "committed to the prison of Marshallsea, refusing to subscribe unto
certain erroneous and false articles gathered out of the bookes of one H.N.,
supposed to be the author of a certaine Secte called the Familie of Love,
whereof they were vehemently suspected to be, and order geven to the Gierke
of the Checke to take her Majesties coate from them."^^ Shortly there after
Anthonie Ediscombe (obviously the Anthony Enscombe of 1578, "being
suspected to be one of the sect of the Familie of Love, denied the same before
ther Lordships. ... "^^ On November 30, 1580, Thomas Seale (a relative of

Renaissance et Réforme / 143

Robert Seale?) "charged before their Lordships with certen lewde and irrev-
erent speeches of a certen person . . . being of the Secte called the Familie of
Love," was committed to Marshallsea, "there to remayne to be furder examine
and proceded with all as shold appertained' '^ The only other bit of evidence
regarding this case is a undated manuscript among the Harley manuscripts in
the British Museum which would seem to be a confession of the accused
guards.'^^ These men were almost certainly members of the Family of Love,
and we shall have occasion to refer to them again.

That the Family of Love's center of activity was Cambridgeshire and the
Isle of Ely becomes apparent in several other confessions. In December of
1574, Dr. Andrew Feme, the Dean of Ely, alarmed by reports of private
assemblies in the parish of Balsham, examined six villagers, among whom
were Robert Sharpe, parson at Strethall, in Essex, Edmund Rule, and two
members of the Lawrence family. ^^ Feme was apparently satisfied with their
answers and no further action was taken.'^-^ However, some six months later
Robert Sharpe, along with five others recanted their belief in the Family of
Love at Paul's Cross.-^^ That Sharpe, and by extension the Balsham group,
were members of the Family of Love, there is little doubt. Sharpe admitted
in his recantation that he had "heretofore unadvisedly conceyved good
opinion of certaine books of an author, otherwise unknown, save only that he
noteth himself by the letters H.N.''^"^

In 1580, Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely, at the urging of William Wilkinson,
who had dedicated his Confutation to the Bishop, embarked on a campaign
to hunt down the Family of Love in his diocese. As a result, a group of people
from Wisbech were examined by the Bishop between October 3 and 5, 1580.
Again, note the timing: Cox's campaign is simultaneous with the promul-
gation of the Royal Proclamation. The leader of this group appears to have
been John Bourne, a glover. All nine people examined recanted their beUef
in H.N. and the Family of Love.^^ What happened to this group afterwards is
unknown. Certainly, they may have, as Felicity Heal suggests, returned to the
sect.^^ This would be quite consistent with the behavior alleged as typical of
the Family of Love. There is, however, no evidence for it.

There is one other bit of evidence concerning the Wisbech group. This is
a confession dictated to "Thomas Barwicke, minister," by Bourne's appren-
tice, Leonard Romsey.^^ Apparently Romsey had escaped questioning with
his master and made his confession at some later date. Romsey describes how
his master brought him into the sect and touches on their beliefs. Most
interesting from our point of view, however, is his allusion to their connec-
tions at Court:

144 / Renaissance and Reformation

for it being reported upon a time that a commission was granted forth against
us of Wisbech we had letter from the Family of Love in the court, from one
Dorrington and Zeale, wherein we were advertised how to behave our
selves before the commissioners and charged that we should deny that we
had seen any of the books of H.N., whereupon all the books were conveyed.^^

Here is the only evidence of any connections between different groups of the
Family of Love. It appears that "Dorrington and Zeale" (either Thomas or
Robert Scale), acting upon their inside information, had informed their
co-religionists at Wisbech of the upcoming persecution.

The possibility remains, however, that Romsey's confession was some-
what manufactured. Alastair Hamilton believes that the confession played too
perfectly into the hands of the authorities to be as voluntary as advertised.^^
There is also the possibility that Romsey had been embittered against his
employer and purposely sought to damage him. In his confession, Romsey
states that the sect was planning an armed uprising "when they are of
sufficient number to undertake the matter. "^° Certainly H.N. would never
have approved of this. Perhaps this was an idiosyncratic belief of the Wisbech
group, or maybe the interrogators asked the questions in such a way as to lead
to this statement, or perhaps Romsey was trying to make himself seem more
important in the eyes of the authorities.

The second category of evidence for the history of the Family of Love in
England consists of written works attributed to members of the Family. Chief
among these, of course, are the translations of H.N.'s own works. ^'

In addition to the English translations of Niclaes' works, there are several
other English translations of continental Familist tracts. One of these is A
Good and fruitful I Exhortation unto the Family of Love by "Elidad," identified
only as a "fellow elder with the elder H.N.;" A distinct declaration of the
requiring of the Lord, by "Fidelitas," a "fellow elder with H.N. in the Famelie
of Loue;" Mirabilia Opera Dei: Certaine wonderfull works of God which
hapned to H.N. by "Tobias," a hagiographical account of H.N.'s life and
works; and A Reproofe Spoken and Given against all False Christians by
"Abia Nazarenus." Julia Ebel has speculated that this is a pseudonym for
Vitell himself, but this is without substantiation.^^

What do these works tell us about the Family of Love in England? Apart
from the preface to A Reproofe, England or English people are not mentioned
at all. Yet the very fact that these works were translated from "base-almayne"
or "nether- Saxon" into English indicates that somebody thought the task was
worthwhile. The expense and labor of translating, printing, and (after 1580

Renaissance et Réforme / 145

surreptitiously) transporting them into England, indicates that they were not
shots in the dark, so to speak. Somebody was on the receiving end; there had
to be a demand for them, however small. That these works actually found
their way to England and were read by English members of the Family of
Love is borne out by other sources. In the confession of the Family of Love
at Wisbech, John Bourne admitted that among the works of H.N. which he
possessed were also the works of "Elidad" and "Fidelitas."^^

From time to time, English members of the Family of Love took it upon
themselves to defend themselves in print. The first of these defenses is the
anonymous Brief Rehear sail, printed in 1575. As might be expected, the
thrust of the Brief Rehearsall is that the Family of Love is no threat.
Throughout, the author or authors protest their loyalty, obedience, and peace-
fulness. As also might be expected, the Brief Rehearsall downplays the
foreign origins of the sect and its heterodox nature.

The significance of this document is not easy to assess. It does show that
there were definitely members of the Family of Love sufficiently literate to
pen it, sophisticated enough to couch it in the proper language, and powerful
enough to have it printed. Who these people were, in the absence of further
evidence, must remain a matter of speculation.

Another anonymous document attributed the Family of Love is An Apology
for the Service of Love. This work is in the form of a play, a discussion between
three characters: Exile, a member of the Family of Love, Citizen, and
Countryman. Again, this is an attempt on the part of the Family of Love to
answer the charges against them. However, rather than, as in A Brief
Rehearsall, where only general statements are made about the group's loyalty
and orthodoxy, in An Apology, charges are answered in specific:

Citizen: Wilt thou deny the Sacrament of Baptisme?
Exile: Though I speak of the true Baptism of regeneration through repen-
tance, and newness of life, yet do I not deny the holy sacrament of Baptisme,
which signifieth regeneration in Christ and is ministered unto Infants, though
some have most unjustly reported to us.^"*

The question of authorship, here as with A Brief Rehearsall, must remain
in the realm of speculation. However, in the case of An Apology, we are at
least given a clue. In the preface, the author describes himself as "one of her
Majesties menial servants, who was in no small esteem with Her, for his
known wisdom and godliness."^^ The category of "menial servants" would
seem to fit the Yeoman Guards, among whom, as we have seen, the Family
of Love was popular.

146 / Renaissance and Reformation

The only other document we have which definitely is a work of the Family
of Love is a petition addressed to James I in 1604, shortly after his accession.^^
This petition, couched in the subservient language of humble subjects ad-
dressing their monarch, seeks to correct His Majesty's view of the sect. The
petitioners

doe beseech your Princely Majesty to understand that the people of the
family of love, or of God, doe utterly disclaime and detest all the said absurd
and self-conceited opinions and disobedient and erroneous sorts of the
Anabaptists, Browne, Penry, Puritans, and all other proud minded sects and
heresies whatsoever, protesting upon paine of our lives, that wee are not
consenting with any such brainesicke preachers, nor their rebellious and
disobedient sects whatsoever, but have been, and ever will be truly obedient
to your Highnesse. . . . ^^

Their only offense, they say, is that "we have read certaine bookes brought
forth by a Germane authour under the characters of H.N."^^ They also claim,
probably somewhat dishonestly, for they must have known of the 1580
Proclamation, "Against which Authour and his books we never yet heard nor
knew any Law established this Realme by our late gracious Sovereigne."^^
They have been victimized by "malicious and slanderous reports," and by
magistrates who "have framed divers and subtle articles for us, being plaine
and unlearned men to answer upon our oaths, whereby to urge and gather
somethings from our selves, so to approve their false and unchristian accusa-
tions to be true. . . . "^^

Their request is that the King only read H.N.'s works for himself and meet
with elders of the Family of Love to discuss them. Interestingly, they offer

to procure some of the learned men out of that Country (if there be any yet
remaining alive that were well acquainted with the Author and his works in
his life time, and which likewise have exercized his works ever since) to
come over and attend upon your Majesty at your appointed time convenient,
who can much more sufficiently instruct and resolve your Majesty in any
unusual words, phrase, or matter that may happily seem darke and doubtfull
to your Majesty than any of us in this land are able to doe.'*'

The 1604 petition is the last direct evidence we have for the existence of
the Family of Love in England. No more is heard from the sect. All we get
from now on are hostile accounts and innuendo. It does indeed seem likely
that the 1604 petition represents the sect's last gasp, or at least its last attempt
at justifying itself before the authorities. If there were any members after this.

Renaissance et Réforme / 147

they probably kept their beliefs to themselves, giving up any hope of evan-
gelization or vindication.

The third type of evidence concerning the Family of Love in England is
certainly the most plentiful and the most misunderstood: hostile writings
against the sect. Besides the major works of Rogers, Knewstubb, and Wilkin-
son, there are a number of minor and incidental attacks. Almost everyone who
set pen to paper on the subject of religion found space to attack the Family.
The crucial point, however, is the repetitiveness of the charges and their
origin. Virtually every accusation against H.N. and the Family of Love can
be traced back to the works of Rogers, Knewstubb, and Wilkinson."^^

When the Family of Love vanished from the historical record after the
petition to James I, the attacks upon it did not cease. After all, what could be
easier than attacking a group that would not or could not defend itself? If we
go on the assumption that the number of hostile references to the sect are an
accurate guide to its fortunes, then obviously we could conclude that the
Family of Love maintained its existence and even grew during the first half
of the seventeenth century. However, this view is a result of faulty method-
ology. In Hamilton's words, "the numerical power of the Familists in the
seventeenth century was very far from corresponding to the ever more
frequent complaints against them.'"^^ In fact, if we look at the complaints
against them, we see that those being called Familists, even if they shared
H.N.'s mystical views, even if they had read and approved of this works, were
not members of the Family of Love. They were called Familists because that
was one of the worst names their critics could think of.'*'*

The reprinting of many of Niclaes' works in the 1640' s and 1650' s has
been seen by some as evidence of a resurgence in the Family's fortunes.
However, most of these editions were printed by Giles Calvert, who also
printed many Quaker and Leveller works, as well as translations of Jacob
Boehme, of whose works he published just as many as he did of Niclaes. "^^
This indicates a renewed interest in Spiritualist religion and radical mysti-
cism, but not a new period of growth for the Family of Love.

Throughout the Civil War period and even into the Restoration, the name
"Familist" was a term of abuse. It was used because of its connotations of
libertinism, perfectionism, anti nomianism, and deceit. It was quite simply
one of the worst things to be called.

One of the last, tantalizing references to the Family of Love is contained
in the diaries of John Evelyn. He recounts that several people of the Family
of Love had presented a petition to James II in 1687. When the King asked
about their form of worship, they described themselves as "a sort of refined

148 / Renaissance and Reformation

Quakers ... not above three-score in all ... chiefly belonging to the Isle of
£jy"46 Perhaps, after all, a small group had managed to survive in
Cambridgeshire for eighty years or so. This would accord with Strype's
statement in 1725:

"I remember a gemleman, a great admirer of this sect, within less than twenty
years ago, told me, that there was but one of the Family of Love alive, and
he an old man."^^

If, however, this group did survive, it was only because they were so
insignificant as to escape official notice and repression. A far cry indeed from
the view which hostile writers (and some modem historians) have presented.
On the other hand, there may be no genetic connection at all. With the
reprinting of H.N.'s works in the 1640's and 50's, there may have been some
kind of small revival, or an already existing, but unconnected group may have
appropriated the name for themselves.'*^

The view of sixteenth and and seventeenth century commentators of the
origins and growth of the Family of Love have found their way into modem
historiography, transmitted by Church historians such as Thomas Fuller and
John Strype.'*^

More recent treatments of the Family of Love fall into two general catego-
ries. One of these is the condemnation of the fanatical persecution of harmless
mystics who posed no danger to the state or the social order.^^ The other is
parallel to the first, but has more to do with a "quest for roots" on the part of
modem groups, especially the Quakers.^ •

Combining both categories is Rufus Jones' interpretation. Jones, as a
Quaker, identifies many of the beliefs of the Family of Love with the original
Quakers of the late seventeenth century. His tone is admiring. Here was a
group that was "at its best the exponent of a very lofty type of mystical
religion," whose founder "was a very extraordinary character, and his volu-
minous writings contain spiritual insights and religious teachings which
deserve to be rescued from the oblivion into which they have largely fallen."
Jones especially commends their em phasis on an inward transformation, their
pacifism, their "concern that the life should be put above forms," their
insistence "on spiritualizing this life rather than on dogmatizing about the
next life," and their desire for moral rectitude. Jones is also concemed with
intolerance and fanaticism, thus bringing together both streams of historical

Renaissance et Réforme / 149

treatment mentioned above. He castigates H.N.'s critics as not penetrating

"the meaning of his deep mystical teaching," as writing in a "spirit of bigotry

and intolerance and in ignorance of the real teachings" of the Family of

Love.^^ However, Jones' ultimate purpose is to show that the Family of Love

influenced George Fox and the earlier Quakers, as well as the Seekers and

Ranters, in an effort to place the Quakers in a longstanding and honorable, if

widely misunderstood, tradition.

Jones' treatment of the origins and history of the Family of Love in England

is entirely standard. Nowhere has he attempted to re-examine the historical

evidence relating to the Family of Love; indeed to do so is unnecessary, for

the standard view accords very nicely with his own thesis. His view is

dependent on the Family of Love surviving into the late seventeenth century

and beyond, in order for them to have influenced the Quakers. Indeed, he goes

so far as to state that "many Familists must have joined with Friends,"

although he does admit that "there is little positive proof of the fact that they
did."53

Emerging from these streams of historical treatment are attempts to de-
scribe and explain the Family of Love not so much in terms of being an
ancestor of this or that group or of its suppression as an example religious
bigotry and fanaticism; rather, they try to describe and explain the Family of
Love as a concrete historical phenomenon.

Of course, these two historiographical streams are interdependent and
intersect at a number of points. The more recent stream has had to rely on
what has gone before, and herein lies its chief failing. For in relying on
previous research and interpretation, the standard outline of the history of the
Family of Love in England has assumed the proportions of a received truth,
or at least of conventional wisdom. What no-one has thought worthwhile is
to re-examine the conventional wisdom, particularly as regards the nature and
extent of the Family of Love in England.

Typical of this tendency is the work of Herman de la Fontaine- Verwey.^"^
De la Fontaine- Verwey, as do most recent commentators, approaches the
Family of Love as being more important than previously thought. Indeed, this
is the basic preconception that runs through all recent accounts. If it cannot
be shown (as indeed it cannot, though some have tried) that the Family of
Love was a widespread underground movement with a large number of
adherents, then it becomes important

in the greater understanding which has developed of the significance of the
smaller churches, groups, and sects of the sixteenth century for the history

150 / Renaissance and Reformation

of ideas. It is becoming increasingly clear that these movements ... had
considerable influence on the crisis of European consciousness at the end of
the seventeenth century and the emergence of the modem world. For an
understanding of this fact the study of sects in the sixteenth century provides
on the keys.^^

One might already guess what his approach to the history of the Family of
Love in England might be. It is unnecessary to again repeat the standard view,
but a few quotations will suffice to show de la Fontaine-Verwey's adherence
toit:

there were Familists as early as 1553, at the beginning of Queen Mary's
reign. Their leader was a cabinetmaker from Delft, Christopher Vittel. ... In
the 1560's the sect expanded considerably. ... Despite persecution the sect
endured. ... At the beginning of the Civil War ... [the] Familists, too, now
appeared on the scene of opposition to the church.^^

There have since been other lengthy treatments of the Family of Love. Jean
Dietz Moss, in her 1969 Ph.D. dissertation states:

there are many contradictory statements about the Familists in modem
histories of the period. . . . there is considerable confusion among modem
historians as to who and what Familists were. The few studies which have
investigated the society have focused on one or another aspects of it, and
none has examined in depth the Family's teachings, as expressed by the
founder, and their impact upon Englishmen.^''

This work, and another later article,^^ may then be seen as works of synthesis,
attempts to reconcile the contradictions and state definitively the origins,
history, and doctrines of the Family of Love. Unfortunately, she too accepts
without question the conventional wisdom. The accounts of various hostile
writers are taken at face value in the sense that they describe accurately the
origins of the Family of Love in Vitell's missionary activity, the practices of
early English Familism, and its subsequent spread and repression.^^

In the last fifteen years or so there have been numerous other works on the
Family of Love in England. It is unnecessary to go through them all and show
how they have all, with minor variations, followed the same approach. There
has only one other lengthier treatment of the Family of Love.^ In it Alastair
Hamilton provides the most useful and concise account of Niclaes and the
Family of Love to date. In his account of the Family's history in England,
however, he too accepts the standard view, albeit with some minor qualifica-
tions. Thus, he doubts that the 1561 Surrey confession was really one of

Renaissance et Réforme / 151

devoted followers of H.N. and he concedes that "the numerical power of the
Familists in the seventeenth century was very far from corresponding to the
ever more frequent complaints against them."^* At no time, however, does he
apply this methodological incisiveness to the history of the Family in England
in the sixteenth century.^^

Here we are at the heart of the problem. As we have seen, there is very little
objective evidence about the Family of Love in England. Of necessity,
historians have had to base their accounts on hostile sources. There is nothing
wrong with this in itself, as long as the hostile and polemical purposes of the
writers are kept in mind. Of the recent commentators on the Family of Love,
not one has taken the accounts of Rogers, Knewstubb, or Wilkinson at face
value. There are lengthy passages to show that the early critics misinterpreted
either unknowingly or wilfully, H.N.'s writings and doctrines. Thus we have
seemingly endless quibbling about various aspects of Niclaes's doctrines on
the Mass, baptism, and Scripture. While admitting that Niclaes' critics were
motivated by polemical purposes, and pointing out that the particulars of their
attacks must be carefully weighed, the sheer volume of these attacks must
serve as some sort of guide to the rise and fall of the Family of Love. The
underlying assumption is that even with the paucity of actual documentary
sources, one can follow the fortunes of the Family of Love by looking at its
critics and at governmental attempts to suppress it. This seems reasonable
enough. Or is it? The great failing of this approach is that it assumes a constant
attitude on the part of intellectuals, churchmen, and governmental authorities.
If these people were always equally concerned with stamping out such sects,
then this approach would be justified. But in fact they were not. It is as if an
historian several centuries from now were to examine the United States in the
early 1950's. Using this sort of approach, he would inevitably conclude, on
the basis of Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Com-
mittee, that the Communist Party of the United States was attracting a large
number of members and was actually about to overthrow the government.

Thus we see that the standard view of the history of the Family of Love in
England is an optical illusion based on small core of truth. The small core of
truth is that there were groups of the Family of Love in Cambridgeshire and
London. At no time, however, were these large or significant. Although the
Family vanishes from sight after the petition to James I, it may have survived
(but just barely) in the Isle of Ely into the last half of the seventeenth century.
This core of truth was distorted by the general prevalence of "Familist" ideas,
in no way unique to the Family of Love. More importantly, the standard
historical view is based on the volume and vehemence with which the Family

152 / Renaissance and Reformation

of Love was attacked and repressed in England. It has already been shown
that the response was out of all proportion to the threat. What remains is to
explain why such an insignificant and harmless sect provoked such a violent
reaction at that particular time.

In order to answer these questions, we shall have to examine more closely the
three writers who initiated the official reaction to the Family of Love, and
whose works dictated the course of that reaction, and whose assertions have
colored modem historiography of the Family of Love in England. These
writers will be put in the context of Elizabethan religious politics, and we
shall see that they were all inclined to the "puritan" side of the debates within
the Church of England, and that this inclination influenced their attitudes
towards the Family of Love, atti tudes which dominated the official reaction
to the Family.

The earliest printed attack on the Family of Love was John Rogers' The
Displaying of an horrible Secte of grosse and wicked Hérétiques (1578).
Unfortunately we are considerably less well-informed about his life than we
would like. Most likely, he attended Oxford, where he graduated B.A. from
Merton College in 1569-70 and M.A. from St. Alban's Hall in 1576.^^
Sharing a common theme that runs through all attacks on the Family of Love,
Rogers identifies the Family of Love with the Anabaptists, stating that H.N.
was the disciple of David Joris:

David George was the hatcher of this heresie, and layde the egge, but H.N.
brought forth the chickens.^

Henrie Nicholas . . . after the death of David George tooke upon him to
maintaine the same doctrine, not in the name of David, but in his owne
name.^^

As Stephen Batman mentions in his preface to Rogers' Displaying, action
must be taken against the Family of Love, "or else wil assuredly follow the
like plague on us, as was at Munster." ^^

Many of the accusations with which the Family of Love were charged in
subsequent years seem to have originated with Rogers. These include the
Family's purported libertinism and licentiousness,^^ their duplicitousness, ^
and that its members are really secret papists.^^

Renaissance et Réforme / 153

Throughout the Displaying, Rogers is very conscious of firing the opening
shots in an ongoing campaign:

No man hitherto (that I can leame) hath endeavoured to confute them in
writing.^^

He is also very conscious that others must carry on the battle:

Notwithstanding, so many as either by the doctrine of Henrie Nicholas, or
by conference 1 haue learned, I have setdowne, to the ende that some good
man might be encouraged to confute so impious an author, and such horrible
errours, and perfourme in some learned worke that which my want and
capacitie is not able to supply. ... ^'

It is enough for me to begiime the skirmishe, to display the Familie, to make
readie the way, and discrie their force, that others may come after and
overthrow their camp. 72

It was not to be long before Knewstubb and Wilkinson accepted the
challenge laid down by Rogers.

John Knewstubb, author of A Confutation of Monstrous Heresies taught by
H.N. (1579) was the most prominent of the three. Bom in Westmorland in
1544, he went up to Cambridge where he graduated B.A. in 1564, M.A. in
1568, and finally B.D. in 1576.^^ We see, therefore, that Knewstubb was at
Cambridge at the same time that Rogers was at Oxford.

Knewstubb' s Confutation is a longwinded and involved theo logical polemic in
which he takes various of H.N.'s doctrines and refutes them with the same
passages with which Niclaes had supported them. The theological intricacies do
not overly concem us here. There are, however, several significant aspects of
Knewstubb' s attack. First is his identification of the Family of Love with "the
Papists, Anabaptists, [and] Libertines ... for as much as they will have the word
subject to their spirite." ''^ The sins of England are so great that God has sent not
only Papists as a judgment, but also Arians, Anabaptists, and the Family of Love.
Though the Papists profess to hate the Family, they do not suppress it, for they
have a great deal in common with it.^^ Though the Family is not Protestant,
Protestants must share the blame for it, for they have not combatted in fiercely
enough.^^ In order to better combat such enemies, Knewstubb claims, the true
church may no longer be satisfied with extemal conformity only. Those who

154 / Renaissance and Reformation

submit to the Church outwardly while secretly maintaining another faith are
the greatest enemy and must therefore be brutally dealt with according to the
Scriptural injunction of Deuteronomy 14,^^

William Wilkinson, author of A Confutation of Certaine Articles delivered
unto the Family of Love (1579) was a contemporary of John Knewstubb at
Cambridge. He matriculated a sizar of Queen's College in 1568, and gradu-
ated B.A. in 1572, M.A. in 1575, and B.D. in 1582.^^

Wilkinson's book is the longest of the three, and also the least organized,
consisting in large part of sections culled from other sources and contributions
from others. The core of the work is "Articles which I exhibited unto a frend
of mine, to be conuaied unto the Familie of loue, that I might be certified of
the doubts in them contayned. Which for my further instruction one The-
ophilus sent me a letter, and an exhortation, in the following manner." It
appears that somehow Wilkinson was able to contact some members of the
Family of Love and confront them with his charges.

Even more strongly than Knewstubb and Rogers, Wilkinson affirms that
the Family of Love is a type of Anabaptist sect. In Rogers' work, we had the
affirmation that H.N. was a disciple of David Joris, and Batman emphasized
that England must suppress the Family or suffer the fate of Munster. Wilkin-
son, however, states the relationship quite boldly: "Therefore are they [the
Family of Love] Anabaptists and David Georges Schollers."^^ Indeed, sprin-
kled liberally throughout the text are references to Heinrich Bullinger, that
Swiss scourge of Anabaptists. The clear implication is that the Family of Love
are really Anabaptists and should be dealt with according to the same rules.
As if to hammer the point home, Wilkinson includes "Certaine profitable
notes to know an Hérétique, especially an Anabaptist. With the opinions, the
behaviour of them out of various authors." Chief among the "various Au-
thors" is Bullinger himself, but Calvin and Zwingli are also liberally ex-
cerpted. The idea, of course, is to "know your enemy," and who better to
perform this task than three pre-eminent continental theologians, all of whom
had had extensive dealings with and struggles against Anabaptists.

Lest we think, however, that identification of the Family of Love with the
Anabaptists exonerates them from charges of Popery, it must be stated that
to many Protestants, Anabaptism and Rome were working hand in hand. In
Wilkinson's paraphrase of Bullinger: "Anabaptists were hartned by those
which desired the overthrow of the Gospell and the restoring of Popery."^^

Renaissance et Réforme / 155

One certainly hesitates to use a term as overworked and misunderstood as
"puritan." Yet, so long as the term is carefully defined and used, we shall see
that it does indeed apply to Knewstubb, Rogers, and Wilkinson, and further-
more, that their puritanism was an important factor in their attacks on the
Family of Love.

In its most basic definition, the term "puritan" denotes one who believed
that the Church of England was "but halfly reformed," retaining as it did
popish vestiges in doctrine, practice, and government that denied it the status
of a truly "Reformed" church. ^^ This basic definition, however, needs to be
refined somewhat, for if we define "puritan" as those who wished to see the
English church further reformed, we would have to include almost all of the
church leadership in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. If we are to make
this our definition of "puritan," we shall have to include such widely divergent
characters as the cautious, conservative reformers Grindal, Sandys, and Cox,
firebrands such as Cartwright, Sampson, and Humphrey, and out-and-out
rabble-rousers such as John Field, Thomas Wilcox (authors of the Admonition
to Parliament) in the same category. We obviously need finer categories of
analysis if we are to understand Elizabethan religion and politics and to tie
the attack on the Family of Love into a general context.

In essence, there were almost as many kinds of Protestantism as there were
Protestants. For the sake of analysis, however, it is possible to define several
broad categories. In the first place there were cautious, conservative reform-
ers, such as most of the first Elizabethan bishops, with the notable exception
of Matthew Parker, Elizabeth's first Archbishop of Canterbury. Drawn almost
exclusively from the ranks of returned Marian exiles, this includes such
prominent figures as Edmund Grindal, Edwin Sandys, and Richard Cox. In
general, these men, while not entirely satisfied with the Elizabethan settle-
ment, recognized that a Protestant Queen, even if not as Protestant as they
would have liked, was infinitely preferable to the more plausible alternatives:
civil religious war, or foreign invasion and the restora tion of the Roman
Church. They hoped to further reform the church by slow increments, gently
nudging the Queen in the right direction. This indeed was their reason for
accepting positions of leadership in the church when many of their "hotter"
Protestant colleagues urged them not to have anything to do with a semi-
papistical church. At the time, of course, they had no way of knowing that the
settlement of 1559 was to be permanent, and their chances of success must
have seemed very high indeed.

156 / Renaissance and Reformation

At the other extreme were radical preachers, especially in London and East
Anglia, who were very outspoken about Popish remnants in the church. In
this category we would include the radical Londoners Field and Wilcox,
Wibume, Anthony Gilby, and Robert Fitz. It was, in fact, to puritans of this
stripe that the name was first applied in the vestiarian controversies of the
1560's.

Somewhere between these two extremes, one suspects, were the majority
of educated, articulate, and Protestant Englishmen. If they were dissatisfied
with the pace of reform in the 1560' s and 70' s, neither were they able to
condone the radical nonconformity, and ultimately the separatism, of
"London's Protestant Underworld. "^^

It should be emphasized, however, that the situation was extremely fluid.
There were no party lines, only floating coalitions which coalesced and
disbanded as circumstances dictated. As Elizabeth moved the church more in
her own direction under Archbishop Whitgift in the 1580's and 90's, the
situation became less fluid and puritan opposition more cohesive. However,
in the 1560' s and 70' s, the situation remained fluid and the "puritans"
remained within the embrace of the Church of England.

It should also be emphasized that underneath such seemingly divisive
questions as the vestiarian controversy, the form of church government, and
the "prophesyings" or "exercises," there was substantial agreement on the
essentials of faith: the doctrines of justification by faith, and the Eucharistie
question, the single most burning doctrinal issue of the time. Though the
Queen herself was probably more inclined to a Lutheran view, it is significant
that the question of Real Presence versus Memorial Supper was very rarely
a bone of contention. Virtually the entire church was united behind the
Swiss/German view.^^

One of the things which stands out when we look at the three authors who
initiated the attack on the Family of Love is that not only were they all
university men (Knewstubb and Wilkinson at Cambridge, Rogers at Oxford)
but they were also almost exact contemporaries. Knewstubb graduated B.A.
in 1564, Rogers in 1569 and Wilkinson in 1568. That these three men, similar
in age, background, education, and religious conviction all undertook to
attack the Family of Love within two years of each other is no accident.
Rather, it was the result of their education, the way they had been taught to
view the world, especially the reUgious situation and the church. To under-
stand these men and their writings, we must go back to their days at university,
when their ideals and convictions were formed.

Renaissance et Réforme / 157

Cambridge University, of course, had acquired a reputation as a hotbed of
Protestantism as early as the 1520' s and the meetings in the White Horse Inn.
From William Tyndale on through Cranmer and Ridley, the University had
provided English Protestants with models, heroes, and martyrs. Under Ed-
ward, Cambridge was much more the royally favoured university. And it was
under Edward and his Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, that the
man who, more than anyone else influenced the next generation of English
churchmen came to England. This man was Martin Bucer.

Bucer arrived in England in the spring of 1549 at Archbishop Cranmer's
invitation and was shortly appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Cam-
bridge. Though only at Cambridge a short time (he was to die in 1551) and
ill much of the time he was there, he left a lasting impression. His influence
was to be felt for generations. Among those who sat at his feet were a number
of future bishops: Grindal, Sandys, Parker, and Pilkington. Thus we can see
that Bucer' s influence survived in a direct way, affecting church and state
under Elizabeth. Grindal especially was a favourite of the reformer, and Bucer
was the dominant influence in the life and thinking of the future Archbishop
of Canterbury.^"* Besides these luminaries, hundreds of other subsequently
prominent leaders must have Ustened to and been taught by Bucer. According
to contemporary observers, one never forgot having been taught by Martin
Bucer. ^^

Bucer enjoys a deserved reputation as one of the more tolerant and eirenic
of the reformers, working ceaselessy for concord among Protestants. Yet
there were limits to his tolerance. For all his efforts at concord, he would not
compromise on the core of his faith, on justification by faith, for instance.^
Diversity of practice was also not to be tolerated. Granted he was fairly
indulgent when it came to drawing the line, and his view of adiaphora was
especially generous. But diversity of essential religious practice was some-
thing not to be tolerated. This is based on his view of the essential unity of
church and state, or rather, their symbiosis, as a societas christianaP His
concern for the essential unity of church and state is reflected in his attitude
towards the Anabaptists. His arguments condemned not so much their denial
of infant baptism as their tendency to withdrawal and separation, thus rending
the unity of the Christian community. He urged stringent measure against the
Anabaptists in Strasbourg during the Peasants' Revolt and had Carlstadt
expelled from the city.^^ As an advisor to Philip of Hesse, he suppressed
Anabaptism there.^^ At the Smalkald Conference, he took the lead in drafting
a petition to suppress various Anabaptists and Separatists.^ Though more
inclined to persuade than to bum, he nevertheless was not above using

158 / Renaissance and Reformation

physical force when he deemed it necessary.^ ^ This then was the dominant
intellectual and theological influence at Cambridge for years afterward, and
it could not have helped but to shape Elizabethan religious politics, both
directly through men such as Grindal and Sandys, and indirectly through the
lasting impression which Bucer left on the University.

Cambridge in the 1560' s must surely have been an exciting place for a
young man. Not only was there a new regime which would further pursue the
reformation begun under Edward (or so they thought), they were to be the
leaders of it. The early 1560' s saw a considerable increase in the university
population.^^ By a statute of 1559, the regents were given considerable author
ity within the university by virtue of their control of the Senate.^^ That these
young dons should incline more to the puritan side is not surprising, since
there was certainly a intergenerational component to the religious conflicts
of the day.

Cambridge was consistently on the cutting edge of puritanism in the early
years of Elizabeth's reign, from Fulke's denunciation of clerical vestments
to Cartwright's more serious opposition to episcopacy, leading eventually to
his being deprived of his chair and a self-imposed exile in Geneva, as well as
to a revision of the statutes of the university, placing effective authority in the
hands of the Vice-Chancellor and the Heads of Colleges.^"^

Nevertheless, it is easy to exaggerate the divisiveness of these conflicts.
There were many, for example, who supported Cartwright not out of sympa-
thy for his religious convictions, but to protect the ancient liberties of the
university. In large part, the whole affair smacks of academic intrigue and
factional politics. In many ways, this controversy resembles the row over
Greek pronunciation in the 1530s, with its mixture of personal, factional,
academic and political motives, rather that a life and death struggle over the
future of the church.^^ Only in rare cases, when someone proved as outspoken
and intractable as Cartwright were such severe measures taken.

The prominence of Cantabrigian puritans has sometimes obscured the
significant if numerically smaller Puritan movement at Oxford. In the several
years following Elizabeth's accession, staunchly Cathohc Oxford was grad-
ually purged and Protestants put into positions of authority. Most notably, the
Earl of Leicester was appointed Chancellor in 1564 and took an active role
in the university's administration.^^

There was also the influence of the Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli,
who, like Bucer had been invited to England by Craimier after the death of
Henry VIII. Indeed, as Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, Martyr was
Bucer' s direct counterpart, though the Italian seemingly had a much harder

Renaissance et Réforme / 159

row to hoe, consistently coming up against Oxford's Catholic and conserva-
tive prejudices.^^

Reformed influences were also brought to Oxford by the presence of
numerous foreign Protestant students particularly from Switzerland. Swiss
presence at Oxford began in the 1530s when Rodolph Gualter, BuUinger's
foster son and later his son-in-law, paid a short visit. Under Edward, there
was a virtual exchange program between Oxford and Zurich. Among the
Swiss who studied at Oxford were John ab Ulmis, John Stumphius, and
Thomas Blaurer. The briefest glance at the Zurich Letters confirms the lasting
friendships and enduring influences formed by both sides.^^

The crucial point is that even though Oxford has justly acquired the label
"Catholic," puritan influences were not lacking. Continental reformed theol-
ogy was brought to the university through Peter Martyr, foreign students and
the influence of Zurich, and later on through Elizabeth's purge of the univer-
sity. And those puritans which Oxford did produce tended to be of a more
radical stripe, "brought up, it may be, in a harsher school:" Field and Wilcox
were both Oxonians. ^^ Thus, John Rogers could very likely have been
exposed to continental theology and puritan influences during his time at
Oxford.

Not knowing very much about John Rogers, we must extrapolate from his
writings to gain any idea of his religious convictions. Throughout his Dis-
playing he uses many concepts and phrases which would seem to put him on
the side of the "hotter" Protestants. There is his constant castigation of the
Roman Church. Granted, this was commonplace, but his continued repetition
of the charges against the Papists would lead one to believe that there is more
to it than literary fashion. There is also his black and white view of the
religious situation. Not for him were Parker's "mediocrity" or an Elizabethan
via media:

with the bloudie Papistes with their fire and fagot, continual warre, with
horrible murders on the one side, and the Anabaptistes, Free will men,
Arrians, Pelagians, and the Famelie of Loue on the other side, Christes
Church hath little rest, and small favour in the sight of man, but spumed on
euery side. ^^

Besides the Displaying and the subsequent Answere unto a wicked libel
made by Christ. Vitel, one of the Chief English elders of the pretended Family
of Love (London: 1578), the STC attributes only one other work to our John
Rogers. This is The Summe of Christianity . . . (1578). As its title suggests, this
is a sort of primer in the basics of Christian theology. Its very existence

160 / Renaissance and Reformation

suggests that Rogers was more inclined to the "hotter" Protestants. It implies
that the Prayer Book is not enough, that it needs a "briefe and plaine"
supplement. In particular, Rogers' emphasis on the ultimate authority of
Scripture, on preaching and discipline, and on a godly life, would seem to put
him on the puritan side of things.'^ It is not a question of theology: anyone
but a Catholic would have to agree with his theological assertions. Rather, it
is a question, and the judgment is admittedly subjective and speculative, of
tendency and emphasis. There is only one clear reference to the religious
controversies of the day: This would seem to be a reference to the vestiarian
problems the question of "lawful" versus "offensive" was at the heart of
religious debate.

John Knewstubb was what we might call a radically-tinged moderate. No
friend of vestments and square caps, in his days at Cambridge he had
petitioned in favour of Cartwright.^^^ He had also taken part in "prophesy-
ings" or conferences of ministers designed to elicit the true meaning of
Scripture and instruct unlearned clergy. ^^^ It was Grindal's refusal to suppress
the prophesyings, and worse yet, his attempt to justify his disobedience to
Elizabeth herself, which led to his fall from favour. Yet for Knewstubb, there
was no question of separation. The conclusive, damning evidence of the
falseness of Arians, Anabaptists, and others was that they removed them-
selves from the church. ^^ The question was not one of whether there ought
to be an authoritative church coterminous with the nation, but rather, what
form that church ought to take. Viewing Knewstubb' s career in retrospect,
one might think that he would have been anathema to authorities. He was after
all one of the leaders of the crypto-Presbyterian Dedham conference in the
1580's, the leading puritan preacher in Suffolk, and took the nonconforming
side in 1604 at Hampton Court. *^^ Not the sort of man we would expect
Elizabeth or her Council, which had to answer to her, to entrust with much
responsibility. Yet we find him preaching at Paul's Cross on Good Friday,
presented to the living of Cockfield in Sussex, and, most relevant for out
purposes, the Privy Council, at the height of the Familist "scare" in early 158 1
(1580 O.S.), appointed him as a sort of consultant to the bishops in the
repression of the Family of Love.*^

That William Wilkinson, like Knewstubb and Rogers, was a puritan, is
evident not only from his Confutation, wherein he made prodigious use of
BuUinger and other Reformed theologians, but also from his other writings.
In 1580, while residing in London, he published A very godly and learned
treatise of the exercise of Fastyng, described out of the word of God, very
necessarye to bee applyed unto our churches in England in these perillous

Renaissance et Réforme / 161

times. Again, as with Knewstubb, one notices that even though one would
place him in the "puritan opposition," this did not prevent him from advancing
his career within the Church of England. In 1588, though a layman, he became
prebend of Fridaythorpe in York Cathedral, which post he was to hold until
his death in 1613. Thus, again we see that even though on some issues he and
the "Anglicans" were on opposite sides, this did not hinder his preferment
within the church, nor did this opposition prevent the sides from cooperating
on the really important issues: the Catholic threat, and sectarianism, the
threats from right and left, as it were.

It is apparent that it was Englishmen more inclined to the puritan side in
religious controversy who took the lead in the attack on the Family of Love.
This fact is underlined very nicely by an episode in Parliament. ^^^ On
February 15, 1581 a bill for the suppression of the Family of Love was brought
in by "divers preachers . . . commended . . . from the Convocation." Subse-
quently, the bill seems to have been lost in the shuffle and presumably died
at the committee stage.

What is interesting about this episode is the committee members responsi-
ble for the bill. Most of those whom we can identify are of pronounced puritan
leanings, supporters of one or more of the great "puritan" issues of the day:
the fate of Mary Queen of Scots, increased penalties for recusant CathoUcs,
a more aggressively Protestant foreign policy, including concrete aid to the
Dutch rebels and French Huguenots, and, of course, further purification of
the Church, which for some meant its presbyterianization. One of the com-
mittee members, Sir Thomas Scott, had supported a bill to enforce the Act of
Uniformity against Catholics only, leaving puritan ministers free to vary the
Prayer Book as they wished. He was a chief enemy of Mary Stuart and
consistently urged her execution. ^^^ Another, the diplomat Sir Henry Killi-
grew, was in league with Leicester and Walsingham in urging a more
aggressively Protestant foreign policy on the Queen. ^^^ A third, Robert Beal,
Clerk of the Privy Council, was chosen to carry Mary's death warrant to
Fotheringay.^*^ Thomas Norton, Cranmer's son-in-law and translator of
Calwin' s Institutes, was a consistent advocate of Mary's execution and a keen
supporter of the anti-Catholic bill of 1581.'^^ Edward Lewkenor was con-
stantly in trouble for his anti-episcopal views and landed in the Tower in
1586.^^^ There was also Sir William More, the same More who twenty years
earlier had taken Chaundeler and Sterete's confession, indicating a continued
interest in the Family of Love.

Thus far, we have seen that it was the "hotter" Protestants who initiated the
attack on the Family of Love. Even so, this was an issue on which everyone

162 / Renaissance and Reformation

could agree. Puritans and their erstwhile "enemies" in the official church
establishment cooperated wonderfully in this arena. As we have seen. Bishop
Cox of Ely hunted the Family of Love in his diocese. Among those who aided
him in his questioning of the villagers at Wisbech was the same William Fulke
who had stirred up so much trouble at Cambridge over clerical vestments. On
the other hand, Andrew Feme, who had conducted the earlier investigation,
could hardly be considered a puritan. He had conformed under Edward, Mary,
and Elizabeth. As Master of Peterhouse, he had taken the official side in the
vestment troubles at Cambridge. Under Mary he testified against Bucer at his
posthumous trial for heresy. Under Elizabeth, he participated in his rehabili-
tation. All of which gave rise to the derogatory term "Pemecoat."^'^ Yet on
the Family of Love, he was foursquare in agreement with his puritan "ene-
mies." The point is that underneath the seeming division, underneath the
vestments controversy, Cartwright, and the prophesyings, there lay a solid
bedrock on consensus: separatists and sectarians must not be tolerated and
must be made to conform. Even the Queen herself shared this opinion, as
witnessed by her Proclamation, despite her "not wanting to make windows
into men's souls."

This underlying consensus was the result of a number of causes. Everyone,
puritans included, agreed that church and state were inseparable and cotermi-
nous. There was no question of separate and comf)eting churches. Here is the
influence of Bucer and continental theology which coincided very nicely with
the requirements of Tudor monarchs. There was also substantial agreement
on the Eucharist, though puritans were very sensitive to anything which might
imply worship of the host. Puritans also recognized that a "halfly reformed"
church was better than one not reformed at all. If the English church was not
yet what it should be, neither was it what in once had been. For the vast
majority (as yet) there was no question of separation: the only church they
could envision was a church of England.

One is struck by the pro forma character of the attacks on the Family of
Love. Again here, we see the influence on continental theologians. Despite
the bitter disputes between Wittenberg, Zurich, and Geneva, one aspect was
common to all: enmity towards and persecution of Anabaptists and sectarians.
They were anathema precisely because their beliefs meant the end of
coterminous church and state, a societas Christiana. On the Anabaptists, there
was solid agreement about ends, if not about means. One almost gets the
impression that Englishmen felt left out. Having no real indigenous An-
abaptists to hunt, they came up with a more than adequate replacement in the
Family of Love. To be more precise, there was a small group of ambitious

Renaissance et Réforme / 163

Englishmen who werç looking for a target to attack. Remember that
Knewstubb, Rogers, and Wilkinson were all relatively young men (perhaps
in their early thirties) when they wrote their anti-Family works, Their careers
were really just starting. What better way to cut one's teeth than to write in a
tried and true genre graced by such illustrious names as Zwingli, Calvin, and
especially Bullinger. We have already seen how frequently the Family of
Love is tied to Anabaptism by its critics. In Patrick Collinson's words, "There
is ample evidence of a kind of informal agreement prevailing in many quarters
that 'civil wars of the Church of God' would be abandoned in favour of an
affirmation of those things in which all protestants assented, against papists,
against such sectarian threats as the Family of Love. ... "^^^

There remains one large question to be answered: Why just then? Why did
the attack on the Family of Love begin and reach its peak in the late 1570's
and early 1580's? As we have seen, the standard historical answer will not
do, that the Family of Love was attracting new members and constituted a
real threat. The answer lies elsewhere.

The late 1570's represented something of a hiatus in the tensions within
the church. In the past were the vestiarian controversies, Cartwright, and the
Admonition to Parliament. The puritans had a sympathetic Archbishop of
Canterbury in Edmund Grindal, whose great troubles still lay in the future,
and whose primacy held high hopes for the godly. ^'^ To a large extent this
represents consolidation in the face of a common threat: resurgent post-
Tridentine Catholicism and native recusancy. Here again is part of the
bedrock of agreement. However objectionable some of the Queen's policies
might be to the godly, she was, after all, a Protestant. A Protestant Queen,
even if slow to purify the church of Popish vestiges, was infinitely preferable
to a Catholic monarch and a restoration of the Roman Church. The year 1571
had seen the victory of Lepanto and Spanish dominance in the Mediterranean,
1572 the St. Bartholomew's Massacre, and 1578 the victories of Don John in
the Netherlands. On every side Protestant Europe, and especially England,
seemed threatened. The King of Spain's "English Enterprise" was thought to
be imminent. In 1579 a Papal force had landed in Ireland and was soon
reinforced from Spain. In 1580 the English Jesuits Edmund Campion and
Robert Parsons arrived to bring succour to English CathoUcs. In addition the
Queen had hinted once again that she was open to the matrimonial overtures
of the Duke d'Alencon, the French King's brother. Then there was the
perennial trouble spot of the Queen of Scots, a rallying point for EngUsh
Catholics while she lived. It was a time indeed in which Laurence Humphrey
could write to Switzerland:

164 / Renaissance and Reformation

These are the signs preceding the end of the world. . . . Satan is roaring like
a lion, the world is going mad, antichrist is resorting to every extreme, that
he may with wolf-like ferocity devour the sheep of Christ.' '^

That the Family of Love should be the object of suspicion then is no
surprise. There was, as we have seen, lingering suspicion of the Family of
Love as crypto-Catholics, a Popish fifth column ready to revolt at any time.
On a deeper level, there was the feeling that now more than ever concord and
unity were essential. Wrote John Rogers:

How the wicked take occasion by these and like errours [the Family of Love],
to speake euil of Christs Church, the eares of many godly doe heare.
Especially the Papists: who speak and write, and nothing heard more
common in the mouths, then these tearmes, ye are at variaunce amongst your
selves: no unitie of doctrine is observed: ye are of divers opinions and
sectes.

117

If euer there were disturbers of the Church ... I thinke that now is the time:
For what with the bloudie Papistes with their fire and fagot, continuall warre,
with horrible murders on one side, and the Anabaptistes, Freewill men,
Arrians, Pelagians, and the Familie of Loue on the other side, Christes
Church hath little rest, and small favour in the sight of man, but spumed on
euery side.''*

This indeed is a theme which, if not always explicitly stated, was certainly
always in the background. Now was not the time to engage in "civil wars of
the Church of God;" now was the time to combat the Catholic threat and the
best way to do that was to make sure your own house was in order and to
display strength and unity, not division and dissension. This concern was
fundamental to all Protestant Englishmen. That puritans took the lead in
attacking the Family of Love is perhaps attributable to their greater sensitivity
to the Roman threat and to their greater emphasis on a completely godly life
as opposed to formal religious practice. Though they led the way, all joined
in, attacking a threat which never really existed. That the attack was pursued
with such gusto is perhaps attributable to those things which "puritans" and
"Anglicans" had in common, especially their belief in an authoritative na-
tional church. It was only natural then that they should concentrate on those
areas and issues in which they were in substantial agreement and leave the
others to sort themselves out later.

There was also a careerist aspect to the origins of the attack on the Family
of Love.^'^ It is surely significant that our three authors were all roughly the

Renaissance et Réforme / 165

same age: in the late 1570's they were just coming into their official maturity.
John Rogers' three works were all printed within two years of each other. All
of John Knewstubb's writings were published during an eight year period in
the late 70's and early 80's. For the rest of his long career, he did not publish
another thing. William Wilkinson's other major book was published in 1580,
one year after his Confutation. The fact that these men's offical careers were
just starting, that they were looking for some issue with which to make their
mark, when the Family of Love presented itself as a target, and when
conditions within England and the church were most conducive to such an
attack, only served to intensify the campaign against the Family of Love.

The Family of Love in England was unimportant and insignificant in the
grand scheme of things. However, for the reasons outlined above, it provoked
a response out of all proportion to any threat it presented. This vehement
attack has magnified the marginal significance of the Family of Love in
England beyond recognition. This has been transmitted to the present through
historical writings which were more concerned with making an ideological
or genealogical point than with establishing the real historical significance of
the Family of Love. By a critical evaluation of sources, it has been established
that the standard view of the Family's history in England is a vastly distorted
version of the truth. The only reason it has become a subject of research at all
is because a peculiar conjunction circumstances led certain Englishmen to
attack it in a certain way. The Family of Love, and the attack on it, are a mirror
in which we see reflected the concerns and attitudes of Elizabethan England.*

University of Calgary

Notes

* The research for this article was originally undertaken for an M. A. thesis at the University
of British Columbia under the supervision of Professor C. R. Friedrichs and Professor
M. Tolmie. I am also grateful to Professor L. Knafla of the University of Calgary for his
advice and assistance.

1. P.L. Hughes, J.F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations (New Haven: Yale University
Pr€ss,l%9), 11,474-75.

2. Accounts of Niclaes' life are numerous. The information here was taken largely
from the following sources: Friedrich Nippold, "Heinrich Niclaes und das Haus der
Liebe," Zeitschrift fur die historische Théologie, XXXII (1862); Charlotte Fell-
Smith, "Henry Niclas," Dictionary of National Biography, XIV, 427-31. Jean
Dietz Moss, "The Family of Love in England," Diss., West Virginia, 1969; Alastair
Hamilton,7/je Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1981); F. Loofs,
"Familisten," Realencyclopadie fur protestantische Théologie, V, 750-55; L.
Knappert, "Hendrik Niclaes," Nieuw N ederlandsche Biografisch Woordenboek, V,

166 / Renaissance and Reformation

cols., 367-70; H. de la Fontaine- Verwey, "The Family of Love," Quarendo, VI
(1976), pp. 219-271.

3. Hamilton, pp. 6-12.

4. Vitell described by both Rogers and Wilkinson as the Family's chief elder in England,
first appears on the scene in 1555. Wilkinson includes in his Confutation the account
of one Henry Crinell (or Orinell) recounting Vitell's heretical views as expressed in
that year in Colchester. However, neither H.N. nor the Family of Love are mentioned
and it seems that Vitell became a follower of H.N. at some later date. (W. Wilkinson,
Confutation, preface, iiii-Al.)

5. The fortunes of the Family of Love on the Continent were somewhat different. One
of its most interesting aspects is Niclaes' connection with the great Antwerp printer
Christopher Plantin and his humanist circle of friends and associates including the
geographer Ortelius, Justus Lipsius, the Hebraicist Andreus Masius, Benito Arias
Montano, and quite possibly Guillaume Postel and Guy Le Fevre de la Boderie.
There was rift in the sect in 1573 in which Plantin and his circle deserted Niclaes
for his erstwhile disciple Hendrik Jansen van Barrefeld, known as Hiel, or "the life
of God." On this aspect of the Family of Love, see Max Rooses, Christophe Plantin,
Imprimeur anversois (Antwerp: Buschman, 1897), pp. 59-76; H. de la Fontaine-
Verwey, Quarendo, pp. 230-43; Hamilton, pp. 70-78; Bernard Rekers, Benito
Arias Montano (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972), pp. 70-1 14.

6. For the full text of the confession, see Moss, "'Godded with God': Hendrik Niclaes
and His Family of Love," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 7 1 , part
8(1981), pp. 70-74.

7. Moss, APS, p. 74.

8. J.W. Martin, "English Familists and other Separatists in the Guildford Area," Bulletin
of the Institute for Historical Research, 5\ (May, 1978), p. 9L

9. Moss, y4/>S, p. 74.

1 0. See above pp. 6-1 0. Chaundeler stated that his wife was "fetched out of the Isle of Ely
by two of the congregation." Chaundeler and his bride, however, apparently did not
take to each other. This disgruntlement in itself ought to make us wary of accepting all
of Chaundeler's statement at face value. (Moss, APS, p. 72.)

11. Moss, A/»S, p. 70.

12. Martin, BIHR.

13. Martin, fi////?, p. 91.

14. Hamilton, p. 118; John Rogers, An Answere unto a wicked libel made by Christ. Vitel,
one of the chief English elders of the pretended Family of Love (London: 1578), fols,
K1-K2.

15. Hamilton, p. 119.

16. Acts of the Privy Council, vol. 10, p. 332.

17. APC,vo\. 12, p. 231.

18. APC,\o\. 12, p. 232.

19. APCvol. 12, p. 269.

Renaissance et Réforme / 167

20. "The confesion of sele ely and mathew/beinge of the famely of Love &/of her maisties
gard/ They must be deyfyed in god & god in them/[T]he Jugement & resurexion is past
already/ We are eylewmynated that is to saye of the [?resurexion] & restoryed to the
parfection that Adam/[?had] before his fale/[Th]e Literall sence of the scrypture they
do not regard/[What] so ever they do is no syne/[Th]ey ought not to suffer their bodyes
to be executed bycause/[they are] the temples of the holly gost/[The]y may lawfully
deny religion of faith before any/[if]ther be any cause of persecusion/[Th]er ought not
to be any maiestarts amongest crystyans."

(J. Hitchcock, "A Confession of the Family of Love," BIHR, 43 [1970] ,p. 85.) The
"sele" and "mathewe" mentioned are obviously Robert and Thomas Mathewe, while
the "ely" could possibly William Eling of the group accused in 1578.

2 1 . Felicity Heal, "The Family of Love and the Diocese of Ely," Studies in Church History
IX: Schism, Heresy, and Religious Protest, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge, 1972), pp.
218-19; Moss, APS, p. 28; Hamilton, p. 120.

22. Moss, APS, p. 28.

23. Moss, APS, p. 2S.

24. Hamilton, p. 120. The next day, the Privy Council wrote to Bishop Sandys of London,
"touching order to be taken with Anabaptists and those of the Family of Love." (APC,
vol. 8, p. 338.)

25. Moss, APS, p. 75. A tenth person, Thomas Piersonne, "yeoman and the wealthiest of the
company, before he was sent for conveyed himself away as it is thought to London. ..."

26. Heal, p. 220.

27. Jean Dietz Moss, "Variations on a Theme: The Family of Love in Renaissance
England," Renaissance Quarterly, XXXI (1978), pp. 189-95.

28. Moss, APS, p. 81.

29. Hamilton, pp. 123-24.

30. Moss APS, p. 80.

3 1 . The Short-Title Catalogue lists sixteen of H.N.'s works in English. Of these, the most
important are:

1. Evangelium Regni. Ein Frolicke Bodeschop vam Ryke. (Antwerp, 1555-62); in
English, Evangelium Regni. Ajoyfull Message of the Kingdom.

2. Prophétie des Geistes der Lieften. (Antwerp, 1555- 62); in English, The Prophétie
of the Spirit of Love.

3. Den Spiegel der Gherechticheit. (Antwerp, 1562); the entire work was never
translated into English. Rather, its two introductions were published separately under
the titles An Introduction to the holy Understanding of the Glasse of Righteousness and
A Figure of the true and Spiritual Tabernacle according to the inward Temple of the
House of God in the Spirit.

4. Exhortatio. De eerste Vormaninge H.N. Tot syne kinderen, unde dem Husgesinne
der Lieften. (Cologne, 1573); in English, Exhortation I. The first exhortation ofH.N.
to his Children, and to the Family of Love.

168 / Renaissance and Reformation

5. Revelation Dei. De openbaringe Godes, und syne grote Prophétie. (Cologne, 1 573);
in English, Revelatio Dei. The Reuelation of God, and his great Prophétie: which God
now; in the last Daye; hath shewed unto his Elect.

6. Terra Pads. Ware getugnisse van idt geistlich Landtschap des Fredes. (Cologne,
1580); in English, Terra Pads. A True Testification of the Spirituall Lande of Peace;
which is the Spirituall Lande ofPromyse, and the holy Citie of Peace or the Heauenly
lerusalem.

Only two of H.N. 's works make reference to his followers in England. The first of these
is "An Epistle sent unto two daughters of Warwick." As Niclaes signed it "your
unknown friend," it seems unlikely that he knew them personally. (Moss, APS, p.
16.)The second is "The Epistle of H.N. ... unto the right Reverent Bishops," which
exists only in manuscript form in Lambeth Palace. (Hamilton, p. 129.)

32. Julia C. Ebel, "The Family of Love: Sources of Their History in England," Huntington
Library Quarterly, XXX (1966-67), pp. 335-36.

33. Moss, APS, p. 76.

34. An Apology for the Service of Love, and People that own it, commonly called the Family
of Love, quoted in Hamilton, p. 123.

35. An Apology, quoted in Moss, Diss., p. 64.

36. This petition was published in 1606 with hostile notes by a Protestant critic under the
title A Supplication of the Family of Loue, and again by Samuel Rutherford in his Survey
of the Spirituall Antichrist (London, 1648).

37. Rutherford, p. 344.

38. Rutherford, p. 346.

39. Rutherford, p. 346.

40. Rutherford, p. 348.

41. Rutherford, p. 350.

42. For further examples of minor and incidental attacks on the Family of Love, drawn
from Rogers, Knewstubb, and Wilkinson, see William Fulke, A Defense of the
sincere and true Translations of the holie Scriptures into the English tong ...
(London, 1583; rpt. Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1843), pp.
36-37; Thomas Rogers, Catholic Doctrine of the Church of England (London,
1585; rpt. Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1854), pp. 52, 79,
280, 320; William Whitaker, A Disputation on Holy Scripture against the Papists,
especially against Bellarmine and Stapleton, trans, and ed. W. Fitzgerald (London,
1588; rpt. Cambridge University Press for the Parker Society, 1844), p. 298; Edwin
Sandys, Sermons, ed. J. Ayre (Cambridge University Press .for the Parker Society,
1842), p. 130.

43. Hamilton, p. 135.

44. For an example of one accused of "Familism" but who cannot be connected to H.N.
or the Family of Love, see the case of John Etherington (or Hetherington) cited in
Moss, APS, pp. 55-56. While he exhibited "Familist" characteristics, he is not
connected to H.N. or the Family of Love and indeed, while he does admit to heresy
in his younger days, he denies being a member of the Family of Love. (John

Renaissance et Réforme / 169

Etherington,y4 brief discovery of the blasphemous doctrine of familisme [London,
1645], quoted in Hamilton, p. 137.) See also the work of Stephen Denison,
Etherington's accuser. The White Wolfe; or, a sermon preached at Pauls Crosse
(London, 1623), pp. 33-34, 38-39, 46. Moss's assertion that "Denison may indeed
have cornered as seventeenth-century Familist" appears unfounded. (Moss, APS,
p. 56.)

45. Hamilton, p. 139. In addition, Calvert printed the first English translations of Hiel,
H.N.'s schismatic disciple. For an interesting seventeenth-century parallel to the
Familist "scare," see J.C. Davis, Fear, Myth, and History: The Ranters and the
Historians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Davis argues that the
authorities' fears of the Ranters were manufactured out of whole cloth, that there
were, in fact, no Ranters. They were invented because "it was necessary to believe
that the Ranters existed in order to demonstrate the perceived and potential anarchy
of de facto religious toleration. ..." The Ranters were "discovered" in 1970 by
Norman Cohn and A.L. Morton, because it was "necessary to believe that they
existed, as a movement of indeterminate size, in order to sustain the twin notions
that the people have persistently attempted to make their own history and that such
a potential history has been, in essence, the negation of capitalist culture and the
Protestant ethic, which for three hundred years accompanied it." (pp. 135-36.) I
would agree that the Family of Love has found its way into modern historiography
in much the same way, although with some significant differences. There actually
was a Family of Love, on which the authorities seized, and whose importance they
greatly magnified; it was not invented, as Davis maintains the Ranters were.
Neither was the Family of Love as dramatically "discovered." The reasons for the
recent flowering of Familist studies have little to do with left-wing history, and
more to do with the notion of a Radical Reformation, hitherto obscured by the
looming bulk of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin.

46. Hamilton, pp. 140-41; Moss, APS, p. 69.

47. John Strype, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1824), n, part 1,
561-62.

48. I owe this suggestion to Professor C.R. Friedrichs.

49. Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain, ed. J.S. Brewer (Oxford University
Press, 1845), IV, 407-12; Strype, H, part 1, 556-64.

50. See, for example R. Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Common-
wealth (London, 1879), pp. 27-32; E. Belfort Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1903), pp. 338-383; Ronald A. Knox, Enthusiasm— A
Chapter in the History of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), pp. 140^1,
170-72; Champlin Burrage, The Early English Dissenters (Cambridge University
Press, 1912), pp. 209-215.

51. Allen C. Thomas, "The Family of Love or the Familists," Haverford College
Studies, XII (1893), and E.A. Payne, "The Family of Love," The Chronicle, XIV
(1953).

52. Rufus Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (London: Macmillan, 1909), pp. 428^48.

53. Jones, p. 448

170 / Renaissance and Reformation

54. "De Geschriften van Hendrik Niclaes" Het Boek, XXXVI (1942), pp. 161-221; "Trois
hérésiarques dans les Pays-Bas du XVIe siècle," Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renais-
sance, XVI (1954), pp. 312-330; "The Family of Love," Quarendo, VI (1976), pp.
219-71.

55. De la Fontaine-Verwey, Quarendo, p. 221.

56. De la Fontaine-Verwey, Quarendo, pp. 259-260.

57. Moss, Diss., pp. 6-9.

58. Moss, APS.

59. Moss, Diss., pp. 23-30.

60. A. Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1981).

61. Hamilton, p. 135.

62. For other recent accounts along the same lines, see J.W. Martin, "Elizabethan Familists
and English Separatism," Journal of British Studies, 20 (1980), pp. 59-62; , p. 338;
Jean Dietz Moss, "The Family of Love and English Critics," The Sixteenth Century
Journal, VI (1975), pp. 41-42, 44.

63. Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint
Ltd., 1968), III, 1274; Anthony a Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1691), I,
156-157.

64. Displaying, fo\.C%.

65. Displaying, fol. B4.
(i(>. Displaying, ïoX.làX.

67. Displaying, fol. 36.

68. "If the doctrine of H.N. be a trueth, why is it taught in comers? Why dare none step
foorth to maintaine the doctrine of H.N. being euerywhere spoken against?" (Display-
ing, fol. E5.)

69. "And least the Papists should imagine that H.N. should be a professor of the Gospell,
I will declare manifest causes to prove that he is a right chicken of the Church of Rome."
(Displaying, fol. D3.) H.N., declares Rogers, agrees with Rome on the authority of the
Pope, on the Mass, and on the efficacy of works. In the matter of confession, he exceeds
even the Catholics, "for where the Pope requireth but a confession of [the acte?]
committed, H.N. requireth a declaration of the thought." {Displaying, fol. D3.)

70. Displaying, fol. C3.

71. Ibid.

72. Displaying, fol. H5.

73. J.B. Mullinger, "John Knewstubb," DNB, vol. 11, p. 224; J. and J.A. Venn, Alumni
Cantabrigensis (Cambridge University Press, 1922).

74. Knewstubb, fol. R4.

75. Knewstubb, Dedication to the Reader, p. 2.

76. Knewstubb, Dedication to the Reader, p. 3

77. Knewstubb, Dedication to the Earl of Warwick, pp. 2-3, 8.

Renaissance et Réforme / 171

78. E.I. Carlyle, "William Wilkinson," DNB, vol. 21, p. 278; Venn and Venn, Alumni
Cantabrigensis, pt. 1, vol. 4, p. 412.

79. Wilkinson, fol. Jl.

80. Wilkinson, fol. X2.

81. Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1967), pp. 11-15. There is, of course, an enormous
historiographical literature surrounding the term "puritan." Most of this literature
surrounds the importance (or lack thereof) of puritanism in understanding the Civil
War. Michael Finlayson, (Historians, Puritanism, and the English Revolution: the
Religious Factor in English Politics before and after the Interregnum [Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1983]) for example, points out that in fact the
importance of puritans and puritanism in the build-up to the Civil War has been
vastly overstated, in that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to identify as puritan
any of leading figures of the political oppostion between 1621 and 1641 (p. 161).
Nevertheless, Finlayson does agree that there were puritans (pp. 11, 85, 160- 61);
he simply disputes the idea that they played a crucial role in the conflict between
Crown and Parliament. There is thus no fundamental disagreement between his
viewpoint and mine. Indeed, I see a good deal of congruity, inasmuch as he stresses
the importance of anti-Catholicism for both "Anglicans" and "puritans" (pp. 118,
162), a factor which played an important role in the authorities' understanding of
the Family of Love. If, in what I follows, I use expressions such as the puritan
"side," this should in no way be taken to imply the existence of a party, or of a
cohesive opposition within the church. Indeed, the foundation on which much of
my argument rests is that the divisions within the church were much less important
than what united "puritans" and "Anglicans."

82. The phrase is Collinson's. (EPM, pp. 84-91.)

83. Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal (London: Jonathan Cape, 1979), pp. 42—46.

84. Collinson, Grindal, pp. 49-56.

85. Collinson, Grindal, p. 49.

86. Hastings Eells, Martin Bucer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), p. 394.

87. Collinson, Grindal, pp. 52-53.

88. Eells,pp. 54-64, 71.

89. Eells, pp. 238-40.

90. Eells, pp. 267-68.

91. Eells, p. 64.

92. H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge University
Press, 1958), pp. 107-9.

93. Porter, pp. 163-64.

94. Porter, p. 176.

95. See W.S. Hudson, The Cambridge Connection (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
1980), pp. 43-60; Mullinger, Cambridge, II, 53-64.

172 / Renaissance and Reformation

96. Collinson, EPM, p. 129; Mark H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 191-193; CE. Mallet, A History of the University of
Oxford (London: Methuen, 1924), II, 1 15.

97. Clare Cross, "Continental Students and the Protestant Reformation in England in the
Sixteenth Century," Reform and Reformation: England and the Continent c.l500-c.l750,
ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1979), pp.
44-^5.

98. Collinson, EPM, p. 129.

99. John Rogers, Displaying, fol. F7.

1 00. John Rogers, The Summe of Christianity, reduced unto eight propositions, briefly and
plainly confirmed out of the holy worde of God (London, 1578), pp. 10-12, 19-23.

101. Summe, p. 19.

102. Porter, p. 190.

103. Collinson, EPM, pp. 126, 215.

104. Knewstubb, Confutation, dedication to the reader, ii.

105. Collinson, EPM, pp. 218-19, 232; J.B. MuUinger, "John Knewstubb," DNB, vol. 11,
p. 244.

106. Acts of the Privy Council, vol. 12, pp. 317-318.

107. House of Commons Journals, I, 127, 128, 129, 130.

108. M.M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), p.
234; Sir J.E. Neale, Elizabeth and her Parliaments (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1958), I, 250.

109. Knappen, p. 249; Collinson, EPM, p. 166.

1 10. Neale, I, 342.

111. Collinson, EPM, pp. 216-17; Neale, I, 252-53, 385-87.

1 12. Collinson, EPM, pp. 306-7.

1 13. MuUinger, Cambridge, II, 180-82; Porter, p. 177.

1 14. Collinson, Grindal, p. 287.

115. Collinson EPM, pp. 154-55, 159-61.

1 16. Neale, I, 369.

117. Displaying, fol. C2.

118. Displaying, M.n.

1 19. I am grateful to Professor Murray Tolmie for this insight.

Book Reviews / Comptes rendus

Ralph Berry. Shakespeare and Social Class. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey:
Humanities Press International, 1988. Pp. xxii, 198.

When distributing a bibliography to his graduate students at the University of Manitoba,
Ralph Berry would explain the brevity of his list by noting that in spite of the
overwhelming number of books published about Shakespeare each year, very few of
them are any good. Following his example, the bibliography which I distribute to my
Shakespeare classes is usually quite brief, but expanded, in a manner his undoubtedly
is not, to include all the books that Berry himself has written. Ralph Berry's studies
have made their way onto my select list both for the originality of insight and also, most
compellingly, for the articulation of a thorough and useful approach to the plays. His
approach is characterized, first, by a keen ear for the subtleties of Shakespeare's
language from variations in tone through to the larger patterns of prosody and the
curiosities of subtextual repetitions. Secondly, Berry holds forward Shakespeare's
"divine neutrality" in controversial issues of interpretation, looking instead for the
solutions to these difficulties in the most intelUgent productions of recent years. Finally,
Berry views the chronology of the plays as "the key to the study," for he maintains
firmly that "Shakespeare never stopped developing, and that should qualify generaliza-
tions based on his practice at any one time" (xviii).

Although I feared at first that social class would prove to be too limited a field
for the free range of Berry 's ideas, I was wrong; Shakespeare and Social Class yields
insights on virtually every page, from a flash of illumination on a well-worn line in
Hamlet to the presentation of the conflicts that arise out of social class in the
characters of every play. In his introduction. Berry reminds us, first, that
Shakespeare's plays contain a full range of characters from every social class and
that their relationships "express the social order in which they live" (ix). He adds
that while "status and income receive intermittent treatment . . . rank and occupation
are there all the time" (ix). Although Shakespeare includes people of all ranks. Berry
feels that the most important distinction made in the plays is the "great divide," the
central class distinction, "between gentlemen and the rest" (xii). Gentility is an
indication of "birth, education, wealth, behaviour and values." Above all, it estab-
lishes an ideal of conduct which requires a constant balancing act as the gentleman
is confronted by "the usurper, the inferior classes," and faces challenges of all sorts.
In short, there is a "tension between rank and conduct" (xiv) present in each of the

174 / Renaissance and Reformation

plays. Berry notes, "People are shown making claims for themselves and others via
class. What one makes of those claims is part of the most essential plot, the real
play in performance" (xv).

Although the class of each character is not always included in the cast list, Berry
notes that class is conferred, nonetheless, through a number of different means.
Class is conveyed, first, both directly and indirectly through language. It is well
known that each speaker in each play has his/her own unique mode of expression,
but Berry calls to our attention the fact that these unique language patterns convey
rank and education as much as character. A speaker's language — use of tropes,
swearing, imagery patterns — are all indicators of the social system within which
the character has developed. Rank and class enter, as well, into the distinction
between the characters who speak in blank verse and those who speak in prose. As
a rule, blank verse is "the medium of the gentry" while prose is "the medium of
those who, for various reasons which include the social, fall beneath the dignity of
verse" (xvi). We are all aware of how crucial these distinctions can be in a play like
The Tempest wherein an "unregenerate" character like Caliban speaks in the
language of the gentry, which identifies him as being of an order superior to the
drunken Stephano and Trinculo. Here, Caliban's language forces a re-evaluation of
one who is regarded by many of the other characters as subhuman. Berry also notes
that verse is not invariably related to rank for many members of the aristocracy lapse
into prose from time to time. However, these times are to be closely considered, for
Berry warns that prose may mark a simple lapse into informality or it may indicate
a more subtle characteristic such as disorientation or subterfuge.

The discussion of language as a conveyor of rank extends, as well, to a usage which
has probably escaped the notice of today's audience, namely, the distinction between
you and thou. Berry notes that you is a "mark of respect when addressing a social
superior" while thou "conveys intimacy, whether of warmth or hostility." Thus,
"thou/you is an infinitely subtle marker of distance between human beings, constantly
moving on the scale" (xvii). By way of example. Berry looks at the use of thou in a
single line in one of the best known scenes in Hamlet and provides a new dimension to
the dynamics of Hamlet's revenge and anger. He writes: "The person addressing the
other as thou has the initiative: he claims a social right for himself. Hamlet, who must
spend the play addressing Claudius as you (and is so addressed by Claudius: they are
not close these two) ends it with 'Here, thou incestuous, murd'rous damned Daney
Drink off this potion. ' With thou, Hamlet releases a social insult, the linguistic analogue
to killing the King" (xvii). The use of thou or you can serve as a means of determining
the relative social standing of the speakers, for while such things may not always be
clear to the audience, the players "always seem to know."

A knowledge of social class is also useful to the actor in developing, and the critic
in analyzing, characterization. Berry cites Coriolanus as an example of a character
that cannot be understood without coming to terms with his class background. In
this case, as in many others, "class is an ellipsis of motivation" (xviii) which the
actor or critic can utilize.

Renaissance et Réforme / 175

Shakespeare's sense of social order, like everything else in the plays, changes
with the major phases of his career. An understanding of the chronology of the plays,
therefore, assists in interpreting the social patterns. Berry provides a useful enumer-
ation of "the main periods and emphases of Shakespeare's work as they bear upon
social class" (xx) and discusses each play in terms of this chronology. In summary,
the early plays. Berry asserts, are characterized by "stable relationships between
classes and fixed counters" (xix). All of this changes in the middle comedies, where
the social issues are more complex with social frictions often at the core of the play 's
actions. The second tetralogy of history plays present a complete panorama of social
classes and tests the English class system under the "pressures of war." In the major
tragedies, "class" is "completely assimilated into character and motivation." While
the later plays "bring all social values into question," the final romances offer a
return to order, with a diminished interest in class structures (xx-xix). Berry's
discussions of the individual plays are grouped according to this chronology. While
each chapter is worth reading, a sampling of the new interpretations that arise from
a consideration of social class in some of the best-known plays will suggest the
strengths of Berry's approach.

The discussion of The Taming of the Shrew, for example, tempers much of the
distaste that contemporary feminists and social critics feel about Petruchio's crude
courtship of Katherina. Rather than a cruel "taming," Berry sees the main action of
the play as "an account of an Elizabethan marriage, as negotiated by a pair of
tough-minded practitioners" (25). The marriage "contract" is based upon the value
system of the nobility, a code of manner which both Katherina and Petruchio share.
Baptista, who structures the courtship, "has gotten where he is by the certainties of
family merger and marriage contracts." Crucial here is Berry's reminder that all of
the male actors who control the play are gentlemen. Katherina's refusal to marry
has set a road-block in the way of their gentlemanly negotiations. The way is cleared
in the "key" passage, the "wasp" dialogue (2. 1. 212-16) which ends with Petruchio's
assertion that he is a gentleman (in spite of his obscene suggestions). Berry adds
that Petruchio's statement is "advanced as a measure of conduct," (26) and Kather-
ina and he negotiate their relationship within the terms of this code. Once this
behavioral code is established between them, Petruchio and Katherina both learn to
live within the boundaries of their bargain: "Gradually, the behaviour of both is
encased within a class formation. Petruchio and Katherina are learning to live as a
gentleman and a gentlewoman" (28). Berry sees Katherina and Petruchio as equal
partners in the agreement they have negotiated.

Twelfth Night reveals some of the problems when the class and rank of characters
are less sure, and the code of conduct is enmeshed in the struggles of individuals
between class and identity. Berry notes, "In no play of Shakespeare's is it more
important to place the characters socially, and in none do they spend more time in
pursuit of their definitions" (68). The "heavily charged atmosphere" of the play is
the result of the "frictions, ambitions and resentments" as the social classes interact
(73). Berry terms the play "an anatomy of social mobility," wherein "three of its

176 / Renaissance and Reformation

personages marry upward (Sebastian, Viola and Maria), and two seek to (Sir Andrew
and Malvolio.)" The action of the play revolves around the maneuverings between
"those who have" and "those who desire," wherein "identity is sometimes asserted,
sometimes infringed upon" (73). In his interpretation. Berry helps to sort out the
class of each of the central characters and looks at some of the great actor's solutions
to the problem of Malvolio's alienation from the fmal concord of the others.

Social commentary and the problems of social position inform and color each of
the history plays in the second tetralogy. Henry IV, I, for example, presents a
"panorama of English social life" out of which the major characters grow. Berry
compares Hal to an anthropologist field-worker who intimately observes the cus-
toms and languages of the world he will inherit. Berry terms Hal's position an
ambivalent one, for "Shakespeare shows a young man not yet invested in the
authority that will be his, having to deal with all social classes from tinkers to the
Lord Chief Justice. Con men, friends, offers, criticism, traps, he has to surmount
them all" (78). The social commentary arises from Falstaff 's part in the war scenes.
Berry concludes that war, as Falstaff presents it, "is an affair of the poor, the
unemployed, criminals and dropout. Those who can afford to, pay to dodge the draft.
This bleak and patently accurate analysis of the social formations used by the
military comes from one who is himself something of a dropout from the knight-
hood" (82). These elements combine in the creation of a truly epic drama, "with its
extraordinary sense of life as it is lived" (77).

In his analysis of King Lear, Berry gives a new force to the rather tired discussions
of the thematic importance of the concept of natural order in the play. He begins by
asserting the crucial importance of the opening scene to the larger concems of the play.
By understanding this scene, wherein Glouchester introduces his illegitimate son,
Edmund, the later blinding of Glouchester seems much less an act of gratuitous cruelty
than an outcome of his own actions. In his treatment of the son of whom he is ashamed,
Glouchester can be seen as "a type of callousness and insensitivity — the aristocrat who
will neither acknowledge properly nor cut off his bastard, and thereby, breeds a
malcontent" (103). The play, in a larger sense, then, "depicts with an unillusioned clarity,
the consequences of a failure to assimilate a well-bom outsider into the social order"
(103). The climax of the play, the heath scenes, also are imbued with questions about
social class. As the world and its structures appear to be falling apart, all social order is
challenged and put together again on a new basis. These scenes reflect the persistent
rebellions against the social order that permeate the play. The fmal battle in the play,
that between Edgar and his brother, brings social standing to the foreground: "The
contest between right and wrong is fought out within a class and is so emphasized"
(111). Edmund, throughout, focuses the limitations of the social system. He has a "stark
choice, submission or revolt," which "is the disabling weakness of the social order
that Shakespeare diagnoses" (111).

The world of The Tempest offers other possibilities than submission or revolt Of the
later plays, this one yields particularly well to an analysis in terms of social class. As
Berry notes, "Master and man: that is the relationship to which The Tempest tums again

Renaissance et Réfonne / 177

and again," (180) as Ariel and Caliban seek independence from Prospero's control.
Social class and identity are interwoven in their quest for freedom. The storm at sea,
the tempest of the opening scene, reveals at once the "class tensions" of the old
world which are being brought, like so much luggage, to the new. Each of the
characters is given an opportunity to reflect upon the possibilities of a new world
and new social structure upon arriving in Prospero's domain. Berry is intrigued by
recent interpretations of the play which emphasize its social content. He cites,
specifically, Jonathan Miller's production which viewed the play as a "myth of
decolonization," for Berry believes that remains "the most urgent and compelling of
the possibilities in the text" (185). While Shakespeare was not omniscientiy comment-
ing upon colonial practices three-hundred years in the future, he was deeply concerned
with the inter-relationship of "service and freedom" (185) which shapes our social and
political analysis today.

If there is a weakness in Berry's book, it surfaces particularly acutely in the discussion
of The Tensest in the absence of any discussion of Miranda. This omission reflects the
general lack of interest in the class struggles of the female characters. For example,
although Berry does consider Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew to be a participant
in the social contract she forms with Petruchio, nothing has been said about her
alternatives to such a contract. In the discussion of The Tempest, Miranda is mentioned
only in passing in connection with the discussion of other characters. She certainly
deserves as much space as Ariel, for her world has been suddenly infused with social
relationships she has never considered, nor been educated to consider. Her need for an
education within a wider social context, her need at adolescence to widen her personal
horizons, her need for the freedom to select a mate, are all topics which touch upon the
very ideas of "service and freedom" which Berry has identified as central to the play.

In spite of the lack of interest in the social standing of Shakespeare's female
characters, this book can be recommended to anyone, whether student or specialist,
for its wealth of insights, which range from the illumination of a single line to the
shaping of a conceptual framework that encompasses all of the plays. The clarity
and readability of the text is also noteworthy. Berry strikes that delicate point of
balance between specific reference and conceptual theory that so often eludes the
scholarly author. The reader is never buried in a plethora of footnotes about
footnotes; Berry attributes his sources quickly and efficiently and develops his own
interpretations without belabouring the point. Most importantly, Ralph Berry's book
turns the reader back to the plays with renewed interest, eager to locate a strand of
a new colour within the intricate tapestries of Shakespeare's works.

LORELEI CEDERSTROM, Brandon University

178 / Renaissance and Reformation

Johannes Cochlaeus. Responsio AdJohannem Bugenhagium Pomeranum, edited
by Ralph Keen. Nieuwkoop: De Graaf, 1988. Pp. 10, 178.

This tidy, well-organized little work consists of five parts: Introduction, Response,
Commentary, Appendix A (Bugenhagen's Letter to the English), Appendix B
(Luther's Letter to Henry VIII). A brief but adequate index rounds out this forty-
fourth volume of the Bibliotheca Humanistica & Reformatorica.

It is the potential prospect of a Lutheran England that unites the entries into an
intelligible whole. Bugenhagen, who had married Luther and Katherine von Bora,
had hoped to see a merging of a different sort, hence his brief letter to the English
and his admirably concise register of the evangelical faith. Unaware of the role
human desire would subsequently play in England's religious history, Cochlaeus
took very seriously the possibility of a Lutheran England. His Responsio is a
polemic effort to avoid this contingency. The response is typical of the guerilla
warfare waged by secondary figures at the very beginning of the reformation period.
Apart from the linguistic routines well-known to students of this era, we see the
participants attempting, however crudely according to later standards, to enact
themselves as human beings seriously committed to a particular religious form.
Below the horizon of consciousness there seems to be an awareness of the tidal
forces that would soon alter the faith and future of Western society.

In addition to his aggressive defense of Roman Catholicism, Cochlaeus had
written a handbook of etymology, syntax, prosody, and orthography. Nor was his
energy confined to academic pursuits. He travelled from Bavaria to Cologne,
Bologna, Ferrara, Rome, Frankfurt and back to Cologne. In contrast to the migratory
Cochlaeus, Bugenhagen was pastor of the Wittenberg Church for thirty-six years.

The valorization adduced in the response is primarily the assumption that the Catholic
church is an etemally fixed Archimedian point. This gives some justification to the fixed
phrases characterizing the diatribe. Despite the unpleasant protocol present in the rabid
condemnation of Lutheranism, theological issues do arise. The contentious point of
good works is resolved by noting that the works will follow from a suitable disposition,
an opinion that would please both Lutherans and Catholics today. The example of the
good tree, no doubt a reflection of the first Psalm so often referred to in the gospels, is
almost a convention that avoids the ideological difference about human nature. In an
era when change was gradual, Cochlaeus ' strongest argument against Protestantism was
precisely its newness — whether this be the newness of Wittenberg, of a potentially
Lutheran England, or of doctrine. This stance does not, of course, come to grips with
Luther or the Swiss reformers. But traditional convictions had not yet been subject to
the canons of serious historical criticism. Nor was it yet common for the individual to
exercise moral freedom, particularly when contrary to the few powerful institutions that
governed life then.

While the Catholic Church at this time did not really take Luther all that seriously,
Cochlaeus seems to sense that the challenge to orthodoxy was more than a tempo-
rary aberration. Later, of course, the Catholic Church was forced to take Luther very

Renaissance et Réforme / 179

seriously indeed. In contrast to Luther, the inspiration of Cochlaeus seems moved
by very pale religious sparks. And yet, read from a distance, the difference between
the two religious paradigms seems relatively small.

Keen has done an excellent job in reproducing the Responsio from the original in the
Herzog August Bibliothek, the Epistola ad Anglos from the 1536 English translation in
the British Library, and Bugenhagen's epistle from a private collection. The dispersed
material is now readily accessible and in layout, design, and printing that is equal to the
intrinsic interest of the subject matter. Particularly commendable is the use of boldface
in the Commentary. Altogether an admirable piece of woric.

P.JOSEPH CAHILL, University of Alberta

Etudes sur la Satyre Ménippée, réunies par F. Lestringant et D. Ménager. Genève,
Droz 1987, 286 p.

La Satyre Ménippée, savoureuse parodie des États-Généraux réunis par Mayenne en
1593, et dirigée contre la Ligue, a fait jusqu'ici l'objet d'un petit nombre d'études
ponctuelles et relativement disparates. Dans ce contexte, le recueil d'études réunies par
F. Lestringant et D. Ménager retient l'attention non seulement par l'intéressante
diversité des méthodes utilisées mais aussi parce que l'éventail des sujets traités réalise
une étude critique pratiquement systématique et en tout cas inédite de l'oeuvre.

Ces études à caractère essentiellement littéraire n'en établissent pas moins un
fructueux dialogue avec les travaux les plus récents des historiens de la Ligue (E.
Bamavi, R. Descimon ... ), travaux qui en révisent totalement la conception.
Élargissant ainsi sa portée, cet ensemble d'analyses du discours de la Satyre
Ménippée vise à le situer par rapport aux grands débats contemporains: redéfinition
de la notion de roi, réflexion sur le pouvoir de l'éloquence, (pour ne citer que les
plus importants.) La mise en perspective historique sur laquelle débouchent la
plupart des études de ce recueil le range parmi les outils indispensables à la
compréhension non seulement de la Satyre Ménippée, mais aussi de son époque.

Il convient de noter que la diversité des approches n'empêche pas une certaine
homogénéité des conclusions. En effet, les différentes lectures de ce texte, bien loin
de se contredire, s'éclairent mutuellement et s'accordent pour lui reconnaître un
même enjeu fondamental: la présentation sérieuse de l'idéologie des Politiques.
Celle-ci s'élabore à partir de la figuration carnavalesque du discours des Ligueurs
et s'en sert comme socle. Le texte carnavalesque s'achève paradoxalement sur un
discours sérieux: la harangue de d'Aubray (ancien prévôt des marchands) désignée
par toutes les études comme le point culminant de l'oeuvre. Expression de
l'essentiel du programme politique des auteurs de la Satyre Ménippée, ce discours,
en prônant la réconciliation nationale et l'instauration d'une monarchie toute
puissante incamée par Henri IV, milite pour le retour à l'ordre.

180 / Renaissance and Reformation

Le premier volet de ce recueil s'ouvre sur la genèse de l'oeuvre, et dégage le sens
des modifications survenues dans le texte de 1593 à 1594, L'étude comparative des
Advis de l'imprimeur marque, d'après F. Poirson, l'élargissement du public visé
ainsi que la volonté de donner à la Satyre Ménippée un statut littéraire. Elle renforce
en les précisant les conclusions d'A. Armand et M. Driol qui examinent les deux
étapes du texte même. Ils montrent que si les transformations du texte s'expliquent
par les évolutions de la situation politique, elles n'en expriment pas moins un
changement dans la conception littéraire de l'oeuvre ainsi que dans ses visées
rhétoriques. Il ne s'agit plus d'un pamphlet, mais bien d'une représentation satirique
des Ligueurs lors de l'Assemblée des États-Généraux, puisqu'entre les deux étapes
du texte celle-ci s'est tenue. L'enjeu de cette satire vise cette fois à asséner un coup
fatal au discours politique des Ligueurs.

Les discours des orateurs sont encadrés par les descriptions significatives du
décor où ils se tiennent. Ils ont pour prélude la description des Tapisseries de la Salle
des Etats et pour clôture, celle des Tableaux allégoriques ornant l'escalier. L'analyse
que donne F. Lestringant du fonctionnement très particulier de ce décor révèle à la
fois le mode de composition et les modalités de lecture de l'oeuvre. Lire la Satyre
Ménippée, c'est en fait transposer un décor spatial et allégorique en un discours
idéologique destiné à tourner les Ligueurs en dérision. Ce mode de représentation
reposant sur le passage du spatial au discursif est associée à une critique de
l'imagination à la Renaissance. Les vertus mnémotechniques du mode de
représentation, soulignées par F. Lestringant, répondent à l'un des plus pressants
impératifs de la satire: marquer le lecteur en l'aidant à mémoriser l'essentiel. Tel
est précisément selon M.-D. Legrand et D. Ménager, le rôle imparti aux vers de la
Satyre Ménippée. Partant d'une réflexion sur la signification du mélange vers et
prose (sens du qualificatif de ménippée), les auteurs rendent compte du choix de ce
genre à divers titres. Si le mélange vers-prose répond à l'impératif de variété
inhérent à la satire, il implique surtout, au-delà d'un changement de forme, un
changement de ton et autorise de ce fait une diversité des points de vue contribuant
à l'enrichissement du discours tout en renforçant sa cohérence, puisqu'il est au
service d'une même idéologie, celle des Politiques.

Quittant l'étude de la forme de l'oeuvre, l'article "Carnaval et monde renversé"
en analyse un des constituants essentiels: le carnaval et sa signification. Il ne s'agit
pas ici du carnaval rabelaisien à la portée universelle dont parle Bakhtine. Le
carnaval de la Satyre Ménippée n'est plus qu'un procédé dont l'enjeu est étroitement
politique. Le Carnaval, attribut de la Ligue, vise à la dénoncer comme un
dérèglement dépourvu d'idéologie, et la condamne en s'en riant. Cependant le rire
de la Satyre Ménippée est limité et contribue à la mise en valeur d'un discours
sérieux, véritable centre de gravité de l'oeuvre prônant un retour à l'ordre naturel
renversé par la Ligue et au sommet duquel trônera Henri IV. Selon D. Ménager,
c'est à la figuration carnavalesque de la Ligue que la Satyre Ménippée doit son
succès. L'éloquence ridicule des Ligueurs, contrastant avec l'éloquence efficace de
d'Aubray, en est un des aspects qui n'est pas sans entretenir des rapports

Renaissance et Réforme / 181

thématiques étroits avec la réflexion sur l'éloquence dont débat l'époque. S 'insérant
dans ce cadre, c'est plus précisément le rapport de l'éloquence à la politique
qu'étudie D. Ménager. Ainsi la Satyre Ménippée dénonce les dangers de l'éloquence
au service de la politique et partant jette le discrédit sur les clercs qui trahissent le
spirituel en intervenant sur la scène politique. D. Ménager conclut en indiquant les
limites de ce discours, dues à la circularité de son argument: la critique de
l'éloquence ne fmit-elle pas par se prendre toujours et inévitablement pour cible?

C'est encore sur l'idée du retour à l'ordre que débouche l'étude de J. Vignes "Culture
et Histoire dans la Satyre Ménippée." L'analyse du rôle et de la signification des
références culturelles dont l'oeuvre est émaillée, montre qu'en dépit de leur diversité
(erudites, populaires, profanes et rehgieuses) et de la complexité de leur fonctionnement
(références à Rabelais), elles font toutes office d'autorité. Celle-ci renvoie à un ordre
ancien et "révèle l'esprit misogène et réactionnaire de la Satyre Ménippée" (p. 183).

Les deux articles de clôture examinent le contenu de la pensée politique à l'oeuvre
dans la Satyre Ménippée. Centrée sur l'image que les Politiques tracent d'Henri IV,
l'étude de D. Ménager expose les caractéristiques de la notion de roi redéfinie dans
son rapport à Dieu ainsi que les modifications qu'elle entraîne sur la scène politique
et qui s'expriment d'une part par l'émergence d'un esprit national, dont M. -A.
Barrachina et M.-C. Gomez-Géraud définissent les articulations dans l'oeuvre.
D'autre part, le texte opère une série de confusions visant à donner comme national
ce qui n'est en fait que l'expression d'un discours bourgeois et parisien. Ainsi
s'imposent les bases de l'absolutisme en la personne du roi et de la conception
centralisatrice du pouvoir. Il faut y voir l'expression de l'État moderne qui se
construit sur les vestiges du féodalisme.

Situant la Satyre Ménippée par rapport aux débats politiques, philosophiques et
historiques du seizième siècle finissant, cet ouvrage explique l'oeuvre tout en
contribuant à la compréhension d'un siècle dont la complexité tient peut-être à ce
qu'il opère la difficile suture entre le Moyen Age et l'époque moderne.

NADINE MANDEL, Université de Tel-Aviv

Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy, the Canon and Medical Teaching
in Italian Universities after 1500. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, xii +
410 p.

Le Canon de la Médecine, cette fameuse encyclopédie en cinq parties qu'Avicenne
(Ibn Sina, mort en 1028) avait composée en langue arabe au tournant du onzième
siècle, était, on le sait, le livre le plus important de l'enseignement médical dans
l'Occident médiéval. Il fut traduit en latin à Tolède dans le dernier quart du
douzième siècle, par Gérard de Crémone ou par un de ses collaborateurs, mais ce
n'est qu'un siècle plus tard qu'il devint texte obligatoire dans certaines facultés de
médecine. Malgré les défauts de cette traduction, sans parler même des critiques

182 / Renaissance and Reformation

qui avaient pu être adressées déjà à Avicenne, jugé mauvais interprète de Galien,
par un Arnaud de Villeneuve (Siraisi, p. 66-67), l'oeuvre ne devait cesser de figurer
dans les programmes universitaires ou curricula tout au long de la Renaissance et,
dans certaines universités, jusqu'à la fin du dix-huitième siècle.

Les meilleurs témoins de ce succès ininterrompu sont les quelque soixante
éditions intégrales ou partielles de ce texte qui, dans l'état actuel de nos
connaissances, ont été produites entre 1500 et 1674, pour s'en tenir à la période
étudiée par Nancy G. Siraisi dans le livre que nous avons devant nous. Ce sont
d'ailleurs ces soixante éditions qui constituent le coeur du corpus documentaire
de notre savante collègue. Il faut leur ajouter, cependant, un nombre égal de
commentaires sur le Canon écrits par des professeurs d'universités surtout
italiennes (id., p. 175-186), commentaires qui refléteraient l'enseignement de
ces maîtres dans leurs classes.

Même si, dans l'enseignement de cette époque, le Canon ne servait plus que de
manuel d'introduction à la physiologie pour les débutants (id., p. 106-107, p.
111-112 et passim), sa présence dans le curriculum n'était pas sans poser de graves
problèmes aux enseignants. Tout d'abord, parce que les savants des seizième et
dix-septième siècles, ayant désormais un accès direct à l'original grec de l'oeuvre
de Galien, ne nourrissaient plus d'illusions sur la valeur de la traduction tolédane
dont ils disposaient. C'est pourquoi ils ont déployé un effort considérable dans ces
éditions successives pour expurger le texte de ses erreurs. Pour ce faire, ils se sont
appliqués à comparer leur texte latin aux deux traductions faites de l'arabe en hébreu
au cours du treizième siècle (id., p. 132-138) ainsi qu'aux enseignements de Galien
qui sont à la source de l'oeuvre d' Avicenne. La publication à Rome, en 1593, de
l'original arabe du Canon par Giovanni Battista Raimondi (id., p. 143-152) con-
stitue à cet égard un événement notable.

Mais les problèmes linguistiques n'étaient à l'origine que d'une part des
difficultés: l'autre part provenait du contenu même du Canon et de certaines des
doctrines qui y étaient exposées. Les maîtres de la Renaissance devaient en effet
prendre en compte les découvertes faites par leurs contemporains, les recentiores
ou modernes, notamment en anatomie, discipline pleine de vitalité durant cette
période, et en physiologie générale, snas parler de la pathologie des maladies, ainsi
que les innovations que connaissaient les sciences naturelles, entre autres (id., p.
230). On constate cependant avec Nancy G. Siraisi qu'Avicenne comptait encore
des fidèles parmi ces universitaires (id., p. 202-203) et que nombre de ceux mêmes
dont les dispositions étaient plus critiques ont tenté également de sauver le Canon
en le défendant contre toute critique.

Comme l'auteur nous le suggère (id., p. 90) et comme le montre une enquête
effectuée en 1600 parmi les professeurs de Padoue à l'initiative d'Orazio Augenio
(id., p. 113-120), il s'agit, au moins en partie, d'un conservatisme "curriculaire."
Mais le phénomène analysé par Siraisi dépasse à mon avis le simple cadre de
l'enseignement ou de la médecine: c'est un exemple précieux de la survivance d'une
doctrine ancienne bien dépassée en dépit des données nouvelles sans équivoque que

Renaissance et Réforme / 183

devraient, en principe, la discréditer entièrement. On peut toutefois se demander si,
par sa nature même, le corpus utilisé par notre auteur ne reflète pas mieux le point
de vue des "fidèles" que celui des "détracteurs" du Canon (id., p. 168-169).

La provenance de ces rééditions du Canon et de ces commentaires à l'usage des
étudiants attire l'attention sur l'Italie du Nord, et prinipalement, sur les universités
de Padoue et de Bologne. Comme Siraisi le montre très clairement dans la troisième
partie de son étude (id., p. 127-217), c'est dans ces centres que l'on ressentit le
besoin de cette production ou reproduction. Cette troisième partie d'Avicenna in
Renaissance Italy est précédée de quatre chapitres groupés en deux parties: la
première présente le Canon et ses doctrines (id., p. 19-40), la deuxième détermine
sa place dans l'enseignement universitaire (id., p. 43-124). Les deux derniers
chapitres du livre (id., p. 221-352) en constituent la quatrième partie, qui traite de
l'effort de certains des professeurs de la Renaissance pour adapter, comme on l'a
mentionné plus haut, certaines doctrines du Canon.

Sont ainsi évoquées les tentatives de Da Monte, Oddo Odi, Patemo et Giovanni
Costeo. Mais le cas le plus séduisant à mon sens est celui de Santorio, professeur à
Padoue de 1611 à 1624 (id., p. 206 sqq.). Curieux de toutes les innovations scientifiques
de son temps et saisi d'une ambition toute moderne de quantifier et mesurer l'ensemble
des phénomènes médicaux et naturels, il se sent parfois mal à l'aise face à certaines
doctrines exprimées dans le Canon: il s'élève ainsi contre l'astrologie judiciaire (id., p.
284-286). Bien que plus remarquable que ses collègues par ses visées et sa vivacité,
Santorio n'en demeure pas moins représentatif de tous les maîtres de la Renaissance et
de leur dilemme face à ce classique de la médecine qu'était le Canon.

Au terme de cet examen d'Avicenna in Renaissance Italy, on mesure mieux à
quel point nous fait défaut un livre similaire sur Avicenne au moyen âge. S'il y eut
pourtant une époque où le Canon joua un rôle déterminant dans la vie universitaire
et médicale de l'Europe, ce fut bien au cours des deux siècles qui précédèrent la
période étudiée par Nancy G. Siraisi. L'un des grands mérites de son livre est
d'ailleurs que son chapitre d'introduction constitue à ce jour la meilleure synthèse
dont nous disposions sur l' Avicenne médiéval.

JOSEPH SHATZMILLER, University of Toronto

Black, Christopher F. Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xiv, 32L

In recent years confraternities have attracted a growing amount of attention from
historians of late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. This is undoubtedly a response to the
realization that confraternities played a vital role in the fabric of late-Medieval and
Renaissance society. While there have been previous important studies of Italian
confraternities, both in Italian (Monti, Meersseman) and in English (Weissman, Pull-
man), professor Black's book is the first to offer a comprehensive view of confraternities

184 / Renaissance and Reformation

throughout the peninsula. As its author rightly points out, it is also "the first ... to
look at them from many different angles and perspectives." (p.ix)

This study, therefore, is also a solid general introduction to the entire phenomenon
of lay religious associations. Geographically, there is the inevitable emphasis on the
major centres of confratemal activity (Naples, Rome, Perugia, Florence, Bologna,
Venice, Milan), with their rich archival resources. Confraternities in smaller towns,
however, are also considered and included (in Lecce, Teano, Todi, Mestre, to
mention just a few). The author is thus able to point out, when necessary, the
parallels and differences between confraternities in large urban centres and in
smaller towns.

Though the author casts his net quite widely across the peninsula, the result is
not a cursory, superficial description. On the contrary, exact references to specific
situations and an ample critical apparatus allow for a clear, detailed understanding
of particular as well as general situations.

The chronological limit is the "long" sixteenth century, that is, the period from
about the middle of the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century — a time
of great upheavals and change in Italy, both political and religious. Earlier material
is included, but only as background. The Council of Trent and the ensuing synodal
reforms throughout the peninsula are, in fact, the key on which the place and role
of confraternities in Italian life is seen to turn. Professor Black thus points out clearly
the influence of reforming bishops (Giberti, Bellarmino, Borromeo) on the life of
existing confraternities and on the establishment of new ones.

Given the variety of confraternities and their activities, professor Black has, quite
judiciously, divided his chapters into clear sub-sections. Thus, for example, the
chapter on the internal organization and religious life of confraternities has eight
clearly defined sections: 1 . Statutes and official; 2. Councils and general assemblies;
3. Enrolment, discipline and expulsion; 4. Feast-days and private confraternity
devotion; 5. Forty-Hour devotions; 6. Flagellation; 7. Rosary devotion; 8. Death
and the afterlife. This structure allows the reader not only to appreciate the
complexity of the subject, but also to go directly to the description of a particular
aspect of confratemal life and activities.

As the author himself points out, the scope and structure of the book do not allow
for the presentation of "one particular thesis or point of view." His aim, instead, is
"to argue that confraternities had a key role — often neglected by historians — in the
religious, social, political and cultural lives of a large number of Italians in the
period, with implications for the later evolution of Italian society" (p. 4-5).

Those of us working (either directly or indirectly) on Italian confraternities in the
early modem period will find professor Black's richly detailed and highly percep-
tive study of the phenomenon to be a gold mine of information and insights for our
own work in the field. The scope and grasp of his work make it an indispensible
volume for Italian confratemity studies, one that will become a standard reference
work for future scholars.

Renaissance et Réforme / 185

KONRAD EISENBICHLER, University of Toronto

Francesco Guardiani. La meravigliosa retorica delVAdone di G.B. Marino. Flor-
ence: Olschki Editore, 1989, Pp. 165.

The concluding sentence of La meravigliosa retorica delVAdone serves as the key
to understanding its meaning and also its significance within the context of studies
dealing with both Marino and, more importantly, the Italian Renaissance and
Baroque. The final words of the book inform us that in final analysis Marino's
poetics is a form of philosophical thinking: "... non resta che . . . riconoscere che
la poetica mariniana è filosofia." (p. 158). Guardiani is here troping on Ernesto
Grassi's conviction that "rhetoric is philosophy." Such a critical attitude leads
Guardiani to promote Marino the artist on the ontological scale: that is, from a
mindless hedonistic juggler of words (as many a critic would have us view the
Neapolitan) to a "cultore del pensiero" (p. 128), a poet who is acutely sensitive to
the ontic relationships between the senses and thought. But this totally justified
promotion is enough to spark a clash with the prevalent interpretation of both
Marino's art and the Seicento which (save the rehabilitating efforts of scholars such
as Giovanni Pozzi and Marzio Pieri) have been generally denigrated in Italy since
the Arcadia. In a largely hidden sense, Guardiani 's reading of the Adone also clashes
with Heidegger's uncompromisingly negative assessment of Italian Renaissance
thought. I will return to this latter point.

The external anatomy of La meravigliosa retorica is contructed under the muse
of the three parts of rhetoric: Chapter 1, "Inventio: dal madrigale al 'poema
grande'"; Chapter 2, "Dispositio: La narrazione negata"; Chapter 3, "Elocutio: la
logica della parola." In the pages that precede the opening chapter Guardiani
pinpoints the current of rhetorical ideology he will subscribe to: what will be
favoured are the positions put forth by Ernesto Grassi and Renato Barilli both of
whom have independently developed an "existential rhetoric." Such a choice is
conditioned by the fact that Guardiani aims to show the great extent to which
Marino's poetry is about the interplay between the mundus of the imagination and
reason. But it is Northrop Frye who nourishes the aesthetic ideology that is defined
in this monographic study.

The initial chapter deals with the artistic circumstances that give rise to the
conception of an epic poem based on the mythological god. In the second chapter
Guardiani traces the many details involved in the development and the realization
of the Adone. The third chapter, unlike the first two which emphasize the macro-
cosmic picture of the poem, gravitates upon isolated fragments so as to flesh out
their artistic bearing.

In less than one hundred and fifty pages of actual text Guardiani offers many
insightful observations. These are supported by an arsenal of textual evidence and

186 / Renaissance and Reformation

are arrived at through both a critical orchestration of ecdotic data along with a will
to discover the dynamics of the rhetorical figures that garb the Adone. I will cite a
minimum of examples: Adonis' death is likened to that of the Saviour's (p. 52ff);
the Adone is an open work, but not only within the economy of Eco's definition of
the concept. What is privileged is not so much the relationship between reader and
text but the rapport between the work and the world it depicts: "L'apertura
dtW Adone è fondata sulla cosciente visione mariniana di un universo spalancato a
tutte le possibilité di realizzazione" (p. 98). Finally, because it is keyed in a
non-Cartesian mode the Adone is very much in tune with the postmodern sensibility
(pp. 157-158).

Paul O. Kristeller was convinced that the Italian Renaissance (and, I would add
at the risk of putting words in the great scholar's mouth, by insinuation and extention
also the Italian Baroque) offered a bare minimum of what may be generically termed
"philosophical thought." We can trace a parallel stance in Heidegger who in the
Letter on Humanism accused Renaissance Humanism of being a naive form of
anthropomorphism which was oblivious to the question of Being. As we all know
by now, Ernesto Grassi corrected these historically flawed views by showing the
great extent to which Italian figures from Mussato, Salutati and Pontano through to
Tesauro in the Seicento on to Vico in the following century were at task at
elaborating a form of philosophy that hinged on the cognitive capacities of metaphor
and rhetorical utterance in general.

But to arrive at Grassi 's conclusions we must overcome the worn tendency to
perceive philology as textual antiquarianism and understand it instead the way the
Italian Humanists did, namely as a tropology which studies the many turns and
twists words and texts undertake throughout time (I wish to posit emphasis on the
"twists" and the "turns" for these are the same elements which will obsess Freud
and Derrida; both of whom treat the sign as a helpless victim of diachronic erosion
and displacement). This is why Guardiani's book is of significance. His attitude
toward Marino is one that privileges the erring and disfigurations (he does not
employ these very terms) of the rhetorical figures that breathe life into the Adone.
It is this same critical disposition that leads him to conclude that the rhetorical
figures that were staple diet for any Baroque poet are not unorganic embellishment
placed there to mask any supposed lack of poetic and philosophical depth. It is the
very rhetorical circuitry of the Adone, as Guardiani discovers, that serves as the
fount of any philosophical possibility.

Finally, Guardiani's study is a confirmation of the fact that we are well on our
way to salvaging the forgotten value of not only one of the most important poets
Europe has ever produced, but also an historical period, the Renaissance-Baroque,
that has been reduced to an academic formula. For this reason. La meravigliosa
retorica is necessary reading for all those concerned with Marino and the Cinque-
cento-Seicento.

PAUL COLILLI, Laurentian University

ERRATUM

Dissolution and the Making of the English Literary Canon:
The Catalogues of Leland and Bale

Trevor Ross

The first paragraph of the above article was inadvertently omitted from page
57 of the Winter 1991 issue of Renaissance and Reformation. A revised page
is being mailed along with this issue of the Journal.

The editors regret the error and apologize for any inconvenience or embar-
rassment to the readers and the author.

Renaissance

and

Reformation

Renaissance

Réforme

^^Slty 0^^^"

New Series, Vol. XV, No. 3 Nouvelle Série, Vol. XV, No. 3

Old Series, Vol. XXVII, No. 3 Ancienne Série, Vol. XXVII, No. 3
Summer 1991 été

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réformeis published quarterly (February, May,
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Old Series, Vol. XXVII, No. 3 1 99 1 Ancienne Série, Vol. XXVII, No. 3

CONTENTS / SOMMAIRE

ARTICLES

187

Perceforest et Amadis de Gaule: le roman chevaleresque à la Renaissance

par Jean-Philippe Beaulieu

199

Erasmus, Revision, and the British Library Manuscript Egerton 1651

by David R. Carlson

233

The Politics of John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent

Occasions Reconsidered

by Mary Arshagouni

249

La création du monde et The Taming of the Shrew:

Du Bartas comme intertexte

par Richard Hillman

BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

259
Elaine V. Beilin. Redeeming Eve. Women Writers of the English

Renaissance
reviewed by Joyce T. Forbes

261

Michael J. Heath. Crusading Commonplaces:

La Noue, Lucinge and Rhetoric against the Turks

compte rendu par Pierre-Louis Vaillancourt

263

The Entertainment of His Most Excellent Majestic Charles II, by John

Ogilby, London, 1662, a facsimile introduced by Ronald Knowles

reviewed by C. E. McGee

265

R. J. Schoeck. Erasmus Grandescens: The Growth

of a Humanist's Mind and Spirituality

reviewed by Jacqueline Glomski

266

Nicholas Howe. Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England

reviewed by Daniel Wright

268

Ronsard et la Grèce, 1585-1985, sous la direction de Kyriaki Christodoulou

compte rendu par André Gendre

Perceforest et Amadis de Gaule", le roman
chevaleresque de la Renaissance

JEAN-PHILIPPE BEAULIEU

Jj/n privilégiant le point de vue des censeurs érudits du seizième siècle,
l'histoire littéraire a longtemps considéré les romans chevaleresques de la
Renaissance comme une survivance de la mentalité médiévale qui per-
vertissait l'imagination du lecteur par son extravagance et son manque de
mesure.' Des études récentes montrent cependant que si les romans cheva-
leresques ont fait l'objet, à la fin du seizième siècle, de critiques morales et
formelles (s' inspirant des nouveaux idéaux de la Contre-Réforme et des
conceptions diégétiques aristotéliciennes),^ la grande popularité que ces
textes ont connue - surtout au cours de la première moitié du siècle - oblige
la critique à réévaluer leur importance dans le monde des lettres et à ne pas
les considérer a priori comme des prolongements décadents de la littérature
romanesque courtoise «classique».^ Il y a tout lieu de croire, en effet, que
cette production textuelle possède des particularités de contenu et de forme
qui, sans renier leur ascendance médiévale, se combinent de façon à créer
une singularité intéressante en elle-même. C'est sur cette assertion que se
fonde la démarche d'identification des caractéristiques formelles du roman
chevaleresque de la Renaissance dont nous présenterons les résultats dans
les pages qui suivent. Il convient de souligner le caractère exploratoire et
partiel de cette démarche qui fait face à des problèmes reliés, d'une part, aux
dimensions considérables du corpus visé et, de l'autre, à la rareté des études
critiques portant sur cette question. Voilà pourquoi notre présentation con-
sistera principalement en des données de nature générale illustrées par un
certain nombre de références à deux romans, Amadis de Gaule et Percefo-
rest; données qui visent à constituer une synthèse pouvant servir de point
de départ à des recherches ultérieures.

Les inventaires bibliographiques qui nous sont parvenus soulignent claire-
ment l'engouement que le public lettré français des quinzième et seizième
siècles a éprouvé pour les romans d'aventures chevaleresques,"^ engouement

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVII, 3 ( 1 99 1 ) 1 87

188 / Renaissance and Reformation

qui s'est manifesté, entre autres, par un certain nombre d'opérations textuelles
qui témoignent de la vitalité de la production romanesque de l'époque.
Notons, parmi ces opérations, les mises en prose de romans anciens (qui sont
en fait des adaptations au goût du jour), les traductions de romans étrangers
ainsi que la rédaction d'oeuvres nouvelles.^ Il est possible de regrouper les
textes résultant de ces opérations en deux courants dont les critères d'apparte-
nance relèvent à la fois du lieu d'origine et de la matière du roman. D'un côté,
on retrouve les récits qui s'inscrivent plus ou moins directement dans la
tradition romanesque française. Même s'il y a au seizième siècle relativement
peu d'oeuvres entièrement nouvelles appartenant à ce courant, les continua-
tions, les reprises et les adaptations qui constituent l'ensemble de cette
production comportent assez de caractères particuliers pour être considérés
comme une étape ultérieure de l'évolution du roman courtois médiéval.^
Certains de ces textes reprennent des sujets épiques, tels Fierabras, Galien
restore et Les Quatre Fils Aymon. D'autres s'inscrivent plutôt dans l'esprit
de l'univers arthurien qui plaisait surtout au public aristocratique.^ A ce sujet,
on peut d'ailleurs constater que les rédacteurs de la fin du Moyen Age, en
dotant Arthur d'une généalogie qui remonte très loin dans le passé, créent des
oeuvres originales telles Meliadus, Giron et Perceforest. Une troisième
catégorie, qualifiée par Giraud de roman d'aventure, connaît une grande
vogue au seizième siècle du fait de sa thématique populaire et folklorique.
Dans ce groupe, on peut classer Valentin et Orson, Pierre de Provence et la
belle Maquelonne.

Parallèlement à cette importante production française, on retrouve les
traductions de romans d'origine italienne et espagnole, ouvrages qui font une
entrée discrète en France au début du seizième siècle, mais qui en viennent à
prendre une telle part du marché que, pendant la deuxième partie du siècle,
presque tous les grands succès de la littérature de fiction sont des traductions
ou des adaptations de textes espagnols.^ Parmi les ouvrages italiens recher-
chés par le public de l'époque, notons le Philocope de Boccace et le Peregrin
de Caviceo.^ Parmi les ouvrages espagnols qui ont connu une popularité
certaine, signalons La Prison d 'Amour et L 'Amant maltraicté de s 'amye, tous
deux rédigés par Diego de San Pedro (traduits respectivement en 1526 et
1539), ainsi que La Déplorable Fin de Flamecte de Juan de Flores, dont le
succès est mitigé mais dont l'influence (par le truchement de la traduction de
Maurice Scève [1535]) est importante sur des écrivains telle Hélisenne de
Crenne.'^ N'oublions pas Amadis de Gaule de Garci de Montalvo (première
édition espagnole: 1508) qui avec le temps est devenu un roman cyclique à
auteurs multiples dont l'élaboration s'est étendue au delà des limites chro-

Renaissance et Réforme / 1 89

nologiques du seizième siècle." Ces textes, surtout ceux d'origine espagnole,
présentent généralement des fictions centrées sur une analyse ou, du moins,
une observation des comportements amoureux dans un cadre chevaleresque,
d'oii le qualificatif - un peu trop fort croyons-nous - de «romans
sentimentaux que leur a attribué Gustave Reynier.'^ Nous verrons plus loin
comment il convient de considérer l'alliage de chevalerie et d' amor hispani-
cus qui est particulier à cette catégorie d'écrits.

Dans la perspective formaliste qui est la nôtre, il semblerait adéquat de
distinguer la matière de la conjointure dans les ouvrages appartenant à chacun
des courants décrits, pour ne retenir que les informations relatives à la mise
en forme, c'est-à-dire la conjointure. L'une et l'autre sont cependant si
intrinsèquement liées que l'isolement des caractéristiques purement formelles
est difficile, sinon impossible. C'est pourquoi les commentaires qui vont
suivre s'appliquent aux deux aspects des textes de cet immense corpus que
constituent les romans chevaleresques de la Renaissance. Par ailleurs, vu la
complexité et l'envergure du sujet traité, il est avisé d'illustrer nos propos
généraux par des références à deux textes qui représentent chacun des
courants en question: Perceforest et Amadis de Gaule.

Les dimensions du Roman de Perceforest, récit dont l'auteur ne nous est
pas connu, en font le plus long des ouvrages chevaleresques de la fin du
Moyen Age.'^ Bien que tout indique que sa rédaction remonte au quatorzième
siècle, nous ne le connaissons que par quatre manuscrits du quinzième et deux
éditions du seizième (1528 et 1531).'^^ On sait, par ailleurs, qu'au cours de la
période qui nous intéresse, Perceforest a connu une renommée considérable
et durable au point que, même au dix-septième siècle, des écrivains tel Voiture
affirmaient en être amateurs. L'ouvrage est constitué de six livres où sont
racontées des aventures s 'étendant sur plusieurs générations de héros.

Le roman espagnol Amadis de Gaule se présente quant à lui sous la forme
d'une série qui a débuté par les quatre premiers livres et qui a formé, par la
suite d'ajouts successifs dus à différents auteurs, un monumental ouvrage de
vingt-et-un volumes.'^ Herberay des Essars a traduit en 1540 les deux
premiers livres en français, traduction dont on a beaucoup loué les qualités à
l'époque.

En tant que groupe, les romans de la Renaissance (aussi bien français
qu'étrangers) participent d'une dynamique formelle dont les divers éléments
peuvent s'inscrire dans la catégorie de l'amplification et de la non-diffé-
renciation. Ces éléments sont liés de façon si étroite entre eux qu'il est souvent
difficile de les distinguer nettement et de les placer dans un ordre

190 / Renaissance and Reformation

d'importance indiscutable, ainsi qu'on pourra le constater dans les com-
mentaires qui suivent.

Disons en premier lieu que l'évolution du roman chevaleresque se caracté-
rise par la disparition progressivement plus marquée des distinctions médié-
vales entre les genres narratifs, distinctions qui étaient fondées sur des
oppositions de matière et, surtout, de forme poétique.'^ A la fin du Moyen
Age, le roman chevaleresque en vient ainsi à acquérir des dimensions textu-
elles appartenant à des genres qui lui étaient jusque là plus ou moins étrangers.
Il s'agit là d'un amalgame de matières et de formes qui trouve son origine
dans la pratique du dérimage, très courante à partir de la fin du treizième
siècle.'^ Par l'emploi généralisé de la prose, les divers genres narratifs se
réalisent, au cours de cette période, dans le cadre d'une forme unique
entraînant une perte de spécificité de la vision du monde propre à chaque
type.'^ Cette tendance à la non-différenciation des matières explique d'ail-
leurs le succès qu'ont connu alors les récits composites (tel Berianus) qui, en
faisant côtoyer l'anecdote, le fabliau et les aventures courtoises, démontrent
très clairement l'importance des emprunts effectués par les romans
chevaleresques. Tous les ouvrages de l'époque ne font pas nécessairement
preuve d'une telle diversité, mais ils possèdent néanmoins - à des degrés
divers - une dynamique d'intégration qui réunit matière épique, matière
arthurienne, éléments antiques, idylliques et allégoriques.'^ Cleriadus et
Meliadice est un exemple de roman à la fois idyllique et chevaleresque.-^^
Perceforest, quant à lui, en réclamant le caractère de prologue aux romans
arthuriens et en devenant de ce fait un prolongement rétroactif de la vulgate
arthurienne, cherche à rattacher le cycle d'Alexandre à la matière de Bretagne
pour former une seule oeuvre de dimensions colossales. C'est pourquoi les
lieux communs de la littérature arthurienne - fées, tournois, demoiselles
infortunées - s'y retrouvent réalisés par des actants (et dans un cadre histori-
que) helléniques.-^'

Par ailleurs, la traduction en français d'épopées étrangères (Morgante
(1519) de Pulci, par exemple) entraîne l'inclusion de plus en plus marquée
d'éléments épiques dans les romans chevaleresques. Il s'agit là de la revivis-
cence d'un intérêt populaire médiéval encore très vivant aux quatorzième et
quinzième siècles (comme le prouve la faveur que connaissent à ce moment
des textes dérivés des chansons de geste, tel Les Quatre Fils Aymon), mais
qui acquiert lors de la Renaissance un statut plus noble aux yeux du public
lettré aristocratique.*^^ Le succès d^Amadis de Gaule, ouvrage qui selon
certains critiques se présente comme une synthèse de la matière de Bretagne
et de la matière épique, témoigne des nouvelles dispositions des lecteurs face

Renaissance et Réforme / 1 9 1

à l'inclusion d'éléments épiques dans le cadre romanesque traditionnel.^^
Selon Meletinsky, l'épopée met en scène un héros dont la libre initiative se
confond avec le destin collectif et dont les actions déterminent la destinée du
monde. Le romanesque, par contre, présente des personnages strictement
privés dont le sort individuel est le jouet du hasard. Dans le roman courtois
illustré par Chrétien de Troyes, le principe épique est lié au principe roma-
nesque dans la mesure où le héros est un individu privé, mais aussi une
personne dont les préoccupations personnelles s'opposent aux contraintes de
l'environnement, d'où la présence d'une problématique sociale non négli-
geable dans ce type de texte.-'* Le lien épique/romanesque y est cependant
subtil car il est associé à un processus de résolution des conflits existant entre
les obligations sociales et les sentiments des héros. A la fin du Moyen Age et
au début de la Renaissance apparaît un nouveau type de réunion des principes
épique et romanesque qui se caractérise moins par la superposition de pro-
blématiques individu/société (superposition constante bien qu'effacée dans
les romans courtois) que par la juxtaposition de séquences narratives relevant
de l'un ou de l'autre des types narratifs décrits plus haut. Ainsi, dans Amadis,
certaines actions du personnage principal, le Demoysel de la Mer, s'inscri-
vent-elles dans le processus de résolution d'un problème collectif relié à la
lutte contre un ennemi bien identifié (c'est le cas du combat d' Amadis et du
roi Abies au chapitre 9 du livre I) alors que d'autres actions, qui ne mettent
en cause que les enjeux personnels du héros, relèvent du hasard d'une errance
dont la finalité échappe souvent autant au lecteur qu'au personnage lui-même.
L'alternance de passages de nature et d'orientation différentes forme ainsi un
texte qui a les apparences d'une mosaïque.

Avant d'examiner les manifestations formelles de cette tendance à la
fragmentation, il convient de souligner que l'amalgame de matières auquel
nous venons de faire allusion apparaît en partie comme le résultat d'un
rapprochement entre le roman chevaleresque et les genres historiques, rap-
prochement effectué grâce à l'utilisation généralisée de la prose, considérée
comme le véhicule privilégié du savoir.-^'' On sait en effet que la fin du Moyen
Age a vu l'émergence de préoccupations historiques très marquées.^^ Et c'est
dans une large mesure cet intérêt qui semble avoir amené les particularités de
la littérature historique (comme l'utilisation de la prose) à s'imposer à la
littérature de fiction. Il ne faut donc pas s'étonner de retrouver, dans les
romans de la fin du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, un grand nombre de
procédés référentiels pseudo-historiques qui consistent, par exemple, en
l'attribution d'aventures fictives à des personnages historiques. Perceforest
est un exemple parfait de ce genre d'orientation textuelle: l'auteur a voulu

192 / Renaissance and Reformation

relier deux périodes historiques différentes en présentant Alexandre le Grand
comme l'ancêtre du roi Arthur. Dans le but de justifier cette opération, le
rédacteur utilise les 2 000 premières lignes de son texte pour présenter une
histoire de l'Angleterre (d'après Geoffroy de Monmouth) mettant en lumière
le séjour d'Alexandre dans ce pays. De plus, des lignes 2 008 à 2 060, l'auteur
explique quelle est l'origine de son récit et cherche à en prouver l'authenticité
par un exposé de la destinée du manuscrit originel. Ces préoccupations de
véracité servent donc de point d'appui à l'histoire elle-même qui attribue à
un personnage réel, Alexandre, une série d'actions fictives. Ces actions, tout
en s'inscrivent sous le signe de l'aventure, possèdent des caractéristiques
statiques qui donnent les actants et l'univers dans lequel ils se meuvent
comme partiellement prédéterminés par le poids de l'Histoire. -^^

Parler d'aventure nous amène à signaler le fait qu'en général - et surtout
dans les romans d'origine française - les aventures chevaleresques sont plus
nombreuses et plus développées que les séquences de nature amoureuse,
pourtant si importantes dans le déroulement narratif des romans classiques.
Ainsi, dans Perceforest, on peut constater un net déséquilibre entre les deux
fonctions principales du récit traditionnel.^^ En effet, l'amour, tout en étant
présent dans certains passages (comme la rencontre d'Alexandre et de la
Dame du Lac), a une place si réduite dans l'ensemble du texte qu'il apparaît
comme un motif secondaire du récit. La situation est cependant moins nette
dans les romans étrangers, car l'amour, sans représenter une dimension
centrale de ces ouvrages, s'y manifeste néanmoins de façon marquée par une
foule de petits détails décoratifs. Dans Amadis, par exemple, on peut remar-
quer que la première partie (consacrée à la traditionnelle enfance du héros)
décrit longuement les rapports amoureux d'Elisenne et de Perion (Amadis,
p. 13); descriptions effectuées avec une touche didactique discrète, mais
réelle. Il reste cependant que dans ce roman, comme dans la plupart des
narrations chevaleresques de la première moitié du seizième siècle, non
seulement les passages consacrés à des considérations amoureuses sont-ils
relativement peu nombreux, mais leur rôle n'est plus primordial dans la
dynamique diégétique, la fonction du désir amoureux s' atténuant par rapport
à la fonction purement guerrière.^^ Dans Amadis, certains critiques ont cru
pouvoir identifier une motivation amoureuse (la réunion avec Oriane) comme
le but de la quête d' Amadis, mais un tel point de vue nous semble relever plus
d'un placage d'intentions de lecture que d'une réalité manifeste du texte. La
présence minimale de conversations et de commentaires courtois est indé-
niable, mais elle perd sa pertinence devant les innombrables séquences
chevaleresques dont le caractère de nécessité (par rapport à l'idéal de réali-

Renaissance et Réforme / 193

sation du chevalier) s'estompe. Nous touchons ici la caractéristique principale
des romans de la Renaissance, soit l'hypertrophie de la dimension aventu-
reuse du récit (et l'effritement de l'unité de la senefiance qui en découle).

On sait que, dès ses origines, le roman chevaleresque médiéval a privilégié
une grande mobilité de ses actants, mobilité reliée à la notion d'aventure,
ensemble d'épreuves imprévisibles dans leur forme qui surprend par son
caractère extraordinaire et auquel doivent se soumettre les héros. La succes-
sion d'actions héroïques qui résultait de ce type de construction possédait
habituellement une orientation, une finalité, puisque V aventure, manifesta-
tion de la volonté divine, représentait une source d'enseignements personnels
et sociaux.^^ La quête chevaleresque apparaissait ainsi comme le processus
d'apprentissage d'un ensemble dynamique de quahtés guerrières, amou-
reuses et religieuses. Dans les romans de la Renaissance, cependant, V aven-
ture, facteur déterminant dans l'orientation et le sens du récit, fait place aux
aventures purement guerrières, comme nous l'avons déjà souhgné. La quête
n'est plus, dans une telle perspective, la recherche du dépassement de soi,
mais un ensemble d'actions gratuites dont les éléments constitutifs, les
combats, apparaissent souvent comme étant sinon absurdes, du moins peu
justifiés par le contexte.-^' Le chevalier errant, type de personnages très
fréquent à la fin du Moyen Age, s'en prend fréquemment au premier venu
sans raisons évidentes, si ce n'est pour meubler le récit. En masquant ou en
éliminant les enjeux transcendants de la quête chevaleresque, les auteurs de
ces romans font en sorte que les aventures semblent constituer le but ultime
de la narration (comme dans Meliadoret dans le Chevalier au Papegau), d'oij
la tendance à les accumuler pour continuellement remettre à plus tard la fin
du récit. C'est pourquoi ces ouvrages ont l'apparence de romans à tiroirs dans
lesquels l'histoire est étendue au-delà du point de discontinuité logique.^^
Quoique ce type d'errance chevaleresque dans un monde merveilleux {Per-
ceforest oXAmadis comportent bon nombre de fées, de géants et d'enchante-
ments) ne soit pas en lui-même nouveau aux quinzième et seizième siècles,
il reste que la façon dont on lui donne corps à cette époque fait en sorte que
la quête perd son caractère téléologique pour se fragmenter en une multitude
de petites actions relativement indépendantes les unes des autres; actions qui
prennent place dans un univers, fantastique certes, mais dont le symbolisme
originel a été édulcoré au point de n'être présent que dans quelques éléments
du décor censés mettre en évidence la valeur du héros. La magie con-
ventionnelle (et de ce fait prévisible) succède, dans ces textes, à l'au-delà
féerique (imprévisible) caractéristique du roman arthurien. Ce type d'errance,
qui est marqué d'un caractère de gratuité, se trouve illustré dans des romans

194 / Renaissance and Reformation

tels Cleriadus et Perceforest, textes dont l'ouverture narrative évoque ce que
seront les romans picaresques de la fin du quinzième siècle. ^-^

Il n'est pas étonnant que le roman chevaleresque, en perdant une bonne
partie de sa senefiance symbolique,-^"* tende à s'inscrire à partir du treizième
siècle, dans de vastes fresques, les cycles (la vulgate arthurienne et les
vingt-et-un volumes d'Amadis, par exemple), séries dont le caractère épiso-
dique renvoie constamment à plus tard la finalisation de l'action globale du
récit. Même si tous les romans de la Renaissance ne participent pas d'une telle
sériation, la plupart reproduisent à une plus petite échelle l'organisation
épisodique des cycles. C'est ainsi que des romans comme Perceforest,
rédigés par un seul auteur, forment des sommes gigantesques de séquences
narratives mettant en scène les aventures parallèles de nombreux person-
nages. D'après Ryding, cette ampleur textuelle résulte d'une tendance très
vive des rédacteurs de la fin du Moyen Age à amplifier le matériel narratif.
On sait que de façon générale, le Moyen Age considérait que l'allongement
de la conjointure constituait le coeur même du métier d'écrivain. Les genres
longs jouissaient ainsi souvent d'un plus grand prestige que les genres brefs
- du moins auprès d'un certain public. ^^ Les scripteurs des quatorzième et
quinzième siècles ont repris à leur compte ce point de vue, mais de manière
plus marquée en faisant appel à une multitude de procédés d'amplification
matérielles consistant en des ajouts de matière dont la fonction peut être
logique lorsqu'il s'agit d'élucider la trame, ou non logique, lorsque l'addition
répond avant tout au plaisir de l'amplification pour elle-même. Les amplifi-
cations rhétoriques, quant à elles, relèvent moins de l'addition de matière
nouvelle que de l'exploitation maximale du matériel narratif originel par
rapport aux sources dont l'auteur s'inspire. ''^ Sur les plans complémentaires
de la matière et de la forme, ces deux types d'amplification consistent souvent
en la juxtaposition de différentes histoires et en la combinaison du destin de
plusieurs personnages reliés entre eux par des liens de parenté ou par l'appar-
tenance à un groupe social spécifique. C'est pourquoi il est juste d'affirmer
que les rapports actantiels deviennent extrêmement complexes dans les récits
de la fin du Moyen Age, du fait de la multiplicité des actants et de leurs
rapports. D'où l'utilisation de techniques d'entrelacement narratif qui per-
mettent au lecteur de suivre les cheminements parallèles de chevaliers dont
les quêtes sont simultanées. Ces techniques, déjà présentes dans les romans
de Chrétien de Troyes, deviennent des procédés centraux dans le Tristan en
prose et dans Les Quatre Fils Aymon. Notons la prolifération des personnages
principaux dans Perceforest (Alexandre, Betis, Gadifer ... ) et dans Adamis
(Adamis, Galeaor, Florestan ... ), prolifération qui suscite une complexifica-

Renaissance et Réforme / 195

tion des réseaux diégétiques menant souvent à un morcellement extrême et,
disons-le, à une certaine monotonie de la trame narrative. ^^

Nous voici au terme de notre survol des caractéristiques formelles du roman
chevaleresque de la Renaissance, survol dont l'aspect se révèle en fin de
compte aussi fragmentaire que celui des textes qu'il cherche à décrire. Il est
possible de voir dans une telle constatation l'inévitable conséquence d'un
projet de recherche critique qui vise à cerner la spécificité d'un corpus de
textes immense et assez peu étudié. Certains éléments de synthèse sont
cependant formulables dans l'état actuel de nos connaissances, tel le fait que
les romans de la Renaissance reprennent en général les thèmes et les formes
des différents types de romans antérieurs - et plus particulièrement ceux des
récits chevaleresques courtois - en en amplifiant toutefois certains aspects au
point de déformer considérablement la configuration originelle des textes
modèles. Cet effort pour enrichir des dimensions particulières du roman
répond à une volonté de présentation syncrétique de la fiction, laquelle remet
cependant en question la stabilité formelle établie dans les romans «classi-
ques», tels ceux de Chrétien de Troyes. On peut en effet constater que
l'exploitation maximale à la Renaissance de quelques tendances romanesques
médiévales a conduit à un amincissement de la senefiance globale du récit:
ce que le roman chevaleresque a gagné en ampleur et en diversité, il paraît
l'avoir perdu en densité. L'origine de ce phénomène semble résider dans la
volonté qu'ont les rédacteurs de cette période de réconcilier des idéaux
formels et thématiques d'époques et de milieux sociaux différents, volonté
qui doit probablement être considérée comme le reflet d'une société faisant
face à la fin du Moyen Age à des changements de valeurs qui se répercutent
dans l'image paradoxale de la chevalerie projetée par ces textes. -^^

Quoique de nature exploratoire, les quelques éléments définitionnels pré-
sentés au cours de cet article montrent cependant que le roman de la Renais-
sance n'est pas forcément une survivance archaïque des idéaux romanesques
du Moyen Age. Il représente plutôt le point de jonction de plusieurs courants
textuels, d'où émergeront quelques-unes des formes narratives privilégiées
au dix-septième siècle.

Université de Waterloo

196 / Renaissance and Reformation

Notes

1. Marc Fumaroli, «Jacques Amyot and the Clerical Polemic against the Chivalric
Novel», Renaissance Quarterly, 18 (1985), p. 23.

2. Michel Simonin, «La Réputation des romans de chevalerie selon quelques listes de
livres», dans Mélanges de langue et littérature française (offerts à Charles Foulon)
(Rennes: Institut de français, 1980), I, p.364.

3. Jean Frappier, «Les romans de la Table Ronde et les lettres en France au XVF siècle».
Romance Philology, 19 (1965), p. 178.

4. Yves Giraud et Marc-René Jung, La Renaissance I (1480-1548) (Paris: Arthaud,
1972), p.48. Nous ne tenons pas à distinguer de façon précise roman d'aventures et
roman chevaleresque. Nous nous contentons de considérer ce dernier comme un récit
mettant en scène des chevaliers qui connaissent des aventures dont l'enchaînement
constitue le contenu principal du texte, voir J.-Y. Tadié, Le Roman d'aventures (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1982), p. 21.

5. Giraud, p.48.

6. Maurice Lever, Le Roman français au XVII^ siècle (Paris, Presses Universitaires de
France, 1981), p.37.

7. Frappier, p. 1 80.

8. Alexandre Cioranescu, Le Masque et le visage (Du baroque espagnol au classicisme
français) (Genève: Droz, 1983), p.391.

9. Gustave Reynier, Le Roman sentimental avant «L'Astrée» (Paris: Armand Colin,
1908), p.47-49.

10. Raymond Lebègue, «Contacts français avec la littérature espagnole pendant la pre-
mière moitié du XVF siècle», dans Charles-Quint et son temps (Paris: Éd. du Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1959), p. 148.

1 1 . John O'Connor, «Amadis de Gaule» and its Influence on Elizabethan Literature (New
Brunswick [N.J.]: Rutgers University Press, 1979), p.5.

12. Reyner, p. 3

13. Helen P. Daniell, Studies in the «Perceforest», thèse de doctorat. University of North
Carolina, 1968, p.iii.

14. Le Roman de Perceforest (première partie), édition critique de Jane Taylor (Genève:
Droz, 1979), introduction, p.l 1 et 29.

15. Nos commentaires portent sur le premier livre: Amadis de Gaule, premier livre,
traduction française de H. Des Essars (1540), éd. critique de H. Vaganay (Paris:
Hachette, 1918), 490p.

16. Michel Zink, «Le Roman de transition», dans Précis de littérature française du Moyen
Age, dir. M. Poirion (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), p. 295.

17. Jean-Charles Payen et coll.. Le Roman, fasc. 12 de Typologie des sources du Moyen
Age occidental (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), p. 47.

18. M. Zink, p. 295; Marie-Louise Oilier, «Le Roman au douzième siècle: vers et narra-
tivité», dans The Nature of Medieval Narrative, dir. M. Grunmann-Gaudet et R. Jones
(Lexington: French Forum, 1980), p. 123.

Renaissance et Réforme / 197

19. Payen, p.48.

20. Gaston Zink, «Cleriadus et Meliadice, histoire d'une élévation sociale», dans Mélan-
ges de langue [ ... ] offerts à A. Planche (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984), II, p.298.

21. Introduction à Perceforest, p. 32-33.

22. Ryding, p. 19.

23. Payen, p.48.

24. Elizar M. Meletinsky, «Typologie du roman médiéval en Occident et en Orient»,
Diogène, 127 (1984), p. 3 et 14. Michel Stanesco fait un bilan des interprétations
sociocritiques des rapports individu/société dans les romans médiévaux: «Un regard
glacé: le roman médiéval comme justification de classe». Littérature, 4 ( 1 98 1 ), p. 7-20.

25. Daniel Poirion, «Romans en vers et romans en prose», dans Grundriss der Romani-
schen Literaturen des Mittelalters, dir. J. Frappier et R. Grimm (Heidelberg: Carl
Winter, 1978), vol. IV, tome I, p.76.

26. M. Zink, p. 300.

27. Marie-Louise Oilier, «Le Roman courtois: manifestation du dire créateur», dans La Lecture
sociocritique du texte romanesque, dir. H. Mitterand (Toronto: Samuel Hakkert, 1975), p.
185.

28. Aron Kibedi-Varga, «Le Roman est un anti-roman». Littérature 48 (1982), p. 9.

29. W.T. Jackson, «Problems of Communication in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes»,
dans Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies (New Brunswick (N.J.): Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 1970), p.42.

30. Jacques Ribard, «U Aventure dans la Queste del Saint Graal», dans Mélanges de langue
[ ... ] offerts à A. Planche (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984), II, p. 421.

3 1 . Philippe Ménard, «Le Chevalier errant dans la littérature arthurienne [ . . . ]», Senefiance
2(1976), p. 207 et 303.

32. M. Zink, p. 298.

33. Tadié, p. 22.

34. Julia Kristeva, Le Texte du roman (La Haye: Mouton, 1970), p. 190.

35. Ryding, p. 62

36. Ibid., p.S2.

37. /fe/f/., p. 116; O'Connor, p.87.

38. D. Boutet, A. Strubel, Littérature, politique, société au Moyen Age (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1979), p. 96.

Erasmus, Revision, and the British Library
Manuscript Egerton 1651

DAVID R. CARLSON

he American writer Gore Vidal retails an anecdote about his friend, the
playwright Tennessee Williams, of paying Williams a visit, only to catch
him at a kind of behaviour that Vidal regarded as deviant. Williams was
revising a short story that had just been published. "Why," I asked, "rewrite
what's already in print?" He looked at me, vaguely; then he said, "Well,
obviously it's not finished." And went back to his typing. Vidal means to
make a point of Williams's obsession with working: "Tennessee worked
every morning on whatever was at hand. If there was no play to be finished
or new dialogue to be sent round to the theater, he would open a drawer and
take out the draft of a story already written and begin to rewrite it."' But the
anecdote depends for its effect on an implicit agreement, between Vidal and
his essay's contemporary audience, to believe that publication finishes
pieces of writing, in such a way that rewriting something "that had just been
published" can appear to be a pointless, neurotic occupation.

Things were different, however, before and even for some period after the
advent of publication in print, which is what Vidal evidently understands by
the term "publish:" well into the sixteenth century at least, Williams's
behaviour would have been unremarkably normal, while Vidal' s shock at the
thought of revising something that had "just been published" would itself have
seemed shocking. From Vidal' s perspective, which he shares with his late
twentieth-century audience - the perspective of a belief in the finality of print,
in a fixity imparted by it to what is put into it - writers working with
manuscripts of one sort and another, who were in the habit of circulating their
work by means of manuscripts, appear to have been neurotic indeed about
working; they were assiduous revisers and frequent republishers of work that
they had already published.^

These different attitudes to rewriting seem to have something to do with
the technology involved, with the material properties of book-production by

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVII, 3 ( 199 1 ) 1 99

200 / Renaissance and Reformation

manuscript means and by means of print; but it is in fact difficult to specify
a cause.^ Texts can be stable in print, even though often they are not; but texts
are not stable in manuscript, even when stability would seem to have been a
desideratum.'* In the production of the text of every manuscript, human brains
and hands have always participated, more and less actively;^ but the same is
not so persistently true with printing and other mechanical means for repro-
ducing writing. It is possible to make numbers of textually identical copies
by means of a printing press because, once type has been set, human partici-
pation in formulating the text itself can cease. The inevitable mutability about
texts circulated and reproduced in manuscript may have discouraged writers
from regarding pieces of work as finished, in the way that Gore Vidal would
regard something published in print as finished.

In any case, the Tennessee Williams-like attitude towards revision - the
belief that "obviously it's not finished" even after publication - did not
disappear with the advent of printing. It persisted among the first generations
of writers to live and work in the nascent print culture of the late fifteenth and
early sixteenth centuries, for whom printing was not yet synonymous with
publication. Other means remained in use for making writing public; and a
work's publication in any form, including print, did not obviate the possibility
of its republication, subject to revision or not, by the same or different means.
All that printing did was introduce an alternative means of publication for late
fifteenth-century writers, without immediately precluding other means; if
anything, the advent of printing may have increased textual mutability in the
short term, by encouraging writers to rewrite, not only for further manuscript
circulation, but also for print.

Erasmus was among those who lived and worked during this period of
transition from a manuscript-dependent literary culture, characterized by
textual instability, to a culture dominated by printing and the idea of textual
fixity that seems eventually to have been a by-product of it. For Erasmus,
evidently, printing was only an additional mode by which to circulate his
writing, a mode that may have been particularly profitable for him, but one
without as yet other particular privilege or particular consequences for his
behaviour as writer and re writer. He continued to avail himself of manuscript
circulation for his work, publishing and republishing work to patrons and
among equals in manuscript, as appropriate; and although he published in
print a good deal more than most, perhaps all, of his contemporaries, his
involvement with print does not seem to have made him any less assiduous a
reviser of work he had already published.

Renaissance et Réforme / 201

The Erasmian correspondence and his published works combine to provide
an unusually great quantity of information about Erasmus's activities in
publishing his work and rewriting it in public overtime. The textual evolution
of the Adagia, rewritten in public repeatedly over a thirty-year period, in the
series of revised and redacted editions the publication of which Erasmus
oversaw, only provides egregious examples of kinds of behaviour that char-
acterize Erasmus throughout his career, including its earliest phases.^ The
British Library manuscript Egerton 1651 comprises additional evidence for
such practices, in Erasmus's comparatively early work as a poet. The Egerton
manuscript is a collection of Erasmian writings - one rather formal letter and
ten poems, one of them a poem addressed to Erasmus by the Parisian humanist
Robert Gaguin - evidendy written c. 1500. It attests three poems not otherwise
known, and this quality has attracted some scholarly attention to it.^ But its
witness to the other Erasmian writings that it includes has been undervalued;
its importance is as an authoritative witness to Erasmus's activities as a
rewriter of work he had already made public. The texts of the Egerton
manuscript shed light on the several serial campaigns of writing and rewriting
that went into the creation of these early poems of Erasmus.

Egerton 1651 is a small paper manuscript of ten leaves. It was written,
without decoration or ornament of any kind, except for pen-work flourishes
of the simplest sort, in a hand of c. 1500, which does not appear to be the hand
of Erasmus himself.^ Copied into the book - casually, it would seem, with
much abbreviation and a number of errors, only some of them corrected
currente calamo by the copyist - are eleven items, all in Latin verse, with the
exception of the first; the composition of none of them appears to postdate
1500:^

[1] a letter, in Latin prose, headed "Generosissimo duci Henrico
Herasmus," written in 1499 in England, fols. Ir-lv (Allen, Ep.
104);

[2] "In laudem angelorum," written before early 1496, probably in
Paris, fols. lv-5r, comprising subsections headed "De Micha-
hele," fols. 1 v-3r, "Gabrielis laus," fols. 3r-3v, "Raphahelis laus,"
fols. 3v-4r, and "De angelis in genere," fols. 4r-5r (Reedijk, nos.

34-37);

[3] "Hendecasillabum carmen," addressed to Robert Gaguin proba-
bly in 1495 in Paris, fols. 5r-5v (Reedijk, no. 38, "Ad Gaguinum
nondum visum carmen hendecasyllabum alloquitur musas suas");

202 / Renaissance and Reformation

[4] "Epigramma Gaguini," probably contemporary with [3], fols.
5v-6r (Smith, no. 15);

[5] "In Gaguinum et Faustum Herasmus," written a few months later
than [3] in Paris, fols. 6r-6v (Reedijk, no. 39, "In annales Gaguini
et Eglogas Faustinas carmen ruri scriptum et autumno");

[6] "Carmen extemporale," written in 1499 in England, fols. 6v-7r
(Smith, no. 9; Ferguson, p. 29; Reedijk, no. 46);

[7] "In castigationes Vincentii contra Malleoli castigatoris depra-
vationes," written in 1498 in Paris, fols. 7r-7v (Smith, no. 10;
Ferguson, p. 30; Reedijk, no. 44);

[8] "Ad Gaguinum de suis rebus," '^ written in the spring of 1496,
fols. 7v-8r (Reedijk, no. 40, "Ad Robertum Gaguinum carmen de
suis fatis");

[9] "Contestatio salvatoris ad hominem sua culpa pereuntem carmina
futuri rudimentum," probably written in 1499 in England, fols.
8r-8v (Smith, no. 12; Ferguson, pp. 30-31; Reedijk, no. 47);

[ 10] "In dive Anne laudem Rithmi lambici," probably written in 1 497-
1499, probably not in England, fols. 8v-10r (Reedijk, no. 22);

[11] "Ad Skeltonum carmen ex tempore," the first three lines only of
[6] above, followed by the annotation "ut habetur," fol. lOr
(Reedijk, no. 46.1-3; cf. [6] above).

The manuscript came into the collections of the British Museum Library
in December 1854, having been owned previously, it would seem, by Benja-
min Heywood Bright, whose books were dispersed by means of a series of
sales, in 1844 and 1845, after his death." Nothing more can be said of its
whereabouts between the time of its manufacture and the nineteenth century;
but its presence in England and its English contents - the items in it written
for English audiences, such as the letter to Prince Henry [ 1 ] and the poem to
John Skelton [6] - foster the presumption that its provenance is English. In
aggregate, the evidence supports the notion that the manuscript is a product,
possibly at some remove, of Erasmus's residence in England from the early
summer of 1499 until January 1500.

During this period, Erasmus's acquaintance, Thomas More, took him to
meet the Tudor royal household, then in residence at Eltham. Erasmus
recounted the episode some years later, in 1523, in his autobiographical letter

Renaissance et Réforme / 203

to Johann von Botzheim, printed as the Catalogus lucubrationum, in which
he describes the genesis of poems of his:

Sed multo prius aedideram carmen heroico hexametro et iambico trimetro
mixtum de laudibus regis Henrici septimi et illius liberorum, nee non ipsius
Britanniae. Is erat labor tridui. et tamen labor, quod iam annos aliquot nee
legeram nee scripseram ullum carmen. Id partim pudor a nobis extorsit,
parti m dolor. Pertraxerat me Thomas Morus, qui turn me in praedio Montioii
agentem inviserat, ut animi causa in proximum vicum expatiaremur. Nam
illic educabantur omnes liberi regii, uno Arcturo excepto, qui tum erat natu
maximus.

The visitors were welcomed by the royal children Henry, Margaret, Mary
and the infant Edmund "in aulam;" then

Morus cum Amoldo sodali salutato puero Henrico, quo rege nunc floret
Britannia, nescio quid scriptorum obtulit. Ego, quoniam huiusmodi nihil
expectabam. nihil habens quod exhiberem, pollicitus sum aliquo pacto
meum erga ipusm studium aliquando declaraturum. Interim subirascebar
Moro quod non praemonuisset, et eo magis quod puer epistolio inter pran-
dendum ad me misso meum calamum provocaret. Abii dommum, ac vel
invitis Musis, cum quibus iam longum fuerat divortium, carmen intra tri-
duum absolvi. Sic et ultus sum dolorem meum et pudorem sarsi.'-

In 1922, Percy Allen identified what Erasmus says he presented to Prince
Henry in 1499 with the Egerton manuscript, which had come to his attention
only lately: "In the British Museum," Allen wrote, "is an illuminated MS.
(Egerton 1 651) of ten leaves octavo, containing Ep. 104 li.e., Erasmus's 1499
letter to Prince Henry] prefixed to a number of poems, most of which are by
Erasmus. ... Though the Ms. does not contain the Prosopopoeia, it is very
likely a special copy of some of Erasmus' poems prepared for presentation
to Prince Henry after the visit to Eltham in the autumn of 1499."'-^ As the
provisional nature of Allen's remarks suggests, however, identifying the
Egerton manuscript with Erasmus's 1499 presentation to Prince Henry is not
an altogether straightforward exercise. The basis of Allen's hypothesis is the
fact that the Egerton manuscript recalls the terms used in the Catalogus
lucubrationum more nearly than anything else known to survive: it does
include a version of the letter Erasmus wrote Henry on the occasion, along
with other English items contemporary with the letter. Nevertheless, the
manuscript does not match Erasmus's account in the details that matter most.

204 / Renaissance and Reformation

The Egerton manuscript is too humble to seem fit for presentation to a
prince, even at short notice.''^ In addition, the numerous errors of execution
in the copying of the Egerton manuscript are unHkely to have been made by
the author of the writings, or to have seemed passable to him without
correction. '^ Most to the point, the Egerton manuscript is acollection of items,
comprising a representative selection of Erasmus's early verse compositions;
but both the account of the presentation in the Catalogus lucubrationum and
the letter Erasmus wrote Prince Henry in 1499 to cover his presentation speak
as if Erasmus presented Henry a single poem, the thing of which Erasmus
claims, in the Catalogus, ""carmen intra triduum absolvi." In the prefatory
letter that Erasmus wrote for the presentation in 1499, Erasmus again refers
to his versified gift in the singular: he describes himself as a person "qui
carmen suo ingenio, suis vigiliis elucubratum nomini tuo dicat," and says that
he "non veritus sum hunc qualemcunque panegyricon nomini tuo
nuncupare."'^ Finally, this singular carmen or panegyricon can be identified
with a poem Erasmus printed repeatedly in the sixteenth century, with the title
"Prosopopoeia Britanniae," a poem, unusually, "heroico hexametro et
iambico trimetro mixtum," "de laudibus regis Henrici septimi et illius
liberorum, nee non ipsius Britanniae." The letter with which this poem was
printed in the sixteenth century does occur in the Egerton manuscript, as its
first item; but the "Prosopopoeia Britanniae" itself does not, the one piece
Erasmus almost certainly presented to the prince in 1499. Either Erasmus
misled Botzheim in 1523, or the Egerton manuscript is not, and is not much
similar to, the manuscript Erasmus presented to Prince Henry in 1499.

It is somewhat more likely that the Egerton manuscript is, or is nearly
related to, another publication of Erasmus's, that the correspondence again
indicates he made in England in 1499-1500. On 20 August 1499, exit from
England without royal licence was prohibited,'^ and Erasmus chose to pass
the period of obligatory delay in Oxford. While there, between about the
beginning of October 1499 until January 1500, when he returned to Paris,
Erasmus stayed at St. Mary's College, the Oxford hall of his Augustinian
order, the prior of which was then Richard Charnock. Charnock introduced
members of the local learned community to his guest; in some measure by
Charnock' s good offices, Erasmus formed in Oxford at this time a number of
friendships that were to remain important to him over the years, among them
his friendship with John Colet. '^

During this stay with Charnock, on or about 27 October 1499, Erasmus
received a letter from a fellow Lowlander, who was at the time also resident

Renaissance et Réforme / 205

in Oxford, Joannes Sixtinus, praising Erasmus's poetry, which Sixtinus had
seen in something that Chamock had made available to him:

Ostendit hodie mihi humanissimus dominus noster, Prior Richardus Chamo-
cus, quaedam abs te carmina, non vulgari numéro trivialive currentia; quae
si multo labore confecta essent, meo tamen iudicio non in infima laude forent
reponenda. Quum vero elaborata exque tempore at te conscripta dicantur,
quem credis futurum, modo sit ullius ingenii, qui non te cum summis illis
priscisque vatibus, periectis tuis versibus, sit collacaturus? Redolent enim
Atticam quandam venerem mirificamque ingenii tui suavitatem.'^

Neither Sixtinus' s letter nor Erasmus's surviving response to it - a letter
in which, with an, at times, patendy false modesty, Erasmus denigrates his
accomplishments^^ - is specific about the poetry in question. Sixtinus makes
reference to a collection of poems by Erasmus ("quaedam abs te carmina,"
for example) that demonstrated a mastery of various metres ("non vulgari
numéro trivialive currentia"), some of which at least pretended to have been
written "ex tempore." The collection must have been such that by it Sixtinus
felt himself adequately informed to pronounce on Erasmus's skills as poet in
general: that is to say, again, that the subject of the exchange of letters was a
collection, and it would have to have included substantial pieces of writing.

In his reply to Sixtinus, besides simply belitding his "versiculos," Erasmus
only suggests that the poetry must have been old stuff; his muses, he claims,
have been enjoying ten years' rest:

Quod hortaris ut Musas meas excitem, Mercuriali virga opus esse scito, ut
expergefiant ... Excitavimus nuper, et quidem iratas, a somno plusquam
decenni, compulimusque liberorum regiorum laudes dicere. Dixerunt et
invitae et semisomnes cantilenam nescio quam, adeo somnolentam ut cuivis
somnum conciliare possit. Quae cum mihi vehementer displiceret, facile illas
redormiscere sum passus.^'

The implication of this reference to the "Prosopopoeia Britanniae" is that
it was not among the poems Sixtinus saw; otherwise, Erasmus would not have
had to describe the poem for him, the point being that the poem so extremely
displeased Erasmus ("mihi vehementer displiceret") that he would not want
anyone to see it.^^

Because neither Erasmus nor Sixtinus is any more specific about the nature
of the collection of poems that they discuss in their letters, neither quoting
from nor describing or naming any of them, and there is no other evidence,
it is not possible to delineate with precision the contents of the collection or

206 / Renaissance and Reformation

the form that it took.^^ But inasmuch as it seemed sufficient to Sixtinus for
identifying the materials in question to say that he had received the collection
from Chamock, Erasmus can be believed to have passed the collection to his
host Charnock directly; in other words, the collection that Chamock obtained
and then passed along to Sixtinus in October 1499 most likely derived
immediately from Erasmian autographs. Since Erasmus was Chamock' s
guest at the time, Charnock may have had access to Erasmus's foul papers -
Erasmus's drafts of the poems, perhaps written on single, ungathered sheets
of paper. These Charnock might have passed by hand, as they were, to
Sixtinus, who was also locally resident at the time, and from them Sixtinus
could have taken copies of his own. Alternatively, Charnock may have taken
copies of the poems - all that were available to him or only selections - in a
book that he could then have passed by hand to Sixtinus.

Such a process of transmission would have yielded up a thing like the
Egerton manuscript, with its unauthorial errors, its apparent lacunae - its
failure to incorporate the "Prosopopoeia Britanniae," along with that poem's
covering letter to Prince Henry - and the confusion about its treatment of the
"Carmen extemporale," which it begins to include twice. It seems somewhat
more likely that the Egerton manuscript is or has its origin in such a humble,
defective, confused copy, taken from Erasmus's foul papers, by Chamock or
Sixtinus or some other learned Oxonian, during Erasmus's stay with Charn-
ock in Oxford in the fall of 1499, than that the Egerton manuscript is an
authorial presentation copy for a Tudor prince. But again, because of the
vagueness of the evidence for what Charnock and Sixtinus saw in 1499 and
the want of further evidence, it is not possible to assert unequivocally that the
Egerton manuscript issued from among the circle of acquaintances Erasmus
formed in Oxford in late 1499, among whom he did publish his verse.

This evidence from the Erasmian correspondence gives some idea of
Erasmus's publishing activities during his time in England 1499-1500. He
saw nothing printed; he had published little by this means before his arrival
in England in any case, and English printers were laggard in printing humanist
work.^"^ On the other hand, Erasmus did publish writings of his among the
English, by means of manuscripts: he published a presentation manuscript to
Prince Henry, probably a fairly formal thing, that seems to have comprised
his just written "Prosopopoeia Britanniae" along with a letter written to cover
it; and he published a collection of his poetry, probably more informally,
among the circle of acquaintances he formed in Oxford.

The extemal evidence will not admit certainty. In the absence of additional
information, however, the physical and scribal properties of the Egerton

Renaissance et Réforme / 207

manuscript, its presumptive English provenance, and, most telling, the fact
that the selection of Erasmus's writings contained in it includes only pieces
written before 1500, the most recent of which are products of Erasmus's first
English visit, all taken in light of what the correspondence reveals about
Erasmus's publishing activities in England in 1499-1500, make it seem
reasonable to imagine that the Egerton manuscript is a product of his activities
in the country at the time. The Egerton manuscript is not the very thing that
Erasmus gave to Prince Henry; it may or may not be the very thing that
Johannes Sixtinus saw. It is not an autograph, authorial papers either fair or
foul; but it appears to be an apograph, a copy taken, at a remove or two, though
not more, from authorial papers made available by Erasmus - published, in
effect - while he was in England in 1499-1500.

The internal evidence, of the textual properties of the several items in the
Egerton manuscript, corroborates this view of the manuscript's origin. The
details of its textual witness are discussed in some detail below; briefly, the
textual evidence is that the manuscript enjoys an authority independent of the
other witnesses to the several writings and attests to authorial versions and
revisions of the writings. Its texts are riddled with the sort of simple mechan-
ical error represented by the example that Allen adduced as reason for
dismissing it: the reading "Stelkonum" for "Skeltonum" in the letter to Prince
Henry. -^^ Such mistakes, numerous though they are in the Egerton manuscript,
are easily recognized as such. The manuscript's non-erroneous readings, on
the other hand, are not so easily dismissed, being of several sorts, in part
consequent on the manuscript's texts' relations with the other sources of
textual information. Differences among the Egerton manuscript texts and the
other sources are often extensive, and are often too intelligent to be imputed
to non-authorial meddling. In some instances, the manuscript texts give every
appearance of preceding the other texts, in textual terms: in such instances,
the Egerton manuscript readings, while subject to later improvement and
amplification, still appear plausibly authorial, as first tries. In other instances,
most tellingly, the Egerton manuscript texts are intermediate, again in textual
terms, between earlier and later textual alternatives: the manuscript texts
improve antecedent printed texts, in ways that bespeak Erasmus's interven-
tion, and in ways confirmed by the later printed texts, while also retaining
readings of the earlier versions that underwent further revision for the later
printed texts.

Amplification is the most salient of the varieties of Erasmian revision for
which the Egerton manuscript gives evidence. Three of the manuscript's
items apparently antedate printed versions of the 'same' writings: the letter

208 / Renaissance and Reformation

to Prince Henry [1], the "Contestatio salvatoris" [9], and in the "In laudem
Anne" [10]. Comparison of the manuscript with the printed texts of these
items, indicates that each underwent extensive revision, taking the form,
above all, of the addition of new passages to them, at some point between
their publication in the form that brought them to the Egerton manuscript and
their appearance in print. Erasmus seems also to have revised by polishing
his work, repeatedly. The Egerton manuscript texts of his "In laudem ange-
lorum" [2] and the three poems for Robert Gaguin [3], [5], and [8], represent
campaigns of revision intermediate between other versions of the poems,
printed as early as 1496-1497, on the one hand, and then printed again in the
sixteenth century, in 1503 and 1507. In these instances, Erasmus would seem
to have polished his work again, each time he had occasion to publish it by
some means or other. This process of repeated polishing was not altogether
cumulative, however; improvements made at one stage were sometimes
forgotten at the next, and sometimes retained. In any case, instead of simply
republishing what he had already circulated, the evidence of the Egerton
manuscript indicates that Erasmus preferred each time to publish new poems,
in effect - newly refurbished versions of the poems.

In any individual instance, it might be imagined that the Egerton manuscript
texts are non-authorial redactions, made from available printed materials; for
example, that the manuscript's fabricator had access to the text of the letter
to Prince Henry printed in 1500, and abbreviated and otherwise altered it to
suit his own purposes. Such an hypothesis is more difficult to maintain in
other instances: to make the Egerton manuscript texts of the epigrams for
Gaguin, for example, the hypothetical fabricator would have had to have
access to two printed books, and to have cobbled together his plausible texts
from bits of both of them. But to suppose that the whole manuscript was made
by such means necessitates imagining that the fabricator had the use of six or
more printed books, published at various dates over an at least twenty-year
period, between 1496 and 1518, in Paris, Antwerp, Basel, or elsewhere; that
he chose from among the poetry printed in these several books only things
Erasmus had written before 1500; and that he was able to create plausibly
Erasmian new readings and to edit the disparate materials together in con-
vincing ways. And still there would remain the problem of the Egerton
manuscript's source for the two Erasmian items unique to it, the poem to
Skelton [6] and the epigram for Caminade [7]. The Ockhamite alternative that
the evidence will support is to believe that the texts of the Egerton manuscript
derive from Erasmus's own papers, which he made available for circulation
in some form while he was in England in 1499-1500.

Renaissance et Réforme / 209

Notes on the Egerton Manuscript Texts

[ 1 ] The Letter to Prince Henry (Ep. 1 04)

By the evidence of the Catalogus lucubrationum and its own statement,
Erasmus' s earhest letter to Prince Henry Tudor was written during Erasmus's
English sojourn in 1499, to cover his presentation to the prince of a copy of
his verse "Prosopopoeia Britanniae," also written expressly for the presenta-
tion. The text of this letter in the Egerton manuscript suggests that the letter
underwent revision, at its author's hands, between its original publication to
the prince in the summer of 1499 and its publication in print, first in 1500,
after the middle of June, and then again in January 1 507, in the earliest editions
of the Adagiorum collectanea?^ A number of the differences between the
manuscript and printed versions of the letter are simple stylistics variants,
more or less indifferent, of word order and the like; other such local variants
of the printed texts, however, improve initial choices represented by the
manuscript. For example, "'unus vates" - the Egerton manuscript reading -
"eruditis carminibus praestare [immortalitatem]" is potentially confusing in
ways that the reading of the printed versions, "soli vates," is not.-^

More striking is the difference of length between the manuscript and
printed versions: the printed versions add four wholly new passages, one
which comprises about a quarter of the length of the letter as printed. Briefly,
the added passages do more to flatter Erasmus than they would have done to
attract royal munificence. For example, to the manuscript version's list of
princely memorials that the passage of time will destroy - "incisos in es titulos
et operosas pyramides" - the printed versions added "et ceras et imagines et
stemmata et aureas statuas;" and the effect of the insertion is to impute excess
to princely lust for glory and absurdity to such ultimately vain princely efforts
to attract it.

The printed versions' longest insertions speak similarly to this issue of
princely vanity. The only "glorie genus syncerius" that a prince could hope
to attain, the printed versions add, is that coming to him "libero iudicio," "no
ab amore, non a metu, nonab assentatione." The printed versions go on to add
further that purveyors of assentatio - like Erasmus himself, in fact, who
initially wrote the letter to cover his "Prosopopoeia Britanniae" - were only
learned mercenaries, laughing behind the backs of the princes whom they
flattered; and that modern princes were particularly susceptible to such wiles,
because they were both stupid and undistinguished: modem princes "nee
tamen a Gnatonibus suis laudari refugiunt, a quibus se rideri aut sciunt, si quid
sapiunt, aut id si nesciunt, stultissimi sunt" - a statement which seems to leave

210/ Renaissance and Reformation

potential patrons room only to choose between being dupes and being idiots
- and in any case, according to the printed letter, modem princes "desierunt
facere laudanda."

The longer version of the letter raises problems about relations between
learned poets and their patrons - the longer version represents them as mercenary
flatters and their victims, respectively - that do not come up in the shorter version.
In the context of a printed book, the audience for which would in the main have
been Erasmus's learned peers, the long version of the letter could suggest that
Erasmus understood and stood above such venality and malfeasance. In the
manuscript context of his 1 499 presentation to Prince Henry, as a letter presented
to a potential patron (and, in this present instance, his adult handlers), covering
something so abjectly flattering as Erasmus's "Prosopopoeia Britanniae," such
matters were perhaps better left unmentioned.

Here follows the text of the letter to Prince Henry in the Egerton manu-
script, represented synoptically with the variants and insertions of the printed
versions.-^^ The basic text is that of the Egerton manuscript; the punctuation
is editorial; and the synoptic apparatus ignores simply orthographical vari-
ants. Egerton manuscript (Eg.) readings varied by the printed versions are
italicized, and the variants are given immediately following the italicized
words, the variants from the 1 500 Adagiorum collectanea (a, as reported in
Allen) enclosed in angle brackets, and the variants from the 1507 Adagiorum
collectanea (b, as reported in Allen) enclosed in square brackets, often in this
form: Eg. reading < a variant [h variant]>; omissions of a are represented by
"< >" and those of b by "[ ]," following the words italicized in Eg. that were
so omitted. Passages added to the letter by a and b are in boldface, enclosed
in double angle and square brackets, with a and b variants and omissions
within them italicized and bracketed above; words added by b only are
enclosed within double square brackets.

Generosissimo duci Henrico Herasmus

Meminisse debes, Henrice dux illustrissime, eos qui te <> gemmis aurove
colunt <[honorant]>, dare primum aliéna, quippe fortunae munera, turn <[pre-
terea]>caduca^r/am<[ ]>;de'mdQqU(i\mpossing quani plurimi mortales <[qusim
plurimi mortales] possiint [possint]> elargiri; postremo ea [ ] que tibi ipsi < >
domi abundent, queque donare aliis quam accipere magno principi longe sit
pulchrius. At qui carmen suo ingenio, suis vigilis elucubratum nomini tuo dicat,
is mihi non paulo prestanciora videtur offerre, utopote qui non aliéna sed propria
largiatur, nee paucis annis intermoritura; sed qu gloriam etiam uam immortalem
querant <[queant]> efficere, turn ea que perpauci <[perquam pauci]> possint

Renaissance et Réforme / 2 1 1

donare [neque enim pecuniosorum et bonorum poetarum par copia), et <[ ]>
que denique non minus pulchrum sit regibus <[sit regibus pulchrum]>
accipere quam remunerari. Et opibus quidem nemo non regum abundavit,
nominis immortalitatem non ita multi sunt assequuti; quam quidem illi
pulcherrimis facinoribus emereri possunt, ac iinus <[at soli]> vates eruditis
carminibus prestare. Siquidem «[[et ceras et imagines et stemmata et
aureas statuas]]» et incisos in es titulos, et operosas pyramides, longa
annorum series demolitur; sola vatum <[poetarum]> monumenta
«momenta» ipsa etate, que omnia <[res omnis]> débilitât, invalescunt.
Quod prudenter intelligens Allexander, ille cognomento Magnus, a Cherylo,
poeta non admodum sane bono, singulos versiculos «[[tolerabiles]]»
singulis Philippicis ex pacto redimebat. Sciebat enim <[Prospiciebat
nimirum]> et Appellis tabulas, et Lisippi statuas, paucis annis interituras, nec
quicquam omnino fortium <<[[virorum]]>> memoriam eternam
«[[posse]]» reddere prêter immortalitate dignas eruditorum hominum
litteras «[[nec ullum esse glorie genus syncerius ac prestantius quam
quod a posteris virtuti datur hominum, non fortunae, non ab amore, non
a metu, non ab assentatione, sed libero iudicio profectum]]». Age iam,
qui malos versus tam chare prodigus emit, nonne optaverit <optinent [optet]>
Homericos non singulis aureis, sed singulis urbibus emercari? Quem quidem
poetam, tam egregium preconem <[ ]>, «[[et in deliciis habuisse, et]]»
Achilli legitur invidisse <[invidisse legitur]> «[[beatum illum pronun-
cians non solum virtu te, sed potissimum tali virtutum suarum precone.
Quanquam non me clam est bac nostra memoria principes plerosque
litteris tam non delectari quam [[eas]] non intelligunt; qui utrunque iuxta
ineptum existimant, imo pudendum, optimatem virum vel scire litteras
vel a litteratis laudari; quasi vero sint ipsi vel cum Alexandro, vel cum
Cesare, vel omnino cum illo [ullo] veterum aut gravitate aut sapientia aut
benefactorum gloria conferendi. Ineptum putant a poeta laudari, quia
desierunt facere laudanda, nec tamen a Gnatonibus suis laudari refu-
giunt; a quibus se rideri aut sciunt, si quid sapiunt [ ], aut [[id]] si nesciunt,
stultissimi sunt [sint oportet]. Quos quidem ego vel ipso Mida stolidiores
iudico, qui asinis auriculis deturpatus est, non quod carmina con-
temneret, sed quod agrestia preferret eruditis. Mide itaque non tam
animus defuit quam indicium; at his nostris utrumque.]]». Ab hac igitur
tam generosa, tam regia Allexandri mente cum perspexissem pulcherrimam
indolem tuam non abhorrere <[A quorum stulticia qum intelligerem
generosam tuam indolem vehementer abhorrere]>, «[[dux clarissime,
eoque iam inde a puericia [nunc a puero] tuos conatus spectare ut non

212/ Renaissance and Reformation

tarn tuorum temporum quam veterum similis evadere cupias]]», non

veritus sum hoc qualecunque <[hunc qualemcunque]> panegiricon tuo
nomini illustrissimo <[nomini tuo]> nuncupare. Quod <[Qui]> si tue
celsitudini longe impar (ut est) videbitur, memineris facito et Artaxersem,
regem prestantissimum, aquam a rusticano quodam operario, quam ille manu
utraque haustam < > obequitanti obtulerat, hilarem subridentemque
accepisse, et eiusdem nominis alterum <[alium]>, «[[ut opinor,]]» pro
malo a pauperculo quopiam allato, perinde ut pro mangificentissimo munere,
gratias egisse, ratum videlicet non minus esse regale, parva prompte accipere,
quam magna munifice elargiri. Quinetiam superos ipsos <[Quid? Nonne
etiam superi ipsi]>, qui nullis mortalium opibus <operibus> egent, «[[ita
muneribus [[huiusmodi]] delectantur ut]]» contempta interim divitum
hécatombe, rusticana mica et thusculo «[[paupere]]>> placari
<[placentur]>, nimirum ojferentis animo <[animo nimirum offerentis]>, non
rerum precio, nostra donaria metiaris <[metientes]>. Atque <[Et]> hec
quidem interea tanquam ludicra munuscula tue puericie dicavimus, uberiora
largituri ubi tua virtus, una cum etate accrescens, uberiorem carminum
materiam suppeditabit. Ad quod equidem te adhortarer, nisi «[[et]]» ipse
«[[iamdudum]]» sponte tua velis remisque «[[ut aiunt]]» eo tenderes,
et domi haberes Skeltonum, unum Britannicarum litterarum lumen ac decus,
qui studici tua <[tua studia]> possit non solum accendere verum <[sed]> etiam
iuvare <[consummare]>. Bene vale «[[et bonas litteras splendore tuo
illustra, auctoritate tuere, liberalitate fove]]».

[2] The "In laudem angelorum" (Reedijk nos. 34-37)
Erasmus's cflrm/>zâ! in praise of the angels - a single work comprising a series
of subsections - was apparently commissioned, for use in a chapel. As it
happened, the work was not used in the chapel as intended,-*^ and the date of
the commission remains uncertain. The work has been thought to be a product
of Erasmus's residence in Paris in the autumn of 1495, but it may in fact be
earlier. ^^ In any event, the work was printed at Paris in 1496, under Erasmus's
superintendence, among other early poetry of his in a volume entitled De casa
natalicia Jesu, Erasmus's first publication in print.-^' Texts of the work also
occur as the second item in the Egerton manuscript, and in a series of
sixteenth-century printed books: the Lucubratiunculae aliquot printed by
Schurer at Strasbourg between September 1515 and November 1517,^^ and
the Epigrammata and Enchiridion militis christiani printed by Froben at Basel
in March and July 1518, respectively .-^"^

Renaissance et Réforme / 2 1 3

The text of the work in the Egerton manuscript, here entitled "In laudem
angelorum," is filled with numerous simple errors, apparently purely mechan-
ical mistakes made by the manuscript's copyist (e.g., at 34.1 1, 34.51, 34.53,
34.82, 34.87, 35. 19, 35.25, 35.28, 35.34, 36.3, 36. 1 3, 37. 1 8, and the transpo-
sition of hoc and haec at 37.33). The other eariy text of the poem, that printed
in 1496 in the De casa natalicia, manifests a similar rate of mechanical error
on the part of compositors involved in its production. Except in four instances,
of orthographical variation that seem likely to have occurred independently
in both the 1496 and the Egerton manuscript never perpetuates the errors of
the 1496 text. Rather, as does the rest of the subsequent textual tradition, the
Egerton manuscript, even while introducing its own peculiar errors, regularly
corrects the 1496 errors (e.g., at 34.57, 34.60, 34.67, 34.72, 35.6, 35.1 1 [bis],
35.18, 35.55, 36.1 1, 36.20, 37.30, 37.35, 37.43).

The Egerton manuscript introduces errors of its own; but it also corrects
errors of the antecedent, 1496 text, and it attests independently of the ante-
cedent text a series of seemingly authorial changes to the poem that recur also
in the later printed editions. Six readings of the 1496 text that are plausible,
i.e., non-erroneous and not patently unauthorial readings, change in the later
printed editions (at 34.33, 34.39, 34.54, 34.93, 37.21, and 37.31). The nature
of these differences between the 1496 texts and the later printed editions
necessitates presupposing intelligent, creative, i.e., most plausibly authorial,
intervention in the work; and each of these plausibly authorial revisions or
corrections that appear in the printed editions of 1503 and later occurs also in
the Egerton manuscript.

In addition, the Egerton manuscript "In laudem angelorum" has some
eighteen plausible readings that are unique to it, non-erroneous readings that
occur in neither the fifteenth- nor the sixteenth-century printed texts. Of these
plausible readings unique to the Egerton manuscript, one is probably a worse
reading than that of the printed texts (37.21); nine are more or less indifferent
from the readings of the printed texts (i.e., 34.7, 34.61 : metuant, 34.77, 35.17,
35.31, 37.7, 37.25, 37.33: Querit and 37.73) - no reason for preferring the
one over the alternative is apparent in these cases; and in the remaining eight
instances, the unique Egerton readings appear preferable, on some stylistic
basis or other (34.8 1 , 35.42, 36. 1 0, 36. 1 1 : multis, 36. 1 7, 36.32, 37.49-60, and
the manuscript's subtitles). Minor instances of such preferable unique
Egerton readings include "ferus ille," in place of "metuitque" at 35.42, where
the Egerton reading reduces the number of finite verbs and conjunctions,
which otherwise clutter the stanza (35.41-44: "Vidit obliquis oculis
volantem/ Dextero celo metuitque latis/ Incubans terris draco luridoque/

214/ Renaissance and Reformation

Palluit ore"), as well as introducing a pointed contrast between the "ferus ille
... draco" and the fear the angel's approach awakens in him; likewise, the
Egerton reading "Rectius nos te colimus," in place of "Nos magis nos te
colimus" at 36. 1 7, where the Egerton reading eliminates a pointless emphasis
on the verb's subject.

The most significative of these unique Egerton variants is the manuscripts
treatment of the poem's subsections.^'' All texts concur in providing a single
general title for what turns out to be a poem built of more or less discrete sections.
The 1496 text sets at the beginning of the poem: "Carmen ad orationem solutam
plurimum accedens: Ode dicolos hendecasyllaba Sapphica in laudem
beatissimorum angelorum féliciter incipit;" under this rubric follow a first section
headed "Invocatio propositionem complectens" (equivalent to Reedijk's no. 34);
a second section headed "De singulari laude Gabrielis Archangeli" (Reedijk's
no. 35); a third section headed "De singulari laude Raphaelis" (Reedijk's no. 36);
and a fourth section headed "De universis angelis" (Reedijk's no. 37). The
difficulty with this 1 496 arrangement is that, although most of the ninety-six lines
of verse in its disproportionally long first section are devoted to praise of St.
Michael, as subsequent sections are devoted to praise of other angels, the heading
of the section, "Invocatio propositionem complectens," does not mention him.
The 1496 editions' failure to distinguish the poem's "Invocatio," which the 1496
title does mention, from a subsection in praise of Michael, that the 1496 title does
not mention as such, is repeated in all subsequent editions. The later printed
editions, of 1503-1518, address this problem in part, by offering as title for the
whole: "In laudem Michaelis et angelorum omnium," and by omitting to mention
or distinguish the "Invocatio" with which the poem begins. But only the Egerton
manuscript's treatment of the whole poem and its subsections meets the work's
internal requirements: it calls the whole "In laudem angelorum," and it sets the
"Invocatio" (= Reedijk 34.1-16) apart from a section in praise of Michael (=
Reedijk 34.17-ad finem) by inserting the subtitle "De Michahele" between the
two; for the poem's other three subsections, on Gabriel, Raphael, and all angels,
the Egerton manuscript adheres to the practices of the printed editions, setting
off each from the others with subheadings.

Inasmuch as the Egerton manuscript elsewhere independently attests plau-
sibly authorial revisions of the "In laudem angelorum" that the later printed
texts confirm, it is at least possible that these other non-erroneous readings
unique to the Egerton manuscript may also be authorial revisions, but ones
not attested by the later printed tradition for some reason or other. Over half
of the unique Egerton readings are at least as good as the readings of the rest
of the tradition; some seem fairly clearly to be improvements over the texts

Renaissance et Réforme / 215

transmitted in printed editions; and one of them - the manuscript's represen-
tation of the thing as a single whole poem, entitled "In laudem angelorum,"
subdivided into a sixteen-line proem and four additional sections, on Michael,
Gabriel, Raphael, and all angels - seems to capture authorial intention like
no other representation of the work.

The evidence suggests that the original version of Erasmus's poem, of
about 1495, represented only imperfectly by the printed editions of it of 1496,
subsequently underwent revision and correction. A comparatively more thor-
oughgoing correction and revision of it is attested by the Egerton manuscript;
and because this campaign of work on the poem is so attested, it probably
would have taken place prior to or during Erasmus's visit to England in 1499.
An independent, less thoroughgoing but in the event not altogether different
set of revisions and corrections of the 1496 original was later made, and
appears in the later printed texts, beginning in 1503. The earliest revised
printed text, of 1503, was probably produced from a marked-up copy from
one of the 1496 printed editions, without access to or complete recollection
of anything like the Egerton manuscript text, and it incorporates only a simpler
sort of correction and revision; the more substantive and extensive of the
revisions attested by the Egerton manuscript remained otherwise unattested.

Here follows a collation of the Egerton manuscript variants, excluding
variants of orthography, for the "In laudem angelorum," with the texts as
printed by Reedijk, the Egerton readings following the bracketed lemmata.^^
Variants marked with an asterisk were not reported by Reedijk.

*Tit.] In laudem angelorum 34.1 Michaele] Michael 34.7 fulgente]
stellante *34.1 1 Applicet] Applice *34. 13 Luridae] Luride inter 34. lo-
ll ponit Eg. De Michahele 34.23 Utve] Utque *34.39olim] idem exciebis]
excitabis *34.51 Fulminisque] Fulminis *34.53 terret] terre 34.54
Beluae] Bellue 34.61 Ergo] Deinde trépident] metuant 34.77 Laetus
idcirco] Ergo certatim 34.8 1 celebrantur] referuntur *34.82 res] des *34.87
terimus] terminus 34.90 vocablumj vocabulum *inter 34.96 et 35.1 ponit
£g. Gabrielis laus 35.17 canendo] canentes *35. 19 nih] nihil *35.25Tum]
Tu *35.28 Deligit] Delegit 35.31 ne ille sciscat] sentiat ne *35.34 placido]
placito 35.42 metuitque] ferus ille mrer 35.60 er 36.1 ponit Eg. Raphahelis
laus *36.3 Tu te] Tute 36.10multa] longa *36.1 1 ac longis] multis 36.13
Phoebumque] Phebum 36.17 Nos magis] Rectius //iré-r 36.24^-/37.1 ponit
Eg. De angelis in genere 37.7 plenam] pulchram 37. 1 7 quondam] quoniam
37.18rutilabat] rutilabit 37.21 lam pares] Compares 37.32 Decidit] Depluit
37.33 Pugnat] Querit hoc] hec haec] hoc *37.35 tundat] tondat 49-60]
57-60, 49-56 37.72 Christigenarum] Christicolarum

216/ Renaissance and Reformation

[3], [4], and [5] The three Parisian epigrams (Reedijk, no. 38; Smith, no. 15;
and Reedijk, no. 39)

The texts of these three epigrams transmitted in the Egerton manuscript
appear to stand halfway between original versions and the versions printed in
the early sixteenth century. The poems - two by Erasmus, [3] and [5], and
one by Robert Gaguin, [4] - would most likely have circulated hand to hand
in Paris, in ephemeral manuscript copies, in the period just after Erasmus's
arrival in Paris, by September 1495,^^ at least among Erasmus, Gaguin, and
Fausto Andrelini, the third party immediately interested in them. The epigram
by Gaguin does not seem to survive otherwise than in the Egerton manu-
script;-^^ but fairly soon after their first composition and circulation, the two
poems by Erasmus were printed in 1496, in Erasmus's De casa natalica
collection, along with the "In laudem angelorum" and other pieces. These
1496 texts appear to be the earliest extant ones of the Erasmian poems, but
they are not the only printed ones; the poems were reprinted in different
versions, among Erasmus's collected epigrammatic verse in the 1507
Adagiorum collectanea printed by Bade at Paris and again in the 1518
Epigrammata printed by Froben at Basel. The Egerton manuscript texts of
Erasmus's two poems share with the 1496 texts some eight readings, all them
plausible, probably authorial readings, that were later changed when the
poems were reprinted in the sixteenth century (38.3, 38.4, 38.24, 39.3, 39.15,
39.26, 39.3 1 , and 39.32-33).^*^ Most telling of these is perhaps the absence
from the 1496 text and the Egerton manuscript of an entire couplet (treated
by Reedijk as 39.32-33) and the revision of the end of the preceding line
(39.3 1 ) necessitated by the insertion of the couplet in texts of 1507 and later.
The passage in the 1496 and the Egerton manuscript texts reads:

Ille quidem felix agit ocia, sed Scipionis
Ocia, pulchri plena negoci.

while in the sixteenth-century printed editions it reads:

Ille quidem felix agit ocia, qualia quondam

32 Scipiades agitare solebat

33 Urbe procul tacitis solus, neque solus, in agris,

Ocia pulchri plena negoci.

(Reedijk, 39.31-34)

Both versions of the passage are satisfactory, but the later version by no means
represents careless or casual alteration of the earlier one. The new couplet, in

Renaissance et Réforme / 2 1 7

the altered setting, appears to be a revision of the 1496 version of the poem
that had not yet been, made by the time of the genesis of the Egerton
manuscript; the other readings similarly shared between the 1496 and Egerton
texts in contrast to the later printed texts - albeit that they are less substantive
variants and consequendy admit discrimination less surely - are probably
similariy changes made to the poems only comparatively late.

The Egerton manuscript also has a dozen readings unique to it, not counting
its treatment of the titles of the poems, which each of the texts treats differently
from all of the others. Seven or either of these unique readings represent
results of simple mechanical error, almost certainly due only to the peculiar
competence of the person who wrote the Egerton manuscript and so are of no
textual import (38.25, 39.2, 39.6, 39. 13, 39.47, 39.49, 39.5 1-52, and possibly
39.25). The rest are minor variants, of single terms (39.35, 39.36, 39.40,
39.59, and, again, possibly 39.35). The best of them, which tends to suggest
that at least some of these unique Egerton readings are authorial, is the
replacement of the redundancies of the phrase "vagus errat" with the (admit-
tedly unclassical) "correptat" (39.36); in any case, all of these unique,
non-erroneous Egerton variants are of a sort that would appear to have been
created more or less casually, but with some care and thought, in the process
of recopying the poems. None of these peculiarities of the Egerton manuscript
seems to have been of sufficient significance - granted for the moment that
they are authorial - to have been remembered when the poems were being
prepared for republication later among Erasmus's other epigrams.

Such was not the case, however, with the preponderance of the Egerton
manuscript's differences from the 1496 texts. In thirty-one instances, the
Egerton manuscript offers readings differing from those printed in 1496, that
did then reappear in the printed texts of the sixteenth century (38.5, 38.9,
38.1 1, 38.27, 39.1 [bis], 39.5, 39.9, 39.1 1 [bis], 39.12 [bis], in omitting the
couplet that in 1496 followed 39.12, 39.13 [bis], 39.17, 39.22, 39.23, 39.27,
39.35, 39.39, 39.43 [bis], 39.44, in adding the couplet 39.47^8 that had not
occured in 1496, 39.49, 39.56, 39.57, 39.59, 39.60, and in omitting the couplet
that in 1496 had followed 39.60 to conclude the poem).'*^ No more than five
of these readings shared between the Egerton manuscript and the texts in later
printed collections of epigrams simply correct evident errors of the 1 496 texts
(39.17, probably 38.5, and possibly the variants of word order of 39.57 and
39.59-60); the rest are substantive revisions to the versions of the poems
printed in 1496, including several that involved rewriting whole lines and
couplets (e.g., following 39.12, at 39.27, 39.35, 39.39, 39.44, 39.47-48, and
following 39.60). The better part of the final versions of these poems - the

218 / Renaissance and Reformation

versions in the sixteenth-century printed collections of Erasmus's epigrams
- made its earliest appearance in the Egerton manuscript.

Erasmus's epigrams for Gaguin and Andrelini survive in three versions,
each with its own integrity, and each evidently authorial. The original versions
are attested by the 1496 printed book; and the final versions - final in the
sense that Erasmus cannot be shown to have fiddled with the poems any
further - appeared first in 1507, when Erasmus first saw printed his collected
epigrammatic verse. Between these two publications in print, Erasmus would
seem to have circulated intermediate versions of the poems, as attested by the
Egerton manuscript. Albeit impossible to be conclusive about the date of the
Egerton manuscript - its exact chronological fit between or otherwise in
relation to the printed books of 1496 and 1507 - the manuscript is in textual
terms intermediate between them, sharing textual features with both. The
intermediate versions attested by the Egerton manuscript perpetuated a com-
paratively small number of features otherwise distinctive of the 1496 ver-
sions, while also changing the 1496 versions extensively. The final versions
perpetuated the better part of the revisions introduced at the intermediate
stage; effectively discarded a few minor readings, which by consequence
remained peculiar to the intermediate versions; and introduced additional,
albeit comparatively few, changes of their own, altering some passages that
the intermediate versions had retained from 1496. The greatest difference is
between the initial and intermediate versions, between which the greatest
amount of revisions was done; the final versions represent only a comparative
minor retouching of the intermediate versions for republication.

Again: here follows a collation of the Egerton manuscript variants, exclud-
ing variants of orthography, for Erasmus's epigrams for Gaguin and
Andrelini, with the texts as printed by Reedijk, the Egerton readings following
the bracketed lemmata."^' Variants marked with an asterisk were not reported
by Reedijk.

*38.r/r.] Hendescasillabum carmen 38.3 trepidaeque pailidaeque]
trepideque pallideque post corr. 38.4 Necnon Parmeno uti] Ac Parmeno
velut 38.24 ille] ore 2,%.15]deest

*2>9.Tit.] In Gaguinum et Faustum Herasmus *39.2 in herbal desunt *39.3
Errabam] Errarem *39.6 peroso] perose *39.13 occupo] occupe *39.15
devinctus] devotus 39.25 ipsi] illi *39.26 ac] atque 39.31 qualia quon-
dam] sed Scipionis 39.32-33] desunt 39.35 Quippe] Nunc 39.36 vagus
errat] cooreptat 39.40 Agresti] Buccolica *39.47 placidos] placidas
*39.49 tecum] demum 39.51-52] desunt 39.59 arundine] Appolline

Renaissance et Réforme / 219

[6], [7], and [1 1] The "Ad Skeltonum carmen" (Reedijk no. 46) and the
Vergilian Epigram (Reedijk no. 44)

Besides Robert Gaguin' s epigram to Erasmus and Fausto Andrehni, two other
poems are known only from the Egerton manuscript. The one is a poem
addressed to and in praise of John Skelton, written out in full following
Erasmus's epigram to Gaguin and Andrelini, under the title "Carmen
extemporale" [6], the first three Hnes of which, followed by the annotation
"ut habetur," were again copied out at the end of the manuscript, under the
title "Ad Skeltonum carmen ex tempore" [11]. The other is an epigram in the
voice of Vergil [7] - who praises the work of Augustin Vincent Caminade,
and damns that of Paul Hemmerlin,'^- on the text of his poetry - copied out
following the "Ad Skeltonum."

Both poems appear to have been written in the fifteenth century, the
Vergilian epigram in 1498,"^-^ and the "Ad Skeltonum," extemporaneously
according to its titles, during Erasmus's English sojourn in 1499-1500. The
Vergilian epigram was occasioned by the publication of a pair of rival editions
of Vergil at Paris in the same year, 1498, the one by a person - Caminade -
on whom Erasmus was financially dependent from time to time, during the
period July 1497 - December 1500. The epigram would have served to repay
Caminade, for benefactions done to Erasmus, and to strengthen the associa-
tion between them. Probably, it first circulated in Paris more or less privately,
passed hand to hand in ephemeral manuscript copies, posted publicly, or
inscribed in copies of the book in question. Its subsequent republication, by
means of its inclusion in a collection like the Egerton manuscript, would have
served to give notice to such a collection's English audience of the extent of
Erasmus's Parisian connections, as do also the suite of epigrams included in
the collection that had passed among Erasmus, Gaguin, and Andrelini in Paris.

The "Ad Skeltonum" appears to have been similar in purpose, albeit different
in occasion: something written to ingratiate Erasmus with Skelton. Skelton was
Prince Henry's tutor during Erasmus's first visit to England, a position carrying
with it some status and influence, and Skelton was present in this capacity when
More brought Erasmus to visit the royal household at Eltham in 1499.^
Erasmus's "Prosopopoeia Britanniae," also written extemporaneously, and cer-
tainly occasioned by this visit to Eltham palace, also makes mention of Skelton,
likewise in flattering terms. But there is no evidence of any contact between
Erasmus and Skelton subsequent to their meeting in 1499.

Both the Vergilian epigram for Caminade and the effusion for Skelton
would appear to have served short-term local ends for Erasmus, to earn

220 / Renaissance and Reformation

himself the favour of the two men, each of whom was already comparatively
well established, in a locale in which Erasmus was seeking a place for himself.
After 1498-1499, Erasmus' financial situation improved and his reputation
grew, whereas Caminade remained obscure and comparatively impoverished,
and Skelton lost his standing at court when he left the royal household in about
1502. The inclusion of these two apparently early poems of Erasmus in the
Egerton manuscript makes most sense, then, if the manuscript is early, or
represents a collection of Erasmian pieces assembled early in his career, by
about 1500. After that date, interest in the two poems, on the part of Erasmus
or anyone else, would have been minimal; in fact neither of the poems was
put into print, by Erasmus or anyone else, until 1923.'*''

Nothing needs be added to the representations of these poems in Smith
(whose edition is most like the manuscript, except that he gives
"Castaldumque" in place of ms. "Casthalidumque" at 46.4 and "Apollo" in
place of ms. "Appollo" at 46.8), in Ferguson and Reedijk (who classicize and
otherwise 'correct' the orthography), and in Vredeveld, "Erasmus' Poetry,"
pp. 156-157 and 159-160; except to note that the text of 46.1-3 recopied at
the end of the manuscript (i.e., item [11]) does not differ from the other copy
of it in the manuscript (i.e., the first three lines of item [6]); the peculiar title
given the three-line fragment here and the note at the end of it are quoted
above.

[8] The "Ad Gaguinum de suis rebus" (Reedijk no. 40)

Like the other poems in the Egerton manuscript for or by Robert Gaguin, the
poem later printed as the "Ad Gaguinum de suis fatis querela" was written
fairly soon after Erasmus's first arrival in Paris. Since it was not included in
the De casa natalica collection, along with Erasmus's other poems for
Gaguin, printed in Paris in January 1496, the poem is presumed to postdate
that publication; other evidence suggests that it had probably been written by
May 1496, when a personal copy would have been provided Gaguin, and other
manuscript copies may have circulated hand to hand as well."*^ In any event,
the poem was printed in January 1497 with the Sylva odarum of Willem
Hermans - a long-time friend of Erasmus - a volume which Erasmus edited,
also contributing a dedicatory letter to it, addressed to Henry of Bergen and
dated from Paris 7 November 1496.'*^

There is little in the surviving textual evidence to suggest that Erasmus (or
anyone else) ever much reworked this poem, at any point after its initial
composition and printed publication in January 1497. The four at least
potentially authorized and authoritative texts of the poem - those in the 1497

Renaissance et Réforme / 22 1

Hermans Sylva Odarum, in the Egerton manuscript, in the 1507 Adagiorum
collectanea, and in the 1518 Epigrammata - differ from one another only
incidentally. In the poem's fifty-two lines, there are differences among the
four texts at only fourteen places; with the exception that the 1497 text
apparently twice omits whole lines, these differences among the four texts
are never matters of more than single words. Furthermore, nine or ten of the
fourteen variants are mechanical errors, of some copyist or compositor (40.6,
40.22, 40.26, 40.28, 40.32, 40.46 [bis], 40.47, 40.52, and probably 40.24);
those that remain - differences between ned, non, and neque (40.8, 40.9), and
between toties and totiens (40.26) - may well be mechanical errors too, and
are not in any case intrinsically interesting, nor informative, with the possible
exception of an Egerton manuscript variant in a line omitted from the 1497
publication.

Here as elsewhere, the Egerton manuscript introduces its own errors into
the text (e.g., 40.6, 40.22), but at the same time it also corrects errors of its
antecedent, in this instance, the 1497 printed text (40.28, and possibly also
40.9 and 40.24). Most informatively, the Egerton manuscript supplies, evi-
dently out of its own resources, two lines that do not occur in the 1497 text,
but which do appear in the sixteenth century editions (40.47 and 40.52);"^^ in
one of them, the Egerton manuscript reads "Nee cedent miseris pectora
casibus" where the later printed editions read "gravibus" (40.52). Neither of
the lines could have reached the Egerton manuscript via the 1497 edition, and
the variant version of the one could not have come to it from the sixteenth-
century editions. The Egerton manuscript is not the earliest of the texts of the
"De suis fatis;" if it antedates 1507, as seems probable, it is the earliest
complete text of the poem, supplying the lines omitted in 1497; in any case,
the manuscript's ability to supply the two lines, in the form in which it does,
again bespeaks an independence from other sources of textual information
and an independent access to authoritative documents.

Again: here follows a collation of the few Egerton manuscript variants in
the "De suis fatis," excluding variants of orthography, with the texts as printed
by Reedijk, the Egerton readings following the bracketed lemmata."*^ Variants
marked with an asterisk were not reported by Reedijk.

*40.r/7.] Ad Gaguinum de suis rebus *40.6 teneras] teneas *40.8 Nee]
Non *40.22 certo] certe *40.25 Sullae] Scylle *40.26 toties] totiens 46
Quaeve] Quove *40.52 gravibus] miseris

222 / Renaissance and Reformation

[9] The "Contestatio salvatoris" (Reedijk no. 47)

It is generally recognized that a verse monologue, in the voice of Christ, who
chastizes humankind's neglect of him, exists in two versions by Erasmus, a short
form, the "Contestatio Salvatoris ad hominem sua culpa pereuntem," which
occurs in the Egerton manuscript, and a longer one, the "Expostulatio lesu cum
homine suapte culpa pereunte" (Reedijk, no. 85), repeatedly put into print in the
sixteenth-century.^^ In kind, the differences between the "Contestatio" and the
"Expostulatio" are similar to those between other Egerton manuscript versions
and the cognate printed texts, embracing both large-scale changes and local
stylistic improvements. The most substantive differences between the two ver-
sions are reflected in their lengths; like the printed version of the 1499 letter to
Prince Henry, the printed "Expostulatio" is an amplification of the "Contestatio,"
a thing about three times as long again. The order of lines of the "Contestatio"
was kept intact, and among the original lines were inserted a series of wholly
new passages, including a passage of sixteen lines subjoined after what had been
the end of the thing in the short version (85.75-90).

Only five lines of the "Contestatio" (47.3-4, 13-14, and 19) were wholly
discarded from the "Expostulatio;" eleven of the twenty-eight lines of the
short version differ not at all from their counterparts in the longer poem (47.8
= 85.20, 47.10-12 = 85.22-24, 47. 15-16 = 85.3 1-32, and 47.24-28 = 85.70-
74); the rest were variously altered, much or only slightly. In most instances,
these local alterations functioned to refit the old lines for reuse in contexts
created by the new lines; in others, however, the changes appear to be
considered improvement, that is, to represent the sort of verbal polishing that
other poems of Erasmus seem also to have undergone for appearances in print.
For example, the printed editions' phrase "implacabilis ulto iniqui" (85.67)
is more precise in meaning than the Egerton manuscript's "vindexque severus
iniqui" in the cognate line (47.23); and its verbs "rapit" and "ardet" (85.1 1-
12) are more vivid and emphatic than the verbs in the same couplet of the
shorter version: "capit" and "amat" (47.5-6).^'

The long version made its first known appearance c. 1 5 1 1 , in a printed book
comprising a series of poems that Erasmus wrote at the behest of John Colet,
for use in Colet' s recently edified St. Paul's School; this set of poems "in
schola Coletica pronuncianda," including the "Expostulatio," was thereafter
frequently reprinted, in editions authorized and corrected by the poem's
author.^- The short version survives only in the Egerton manuscript, and its
occurrence here tends to suggest an early date of composifion for it, relative
to the printed editions of c. 15 1 1 and later: the poems attested uniquely by the

Renaissance et Réforme / 223

Egerton manuscript are ail early ones, written in the fifteenth century, and
none of the other Egerton manuscript writings that were put into print would
appear, by the internal, textual evidence, to be later than the first decade of
the sixteenth century. The nature of the difference between the "Contestatio"
and the "Expositio" likewise suggests that both versions and their publication
originated in Erasmus's initiative, and that the short version is in the earlier
version, the basis for later amplification and subject to authorial polishing.
The subtitle given the "Contestatio" in the Egerton manuscript - "Carminus
futuri rudimentum" - tends to confirm the implication of the textual evidence,
that the short version, an authorial version, came first. The information that
the "Contestatio" was "carminus futuri rudimentum," the groundwork, in
effect, for a poem yet to be, can only have come from Erasmus, an author
conscious already at the time he circulated the "Contestatio," of an intention
to rework it, to make of this rudimentary draft something greater.

The Egerton manuscript text of the "Contestatio" has already been reported
thoroughly, by Smith, Ferguson and Reedijk; the following cautionary remarks
only seem called for. Smith's is here again the most diplomatic text. The last
word of the title is "rudimentum," not "rudimenta:" the first word of the poem
seems certainly, by light of scribal practice elsewhere, to be "Qum," not "Quin;"
and the manuscript regularly spells "qum" and "qur" (47.1, 8, 17, 18, 20) what
Smith gives as "quum" and "quur," and Ferguson and Reedijk give as "cum"
and "cur." The manuscript's reading at 47.6 is "hac," which all have corrected
silently to hanc\ and, contrary to what Reedijk reports, 47.1 1 reads "sapiencia"
(as also in the cognate line 85.23) rather than "patientia."'^^

[10] The "In laudem Annae" (Reedijk no. 22)

Erasmus's poem in praise of St. Anne, mother of Mary, the "In laudem
Annae," was a presentation piece for Anna van Borssele, Lady of Veere.
Erasmus visited her at Tournehem before visiting England in 1499-1500, and
probably again just after;^"^ his friend Jacob Batt was in her household, as her
son's tutor, and Erasmus continuously entertained hopes of benefitting from
her patronage, up until the time of her remarriage and Batt' s death in 1502.'^-''
He presented the poem to her with a dedicatory letter dated January 1 50 1 ; but
the poem was not printed for some years, until 1518, when, in March, it was
printed by Froben in the Epigrammata and, in July, it was reprinted, again by
Froben, in the first edition of the Enchiridion.

In the dedicatory letter addressed to the Lady Anna, with which he prefaced
the poem, Erasmus claimed that the "In laudem Annae" was "carmen vel
rithmos pofius a me puero admodum lusos; nam iam inde a tenellis unguiculis

224 / Renaissance and Reformation

eius Divae pietate flagravi."^^ The claim may be compounded of disingenu-
ous flattery in some part; it might also, on the other hand, be true that, by
1501, the poem had already been in existence for some time,^^ and the extant
textual evidence indicates that the poem underwent revision at some point in
the course of its publication history.

The text of the "In laudem Annae" printed and reprinted in 1518 differs from
that transmitted by the Egerton manuscript, particularly significantly at the
poem's conclusion. There are only about a dozen differences between the
manuscript and the printed texts, and five to seven of these are evidently
mechanical errors of transmission (22.3 1 , 22.38, 22.52, 22.65, 22.74, and prob-
ably 22.39 and 22.68 as well). For the rest of the variants involving single words
or brief phrases, the readings of the printed texts appear to be improvements, by
comparison with the basically sound readings of the Egerton manuscript (22. 12,
22.35, 22.57, and 22.63). For example, in the phrase "hinc leti lares/ lunctis
revisunt gressibus" (22.63), the "leti" of the manuscript is replaced by "modicos"
in the printed editions, a reading that yields a metrically more supple line as well
as giving greater point to the passage. Of course, the angel's announcement of
Anna's pregnancy would make the aged couple leti; "laetus stupor" of the
previous line but one (22.61) is the more striking image for their response, and
to repeat the same term two lines later only detracts from its effect; moreover,
the couple's humility - their return to their "modicos lares," even as exalted as
the angel's visit has made them - is a point worthy to bear some emphasis, for
purposes of moral doctrine.

The difference of greatest substance, between the manuscript and the
printed texts, occurs at the poem's conclusion. In the printed versions, the "In
laudem Annae" ends with a question and a twenty-line answer to it:

Fit Anna filiae parens.
Nee filiae cuiuslibet,
Sed filiae quae fertilis
Eademque virgo gigneret.
At quern beata gigneret?
Summi parentis filium,
Qui sceptra terrae et aetheris
Cum patre habet communia
(22.71-78)

and so forth, at some length. The Egerton manuscript text neither asks nor
answers the question, wanting the interrogatory line as well as the bulk of
what follows it, to conclude more summarily:

Renaissance et Réforme / 225

Sed filiae quae fertilis
Eademque virgo gignere<t>
Summi parentis filium.

The conclusion of the printed texts only amplifies the paradoxes of the faith
already articulate at the end of the manuscript versions, those of the virgin birth,
of a son who is also his parent's parent, with a focus on the Virgin and on Christ
not otherwise apparent in Erasmus's poem about St. Anne. In the absence of the
printed texts, there would be no reason to suspect defects about the concise ending
that the manuscript puts to the poem, which is coherent as its stands.^^

It is difficult to place the making of these changes to the poem in time - the
local verbal improvements and the amplification of its conclusion. The Egerton
version may be juvenile version of the poem to which Erasmus seems to allude
in his letter to Anna van Borssele, which Erasmus improved and amplified before
presenting it to her in 1501. The altemative is to imagine that the Egerton
manuscript version is essentially the same version as was presented to Erasmus's
prospective benefactor in 1501, and the revisions may have been made consid-
erably later, with a view to printing the poem, as was done in 1 5 1 8. In either case,
the textual evidence favours an hypothesis of the circulation of two versions of
Erasmus's "In laudem Annae," a briefer one circulated at least in England in
1499-1500, whereby it could have come to the Egerton manuscript, and an
amplified one, printed in 1518, one or the other of which was also published by
presentation to Anna van Borssele in 1501; the evidence is that, after an initial
publication of it in one form, Erasmus reworked his poem on St. Anne and
published it again in a different form.

Again: here follows a collation of the Egerton manuscript variants, exclud-
ing variants of orthography, for the "In laudem Annae," with the texts as
printed by Reedijk, the Egerton readings following the bracketed lemmata.^^
Variants marked with an asterisk were not reported by Reedijk.

22. Tit.\ In dive Anne laudem rithmi iambic! *22.12 Deus] decus 22.31
mihi] deest 22.35 Vestran] Isthec 22.38 libidinem nihil] nihil libidinem
ac 22.39 et] deest *22. 52 probe probrum] prole proborum 22.57 invicem]
mutuo 22.63 modicos] leti 22.65 vana] una 22.68 videt] vidit *22.74
gigneret] gignere 22.15] deest 22.11 -ad finem]desunt

University of Ottawa

226 / Renaissance and Reformation

Notes

For counsel and criticism, I am grateful to David Galbraith, Erika Rummel, James Carley,
and William Stoneman; to Julian Conway, of the British Library's Department of Manu-
scripts; and to Harry Vredeveld, particularly, for his detailed scrutiny of my research and
his willingness to make available to me typescripts of forthcoming work of his.

The paper and notes use the following abbreviations: Allen = P.S. Allen, H.M. Allen
and H.W. Garrod, eds.. Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, 12 vols. (Oxford,
1 906- 1 958); CE = Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher, eds.. Contemporaries of
Erasmus, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1985-1987); CWE - Collected Works of Erasmus, vols. 1-
(Toronto, 1974-); Ferguson= Wallace K. Ferguson, Erasmi Opuscula: A Supplement to the
Opera Omnia (The Hague, 1933); Reedijk = Cornelius Reedijk, éd.. The Poems of
Desiderius Erasmus (Leiden, 1956); Smith = Preserved Smith, Erasmus: A Study of his
Life, Ideals and Place in History (1923, rpt. New York, 1962); and Vredeveld, "Erasmus'
Poetry" = Harry Vredeveld, "Towards a Definitive Edition of Erasmus's Poetry,"
Humanistica Lovaniensia 37 (1988), 1 15-174.

1. Gore Vidal, "Tennessee Williams: Someone to Laugh at the Squares With," in At
Home; Essays 1982-88 (New York, 1988), p. 52.

2. Examples - from Ovid to Shakespeare - are too many to be enumerated; only writers
whose literary remains are poorly attested still appear to be exceptions. The revision
of the Eclogues of Mantuan - a leading neo-Latin poet of the period during which
Erasmus was seeking to make a name for himself in the same field - has been
graphically documented lately, be Lee Piepho, "Mantuan and Religious Pastoral:
Unprinted Versions of his Ninth and Tenth Eclogues," Renaissance Quarterly 39
(1986), 644-672, and "Mantuan on Women and Erotic Love: A Newly Discovered
Manuscript of the Unprinted Version of his Eclogues," Renaissance Studies 3 (1989),
13-28.

3. This thesis has recently been discussed by Bernard Cerquiglini, Eloge de la variante
(Paris, 1989), esp. pp. 18-29; cf. also Alvin Kernan, Printing Technology, Letters and
Samuel Johnson (Princeton, 1987), pp. 48-55.

4. As in the instances - characteristically involving some societal interest in maintaining
authority - of law. Scripture, patristic and other authorities for religious dogma, and,
intermittently, the classics.

5. A striking illustration is embodied in the texts of PietroCarmeliano'sfieatoe Katerinae
Vita, written 1483-1485. Carmeliano published his work by means of three presenta-
tion copies, two of which survive (Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, Ms.
196/102; and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 501). Even in details of decoration
and mise-en-page, the two surviving manuscripts are as alike as any two handmade
things can be; and both are autograph copies, written by the poem's author for formal,
final publication. The texts of Carmeliano's 635-line poem in the two manuscripts
differ from one another in some seventy-five places, none of them involving errors,
and over fifty of them substantive.

6. Cf. Margaret Mann Phillips, r/i^ 'Adages' of Erasmus (Cumhndge, 1964), pp. 41-165.
Sotheby's has recently brought to auction a copy of the 1523 Froben edition of the
Adagia that should shed much light on the details of Erasmus's revisionary habits. In
addition to manuscript corrections, the copy is said to contain some two hundred and
forty additional passages, in Erasmus's hand, inscribed between lines, in margins, and

Renaissance et Réforme / 227

on interleaved slips of paper; many, but not all, of these appear in the next edition of
the Adagia, that of 1526. The copy is described, with numerous illustrations, in the
catalogue of Sotheby's 20 November 1990 sale. Continental and Russian Books and
Manuscript, Science and Medicine, lot 397, pp. 208-217.

7. The manuscript was described summarily in the Catalogue of Additions to the Manu-
scripts in the British Museum 1854-1875, vol. 2 (London, 1877), for 1854, p. 837;
notice of it was published by Allen in 1922, as quoted below; in 1923, the three unique
items in it were published by Smith, pp. 453-457, along with the manuscript's
"Contestatio salvatoris" [9]; in 1933, Ferguson, pp. 25-31, republished the same items,
excepting the non-Erasmian "Epigramma Gaguini," [4]; and the manuscript has been
used by Reedijk for his 1956 edition of the poems, and by Vredeveld, "Erasmus'
Poetry," for his castigationes of Reedijk.

8. The manuscript measures 280 x 188 mm, and does not appear to have ever been
trimmed much, if at all; the writing occupies a single column, which is unruled, of
between thirty-six and thirty-two lines, measuring c.215 x c.l45 mm. It is made up of
five conjugate bifolia, from a single stock of paper, gathered into a single gathering of
ten leaves, from which nothing appears to be missing. I have been unable to identify
the watermark in the paper; it would belong among Briquet's class "indéterminés,"
though it does not appear there. The nearest thing to it I have seen is Briquet no. 6702
(found in Northern Italian papers of c. 1489-1491), which is not in fact very much like.
The statement that the manuscript is "illuminated," repeated by Allen, Smith, Reedijk,
and others, is mistaken. For comparison with the hand of the manuscript, I have used
the reproductions of Erasmian autographs in CWE, II, 130, and III, 152 and 212
(examples of 1507 and 1515, respectively); and reproductions of Cambridge, Trinity
College, Ms. R.9.26 (an example of 1503) and Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibl., Gl. Kgl.
Samling 96, made available to me by Erika Rummel, from whose advice about
Erasmus's hand(s) I have benefitted.

9. For dating the composition of these items, I have relied on the discussions of Allen,
for the data of [ 1 ], the letter, and on Reedijk's discussions in his headnotes to the several
poems, except as indicated otherwise. The possible exceptions to the claim that all the
manuscript's items antedate 1500 in composition are items [9] and [10]. [9], the
"Contestatio salvatoris," was not printed or otherwise published until c. 1511, when it
appeared, as the "Expostulatio salvatoris," in a form that differs greatly from the
Egerton manuscript "Contestatio;" this difference is discussed below. Reasons for
thinking that the "Contestatio" was written by 1500 are: first, that the "Expostulatio"
appears to be an amplification of the "Contestatio," rather than the "Contestatio"
appearing to be an abbreviation of the "Expostulatio," so that the "Contestatio"
antedates the c. 1511 publication of the "Expostulatio;" and second, less certainly
informative, that the "Contestatio" occurs in the Egerton manuscript. The claim that
the composition of the manuscript's item [10], the "In laudem Anne," antedates 1500
is similarly somewhat ill-founded. Reedijk's reason for believing the poem to have
been composed "c. 1489" - a passage in the letter Erasmus wrote to cover the poem's
presentation to Anna van Borssele (Ep. 145), in which Erasmus describes it as "carmen
vel rhithmos potius a me puero lusos" and claims "a tenellis unguiculis eius Divae
pietate flagravi" - may be insufficient. The poem may in fact be nearly as late in
composition as its date of presentation to Anna van Borssele, with Ep. 145, in late
January, 1501; the best evidence here - but again, it is not good evidence - for a date

228 / Renaissance and Reformation

of composition somewhat earlier than that of the poem's presentation to the Lady of
Veere is the fact that the poem occurs in the Egerton manuscript, again in what appears
to be draft form.

10. Others have made "etc." of the manuscript's curious, abbreviated scrawl at this point
(cf. Vredeveld, "Erasmus' Poetry," p. 154), where I have read an abbreviation for
"rebus."

1 I . In the Sotheby's sale catalogue for the second of the sales of Bright's books - the sale
of his manuscripts, held 18 June 1844 (cf Seymour De Ricci, English Collectors of
Books and Manuscripts [Cambridge, 1930], p. 107 and n. 3) - Lot 151 (p. 18) is
described as follows:

MISCELLANIES. Liber Theoduli cum commento - Aviani Fabulae, on vel-
lum. Xlllth Century, damaged - Centones Probae, 1481 - Seb. Brant, In
Thurcum invectiva - Jo. Franc. Pici Mirandulae Hymni. Carmen extemporale
(ad Jo. Skeltonum), etc.

According to the annotated copy of this sale catalogue, prepared by Sir Frederic
Madden and now in the British Library, this miscellaneous Lot 151 - consisting of a
series of dfstinct manuscripts, independent in origin, no matter whether or not they
were at the time bound as a single volume - was sold to the bookdealer Thomas Thorpe
(for two pounds, eleven shillings).

Some years later, Alexander Dyce, who had published an edition of John Skelton's
poetry shortly before the Bright sale, in 1843, and who would have had occasion to
deal with Thorpe, printed a text of the "Ad Skeltonum carmen" (i.e., Reedijk, no. 46),
in a second, somewhat augmented edition of his The Poetical Works of John Skelton
(Boston, 1856), pp. Ixvii-lxviii. Dyce says that the text he gives was "transcribed from
a MS. (in the collection of the late Mr. B.H. Bright,) consisting of Hymni, &c., by Picus
Mirandula;" but, except for the fact that Dyce here entitles the poem ''Pici Mirandulae
Carmen Extemporale" his text appears to represent a transcription of the text in
Egerton 1651, as Harry Vredeveld has shown me.

After its purchase by Thorpe in 1 844, that portion of Lot 1 5 1 described in the catalogue
of the Bright sale as "Jo. Franc. Pici Mirandulae Hymni. Carmen extemporale (ad Jo.
Skeltonum), etc." seems to have come into the possession of Charles Frederick Molini,
a resident of London, about whom I have been able to discover nothing, except that,
by a letter of 16 November 1 854, addressed to Madden and now among the minutes of
acquisitions kept in the departmental records of the British Library (as described and
later shown to me by Julian Conway, from whose advice I have benefitted much),
Molini offered to sell to the Library a group of fifteen manuscripts, which he listed
under the heading "Italian Mss." Among these is one that Molini described in his letter
as "Mirandola<e> (lo. F. Pici) Hymni Heroici Très - et carmen extemporale ad
Skeltonum cum comment<o> - small folio, neatly written Ms of XVI. century" (for
which he was asking nine shillings). These are nearly the same terms as were used in
the Bright sale catalogue, and the gist of them was at some point written in pencil,
vertically, in the inner margin of the first folio of Egerton 1561.
In a memorandum of 24 November 1854, also kept among the departmental minutes
of acquisitions. Madden noted that he had selected for purchase for the British Museum
Library seven of the "Italian" manuscripts that Molini was offering; the seven became
Egerton Mss. 1649-1655. By the time the catalogue of these acquisitions came to be

Renaissance et Réforme / 229

printed, it had been established that what had been sold as a manuscript of the poetry
of the Italian, "Mirandolae (lo. F. Pici)," including the poem ostensibly by Pico "ad
Skeltonum," and then accessioned as Egerton 1 65 1 , was in fact a collection of writings
by Erasmus, not Pico.

12. Ed. Allen, I, 6; CW£ IX, 299-300 (no. 1341a).

1 3. Allen, IV, xxi. Ferguson, pp. 25-26, H.W. Garrod, "Erasmus and his English Patrons,"
The Library, 5th sen, 4 (1949), 4-5, and Reedijk, p. 202, have concurred with Allen's
view.

14. On the other hand, John Skelton seems to have presented his paean on the accession
of Henry VIII to the king in 1 509 in the form of a rather plain copy indeed, now London,
P.R.O., E 36/228, fols. 7r-8v: a pair of ungathered sheets of paper, altogether undeco-
rated, that were folded and endorsed like a letter. The copy is reproduced in P.J. Croft,
Autography Poetry in the English Language (New York, 1973), I, 6-8. Likewise, there
is an altogether plain and simple copy, again on paper, of a group of poems by Robert
Whittinton, now Hatfield House, Cecil Papers 233/8, that may have been presented to
Henry VIII in 1532.

15. Most telling of these perhaps is that, having copied out the poem in full once already,
the copyist of the Egerton manuscript began to copy again at the end of the book
Erasmus's poem in praise of Skelton [11], stopping here after only three lines, evidently
having realized by then that a copy of the piece had already been taken.

16. Ep. 104; Allen, I, 239, 240.

17. See Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations, vol. 1 (New
Haven, 1964), 52-54 (nos. 46^7).

1 8. On Charnock, see CE, I, 300-30 1 .

19. Ep. 112; Allen, I, 260.

20. p. 113; Allen, I, 261-265. Cf Vredeveld, "Some 'Lost' Poems of Erasmus from the
Year 1499," in Fide et Amore: A Festschrift for Hugo Bekker, ed. W.C. McDonald and
Winder McConnell (Goppingen, 1990), p. 331.

21. Ep. 113; Allen, 1,264-265.

22. Vredeveld would characterize these remarks about the "Prosopopoeia Britanniae" as
"obligatory modesty" on Erasmus's part; as he points out, Erasmus did in fact have the
poem printed frequently in the sixteenth century and he also mentions it among his
other acknowledged writings in the Catalogus lucubrationum.

23. On the basis of this exchange of letters between Erasmus and Sixtinus, Vredeveld,
"Some 'Lost' Poems," pp. 330-331, makes the same few inferences about the nature
of what Sixtinus saw; he goes on to argue, pp. 331-337, that the collection seen by
Sixtinus may have included also Reedijk nos. 1 9-2 1 , which do not occur in the Egerton
manuscript, in addition to the "In laudem Annae" (Reedijk no. 22) and the "Contestatio
salvatoris" (Reedijk no. 47), which do. Reedijk, pp. 398-399, discusses the same
correspondence more pessimistically, as regards what conclusions can be drawn from
the evidence.

24. By the time of his departure from Paris in May 1499, Erasmus had seen printed only
his De casa natalica collection of verse, two additional poems (Reedijk nos. 43 and
40) and a letter (Ep. 49) in Willem Hermans's 5/7v'« Odarum, and an additional letter

230 / Renaissance and Reformation

(Ep. 49), printed and reprinted, in Robert Gaguin's De origine et gestis Francorum.
On the printing of humanist writing in England at this time, see Carlson "Reputation
and Duplicity: The Texts and Contexts of Thomas More's Epigram on Bernard André,"
forthcoming in ELH.

25. Allen, IV, xxi.

26. For bibliographical descriptions of these two volumes, see F. Vander Haeghen, R.
Vanden Berghe, and Th. -J. -I. Arnold, Bibliotheca Erasmiana: Adagia (Gand, 1897),
pp. 1-7 and 10-14; the edition of 1500 was simply reprinted by its publisher in 1505,
without editorial or authorial intervention.

27. Some of the printed versions' putative improvements may be only apparent, results of
errors of the Egerton copyist rather than authorial revision; the absence in the Egerton
manuscript oi posse, from the phrase "nee quicqum omnino fortium virorum memoriam
eternam reddere," for example, would seem to be an erroneous omission of the Egerton
copyist rather than an improvement of the printed versions.

28. For readings of the printed texts of the various writings of Erasmus discus.sed here and
below, I have often had to rely on the reports of Allen, Reedijk, and Vredeveld,
"Erasmus' Poetry;" I have also had the pleasure of examining many of the pertinent
printed books, in the collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the British Library,
and the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Toronto.

29. Catalogus lucubrationum; Allen, \, 3-4.

30. Cf. the discussion of Reedijk. pp. 227-228. In the CWE volume of Erasmus's poems
(vol. 85, forthcoming), Vredeveld makes a case for dating the poem to the winter or
early spring of 1491.

31. The collection was printed and reprinted by Marchand during 1496. the first time
probably fairly early in the year, the second time with some quantity of verbal and
orthographical variation; cf. the discussion of Reedijk, pp. 237-238. For description
of the two books, see the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, vol. VIII (Stuttgart, 1978),
nos. 9375-9376.

32. Described in Irmgard Bezzel, Erasmusdrucke des 16. Jahrhunderts in Bayerischen
Bibliotheken (Stuttgart, 1979), no. 968.

33. Described in Bezzel, nos. 846, 848-849, and 850-851. The second of these editions,
that of June 1516, adds to its title page the claim "Ex recognitione authoris." The
description of these volumes in Reedijk' s "Survey of Editions and Ms. Sources
Containing Poetry by Erasmus,' p. 369, nos. 188-190, as omitting the poem's section
on Raphael (Reedijk no. 36), is mistaken.

34. Described in Bezzel, nos. 912 and 852.

35. Cf. Vredeveld, "Erasmus' Poetry," p. 150.

36. Cf. also Vredeveld's castigationes of Reedijk's edition of these poems, "Erasmus'
Poetry," pp. 150-152.

37. For the date, see Ep. 43 (and the comments on it in Allen, I, 145-146 and CWE, I, 83),
a letter from Robert Gaguin replying to a no longer extant letter by which Erasmus is
thought to have addressed to Gaguin a copy of his poem "Ad Gaguinum nondum
visum" ([3], Reedijk no. 38).

Renaissance et Réforme / 23 1

38. The epigram does not appear among the materials published by Louis Thuasne, Roberti
Gaguini Epistole et Orationes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1903).

39. The variant at 38.3, where the Egerton manuscript reads "trepideque pallideque" might
be regarded, not as a substantive, but simply as an orthographical variant, except that
the reading is in the manuscript corrected form "trepidaeque pallidaeque," the reading
of the later printed editions, which the Egerton copyist here first wrote and then
expunged.

40. Both the Egerton manuscript and the later printed editions also lack the heuristic
apparatus that the 1496 editions provide for Erasmus's conversation with his muse ( [5],
Reedijk, no. 39), that is, the speech-cues "Thalia" and "Herasmus" (in the margin, iuxta
39. 15 and 39. 1 7, respectively) and the interlinear explanation "Nam hoc carmen et ruri
et autumno scriptum est" that follows 39.18. The title of the poem in 1496, "Carmen
lyricum de hystoriis Roberti Gaguini atque eglogis Fausti. Inducit secum loquentem
Faustinam musam" changes in the later editions to incorporate the interlinear explana-
tion of the 1496 edition: "In annales Gaguini et eglogas Faustinas carmen ruri scriptum
et autumno;" and the marginal speech cues disappeared. In general, such change seem
more likely to be results of a printer's rather than an author's decisions: marginalia
were more difficult (and so more costly) to do in print than in manuscript, and so would
have seemed less worth introducing or reproducing to printers and their compositors
than they would have seemed to scribes or to authors habituated to manuscript
technology. The textually stable marginalia printed with the "Prosopopoeia Britanniae"
in the sixteenth century (e.g.. with the texts of the poem in the 1518 Froben
Epigrammata and the 1506 Bade edition of Erasmus's translations Hecuba et
Iphigenia, but not with the text in the subsequent Aldine edition of the same materials),
mentioned only dismissively by Reedijk, p. 248 n., are probably authorial. Cf.
Vredeveld, "Erasmus' Poetry," pp. 153 and 157-158.

41. Cf. Vredeveld, "Erasmus" Poetry," pp. 152-154.

42. On Caminade and his relations with Erasmus, see Franz Bierlaire, "Erasme et Augustin
Vincent Caminade," Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance 30 (1968), 357-62, and
CEI, 280-281; on Hemmerlin, see CE, II, 175.

43. In the forthcoming CWE volume, Vredeveld established July, 1498 as the date of the
epigram.

44. On Skelton's tenure as a tutor in the royal household, see Carlson, "Royal Tutors in
the Reign of Henry VII," forthcoming in The Sixteenth Century Journal.

45. See above, n. 7.

46. See Reedijk's discussion, p. 238.

47. The letter is Ep. 49, Allen, I, 160-164; for bibliographical description of the Hermans
Sylva odarum, see the Catalogue of Book Printed in theXVth Century Now in the British
Museum, part VIII (London, 1949), 62-63.

48. The 1497 edition acknowledges its defectiveness in these passages, by leaving space
blank on the page where the lines belonged.

49. Cf. also Vredeveld, "Erasmus' Poetry," pp. 154-156.

50. Cf. the discussions of Smith, p. 455, Ferguson, p. 28, who suggests that the poem may
date from Erasmus's "conventual period," and Reedijk, p. 255.

232 / Renaissance and Reformation

51. Cf. also 47.9 rogatus with 85.21 roganti.

52. For bibliographical description of the printed book, see M.E. Kronenberg.
Nederlandsche Bibliographie van 1500 tot 1540, vol. 2 ('s-Gravenhage, 1940), 330,
no. 2887; and see also the discussion of Reedijk, pp. 291-293.

53. Cf. Vredeveld, "Erasmus' Poetry," pp. 160-161.

54. Cf Ep. 87-90 and 1 20, and the notes on them in Allen, I, 223 and 282-4 and CWE, I,
174 and 247.

55. Cf. CE, I, 100-101 and 173-174.

56. Ep. 145; Allen, I, 345.

57. In the forthcoming CW£ volume, Vredeveld argues for a date of late 1 490 or early 1491
for the first version of the poem.

58. Reedijk misreports the variants at the poem's conclusion, in such a way as to suggest
that the Egerton manuscript text is defective, a faulty representation of something
transmitted accurately only in print. He reports that the manuscript simply ends with
22.76; i.e., that it includes the portending question (22.75) but no more than a line of
answer to it (22.76) before giving out. In fact, it omits the interrogatory line (22.75)
but not the next one, which in the manuscript supplies an object for the very "gigneret"
(22.74), to conclude its text of the poem. Cf. Vredeveld, "Erasmus' Poetry," p. 144.

59. Cf also Vredeveld, "Erasmus' Poetry," pp. 143-144.

Politics of John Donne's Devotions Upon
Emergent Occasions: or, New Questions on
the New Historicism

•

MARY ARSHAGOUNI

lintered in the Stationers' Register on January 9, 1624,' and dedicated to
Prince Charles, John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions tradi-
tionally has been read as a meditative exercise that moves from a mood of
anxiety to peace and reconciliation with God.- It has also been interpreted
as a work that offers pointed political advice to King James, an approach
that has attracted those whose interests lie in examining the political and
historical contexts of works. Robert Cooper's 1977 essay, "The Political
Implications of Donne's Devotions'' for example, interprets the Devotions
as a warning to the King against falling under the influence of Rome.^ But
in my view, this new historicist perspective ultimately fails to solve critical
problems in the work. Much of the difficulty in reading the Devotions along
these lines arises from faulty assumptions regarding Donne's political ori-
entation at the time he composed the Devotions, a view that highlights the
striking politicization of Donne's life and works from as early as 1640. In
this article, therefore, I would like to re-examine the historical and political
context of the Devotions, re-consider the way in which Donne's life and
writings have been politicized, and question the appropriateness of applying
a new historicist methodology for interpreting a work like the Devotions.

Let us begin with an examination of the political/historical context that
Cooper presents and consider whether such a reading is in fact tenable. This
re-examination is particularly important, for Cooper's interpretation of the
political role that Donne intended his Devotions to play seems to have become
the accepted view of Donne's political concerns in early 1624, as Arthur
Marotti's recent affirmation of Cooper's assertions suggests. In his analysis.
Cooper finds the traditional meditative view of the Devotions as an account
of Donne's recovery from sickness and ultimate reconciliation with God
"insufficient." In Cooper's words, the traditional meditative view of the

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVII, 3 ( 199 1 ) 233

234 / Renaissance and Reformation

Devotions "does not explain why Donne chooses to fill the work with an
almost endless webbing of political imagery." In addition to any spiritual
movement, he explains, Donne also issues a political warning to King James,
urging him to be on guard against the Roman Church and the dangers of
"relapsing" into Catholic idolatry. He develops this argument by describing
the politically sensitive situation in England in 1623-24 and by noting
Donne's own personal reasons for taking a subtle approach in warning James,
not a direct one. As he stresses the unrest that he thinks English protestants
would have felt in 1623-24 as they anticipated the Spanish match. Cooper
goes on to suggest that because Donne had "fallen at least once into the king's
disfavor, [he] was likely to be extremely cautious about any comment he
might wish to make concerning royal 'inclining to Popery'." Ultimately the
argument rests on the notion that "Donne could hardly have been unaware of
these possibilities when he readied the Devotions for the press and prepared
to dedicate them to Charles Stuart."'*

All of this may sound appealing at first glance. But Cooper's political
analysis suffers from an inaccurate description of the historical context of the
work. First, it accepts Walton's account of the King's displeasure with Donne
at face value and thus concludes that Donne had in fact fallen into disfavor
as a result of his pulpit arguments against the Roman Church. Convincing as
this may sound, the facts do not bear out such a conclusion. As David Novarr
and Judith Anderson have clearly demonstrated, care must be used in reading
Walton.'' According to the story in the Life of Donne, Donne "was once, and
but once, clouded with the King's displeasure ... which was occasioned by
some malicious whisperers, who had told his majesty that Dr. Donne had put
on the general humor of the Pulpits, and was become busie in insinuating a
fear of the Kings inclining to Popery, and a dislike of his government." Other
interpretations of these facts are beginning to come forward. According to
Donne's modern biographer, R.C. Bald, for example, "the incident makes a
pleasant story and is told very circumstantially, but it is suspect none the less."
He suggests that Walton has perhaps confused this with "a well-authenticated
incident which occurred in the next reign when Donne was suspect for a brief
period and successfully cleared himself after an interview with Charles I."^
Paul R. Sellin agrees with Walton, that this incident occurred during James'
reign, but he reads it in an entirely different context. In his view, the king's
displeasure may have resulted from attempts to discredit Donne, not for
speaking out against Papism, but rather for speaking out in support of
Bohemia, following his return to England from the Palatinate and the Neth-
erlands in 1620, a point to which we will return shortly.^ In brief, Walton's

Renaissance et Réforme / 235

suggestion that Donne had been chastized for speaking out against Romanism
is suspect, and one certainly should be circumspect about basing conclusions
on it.

Second, the account of the Directions to Preachers is also subject to
correction. While Cooper, seconded by Marotti, states that James issued the
Directions in hopes of quieting the discontent that had arisen as a result of
the secret trip to Spain that Prince Charies and Buckingham had undertaken,
this cannot be correct. The Directions were issued on August 4, 1 622, whereas
Charles and Buckingham did not set off on their voyage until February 28,
1623. Cooper's inversion of these two events may well result from confusion
between old and new style dating. The Directions arose, rather, from discon-
tent over James's failure to respond to the struggle in Europe where danger
to the Palatinate was growing.^ Though greatly distressed by the threat to
protestantism in Europe and the failure of his sovereign to respond to the
crisis, Donne does not permit himself at this time generally to indulge in any
overt expression of doubt about the King's "constancie in the true reformed
religion." Although his whole heart may not have been in his "Sermon upon
the XX. verse of the V. Chapter of the Booke of Judges. Wherein occasion
was justly taken for the Publication of some Reasons, which his Sacred
Majestic had been pleased to give, of those Directions for Preachers, which
hee had formerly sent foorth," preached at Paul's Cross on September 15,
1622, Donne nevertheless speaks in favor of the King's order, rather than as
the King's critic.^ In a letter to Sir Henry Goodere written but a week later,
Donne explains that because many were distressed by the King's orders, he

had commandment to publish them in a Sermon at the Crosse, to as great a
Congregation as ever [he] saw together, where they received comfortable
assurance of his Ma[jes]ties constancy in Religion, and of his desire that all
men should be bred in knowledge of such things, as might preserve them
from the superstition of 'Rome'.'^

Professing himself pleased with the sermon, the King ordered it printed, and
called it, according to Doncaster, "a piece of such perfection as could admit
neither addition nor diminution."" However he may have felt personally,
Donne never goes so far as to criticize James in this sermon. Quite the
contrary, he urges patience. In fact, he even complains to Sir Thomas Roe
that "to conclude the worst upon the first degree of ill is a distilling with too
hot a fire." He tells Roe as well that "Some weeks after that I preached another
at the same place, upon the Gunpowder Day; therein I was left more to mine
own liberty."'- His expression hardly implies that he ran the risk of royal

236 / Renaissance and Reformation

displeasure. In case any doubt remains, Donne's Gunpowder Day sermon
preached "upon the fift of November 1622" best illustrates the contrary. Here
Donne clearly plays the role of royal apologist. He demonstrates publicly his
commitment to King James, praising him as the symbol of peace, and the
heart and breath of the nation. "In the presence of the Head of the whole
Church, who is All in all," he declares,

I . . . doe deliver that, which upon the truth of a Morall man, and a Christian
man, and a Church man, beleeve to be true. That hee, who is 'the Breath of
our nostrils,' is in his heart, as farre from submitting us to that Idolatry, and
superstition, which did heretofore oppresse us, as his immediate Predecessor,
whose memory is justly precious to you, was: Their wayes may be divers,
and yet their end the same, that is. The glory of God; And to a higher
Comparison, to her, I know not how to carry it.'-^

In light of Donne's own public statements in support of James, it seems hard
to argue that Donne entertained real fear of James's return to 'popery.' Far
from criticizing the King, Donne's response to the Directions to Preachers
expresses explicit faith in James's 'constancie in religion', however much he
may have been troubled by the events in Bohemia and the fall of Heidelberg
in September 1622. If anything, the issues and "politics" behind the Devotions
may be more closely connected with the events in Bohemia than with any real
fear that James would convert to Catholicism.

Third, in describing the political climate which existed when Donne wrote
the Devotions, the analysis put forth by Cooper and Marotti (who describes
Donne as a "sanctioned religiopolitical spokesman"),'"^ focuses exclusively
on the possibility of a marriage between Charles and the Spanish Infanta and
completely ignores the dangers facing protestantism in Europe. Any review
of contemporary documents and correspondence, whether public or private,
however, reveals that from 1619 onward the plight of James's daughter and
son-in-law, the Queen and King of Bohemia, consumed the mind and heart
of England, including Donne's.'-^ After the fall of Heidelberg in September
1622, an event which Donne chronicled in his letters to Goodere, attitudes
towards the Spanish match changed. Whereas before 1623 it had been viewed
with dread, after the fall of Heidelberg it slowly became intertwined with the
restoration of the Palatinate in the minds of the English people, their King,
and their Prince. Indeed, by late 1623 fear of the Spanish match had waned,
and upon the return of Charles and Buckingham from Spain in October 1623,
when it was clear that the match was unlikely to proceed, the whole country
breathed a collective sigh of relief.'^ Rather than encouraging the Papists in

Renaissance et Réforme / 237

England, Charles's return seems to have hurt their position. As early as June
16, 1623, the Venetian' Ambassador in London writes that "the Protestants
here, laying aside their great repugnance of old, seem better disposed to this
marriage. This increases the suspicion of the Spaniards that they have been
assured it will not cause them any prejudice." And on January 3, 1624, John
Chamberlain writes to Dudley Carleton, "We talke of a proclamation likewise
shortly to come foorth against priests and Jésuites . . . which makes the papists
hang downe their heades, and looke for no goode for their tume by this
parlement."'^ After nearly a decade of real crisis because of the Spanish
match, why would Donne, in early 1624, in a work dedicated to Charles,
reverse his position and suddenly attempt to warn James of the dangers of a
Spanish match that was unlikely to take place anyhow? Even though in
January 1624 the match had not definitely been called off, it was clear that
no such marriage would take place before the restoration of the Palatinate,
and in any event, even the conclusion of such a match in 1624 was not
necessarily good news for papists. In short, there is no evidence that in early
1624, precisely at the time Donne readied his Devotions for press, either
James or Charles would be likely even to go through with a Spanish match,
much less return the country to the influence of Rome.

The argument that James would return the country to the influence of Rome
is faulty in other respects too, for it makes no mention of the troubles afflicting
James' daughter and son-in-law in Bohemia. This glaring omission under-
scores two important problems: 1) faulty assumptions regarding Donne's
political orientation and concerns in early 1624, and 2) the tendency of most
Renaissance historicists to focus almost exclusively on issues of domestic
policy at the expense (and at times to the exclusion) of those of foreign policy.
Let us examine the initial problem first. Many scholars today consider Donne
a via media Anglican with Catholic leanings arising from his Papist upbring-
ing - an assumption that is clear in their tendency to view Loyola's Spiritual
Exercises as Donne's primary model for the Devotions}^ But when one
re-examines the earliest biographies of Donne, particularly Walton's 1640
Life of Donne, it becomes clear that Donne's life and writings have been
politicized from the time of his death and that, consciously or unconsciously,
modern assumptions generally have followed along these lines. In a recent
study on Walton's biography of the late churchman, Judith Anderson asserts
that Walton's "'Life of the holy Dr. Donne [first published in 1640 and revised
continually until 1675] is an artificial saint's Life - not an untruth certainly,
but a fiction." Indeed, she goes on to explain, "Walton's role in The Life is
interpretative, and it is also openly inventive. ... Walton may blend his facts

238 / Renaissance and Reformation

with his point of view but the resulting image is one we should recognize as
artificial, contrived, or even fictional."'*^ What is most striking about the
portrait of Donne presented in the Life is Walton's interest in presenting a
holy man with strong ties to the Anglican church. Fittingly, the climax in this
"story" occurs at the moment of Donne's calling. While the biographical
methods employed by Walton "leave us with Walton's picture of Donne, a
real seventeenth-century view of a real life lived in historical time,"-^^ it is
important to recognize the political biases that would have led Walton in early
1640 to place Donne strongly in the "Anglican" camp, a perspective that
assumes that Donne would have focused his attentions on Anglo/Catholic
issues such as the Spanish match, and not on the profound dangers threatening
sister Protestant churches in Europe. Despite statements by Donne's son in
1640 and by more recent scholars that recognize that the political climate had
changed drastically between 1 624 and 1 640, modem scholars like Cooper and
Marotti persist in rehearsing assumptions underlying Walton's Life of Donne
that read Donne as a post-Laudian "Anglican" with strong antipathies to
radical puritanism in Europe and at home rather than as a pre-Laudian
clergyman with deep feelings of kinship with suffering protestant churches
in Europe. In 1624, one could certainly be a Calvinist within the established
church - indeed, as some argue, the established church was Calvinist.' ' But
by 1640, on the verge of civil war, the country divided along lines that simply
did not exist in pre-Laudian times.-- Consequently, a post- 1640 perspective
often fails to recognize the close affinities that had existed between those who
served in the Church of England such as Donne and the Calvinist churches in
Germany and the Low Countries. Unfortunately, this later perspective
remains the bias of many literary scholars concerned with Renaissance and
Reformation issues today.

Let us now turn to the second issue, that of the tendency of Renaissance
historicists to focus almost exclusively on domestic policy to the near exclu-
sion of foreign policy concerns. As Professor Sellin has recently recognized,

a serious flaw in much current historicism, whether "new" or antiquated, is
its seeming reluctance to connect English literature of the Renaissance and
early seventeenth century with anything other than domestic politics and
patronage, almost to the point of effectively excluding from consideration
even large matters involving foreign policy or relations with the Continent
and the world abroad.--^

While Cooper's attempt to link Donne's politics with concerns of foreign
policy - the concerns in England with the events occuring in Spain - is a

Renaissance et Réforme / 239

welcome change from the traditional approach, Sellin suggests a very differ-
ent political context and description of Donne's political preoccupations and
disappointments in the early 1620' s on the eve of his composition of the
Devotions. After describing Donne's experiences with the mission to the
Continent in 1619-1620 led by the King's favorite James Hay, Viscount
Doncaster, Sellin outlines the extreme disappointment that Donne probably
experienced after Doncaster' s failure to move James to become actively
engaged in support of the Palatinate.*^'* Rather than manifesting concern for
the possibility that James might return the country to the influence of Papism
as Cooper and Marotti had suggested, Donne rather showed concern for
James' failure to act on behalf of the Palatinate. The distinction is more than
merely a question of emphasis. In this context, the conclusion that "pohtically
Donne shared the enthusiasm that Doncaster and Nethersole felt for the
Bohemian cause, for Frederick's accepting the crown at Prague, and for
militant support of the Cal vinist Dutch against the house of Spain and Austria"
demonstrates the passion with which Donne held the plight of the Queen of
Hearts in 1622, a fervor that deteriorated into extreme disappointment when
James failed to heed the advice of Doncaster and Donne. Although following
the mission to the Continent with Doncaster, "Donne was to live another
decade," he "never went abroad again." More importantly, "in the many crises
that English foreign policy was soon to undergo, his talents and experience
were never again put to use in this way."^^ Indeed, rather then showing
concern for the possibility that James might return the country to Papism, the
politics behind the Devotions might reflect Donne's extreme disappointment
at the failure of his mission with Doncaster to the Continent and the failure
of James to act decisively on behalf of the Palatinate. In this context, as we
shall see, the Devotions becomes anything but a work offering the kind of
political advice that Cooper describes.

If, as I think, Donne's political and religious orientation in 1623-24
differed from what most scholars generally have assumed, then the position
that Donne feared James would return the country to Papism is untenable.
However, simply correcting historical facts does not address the underlying
methodology. Should a work like the Devotions really be subjected to a
political/new historicist reading? Cooper and Marotti thought the critical
solution to problems in the text lay in politics, but politics as inferred from
imagery considered to be political.^^ The first question that arises from this
method concerns the "endless webbing of political imagery" traced through-
out the Devotions. Does the mere presence of allusions to kingship and society
allow readers to interpret the Devotions as a work which has a specific and

240 / Renaissance and Reformation

definable political intent, as a new historicist reading does? A glance through
the "political" imagery that Donne's speaker employs in the Devotions -
imagery that lies side-by-side his numerous scientific and natural allusions -
reveals Donne's dexterity in manipulating the familiar microcosm/macro-
cosm correspondences, as he has his speaker constantly draw comparisons
between his person, the natural world, and society at large. Do these "politi-
cal" images really differ from the other sorts present? Rather than attempting
to offer political advice, all of them, including the "political," stress the
fragility of mankind in comparison to the greatness and majesty of God - an
important element in humility and pietism. But is this not more a question of
private ethics than public political policy? In Expostulation II, for example,
Donne's speaker makes reference to the biblical King David in order to
remind us that "No man is so little, in respect of the greatest man, as the
greatest in respect of God." Similarly, he says in Meditation III, "a fever can
bring that head, which yesterday carried a crown of gold five feet towards a
crown of glory, as low as his own foot to-day." And again, "A glass is not the
less brittle, because a king' s face is represented in it; nor a king the less brittle,
because God is represented in him. ... They are gods, but sick gods"
(Med.VIII).^^ It is hard to see how such instances as these constitute clear
advice on public policy.

In a similar vein, Donne's speaker praises King James in Expostulation
VIII, not simply for encouraging Donne to take Orders, but more importantly
as an agent through whom God works His will. "But this his assisting to my
bodily health, thou knowest, O God," the speaker asserts, "and so do some
others of thine honourable servants know, is but the twilight of that day
wherein thou, through him, hast shined upon me before; but the echo of that
voice, whereby thou, through him, hast spoke to me before." Here Donne's
speaker praises James not as a ruler governing public affairs, but as an agent
of God's will in shaping Donne's private life. True, Donne is "careful to point
out, constantly, that kings are subject to limitations and restrictions," and need
to be wary of rumours and open to the advice of counsellors.^^ But again, this
is difficult to relate to specific issues of controverted policy, whether foreign
or domestic. And if this is indeed intended to rebuke James, whom the speaker
has just praised - and James's policies certainly had their share of "limita-
tions" - the reference is, if anything, a reflection of Donne's disapproval over
James's failure to act aggressively in support of the Palatinate and European
protestantism rather than a fear of his falling under the sway of idolatry and
papism.

Renaissance et Réforme / 241

Finally, we must consider whether such a "political" reading of the Devo-
tions as Cooper's and Marotti's adequately solves the critical problem that
they see in the ending of the work. That is, though scholars who have focused
on the spiritual nature of the Devotions have insisted on seeing a peaceful
reconciliation at the work's conclusion. Cooper instead highlights the over-
whelming Angst that overcomes the speaker in the final meditation when he
learns that his recovery is temporary and that he will inevitably fall again into
sickness. Furthermore, he explains Donne's fear of relapse solely in political
terms, however questionable. But although an awareness of the political
climate during which Donne wrote the Devotions may add to the poignancy
of the work, there is no conclusive evidence that political considerations either
informed it or that Donne intended it to have a specific and definable political
effect. On the contrary, Donne and his contemporaries spoke of the Devotions
only in pietistic, never in political, terms. In a letter to Sir Robert Ker, Donne
himself explicitly refers to the Devotions as "the meditations had in my
sicknesse . . . [that] may minister some holy delight." John Chamberlain writes
to Carleton of "Dr. Donnes Devotions in his sicknes newly come abrode,
wherein are many curious and daintie conceits, not for common capacities,
but surely full of pietie and true feeling." Even in sending a dedication copy
to the exiled Queen of Bohemia, at best Donne hopes to comfort her and urge
her to bear her crosses and afflictions, as she has done thus far, with patience
and faith. The only possible political reference here is to events in the
Palatinate. And even in the 1655 Dutch translation of the Devotions, appear-
ing shortly after the first Anglo/Dutch War (1648), the translator Johannes
Grindal likewise spoke of nothing but personal piety. In his words "To the
Reader," the Devotions "is the right lye to cleanse the eyes of our conscience;
the right means to bring us to the right knowledge of our Creator, of our
selves."-^^ The deliberate absence of politics in a work published in early 1 624,
precisely when political worries seem to have dominated the concerns of
Donne and his fellow citizens, may rather express Donne's own profound
disappointment both at James' failure to support the Palatinate and at Donne's
own failure to advance as a consequence of his mission to the Continent.
Contrary to what most scholars have assumed, it looks as though Donne's
disappointment may have caused him suddenly - and surprisingly - to turn
away from politics and towards a pietism that allowed him to escape from
just such worldly emptiness, whereas earlier he had embraced such an
approach.

Although we may question Cooper's (mis)use of politics founded upon
incomplete information as a means of solving critical problems in the Devo-

242 / Renaissance and Reformation

tions, we should note that he anticipates the recent flowering of interest in the
political/historical contexts of literary and other texts. ^^ The new historicist
methodology, however, must not be regarded as the only acceptable - or even
the most appropriate - critical perspective in all circumstances or for all
problems. In a recent essay re-examining this now popular critical approach,
Edward Pechter raises some questions regarding its methodology, and partic-
ularly its tendency to "view history and contemporary political life as deter-
mined, wholly or in essence, by struggle, contestation, power relations, libido
dominandi." One of the main problems with this approach "is the way the
new historicists ignore the contrasting rhetorical situations of the texts they
discuss. "Morever, such a methodology results in "the new historicists'
tendency to deemphasize passages whose affective power seems unusually
great," or to read everything in political terms. ^' Ironically, this latter problem
underscores an important shortcoming in endeavoring to read the Devotions
in purely political terms. Indeed, these observations find no better manife-
station then Cooper's treatment of the Devotions. Although he offers his
reading as a way of accounting for the striking fear of relapse with which the
work closes, for example, his analysis insists that the political allusions must
represent Donne's concern with the power of the kingdom. Consequently, he
ignores the poignant outbursts of doubt, hope, piety, and fear that characterize
Donne's speaker as he undergoes first the shock of affliction and then the
shock of recovery. Moreover, if the new historicism's "persuasive capacity
depends first of all on our believing the assumption that the will to power
determines human activity and social organization,"^^ then Donne's Devo-
tions is, ironically, an expressly anti-new historicist work. Written at a time
when Donne seems to have given up any hope of political influence or power,
that is, the Devotions might very well reflect his turning away from the world
of politics and turning toward a worid that transcends everyday weariness.
Indeed, perhaps the most affecting moment in the work occurs when the
speaker realizes in Devotion XIX that he has not died, and hence cannot
escape precisely this world of power, failure, and above all, sinfulness that
has caused Donne himself so much recent trauma and pain.

The parallels between the emotional and psychological distress experi-
enced by Donne and his speaker are striking. Contrary to what scholars
generally assume, that is, Donne's speaker in the Devotions never prays for
physical recovery. Rather, he echoes Donne's own disappointment in the
active, earthly, political life as he longs not for physical recovery and further
engagement in the world but for the triumphant moment when his soul can
join Christ in Heaven. After asserting that "the whole course of life is but an

Renaissance et Réforme / 243

active death" (Prayer XVIII, p.96), Donne's speaker concludes the eighteenth
devotion with his eyes set firmly on heaven, not on the pains and sufferings
of this world. Looking forward to the Last Judgment, when "this soul, now
newly departed to thy kingdom, may quickly return to a joyful reunion to that
body which it hath left," he is overcome by joy as he contemplates the moment
"that time may be swallowed up in eternity, and hope swallowed in pos-
session, and ends swallowed in infiniteness, and all men [that are] ordained
to salvation in body and soul be one entire and everlasting sacrifice to thee,
where thou mayst receive delight from them, and they glory from thee, for
evermore" (Prayer XVIII, pp.96-97). When his hope for union with God is
blasted by physical recovery, however, the speaker can only cry out his
readiness to "deliver [himself] over to [God] this minute, if this minute [God]
wouldst accept [his] dissolution" (Prayer XXIII, p. 126). As these final lines
from the Devotions demonstrate, this work ends with Donne's speaker
shaking in fear and pleading to be preserved through death from relapses of
the spirit. Cannot one as readily hear in the moving cries of his speaker echos
of Donne's own frustrations and disappointments at failing to move his
sovereign to act aggressively and decisively in response to the growing
calamities facing Protestantism in Europe? Or, to put it another way, can one
not help but notice how strikingly the turning away from this world of
sinfulness and fear that Donne's speaker so profoundly expresses in the
Devotions parallels Donne's own turning away from the world of politics as
a result of the series of disappointments that he had recently suffered?

If in its day, Donne's Devotions seems to have been read for its piety rather
than for its political intent, then what is the significance of the curious ending
in which fear of relapsing into sin rather than thankfulness to God for physical
recovery overcomes the speaker? Although scholarship on the Devotions thus
far traditionally has assumed that the work, in keeping with its formal nature
as a meditative account of Donne's spiritual self-combat during his near fatal
illness, moves from initial anxiety at his fall into sickness towards a final
moment of peace brought on by his physical recovery, a careful reading of
the final devotions highlights the speaker' s tremendous concern with misery
and sinfulness. This growing anxiety contrasts sharply with the expressions
of unconditional joy in the fourteenth and eighteenth devotions when the
speaker lay perilously on the verge of death. This concern also far exceeds
the laments on sickness and sin that dominate the early devotions. While it is
not possible to do justice to the argument here, in order to read the ending
properly, it is important to recognize that the speaker explicitly confesses
himself throughout the Devotions as Elect, despite his acute awareness of his

244 / Renaissance and Reformation

own sinfulness. ^^ Contrary to Cooper' s assertion, however, the fear of relapse
in the final two devotions hardly functions as a warning to James of the
dangers of Papism. Rather, it highlights the anxiety that overcomes the elect
of God who, though he enjoys assurance of salvation, nevertheless knows that
as long as he remains on this earth, he will fall again and again into sin, even
though to be sure, he can never fall completely away from God. Far from
expressing criticism of public policy, whether foreign or domestic, the Devo-
tions is rather an anatomy of Perseverance, an experience appropriate only to
the elect who despite their assurance of salvation, can never be free from
sinfulness while on earth. It is a dramatization of the emotions which afflict
the godly as they attempt to humble themselves before God, repent their sins,
and bear their crosses patiently as they await their final moment of peace, a
peace that comes with a final escape from - and not an engagement in - the
world of politics, diplomacy, and worldly men.-^"^

While an accurate political reading - one more scrupulous than we have
had thus far - may add to the poignancy and emotional depth of the work,
particularly in light of the political failures and disappointments that Donne
had suffered just prior to his writing the Devotions, one must remain cautious,
for not all texts are equally amenable to this approach. Awareness of the true
political and historical situation leading up to the publication of the Devotions
reveals that in this work, a Donne psychologically distressed by the failure of
his mission with Doncaster to persuade King James to act decisively on behalf
of the Palatinate offers a striking and profound turning away from the world
of politics as he realizes the suffering that this world inevitably brings and
laments his failure to escape from its miseries into the eternal comfort of
Heaven. Or to put it another way, a new historicist reading, as we have seen,
ironically points up how "anti-historical" a work the Devotions in fact is. In
short, it becomes clear why ultimately in the Devotions - and perhaps this is
Donne's point - piety and poetry transcend politics.

Oakland University

Notes

1. All dates are in new style, unless otherwise indicated.

2. See R.L. Abrahamson, "The Vision of Redemption in Donne's Devotions upon Emer-
gent Occasions," Stadia Mystica 6.i ( 1 983), 62-69; N.J.C. Andreasen, "Donne's Devotions
and the Psychology of AssenU" Modern Philology 62 (1965), 207-216; Gerald H. Cox, III,
"Donne's Devotions: A Meditative Sequence on Repentance," Harvard Theological
Review 66 (1973), 331-351; Jonathan Goldberg, "The Understanding of Sickness in
Donne's Devotions" Renaissance Quarterly 24 (1971), 507-517; Thomas J. Morrissey,

Renaissance et Réforme / 245

'The Self and the Meditative Tradition in Donne's Devotions^ Notre Dame English
Journal 13 ( 1980), 29-49; Dan Noel Smith, "The Artistry of John Donne's Devotions^
University of Dayton Review 10,i (1973), 3-12; and Thomas Van Laan, "John Donne's
Devotions and the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises," Studies in Philology 60 (1963), 19 1-202.
Although these essays focus on varying aspects of Donne's Devotions, all assume a
movement from sickness and discord to recovery and peace.

3. See Robert M. Cooper, "The Political Implications of Donne's Devotions," in Gary A.
Stringer, éd.. New Essays on Donne (Salzburg Studies in English Literature) (Salzburg:
Institut furEnglischeSprache und Literatur, 1977), 192-210. Cf. Arthur Marotti, Jo/iw
Donne: Coterie Poet (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), pp.276, 287,
349. Cooper responds particularly to Andreasen's "Donne's Devotions and the Psy-
chology of Assent."

4. Cooper, pp. 192- 196.

5. See David Novarr, The Making of Walton's 'Lives' (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1958), 29-30 et passim; Judith H. Anderson, Biographical Truth: The Representation
of Historical Persons in Tudor-Stuart Writing (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1984), pp. 57-61.

6. Izaak Walton, The Life of Dr. John Donne, in John Donne: Devotions upon Emergent
Occasions (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1959), p.xxv; R.C. Bald,
John Donne: A Life (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), p.455.

7. Paul R. Sellin, 'So Doth, So Ls Religion : John Donne and Diplomatic Contexts in the
Reformed Netherlands, 1619-1620 (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1988),
pp. 166-168.

8. Buckingham and Charles set off on February 18, 1622 old style, which becomes
February 28, 1623 when translated into new style. The date for the issuance of the
Directions remains August 4, 1622. For accounts of the growing discontent over James'
failure to act decisively in support of the Palatinate, please see the Calendar of State
Papers, Domestic Series, \ .10 i\6\9-l623), ed. Mary A. E. Green (London: Longman,
1858); and Valaresso to the Doge, March 1, 1623, in the Calendar of State Papers,
Venetian Series, v. 17 (1621-1623), ed. Allen B. Hinds (London: 191 1). The accounts
of the Dutch ambassador in London, Noel de Caron, also underscore this growing
discontent on the part of the English citizenry. See, for example, his letters to the States
General from December 25, 1621, to March 13, 1623, printed in The British Museum,
London, "Engelsche dépêches, berustende in het Rijks Archief te s'Gravenhage,"
Documents on British Dutch Relations. Deposited in the British Museum by order of
Viscomte Palmerston, Secretary of State, December 20, 1848, 1 1 reels. Microfilmed
by the Bancroft Library, The University of California, March 4, 1957, #0157, reel 5.

9. In this sermon, Donne stresses the need for the church to follow the "Orders" or
"Priviledges which godly Princes, out of their pietie have afforded" preachers such as
himself, particularly those which this "Royall and religious Head of these Churches
within his Dominions hath lately had occasion to do" [George R. Potter and Evelyn M.
Simpson, The Sermons of John Donne (Berkeley, The University of California Press,
1959), vol. IV, sermon # 7, pp. 198-199]. See also the last half of the sermon,
pp.20 1-209, in which Donne speaks specifically in support of the Directions to
Preachers. Although Donne expresses faith in the constancy of James's religion
throughout this sermon, there are undertones of dissatisfaction. In his John Donne: A

246 / Renaissance and Reformation

Life, R.C. Bald writes that "Donne's defence of the King's directions scarcely touched
the real issues" (p. 434) and in a letter to Carleton in September, 1622, John Chamber-
lain writes "on the 15th of this present the Dean of Paules preached at the Crosse to
certifie the Kings goode intention in the late orders concerning preachers and preach-
ing, and of his constancie in the true reformed religion ... , but he gave not great
satisfaction, or as some say spake as yf himself were not so well satisfied" [The Letters
of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman E. McClure (Philadelphia: The American Philosoph-
ical Society, 1939), v. II, p.451]. Rather then suggesting that Donne feared James'
return to popery, this dissatisfaction may instead reflect his concern over James's
failure to act aggressively on behalf of the Palatinate. Indeed, Donne may be referring
in this sermon to mounting discontent amongst the citizenry regarding James' failure
to act in this regard when, in speaking of God's power, he says:

But I speake of this subject, especially to establish and settle them, that suspect
Gods power, or Gods purpose, to succour those, who in forraine parts, grone
under heavie pressures in matter of Religion, or to restore those, who in
forraine parts, are devested of their lawfull possessions, and inheritance; and
because God hath not done these great workes yet, nor yet raised up meanes,
in apparance [sic], and in their apprehension, likely to effect it. That therefore
God likes not the cause; and therefore they begin to bee shaked in their owne
Religion at home, since they thinke that God neglects it abroad.

Potter and Simpson, IV, p. 183.)

10. Donne to Goodere, September 1622, Letters to Severall Persons of Honour by John
Donne, ed. Charles E. Merrill, Jr. (New York: 1910), p. 200. This letter also
demonstrates the careful attention Donne paid to events in Bohemia.

11. Doncaster to Donne, 1622, Edmund Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne
(London: 1899), v.II, pp. 160-61.

12. Donne to Roe, December 1, 1622, Gosse, v.II, pp.1739675.

13. Potter and Simpson, V. IV, p. 254.

14. Marotti, p.287.

15. From 1619 on. Chamberlain's letters to Carleton and the Venetian Ambassador's letters
to Venice [see C.S. P., Venice, vols. 16 & 17], reveal England's deep interest in the
Palatinate and the fate of the King and Queen of Bohemia. The letters of Caron, the
Dutch Ambassador to London during these years, similarly reveals the concern that the
English court and people felt for the events occuring in the Palatinate. See, for example,
Caron' s letters to the States General, recorded in "Engelsche dépêches," from Decem-
ber 25, 1621, to October 7, 1623. Cf. Donne to Goodere, September 24, 1622, Letters
to Severall Persons of Honour, pp. 182-183. This letter, too, chronicles the events as
they unfolded in Bohemia, thereby revealing the deep concern that Donne felt for them.

16. For example, on May 22, 1623, the Venetian Ambassador wrote from London, "A
Gentleman has reached here in twelve days from Spain, sent expressly by the Prince
of Wales with a letter to his sister, asuring her that he will on no account consent to the
marriage before he has obtained the restitution of what belongs to her, and brought her
the rest and peace which he desires for her" {C.S. P. Venice, v. 18). In detailing the
various changes that occured in English policy toward the events in Bohemia, the Dutch
Ambassador Caron similarly recounts how the Spanish match became contingent upon

Renaissance et Réforme / 247

the restoration of the Palatinate. His letter of July 30, 1622, for example, relates not
only that the Infanta has agreed upon the conditions of the marriage, but, more
importantly, that the King will support this marriage only if the Palatinate is restored.
Indeed, as Caron reports on December 22, 1623 (Charles has returned to England
without the Infanta), although Spain refuses to return the Palatinate until after the
match, the King insists that this restoration must take place before the wedding.

17. C. S.P.Venice, v. 18, June 16, 1623; Chamberlain to Carleton, January 3, 1624, v.II,
p.537.

18. For a full analysis of Donne's Catholic background, see Dennis Flynn, "Donne's
Catholocism: I" Recusant History 13 (1975-76), 1-17 and "Donne's Catholocism: 11"
Recusant History 13 (1975-76), 178-195. Cf. R.C. Bald, John Donne: A Life (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 39-40, 61-68. Ignatian readings of the
Donne's poetry and his Devotions include: Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation:
A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1954); Thomas Van Laan, "John Donne's Devotions and the Jesuit
Spiritual Exercises," Studies in Philology 60 (1963), pp. 191-202; Anthony Raspa,
"Introduction" to his edition of the Devotions (Montreal: McGillQueen's University
Press, 1975), pp. xiii-xl; Sister Elizabeth Savage, éd., John Donne's Devotions Upon
Emergent Occasions (Salzburg: Institut fur Englisch Sprach und Literatur, 1975), pp.
liii-cii; and R. L. Abrahamson, "The Vision of Redemption in Donne' s Devotions Upon
Emergent Occasions" Studia Mystica, 6 (1983), pp. 62-69.

19. Anderson, pp. 19, 57, 61, 69. Anderson's study builds upon Stephen Greenblat's
important work. Renaissance Self -Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980) and David Novarr's The Making of Walton 's Lives.
Note, too, that Anderson (pp. 58-65) explains how Walton made revisions in his Lives
that reflected the changing historical times, and that Walton constantly interpreted and
reinterpreted the events in Donne's life.

20. Anderson, p. 69.

21. See Paul R. Sellin, John Donne and 'Calvinist' Views of Grace (Amsterdam: 1983),
pp. 1-50; Mary E. Arshagouni, John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: A
Puritan Reading (Dissertation: University of California, Los Angeles, 1988), pp.
341-346.

22. Indeed, the growing tension between what scholars now call the via media "Anglican"
church and more radical Puritans within England in early 1640 may very well have
been the impetus for Walton's insistence on defining Donne as a true son of the
post-Laudian "Anglican" church, though of course he would not use these terms.
Donne's own son, John Donne, Jr., may very likely be alluding to this very problem
in remarks made on the 1640 printing of his father's Sermons. According to John
Donne, Jr.,

... Upon the death of my Father, I was called awaie, beeinge commaunded by
the Kinge, and encouradged by most of the cheefe men in the Kingdome, to
recollect and printe my Fathers Sermons. ... I had in my proceedings with the
Bysshop of Canterburies Chaplaines, (who were to licence them), manie
disputes, thay offeringe to expunge manie things, which hee openly preached,
and, in the Bysshops hearinge, withoute anie dispute, all his lyfetime: by which

248 / Renaissance and Reformation

meanes, I soe farr incurred the Bysshops displeasure, that hee thrice put me \

by the Cannonry. !

See Bald, pp. 575-576. One cannot help but wonder just what were those "manie things, i
which [Donne] openly preached" that the Bishops in 1640 found so objectionable.

23. SeWiix, 'So Doth, So Is Religion', p.vU. I

24. According to Professor Sellin, moreover, "there is little doubt," that Donne's thoughts \
were consumed with the problems facing protestantism in Europe and "that about this I
time [ 1 62 1-22] Donne did in fact air his opinions publicly about Bohemia, the papacy, '
and the consequences of neutrality for the Reformed religion." Ibid, p. 169.

25. ???

26. Cooper, pp.192, 203-04.

27. John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, edited by Anthony Raspa (Mon-
treal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975). All subsequent references will be from '
this edition. 5

28. Cooper, pp. 198-201. J

29. Donne to Ker, February 1624, Letters, pp.2 14-1 5; Chamberlain to Carleton, February \
21, 1624, p.545; Donne to the Queen of Bohemia, 1624, Gosse II, p. 205; Grindal, "To f
the Reader," reprinted in Paul R. Sellin, John Donne and 'Calvinist' Views of Grace, 'i
pp.59-61. j

30. See, for example, Louis Montrose, "Renaissance Literary Studies and the Subject of |
History,"' English Literary Renaissance 16:i(Winter 1986), pp.5- 12; and Jean Howard, i
"The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies," English Literary Renaissance 16:i
(Winter 1986), pp. 13-43.

3 1 . Edward Pechter, "The New Historicism and Its Discontents: Politicizing Renaissance
Drama," Publications of the Modern Language Association 102:iii (May 1987),
pp.292-299.

32. Ibid, p.301.

33. Mary Arshagouni, "Election in John Donne's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions"
(unpublished essay).

34. Please see my study, John Donne 's Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: A Puritan
Reading, for a full account of this reading of the Devotions.

La Création du monde et The Taming of the
Shrew: Du Bartas comme intertexte

RICHARD HILLMAN

Uepuis la parution, en 1908, de la thèse de Harry Ashton intitulée
Du Bartas en Angleterre - ouvrage réédité en 1969' - la question des
premières traductions anglaises de La Création du monde de Du Bartas est
généralement considérée comme réglée, bien que la problématique de
l'influence contemporaine de l'épopée chrétienne sur le monde littéraire de
l'Angleterre soit restée ouverte.-^ La présente étude aborde ces deux
problèmes à la fois en examinant, du point de vue de l'application
idéologique de certains éléments bartasiens, une traduction du seizième
siècle jusqu'à présent presque entièrement négligée.

Cette négligence s'explique assez facilement; comme il ne s'agit que de
quelques vers de La première sepmaine, ensevelis dans une pièce assez
obscure à laquelle personne ne prêterait aucune attention, si ce n'était sa
relation - vivement disputée, bien sûr - à The Taming of the Shrew de
Shakespeare. Ce lien problématique augmente l'intérêt de cette oeuvre ano-
nyme, The Taming of a Shrew, bien que je n'aie pas l'intention de prendre
parti dans le débat sur l'ordre prioritaire de ces textes, considérant la pièce
soit comme un "Bad Quarto" de la pièce de Shakespeare, soit comme sa
source ou encore comme une version plus ou moins dégénérée de quelque
source commune. Les relations entre ces deux oeuvres n'altèrent en rien leurs
divergences vis-à-vis Du Bartas: d'une part, l'héroïne farouche de The Tam-
ing of a Shrew annonce finalement son propre apprivoisement en citant les
vers de Du Bartas sur la création de l'ordre universel par "L'immuable décret
de la bouche divine" ( 1 9),^ d' autre part, l'héroïne de Shakespeare - également
nommée "Kate" - n'étend son argument ni à Dieu ni à la nature, pour garder
son discours strictement au niveau humain et politique. Le devoir de l'épouse,
considéré comme obligation purement séculière, remplace la grande logique
de la création selon laquelle Eve fut justement subordonnée à Adam. Cette
absence ou plutôt cet effacement du système de l'harmonie divine de

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVII, 3 ( 199 1 ) 249

250 / Renaissance and Reformation

Du Bartas, c'est-à-dire de l'essence de son texte, entraîne la question
suivante: comment justifier la soumission absolue de la femme à l'homme?
Même si la critique a perçu des thèmes bartasiens dans les paroles finales
de la Kate de l'auteur inconnu,"* je n'ai trouvé aucune description exacte de
cet emprunt. Voici les six premiers vers de ce discours:

Thetemall power that with his only breath.
Shall cause this end and this beginning frame,
Not in time, nor before time, but with time, confusd.
For all the course of yeares, of ages, moneths,
Of seasons temperate, of dayes and houres.
Are tund and stopt, by measure of his hand . . .

(xviii. 17-22)5

A part une certaine confusion dans les deux premiers vers produisant une
structure grammaticalement incomplète, ce passage suit assez fidèlement les
vers 19-24 du Premier jour.

L'immuable décret de la bouche divine.

Qui causera sa fin, causa son origine.

Non en temps, avant temps, ains mesme avec le temps,

J'entens un temps confus, car les courses des ans.

Des siècles, des saisons, des moys, et des journées.

Par le bal mesuré des astres sont bornées.

Dans les quatre lignes suivantes, Kate continue sa traduction, mais elle saute
presque deux cents vers de l'original:

The first world was, a forme, without a forme,
A heape confusd a mixture ail deformd,
A gulfe of gulfes, a body bodiles.
Where all the elements were orderles.

(xviii.23-26)

Ce premier monde estoit une forme sans forme.
Une pile confuse, un meslange difforme,
D'abismes un abisme, un corps mal compassé.
Un Chaos de Chaos, un tas mal entassé
Où tous les elemens se logeoient pesle-mesle.

(1.223-27)

Renaissance et Réforme / 25 1

Comme on le verra, le fait que la traduction omet le vers employant le terme
"chaos" signale l'imposition d'une idéologie plus conservatrice à l'intertexte.
L'approche radicalement différente de Shakespeare sera également évidente.
Quant à Kate, elle commence dès lors à s'éloigner de plus en plus du texte
bartasien. Elle laisse de côté l'amplification des éléments en désordre qui occupe
les neuf prochains vers de l'original, avant de faire un geste assez vague - "the
great Commander of the world" (xviii.27) - vers l'image de Dieu en tant que
"Grand Mareschal de camp" qui donnera "Quartier à chacun" (1.237-38) des
éléments. Kate gâte encore la cohérence grammaticale en remplaçant le futur par
le passé - "Who in six daies did frame his heavenly worke, / And made al things
to stand in perfect course" - afin évidemment d'opérer dans la narration une
transition vers le point principal, axe moralisateur du texte soit, la création de
l'homme et de sa méchante inférieure:

Then to his image he did make a man,

Olde Adam and from his side asleepe,

A rib was taken, of which the Lord did make.

The woe of man so termd by Adam then, •

Woman for that, by her came sinne to us.

And for her sin was Adam doomd to die.

(xviii.31-36)

Par ces vers, l'héroïne antiféministe abandonne non seulement l'esprit mais
aussi la lettre de son modèle. Du Bartas ne traite de la création de la race
humaine qu'à sa juste place dans l'histoire, c'est-à-dire au Sixiesme jour, où
d'ailleurs il ne parle pas de la femme en tant que pécheresse ou inférieure
mais, au contraire, comme une sorte de supplément rédempteur:

Sans qui l'homme ça bas n'est homme qu'à demy:
Ce n'est qu'un loup-garou du soleil ennemy.
Qu'un animal sauvage, ombrageux, solitaire.
Bigarre, frénétique, à qui rien ne peut plaire
Que le seul desplaisir, né pour soy seulement.
Privé de coeur, d'esprit, d'amour, de sentiment.

(6.949-54)

Dieu opère Adam "[c]omme le médecin, qui desire trencher / Quelque
membre incurable" (6.961-62) et "[p]our sauver l'homme entier, il en coupe
une part" (6.966). Eve forme avec son conjoint r"amoureux Androgyne"
édénique (6.987). Loin d'être une lutte pour préserver une hiérarchie précaire,
le mariage devient, même dans ce monde déchu, la "[slource de tout bon heur"

252 / Renaissance and Reformation

(6.987). La lacune déjà ouverte entre le discours de Kate et l'autorité textuelle
qu'elle invoque se transforme de la sorte en un véritable abîme.

Revenons au chaos, pour ainsi dire. Ce terme est exclu non seulement par
Kate, mais aussi par le premier traducteur anonyme de La première sepmaine
en 1 595 dans sa version du même passage - version beaucoup plus pittoresque
que celle de Kate, même si elle est plus éloignée de l'original:^

Base was the world's first visage, and vncouth,

An Auerne dungeon, tost with heedles quoyle:

A rifraffe medley; and gulphall mouth.

A sluggish heape of Elements at soyle.

Amongst themselues pell mell all one the spoyle. (14)

II faut reconnaître que le rôle attribué par Du Bartas au chaos dans le
processus créateur provoqua une grande controverse religieuse, non seule-
ment parce que l'idée du chaos était d'origine païenne, mais aussi parce
qu'elle menaçait, dans le texte de Du Bartas, le dogme de la création ex
nihiloJ L'auteur a tenté de maintenir l'orthodoxie à cet égard, en parlant assez
énigmatiquement, par exemple, de

Ce lourd, dy-je. Chaos, qui, dans soy mutiné.
Se vid en un moment dans le Rien d'un rien né ...

(2.43-44)*^X

Le principe du mystère divin y était ainsi suffisamment préservé. Néanmoins,
il semble qu'une fois créé du néant, le chaos lui aussi acquiert un pouvoir
créateur, en fonctionnant effectivement comme partenaire nécessaire de Dieu.
Car c'est le chaos qui "Estoit le corps fécond d'où la celeste essence / Et les
quatre elemens dévoient prendre naissance" (2.45^6).

Ce tableau risque de soulever une question dangereuse pour l'auteur, soit
celle de la nature de la matière. Chez des néo-platoniciens comme Plutarque,
le concept typiquement grec de la création comme mise en ordre accorde à la
matière non seulement une force créatrice, mais une âme.^ Dans le contexte
chrétien, une telle perspective entraîne d'inquiétantes conséquences concern-
ant le rapport de Dieu à sa création, le statut actuel du monde et la nature du
temps. De plus. Du Bartas est bien capable de renforcer cette inquiétude en
exprimant ses idées au moyen d'images assez étonnantes: quand il a recours,

Renaissance et Réforme / 253

par exemple, à une ancienne croyance pour expliquer le processus par lequel
le chaos a donné naissance à l'univers. Dieu, propose-t-il.

En formant l'univers fit donc ainsi que l'ourse

Qui, dans l'obscure grotte, au bout de trente jours.

Une masse difforme enfante au lieu d'un ours;

Et puis en la léchant ores elle façonne

Ses deschirantes mains, or' sa teste félonne.

Or' ses pieds, or' son col, et d'un monceau si laid

Son industrie anime un animal parfait.

(1.408-14)

Outre la représentation vraiment audacieuse de Dieu dans ce passage, il est
frappant que cet "animal parfait", manifestant la perfection de la création, soit
aussi le symbole même pour la Renaissance de la destruction brutale et sauvage,
tel qu'attesté par les "deschirantes mains" et la "teste félonne". Ces détails ont
étés supprimés de la traduction de 1 595 et également de celle de Joshua Sylvester,
postérieure à cette dernière, sans doute afin de produire un tableau plus neutre,
qui ne susciterait pas de réactions négatives.'^ Chez Du Bartas lui-même, le
lecteur se heurte à un paradoxe: la naissance devient la mort tout en demeurant
la naissance. Ce n'est peut-être pas par hasard qu'on trouve les mêmes images,
chargées d'un semblable mélange de destruction et de création, au moment où
le roi Richard III de Shakespeare, homme déformé moralement ainsi que phys-
iquement, mais plein de force et d'énergie, parle de sa naissance: "Like to a chaos,
or an unlick'd bear-whelp / That carries no impression like the dam" (Richard
///,III.ii. 124-27)."

Parmi les commentateurs modernes de Du Bartas, c'est Luzius Keller qui
a saisi les implications subversives, sinon carrément hérétiques, d'une telle
conception du chaos créateur. Après avoir approfondi le traitement du chaos
chez Du Bartas, Keller conclut: "Tout nous fait croire que Du Bartas est tenté
d'attribuer à la Matière un prestige semblable à celui qu'il attribue à Dieu". '-
Sans doute existe-t-il des indications spécifiques, en plus des réticences des
traducteurs, qui soulignent la problématique découlant du thème du chaos
pour certains lecteurs contemporains, même si l'on peut parler, en général,
comme le fait James Dauphiné, d'une "'rencontre' entre La Sepmaine et la
religion dominante".'^ Simon Goulart, par exemple, consacre un effort
considérable à justifier l'orthodoxie de cet aspect de la pensée de Du Bartas
dans son commentaire détaillé d'abord publié avec l'édition de 1582 et
éventuellement tiré à part en traduction anglaise.'"* Sur la défensive, il
réaffirme au nom du poète la doctrine de la création ex nihilo ainsi que les

254 / Renaissance and Reformation

principes philosophiques qui en dépendent. Il insiste donc dans un premier
temps sur le fait que la matière n'a pas d'être en soi, puis que le chaos (image
empruntée à Ovide) n'attribue pas à Dieu le rôle borné de metteur-en-ordre.
Selon lui, on peut légitimement considérer le chaos comme r"embryon" du
monde puisque cet embryon a été créé du néant par la volonté divine.

Cette opinion est bien loin, tout de même, du jugement outragé de Christo-
fle de Gamon, exprimé dans son ouvrage aussi absurde que révélateur, La
Semaine, ou Création du monde contre celle du sieur Du Bartas)^ Ce n'est
guère exagéré de décrire son intérêt pour la question comme une véritable
obsession, provoquant des attaques beaucoup plus violentes que celles
lancées contre d'autres aspects du poème de son adversaire désigné. Pour lui,
évidemment. Du Bartas donne l'assaut à la toute-puissance de Dieu en
renversant le processus créateur. En fait, De Gamon déconstruit la section du
poème traitant du chaos, parfois vers par vers, dans un véritable orage de
négation. Ainsi Dieu, selon lui.

N'entassa point un Tas qui fust mal entassé,

Ne fut vn monstre horrible, un corps mal compassé

Une forme difforme, vn informe meslange.

Une pile, vn Chaos, vn brouillement estrange, (p. 5)

L'auteur estime qu'il serait fondamentalement contraire à l'essentielle
harmonie divine que les éléments "Se fissent l'vn dans l'autre vne mortelle
guerre" (p. 5); il devient donc nécessaire de rejeter comme antichrétienne
toute la conception du chaos:

Du fantasque Chaos la profane doctrine

Ne heurte seulement la Parole-Divine,

Mais la nature encor du prudent Créateur,

Qui d'vn euure confus ne peut estre l'Auteur, (p. 8)

Mais à la lumière du contexte bartasien, il est clair qu'en supprimant la
mention du chaos, la Kate de The Taming of a Shrew n'essaie pas seulement
d'éviter une controverse théologique assez abstraite. Il s'agit surtout pour elle
de garder pur et clair l'appui que prête la hiérarchie de la création divine à la
subordination de la femme. Dans cette pièce, la tendance au désordre est
carrément qualifiée de féminine et stigmatisée comme contraire à la volonté
d'un bienveillant créateur masculin. En fait, comme la création de la femme
chez Du Bartas ne constitue pas une menace à l'ordre - l'auteur applique.

Renaissance et Réforme / 255

pour ainsi dire, l'argument a priori de de Gamon à cet égard - le chaos
lui-même représente un élément (ou plutôt des éléments) nettement positif.
En outre, le chaos de Du Bartas est revêtu d'une identité indubitablement
féminine, grâce à plusieurs images de naissance et de fécondité qui rappellent
la désignation néo-platonicienne de la matière comme part féminine de la
nature, c'est-à-dire comme conjointe de Dieu.

Or, nous avons vu que, dans la pièce anonyme. Dieu existe, au moins dans
les coulisses. Kate l'invoque directement comme l'autorité ultime, garantis-
sant la place convenable de chaque élément dans la grande chaîne de la
création. De plus, dans une scène antérieure qui a son équivalent très connu
dans l'ouvrage de Shakespeare, les conjoints invoquent Jésus en réglant leur
dispute sur l'identité du corps céleste qui brille à ce moment (il fait plein jour,
bien sûr): "Jésus save the glorious moone" (xv. 11,12). Il s'agit également
dans les deux pièces d'une confirmation de l'obéissance littéralement aveugle
de la femme. Mais il y a une différence significative. Si le dernier discours
de la Kate de Shakespeare présente sa soumission comme une question de
devoir féodal, de dépendance physique, et d'obligation morale ne tenant
aucunement compte de Dieu, c'est que le héros, Petruchio, s'est déjà
effectivement substitué à Dieu. Il ne jure pas par Jésus, mais "by my mother's
son, and that's myself (IV.v.6); il s'arroge le pouvoir non seulement
d'interpréter la réalité, mais de la transformer selon sa propre volonté, voire,
jusqu'à commander le temps: "It shall be what a' clock I say it is" (IV.iii.l95).
On prophétise à son sujet, "this gallant will command the sun" (196), et
lorsque cela arrive littéralement, Kate doit lui rendre hommage dans les
formes spécifiques de la prière:

Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun.
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it nam'd, even that it is.
And so it shall be so for Katherine.

(IV.v. 18-22)

Quand l'on connaît les versions anglaises de la Bible du seizième siècle, il
est impossible de ne pas remarquer la cadence biblique de ce passage dans
lequel la force créatrice du langage de Petruchio supplante carrément le
principe de la dénomination adamique.

Dieu n'est pas absent de The Taming of the Shrew; il prend le nom de
Petruchio. Cependant, Petruchio est loin de se comporter d'une manière
divine. Franchement humain, il se montre intéressé, brutal, égoïste: l'idée

256 / Renaissance and Reformation

qu'il aime Kate dans le sens romantique du terme me semble rien de plus
qu'une fantaisie entretenue sans aucune preuve textuelle. Afin peut-être
d'excuser, en soulignant l'idéologie contemporaine, des idées trop
inquiétantes pour être attribuées personnellement à Shakespeare, plusieurs
commentateurs ont accentué le stéréotype de la "shrewishness". En particu-
lier, on a souvent comparé le thème de The Taming of the Shrew au traitement
de l'histoire de Noé au moyen âge. Bien que l'on y trouve un apprivoisement
semblable d'une femme rebelle, il devient capital que ce résultat dépend non
des efforts du mari, toujours comiquement futiles, mais de la grâce divine.
Comme dans la pièce anonyme, cette grâce transcendante établit la place
subordonnée de la femme dans le plan universel de Dieu. Comportant moins
de brutalité physique que la plupart des oeuvres littéraires anti-féministes de
l'époque, la pièce de Shakespeare est paradoxalement plus inquiétante
qu'elles - et je crois qu'elle l'aurait été pour un public conservateur de la
Renaissance - à cause de sa transformation des prérogatives divines en
ambitions terrestres. En imposant sa volonté à son épouse, Petruchio ne se
montre ni plus juste ni plus sage ni plus pieux qu'elle, mais simplement plus
fort.

Quant à l' intertexte, il me semble que la séparation radicale dans The
Taming of the Shrew du modèle de la création de sa base théologique dégage
effectivement les significations les plus subversives de la version de
Du Bartas, qui sont activement supprimées par la pièce anonyme. Il faut
d'ailleurs reconnaître que le chaos représenté par la Kate de Shakespeare est
doué d'une valeur créatrice en soi. En effet, l'harmonie finale, confirmée
d'une façon conventionelle par des mariages multiples, n'existerait pas du
tout sans elle, c'est-à-dire sans son entêtement, son énergie, son désordre, sa
colère assez justifiée. C'est elle qui provoque la transformation du monde de
la pièce, même si elle le fait à ses propres dépens. Elle invoque, voire elle
invente, les règles de la comédie sous le nom de Petruchio. Ce dernier est
ainsi vraiment relégué au rôle de metteur-en-ordre, comme menace de le
devenir le Dieu bartasien. Ce n'est point, bien sûr, la perspective de Petruchio
lui-même. Contrairement à son équivalent dans la pièce anonyme, qui prend
sa place dans l'ordre universel en faisant le travail de Dieu, Petruchio vise à
recréer l'univers selon sa propre vision. Il croit d'ailleurs avoir réussi. Mais
sa présentation non comme agent du tout-puissant, mais comme tyran ter-
restre, mené par une vision bornée et étroite, entraîne une diminution ironique
de sa stature. Elle entraîne aussi l'ouverture d'un espace infranchissable entre
deux conceptions antagonistes, l'une d'un véritable mythe de création,
appartenant à la comédie divine - on pense, à cet égard, à la figure de

Renaissance et Réforme / 257

Mutabilitie chez Spenser, aussi en quelque sorte une mégère apprivoisée - ,
et l'autre d'une histoire assez sordide de souffrance et de répression dans
l'ordre de la politique sexuelle. Cette dernière vue implique sans doute une
dimension tragique, en ce qui concerne l'expérience de Kate. Mais la lumière
jetée sur le texte par Du Bartas nous permet de dégager un sens tragique au
niveau mythique, à la différence de Spenser. Car l'élimination de l'énergie
chaotique, le refus de lui attribuer une valeur, marque dans ce contexte
l'imposition de limites aux possibilités futures du monde fictif, c'est-à-dire à
l'idée même de la création.

Université York

Notes

Note: Je tiens à remercier mes collègues, M.-C. Leps et C. Quesnel, qui ont bien voulu relire
le manuscrit de cet article et m'aider à faire des révisions.

1. Harry Ashton. Du Bartas en Angleterre (Genève, Slatkine Reprints, 1969.

2. Pour une tentative importante et assez récente d'éclairer cette deuxième question, voir
Anne Lake Prescott, "The Reception of Du Bartas in England," Studies in the Renais-
sance, 15 (1968), 144-73.

3. Lm première sepmaine, in The Works of Guillaume de Salluste Sieur du Bartas: A
Critical Edition with Introduction, Commentary, and Variants, 3 vol., ed. Urban Tigner
Holmes, Jr., John Coriden Lyons et Robert White Linker (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1935-40 - H, 1938).

4. Juliet Dusinberre. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women (Houndmills, Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1975), p. 78.

5. The Taming of a Shrew, in Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, ed.
Geoffrey Bullough, I (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia
University Press, 1957), 69-108.

6. The First Day of the Worldes Creation. Or Of the First Week of that most Christian
Poet, W. Salustius, Lord of Bartas (London: J. Jackeson for G. Seaton, 1595), STC
21658, réédité en 1596 (STC 21658.5). Le terme est employé plus loin pour décrire
l'anarchie originaire (p. 16), quand le tableau peut être purement négatif. Dans sa
discussion des premières traductions (127-34) - reproduite malheureusement par
Holmes, Lyons et Linker (lU, 538) - Ashton attribue erronément cet ouvrage au
traducteur de Du Bartas le plus connu, Joshua Sylvester, dont la version grandement
différente, publiée en 1605, a introduit en fait le mot "chaos" pour la première fois, à
ce que l'on sache (il y avait probablement eu des traductions préalables qui ont été
perdues, dont l'une de Sir Philip Sydney).

7. Une tendance semblable chez Ronsard est discutée par Luzius Keller dans Palingène,
Ronsard, Du Bartas: Trois études sur la poésie cosmologique de la Renaissance
(Berne, Francke, [1974], pp. 88-94, qui accentue l'influence de Ficin.

8. Dans sa traduction du Second jour, The Second day of the First Weeke (Londres, 1603
[STC 21659]), Thomas Winter évite la mention du chaos dans ce passage (voir p. 4).

258 / Renaissance and Reformation

9. Voir en particulier deux essais faisant partie des Moralia: le commentaire de plutarque
sur le Timée de Platon (pour qui la matière restait inerte) et l'essai sur Isis et Osiris,
qui représente la matière comme la partie féminine de la nature. Pour une analyse de
la pensée de Plutarque sur cette question dans la tradition philosophique, voir Pierre
Thévenaz, L'âme du monde: le devenir et la matière chez Plutarque, Collection
d' Etudes Anciennes, publiée sous le patronage de l 'Association Guillaume Budé (Paris,
Les Belles Lettres, 1938), pp. 68-70.

10. Cet effet est particulièrement frappant dans la traduction anonyme:

By licking she expresseth eurie lim:

She formes the head, and fashions out the feet.

Indents the pawes, and make the visage grim,

Rough casts the shag hair'd shoulders: as is meet

In euerie part, she shewes hir selfe discreet:

Discreet and diligent, till she haue done.

And brought hir whelpe to iust perfection, (p. 23)

1 1. L'édition de Shakespeare citée dans la présente étude est The Riverside Shakespeare,
éd. G. Blakemore Evans & al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).

12. Keller, p. 130. Ce critique met en relief une distinction essentielle: "Si chez du Bartas
le thème de la matière éternelle prend la forme d'une véritable tentation de l'esprit,
chez Ronsard il apparaît plutôt comme l'occasion d'un exercice poétique" (p. 92).

13. James Dauphiné. Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas. Poète scientifique (Paris, Société
d'Editions Les Belles Lettres, 1983), p. 1 13.

14. A Learned Summary upon the Famous Poeme of William of Saluste Lord of Bartas, tr.
T. L. D. M. P. [Thomas Lodge] (London: 1621 (STC 21666J).

1 5. Christofle de Gamon, Sieur de Chomenas, La Semaine, ou la Création du monde contre
celle du sieur Du Bartas (Genève, G. Petit, 1599).

Book Reviews / Comptes rendus

Elaine V. Beilin. Redeeming Eve. Women Writers of the English Renaissance.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Pp. xxiv, 346.

In a finely crafted work Elaine V. Beilin undertakes, through this first in depth study
of thirty women writers of the English Renaissance, her colossal task of Redeeming
Eve (Princeton University Press, 1987). Two 1930s doctoral studies had concluded
that as a group, women writers of the English Renaissance "form an early modern
tradition of women's writing" (xvi). Building upon this pioneering scholarship,
Beilin adds a new dimension in her investigation into how these women were
influenced by the social and literary attitudes of the time. She concludes that there
were three major ways in which the concept of women influenced these writers:
firstly, it motivated them to write; secondly, it controlled by limiting what and how
they wrote; thirdly and yet ambivalently, it encouraged them to subvert the expec-
tations of their writing (xvii-xviii).

As much a product of their cultural environment as their male counterparts, these
women writers were caught in an untenable situation. Praised for the passive virtues
which they internalized and which then defined them, when they became writers
they were actors in a veritable theatre of the absurd. Not only did they have to write
about their limited sphere of activities, they had to use an intellect whose existence
was denied to subvert their private and domestic role. Beilin underscores the irony
implicit in the historical fact that in finding their voice, these women of Tudor and
early Stuart England carved out their own niche. For these women writers society
and literary tradition meet in ambivalence.

Beilin uses the architectural metaphor of the late medieval writer Christine de
Pisan's Cité des Dames to divide her study of the 100 year sweep (1524-1623) of
women writing into three parts. Written in direct response to the devaluing of
women's intellect and creativity, de Pisan's structural metaphor is used to show how
sturdy is the foundation on which women's writing is built; how it developed into
"Mighty towers and strong bastions"; and how it hedged itself with "Lofty walls all
around" (xxiii-xxiv).

The sturdy foundations of Part I cover the years 1524-1 544 in four chapters that
trace the growing tradition of women's writing in prose, poetry and translations. In
addition to discussing the cultural setting created by such great Renaissance human-
ists as Thomas More, Beilin identifies how restricting was the liberal education and

260 / Renaissance and Reformation

the "decorum of language" (25) they advocated. Mary More Roper, daughter of
Thomas More, is an extraordinary example of the success of the humanist ideal of
the learned and virtuous woman (16,21). Not less impressive is the opposing
self-portrait of Anne Askew whose heroic battle against all authority made her into
the first Protestant martyr.

The publication between 1545-1605 of fifteen prose religious works and trans-
lations by women of different social ranks is seen by Beilin as an important link
between "women's traditional spirituality and their developing literary calling."
(48) Not all the famous women Reformist prose writers survived the religious and
political dangers of the time. When these writers saw themselves both as spiritual
teachers and poets, they faced the additional task of overcoming the literary
convention that poets were male.

"The Mighty Towers and Strong Bastions" of Part II fittingly begins with an
examination of the talents and literary development of Mary Sidney, Countess of
Pembroke (1561-1621). In the history of women writing, she is the first to be
concerned with writing itself. Female dramatists who now use the female archetype
of the Christian soul are building upon Mary Sidney's attempt to embody the hero
in woman, and to indicate how the private virtues of women could bring about heroic
actions. No longer do female images and symbols merely represent feminine type
or allegorical figures. They have become a writer. When Aemilia Lanyer praises
women's virtues she is, unlike her contemporaries, John Donne and Ben Jonson,
creating an image of beneficent feminine power. In perceiving women as speaking
and acting wisely, Lanyer was "redeeming Eve" (179, 182).

What one critic has termed the "mythology of patronage" that surrounded the
Sidneys provided a positive influence on Mary Wroth, gifted offspring of this
pre-eminent family. In being the first woman to write a prose romance and a sonnet
sequence, she broke new ground moving beyond Lanyer's poetry of praise to
explore the question of heroic virtue. Her virtuous monarch Pamphilia who was also
a constant lover and a poet is a successful challenge of the masculine standards of
heroism. Unfortunately, no Jacobean woman writer pursued the possibilities now
open to them.

Part III, "Lofty Walls All Around," is the final chapter of the book. Here Beilin
accounts for women writers' return to the restrictive perspective of traditional
feminine identity. She sees it as arising from their obvious return to defending
women from misogynist attacks, and their developing the uniquely feminine genre
of the mother's advice book. Beilin concludes that in merely modifying a masculine
genre to discredit the style and views of the opponent, these writings do not make
the breakthrough into a feminine consciousness.

In Redeeming Eve, Beilin clearly spells out her theoretical position. Wherever
appropriate she provides detailed analyses of the works of women writers to
illustrate her theories and to support her conclusions. Evidently, her empathy is with
these writers but it does not distort her critical appraisal of the varying quality of
the writings nor her understanding of the society that formed and inhibited these

Renaissance et Réforme / 261

writers. Beilin also captures the underlying tension between the male artistic world
and that of the woman artist trying to create. Her impeccable research leads her to
the conclusion that even the most gifted and sensitively nurtured woman artist had
to be not merely very talented but able to withstand the fact that she was constantly
judged as a woman who only happened to write.

The notes provided on each chapter are excellent and are followed by a list of
works by women for the period. The accurate index that concludes the bibliograph-
ical material enhances the usefulness of this truly outstanding contribution to
feminist literature and the literature of Renaissance England.

JOYCE T. FORBES, Lakehead University

Michael J. Heath. Crusading Comrjionplaces: La Noue, Lucinge and Rhetoric
against the Turks. Genève, Droz, 1986, 1 13p.

Nul n'était mieux placé que M. J. Heath pour écrire un ouvrage sur les Turcs dans
l'opinion européenne de la Renaissance. Il avait déjà composé d'excellents articles
sur des sujets connexes, comme l'opinion des humanistes quant à l'origine de
l'ethnie turque et celle d'Erasme à propos de la guerre contre l'empire ottoman,
comme la participation de René de Lucinge à une expédition navale. De cet auteur,
il a aussi préparé l'édition critique du traité De la naissance, durée et chute des
Estais. Son ouvrage dans ce champ d'études est donc marqué par la somme des
connaissances acquises depuis plus d'une décennie. Il contient d'ailleurs beaucoup
plus que ce qu'annonce son titre et malgré sa brièveté, il constitue une synthèse
riche et vivante des conceptions entretenues au seizième siècle sur la guerre contre
les Turcs.

Ecartant d'emblée la vision positive développée sur la Turquie à partir des récits
de voyageurs, dont C. D. Rouillard s'était déjà fait l'analyste, M. J. Heath entend
ne s'intéresser qu'aux textes appelant à la guerre, d'où son choix de La Noue qui,
en deux chapitres de ses Discours, propose une stratégie militaire d'alliance de tous
les chrétiens pour la prise de Constantinople, et de Lucinge, aux propos plus
machiavéliques de «déstabilisation» de l'empire ottoman. Techniques, ces deux
textes ne sont cependant pas dépourvus des lieux communs qui accompagnent toute
propagande offensive contre la Sublime Porte, sur la barbarie des Turcs, leur volonté
de domination universelle, le gémissement des peuples qui subissent leur joug. Mais
M. J. Heath ne se contente pas de montrer comment ces généralités rhétoriques sont
dépassées par les perspectives dynamiques et dialectiques de La Noue et de
Lucinge. 11 rétablit tout le système des médiations qui relie les conceptions
bellicistes de ces auteurs à la pensée et à l'imaginaire collectifs de leur temps.

Sous un titre un peu réducteur se cache alors un ouvrage qui appartient à l'histoire
des mentalités de laquelle il fournit une précieuse démonstration. Négligeant
rénumération des lieux communs rhétoriques et la paraphrase des deux traités, M.

262 / Renaissance and Reformation

J. Heath structure avec bonheur son analyse autour de trois notions: la nécessité et
la justice d'une guerre anti-turque, les facilités pour la mener, les profits escomptés.
Ces aspects lui permettent de brosser un panorama très vivant de la littérature
belliciste de l'époque, dans lequel les arguments éclipsent les lieux communs, et où
les références aux idées de La Noue et de Lucinge sont dispersées et intégrées dans
un éventail, pour ne pas dire un bataillon, de propositions soutenues par une
trentaine d'auteurs de toutes nationalités.

Non seulement M. J. Heath déplore-t-il ces notions dans un ordre qui assure leur
lisibilité et qui subordonne Is énoncés particuliers à des catégories générales
destinées à les subsumer et à les éclairer, mais encore en tire-t-il des interprétations
qui permettent de mesurer l'évolution globale des mentalités. Ainsi de la con-
troverse connue entre Luther, très réservé à l'égard de la «guerre sainte» (c'est
d'ailleurs à l'occasion d'une campagne de vente des indulgences pour recueillir des
fonds de croisade que commença la Réforme) et ses contradicteurs Dobneck et Eck,
M. J. Heath retient le résultat, celui d'une conception nouvelle de l'empire ottoman,
conçu comme une entité politique souveraine, et non plus comme un simple
adversaire religieux. De la même façon, il souligne comment les plaintes des
humanistes devant l'occupation de la Grèce par des musulmans incultes ont
remplacé les lamentations médiévales sur le triste sort de la Jérusalem conquise. Il
rappelle que le traitement à réserver aux musulmans conquis a engendré une
querelle sur la conversion forcée, fort influencée par les dissidences con-
fessionnelles qui marquent le seizième siècle.

Chacune des notions clefs fait l'objet d'un développement articulé en quelques
sections. Encore là, le déroulement est logique et clair; l'accent mis sur la signifi-
cation globale qui se trouve étayée par de multiples considérations. Les contradic-
tions, les divergences, les différences sont soumises à un traitement qui privilégie
tantôt la vision globale, tantôt l'enjeu dialectique lorsque le consensus fait
manifestement défaut, ce qui est fréquent. Enfin, les opinions de Bodin, toujours
dissemblables, sont remises dans une juste perspective d'ensemble, malgré la
notoriété de l'auteur. Le même sort attend les louables tentatives pacifistes
d'humanistes célèbres comme Erasme, puis Grotius, minces filets dans le grand
courant belliciste.

Tous les éléments qui composent la trame de la représentation des Turcs dans
cette littérature propagandiste sont de plus rattachés aux formes contemporaines de
l'imaginaire et de la sensibilité, aux engagements idéologiques et aux intérêts des
groupes, ce qui jette d'utiles lueurs sur le rapport de ce sujet particulier avec le
climat intellectuel de la Renaissance.

Faut-il, pour satisfaire aux conditions du compte rendu, chercher des failles,
souligner par exemple le caractère un peu redondant d'une section (I, iii), manifester
des réserves à l'égard d'une conclusion où La Noue est un peu rapidement confronté
au «cynisme» des Politiques, relever des omissions, volontaires ou non, dans la
bibliographie des documents d'époque, comme le Cohortatio ad Carolum ... de
Sepùlveda, le Ad principes Germanos et bellum Turcis inférant exhortaria de

Renaissance et Réforme / 263

Hutten, les trois libelles français anti-turcs des années 1570, etc. L'économie
générale de l'ouvrage ne semble nullement souffrir de ces lacunes. S'il est déplus
tout à fait compréhensible qu'un livre paru en 1986 ne mentionne pas les articles
de R. White et de L. Jensen parus en 1985, il est plus étonnant que M. J. Heath n'ait
pas expliqué les limites de sa bibliographie, relativement courte, pour la critique
contemporaine. Est-ce l'ignorance de la langue allemande qui l'a amené à négliger
les études de K. Beydilli, H. Sturmberger, H. Lampartner, E. Benz, C. J. Cosack et
H. Pfefferman? Sans doute. Plus étonnante est l'absence de mention des classiques
de J. W. Allen, R Coles et L. von Ranke sur l'impact de l'empire ottoman en Europe.
Mais solidement appuyé sur les ouvrages les plus importants, et surtout sur les
documents d'époque, l'ouvrage de M. J. Heath s'impose à l'attention par sa solide
architecture; il suscite l'intérêt par la maestria de sa démonstration; il fait la preuve
qu'un court ouvrage peut traiter de façon approfondie d'un vaste sujet.

PIERRE-LOUIS VAILLANCOURT, Université d'Ottawa

The Entertainment of His Most Excellent Majestie Charles II, by John Ogilby,
London, 1662, a facsimile introduced by Ronald Knowles. Binghamton: Medieval
& Renaissance Text & Studies, 1988. Pp. 56, 195.

The Medieval & Renaissance texts & Studies series aims to publish "books that are
needed," and with the publication of this facsimile of John Ogilby's Entertainment,
a series of triumphal arches to celebrate the restoration of Charles II, they have hit
the mark.

The first edition of the Entertainment, probably first sold on the day of the king's
royal entry, 22 April 1661 , provided a relatively brief description of the pageants built
by London to honour the monarch. The second edition was much enlarged in format
and in content by the addition of engravings by David Loggan and Wenceslaus Hollar,
Elias Ashmole's account of the coronation (an account censored, corrected, and
approved by Sir Edward Walker, Garter King of Arms), and a host of references to the
classical sources of Ogilby's visual and verbal motifs. To make either of these editions
more accessible would be a worthwhile enterprise, for the entertainment of Charies II
marks both the end of a tradition of royal entries into London that can be traced back
to 1 393 and, through the representation of Charies as the new Augustus the inauguration
of "what was to become an evaluative term for an entire period - the Augustan age" (p.
41 ). The second edition, as Ronald Knowles points out, does have special significance:
"the most elaborate surviving document for any English festival" its "range of more
than a hundred and thirty sources almost amounts to a compendium of seventeenth-
century English neoclassicism" (p. 10).

This facsimile of the Entertainment is clear and complete, the volume sturdy and
reasonably priced; that is, little of the magnificence of Ogilby's original large folio
remains. To my mind it is unfortunate that this facsimile reproduces the same copy

264 / Renaissance and Reformation

of the Entertainment (the Huntington Library's) already widely available on micro-
film through University Microfilms of Ann Arbor, and it does so without any
editorial apparatus in which lacunae in the copy might be filled. Reducing the
original by about 35% does not adversely affect the text, but it does result in blurred
or darkened features in the engravings; indeed, crucial details of the engraving of
the first arch of triumph are more sharply delineated on the available microfilm than
in this facsimile. But more important than the quality of the reproduction is the need
for some discussion of the reasons for a facsimile of this particular work, rather
than, let's say, a transcription on disk or on-line. A glance at the other accounts of
English royal entries reveals the steady, increasing intrusion of classical lore upon
accounts of such entertainments: references to Virgil appear infrequently and
parenthetically in early Tudor texts; larger and more various, the citations of
classical authorities fill the margins of Ben Jonson's masques and entertainments;
and what were marginal in Jonson make up the body of Ogilby's text. The great
occasion and the civic pageants produced to aggrandize it further are, paradoxically,
dwarfed by the classical allusions in the printed texts, allusions which break up the
record of the city's dramatic offering. Neither the art of the book nor the interplay
of dramatic elements by which each pageant makes its meaning are of much interest
to Ronald Knowles however.

What is of interest to Knowles is the "common literary tradition" that supplied
royalist panegyrists and John Ogilby with a series of "concatenated themes" (p. 27).
King Charles was hailed as Augustus, messiah, and lord of the seas, the last being
a direct rejection of Dutch claims to maritime dominion. The time was celebrated
as a phoenix period, as the start of the golden age (which to London's mercantile
interests meant an age of more gold for them), and as the Platonic Great Year "when
the sphere's are rowl'd / Back to the Loyal points they kept of old" (p. 27). Focusing
on the verbal and pictorial topicality of the Entertainment triumphal arches,
Knowles argues that "Ogilby's propaganda was a formulation of the discrete
allusions of a year of tumultuous panegyric and related literature which repeatedly
turned to Virgilian themes" (p. 22); indeed he goes further, claiming that the first
pageant was "the most complete formation of a politically Augustan framework in
the period" (p. 2 1 ). This analysis of Ogilby's use of panegyric topoi of the day could
be criticized for being narrow, even at points inconsequential, were it not for what
the analysis suggests about the habits of mind of Ogilby and his audience. "Read-
ing" the pageantic structures required an appreciation of rhetorical amplification in
visual and verbal terms, a recognition of "imagistic corollaries" (p. 40), and an
awareness of the "double symmetry" of the design of the arches, which make their
meanings through "the symbolic relationship between back and front, accentuated
by the relationship of left to right" (p. 20). No wonder that the triumphal arches
were intended to remain standing not just for the busy day of the royal entry, but
for a year.

Besides this study of the rich allusiveness of the pageants, Knowles also provides
a solid, traditional introduction to the Entertainment. He acknowledges the special-

Renaissance et Réforme / 265

ized studies of Ogilby's life and work by other scholars and makes use of other kinds
of documentary evidence of the royal entry, such as financial records and the
opinions of contemporary diarists. He argues convincingly that the artificer "who
desires to have his Name conceal'd" (p. 12) was Sir Balthazar Gerbier, through
whom Rubens influenced Ogilby's Entertainment. And Knowles sets the royal entry
in its historical contexts, national, municipal, and personal. Although the change in
government of the nation remains most important, the discussion of Charles's
readiness to re-schedule events, play traditional roles, and alter ceremonies so as to
fulfill the prophecies made about him and his restoration is most interesting and
most suggestive for the study of other English royal entries.

Careful and searching in his scholarship, Ronald Knowles is also forthright about
his special angle on John Ogilby's Entertainment. As a result, the introduction is as
unpretentious as the facsimile, a clear reproduction of a clean copy of Ogilby's work
and a valuable addition to the MRTS series.

C. E. MCGEE, University of St. Jerome's College

R.J. Schoeck. Erasmus grandescens: the growth of a humanist's mind and
spirituality. Bibliotheca humanistica & reformatorica. Vol. 43. Nieuwkoop: De
Graaf, 1988. Pp. 176.

In the preface to Erasmus grandescens, Richard J. Schoeck states that the purpose
of his book is "to consider Erasmus the man, as well as to study the humanist, the
scholar and theologian, and to offer an interpretation which emphasizes the remark-
able growth of Erasmus as a scholar and writer" (p. 10). This collection of essays
does traverse all periods of Erasmus' life and does strike a balance between Erasmus
the private person and Erasmus the scholar, but as it is a collection of essays,
Erasmus grandescens does not possess the continuity of a biography. Rather, the
cogency of Erasmus grandescens lies in its elucidation of the major questions and
controversies connected with Erasmus' person and works.

In the first chapter, "The Place of Erasmus Today," Professor Schoeck addresses
the problems of the modem critic of Erasmus. He notes that "we have to mark
Erasmus as a man whose work is today condemned to fragmentation, for we are
compelled to read it in separated contexts and unrelated approaches; a man who
becomes - as the burden of the past tends to harden inherited views and judgement
of him by scholars whose sense of the whole of past tradition tends to diminish - a
man who becomes, that is to say, progressively more difficult to understand" (p.
19). Schoeck encourages modern scholars to make an effort to comprehend the past
and to become somewhat detached from their own age. He considers it the business
of present-day humanists to transmit tradition, but warns that this transmission must
be creative, for "living tradition is process, not product" (p. 27).

266 / Renaissance and Reformation

Schoeck's portrait of Erasmus the person revolves mainly around the transitions
in Erasmus" life and the decisions which the humanist had to face in order to effect
those changes. Schoeck recreates the spiritual life in which Erasmus participated at
the monastery of Steyn, and discusses the humanist's reasons for his revolt against
monastic life. Schoeck admits that much information about Erasmus' friends and
contemporaries in the monasteries must be conjectured. When treating Erasmus'
entrance into the service of the bishop of Cambrai, Schoeck takes the novel
approach of presenting the bishop's role in selecting Erasmus as his secretary. He
thus diverges from the usual attitude, which puts Erasmus in the manipulative
position of attempting to manoeuvre his way out of the monastery. Finally, Schoeck
examines the motives behind Erasmus' decision to go to Paris for theological
studies, and his eventual abandoning of the course.

The investigation of Erasmus' intellectual life in Erasmus grandescens concen-
trates on his early development as a humanist. The influence of Rudolph Agricola
on Erasmus' humanistic and theological concepts and values is thoroughly ana-
lyzed. Descriptions of the course of studies which Erasmus would have followed at
Paris and of contemporary Parisian scholars are also included. Erasmus' mature
scholarship is discussed as part of the essay on his sojourns in England.

Schoeck's consideration of Erasmus' works centres on his letters and The Praise
of Folly. Schoeck's guidelines for the interpretation of Erasmus' letters are impress-
ive. His rhetorical reading of The Praise of Folly is also stimulating.

Erasmus' influence on his contemporaries is viewed both through his personal
contacts and the circles that were formed because of them, and through the
transmission of his thought via print. Schoeck is careful to define "influence" and
proceeds systematically to discuss the evidence for Erasmus' influence through
primary sources, such as printing, secondary sources, as the imitation of models,
and indirect ones, as the nature of fame.

Erasmus grandescens is, for the most part, written in outline form. Much of the
information is condensed, with extensive footnotes reinforcing the text. Still,
Schoeck manages to impart considerable depth to the events of Erasmus' life, the
people who surrounded him, and the intellectual and spiritual context of "the harvest
of the Middle Ages" in which his mind functioned.

JACQUELINE GLOMSKI, University of Toronto

Nicholas Howe. Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press, 1989. Pp. ix-xii, 198.

It is commonplace knowledge among most scholars of medieval and Renaissance
British literature that medieval and Renaissance history in England was written by
historiographers to serve purposes apart from the mere indifferent chronicling of
events. Successive generations of Britons such as the Norman Anonymous, Gildas,

Renaissance et Réforme / 267

and the Venerable Bede composed histories of England not only to provide accounts
for posterity but also to explain the past. English historiography, therefore, was less
documentary than it was definitive; English historians interpreted the past - they
did not recollect it, except in the spirit of Anglo-Saxon imagination, harmonized by
legend and myth.

Nicholas Howe's book. Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England,
focuses upon and details the significance of the migration myths embedded in many
of the early English histories. His study reveals that these myths embraced sacred
history and translated that history into the events of secular experience. Further-
more, the sacred history most useful to the historians as a paradigm for the founding
of the English nation was that of ancient Israel, but not only because the history of
the Hebrew Exodus was familiar story of Christian Scripture. Rather, and more
importantly for England, the conventional interpretation of the Hebrew Exodus, in
both Judaic and Christian tradition, suggested that the ancient Semitic peoples who
settled in the land of Canaan (now Palestine or Israel) were providentially guided
to their appointed holy land by a beneficent god who delivered them from Egyptian
slavery across a great sea. Howe therefore proposes that the "biblical narrative of
a dispossessed people's journey to a new homeland across a great sea was particu-
larly resonant for the Anglo-Saxons because of their ancestral migration from
continent to island" (72). The argument is persuasive. As Howe's study points out,
the mythology of migration is not confined to an isolated source; the whole of
British mythography is informed by it.

Indeed, Howe observes that the substance of the migratory myth is not confined
only to the prose histories but is celebrated in Old English verse as well. As he writes
of the Beowulfpoei, "The myth exists in the very texture of his poem, that is, in the
use of geography as a narrative conviction" (145). Indeed, the dynamic of the
Beowulf poem, he continues, is the essence of all great myth: "it links the narrative
moment {we gefmnon) with the past {in geardagum) of another place {Gar-Dena)"
(149).

The migration myth, as Howe notes, does not inform many of the minor literary
works of the period, but the fact that the migration myth does not appear in such
works as The Dream of the Rood or the poems of Cynewulf does not diminish "its
centrality and vitality for [Anglo-Saxon] culture" (179). There is ample evidence
of the myth in Alcuin of York and Wulfstan to support a claim for its authority and
widespread recognition among the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Hence, the pervasiveness
of the myth, despite its inapplicability to all literature of the era, demonstrates its
importance and function as a normative, interpretive principle of self-understanding
for a people in a new land who believed their migration to have been nothing less
than the occasion of yet another divinely-appointed migratory exodus modeled upon
the example of the deliverance of ancient Israel from Egyptian captivity.

Howe's book is of value not only to scholars of medieval English literature but
highly suitable for mythographers, cultural historians, anthropologists, and theolo-
gians. Documentation is thorough, and most footnotes are annotated; the bibliogra-

268 / Renaissance and Reformation

phy is exhaustive. This study complements Howe's precedent scholarship and
assumes, by its authority and integrity of presentation, the status of a standard in
contemporary scholarship relevant to Anglo-Saxon England.

DANIEL WRIGHT, Aulmm University

Ronsard et la Grèce. 1585-1985. Actes du colloque d'Athènes et de Delphes, 4-7
octobre 1985, présentés par Kyriaki Christodoulou, Paris, Nizet, 1988, "Publica-
tions de l'Union scientifique franco-hellénique, série "Recherches no 3", Pp. 350.

"Ronsard et la Grèce", sujet premier s'il en fut, et que l'on en traite à Athènes et à
Delphes! Les organisateurs, Kyriaki Christodoulou en tête, ne pouvaient trouver
meilleure justification. Essayons de rendre compte de ce riche et beau colloque.
Plusieurs idées neuves s'y sont manifestées en ce qui concerne le rôle du monde
grec dans la réflexion théorique de Ronsard, dans la constitution des modèles et
dans l'image que le poète laisse de lui à la postérité.

Le rôle de la Grèce dans l'entreprise théorique que Ronsard poursuivit toute sa
vie a donné lieu à des communications d'un grand intérêt (première partie: "Ronsard
et les valeurs grecques" et quatrième partie: "La Grèce dans la poétique de
Ronsard"). L'héritage de la mythologie hellénique fait l'objet de nombreuses
communications de la deuxième partie: "Ronsard et la mythologie grecque": elles
nous introduisent au coeur de l'imaginaire ronsardien. On reprend, dans une
troisième partie, l'importante question des modèles ("Ronsard et les lettres
grecques"). Enfin, quelques communications esquissent la fortune de l'hellénisme
ronsardien ou explorent la voie comparative (cinquième partie: "Ronsard: sa place
dans la critique et la littérature comparée").

S' inspirant de Roger Zuber, Franca Bevilacqua-Caldari montre, à travers Colletet
et son Discours de l 'Eloquence et de l 'Institution des Anciens ( 1 636), que les débats
littéraires du dix-septième siècle reflètent les mêmes préoccupations et obéissent
aux mêmes idéologies que ceux du seizième siècle. Colletet et les libertins qui
évoluaient autour de lui ont fixé les marques d'une continuité littéraire - fondée sur
l'imitation composite - entre la Pléiade et les doctrines contemporaines. Décrivant
les plaidoyers de Ronsard pour l'affranchissement de la Grèce et son soutien aux
exilés grecs réfugiés en France, Kyriaki Christodoulou met en exergue le rôle
historique capital de Ronsard au sein du grand courant philhellène qui se développe
en France au seizième siècle. Madeleine Le Merrer revient sur la généalogie de
Francus, la précise à l'aide des travaux de Colette Beaune et suit le parcours du
guerrier jusqu'à "la nouvelle Troie: Paris". Ce souverain troyen est marqué par le
modèle médiéval du roi soucieux des fins dernières de son peuple; ainsi, le poème
épique doit servir non seulement à la restauration des valeurs nationales mais aussi
à marquer le besoin d'une régénérescence qui passe par la purification des actes du
roi. Gilbert Schrenck est l'auteur d'une contribution fort intéressante sur les Hymnes

Renaissance et Réforme / 269

de 1555-1556. Constatant que la structure du recueil est régie par des alternances
entre histoire et mythologie, il s'interroge sur la signification de la coexistence d'un
temps "primordial" et d'un temps "historial". Gilbert Schrenck montre qu'au-delà
du "désordre" apparent des Hymnes, qui est le fait d'une esthétitque pensée en
termes de "varietas" et de "copia", les Hymnes établissent non seulement un
dialoque avec les Grands, à travers la double référence à l'histoire et à la
mythologie, mais aussi un dialogue avec eux-mêmes, et instaurent une réflexion sur
l'art et la place du poète, associée aux impératifs du juste milieu.

Alain-Maurice Moreau ouvre la section "Ronsard et la mythologie grecque" par
un article très clair sur l'anabase (escalade du ciel) présomptueuse. Il montre, chez
Ronsard, l'importance et l'ambivalence du mythe des Géants: il peut symboliser à
la fois les affrontements entre catholiques et protestants et l'élan des Muses
conduisant à la gloire et à l'immortalité. Ronsard orchestre les figurations non
seulement pour dénoncer les dangers de V hubris, mais aussi à des fins esthétiques.
Hélène Moreau, quant à elle, dégage les principaux éléments du mythe d' Alphée et
d'Aréthuse: si les amours du fleuve et de la source ne président à aucun
développement narratif important dans les poèmes de Ronsard, elles contribuent à
l'instauration d'une géographie mythique dont les prolongements créent une
orchestration de l'union. Géralde Nakam étudie le mythe de Cybèle, qui apparaît
souvent dans l'oeuvre de Ronsard et comporte des significations spécifiques. Si le
mythe fournit des métaphores de la fécondité, de la féminité et de la sexualité, il
permet aussi au poète de la Franciade d'exalter les Valois, de construire une
mystique royale. Il exprime surtout le travail poétique. Jeanne Papaspyridou
s'intéresse à Aphrodite- Vénus. Grâce à elle, on voit comment le poète construit son
image de Vénus à partir des textes grecs. La déesse est souvent la muse de Ronsard
et son idéal de beauté féminine; l'imitation du poète n'est pas servile et Ronsard a
enrichi l'image de Vénus. Giuliana Toso-Rodinis s'applique à montrer également
la prégnance et la polysémie des mythes en examinant celui de Thésée et en
dénombrant les différentes utilisations que Ronsard en a faites. Arnaud Tripet
s'intéresse au mythe d' Hélène; le mythe au seizième siècle peut être une explication
du monde et renvoyer à un syncrétisme pré-cartésien, il peut être aussi ornement
poétique et correspondre à Vinventio rhétorique. A travers l'oxymoron et la syllepse,
A. Tripet montre de façon très sensible comment le mythe traduit une angoisse et,
selon la leçon de J.-R Vernant, est un "outil logique de médiation entre les
contradictions insolubles au niveau de vécu". Il appartient à Jean-Louis Vieillard-
Baron de clore la partie réservée au mythe. Examinant ce que devient chez Ronsard
le Narcisse d'Ovide, le critique montre que c'est toute l'aventure poétique de
Ronsard qui se fait jour à travers le mythe. Celui-ci correspond à une image
emblématique de la création poétique et enregistre, au cours de la carrière de
Ronsard, le "déplacement du désir".

Robert Aulotte ouvre la troisième section en mesurant les influences de Plutarque
sur l'oeuvre de Ronsard. Il est indéniable que Ronsard connaissait Plutarque, et il
lui a d'ailleurs rendu hommage, ainsi qu'au Plutarque français, Amyot. Mais

270 / Renaissance and Reformation

l'oeuvre du poète ne présente jamais des emprunts indiscutables ou des marques
probantes des transpositions: elle fait entendre seulement des échos du Chéronéen.
Charles Béné s'attache à montrer l'impact de l'oeuvre de Théocrite sur l'économie
de l'édition des Amours de 1560 et plus spécialement du Deuxième Livre. Ce dernier
livre doit au poète grec tant son équilibre architectural que son inspiration.
L'influence de la Grèce sur la Franciade n'est que superficielle, nous dit Roger
Dubuis. Une des causes de l'échec de l'oeuvre serait une mauvaise "assimilation"
du modèle grec en "porte-à-faux, vis-à-vis de ses lecteurs, comme vis-à-vis de
lui-même". Comme Charles Béné, Hélène Nais s'intéresse à l'influence de
Théocrite sur Ronsard: importance de la figure d'Adonis et caractère fragmentaire
de l'imitation. La contribution d'Isabelle Pantin s'inscrit dans la même veine que
celle de Roger Dubuis. Même si la Franciade se déclare avec ostentation oeuvre
d'imitation homérique, Ronsard transforme son modèle par superposition d'autres
textes de référence et rend ambigu le projet initial: "La cause formelle et la cause
matérielle ne concordent pas". Ce n'est pas l'influence générale de V Anthologie
grecque sur Ronsard qui intéresse Henri Weber, mais les traductions que le poète
en fait. Cette traduction est complexe et se révèle une imitation-création d'une
grande variété.

Dans le premier article de la quatrième partie, Andrée Comparot- Bouchard
constate que Ronsard préfère à la pensée artistotélicienne un platonisme qui
répondrait à la pensée chrétienne. Analysant des lettres de Pic de la Mirandole et
de Bembo, A. Comparot-Bouchard estime que la préface des Odes se fonde sur les
termes de ces deux acteurs et que VArt poétique en développe les principes. Jean
Lafond apporte une contribution précieuse sur la spécificité de la poétique des
Sonets pour Hélène . Si la formule "Hélène est mon Parnasse" relève de la rhétorique
amoureuse, elle n'en imprime pas moins sa marque au recueil. On assiste à un
retournement du topos pétrarquiste de l'amour dicté par un destin aveugle. Le
renoncement aux Muses, amorcé comme un paradoxe en 1552, trouve son
aboutissement logique avec les Sonets pour Hélène. La jeune femme n'est plus
essentiellement médiatrice entre le poète et les dieux, son individualité y gagne,
ainsi que son autonomie. Le poète n'est plus "vates", mais il chante admirablement
dans une tonalité humaine. Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani analyse de très près
l'aristotélisme esthétique de Ronsard. Le vraisemblable est, chez Aristote, une
catégorie d'ordre logique; il se définit par rapport au nécessaire. Le nécessaire et le
vraisemblable bordent les deux modalités de la représentation. Quant au possible,
objet d'imitation de la poésie, il peut l'être selon le nécessaire ou selon le vraisem-
blable. Dans la Poétique, le vraisemblable est un concept et il est défini par la
logique. Chez Ronsard, lecteur d' Aristote, le vraisemblable correspond seulement
à une spécification de la Poésie opposée à l'Histoire, domaine du vrai. L'opposition
du vraisemblable et de la vérité se substitue à l'opposition aristotélicienne entre ce
qui s'est passé en effet et ce qui est susceptible d' advenir; le vraisemblable est ainsi
ramené au possible. Le vraisemblable n'est plus qu'une notion, la vraisemblance,
et elle définit la spécificité de la poésie en lui accordant pour objet la fiction. Vision

Renaissance et Réforme / 27 1

appauvrie de la philosophie d'Aristote, mais gain considérable pour le poète!
Evanghélos Moutsopoulos reprend la question du platonisme et son rôle sur
l'inspiration du poète. Ronsard défend la conception du poète énergumène, purifié,
brûlé par les quatre fureurs. Le poète est à la fois agent (il traduit les messages des
dieux) et passif (il est un possédé qui crée inconsciemment).

Ouvrant la cinquième partie, Jacques Bailbé nous offre une belle étude à propos
de l'influence de Ronsard sur Garnier. Procédant par contamination d'épisodes
divers, Garnier pratique une imitation féconde, transformant la signification pro-
fonde dont il s'inspire. Claude Faisant est l'auteur d'une contribution très riche
portant sur l'histoire de la réception chez Ronsard. A l'époque classique, on
condamne principalement le poète pour sa conception de l'imitation. Cette attitude
met en lumière le rôle décisif des schémas historico-critiques dans la construction
des mythes culturels qui gouvernent l'histoire de la réception. Puis l'auteur éclaire
les mutations épistémologiques qui renouvellent le préjugé anti-hellénique dans les
années 1880-1820; il montre enfin comment ce préjugé s'infléchit pour se réduire
nettement dans les années 1830. Signalons encore qu'en fin de volume, Claude
Faisant est l'auteur d'un rapport de synthèse très réussi. Kazimierz Kupisz apporte
un éclairage supplémentaire sur l'onomastique d'Hélène. Il rapproche Ronsard de
Jean Kochanowski, un contemporain polonais, qui s'est lui aussi montré sensible
au souvenir d'Hélène de Troie, mais en "élève plus respectueux des anciens que le
poète français si inlassablement soucieux de se distinguer d'eux". Edgar Pich se
donne également pour but d'interroger la "fonctionnalité" d'Hélène dans une étude
comparative portant sur les Sonets pour Hélène de Ronsard et les Poèmes antiques
de Leconte de Lisle. E. Pich met fort bien en lumière les voies de la rêverie
onomastique autour du nom d'Hélène et montre les rapports d'opposition,
significatifs culturellement, qui permettent de confronter, par delà les siècles et les
mentalités différentes, l'imaginaire des deux auteurs. Comme l'indique le titre du
dernier article, "Sappho, Ronsard, Elytis: esquisses pour une phénoménologie de la
poésie erotique", Patrick Quillier tente de montrer la présence d'une
phénoménologie du moi lyrique "au-delà de toutes les esthétiques restreintes" et
des études biographiques. Étudiant les rapports entre la voix de l'aimée et la parole
de l'amant, il décrit ce qu'il nomme "l'avènement de ce langage second qu'est le
lyrisme" et montre que la poésie erotique, née en Grèce, a mené une aventure du
langage qui met en jeu les relations du poète avec autrui et avec le monde.

J'interromps ici cette recension. Il est difficile à la fois d'être fidèle à plus de
vingt-cinq contributions et d'exercer les droits de la critique et du jugement. J'ai
pensé être plus utile au lecteur en mettant l'accent sur le premier aspect.

ANDRÉ GENDRE, Université de Neuchâtel

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Renaissance

Réforme

ts:

f;*?y f^

New Series, Vol. XV, No. 4 Nouvelle Série, Vol. XV, No. 4

Old Series, Vol. XXVII, No. 4 Ancienne Série, Vol. XXVII, No. 4
Fall 1991 automne

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Renaissance Renaissance

and et

Reformation Reforme

New Series, Vol. XV, No. 4 Nouvelle Série, Vol. XV, No. 4

Old Series, Vol. XXVII, No. 4 1991 Ancienne Série, Vol. XXVII, No. 4

CONTENTS / SOMMAIRE

ARTICLES

273

Jean de Sponde: l'écriture poétique

par Semplice Ambiana

289

English Puritanism and Festive Custom

by Alexandra F. Johnston

299

Hamlet: The Dialectic between Eye and Ear

by Mary Anderson

REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS

315

Arthur F. Kinney and Dan S. Collins, eds. Renaissance Historicism:

Selections from English Literary Renaissance

reviewed by D. R. Woolf

319

R. Po-chia Hsia. The Myth of Ritual Murder. Jews and Magic in

Reformation Germany

reviewed by Ira Robinson

320

Massimo Miglio, Francesca Niutta, Diego Quaglioni, and Concetta Ranieri,

eds. Un pontificato ed una città: Sisto FV (1471-1484)

reviewed by Thomas V. Cohen

323

Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince,

reviewed by Rita Belladonna

325

William Baldwin. Beware the Cat: The First English Novel

reviewed by William W. Barker

327

Gérard Defaux, Marot, Rabelais, Montaigne: l'écriture comme présence,

compte rendu par Diane Desrosiers-Bonin

330

Rosemary O'Day, The Debate on the English Reformation,

reviewed by Thomas F. Mayer

331

Paul R. Sellin, So Doth, So is Religion. John Donne and Diplomatic

Contexts in the Reformed Netherlands, 1619-1620

reviewed by Jeanne Shami

333

Christopher R. Armitage, Sir Walter Raleigh, an Annotated Bibliography,

and John R. Roberts, George Herbert, an Annotated Bibliography

of Modern Criticism

reviewed by E. J. Devereux

336

Sara Heller Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women. Three Studies.

reviewed by Lorelei Cederstrom

Jean de Sponde: récriture poétique

SIMPLICE AMBIANA

J_yepuis la fin du seizième siècle, les recueils collectifs^ - à l'exemple de
L'Académie des poètes français (1599) et des Muses Gaillardes (1605),
recueillies à Paris par Antoine du Breuil, du Recueil de diverses poésies
(1597 ou 1598) et du Temple d'Apollon (161 1), publiés à Rouen par Raphaël
du Petit Val ... - qui sont les moyens essentiels de diffusion de la poésie,
nous ont habitués à goûter les poèmes comme de petites pièces finies, et à
ignorer les notions de poète et d'oeuvre individuelle.

Sans doute encouragée par la tradition romantique, - il suffit de penser aux
titres: Harmonies, Les contemplations, Les chimères. Les fleurs du mal ... -,
cette pratique éditoriale, trouve son prolongement dans les anthologies mo-
dernes, de Cm{, La poésie française au IT siècle (1594-1630) (Paris, Boivin,
s.d.), à M. Raymond, La poésie française et le maniérisme (1546-1610)
(Genève, Droz, 1971), en passant par celles de Schmidt (1959) et Rousset
(1961), et s'appuie lourdement sur l'esthétique de la forme poétique courte
qu'est le sonnet. Louis Aragon ne qualifie-t-il pas cette petite unité poétique
de "machine à penser"^ dont la division bipartite en huitain et en sizain
comporte une tension équilibrante faisant du sonnet le poème autonome à
forme fixe par excellence?

Cette formule de diffusion de la poésie, dont Robert Me lançon souligne les
intérêts commerciaux pour les recueils collectifs des seizième et dix-septième
siècles, scientifiques et pédagogiques pour les anthologies modernes'^ a pour
conséquences: de diluer la notion d'auteur, d'instituer l'écriture poétique
comme une "ressource commune dans laquelle chacun puise librement","^ et
de banaliser la poésie en l'intégrant dans des codes ou systèmes de conven-
tions (pétrarquisme, maniérisme, baroque . . . ).

Dans cette perspective, il y a lieu de saluer les efforts, au début du siècle,
d'un Frédéric Lachèvre, pour restituer aux différents auteurs certains poèmes
anonymes de ces recueils, et d'un A. Boase, à qui nous devons, en 1939, la
première présentation moderne, dans la revue Mesures, des sonnets de la
mort, et dont les inlassables travaux ont été couronnés par une édition des

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVII, 4 (1991) 273

274 / Renaissance and Reformation

Oeuvres littéraires de Jean de Sponde, dans la collection "Textes littéraires
français", avec un avant-propos de M. Raymond, à Genève, chez Droz, en
1978, sans oublier la tradition des "canzonières", ces recueils de sonnets
intercalés de "canzone" ou chansons dans lesquels les poètes siciliens, et plus
tard, Jean de Sponde et ses contemporains ont, soit chanté leur amour pour
une femme,^ soit traité d'autres sujets comme la mort ou la passion de Jésus
Christ.6

Cette nouvelle perspective nous a appris à lire les recueils comme on lit
n'importe quel livre, même si l'idée du florilège qu'on peut ouvrir au hasard
et oià on peut apprécier n'importe quel sonnet reste forte; encouragée par
l'apport de la linguistique, elle permet de considérer le canzonière - fût-il
aussi court que cet ensemble de douze sonnets de Jean de Sponde - comme
une totalité signifiante, dont l'écriture, saisie dans sa matérialité en tant que
"l'homogénéité et l'indissociabilité de la pensée et du langage, ... , du
signifiant et du signifié ... , du vivre et du dire",^ conduit, grâce au
"paragrammatisme",* à l'exploration des "formes-sens".^

Notre analyse insistera davantage sur les sonnets: I, VII, et XII, principaux
maillons de cette chaîne où Sponde observe le principe d'organisation du texte
poétique, c'est-à-dire de la versification, qui consiste en l'établissement de
rapports d'équivalence (ou paradigmatiques) entre différents points de la
strophe (quatrain et/ou tercet), visibles à cerains niveaux surfaciels tels que
- la rime dans son alternance masculine/féminine, - la spécialisation de
l'alexandrin dans le traitement du sujet sérieux (la mort). Ces rapports
prosodiques dans leur(s) interaction(s) avec les niveaux syntaxico-
sémantiques (respect de l'unité de sens - c'est-à-dire de l'équivalence entre
unités syntaxiques - au niveau de l'hémistiche, du vers et/ou de la strophe)
tendent à induire (opération [ana]logique) des "effets de sens", notamment
"symboliques", pouvant jouer un rôle déterminant dans l'interprétation du
canzonière.

Observons de plus près ce bref canzonière que Sponde, ce réformé converti
au catholicisme, consacre au thème de la mort, au cours du dernier quart du
seizième siècle. Ces douze sonnets, apparemment dépouillés de "tout parti
pris dogmatique", ^^ fruits d'une méditation que le poète poursuit entre 1583
et 1588, retracent avec une densité qu'on ne retrouve que chez les
romantiques, - notamment Nerval et Verlaine - une destinée spirituelle. Ils
nous plongent d'emblée dans un univers symbolique.

Comme le souligne le dictionnaire des symboles: produit des quatre points
cardinaux par les trois plans du monde, douze est le nombre des divisions
spatio-temporelles; il divise le ciel, considéré comme une coupole, en douze

Renaissance et Réforme / 275

secteurs, les douze signes du zodiaque, qui sont mentionnés dès la plus
haute antiquité. Ce nombre est d'une très grande richesse dans la sym-
bolique chrétienne. En effet, la conbinaison du quatre du monde spatial et
du trois du temps sacré mesurant la création-récréation donne le chiffre
douze du monde achevé: c'est celui de la Jérusalem céleste (12 portes, 12
apôtres, 12 assises ... ). Du point de vue mystique, le trois se rapporte à la
Trinité, le quatre à la création; mais le symbolisme du douze reste iden-
tique, à savoir un accomplissement du créé terrestre par assomption dans
l 'incréé divin. Que Jean de Sponde se soit donc contenté de douze sonnets
et qu'il les ait disposés comme il l'a fait ne manque plus de justification.
On ne cède plus, comme J. Rousset, à la tentation d'une reconstruction qui
placerait le sonnet XII à la place du premier, et le sixième à la place du
douzième^^ et il n'y a plus lieu d'imposer au canzonière "une cohérence
de lecteur moderne". Seuls importent les enchaînements du poète qui a
placé son canzonière dans un Essay de quelques poèmes chrestiens et à la
suite de ses Méditations sur les Psaumes (1588), ces titres ne sont pas de
trop dans une production hantée de part en part par le "démon de
l'analogie".

Dans cette perspective, l'architecture du canzonière obéit à une rigueur
remarquable qui la transfigure en un poème unique en plusieurs sonnets: I,
les hommes mortels et entourés d'images funèbres oublient la fragilité de leur
condition terrestre; II, "mais si faut-il mourir" confirme sur un ton de prêche
l'inéluctabilité de l'événement; III, reprend les motifs de l'oubli et de la
fragilité afin de poser sous forme interrogative la vanité des soucis, des
"travaux" des humains engagés dans une "course à la mort"; IV, considération
qui transfigure, au V, la vie en une succession de morts, "moytié de la vie est
moytié de décez", et appelle au VI la critique de ceux qui se laissent aveugler
par les "fascheux destours" de cette condition terrestre, au point de ne plus
entrevoir les "beaux séjours" de l'univers céleste et éternel.

VII, n'est pas sans rapport avec sa signification symbolique; nombre
universellement connu selon le dictionnaire des symboles, comme celui
d'une totalité en mouvement ou d'un dynamisme total (Il est la clef de
l'Apocalypse et est fréquemment employé dans la Bible ^2). ^^ effet il
marque un tournant, d'abord au niveau du ton, car le poète passe de
l'invective adressée à un auditoire imaginaire à un "je" qui devient dans
une forme d'association du nombre quatre qui symbolise la terre et le
nombre trois qui symbolise le ciel, un lieu de rencontre de deux formes de
réalités, un univers en mouvement:

276 / Renaissance and Reformation

Tandis que dedans l'air un autre air je respire,
Et qu'à I'envy du feu j'allume mon désir,
Que j'enfle contre l'eau les eaux de mon plaisir,
Et que me colle à terre un importun martyre,".

Relevons au passage un premier effet de parallélisme syntaxico-prosodique
qui, à travers la reprise redondante de "[tandis] que," marquant individuelle-
ment les vers, fait apparaître au niveau de l'hémistiche les quatre éléments:
air, feu, eau et terre, constitués en pilier central du quatrain, autour desquels
gravitent deux à deux, au niveau de la médiane, les verbes "Je respire"
"J'allume" d'une part, "(me) colle", "J'enfle" d'autre part, et sur lesquels se
fonde le processus métaphorique:

je respire
j'allume

air

feu

j'enfle

eau

me colle

terre

Le respect de la règle d'alternance des rimes féminines et masculines dans
une disposition embrassée - "respire" /"martyre" embrassant
"désir"/"plaisir" - ne voile pas le caractère des noms masculins placés à la
rime, le parallélisme strict qui marque les masculines: "mon désir"/"mon
plaisir", et surtout la prédominance phonique du lui dans les deux quatrains
qui forment le huitain (le "e" étant muet) et qui, ajoutée aux effets de la
réversion^^ dans le premier et le troisième vers du premier quatrain:

"dedans

l'air

un autre air . . .

(élément)

(vie)

''l'eau

les eaux"

(élément)

(inconsistance)

et les reprises en écho dans le deuxième quatrain: "air" (v.5), ''monceaux"
(v.6), "travaux" (v.8), "désir" (v.5), "plaisirs" (v.6), permettent d'induire
des effets de sens obéissant à l'opposition monde physique/monde
métaphysique, martyre terrestre/plaisir céleste. Ces oppositions, dans une
superposition, permettent de faire ressortir un échange d'attributs, une
synonymie entre la vie terrestre et la mort: "C'est mourir que de vivre en
ceste peine extrême". Équivalence ainsi établie sur le mode de souffrance
et dont le dernier tercet développe un autre versant sur le mode de
l'inconsistance, sans oublier les jeux phoniques autour de (s'es) pard(t):

Renaissance et Réforme / 277

"Voilà comme la vie à l'abandon s'espar^
Chaque par/ de ce Monde en emporte sa parr.
Et le moindre à la fin est celle de nous-mesme".

Le passage du "Vous" des sonnets antérieurs au "Je" de ce sonnet VII
implique la prise de conscience que ce n'est pas tant l'homme qui est mortel
que c'est "Je", moi qui vais mourir, ce qui ne va pas sans anxiété:

"A la fin je me trouve en un estrange emoy
Car ces divers effets ne sont que contre moy".

Cette focalisation indique sans doute aussi l'intégration du prêcheur dans
l'ensemble d'une humanité - d'où le "/nous/-mesme" de clôture du sonnet
- à la recherche d'une autre vie postulée par une autre équivalence implicite:
la mort = la vie. L'esprit dans le corps, témoignage de la "vie", n'est plus
saisi que comme réalité en mouvement et le combat pour la vie, une activité
en sursis.

VIII, enregistre et confirme désormais le destin commun, en associant le
"je" et le "vous": "C'est le train de noz jours" en même temps que la leçon
de l'Inconsistance

" hé! commence d'apprendre

Que ta vie est de Plume, et le monde de vent."

et l'invective du IX, parallèlement à celle du II, condamne tous "ces
lovayeurs", "Hommagers à la vie (terrestre) et 'felons' à la mort". Mais si
le "je" est parmi "Je vogue en mesme mer", il se différencie par le détail de
la conscience:

" Je sçay que ceste mesme vie

N'est rien que le fanal qui me guide au mourir."

X, tout en dénonçant l'inanité de toute résistance à la mort, invite à se
préoccuper de la vie de l'âme; mais si "pour vivre au ciel il faut mourir" sur
terre, comme le constate le XI: "Ce n'en est pas pourtant le sentier raccourcy".
Dès lors le sonnet XII est bien à sa place, qui vient dire sous forme de prière
le combat et l'espoir du triomphe.

Justifiant l'ensemble du canzonière, ce sonnet XII constitue le point
d'aboutissement^"* de l'itinéraire spirituel d'un poète chrétien conscient de la
double postulation simultanée, l'une vers Dieu, et l'autre vers Satan, le prince
de ce "Monde", qui l'investit jusqu'à la tombe. Il s'inscrit dans la symbolique

278 / Renaissance and Reformation

chrétienne, comme un rite et comme une combinaison du créé et du non créé.
Le rite est celui de la prière entendue, d'une part, comme une suite de formules
exprimant le mouvement de l'âme tendant à une communication spirituelle
avec Dieu et s 'intégrant à un culte ou une pratique et, d'autre part, comme
une action.

Comme prière, le sonnet établit une communication grâce au vocatif du
quatrième vers "Seigneur" et à un ensemble d'interrogations portant sur des
termes anatomiques attribués à Dieu: "Ton invincible main", "ta voix" et "ton
oreille", expressions somme toute d'origine biblique. Cette communication
qui s'achève par une affirmation confiante en la victoire divine, met aussi
l'accent sur les éléments formels de sa fonction poétique en tant qu'un hymme
à la (vraie) vie.

Du point de vue formel, en effet, ce sonnet régulier comportant deux
quatrains homophones où les féminines "(a) (e)nte" embrassent une fois de
plus les masculines "-té", suivis d'une rime plate "-oi(s) (x)" et d'un dernier
quatrain à rimes embrassées "(M)onde"/"-ra", présente des caractéristiques
privilégiées de parallélismes, en tant qu'il est constitué de vers rapportés. ^^
Dans le premier quatrain, par exemple, si l'on désigne les vers respectivement
par Al Bl B2 A2, on constate d'abord un parallélisme frappant entre Al et
A2 / El et B2 où les mots de même catégorie grammaticale se trouvent en
position d'équivalence, les verbes en A et les noms en B. D'autre part. Al est
pour Bl ce que A2 est pour B2. Les noms et les verbes (tous au présent de
l'indicatif) entrent en une combinaison qui transmue le poème en trois
colonnes parallèles verticalement. Le quatrain peut alors se lire à la fois
horizontalement et verticalement. Soit:

Tout s'enfle (contre moy) tout m'assaut tout me tente

Et le Monde et la chair et l'Ange révolté

Dont l'onde dont l'effort dont le charme inventé

(Et) m'abime (Seigneur) (et) m'esbranle (et) m'enchante

A côté de sa fonction de coordination latérale, la conjonction "et" reprise
six fois, remplit celle d'accumulation dont le caractère hyperbolique se lit
dans la disproportion des éléments ainsi déchaînés contre un "moy" faible et
solitaire qui n'a plus qu'à invoquer son "Seigneur", dans un cri d'alarme.
Cette lecture verticale permet de déceler une rime intérieure "Monde"/"onde"
dans la première colonne, la rendant ainsi non seulement parente, mais encore
la métamorphosant par voie relative d'appartenance "dont" et par voie
verbale "m'abisme" en un élément particulièrement mortel dirigé "contre

Renaissance et Réforme / 279

moy". D'autre part, relevons le strict parallélisme rythmo-syntaxique au
niveau du second hémistiche entre les vers 2 et 3 où chaque nom masculin
est accompagné d'un adjectif. Cette similitude prosodique s'ajoute aux pro-
cessus de relation d'appartenance "dont" et de dynamique verbale
"m'enchante" pour dire la menace de mort spirituelle d'un autre élément:
l'enfer (royaume de "l'Ange révolté"). Entre ces deux éléments s'élève "la
chair" non moins dangereuse et "dont l'effort" "m'esbranle". Les plaisirs de
la chair entraînent la notion du péché, mort de l'âme. La vie de la chair se
trouve ainsi placée sous le signe symbolique du danger permanent: du mal.
On connaît en effet la fortune du symbolisme biblique nommant le diable
prince de ce monde et représentant la vie terrestre comme un voyage en mer.
En somme, ces trois colonnes évoquent trois menaces de mort qui déferlent
surl'âme du poète.

La double interrogative du second quatrain est symptomatique des
tensions entre les structures syntaxiques et celles régies par le principe
d'équivalence, influant ainsi sur leur projection dans l'axe des com-
binaisons. Aussi peut-on s'appuyer sur le vers 10 " ... ton temple, ta main,
ta voix" pour poursuivre la lecture verticale soit:

Quelle nef Quel appuy quelle oreille dormante

Sans péril sans tomber (et) sans estre enchanté

Me donra(s) (tu)

ton temple ton invincible main (et) ta voix si constante

Les deux derniers vers du premier tercet se présentent sous forme de
confrontation: "ton temple"/" Ange révolté"; "ta main"/"ceste chair"; "ta
voix"/" ce Monde". Ce qui provoque aussi un décalage au niveau de la rime
- reprise en écho de la rime relevée dans la première colonne du premier
quatrain - de "Monde"/"Onde". Les vers 12 et 13 répètent sous le mode
affirmatif les termes du deuxième quatrain où le poète se demande anxieuse-
ment si Dieu lui donnera pour son salut, son "temple", son "invincible main"
et sa "voix". Tous les verbes du deuxième tercet (il y en a quatre: "sera",
"perdra", "mourra", "rompra") sont au futur. Ainsi, du point de vue des temps
verbaux, le premier quatrain (Ql) est pour le premier tercet (Tl) -
prépondérance du présent - , ce que le deuxième quatrain (Q2) est pour le
deuxième tercet (T2) - prévalence du futur. Les décalages observés au niveau
de la rime du sizain et les enjambements des vers 7-8 et 12-13, et les reprises
à partir du deuxième quatrain des mots "temples", "main", "voix",
accompagnent les décalages dans l'ordre du mètre et des mots, incurvant la

280 / Renaissance and Reformation

lecture verticale, puis influent aussi sur les lignes de nos colonnes, et enfin
véhiculent l'impression de piliers en spirales.

Si la tentation, menace de mort spirituelle investit l'homme jusqu'au
dernier jour, le salut s'offre comme une certitude, et se trouve annoncé dès le
premier sonnet. Les douze sonnets sur la mort forment en définitive comme
un couronnement à la (vraie) vie.

Le retour à ce sonnet inaugural nous permet de souligner qu'il reflète
parfaitement un système mettant en évidence le principe d'équivalence: le
parallélisme, en même temps qu'une figure caractéristique du raisonnement:
l'analogie.

"Mortels, qui des mortels avez prins vostre vie,
Vie, qui meurt encor dans le tombeau du corps:
Vous qui rammoncelez vos thresors des thresors
De ceux dont par la mort la vie fust ravie:

Vous qui voyant de morts leur mort entresuyvie.
N'avez point de maisons que les maisons des morts,
Et ne sentez pourtant de la mort un remors
D'où vient qu'au souvenir son souvenir s'oublie?

Est-ce que vostre vie adorant ses douceurs
Déteste des pensers de la mort les horreurs.
Et ne puisse envier une contraire envie?

Mortels, chacun accuse et j'excuse le tort

Qu'on forge en vostre oubly. Un oubly d'une mort

Vous montre un souvenir d'une étemelle vie."

Le poème s'inscrit dans le registre interpellatif par une forme de discours
interpersonnel marqué par la présence simultanée du "je" et du groupe "vous"
permettant d'identifier fictivement l'auteur de l'énoncé et le(s) destinaire(s),
par des traces de structure argumentative qui impliquent un ordre nécessaire
de succession ou au moins des indices d'une progressivité, et par un tonalité
globale qui est celle du sermon.

La construction formelle du sonnet repose sur un système généralisé de
répétitions qu'on pourrait désigner sous le nom générique d'anominatio. Les
répétitions ou parallélismes qui marquent individuellement les vers:

"Mortels qui des mortels" v.l

"Vos thresors des thresors" v.2

" de morts, leur mort" v.5

Renaissance et Réfonne / 281

" de maisons que les maisons..." V.6

" au souvenir son souvenir" v.8

" en vostre oubly. Un oubly..." V.13

ne sont qu'un cas particulier d'un système plus ou moins réversif qui
organise l'ensemble du sonnet. Les quatrains sont construits sur des
mouvements syntaxiquement parallèles:

"Mortels, qui des ... "/ "Vie, qui . . .

"Vous qui rammoncelez"/ "Vous qui voyant de morts

dans lesquels le réseau de répétitions et d'échos à la césure est partout à
l'intérieur des quatrains

Ql [mor/or ... ; mortels/mortels; encor/corps]

thresors/thresor
[vie/i ... qui/vie; vie/qui; vie/ravie]

Q2 [qui/entresuyvie; souvenir/souvenir/s'oublie]

[ . . . mort/mort; morts/mort/remors]

ou des tercets

Tl [adorant/mort/horreurs]

[tort/forge/mort]
[vie/puisse/envier/en vie]

T2 [oubly/oubly; souvenir/vie ...]

est accentué par des équivalences fonctionelles externes. Au niveau des
quatrains, le son [or] revient trois fois dans les mots à la césure et est souvent
lié au mot "mort" par la consonne prévocalique /m/ (vers 1,4,5); de même,
si le son [i] revient une fois au niveau du dernier quatrain, il occupe la césure
par trois fois dans les tercets. Au niveau de la rime, la plupart des mots font
écho soit à "vie" soit à "mort" avec une nette similitude d' occurences dans
les quatrains. Quant à "vie" et "mort", termes-clés, ils se retrouvent par deux
fois à la rime: vers 1 et 14 (vie) et vers 6 et 13 (morts). Dans les quatrains la
rime féminine (ie) embrasse les masculines (or) et exploite souvent la
consonne prévocalique en /v/ et /m/, sauf au vers 8 dominé en revanche par
la triple allitération, en /s/, /ou/, et /v/: ce qui donne une certaine
prédominance à "vie" et confirme l'impressions de couronnement. Du point
de vue des catégories (f = féminin, m = masculin, s = singulier et p = pluriel):

282 / Renaissance and Reformation

Ql:N(f,s) -N(m,s) -N(m.p.) - V(3^ pers. s.)

Q2:A(f,s) -N(m,p) - N(m,s) - V(3« pers. s.)

Tl:N(f.p.) -N(f,p)- N(f.s)

T2: N(m,s) - N(f,s) - N(f.s)

Le caractère féminin de "vie", - au début Ql et à la fin de T2 - , irradie pour
ainsi dire les autres catégories grammaticales. En soulignant les divers effets
de parallélismes homophoniques, syntaxiques et sémantiques, on se rend
compte que la distribution des "invariants" étant en effet rigoureuse, le petit
nombre de "variations" apparaît d'autant plus efficace.

Deux ruptures affectent ce jeu de reprises et de symétries, D'un côté, à la
structure parallèle des quatrains construits sur le même modèle
homophonique qui fait de Q2 le miroir et l'écho de Ql, s'opposent les
structures distinctes des tercets, qui introduisent dans le système, une discor-
dance. De l'autre, le réseau d'échos et d'équivalences produit une correspon-
dance, non point entre l'ensemble Q et l'ensemble T, mais entre le bloc des
quatrains et une partie des tercets (V3 et Tl et T2). On observe ainsi un double
parallélisme: de Ql par rapport à Q2, de l'ensemble Q par rapport au quatrain
constitué par les vers 11 à 14. Le sonnet est ainsi construit sur trois rimes au
lieu de cinq, caractéristique qui rappelle les acrobaties des rhétoriqueurs.

Structurellement les vers 9 et 10 restent isolés (isolement accentué par le
système de distribution de rimes selon le schéma ABBA: un seul jeu de rimes
en /eur/) et ce sont les seuls oià l'on peut lire l'interrogation fondamentale, à
valeur affirmative, du choix entre la vie terrestre et la vie d'outre-tombe.
L'homme aveuglé par les "horreurs" qu'inspire la dégradation du corps après
la mort, et par les tentations des "douceurs" de la terre serait-il incapable
d'envier un sort "contraire", celui de "l'éternelle vie"? Non sans doute!

D'autre part, la construction du réseau thématique repose également sur un
jeu de parallélismes et d'équivalences. Dans les quatrains apparaissent
successivement deux termes distincts, la vie et la mort, renvoyant à deux
paradigmes antithétiques de la biologie; ils ont en fait pour référence non
seulement le monde physique, mais un univers culturel dans lequel ils sont
en effet associés par une contiguïté textuelle, et qui leur assure des fonctions
symboliques. La vie est définie par un ensemble d'apparences de douceurs,
mais c'est une donnée qui n'est en somme qu'une parcelle d'une chaîne de
morts. En revanche, les "horreurs" de la mort révèlent "un souvenir d'une
éternelle vie". Toutes ces qualités sont moins des attributs de nature que des
connotations établies par le code culturel de référence, le discours religieux.
Cette réalité constamment en péril et périssante se charge de valeurs

Renaissance et Réforme / 283

mauvaises, et un interdif pèse sur ces "douceurs" santionnées dans la perspec-
tive chrétienne par les indicibles souffrances de l'enfer, équivalent de
"l'éternelle mort". En surimpression apparaît le paradis dont le nom est tu -
encore qu'il ferait bien écho à "vie" - cet espace de bonheur ou locus amoenus
à la fois attrayant et redoutable. Ainsi, la vie et la mort, différentes par leurs
qualités, deviennent des figures synonymiques, se renvoyant leurs attributs.

La dynamique du texte se fonde sur les perspectives successives du "Je"
sujet de renonciation devant ces réahtés posées d'abord comme équivalentes.
Le premier mouvement est d'observation: on voit se déployer devant le
regard, lui-même mortel, un défilé de morts passés et récents. Cette vie
enfermée dans le "tombeau du corps" devient le miroir d'une mort en acte.
Dépourvue de consistance, d'existence autonome, la mort s'impose comme
une enveloppe de l'être humain, reflétée par la conscience du sujet lyrique.
Un deuxième mouvement corrige bientôt le premier: c'est un mouvement
didactique qui récupère les fruits de l'observation pour asseoir sa leçon sur
une antithèse qui ne néglige pas le jeu phonique: "Chacun diCcuseiy txcuse le
tort". Dans l'espace que dessinent le premier et le dernier vers (v.l; 14), la
"vie" prolongée en écho non seulement par les rimes extérieures et intérieures
(v.9,13) mais encore par le son [i] qui (do)mine le dernier tercet, prend le pas
sur la "mort" qui par son écho la concurrençait nettement dans les deux
premiers quatrains, tout en changeant de statut: de valeur périssable, elle est
devenue une valeur ''éternelle". On s'explique que le terme "vie" inaugure et
clôture le sonnet au niveau de la rime et que ce sonnet I soit si proche de
l'esprit du douzième par l'aspiration à l'éternité.

L'unité de cette couronne à la vie que constituent les douze sonnets de Jean
de Sponde n'est pas, on s'en doute essentiellement dans l'unicité du locuteur
ou dans la contiguïté textuelle. Il ne s'agit pas seulement d'un ensemble de
sonnets composés au hasard sur un sujet, la mort, et rassemblés pour les
besoins d'une publication. L'importance phonique des trois rimes: /(v)i(e)/,
/(m)or(t)/, /-eur(s)/ du premier sonnet constitue une matrice dont l'expansion
investit pour ainsi dire l'ensemble du canzonière. Ainsi, la rime mineure
/-eur/, devenant majeure dans les quatrains des sonnets II, IV et IX, reste liée
par la connotation de la fragilité de la vie terrestre par opposition à la vie
céleste.

La redondance des deux autres rimes /i/, /or/, reprises chacune trois fois
dans ce sonnet I, et qui impose /vie/ et /mort/ comme des mots-thèmes, permet
de noter leur remarquable expansion rimique dans le canzonière. Leur con-
stant retour à la rime avec tout ce que cela implique comme écho investit
presque individuellement les sonnets: /(m)or(t)/ revient onze fois, soit neuf

284 / Renaissance and Reformation

fois dans les rimes masculines où "mort" comporte six occurences et deux
fois dans les rimes féminines; /(v)i(e)/ revient douze fois, soit dix fois dans
les rimes féminines où "vie" totalise sept occurences et deux fois dans les
rimes masculines. Les rimes qui comportent "mort" ou lui font écho se
distribuent dans les sonnets I, III, IV, V, IX et X. Celles qui comportent "vie"
ou lui font écho se distribuent dans I, IV, V, VI, VIII, X, XI. La prédominance
de "vie" dans une couronne qui se charge de la célébrer n'est plus un hasard,
car on saisit à l'oeuvre, comme dirait M. Riffaterre, les mécanismes
d'expansion et de conversion qui font entrer en compétition deux termes dont
l'issue n'est pas une neutralisation, mais une promotion de l'un d'entre eux
- ici l'antonyme - par le truchement d'un réseau de sonorités. ^^ Cette
promotion de sonorités qui minent le canzonière est homologuée au niveau
figuratif.

Le premier sonnet, par exemple, développe la matrice: la vie est une mort,
ou mieux, la vie terrestre est mortelle. Cette expansion, non seulement
autorise les répétitions "mortels" ... "mortels" et autres déjà relevées dans le
cadre de "l'anominatio", mais inaugure une succession de tableaux. En effet,
dans chacune des dérivations synonymiques que développe l'expansion, le
sujet est transformé en complexes descriptifs dont chacun dramatise une sème
de "vie" en termes de "non-vie". Sont sélectionnés les sèmes qui suggèrent
la mortalité: le sème "précarité" d'abord; dans l'usage, il se manifeste sous
la forme d'épithètes nominalisées, "mortels qui des mortels": donnée ou
reçue, la vie terrestre est perçue comme une valeur périssable, involontaire-
ment cessible, tout comme les "thrésors", "les maisons" qui tout en étant liés
au premier sème, génèrent celui de propriété - non propriété, de l'éphémère:
ces trésors comme ces maisons furent possédés autrefois par ceux qui
aujourd'hui sont morts. Enfin, le sème de la pérennité de cet événement qu'est
la mort générée par la métaphore "tombeau du corps" conduit à un
développement sous forme constative: "Et ne sentez pourtant de la mort un
remors", puis interrogative: "D'où vient qu'au souvenir [mémoire] son sou-
venir [rappel] s'oublie?", pour aboutir au recul devant les "horreurs" de la
putréfaction qui font détester la mort, du moins par la pensée: "Déteste des
pensers de la mort les horreurs". L'interrogation rhétorique cependant ouvre
la voie au déploiement d'un sème de permanence de tout autre ordre:
"l'éternelle vie", permet d'effectuer le saut existentiel dans une casuistique
qui n'est autre qu'un mécanisme de conversion légitimant le jeu de mots
"Chacun accuse/J' excuse le tort". Ainsi, et ce, tout au long du canzonière, au
fur et à mesure que s'élabore l'expansion des deux mots-thèmes, on saisit
parallèlement à l'oeuvre, le mécanisme de conversion. Si les deux termes -

Renaissance et Réforme / 285

"morts'V'vie" - jouissent d'un statut à peu près équivalent dans le premier
sonnet, leur opposition laisse bientôt percevoir, à travers un échange
d'attributs, une double équation: la vie est une mort; la mort est une vie.

Et il est tout aussi remarquable que ces deux mots n'aient pas d'écho(s) à
la rime - ou ne s'y retrouvent pas - dans les sonnets VII et XII, choisis comme
autres sonnets charnières. Ce lipogrammatisme trouve sa justification pro-
fonde dans le processus de désignation périphrastique, donc oblique, qui se
manifeste dans chacun de ces deux sonnets. D'une part dans le sonnet VII, la
mort cesse d'être un événement abstrait, universel, et investit la vie per-
sonnelle du locuteur. Ce "je" prend conscience de son néant dans une
méditation morose qui s'étend sur l'ensemble du sizain:

"A la fin je me trouve en un estrange esmoy,

Car ces divers effets ne sont que contre moy;

C'est mourir que de vivre en ceste peine extrême.

Voilà comme la vie à l'abandon s'espard,

Chaque part de ce Monde en emporte sa part,

Et la moindre à la fin est celle de nous [moy] même".

D'autre part, le sonnet XII proclame, en même temps que le triomphe de
Dieu sur le Monde, la certitude de salut de ce même "je", c'est-à-dire
l'assurance d'accéder à "l'éternelle vie" prônée, on s'en souvient dès la fin
su sonnet I. Voici d'ailleurs le dernier tercet de ce douzième sonnet:

"Mais ton Temple pourtant, ta main, ta voix sera
La nef, l'appuy, l'oreille où ce charme perdra,
Où mourra cest effort, où se rompra ceste Onde."

Deux caractères du poète réformé font ainsi surface: le premier, c'est que
l'entière corruption du "mortel" fait reposer son salut sur le libre-arbitre divin.
Le salut vient de Dieu, les oeuvres ne sont donc rien.^^ Convaincu d'avoir été
élu - par la grâce de la conscience - , et c'est là le deuxième caractère, le
poète est si assuré de son salut que sa prière du sonnet XII est moins une
demande qu'une célébration hyperbolique de la toute-puissance de Dieu,
même si ce triomphe total est annoncé au futur. En somme, le mérite du
poète-célébrant, offrant une couronne à la victoire de la vie éternelle sur la
vie terrestre, de l'éternité sur le temporel, n'aurait "nulle" "grâce" devant
Dieu, si lui-même n'avait été, de toute éternité, l'objet de sa providentielle
élection.

286 / Renaissance and Reformation

La tendance moderne à restreindre l'efficacité des thèses de Jakobson à
l'analyse de la poésie romantique trahit surtout des insuffisances dans notre
connaissance de la poésie française, la critique moderne ne se fondant que sur
un classicisme plutôt vague. La poétique de Jakobson, pour être contestée
dans sa généralité, mériterait qu'on l'expérimente dans des analyses de
poèmes datant de diverses périodes.

L'intérêt de la critique universitaire pour la critique moderne ne change
rien au problème du démon de l'analogie qui a hanté, hante et hantera toujours
la production du poème. De là à hanter la critique elle-même, y aurait-il une
situation plus logique?

Université de Yaounde

Notes

1. Henri Lafay a déjà souligné "l'importance capitale" des recueils collectifs dans la
diffusion des poésies nouvelles. On ne saurait oublier que c'est le mode de publication
de la production spondienne dans sa presque totalité. - cf. La Poésie française du
premier XVIF siècle (1598-1630), Pâùs, Nizet, 1975, p. 19 et 551 suiv.

2. Louis Aragon, "Du sonnet" dans Les Lettres françaises 506, 1954, 1-8.

3. Robert Melançon, "Le pétrarquisme pieux: la conversion de la poésie amoureuse chez
Jean de la Ceppède" dans Renaissance et Réforme, XXIII (1987), p. 136.

4. Ibid.

5. Dans le sillage des Amours de Ronsard et de ceux de Philippe Desportes, signalons
L'hécatombe à Diane d'A. d'Aubigné.

6. Par exemple: Le Mespris de la vie et consolation contre la mort de Jean-Baptiste
Chassignet, Besançon, Nicolas de Moingesse, 1594 et rééd. Genève, Droz, Paris,
Minard, 1967; Les Théorèmes... sur le sacré Mistère de N'^^ Rédemption de la Ceppède,
Toulouse, Vve Jacques Colomiez, 1613, rééd. avec une présentation de J. Rousset,
Genève, Droz. 1966; et les Sonnets spirituels d'Anne de Marquets, Paris, Claude Morel.
1605.

7. Henri Meschonnic, Pour La Poétique, I, Paris, Gallimard, 1970, p. 160.

8. Dans le supplément au glossaire, le "paragrammatisme" se définit comme
"l'organisation prosodique d'un texte, par diffraction complète ou partielle des
éléments sonores ou graphiques d'un "mot-thème" dans son contexte, "hors de l'ordre
dans le temps qu'ont les éléments (Saussure)." Ibid., p. Ill .

9. Par "forme-sens", il faut entendre, la "forme du langage dans un texte (des petites aux
grandes unités) spécifique de ce texte en tant que produit de l'homogénéité du dire et
du vivre. Un texte, dans son signifiant, est l'inconscient du langage. Il fait ceci, qu'il
dure, et on ne peut pas en épuiser le pourquoi. Sa connaissance est infinie". Ibid., p.
176.

10. L'expression est de Claude-Gabriel Dubois. Cf. Le Baroque, Paris, Larousse, 1973, p.
84.

Renaissance et Réforme / 287

11. Malgré ses précautions, J. Rousset croit déceler, "d'apparentes ruptures": "Pourquoi
faut-il aller chercher au n. VII la suite naturelle du V? Et que vient faire à la place qui
nous est proposée, le sonnet VI? Sa belle conclusion ... semble sans relation directe
avec ce qui précède, elle intervient trop tôt dans l'évolution du recueil, alors qu'elle en
ferait si bien le dénouement". Cf. L 'intérieur et l'extérieur, Paris, José Corti, 1968, p.
24.

12. Par exemple "Chandelier à sept branches; sept esprits reposant sur la tige de Jessé: sept
cieux où habitent les ordres angéliques ... Lors de la prise de Jéricho, sept prêtres
portant sept trompettes doivent, le septième jour, faire sept fois le tour de la ville ... ".
(Cf. Dictionnaire des symboles).

13. La réversion est une figure rhétorique qui consiste en un retour d'un mot qui change
partiellement de sens. On s'en doute, sa fonction ici n'est pas qu'ornementale.

14. Les raisons sont variées et nous ne sommes pas seul à penser que ce sonnet XII est bien
à sa place. Après A. Boase, C. Dubois affirme que ce sonnet offre "La parfaite
conclusion qui résume les onze sonnets qui précèdent: nous trouvons là en effet, à
travers les volutes des tentations mondaines, charnelles et diaboliques ... l'élan d'un
esprit martyrisé qui réserve toute son énergie pour l'imploration de la paix future". Le
Baroque, Op. cit., p. 86. Ajoutons que ce sonnet est le dernier maillon d'une chaîne,
ou mieux la dernière fleur d'une couronne qui rappelle celle de la femme de
l'Apocalypse: "un grand signe apparut dans le ciel, une femme enveloppée du soleil
comme d'un vêtement, qui avait la lune sous les pieds et une couronne de douze étoiles
sur la tête. Elle était sur le point de mettre au monde un enfant, et les peines de
l'accouchement la faisaient crier de douleur." (Apocalypses, 12, 1-2). En tant que
couronne de "l'éternelle vie", ces douze sonnets disent les peines de l'engendrement
et préfigurent la victoire de "l'invincible main" de Dieu.

15. "On entend par vers rapportés des vers composés de parties semblables, dans chacune
desquelles entrent des mots (trois ou quatre selon les cas) qui se rapportent non pas aux
mots voisins, mais à ceux qui sont semblablement placés dans les autres parties de la
phrase: paria paribus reddita". Cf. Henri Chamard, Histoire de la Pléiade, Paris,
1939-1941, t. IV, p. 101-192. En réalité, cette forme n'est pas nouvelle, puisque E. R.
Curtius en a relevé des traces dans des poèmes grecs et latins, ainsi qu'au cours du
Moyen Age. Cf. La littérature et le Moyen âge latin, trad. J. Brejoux, Paris, 1956, p.
347 sq.

1 6. En effet Michael Riffaterre considère que "le texte comme lieu de signifiance est généré
par la conversion et l'expansion ... (qui) permettent toutes deux d'établir une
équivalence entre un mot et un groupe de mots, c'est-à-dire entre un lexeme (toujours
susceptible d'être réécrit comme phrase matricielle) et un syntagme. Ainsi se crée
l'énoncé verbal fini, sémantiquement et formellement unifié qui constitue le poème".
Et dans le cas d'espèce, un ensemble de poèmes. Cf Sémiotique de la poésie, Paris,
Seuil, 1983, p. 67.

17. Comme le dit Calvin: "Les oeuvres n'auront nulle grâce devant Dieu, que celuy qui les
a faites ne soit déjà auparavant approuvé de luy". Ci Commentaires sur les Cinq livres
de Moyse, Genève, 1564, p. 41.

English Puritanism and Festive Custom

ALEXANDRA F.JOHNSTON

vJn February 1, 1621, John Marten, Vicar of the parish church of St John
the Baptist, Windsor sent a petition to an official of the ecclesiastical courts,
one Master Jones, complaining against the activities of his churchwarden:

Mfl5ter lones, though as yett I am vnknowne to you yett I am bold to
entreate you to be my proctOMr & to put into the Court, by way of Articles
against Thomas Hall Churchwarden of New-Windsor Inkeeper. these
particulars following.

1. That the said Thomas Hall is a common swearer blasphemer & curser,
not onelie in priuate houses but also in the open streetes to the great offence
& grief e of many.

2. That the said Thomas Hall vsuallie receiueth the holie sacrament of the
Lords supper but once in the yeare.

3. That the said Thomas hath maintayned playing at pigeon holes, many
Saterdayes together both in the last yeare 1619, & also in this year 1620
in the tyme of Euening prayer neare to the Church yard wall.'

4. That the said Thomas vpon Easter munday last in the tyme of Euening
prayer was present at a play with many others, at the signe of the Georg
in Windsor, so that through his example few persons were present at
diuine seruice

5. That the said Thomas, vpon the feast of the Ascension of Christ, last
past, did procure bricklayers to mend vp the Churchyard wall & suffered
Carpenters to worke that whole day in the markett place; oftens accom-
panying them ./.

6. That the said Thomas, at the celebration of the holie sacrament of the
Lords supper did with a Iqwde voyce, expostulate, chyde & wrangle with
one Robert Michener a poore labouring man & with Clement his wife:
adding moreouer these words, except you pay your 2 d come no more
here, & also adding this threatning I will talke with you in another place:
as that not onelie the said Robert & Clement his wife, were much greiued,
being readie to receiue the holie sacrament, but also the minister & diuerse
Communicants, were greatlie disturbed

7. That the said Thomas Hall vpon the feast day of the Ascension last past
when one of the morrice dauncers had leaped & daunced in the face of
the minister standing in his owne doore, did before a great number of

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVII, 4 (1991) 289

290 / Renaissance and Reformation

people revile & abuse the minister with these reprothfull speaches sc. that
the morrice dauncers should dance before his doore & before his face in
spite of him & in spite of his teeth & that they would ridd the towne of
him; asking him disdainfullie what he was, w/th many other threatning
speeches.

I pray you Master lones after that you haue thus Articled against the said
Thomas Hall, take out a Commission to examine witnesses (which I haue
many) to proove these Articles: & vpon yowr letter sent to me by
Ockinghaw or the Carrier; I will send what fees you write to be due; as
also the names of my Commisioners. when I know how many Commis-
sioners are required; then also I will write to you about interragatories;
& other particulars vpon yowr direction; thus defying your best further-
ance in an honest cause; with hartie commendations to you & my prayers
to god for you. I end & rest
Feb 1, 1620. from New Windsor

Your vnknowne yet loving
Client

lohn Marten vicar
of New Windsor^

This petition documents the profound split in English society that preceded
the Civil War. Marten represents the new Puritan spirit craving godliness and
order and invoking the ancient courts of the church to prosecute the social
behaviour of those who, like "the said Thomas" still lived in the festive world
of licensed liberty into which he had been born. Thomas Hall takes his job as
churchwarden seriously. He raises money in the tried and true manner with
plays and morris dancing; he spends the money to repair the church property
and even harangues the parishioners to pay the new-fangled twopence fee for
pews. Yet to the new vicar his behaviour is blasphemous and his associates
reprobates to be censured by the ecclesiastical courts and, possibly, excom-
municated.

The work of Mikhail Bakhtin as it has been used by such historians as
Natalie Zemon Davis has helped us to understand the complex symbolism
represented by festive custom in the early modern period. Yet Bakhtin 's
argument that carnival was the first step towards freeing European society
from the "official culture of the Middle Ages" is hard to apply to England.^
What seems to be emerging, particularly from the work of the Records of
Early English Drama project, is that until the last quarter of the sixteenth
century English festive customs were integral to the official culture. There-

Renaissance et Réforme / 291

after, what Leah Marcus calls "old holiday pastimes"^ became tightly
entwined with the struggle for the conscience of the kingdom represented by
Puritans like John Marten. The coincidence of the rise of Puritanism in
England and the breakup of the old social order has produced a phenomenon
unlike what happened on the continent. In England, almost all elements of
festive custom became pawns in a revolution that changed the character of
English society.

The instrument that was used to prosecute those who carried out the old
customs first appeared in Visitation Articles in the diocese of York in 1575,

Item that the minister and churchewardens shall not suffer anye lordes
of misrule or sommerr Lordes or ladyes or anye disguised persons or
others in christmasse or at may gammes or anye minstrels morrie
dauncers or others at Ryshebearinges or at any other tymes to come
vnreverentle into anye churche or chappell or churchyeard and there
daunce or playe anye vnseemelye partes with scoffes ieastes wanton
gestures or rybaulde talke namely in the tyme of divine service or of anye
sermon.^

Such articles were repeated again and again by other bishops and the questions
became a standard part of diocesan visits. The struggle was carried out at the
local, diocesan or parish level with seemingly little reference to edicts issued
at the centre either by the church or by the king himself such as James' famous
Declaration Concerning Lawful Sports. The Bishop of Gloucester, for exam-
ple, in 1622 four years after the promulgation of the James' Declaration
which allowed many of the pastimes, included these questions in his Visita-
tion Articles to be asked of every churchwarden in his diocese:

28 Whether haue any Lords of misrule, dauncers, players, or any other
disguised person, beene suffered to dance or play vpon the Sabbath day,
or to enter into the church or chapell, with games or daunces, to the
prophaning of Gods house, or into the church-yarde in time of Diuine
seruice: and if they haue, what bee the names of such disordered persons.

29 Whether there be any stage -playes, beare-baitings, bul-baitings, or
other such vnlawfull and prophane exercises vsed vpon the Sabbath day:
and who gaue them Licence. Whether there be any common drinkings
in the Church, and who were present at such drinkings: or sports, or any
that do sit in the Tauerne, or Alehouse, or streetes vpon Sundayes or
Holidayes, in time of morning or euening prayer.

292 / Renaissance and Reformation

Such interrogations, depending on the spirit in which they were carried out,
could have constituted a kind of guerilla war against pastimes that had been
approved by the king. The most recent edition of the Records of Early English
Drama series, Lancashire, records various examples of such prosecutions,^

Yet until about 1575, festive customs had been important elements in the
rhythm of the seasons and there is considerable evidence that what Marcus
calls "lawless topsy-turvydom"^ had reinforced rather than challenged the
established order by being licensed within it. The customs of both the church
and secular society seem to have been carefully controlled to uphold the order
that was being inverted.

The most ancient custom that expresses the idea of "licensed liberty" is the
practice of electing a choir boy as a mock bishop for part of the Christmas
festivités.^ The practice was widespread in England from the earliest reference
in York in 1221 to the Reformation. The evidence is fragmentary but it appears
that in some places the Boy Bishop reigned from St Nicholas Day (6 December)
to the Feast of the Holy Innocents (27 December). Evidence from elsewhere
suggests that the boy (who according to reforming statutes in York in 1367 and
1390 was to be good looking and have a good voice) was chosen on the Feast of
St Nicholas but reigned only on the feast of the Holy Innocents. Evidence for the
costuming of the boy as a bishop in full regalia survives from cathedrals, monastic
establishments, and schools and colleges. From their foundation in the mid-fif-
teenth century, for example, Westminster School and Eton and their correspond-
ing colleges (New College, Oxford and King's, Cambridge) had Boy Bishop
ceremonies. Although the ceremony did provide opportunities for abuse, its
intent was a serious one emphasizing the place of children in the conduct of the
service particularly on the day of the feast dedicated to the slaughter of the
children. The Boy Bishop and his attendants were expected to conduct them-
selves with suitable decorum through all the parts of the liturgy that did not
demand the services of an ordained priest and the boy was expected to preach a
sermon to the community which, of course, included the real bishop.

A secular Christmas figure probably related to the religious customs, the
Lord of Misrule, appears in the records of the household of Princess Mary in
1521. The young people who had the care of the young princess appointed
one John Thurgood to be the Lord of Misrule for the household over the
Christmas season. Among other games and disguising, Thurgood arranged
for a man from Windsor to kill a calf "before my lady's grace behind a
cloth". ^^ Two years later across the river in Eton, the school appointed one
of the servants of the royal household to act as their Lord of Misrule.^ ^ At
Christmas, 1525 Princess Mary was in Tewkesbury and her new entourage

Renaissance et Réforme / 293

wrote to Wolsey to enquire "whither we shall appoynte any lord of mysrule
for the said honorable householde/ provide for enterludes Disgysynges or
pleyes in the said fest/ or for banket on twelf nyght/". ^^ These Christmas Lords
of Misrule seem to have been Masters of Ceremonies or Masters of Revels
employed by noble households. The Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral
gave the "Abbott of Misrule" of a local magnate called Courtenay a hogshead
of wine in 1533^^ and the Gloucester town council twice recorded hiring the
"abbott" or Lord of Misrule from the households of Sir Anthony Kingston
and Sir Nicholas Arnold in 1550 and 1563.^"^ These men were, presumably,
hired to arrange a Christmas party for their clients. The custom survived in
the north well into the seventeenth century. The Carlisle town council pro-
vided a costume for their Abbot of Misrule in 1610 and ten years later it seems
that Willy, the town fool, acted as their abbott. ^^

Equally pervasive were the summer customs that are only now coming to be
fully understood as the editors for the Records of Early English Drama project
comb through the church records of the sixteenth century. It was the responsi-
bility of the parishioners, led by the churchwardens, to maintain the fabric of the
church west of the chancel steps including the roof, the tower, the porch and the
churchyard. In most country parishes the necessary money was raised (as
Thomas Hall of Windsor had apparently been doing) by a series of parish events
including "Hocking" (which survives today in the Sadie Hawkins customs),
performing religious plays as well as the ever present folk play of Robin Hood,
morris dancing, and other communal activities. These were usually focussed on
the midsummer or Whitsun festival when parishes all over the country held
Church Ales often termed King Ales or King Plays where home-brew was sold,
often a fair was held, minstrells played and May-poles were erected. A profit was
made from almost every one of these activities. Some small Berkshire parishes
frugally chopped up the may-pole and sold the wood for fire-wood^^. The
festivities were often presided over by a Lord and Lady of the festival sometimes
called summer lords and ladies. Sometimes these figures took on the names of
Robin Hood and Maid Marion. The social inversion of these occasions was
conscious. Evidence survives from the parish of Wing in Buckinghamshire that
servants of local gentlemen, especially those of Sir William Dormer, were chosen
to preside over the festival. ^^

Shakespeare, in 1611, exploits this custom in the fourth act of Winter's
Tale when he portrays Perdita, the lost princess of Sicilia, playing the queen
of the country festival in Bohemia. Florizel, her princely suitor, leads her to
the role while her adopted father, the Shepherd, urges her to take her
responsibilities at the festivities seriously,

294 / Renaissance and Reformation

Fie, daughter! when my old wife liv'd, upon
This day she was both pantler, butler, cook.
Both Dame and servant; welcom'd all, serv'd all;
Would sing her song and dance her turn; now here
At the upper end o' th' table, now i' th' middle;
On his shoulder, and his; her face o' fire
With labour, and one thing she took to quench it
She would to each one sip. You are retired.
As if you were a feasted one, and not
The hostess of the meeting: pray you, bid
These unknown friends to 's welcome; for it is
A way to make us better friends, more known.
Come quench your blushes, and present yourself
That which you are. Mistress o' th' Feast. Come on,
And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing.
As your good flock shall prosper. (IV, iv, 55-69)

At the eiîd of his career, Shakespeare turns to the fast dying customs of his
childhood to portray an idyllic pastoral world far from the suspicions of the
court. But the idyll was soon to be disallowed. Only a few years after
Shakespeare's play William Rice and Dionisia Watkins, two parishioners of
Welsh Newton in Herefordshire, were excommunicated for taking the parts
of the Lord and Lady of Misrule at the summer festival. ^^

The Puritan spirit which would so briefly dominate English society before
it was transported to New England, felt compelled to repress any challenge
to its sense of fit and godly behaviour. Through the very immediate instrument
of the ecclesiastical courts, the personal lives of countless individuals were
disrupted often through the testimony of their neighbours. Reading the court
records of this period, one is struck, on the one hand, by the sincerity of many
of the Puritans and, on the other, by the opportunism of many others who used
the ideological zeal of the godly to settle old scores with neighbours and
family members alike. Evangelical fervour and meanspirited pettiness jostle
one another in page after page of evidence.

Another case that demonstrates the way in which the inhabitants of small
communities were pitted against one another is documented in the court
records of the Bishop of Salisbury. In March 1623, Thomas Kent and his
daughter Susan were cited before the bishop's court for their behaviour in the
parish of Wyly, Wiltshire, on the western edge of Salisbury Plain.^^ It is clear
from the depositions that the incumbent of the parish church, John Lee, had
changed the life of the parish with his Puritan principals. Thomas Kent, styled
"gentleman", despite the fact that he had been an infrequent church-goer,

Renaissance et Réforme / 295

became churchwarden and proceeded to harrass the parson. For example, Lee
complained that Kent refused to cut the bread for communion and provided
mere sack from the local pub rather than the more refined muscadine although
his fellow churchwarden would have been prepared to travel to Salisbury or
Warminster to procure the finer wine. Kent's response at being reproached
by Lee was to say that "the minister should Doe yt himself if he would"
(f 37v). Kent was also loud in his criticism of the length of Lee's sermons
"saying that yt were more fit for mens servantes to be at home w/th their cattle
then here" (f 37). But most telling is the testimony of a neighbour, Elizabeth
Wadling, against Susan Kent,

. . . that vppon a sonday in thaftemoone w/thin this xij monethes Last/ Mr
Lee the parson of wyly being in the church amongst his parishoners
perswaded them to come more orderly to church to heare the cathechism
aswell thold as the young, whervppon she the said \Susan being present said
in this Deponenles hearing that she would not sitt here soe long for said she
when cure he (meaning mr Lee) takes his greene book in hand wee shall
haue such a Deale of bibble babble that I am weary to heere yt & I can then
sitt downe in my seat and take a good napp and this deponent being by her
& some others bad her to be quyet and not to talke soe irreuerently of their
parson in the churche & that they were fearfull he did heere her to which
she answered I care not & if he doe for he speaks against vs for our daunsing
but now my father will mayntayne yt for the king doth allow of yt farder
saying vizt wee had a good parson heere before but now we haue a puritan
but said she a plague or a pox in him that euer he did come hither & I would
wee had Kept our old parson for he did neuer dislike w/th them at any tyme
& she being farder reproved said in this manner vizt theis proud puritans are
vp at the top now but I hope they will haue a tyme to come as fast downe as
euer they come vp . . . ff 41v-42

Clearly the Kents and their friends were hankering for the older world where
dancing and music had been part of the life of the village. However, it is clear,
in this situation, from the number of witnesses against them, that Lee had
many strong supporters in the parish. Unlike the case in Windsor, here in
Wyly the upholders of the old ways were on the defensive not the Puritan
parson.

The custom of Christmas lords became a weapon in the hands of northern
Puritans against recusants. About 1616, a charge of recusancy was brought
against Lord William Howard of Thornthwaite and part of the charge was that

... ye tenantes and servantes of ye lord William assisted with others of
ye parish did erect a christemas lord, and resorting to ye church, did most

296 / Renaissance and Reformation

grossely disturb ye minister in tyme of prayer . . . these christemas misrule
men, drunke to ye minister readinge an homilie in ye pulpitt, others stept
into ye pulpitt, and exhorted ye parishioners to an offeringe for maynten-
ance of there sport, ye minister contynuinge still his service, others of ye
lord William owne servantes came in savage manner disguised into ye
churche, in ye tyme of prayer, others with shootinge of gunnes, others
with flagges and banners borne entered ye churche, others sported them
selves in the churche with pies, and puddinges, vsinge them as bowles
in ye churche allies ... all there in the tyme of diuine service^^

Customs that stemmed from the licensed liberty of Catholic ceremony
become part of the arsenal to be used against the adherents of the old religion
in a district famous for its religious stubborness.

Licensed liberty as it was known in England before 1575 could only
flourish in stable society where the accustomed and often repressive norms
were accepted. When a whole society had consented to a normative pattern,
that pattern could be inverted and burlesqued at festival time without the
system itself being threatened. But by the early seventeenth century there was
no societal norm in England. The insecurity of the dominant Puritan faction
can be seen again and again in their fear of the expressions of the ancient
festive customs. For them licensed liberty was mere license, and as this extract
from a sermon preached before Sir Robert Foster, Justice of Assize in Exeter
in 1642 shows, a metaphor for inadequate rule,

... A pittifuU thing it was, that those which should curbe and restraine
others, should be sonnes of Belial, lawlesse, yoaklesse themselves, That
those which should set bounds to others, will keep no limits themselves,
that those which should have beene the Governours of the people, should
be little better that Christmasse-Lords, Lx)rds of mis-rule, and disorder;

__ 21

The narrowness of the Puritan vision was proved by their inability to
survive in power more than a few generations. But those few generations
marked a profound change in English society. Many of the customs and
ceremonies of the medieval past survived in the countryside beyond the reign
of Elizabeth. Very few of them were left by the time of the Restoration. When
some were revived in the eighteenth century, they were a product of antiquar-
ian zeal, a conscious return to a lost past. The society that had the confidence
to license misrule did not survive the actions of the godly.

University of Toronto

Renaissance et Réforme / 297

Notes

1. According to Hazlitt (Faiths and Folklore of the British Isles, revised edition 1905 vol.
II, pp. 490-1) pigeon-holes "probably resembled a variety of bagatelle called bridge".
The game is frequently associated with bowling and may have demanded skill similar
to that needed for darts. In the seventeenth century it was associated with Witsun.

2. Oxfordshire County R.O. MS Oxon. Archd. Papers, Oxon. c.l74, ff 199-199v.

3. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. Helene Iswolsky, Indiana University
Press, 1984, p. 274.

4. Leah S. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth, Chicago, 1986, uses the phrase as part of her
subtitle "Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell and the Defense of old holiday pastimes."

5. Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, eds.. Records of Early English Drama:
York, Toronto, 1979, p.358.

6. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield, eds. Records of Early English Drama: Cumber-
land, Westmorland and Gloucestershire. Toronto, 1986. p. 346.

7. David George, éd., Records of Early English Drama: Lancashire Toronto, 1992. The
collection of the Somerset records being edited by James Stokes for the REED series
is even richer in the number and complexity of the prosecutions.

8. Marcus, p. 7.

9. Evidence for Boy Bishop activities appear in many collections in the Records of Early
English Drama series (University of Toronto Press 1979-), particularly those related
to monastic establishments. See also E.K.Chambers, The Medieval Stage, London
1903, vol. I, pp.336-71 and W.C. Meller, The Boy Bishop, London, 1923, pp. 3-18.

10. Public Record office E 36/216 endpapers.

11. Eton College Records, Act Book I, 1523-4.

12. Audrey Douglas and Peter Greenfield, eds.. Records of Early English Drama: Cum-
berland, Westmorland and Gloucestershire, Toronto, 1986, pp.296 and 299.

13. John Wasson, éd.. Records of Early English Drama: Devon, Toronto, 1987, p. 133.

14. REED:CWG, pp. 296 and 299.

15. ibid. pp. 71 and 24.

16. See, for example, the churchwardens' accounts of St Denys, Stanford-in-the-vale
(Berkshire Record Office D/P 118 5/1) for the years 1611-2, 1613-4 and 1619-20.

17. Buckinghamshire Record Office, PR 234/5/1, ff. 174v and 67v-81v.

18. David Klausner, éd.. Records of Early English Drama: Herefordshire and Worcester-
shire, Toronto, 1990, pp. 173-4.

19. Wiltshire Record Office, Bishop's Act Books, Office, Dl/39/2/11, ff 35v-43.

20. REED.CWG, p. 2\8.

21. REED:Devon, p. 205.

Hamlet: The Dialectic Between
Eye and Ear

MARY ANDERSON

Wf hat do we know about Hamlet? He is young, educated, sensitive, and
in a dilemma. We know that the practical issue of truth and judgement
preoccupies him. He is a university student at Wittenberg and has a "studious
temperament", illustrated by the fact that he is eager to get back to school. ^'^
He debates and deliberates at great length and gives the appearance of one
who is oriented toward word rather than action. We can assume that Shakes-
peare's characterization of Hamlet as an intellectual carries some philosoph-
ical and thematic import, and that the play is, at least in part, about the
difficulty of achieving certainty, truth, and meaning, as a basis for action in
the world. There is a "general air of uncertainty" in the play and, as A.
Brennan points out, "Truth is so elusive that you can only sneak up on it to
catch it by surprise".-^''*

In Hamlet, both the play and the character, Shakespeare provides a series
of images which examine the various ways of gaining knowledge and cer-
tainty as a basis for judgement and action.^ He sets up a comparison between
the eye and the ear as the two faculties by which sense data are transmitted
to the reason. The frequent and deliberate repetition of these images in the
play invites analysis and provides a comprehensive structure by which the
play can be better understood.

In Hamlet the importance of reason is emphasized, and this faculty is
elevated to "noble", "sovereign", "ingenious", and "godlike" status (III. i. 157;
V.i.248; IV.iv,39). The function of language is implicit in the relationship
between the eye and the ear, and the power of the word for good or evil is a
central theme in the play.

As well as the eye and ear, the images dealing with one or more of the five
senses are especially important to characterization. The five senses represent
an image of completeness, and when one or more is absent, this denotes a
deficiency. The repetition of certain words or phrases according to the number

Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, XXVII, 4 (1991) 299

300 / Renaissance and Reformation

five and its multiples, suggests purpose and design in which theme and
structure coalesce into meaning.

The Revenge Code is also a major theme in the play and we observe Hamlet
being torn between his desire to fulfill his father's wish for revenge, and his
knowledge that the act is unlawful and immoral. When we consider the grave
moral and philosophical paradoxes that the ghost of Hamlet's father presents,
is it any wonder that Hamlet is uncertain how to act?^ Brecht sees Hamlet as
"historically between two worlds, unhappy with the dark revenge duty, yet
unable to find another way to act. ... In the bloody business of feudal revenge
reason merely impedes him".^

Much has been written about the Revenge Code in Hamlet. Fredson Bowers
outlines the historical development of the prohibition against revenge in
Elizabethan England, and its severe and legal punishment as murder.^ Also,
as Harbage notes, had Hamlet taken revenge, he would have become a
villain.*^ In fact Shakespeare's most violent play, Titus Andronicus (1594)
written about six years before Hamlet, dramatizes the chain of bloodshed that
can be set in motion by the act of revenge. Hamlet's struggle with the revenge
duty is contrasted in the play with the character of Fortinbras who also seeks
to revenge his father's death; with Laertes, who rejects "words" and would
cut Hamlet's "throat i' th' Church"; and with Claudius, who tells Laertes,
"Revenge should have no bounds" (IV.vii. 126-28).

The role of the theatre as a medium which incorporates both the eye and
the ear in the transmission of ideas is also a central theme in the play.
Therefore, Shakespeare in the play Hamlet, and like his character Hamlet,
devises a play which will project his ideas and pique the political and social
conscience. In this play Shakespeare demonstrates his views about the moral
function of the theatre in its capacity to stimulate a more balanced understand-
ing in its audience. Wilson suggests that in Hamlet a kind of dramatic dialectic
was being imposed upon the Elizabethan audience. He states:

And the audience, of whatever school, would be swayed hither and
thither in their opinion, as Hamlet himself was swayed. '°

Thus the strongly held views and biases would become moderated and
tempered by an opposing viewpoint.

Hamlet as a scholar, places greater emphasis on the intellect and on reason
and the word. He says that he is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought",
and that he "must like a whore, unpack [his] heart with words" (III.i.84;
II.ii.585). Hamlet obviously struggles with the onerous burden of freedom of

Renaissance et Réforme / 301

choice, while at the same time feeling the equal burden of fate - the inherent
"mole" or "defect", by which each individual in the play is undone (I.iv.24-
38). He is caught between the past and the future - the biblical "sins of the
fathers", and the freedom of self-determination.

The importance of the images of the eye and ear is not restricted to Hamlet
alone and reference to them can be found in some of the other plays. Notably,
in Henry V the King judges as admirable the man who is "Not working with
the eye without the ear" (H5.II.ii.l35,6). Also Allan Bloom points out that in
Julius Caesar.

Caesar had bad hearing but good eyes; Cassius, bad eyesight and good
hearing. Caesar trusted more to what he saw than what he heard; Cassius
trusted the report he heard about what another saw.''

In each case the suggestion is made that a reliance on one faculty without
the balance of the complementary other will result in unwholesome judge-
ment and action.

In the first act oi Hamlet alone there are at least one hundred references to
the eye and the ear and their functions of seeing and hearing. In the second
act there are eighty-four, and the repetitions continue throughout the play. In
fact, the careful staging and juxtaposition of the Dumb-Show and Mouse-Trap
sequence provides a dramatization of the functions of the eye and ear and of
the relative effectiveness of the two forms of drama.

The following images and scenes are selected in order to demonstrate a
deliberate juxtaposition of the eye and ear in a significant way: the images of
malignancy associated with the ear; the actual murder of the King; the
appearance of the ghost; the Dumb-Show and Mouse-trap sequence; the
prayer scene; the killing of Polonius; Hamlet and the Queen; and Ophelia.

In particular there are many references to danger and violence connected
with the ear. A few are quoted here and others will follow as they become
relevant:

Nor shall you do my ear that violence (I.ii.l71).

Too credent ear (I.iii.31).

The whole ear of Denmark is rankly abused (I.v.36-7).

Takes prisoner Pyrrhus ear (II.ii.477).

Cleave the general ear with horrid speech (II.ii.562).

To spleet the ears (Ill.ii.lO).

Mildewed ear (III.iv.64).

Knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear (IV.ii.23).

To infect his ear with pestilent speeches (IV.v.90)

302 / Renaissance and Reformation

I have words to speak in thy ear will make thee dumb
(IV.vi.24,5).

It is interesting that Shakespeare uses a similar image in Macbeth when Lady
Macbeth resolves to convince her husband that he should have the crown. She
says, "Hie thee hither,/ That I may pour my spirits in thine ear" (Mac.I.v.25,6).

The play Hamlet, suggests that information gained through the ear alone
can be malignant, and that information gained through the eye alone can be
incomplete or ineffectual. Shakespeare shows that a dialectical relationship
exists between the functions of the eye and the ear and that an equilibrium
between the two must be sought within the reason before the will is called
into action. This accounts for Hamlet's repeated deliberations and inability
to act. He is not certain that his sources, or his senses, are reliable, and this is
compounded by the fact that his major source is intangible.

It is significant that the play begins on a speculation about hearing and
seeing. The appearance of the ghost has already occurred twice before the
play opens. Line 1 states "Who's there?", and line 21 asks, "What, has this
thing appear'd again to-night?". The ghost exercises a strong influence on the
"sentinels" of the kingdom who have their eyes and ears open and alert, but
it is only Hamlet, the ghost's natural issue, who can communicate with it. The
ghost repeatedly engages his ear, "lend thy serious hearing", and "List, list,
O, list". Hamlet replies "Speak, I am bound to hear" (Lv.5-7).

In the ghost's speech King Hamlet describes the circumstances of his
murder. The words of the ghost are particularly significant since they also are
concerned with hearing:

I find thee apt,

Now, Hamlet, hear:

... the whole ear of Denmark

Is by a forged process of my death

Rankly abused;. ... (I.v. 32-38) (my emphasis).

It is important that the ghost makes this statement even before he mentions
the poisoning in his own ear, and thereby sets up an analogy between the
poisoning of the "whole ear" of the nation, and the poisoning of the ear of the
King. The words "forged process" refer to the misuse of language and
authority, by which the nation has been duped. In order to emphasize the
function of hearing even more cogently, the ghost engages Hamlet's ear, by
saying "Now, Hamlet, hear" (I.v. 34). Ironically, it is by the same process that

Renaissance et Réforme / 303

caused his own death, that the ghost appeals to Hamlet - directly through the
ears. Hamlet must decide if this communication is also poisonous.

Hamlet, does also see the ghost, however intangibly, and it has been seen
by others as well, but whether Hamlet can rely on his senses as a basis for
judgement and action is his dilemma. He is confused because he has also seen
his father in his "mind's eye" and in his "prophetic soul" (I.ii.l86; I.v.40).
Hamlet's "remembering" of his father and his subsequent thought patterns
and inward struggle show that a dialectic is taking place (I.v.92-112).

One of the central images in the play is connected with the ear. It is the
murder of the king and is particularly bizarre. He is poisoned by his brother
who pours a "leprous distillment" into the "porches of [his] ears", while he is
asleep (I.v.63) (my emphasis). We note the plural "ears". How does a
murderer penetrate both ears without waking his victim? ^^ Does this then refer
to the faculty of hearing, which is a natural and simultaneous penetration of
both ears into the reason? This suggests that the poison is connected with
language and that a knowledge gained through hearing alone without benefit
of the tempering and moderating value of its complementary faculty, eyesight,
can be corrupting to both mind and body.

In the ghost's speech to Hamlet, he mentions all five of the senses, but the
fact that his eyes were closed made the murder possible. This implies a
potential for sensual wholeness, but a rational deficiency is also suggested by
the image of complacency in the "custom" of napping in the unprotected
"orchard" (I.v.58-90).

After speaking with the ghost, Hamlet appears to be resolved to act,
however, we find that he continues to be torn between his father's
impassioned plea for justice based on the Revenge Code, and the Christian
proscription against it. Hamlet's dilemma is complicated by the fact that the
ghost himself is an image of contradiction. On the one hand, the ghost is
already condemned to burn in hell for his past sins, and on the other, he would
now add another sin, revenge, to the list. It is left to the young scholar Hamlet
to attempt to find a way to justice and certainty that would accommodate both
the past tradition and the present philosophy. This is a task worthy of a
Socrates.

Immediately after the ghost's speech, Hamlet repeats the word "all" five
times, and these are incorporated with ten references to actual written lan-
guage. This demonstrates that a total change, a "resolution", has taken place
in his "distracted globe", which is his reason. He says:

304 / Renaissance and Reformation

Yea, from the table of memory

I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,

All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past

That youth and observation copied there,

And thy commandment all alone shall live

Within the book and volume of my brain

(I.v.98-103) (my emphasis).

At the end of this speech, Hamlet replaces "all" previous memory with a new
"word" which he swears and writes down - "remember me". Ironically, in
the very act of denying the various forms of language, he is compelled to
employ the written word, and not merely to "remember", and so he
demonstrates the power of the word over him. Thus the play shows Hamlet,
in spite of himself, to be primarily language oriented rather than action
oriented, and this scene suggests that his method of action will be by means
of the word.

Immediately after the ghost scene Hamlet appears to be resolved to act by
means of the sword, but again his resolution is blurred by language. After the
ghost scene, there is a very curious play on the words "swear" and "sword"
(I.v.143-81). Hamlet requires his "friends, scholars and soldiers" to "swear"
on the concrete object of his "sword", and not on "faith" as they are inclined
to do. In this scene, the words "swear" or "sworn" are repeated ten times and
"sword" is repeated five times, so that a totality is alluded to. "Swear" is a
language act, and "Sword" is a combination of "word" and an object of action.
Together they represent the conjunction of language and action, or word and
deed, which later becomes Hamlet's word-sword method of action.

However, at this point, and in spite of what appears to be resolution, Hamlet
is still unable to act until he finds the proper method. The air of tension grows
in the play, and Brennan points out that the audience builds up a "resistance
to the desire to see a final face-to-face confrontation between Claudius and
Hamlet", as is seen in the "two-dimensional heroes, who feature so frequently
in revenge dramas". ^^ The audience hopes that Hamlet, the scholar, will be
able to find a better way.

There is a curious metaphorical pun in the fact that it is only after speaking
to the 'actors' that Hamlet is able to 'act'. Hamlet undergoes a change in
character and comes to the realization that his weapon lies in language; that
word and sword are the same weapon; and that theatre will be the effective
medium.*'* He says that he will ...

Renaissance et Réforme / 305

. . . cleave the general ear with horrid speech.
Make mad the guilty, and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

[I] Must like a whore unpack my heart with words

The play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King (II.ii.561-605).

This passage is packed with significance as we note the word-sword imagery
in the phrase "cleave the general ear", and the reference to the profound effect
of the "play" on the "faculties of eyes and ears". The images evoked by the
words "mad", "appall", "confound", and "amaze", all refer to the great power
of language to penetrate the reason and the conscience.

It is important that all of this is to be accomplished through the theatre
acting as a moral medium. It is at this point in the play that word becomes
translated into deed, and acting and action come together into a word-sword
conjunction. Hamlet finally realizes with certainty that his weapon is lan-
guage, and that his vehicle must be the theatre. We note that language and the
theatre can be both seen and heard, and that in the simultaneous engagement
of both faculties in the experience of theatre, the one informs the other, and
although dis-equilibrium may result for a time, nevertheless there is also the
possibility of synthesis to be achieved through reason.

In his examination of theatrical methods, Shakespeare juxtaposes two
types: the mime of the Dumb-Show seen by eye alone, and the more com-
prehensive theatre of the Mouse-Trap, which engages both eye and ear. Some
productions of Hamlet leave out the Dumb-Show entirely, but this is a mistake
because it is important to the plot and is essential to the thematic structure,
imagery, and meaning. The role of the theatre is absolutely central to the
meaning of the play, and the Mouse-Trap which finally brings revelation and
certainty to Hamlet, is structured so that it is precisely in the middle of tlie
play (Ill.ii).

Norman Holland, in his brief essay "The Dumb-Show Revisited" points
out that the Dumb-Show fits into the "metaphorical structure of the play as a
whole". He says that by a "symbolic necessity" Claudius cannot react to the
"inexplicable" Dumb-Show, because it does not enter his ears. He points out
that the word "ear" occurs twenty-five times in Hamlet, more than in any other
Shakespearean play. Also he states that in the Mouse-Trap, because drama
enters the ear, therefore, "Claudius must see and understand", and what

306 / Renaissance and Reformation

Hamlet does, in effect, is to pour "poison into Claudius' ears".^^ Holland does
not, however, note the significance in the relationship between the eye and
the ear.

In the dramatic juxtaposition of the eye and ear in the Dumb-Show and
Mouse-Trap sequence Shakespeare is not merely making a statement about
drama, but also about the dialectics of perception, and about the essential
nature and theory of the theatre. Shakespeare would agree with Marshall
McLuhan that "the medium is the message".

Hamlet devises the play so that he can "pique the conscience" and know
for certain the guilt of the King. He draws our eyes to the King just before the
play begins, so that we note that the King is totally unaffected by the
Dumb-Show, which Hamlet has already judged to be "inexplicable" (Ill.ii.-
12). In this way, Shakespeare demonstrates that the play which appeals to the
eye alone is totally ineffectual. In the Mouse-Trap however, the King is forced
to both see and hear the dramatization of his guilty deed, and is trapped by
its "argument". He confirms this when he says to Hamlet, "have you heard
the argument?" (III.ii.232) (my emphasis). To this Hamlet replies, "they do
but jest, poison in jest" (III.ii.232-34). This is a very curious pun on the
'ingesting' of poison, a major theme and image in the play, which is then
portrayed in the next part of the play. In this way Hamlet, acting as "chorus",
lays the "poison" bait for the King. It is after seeing and hearing or ' ingesting'
the play that the King appears to repent, although not sufficiently, because
his lust for power is stronger than his faith. '^

It is important to this argument that the King, in the prayer scene, gives the
appearance of repenting. In a sense, this is another Dumb-Show and this time
Hamlet is the victim. Hamlet merely sees Claudius praying but cannot hear
him, and so does not kill him although he now knows he is guilty. If Hamlet
could also hear Claudius, he would know that he is not praying, and would
then be able to act. The King speculates on prayer, but does not actually pray.
He says, "Pray can I not,/though inclination be as sharp as will". He then rises
and says "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:/ Words without
thoughts never to heaven go" (III.iii.36-98). This scene demonstrates again
the importance of perceiving with both facuUies in the attainment of truth.^^

The scene of the killing of Polonius follows immediately after the prayer
scene. In the dramatic juxtaposition of the two scenes we see that in the prayer
scene Hamlet does not kill Claudius because he sees but cannot hear, and then
he does kill Polonius because he hears but cannot see. We note the Queen's
description of the event:

Renaissance et Réforme / 307

[Hamlet] Behind thé arras hearing something stir

Whips out his rapier, cries, "A rat, a rat!"

And in this brainish apprehension kills

The unseen good old man (IV.i.9-12)(my emphasis).

Thus Hamlet becomes a victim of his own poor judgement based on that which
"seems", which is an erroneous assessment of the sense data available to him.

Ironically, Polonius is killed in the act of his favourite pastime, eaves-
dropping. His method of gaining knowledge is concentrated almost exclu-
sively on hearing, such as hearsay and rumour, which he chooses to view as
certainty, and is killed because of being "too busy" in the very act. He is
hidden behind the arras in order to "o'erhear" and is, therefore, unable to see
the danger. Similarly, Hamlet hears him but cannot see him and, therefore,
acts rashly on the basis of hearing alone, without benefit of the tempering
faculty of eyesight, which would have stayed his hand. In a double irony,
Polonius is killed by someone who also is relying on hearing to the exclusion
of sight, and so, in a sense, he is killed by his own "defect", and "hoist with
his own petar" (III.iv.33,207).

When Hamlet kills Polonius, we know by the inevitable law of tragedy that
his tragic fate has been sealed. AUhough Hamlet acts rashly and is guilty of
the murder, he feels that a kind of justice has been done. Hamlet says:

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so to punish

me with this, and this with me,

that I must be their scourge and minister (III. iv. 173).

Hamlet knows that the scourge of God must also suffer the evil it performs
(III.iv.l75f). There is a strong sense of mission in this speech, and Hamlet
goes on to become the tragic hero of a general purgation and sacrifice.

It is also appropriate that Hamlet should become the instrument of purga-
tion since he was born into the very centre of the conflict - on the very day
that his father killed Fortinbras's father (V.i.l44). This is the day that the cycle
of death and revenge began and, therefore, appropriately, also the day on
which the grave-digger came to his job (V.i,142^). This pivotal fact, placed
in the mouth of one of the play ' s most minor characters, illustrates how closely
written is the play, and how even the minor details contain major significance.
The fact of Hamlet's unfortunate birthday contains the very key to his fate.
The sins of the fathers pass inevitably to the next generation and the new
Hamlet, the scholar, must now attempt to find a new and moral course to
expiation in keeping with Christian law.

308 / Renaissance and Reformation

The killing of Polonius also demonstrates that the Revenge Code is an
inappropriate solution, since rashness and danger enter also. Hamlet kills
Polonius impulsively thinking it is Claudius, so as not to miss a second
opportunity for revenge. He says "I took thee for thy better" (III.iv.32). It is
only when Hamlet develops the word-sword method of action that he
demonstrates purpose and direction.

The effectiveness of the word-sword is evident when Hamlet confronts his
mother with the evidence of the murder. He says, "I will speak daggers to her
but use none" (III.ii.396)(my emphasis). We are made aware of the Queen's
perceptual limitations when she is unaffected by the Mouse-Trap and can
neither see nor hear the ghost (Ill.iv.l 13-7). It is only after Hamlet forces his
mother to see and to hear that she repents. He forces her to "look" and repeats
the word "eye" five times. Hamlet points out to her that of the five senses,
she has only appetite, which feeds and gorges on sexual pleasures, and that
she is totally lacking in the other four senses and in reason. He says:

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed.
And batten on this moor? Ha, have you eyes?

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all. ...

And reason panders will (III.iv.66,7; 78,9; 88).

After this scene, the Queen is forced to see her "shame" and it is then that she
admits that Hamlet has turned her "eyes into [her] very soul" (III.iv.53-95).
A few lines later, she also acknowledges the faculty of hearing and says,
"These words like daggers enter my ears", which paraphrases Hamlet's
intention toward her (III. ii. 396). The Queen has followed the rational process
in which the externally induced emotion of shame achieved through the eye,
is internalized into guilt through the ear and reason.

The effectiveness of the word-sword method of action is thus confirmed.
After this scene, the Queen is forced to both see and hear and so her reason
is now stimulated. The suggestion is made that through this process of
awakening of the conscience, Hamlet is able to bring her to "confess herself
to heaven" and to repentance (III. iv. 149). It is important to the Queen's
characterization as a figure of appetite that she should die by ingesting the
wine. She also dies because of her natural "defect".

The eye and ear are also important in the scenes with Ophelia, and there is
an interesting juxtaposition of the two women in the play. A contrast is set up

Renaissance et Réforme / 309

between the total sensuality of Gertrude and the total lack of sensuality of
Ophelia. Unlike Gertrude who is poisoned through the mouth, Ophelia is
poisoned through the ears by 'ingesting' her brother's and father's dangerous
advice which instills fear of her own and of Hamlet's sensuality (I.iii.1-51).
In Laertes' speech to her, there are many sensual images of nature, "blood",
"moon", "spring", and "dew", but they are all sullied by images of "soil",
"besmirching", "danger", "canker", "calumnious strokes", "unmast'red
importunity", and "contagious blastments" (I.iii.5-52). We are reminded of
Hamlet's sage remarks to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (II. ii. 249-50). In his speech to
Ophelia, Laertes repeats the word "fear" five times. Four times he tells her to
fear Hamlet, and once he says, "fear me not" (I.iii. 16,33,43,51). Clearly the
emphasis is on fear of the body, and Ophelia hears the "good lesson" and
accepts it as the "watchman to [her] heart" (I.iii.46). Her capacity to love is
thereby totally constrained.

Ophelia's father, Polonius also warns her about Hamlet's affections, but in
his speech the emphasis is placed on fear of Hamlet's persuasive capabilities
in language, and she is told not to believe his "promises", "vows", "tenders",
"unholy suits", or "pious bonds", and finally not to "give words or talk", with
Hamlet again (I.iii. 134). This also she obeys, and so becomes truncated by
Laertes in the body, and by Polonius in the mind. She describes her rational
deficiency in her statement to her father, "I do not know ... what I should
think" (I.iii.l04), and also to Hamlet, "I think nothing, my Lord" (III.ii.117).
It is significant that Ophelia's madness takes the curious form of deranged
hearing and language, which is precisely the means by which her mind was
poisoned against Hamlet (IV. v. 1-8).

Hamlet puts on his own private Dumb-Show for Ophelia in which the eyes
are featured, and thereby attempts to stimulate Ophelia's eyes into response
in order to counteract the poisonous advice that she has received through the
ear, but this also is ineffectual. In this scene, Hamlet does not speak or engage
her ear in any way, but attempts to force her eyes to engage in an exchange
with his own. He holds her firmly, stares long and hard into her eyes, as if to
draw them out, and continues staring "to the last" as he retreats in defeat
(II. i. 84-97). This scene foreshadows the Dumb-Show of Act III, and
demonstrates that the Dumb-Show is an ineffective form of communication.
Poor Ophelia finds both Dumb-Shows "inexplicable" (III. ii. 143). The scene
also shows that language is vital to the understanding, however, language is
not possible between Hamlet and Ophelia because her father and brother have
preempted it.

310 / Renaissance and Reformation

Ophelia totally denies her sensuality in denying Hamlet's love, and so he
commands her five times, once for each sense, "get thee to a nunnery"
(III. i. 120-49). After the "nunnery" scene in which Hamlet uses language in
the word-sword sense, Ophelia does finally see, and this also is repeated five
times (III. i. 157-62). In this speech, Ophelia mentions all of the senses except
touch (feeling). As her name "0-phelia" implies, she has no love or feeling,
and dies with her "chaste treasure" intact - she is drowned and swept away
by her "one defect", her own purity. While the full-blooded Gertrude dies by
wine, Ophelia dies by water.

There is a strong fundamental theme throughout the play that by a universal
law of justice, the evil act brings its own retribution (I.iv.31). In the rash act,
Hamlet is an "enginer" who is "Hoist with his own petar" (III.iv.207); Laertes
says, "As the Woodcock ... I am justly killed with mine own treachery"
(V.ii.307); and Claudius, is killed by "a poison temper'd by himself
(V.ii.328).

It would appear that the "stamp of one defect", or the "mole of nature" is
an insurmountable human problem - a kind of original sin (I.iv.24— 38). In
spite of the fatalism suggested by the inherent "mole", there is also the
suggestion counter to fatalism and determinism, that man has the capability
within himself to change his character. An illustration of this is Hamlet's
advice to his mother, in which he says, O, throw away the worser part of it.
.../Assume a virtue. .../ For use almost can change the stamp of nature"
(Ill.iv. 157-68). There is also the suggestion that these defects could have been
tempered by the use of reason, and a more thorough attention to all of the
sense data available to the individual at the time.

Hamlet undergoes a development of character in time as the play pro-
gresses, and Rabkin notes that Shakespeare, in his mature work, "portrays
extended time, because he sees character as changing". ^^ In some of the other
plays, Shakespeare shows development taking place because of love. How-
ever, in Hamlet the development occurs because of reason and is, therefore,
nearer the modern ideas of existential freedom and responsibility.

The character of Fortinbras, like Hamlet, undergoes change in time as the
play progresses. At the beginning he is "of unimproved mettle hot and full",
a vengeful warmonger, and symbolizes the old Revenge Code (I.i.95-105).
Some development is shown in the fact that he does submit to embassies,
negotiations and compromise, and embraces his fortune with sorrow
(V.ii.388). Also, he wishes to "see", and is moved by the "sight" of the
"dismal" carnage. He shows a new willingness to hear and to learn when he
says, "let us haste to hear it" (V.ii. 386-88) (my emphasis). He then collabo-

Renaissance et Réforme / 311

rates with Horatio in theatre - in dramatizing the event so that it will be
"presently perform'd/ ... while men's minds are wild" and thus prevent
further bloodshed (V.ii.393-95). The scene suggests that this new emphasis
on both eye and ear, and exposure to language and reason, will result in a
more sober and moderate Fortinbras as he becomes ruler.

The ending of the play in which Fortinbras is 'elected' to the throne by
Hamlet shows that justice has been done and that the revenge cycle can now
cease. Fortinbras says: "I have some rights of memory in this kingdom
(V.ii.389-90). Therefore, the ending of the play, which appears to be totally
pessimistic, and even resembles the modem theatre of the absurd, never-
theless has some elements of resolution and hope for the future. A universal
justice appears to be at work, but Shakespeare the realist, also shows that the
'defects' are inherent in the next generation.

In summary, Hamlet, a play about uncertainty, doubt and irony, reflects the
intellectual and moral conflict as the Elizabethan age struggles with the
abolition of the Revenge Code. The new generation's awareness that "the
time is out of joint", and desire "to set it right" is analogous with the age's
sense of transition and search for a new way (I.v. 188-89). With profound
irony, the play demonstrates that the ghost of the past tradition cannot be
easily extinguished, but lives on to generate a dialogue between past and
present, which finally requires violence and destruction before resolution can
be achieved.

The profusion of eye and ear imagery in the play reflects Shakespeare's
philosophy about the dialectical relationship between the eye and the ear and
the reason. He shows that the exclusion of one or the other results in a
truncation of the intellect and thus, in unwholesome judgement and action.

Shakespeare's allusions to the theatre m Hamlet demonstrate his concern
for its wellbeing and freedom of expression. The theatre's very existence is
being threatened at the time of writing, and is one of Shakespeare's and of
Hamlet's concerns in the play (II.ii.329-62fn; p. 1136). Shakespeare is con-
cerned not merely for his livelihood, art, and the means of transmitting his
ideas, but he also defends the theatre as a very effective moral medium which
stimulates both eye and ear into a dialectic within the reason and conscience.

Shakespeare's directive to Horatio the orator, makes it plain that the moral
is conveyed to "th' yet unknowing world" by the poet through language, and
that his most effective medium is the theatre. Just as Shakespeare intended,
the experience of this play mirrors its intent. We as the audience, are
compelled to participate in the process as we struggle along with Hamlet in
the search for truth and meaning. Hamlet defends the importance of the

312 / Renaissance and Reformation

theatre's role in history as an "abstract" medium and he invokes the eye and
the ear as he says:

Will you see the players well bestow'd?
Do you hear, let them be well us'd, for they are
the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.
(II.ii.522-25) (my emphasis).

Notes

1. Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare, ed. Robert Sandler (Markham, Ontario:
Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1986) 89.

2. It is significant that it is at Wittenberg that Hamlet was being educated, since that is
where Martin Luther launched the Reformation in 1517, less than 100 years before
Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. These were turbulent years of transition in England, with
Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More, Mary Queen of Scots, the reigning Elizabeth I, and
James, an ardent Protestant who would soon become King of England.

3. Harry Levin,"The Question of Hamlet," Shakespearean Criticism Vol. I, ed. L.L.
Harris (Detroit: Book Tower, 1985) 227-30.

4. Anthony Brennan, Shakespeare's Dramatic Structures (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1986) 130.

5. William Shakespeare, ed. G.B. Evans, The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1974). All further parenthetical references are to this edition.

6. Levin 227-30. Levin speculates on this question: "Whether Hamlet was being led
astray to eternal damnation or being enjoined to perform a sacred duty would thus be
contingent on theological questions which were moot".

7. Margot Heinemann, "How Brecht Read Shakespeare", Political Shakespeare, ed.
Jonathan Dollimore, (London: Cornell UP, 1985) 217.

8. Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1966) 10, 11. Also see Chapter One in general.

9. Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1952) 171-72. He says: "Any who take personal vengeance become
murderers. Speculation over the reason for Hamlet's hesitation to slay Claudius has
been singularly unconcerned with Shakespeare's hesitation to convert his hero into a
villain. His audience would have looked askance at any slaying not committed in
combat and heat of battle."

10. Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 84.

11. Allan Bloom, Shakespeare's Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1964), 103. Also the
Robinson text (p.53) notes that Julius Caesar (1599) was still fresh in Shakespeare's
mind when he wrote Hamlet (1600-01).

12. Norman Holland, "The Dumb-Show Revisited". Notes and Queries (May, 1958): 191.

13. Brennan, 130-1.

14. Norman Rabkin, Shakespeare and the Common Understanding (New York: Free Press,
1967), 250-1. Rabkin argues that the mature Shakespeare, in plays such as Hamlet,

Renaissance et Réforme / 313

King Lear, and Macbeth, portrays extended time and shows his characters changing
over the course of their plays. He says that in Shakespeare, "indeed, villainy consists
in a character's vice-like inability to change".

15. Holland, 191.

16. Bowers, 9. This is also evident in the final scene in which Claudius' love of power is
stronger than his love of the Queen, so that even though he asks her not to drink the
poison, nevertheless, he does not physically prevent her from doing so. Bowers states
that by Elizabethan law, "Claudius in Hamlet is guilty of first-degree murder, and not
of manslaughter when Gertrude dies of the poison he has intended for Hamlet".

17. The prayer scene also serves to demonstrate Hamlet's deep commitment to the Chris-
tian faith, unlike Laertes, who would kill "i' th' church" (IV, vii, 127).

18. Rabkin, 250-1.

Book Reviews / Comptes rendus

Arthur F. Kinney and Dan S. Collins, editors. Renaissance H istoricism: Selections
from English Literary Renaissance. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1987. Pp. XV, 411.

Among the current catchy phrases in Renaissance literary criticism is one called
"The New Historicism". While this shares some of the techniques and vocabulary
of other recent schools (deconstruction, reader response, semiotics), and while it
can represent a wide ideological spectrum ranging from American liberalism to
British Marxism, it is important to recognize the New Historicism as a movement
(it is not exactly a school) separate from those from which its adherents occasionally
borrow. If there is a central tenet of New Historicist critics, it is that literary criticism
cannot divorce the text from its social and political context: that criticism, in other
words, must be a historical as well as a literary exercise. Accordingly, new historicist
critics, some of the best of whom are represented in the volume under review,
borrow from critics and philosophers (ranging from Marx to Gadamer to Foucault),
from a number of political and cultural historians of the early modern period, such
as Christopher Hill and Keith Thomas, and from cultural anthropologists including
Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz.

Now professional historians, long accustomed to using texts for illustrative
purposes rather than pursuing their meaning as an end in itself, may have to fight
back a smile at the thought that their brethren in English departments are only just
discovering that texts are determined in large measure by their historical situations.
Have we not been saying this all along? But it is best not to let the "We told you
so" issue with too much of a smirk. There is something genuinely new about the
new historicism, which makes it more than a rebellion against certain earlier
ahistorical schools (most notably New Criticism) and a co-option of others (like
deconstruction). And unlike what must now be considered "old" historicism, the
historically-based criticism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new
historicism generally tries to avoid simplistic interpretations in which literary
characters are seen only as veiled references to real persons.

The essays in this volume, all previously published in one of the leading journals
of new historicism, English Literary Renaissance, set a generally high standard.
They are most definitely not for the beginner: even Arthur F. Kinney's prefatory

316 / Renaissance and Reformation

overview of recent critical trends and Jean E. Howard's lengthier survey of the new
historicism would be tough nuts for most undergraduate English majors (to say
nothing of most historians) to crack. Collectively, they raise a number of issues for
consideration, such as the place of texts in society, the use of language to mirror or
even create power relationships, and the relationship of literature to other sign-sys-
tems, such as ritual.

As Jean E. Howard notes in her opening essay. New Historicism is really an
umbrella term for a number of very different criticisms, ranging from Stephen
Greenblatt's genuinely historical approach (which has been shared by, for example,
Richard Helgerson in America and Martin Butler and David Norbrook in England)
to the eclectic works of Jonathan Goldberg, to the complex marxism of English
critics such as Jonathan Dollimore. Howard suggests that the Renaissance has
become home base for the movement because it is "a boundary or liminal space
between two more monolithic periods" (8), the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment.
I dare say that scholars in those fields might not concur with so static a view of the
periods that frame the Renaissance, but it is interesting that in no other era has the
New Historicism caught fire so well. That it has done so is in large measure due to
the quality and energy of some of its best representatives, especially Stephen
Greenblatt, who first coined the phrase.

Louis Adrian Montrose, another highly influential new historicist, offers an essay
on the relationship between the Elizabethan pastoral and the nature of power in the
late sixteenth century. According to Montrose, the pastoral analogy was employed
by the Elizabethan regime to present an image uniting "intimacy and benignity with
authoritarianism". The essay is sensible, well-documented, and subtle, but like
many of the other selections, it leads one to suspect that literary critics, quite
properly eager to find historical authority for their assertions, may not always be as
aware as they should be that not all historical authorities carry equal weight. Thus,
Montrose hitches his cart to the increasingly discredited argument of RW. Thomas
(first advanced in 1973) that by 1640 there had emerged two distinct and antago-
nistic cultures, one associated with the court, the other with the country. Few early
Stuart historians would now accept this interpretation, at least not without some
serious modifications. Thomas' essay is also among the principal supports, much
later in the volume, for Laurence Venuti's otherwise persuasive essay on the
relationship between Shirley's masque The Triumph of Peace and the attempts of
first James I and then Charles I to make their gentry subjects return to the
countryside instead of idly hanging about in London.

Annabel Patterson's contribution, "Re-opening the Green Cabinet," continues in
a pastoral vein with a comparison of the works of Edmund Spenser and one of his
French sources, the protestant poet Clément Marot. To Patterson, who takes up here
where she left off in her important Censorship and Interpretation, pastoral repre-
sents less an analogy for the exercise of power than a "language of exile" (for
Marot), or a platform for the declaration of contradictory views of England's
situation in the 1570s. She contrasts the optimistic vision presented in the April

Renaissance et Réforme / 317

eclogues of the Shepheardes Calender (1579) with the more sombre one issuing
from the November eclogue, which contains a veiled critique of the proposed
marriage of Elizabeth to the due d'Alençon. (This would have to be very veiled, if
one recalls the fate of one critic, John Stubbs, who together with his printer lost his
right hand on the scaffold.) Calendar issues and the character of agrarian life also
figure in Peter Stallybrass's very interesting essay on Merrick's //esper/V/es, which
suggests ways in which the country elite attempted to "construct carnival as
controlled misrule" through deliberate revivals of classical festivals such as the
Cotswold Games.

The theme of censorship is a critical one for any discussion of the relationship
between writing and power in the Renaissance, as is its obverse, the question of
how the poet or dramatist may use his text to provide constructive criticism and
advice to authority, to help shape policy without risking the fate of Stubbs, or of his
Caroline successor, William Prynne. David Lindley shows how life could not only
imitate but revise art in his treatment of Jonson's masque for the marriage of Frances
Howard to the earl of Essex, Hymenaei: in the 1616 edition of Jonson's Works, all
specific reference to that event was removed, the bride having subsequently
divorced Essex for the Scottish earl of Somerset, and fallen with her new husband
in the Overbury murder scandal. In an essay on censorship and the Jacobean stage,
Philip J. Finkelpearl persuasively challenges the older view that a ruthlessly
efficient censorship mechanism suppressed virtually all expression of political or
religious dissent on the stage. Partly due to the temporary anarchy at the Revels
Office early in the reign, "violations of nearly unbelievable magnitude"(193)
occurred, though no dramatist was ever prosecuted under the libel laws. Finkelpearl
relies a little too heavily on non-contemporary works such as Arthur Wilson's biased
biography of James I, but his paper is well-balanced and fair to the king.

Martin Butler's essay on the drama of the mid- 1630s focuses on how playwrights
(including minor ones such as Lodowick Carlell and Henry Glapthorne) dealt with
the issue of foreign affairs. Many of these plays, entertainments for the exiled
palatine prince, Charles Louis, confront the old question of whether England should
stay neutral in the Thirty Years' War or jump in on France's side. Butler's essay is
interesting not only for its attention to the minor drama of the period than for his
argument, supported by careful scholarship, that Henrietta Maria was, at least before
1637, not the pawn of Rome that many historians have made of her. Similar close
attention to the facts characterizes the essay of F.J. Levy (the only historian in the
volume) on "Francis Bacon and the Style of Politics", which examines the origins
of the first, 1597, edition of Bacon's Essayes in the context of the overlapping crises
of humanism and of politics in the 1590s.

Not all the essays achieve quite the high standard of these. In an essay on the
"hegemonic theatre" of George Puttenham, Jonathan V. Crewe insists on reading
drama, at least in the context of Puttenham's account of the origins of literary genres,
as the instrument of the "ruling class". This begs the question of what exactly that
ruling class was, of whom it consisted, and of how it got that way (particularly since

318 / Renaissance and Reformation

Crewe obfuscates his own argument by referring to the rulers confusingly as a
"caste"); so does Crewe's earnest reference to "the intense hostility of the populace
to their self-elected rulers" (99), which might surprise even a committed marxist
historian like Christopher Hill.

This sort of generalization, though without quite the same level of zeal, is also
represented in Anthony Low's paper on the "New Science and the Géorgie Revo-
lution in Seventeenth Century England". According to Low, the rise of Baconian
and post-Baconian experimental science helped give sweaty agricultural labour (as
opposed to blissful pastoral leisure) a prestige it had previously lacked, and did so
even before Dry den's translation of Virgil's Georgics in 1677. This is a fascinating
hypothesis, worth further exploration (which it has since received in a book by
Low), but what is one to make of broad statements such as that "the decade that
seems to have tipped the balance from a basically feudal to a basically modern
system of land use was that of the 1650s" (330)? Low's argument is not helped by
an over-simple understanding of the character of the "new science" as a monolithic
force. As Bacon scholars have long known, and as the final essay in the volume, by
Janet E. Halley, demonstrates, there is something fundamentally incoherent about
seventeenth-century science, at least as it is dealt with by a well-known virtuoso
such as Sir Thomas Browne, whose Garden of Cyrus represents a kind of middle
ground between the "formlessness" of Baconianism and Jan Amos Comenius'
projected systematizing.

If some of the papers come close to representing a naive marxist vision of
seventeenth-century England, Philip J. Ayres' piece on the nature of Ben Jonson's
Roman History Plays threatens to belabour the obvious. Through a lengthy rehearsal
of the events of Roman history, and a comparison of historical accounts with
Jonson's treatment of them in Seianus his Fall and Catiline his Conspiracy, Ayres
establishes what we already knew, that Jonson was primarily a dramatist, not an
historian, without confronting directly the more interesting problem of exactly
where and how drama and prose history overlap in the early seventeenth century.
Because it is acted out, seen and heard, rather than simply read, drama is the most
inviting of genres for critics interested in ritual, and ten of the seventeen papers deal
either with the public stage or with the masque, poetry receiving less emphasis and
prose writings, including history, less still. On the other hand, most of the authors
are careful to link the drama to developments in other genres and in politics. Eugene
D. Hill, for instance ties Kyd's Spanish Tragedy both to the transition between
Virgilian and Senecan dramatic styles and to the appearance of anti-Spanish views
in non-dramatic writings such as Richard WdtkhxyV?, Discourse of Western Planting.

Feminism, too, has its representatives in this volume. By beginning with a
documented case of a "skimmington ride", a popular ritual re-enacting and censur-
ing the unsuccessful marriage of a Suffolk husbandman in 1604, Karen Newman
anchors her essay on the Renaissance family more firmly than most in the historical
record. Focusing on The Taming of the Shrew, Newman argues for the occurrence
of a "crisis of order" between the sexes, in which women rebelled against the

Renaissance et Réforme / 319

"master narrative" of patriarchy. Suzanne Gossett examines the treatment of rape
in Jacobean drama. She argues that before 1616 the female victims of such assaults
invariably died (often at their own hands) out of grief for their besmirched honour,
thereby succumbing not just to their attacker but to the patriarchal value system.
After 1616, however, the treatment of rape changed radically, even permitting
"happy" endings in which the rape itself ceased to be a heinous felony and became
little more than a sexual impulse, often resolved by a marriage between rapist and
victim. Gossett is on to something here, and it is a pity that she chooses to tie her
interesting argument to the tired old cliché of the "decadent" Jacobean court. The
question of the "stability" of the relationship between the sexes (which historians
and anthropologists have come to realize was more complex than the writings of
male contemporaries would have us believe) are among the most exciting issues in
this volume, and the essays of Gossett and Newman are rounded off by Mary Beth
Rose's examination of the place of apparel in the Hie Mulier/Haec Vir controversy
of 1620 and its connection with the outstanding early Jacobean example of dramatic
transvestism, Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl, in which audiences
watched a male actor play a woman playing a man.

On balance, this is a useful collection, though not every essay in it will be to
everyone's taste - hardly a terrible thing to say about a book. Like much modern
literary criticism, its authors attempt to embrace history with some success, while
at the same time casting their discussions in a vocabulary that is likely to scare off
most historians. This is really too bad. Yet the fact that it is now possible to have
such a wide variety of views on Renaissance literature within the same covers is
testimony to the extraordinary influence the New Historicism has achieved in a
relatively short period of time.

D.R. WOOLF, Dalhousie University

R. Po-chia Hsia. The Myth of Ritual Murder. Jews and Magic in Reformation
Germany. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988. Pp. vii, 248.

The Jews, to their frequent dismay, have found themselves at various times in
history involuntary actors in a play they neither wrote nor controlled. One of these
times was the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Caught up in a web
of Christian lay-piety and fundamental changes in the political and social structure
of towns and cities, the Jews in German lands were widely suspected by their
neighbours of practising the ritual murder of Christian children in order to mock
the Christian religion and in order to utilize their blood in a variety of magical
rituals. Related to this were suspicions that Jews were wont to desecrate the host as
a part of their conspiracy against Christ and the Church.

As Professor Hsia writes in the introduction to this book, it is all too tempting to
engage in a refutation of these charges. For though they have been convincingly

320 / Renaissance and Reformation

repudiated, time and again, the myth is still not dead. Fortunately, the author has
decided not to reinvent the wheel but rather to engage in another sort of dialogue
with the past. His book is an attempt to understand how it was that German
Christians in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries constructed their reality in such
a way that a missing or murdered child was almost inevitably blamed upon
malevolent Jewish action and not other things.

In doing so, Hsia analyzes the documents relating to the arrest, judicial torture,
conviction and execution on these charges of numerous Jews of the Holy Roman
Empire. He also pursues this subject in terms of its repercussions in the popular
culture of the time, literate and non-literate.

As a historian of late Medieval and early Modern Germany. Hsia has done a good
job of placing the myth of ritual murder in its social, political, religious, and legal
context. Thus, for example, it becomes clear that the Jews and their guilt or
innocence became an issue in the struggle by various German cities for juridical
independence from the imperial system of justice. Indeed, as Hsia sees it, it is largely
the strengthening and, above all, the professionalization of justice in the Holy
Roman Empire which ultimately caused the gradual cessation of ritual murder
charges in Germany.

Professor Hsia is at his best where he is most at home in the legal and political
archives of early Modern Germany. He is less at home with the Jewish sources and
has had to content himself with the available translations and secondary literature
on the subject. This almost inevitably leads to a few minor inaccuracies which do
not, however, detract from the authority of the book as a whole. For, ultimately, the
story of the ritual murder legend is not a Jewish story, though the Jews play an
involuntary lead role. It was not the Jew of flesh and blood who practised ritual
murder; it was the mythical demonic Jew who would perpetrate such a crime. In his
largely successful attempt to understand the way German Christians constructed
reality in consonence with the myth of the demonic Jew, he has given the reader an
important insight into the religious and social reality of late Medieval and early
Modern Europe.

IRA ROBINSON, Concordia University

Massimo Miglio, Francesca Niutta, Diego Quaglioni and Concetta Ranieri, eds.
Un pontificato ed una città: Sisto IV (1471-1484). Atti del convegno: Roma, 3 -
7 dicembre 1984. Vatican City: Scuola vaticana di paleografia, diplomatica e
archivistica, 1986. Pp. xv, 826.

Here we have a volume of work in progress. What unites it is not only the time and
subject, the reign of Sixtus IV and the culture of court and city, but also a shared
endeavour, for many of the writers have trained together or are jointly engaged in

Renaissance et Réforme / 321

projects. There are thirty-six articles, of which one is in English, one in French, and
the rest in Italian. The authors, however, number only twenty-nine, for many of
them appear more than once, or even twice, often as co-authors. Interestingly,
despite male hegemony in the Italian professorate, we have here almost twice as
many female romanisti as male.

The very virtue of the book, the freshness of work still only partly done, is also
its greatest vice; well rounded conclusions and clear statements of problems are
scarce. Furthermore, those there are often pop up at unexpected moments, for these
Italian scholars seldom share the Anglo-Saxon love for structured argument.
Against what can often be an irritating vagueness, antiquarian narrowness or
unwillingness to dare or to conclude much, we can throw into the other pan of our
scales not only zest, but also technical skill. The book rests on good archival work
and paleography, energetic compilation, and wide reading. The footnotes, which
must take up half the text, are thus a fine hunting ground for any Romanist.

A few topics dominate the book. Of these, most belong to the history of literary
high culture: books, libraries, printers, the university, inscriptions, chronicles. With
only one article on music and one on sculpture, there is much less on the arts than
on letters. At the same time, there is some social history, including three articles on
the Jews and one quite skilled one on the evolution of a single Roman family, the
Porcari. Furthermore, much of the end of the book is given to reports from a team
of scholars who are studying one of the city's districts, Rione Parione, using the
protocols of its notaries to reconstruct patterns of residence, labour, commerce, and
devotion. Among these papers is a particularly interesting piece by Giovanna Curcio
on the swift change in the city's houses as rents and population both rose rapidly,
clogging alleys and crowding out the old gardens.

Rome is not an easy city to study. Unlike Venice and Florence, which had one
elite and one government, Rome was a many-headed monster. There were two great
poles, the Vatican and the Campidoglio, the seat of the waning commune. But there
were myriad other centres of power: baronial fortresses, royal embassies, and the
households of great cardinals. To make matters worse, the inevitable mortality of
every regime, fated to vanish with each passing pontiff, gave the social and political
scene and extraordinary lability. And no other Italian town was so full of mobile
foreigners. So it has never been easy to write Roman history; there are still no great
synthetic works like those on other cities.

In the face of such problems, the articles in this volume strive to weave lines of
association, placing scholars in networks of papal politics, linking monastic librar-
ies with skeins of neighborly patronage, sitting the evolution of inscriptions in the
movement of papal politics, tunneling through the notarial records to reconstruct
the evolution of a family's enterprises. It is as if those many poles of power in the
city were draped in webs of influence, patronage and loyalty. We cannot see these
whole, but we glimpse them everywhere. In this volume, as a kind of leitmotiv, we
find again and again the tension between the two strongest of these poles, the papal
court and the old civic order, for Sixtus IV was a durable centralizer. His pontificate

322 / Renaissance and Reformation

marks the final eclipse of civic aspirations and a swifter movement toward statism.
The Romanizing inscriptions, the ambitious new Vatican Library, the new bridge
and streets, the papal hospital of Santo Spirito, the transferal of the market from
Campidoglio to Campo di Fiori all bear witness to a movement which sucked both
culture and society into its wake.

THOMAS V. COHEN, York University

Fernand HALLYN, La structure poétique du monde: Copernic, Kepler, Paris,
Seuil, 1987,316 pp.

On sait gré à l'auteur, dans son Introduction, de présenter l'objet de sa démarche
avec toute la clarté désirable et de l'avoir délimité de façon précise comme
recherche de lapoétique de l'hypothèse scientifique, c'est-à-dire comme recherche
et mise en lumière de ce moment où l'oeuvre est d'abord rêvée et pensée comme
seulement possible, avant de prendre forme. Les catégories fondamentales de la
problématique abordée sont mises dans leur juste perspective culturelle. Le corps
de l'ouvrage est bien articulé, chaque chapitre se ventilant en plusieurs sections
brèves, qui apporte chacune, sans redondance, le supplément d'information attendu
et nécessaire. La matière, évidemment abstraite, s'en trouve allégée et le livre,
d'ardu qu'il aurait pu être, est, sans concession à la facilité, de lecture agréable.
L'ensemble repose sur une documentation et une information solides et parfaite-
ment intégrées.

On peut regretter l'absence de bibliographie, mais cette lacune se trouve partielle-
ment compensée par l'abondance des notes et références, regroupées section par
section. Un double index des noms cités complète l'ouvrage, et une table des
matières, sufisamment détaillée, peut pallier l'absence d'un index rerum. La
présentation typographique est bonne et les coquilles, s'il en est, sont certainement
rares. Signalons cependant une formulation erronée de la deuxième loi de Kepler
(p. 229) et relevons au passage ce "préjudice" en lieu et place de "préjugé" (p. 133),
anglicisme étonnant sous cette plume.

Par la problématique abordée, par les nombreuses perspectives qu'il dégage, par
les remarques et annotations pertinentes qui l'émaillent, comme par ses qualités
formelles, le livre de F. Hallyn provoque l'intérêt de son lecteur, et cet intérêt ne se
dément à aucun moment. C'est pourquoi il incite à la discussion, discussion dont
on regrette de ne pouvoir ici donner qu'une ébauche.

Distinguant la spécificité de son enquête de celle de l'épistémologue comme de
celle de l'historien des sciences, Fernand Hallyn évoque le cadre culturel de ses
protagonistes, leur insertion dans ce cadre et leurs réactions face aux valeurs qui y
sont véhiculées. Il retrace avec bonheur les corrélations, convergences et
correspondances multiples qui relient, de façon souvent inattendue, les expressions
culturelles les plus diverses, qui vont de l'architecture à la peinture, des sym-

Renaissance et Réforme / 323

bolismes liturgiques à l'astronomie, de l'ébénisterie aux recherches géométriques
et de la numérologie aux descriptions anatomiques. Tel est l'arrière-plan intellectuel
sur lequel se déroule une intense activité artisanale et artistique, doublée d'une
recherche théorique qui empruntera au néoplatonisme, ses catégories, ses images
et sa symbolique.

L'Auteur souligne la visée essentiellement anagogique de cette symbolique, qui
a toujours pour intention de lire la création comme signe visible de son créateur,
étant entendu cependant que cette signification n'est pas immédiatement donnée:
elle doit, au préalable, avoir été déchiffrée, souvent péniblement. Si tel est le
dénominateur commun de cette époque, il apparaît à la lecture du livre de F. Hallyn,
que cette intention commune se traduit cependant de manière fort diverse dans
chacune des oeuvres considérées.

Pour Copernic, par exemple, l'univers, dans son unité organique profonde, est
régi par une raison, une certa ratio, proportionalité qui devra se retrouver, identique,
aux différents niveaux cosmiques. C'est ce que Copernic entend par "symétrie" et
la tâche du philosophe comme celle de l'astronome consistera précisément à mettre
cette "symétrie" en lumière. C'est cette intention qui motive la recherche de
Copernic, c'est en cette intention qu'elle trouve sa source et son origine. On le sait,
l'hypothèse héliostatique n'était pas, de prime abord, vraiment plus "simple" que
l'hypothèse de Ptolémée, ni quant au nombre de postulats, ni quant aux applications
pratiques. Mais elle est plus intégrante, donc plus harmonieuse, plus "symétrique"
que celle de Ptolémée, et c'est ce qui la justifiait aux yeux de son auteur.

Kepler partage l'intention fondamentale de Copernic, et cette intention ne cessera
de le guider dans les précisions et dans les remaniements successifs qu'il apportera
à son système: il s'agira toujours de retrouver "l'admirable proportion des orbes"
comme le dit le titre de son Mystère cosmographique. C'est en effet ce souci
d'harmonie qui le conduira, d'abord, à concevoir la structure de l'univers selon
l'ordre d'imbrication des polygones réguliers. Kepler n'abandonnera jamais cette
vision de r"organigramme" cosmique, mais il sera peu à peu amené à y voir, non
une réalité achevée, mais un idéal vers lequel tend la Nature, sans jamais pouvoir
le rejoindre: aveu d'un divorce radical entre le sensible et l'intelligible, en lequel
l'Auteur voit la marque de la mentalité baroque. Ce sera essentiellement en vue de
préserver ce modèle que Kepler sera conduit à abandonner le cercle, malgré sa
convenance métaphysique, et, par approximations successives, à lui substituer
l'ellipse. Mais l'ellipse, à son tour, d'abord vue comme déformation du cercle,
conduira Kepler à concevoir une explication dynamique des mouvements
planétaires. Le soleil, comme cause physique devient le moteur des planètes: à la
causalité formelle - la double perfection du soleil comme centre d'orbites cir-
culaires - se substituera une causalité efficiente. Finalement, pour parachever sa
reconstruction, Kepler découvre, plutôt qu'il n'invente, (telle, du moins, est sa
conviction) la véritable harmonie cosmique, qui est musicale, et dont les justes
rapports se peuvent calculer grâce à sa troisième loi, qui met en relation les vecteurs
et les temps des révolutions planétaires. Ainsi l'intelligibilité cosmique, le "plan de

324 / Renaissance and Reformation

Dieu", se réalise et se déchiffre à deux niveaux, celui, approximatif, de l'imbrication
des polygones, celui, englobant, plus parfait et donc plus ardu à décrypter, de la
divine musique des sphères. Parlant au nom de Kepler, l'auteur peut dès lors
conclure:

Tous les éléments du plan de la Création ont ainsi été élucidés. Ainsi, s'explicite
de plus en plus l'iWee mathématique de la Création: monde sans arbitraire ni hasard,
où toute altérité fait proportion, et où la proportion, "le plus beau des liens" d'après
le Tintée, assure "aux termes qu'il relie la plus complète unité." (p. 257-258)

La cosmographie keplerienne, comme celle du Copernic, a donc toujours une
dimension nettement anagogique: Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei. Pourtant, il
semblerait, à lire l'ouvrage de Fernand Hallyn, que cette finalité commune revête
une importance très inégale aux yeux de chacun des protagonistes. L'un et l'autre,
certes, y puisent leur motivation. Pour Copernic, cependant, même s'il affirme que
la mise en lumière de la symétrie est "la chose principale" (cf. p. 86 et suiv.), il
semble que l'oeuvre achevée, c'est-à-dire l'affirmation de l'héliocentrisme, finisse
par l'emporter en importance sur cette motivation initiale. Il y aurait même comme
une inversion de priorité: c'est l'hypothèse héliocentrique qui se voit confortée par
sa valeur de symétrie, non l'inverse, et l'on comprend alors que les premiers
coperniciens, dans leur défense de l'héliostatisme, aient pris argument de cette
"convenance", qui devient ainsi moyen en vue d'une fin.

Il en va tout autrement de Kepler. Bien plus fidèle, en fait à Vesprit du
néoplatonisme, il voit dans l'achèvement de son oeuvre scientifique, la confirma-
tion du sens anagogique intrinsèque au cosmos, sens qui se traduit par la juste
proportion des orbes, que lui, Kepler, a réussi à déchiffrer. Ici donc, le discours
scientifique est explicitement mis au service du discours symbolique, dont il
confirme l'adéquation, comme mise à jour du langage divin.

Autres encore, comme l'auteur le note clairement, seront les attitudes du P.
Mersenne, de Robert Fludd et de Simon Stevin. Pour le correspondant de Descartes,
en effet, seul le discours scientifique a valeur cognitive, tandis que le discours
symbolique, dénué de tout sens métaphysique immanent, ne conserve qu'une utilité
pratique, didactique: réserve d'images et de métaphores percutantes que le
prédicateur habile saura utiliser à ses fins, en comparant, par exemple, les propriétés
des sections coniques aux attributs divins.

Par contre, et tout à l'opposé de Mersenne, c'est la pertinence du langage
mathématique lui-même, que Robert Fludd met en cause, car les mathématiques
"seraient incapables d'apporter une connaissance concrète des choses" (p. 263).
Pour Fludd, il ne subsisterait alors qu'une symbolique à l'état pur, valant en soi et
indépendamment de toute référence cognitive - à moins que, ce qui reviendrait au
même, le cognitif ne s'identifie tout simplement au symbolique.

Enfin, "si Stevin croit à la vérité du système copernicien, il refuse (...) en même
temps de penser cette vérité dans l'optique formiste et anagogique qui est encore
celle de Kepler" et par conséquent 'ni la possibilité ni le refus d'une interprétation

Renaissance et Réforme / 325

symbolique ne le concernent vraiment" (p. 233). Avec Stevin, dès lors, la boucle
est bouclée: renonçant à toute lecture anagogique du monde, l'activité scientifique
se déroule désormais "sans rapport supposé avec un monde situé au-delà", comme
le dit Northrop Frye, que cite l'auteur (p. 49).

On constate alors que, de Kepler à Fludd et Stevin, l'unité organique du
néoplatonisme se désintègre en deux discours parallèles, qui ne se rejoindront plus.
Se dessine aussi, fut-ce pour des raisons différentes, une situation analogue à celle
qui prévalait au quatorzième siècle, alors qu'un même fidélisme se traduisait en un
double discours, celui, mystique, de Maître Eckhardt et de Ruysbroek, celui,
scientifique, propre aux nominalistes. Le parallélisme est tel que l'auteur, souvent,
pourrait reprendre en conclusion de son ouvrage, les remarques par lesquelles, en
son premier chapitre, il décrivait les attitudes mentales pré-rinascimentales. On
pourrait ajouter que ce n'est certes pas par hasard si la distinction nominaliste entre
la potentia dei absoluta et ordinata se trouve à la base de toute l'épistémologie
cartésienne, comme en témoignent précisément les lettres que Descartes adressait
au P. Mersenne (e. a. en avril 1630):

Pour mettre la mutation héliocentrique en une juste perspective, il fallait dégager
"les images, les symboles, les textes autour desquels (cette mutation) s'est
cristallisée" (p. couverture). C'est ce que Fernand Hallyn a fait, et de manière
excellente. Une telle entreprise cependant court le risque d'évacuer la part
irréductible qui, dans l'apparition de tout nouveau paradigme, revient au "génie"
de ses premiers porte-parole. Hallyn, certes, ne nie pas cette part, mais il r"oblitère"
en quelque sorte. Or, si nous considérons Copernic, Kepler et Mersenne - ce dernier,
au moins, à titre de "représentant" de Descartes ou de Galilée - , nous voyons trois
personnages qui, issus d'une même "terreau culturel", y réagissent cependant
chacun d'une manière propre et personnelle. Cette autonomie et cette liberté face
aux emprises de la culture ne constituent-elles pas, précisément, ce que l'on peut
appeler "le génie"? Et sans doute est-ce aussi cette liberté qui est à l'origine de la
"solitude" qui, comme l'auteur le signale à plus d'une reprise, marque l'oeuvre de
Kepler. Et il y a ici un dernier paradoxe car, de tous les personnages évoqués dans
ce livre, Kepler est sans conteste celui qui s'était le plus totalement identifié à la
veine néoplatonicienne que véhiculait son temps, et qui en avait le plus
intégralement assimilé les valeurs. Mais sans son génie, il n'aurait pas abandonné
le cercle au profit de l'ellipse, ni préféré l'explication motrice de la physique, à
l'explication formelle de la géométrie ...

LOUIS VALCKE, Université de Sherbrooke

326 / Renaissance and Reformation

Joseph Bergin. Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld. Leadership and Reform in the
French Church. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1988. VIII + 392.

L'intérêt parle toutes sortes de langages, et joue toutes sortes de personnages,
même celui de désintéressé. (François de la Rochefoucauld [1613-1618], grand-
nephew of the Cardinal, maxime # 39)

This maxim of the famous grand-nephew of the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld would
serve well as an introductory motto for Professor Bergin 's book on the Cardinal
(1558-1645), who was a leader of the church and a reformer of the regular clergy
in France. Joseph Bergin states in the introduction:

Genuine reform 'in head and members' of a church dominated at almost every
level by vested interests embedded in an archaic benefice-system would have had
to have been revolutionary to be wholly successful, and there was nothing
revolutionary about the Counter-Reformation church, (p.2)

The Cardinal had actually to struggle against a tight network of benefice-interests
of clergy, nobility and crown which sabotaged to a large extent his lifelong attempts
at reform of the clergy in general and the monastic orders in particular. Bergin
uncovers in his extremely well documented study a little known aspect of French
church history of the first half of the seventeenth century. In chapters one to five he
describes the Cardinal's education and career, paying close attention to their
political context. The following five chapters describe the Cardinal's activities as
papal commissioner for the reform of the monastic orders in France and his ongoing
fight against anti-reformist interests.

The king nominated François de la Rochefoucauld at the age of 26 as Bishop of
Clermont. He had not reached the minimum age for a Bishop, but he had no problem
in getting the papal confirmation. Both the crown and the curia had strong political
interests in his becoming Bishop of Clermont. Bergin writes:

At a time when royal authority was weakening noticeably in the provinces, an
episcopal nomination was an important political act ... The family seat [of the
Rochefoucaulds] was, after all, in the Auvergne, and one consequence of the
monarchy 's weakness was greater pressure to nominate bishops whose family base
was in the vacant diocese, (p. 16)

The curia, on the other hand, was afraid of Gallicanism, i.e. that movement in the
French church that tended toward more and more independence from Rome.
François de la Rochefoucauld had no academic degree, although he had received
an excellent education at the Jesuit college in Paris. In spite of that, and in spite of
being too young, he received the papal confirmation soon after the king had
nominated him, for, as Bergin writes, at that time "the papacy tended to worry more
about the orthodoxy of incoming French bishops than their qualifications." (p. 17)
About the orthodoxy of this nomine, however, there were no doubts at all. Trained

Renaissance et Réforme / 327

by the Jesuits, he was ultramontane and, in addition, descended from an ultramon-
tane family. It is ironic that François de la Rochefoucauld owed his bishopric to a
system of political interests which he as a reformer was to struggle against all his
life.

François' older Brother, Jean-Louis, was governor of Auvergne and a strong
partisan of the Ligue, during the tensions between the Catholic Ligue and the crown.
François, too, was a lifelong Liguist. He recognised Henry IV only because he
received papal authorisation to do so. "His allegiance to the crown was conditional
upon its support for the church, and Henry IV was not the ideal defensor fidei."
(p.33)

But Henry of Navarre was now king of France, and in recognition of this fact. La
Rochefoucauld dedicated the second edition of his treatise De VAuthorité de
l'Eglise to him. As the king was interested in building up French influence in Rome,
he made La Rochefoucauld Ambassador to the Holy See, and, on the king's
suggestion, the Pope made him Cardinal. In this position La Rochefoucauld had,
nolens volens, to represent French interests.

After the assassination of Henry IV, Gallicanism gained strength in France. La
Rochefoucauld attended the Estates General as a delegate, and the dispute over
state-church relations going on there

propelled La Rochefoucauld into political life. The very first article of the Third
Estate's cahier demanded the enactment of a fundamental law to the effect that the
king and his kingdom were subject to no external power, either spiritual or
temporal; that he was answerable to God alone, to whom he owed his crown; that
those holding opinions contrary to this law - which was in accordance with God's
word - should be considered traitors and sworn enemies of the crown; and that all
office - and benefice-holders should be required to assent to it before taking up
their offices, (p. 50 f)

This article "was the distilled essence of Gallican and parlamentaire thought."
(ibid.) It is ironic again that La Rochefoucauld and other leading clergy were
appointed by the Régente Marie de Medici to find a compromise between the
antagonistic parties. Soon the conflict was aggravated by the clergy's (especially
the Jesuits') attempt to make the decisions of the Council of Trent part of the French
law.

Bergin gives a fascinating picture of French internal policy's being paralysed
again and again by the conflicting interests of clergy, nobility and Third Estate. La
Rochefoucauld as president of the King's Council and Grand Almoner of France
stands in the centre where all those lines of interest cross. Richelieu succeeds him
as president of the King's Council. (In his brilliant study entitled Cardinal Richelieu.
Power and the Pursuit of Wealth Professor Bergin described how Richelieu as head
of the administration followed his own interests and accumulated enormous
wealth.)

328 / Renaissance and Reformation

In 1622 "the papacy finally granted [La Rochefoucauld] a special commission
for six years to reform the main monastic orders of France. It was an undertaking
that had the king's support, but even so the task was enormous." (p.65 f) This new
task took the Cardinal away from the court. He directed the reform from his Paris
hôtel Ste-Geneviève, holding innumerable meetings with abbots, bishops and
patrons of the various monasteries. His reform work was relatively successful with
the Canons Regular, but failed with Cluny and Citeaux. In many ways La
Rochefoucauld's undertaking was diametrically opposed to Cardinal Richelieu's
tendencies. La Rochefoucauld represented the centralism of the curia; the reformed
orders were more strictly bound to Rome than before. Richelieu, on the other hand,
attempted

to define royal power more precisely, and to raise kingship above all earthly
authority ... French foreign policy, directed mainly against Habsburg-Spain
seemed increasingly divorced from religious considerations and hostile to the best
interests of Catholicism, (p. 68)

What the author, appropriately remaining within the limits of his subject matter,
does not mention is that Cardinal Richelieu substantially supported the Swedish
Lutheran king's attack against the German Emperor's armies in the Thirty Years
War. Habsburg surrounded France from the South (Spain), the South-East (Lom-
bardy), the East (Alsace) and the North (Netherlands). So it was in France's national
interest that Habsburg be weakened, regardless of the Emperor's Catholicity. Cecil
Rhodes is said to have coined the maxim: "A country never has continual friends
or continual enemies; a country only has continual interests." One is tempted to add
to this one more sentence: "Neither does a country have a permanent religion or
Cardinal Richelieu exemplifies this".

What is said in these maxims about whole nations could, however, also be said
about smaller communities. Professor Bergin gives ample evidence for the validity
of these maxims for each of the three parts of the French Estates General. And
chapters six to ten of his book present a series of cases in which still small
communities (families, bishops as patrons of monasteries, monasteries themselves)
want to preserve their material interests against La Rochefoucauld's religiously
motivated attempts at reform.

The Cardinal requested "full return to community life and observance based on
the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience; exemptions and privileges
militating against them would be suppressed." (p. 167) He intended to add to every
chapter of reformed Canons Regular a ''Séminaire des enfants ... to educate young
boys and to prepare those with a vocation for their entry into the religious life."
(ibid.) He had, however, to give up this project at the chapter of Ste-Geneviève in
Paris, i.e. at his own residence, because the Jesuits were opposed to it. They were
afraid this new school might compete with their own college, (p. 174) Really,
"l'intérêt parle toutes sortes de langages", including the language of the Jesuits.

Renaissance et Réforme / 329

The reader admires La Rochefoucauld for overcoming again and again so many
frustrating experiences and for tirelessly pursuing his reform work. The church
historian will be grateful to Professor Bergin for having unearthed such a complex
and fascinating chapter of Counter-Reformation.

JAKOB AMSTUTZ, University ofGuelph

Alan Young. Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments. London: George Philip, 1987.
Pp. 224.

Twenty-five years ago, Glynne Wickham observed at the start of Early English
Stages that "Of the many separate components that Time has welded together to
form the literary drama, few have received such scant attention from historians as
the Tournament." (p. 13). That was certainly the situation in 1963: Roy Strong had
just submitted his dissertation to the University of London and Sydney Anglo had
just begun to publish College of Arms' records of tournaments, so that apart from
Frances Yates' influential article, "Elizabethan Chivalry: The Romance of the
Accession Day Tilts", Wickham had only the impressionistic overviews of R.C.
Clephan {The Tournament; Its Periods and Phases [1919]) and Francis Henry
Cripps-Day {The History of the Tournament in England and in France [1918]) to
go on. What was needed was a comprehensive account of the development of the
tournament in England, and that need remained despite distinguished studies of the
Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, the Burgundian origins of Tudor spectacle,
and the importance of tiltyard entertainments to the cult of Elizabeth. With the
publication of Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments, Alan Young has met this
longstanding need - a surprising one too when one thinks that Peele, Sidney,
Shakespeare, and Jonson wrote for tournaments, that noblemen such as Essex,
Cumberland, Windsor, and Sussex commissioned paintings of themselves in tilting
gear, and that money lavished upon the tournament by Tudor and Stuart monarchs
"far surpassed that spent on disguisings, pageants, masques and plays ..." (p.7).

As one would expect of a book published by George Philip, a house best known
for atlases, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments is a handsome volume, richly
illustrated. As one might also expect, it is not an altogether scholarly book. There
is neither a bibliography nor a list of illustrations specifying their original contexts
and dates. The terminology, methods of analysis, and chronological structure (that
of the book as a whole and of its various chapters) make the book accessible to an
audience much wider than that schooled in inter-textuality, cultural inscriptions,
methodological self-reflexiveness, and the like. Presumably the same attempt to
reach a broad spectrum of readers lies behind the inclusion of some illustrations that
have been frequently reproduced and shed little light on tournaments per se, such
as Sittow's portrait of Henry VII (his lips pursed, his parsimonious eyes smiling)
with a caption which includes the commonplace note that "Henry VII united the

330 / Renaissance and Reformation

Houses of York and Lancaster by marrying Elizabeth of York." (p.24) By no means
major flaws, these "unscholarly" features of Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments
represent an underistandable compromise rather than careless or incomplete
research.

Indeed, Alan Young's scholarship is impressive, particularly in the comprehens-
ive examination of the primary sources of information about his subject. The
appendix to the book, "A Calendar of Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments",
demonstrates best the thoroughness of his research. Listing the principal documen-
tary sources for every tournament, this calendar supplements, corrects, and extends
to 1626 - two years beyond the accepted date of the last English Renaissance tilt -
the data in "A Preliminary Checklist of Tudor and Stuart Entertainments" which has
been appearing in Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama. The fruits of the
search for all the primary evidence of tournaments can also be seen in the
illustrations, which include a photograph of one of the two surviving impresa
shields, reproductions of drawings from hitherto unpublished College of Arms'
manuscripts, and the invaluable picture of Queen Elizabeth watching knights tilting,
tourneying, and fighting at barriers, a picture found in a unique illuminated manu-
script in a private collection. The glossary of the technical terminology of martial
sports reveals how carefully Young has studied the documents, for the individual
entries, many of which are complemented by photographs of armour or drawings
of tiltyard scenes elsewhere in the volume, are informed by an alertness to the
various senses of the terms as used a wide range of sources.

Neither Young's understanding of the origins and development of the tournament
in the Renaissance nor his interpretation of its use as an instrument of "prestige
propaganda" (p. 43) are radically new. He shows how several elements combined
to aggrandize the prestige of the monarch: the magnificent buildings in which
tiltyards were situated, the rich accoutrements of the royal viewing stands, the array
of foreign ambassadors and noble attendants vying for positions close to the king
or queen, and, of course, the ritual of loyal service acted out in the lists. Tudor and
Stuart monarchs used these complex events for various purposes depending on the
personality of each ruler and the peculiar conditions of his or her reign. Whereas
Henry VII needed above all to secure his authority at home (and used tournaments
to this end), his son strove to impress foreign rulers with his might and his
magnificence. Whereas Elizabeth I, a skilled performer of the roles prescribed for
her ritual or pageantry, was ready to play the lady of the tournament. King James
reluctantly engaged in public spectacles, as a result of which attitude Prince Henry
became the central figure of a nascent chivalric cult. Generally however, tourna-
ments helped these monarchs consolidate their power within England, enhance their
reputations abroad, and confirm the contemporary ideal of social order. If these ends
were to be achieved, numerous practical matters had to be taken care of, matters
which receive close attention for the first time in Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments.
Young devotes over a third of the book to the financing of tournaments, the
development of armour and weaponry, the activities of various government offices.

Renaissance et Réforme / 331

the design of tiltyards s6 that they became "noble theatres", and other practical
aspects of staging the events. Doing so helps correct the mistaken impression that
tournaments, like Stuart masques, were exclusive court spectacles. As Young says
when concluding his discussion of arrangements for audiences in the tiltyard, "a
tournament was both a calculated display of magnificence and a powerful demon-
stration, both literally and figuratively, of the hierarchical structure of the body
politic, from the single figure of royalty in the most central and most lavishly
appointed viewing place, flanked by the ranks of the nobility and civic officials, to
the thousands of commoners in their own stands ... Little wonder, then, that
Elizabeth and James each chose the tournament as the chief medium for the annual
celebration of their respective accessions." (p. 90) The nature and the functions of
tournaments were further complicated by the combatants as the later chapters on
impresa, tiltyard speeches, and role-playing make clear. Bearing the costs (ulti-
mately prohibitive) of these and other aspects of the tournament, ambitious courtiers
like Sir Philip Sidney or the Earl of Essex exploited the tiltyard entertainment as a
privileged meeting place with the monarch in order to advance their personal and
political causes.

The epilogue of Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments balances the brief opening
account of the English and European origins of the tournament in the Middle Ages
by noting the major revivals of the tournament in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. What began as a bloody free-for-all valued "for the financial profit to be
derived from ransom and booty" (p. 13) survives today as a colourful curiosity under
the auspices of Max Diamond, "The Black Gauntlet", ex-stuntman and founder of
the Jousting Association. But the epilogue serves a more important purpose; it
highlights a crucial, unifying theme of the volume as a whole by tracing the
persistence of the chivalric values of which tournaments were such a vivid, powerful
embodiment. The magnificent public spectacles which thousands attended and on
which thousands were spent for the sake of "prestige propaganda" ceased when
Charles I turned his back on the tournament and settled down within the closed
circle of the court masque. The chivalric values associated with martial sports,
anachronistic even in the Renaissance, have remained alive, however, to help
rationalize oppressive social arrangements and real war efforts.

Under the Tudors and the first two Stuart kings of England, the tournament was
a complex, powerful form of art. To understand individual tiltyard entertainments,
we need biographical information about the participants and knowledge of the
historical conditions of the realm. We need to decode cryptic impresa and heraldic
trappings, and to analyze the interplay among the ceremonial, pageantic, dramatic,
and athletic features of the tournament. Nor is it enough to focus on individual
events, for participants created roles for themselves that they played over many
years. Alan Young's Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments establishes this complexity
and helps us come to terms with it. I am glad to have a copy of the book at hand,
not only because it gives back to the tournament "its due place within the rich and
varied fabric to Tudor and Jacobean court pageantry" (p. 7), but also because, like

332 / Renaissance and Reformation

the best comprehensive histories, it is not the final word on the subject but a solid
foundation for further work.

C.E. MCGEE, St. Jerome's College, University of Waterloo

François Berriot. Exposicions et significations des songes et Les songes Daniel
(Manuscrits français de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris et de la
Staatsbibliothek de Berlin, XlVe, XVe etXVIe siècles). Travaux d'Humanisme et
Renaissance, Genève, Droz, 1989, Pp. 369.

Le texte principal procuré par François Berriot, soit "L'exposition des songes,"
intéresse l'histoire de l'humanisme et de la Renaissance par un manuscrit grec de
la Bibliothèque Nationale transcrit au milieu du seizième siècle, et trois traductions
imprimées, l'une en italien de 1546, l'autre en latin de 1577 et la troisième en
français de 1581. Mais cet ouvrage byzantin du dizième siècle est connu dès le
douzième siècle et jusqu'au quinzième par des traductions latines et françaises. Il
a été cité et utilisé par Jérôme Cardan dans son traité de 1562 et continuera d'être
édité ou traduit au dix-septième siècle.

L'original, intitulé Achmetis oneirocriticon, a pour auteur un chrétien de Con-
stantinople qui s'inspire de traités arabes, sans doute par l'intermédiaire d'une
traduction syriaque dont la British Library possède un manuscrit. C'est un ouvrage
de littérature savante qui s'adresse à un public choisi. Mais "c'est seulement vers
1165, sous le règne de l'empereur éclairé Manuel Comnène, qu'un 'infimus
clericus' de sa cour, Pascalis Romanus, Grec né à Rome ou Romain installé à
Byzance, [ ... ] adopte le traité byzantin en latin [ ... ] sur une version très abrégée.
Il en est de même du De interpretatione somniorum, traduction que Leo Tuscus
[ ... ] réalise vers 1175 ou 1176, à la demande de Manuel Comnène dont il est le
collaborateur officiel" (pp. 34-37). C'est sur une des copies latines de la traduction
de Leo Tuscus - une quinzaine - que sont composées les premières versions
françaises. Ce sont ces dernières que François Berriot a choisi d'utiliser pour établir
son texte, à savoir:

1) VExposicion des Songes (traduction anglo-normande du début du quatorzième
siècle qui occupe les folios 232 à 281 b du manuscrit 968Q de la Staatsbibliothek
Preussicher Kulturbesitz de Berlin, et qui a été effectuée pour 'Dame Alice de
Couty,' laquelle y a fourni des variantes (B);

2) la version du ms fr. 24432 de la Bibliothèque Nationale (folios 281 V), écrit
après 1338, version incomplète qui a également fourni des variantes (P) aux 66
premiers chapitres du suivant;

3) VExposicion et significacion des songes contenue aux folios 55 v° - 105 v°
du ms fr. 1317 de la Bibliothèque Nationale, traduite en 1396 par "Frère Nicole
Saoul, autrement dit de Saint Marcel, de l'ordre de Nostre Dame du Carme à Paris".

Renaissance et Réforme / 333

Cette traduction a été exécutée sur une version très abrégée du De interpretatione
somniorum de Leo Tuscus, analogue à celle du ms latin 337 de la Bibliothèque
Inguimbertine de Carpentras (C) dont les leçons ont été également recueillies. C'est
le ms fr. 1317 qui a servi à François Berriot de texte de base, auquel il a adjoint les
variantes des mss cités ci-dessus, ainsi que celles de l'édition de Denis Duval, Paris,
1581 (D), et de Nicolas Rigault, Paris, 1603 (R). Ce ms a appartenu à Louis de
Luxembourg, connétable de France, mort sur l'échafaud en 1475, et à sa femme
Jeanne, morte en 1466.

Dans l'édition de François Berriot, les 152 chapitres de VExposicion des Songes
occupent les pages 57 à 297 du volume. Les quatre versions des Songes Daniel le
Prophète, elles, qui constituent l'appendice II, occupent seulement les pages 303 à
326. C'est qu'il s'agit d'un ouvrage tout différent, une Clé des Songes destinée à
un public populaire (littérature florissante à l'époque byzantine), même si
VExposicion y a également puisé. Car la plus ancienne de ces Clés, le Pseudo-Dan-
iel, remonte sans doute au cinquième siècle et a été traduite en latin vers le septième
sous le titre de Somniale Danielis. "La bibliothèque d'Upsala en conserve un
manuscrit du IXe siècle; en France, [ ... ] le Paris lat. 18415 date seulement du Xir
siècle. [ . . . ] La version française en prose la plus ancienne daterait du Xlir siècle."
Les traductions imprimées se succèdent à partir de 1470 et les copies jusqu'au
dix-septième siècle. Par exemple, les Songes Daniel le prophète translatez de latin
en français de Jean Trepel, goth., s.l.n.d. (Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris) ou La
phisionomie des songes et visions fantastiques des personnes ... de Jean Thibault,
astrologue de François 1^^ Lyon, s.d., chez Jean Moderne. Ce sont ces quatre
versions manuscrites de ces traductions que publie François Berriot: une du
treizième siècle, une du début du quatorzième siècle, une copie de la fin du seizième
siècle et une autre du dix-septième siècle.

Nous avons essayé ci-dessus d'énoncer clairement les données du problème et
nous poursuivrons maintenant par quelques remarques sur l'établissement du texte.
En plusieurs endroits, il nous a semblé que des passages, lors de la transmission de
tel ou tel manuscrit, au cours d'une longue histoire d'adaptations, avaient dû être
déplacés. Par exemple, au chapitre III: "De lire en livre," les troisième et quatrième
paragraphes se rapportent au chapitre XIV: "De condre et rere le chief;" au chapitre
XLVIII: "De la rougolle," nous trouvons le début d'un autre chapitre, "Des
membres." L'histoire, rapportée au chapitre LXIII: "De vomir," est en rapport avec
le chapitre LXVIII: "Des prestres."

Les variantes en bas de page sont en réalité les leçons des autres versions
manuscrites citées (dont une latine) et constituent en fait un véritable intertexte qui
vient parfois s'ajouter ou se substituer au texte édité. Parmi ces versions, celle du
ms fr. 24432 de la Bibliothèque Nationale (P), le plus ancien (après 1338) est aussi
celui dont la langue est la plus pure - du francien sans aucun doute. On ne peut en
dire autant de celle de Frère Nicole Saoul, fortement marquée de picardismes. Nous
avons relevé quelques fautes: ''Sa femme" pour "Se femme," (p. 143, 1. 30), par
exemple.

334 / Renaissance and Reformation

Le glossaire placé à la fin du volume est très utile, même s'il subsiste plusieurs
points d'interrogation. L'auteur n'a pas indiqué quels dictionnaires il avait utilisés.
La traduction en français moderne des mots difficiles ou obscurs aurait été encore
plus utile au lecteur s'il l'avait trouvée en bas de page, accompagnée de quelques
notes explicatives.

Venons-en au texte lui-même de VExposicion des Songes, dont le commentaire
- surtout en ce qui concerne les sources - est fait longuement et par ordre
chronologique, dans l'introduction générale: l'oniromancie égyptienne, les clés des
songes mésopotamiennes, la tradition judaïque, etc. L'oeuvre elle-même est-elle
d'un grand intérêt pour une étude de l'imaginaire? L'ensemble donne l'impression
d'une vaste compilation ordonnée, mais d'une interprétation abstraite et arbitraire
qui concerne surtout les rapports sociaux, économiques et hiérarchiques. L'index
donne une idée des objets prétendument vus en songe, mais non de leur significa-
tion, presque toujours liée aux notions évoquées plus haut. C'est pourquoi il est
permis de préférer à cette somme encyclopédique les brèves clés des songes citées
en appendice, comme plus représentatives d'un genre éminemment populaire dont
on aimerait suivre la trace dans la production imprimée jusque dans la littérature de
colportage, assurément. Mais c'est là un autre travail.

En attendant, il faut féliciter François Berriot pour l'ampleur de la tâche qu'il a
menée à bien et le remercier d'avoir mis à la portée du public savant des textes,
manuscrits pour la plupart, qui intéressent la littérature comparée, l'histoire des
mentalités et des civillisations, la littérature médiévale et l'histoire de la littérature
du seizième siècle. Nul doute que d'autres chercheurs, à leur tour, se serviront des
textes établis avec autant de soin comme matière première de leurs propres travaux.

JACQUES CHOCHEYRAS, Université Stendhal - Grenoble III

Stan A.E. Mendyk. 'Speculum Britanniae'. Regional Study, Antiquarianism, and
Science in Britain to 1700. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.

In 'Speculum Britanniae' . Regional Study, Antiquarianism, and Science in Britain
to 1700, a book which grew out of his Ph.D. dissertation, Stan Mendyk has created
- as he states - a work of synthesis. Relying for the most part on materials in print
and not on unpublished archives he has looked at several generations of
chorographers and has tried to show the continuity in the evolution from antiquary
to virtuoso. Towards the end of the book he cites Herbert Butterfield's observation
concerning the need to move beyond the examination of the work of "the few men
of supreme genius" in order to understand the history of science and this becomes
his own methodology. Beginning with John Leland, he traces the antiquarian
thought of major and minor figures right up to the beginning of the eighteenth
century when John Morton's The Natural History of Northamptonshire was pub-
lished. Francis Bacon figures prominently in this development: after his seminal

Renaissance et Réforme / 335

work regional study came to require "a critical use of authorities" and ultimately
the virtuoso would use "historical and natural materials and scientific methods to
make accurate statements of fact about both past and present". In some sense, too,
Mendyk sees the later work as a culmination of Leland's original vision and gives
Joseph Levine the final word on the topic: "Looking back across the two centuries
that separated [George] Hickes [the Saxonist] and his friends from John Leland and
his successors, one can see a single great antiquarian dream being slowly realized."

As he makes clear from the very beginning Mendyk wishes to "bring to light" (a
metaphor borrowed - consciously? - from Leland and Bale) individual writers and
their achievements. His framework is straightforwardly chronological and we move
through the centuries from individual to individual. There are, however, problems
with this method of presentation. Most obviously, no single person is studied in any
depth. Mendyk does not add to our knowledge of Leland, say, and he does not bring
the most recent scholarship to bear in his discussion. Instead we have a series of
somewhat repetitive potted histories - updated versions of Dictionary of National
Biography entries - which become more and more difficult to absorb as one goes
along. Even more worrisome are the considerable misunderstandings of the infor-
mation which is already well known, as when (p. 45) Mendyk confuses Leland's
Itinerary and his 'New Year's Gift' of 1546/47. Or when he does not seem to be
aware that the most important Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis was in fact
more or less completed in Leland's lifetime and subsequently published in the
eighteenth century. Very often we seem to slip from vague hypothesis - Tristram
Risdon according to the Dictionary of National Biography was "apparently a
Puritan" - to accepted fact: Risdon, we are now told (without any supporting
evidence) "illustrates the interest of Puritan gentry in chorography." As so often
happens when one is summarizing and giving synopses Mendyk drifts into unex-
amined platitudes: although some of John Norden's devotional books "achieved
considerable popular appeal", Mendyk affirms, "his career as a religious author
proved to be singularly unsuccessful." Unsuccessful from whose perspective? And
in what way? Is not popularity an acknowledged mark of success?

Interestingly, the very narrative context, its division into neatly defined vitae,
tends to undermine the continuity Mendyk is trying to establish. William Burton's
possession of Leland's papers is a major factor behind the composition of his
Description of Leicester Shire (Leland's ancestral county like Burton's): the story
of these papers illustrates graphically, moreover, the almost apostolic succession at
the heart of the antiquarian movement and the very small circle of individuals
involved from generation to generation. And yet in Mendyk's narrative this vital
link is barely even mentioned and certainly not seen in the paradigmatic light it
deserves.

Mendyk's biographical choices seem somewhat arbitrary since he gives himself
such a wide range of possibilities: he restricts himself neither to the famous nor to
the obscure, nor to a single geographical area nor to a single century. If Leland is
to be studied in depth, for example, then why not Cotton or Drayton. In the end one

336 / Renaissance and Reformation

comes to feel the choices are hit or miss and that any pattern which emerges is a
matter more of chance than of fact. Different individuals, one suspects, might have
led to different conclusions.

It is not easy to work out the principles behind footnotes and bibliography. Quite
rightly Mendyk cites Joseph M. Levine and yet the book he seems most to admire
- Levine 's Humanism and History. Origins of Modern English Historiography -
never makes it to the bibliography (and appears to remain only partially cited: I
could never find the date and place of publication nor a full title for that matter)
whereas his earlier Dr Woodward's Shield and his unpublished Ph.D. dissertation
do appear. And why is Oruch's work, so strongly emphasized in the text, excluded?
Some primary sources appear in the bibliography and others do not. Amongst those
which do there is considerable confusion about choices of editions: why, for
example, do we have the 1534 edition of Polydore Vergil rather than the revised
edition of 1546 or the third of 1555? In a book about and for the antiquary - "a man
strangely thrifty of Time past" - one might expect particular care about accuracy
and yet the notes and bibliography are far from punctilious: Leland is linked with
Henry VII in Clarke's article, to give one fine bit of anachronism, and Geoffrey of
Monmouth wrote a "Historia regnum Britanniae". In the text itself 1 enjoyed, inter
alia, the reference to "other ancient Egyptian priests or barbs".

All in all this is a somewhat superficial book, one not carefully researched. One
has the sense that by the time it actually came to press the author had lost some of
his initial enthusiasm and that the final product is more a labour that the kind of
labour of love Mendyk has been describing in the work of the chorographers
themselves.

JAMES P. CARLEY, York University

Jasper Ridley. Elizabeth I, the Shrewdness of Virtue. New York: Fromm Interna-
tional, 1989. Pp. xi, 391. Christopher Haigh. Elizabeth I. London and New York:
Longman Ltd., 1988. Pp. vii, 198.

Studies of many historical figures are called forth by anniversaries of birth and
death, but for Elizabeth I as for Napolean the season remains perpetual. Ironically,
one is hard pressed to identify a standard work in this burgeoning genre since J.E.
Neale's now outdated classic of the 1930s. Commercially successful efforts by such
non-academics as Elizabeth Jenkins, Edith Sitwell and Carolly Erickson have not
altogether met the standards of serious scholarship, while Paul Johnson's effort of
1974 has been rendered questionable on a number of issus by more recent scholar-
ship. The field thus seems wide open for a new and definitive study, one which
would incorporate important recent research and present a new perspective of its
own.

Renaissance et Réforme / 337

The two new works at hand, by the professional biographer Jasper Ridley and the
Oxford historian Christopher Haigh, hold great promise. After all, Ridley has
already published seven historical biographies, four of them on figures in the Tudor
period, while Haigh has written widely and convincingly on various aspects of
Tudor politics and religion. It is thus most disappointing to find that neither of these
efforts entirely fits the bill.

The thrust of Ridley's contribution lies more in placing new interpretations on
familiar material than in drawing upon new sources themselves. Though he does
use some unpublished material, especially on Ireland, he relies principally upon
published primary and secondary sources. The resulting effort shows a well-mean-
ing, conscientious, even devout Queen, sometimes overwhelmed by events, and
often indecisive. Yet Ridley's Elizabeth remained in charge, and it was she and not
her ministers - talented as Ridley construes them to have been - who made the
crucial decisions and who must thus be credited with their success or failure. Though
this picture usefully veers away from Neale's hagiography and may yet prove closer
to the mark than many, it is difficult to be convinced by arguments which are too
often uninformed of the most important of recent scholarship. One looks in vain for
the influence of Norman Jones's work on the Settlement of Religion, of Winthrop
Hudson and others on factions at court, on Michael Graves and others on Elizabe-
than parliaments, of Peter Lake and the most recent of Patrick Collinson's important
works on Puritans, or even Wallace MacCaffrey's not so recent eye for detail in
specific issues. In short, Ridley has defined the boundaries of his subject so narrowly
as to neglect the complexity of the events and ideas which matter: it is, if not Hamlet
without the Prince, then perhaps the Prince without the play.

From Haigh, whose accomplishments as a Tudor specialist are legion and
impressive, one expects more, and indeed neither the incorporation of recent
scholarship nor the presentation of a new and challenging interpretation are far to
seek. One may not compare the two too strictly, for Haigh has not set out to write
a biography at all. This is the second volume to have come forth in Longman's new
and promising 'Profiles in Power' series, in which concise and analytic books on
specific political careers are the objective. Thus Haigh ignores the more personal
aspects of the Queen's life, save those of political import, to concentrate on her
office and use of power.

Here we have a number of new hypotheses, many forged by an historian writing
in the age of both Margaret Thatcher and her public relations men, Saatchi and
Saatchi. Elizabeth remained pre-occupied with public imagery to disguise her faults
as queen and her inescapable problems as a woman ruler. The last point is especially
clear to Haigh. It was difficult for either Elizabeth herself or her contemporaries to
escape the fact of her womanhood and - despite the reality of other female rulers
of that age - the incongruity of a woman ruler in the sixteenth century. This
weakness, as Haigh sees it, accounted for Elizabeth finding herself too often at the
mercy of the disparate political forces around her, rather than, as Neale saw it, in
command of them. Though she bullied the Church well enough, she was bullied or

338 / Renaissance and Reformation

manipulated in turn by many other groups: the aristocracy, whose support she still
required; factions amongst her courtiers and concillors; and the commanders of her
military. Haigh's Elizabeth experienced constant fear of revolt and disrespect, and
thus relied on a 'rule by illusion'. Yet in the end, she was a failure, dying unloved
and unlamented, victimized by her sex.

This is, of course, as far from Neale's Queen as one could get, and pretty far from
Ridley's too. Not only isn't Haigh writing of Gloriana, but he also refuses to accept
the very things Neale saw as most important in her reign: the Parliament, which
Haigh disparages as decreasingly important; the famed concillors, whom he sees as
manipulative and squabbling second raters; and the military achievements, which
he dismisses almost completely.

This is revisionism in the extreme and it offers much to dwell on and much to
celebrate. The departure from the shibboleths of earlier scholarship is most wel-
come, though no longer by now especially novel, and the emphasis on the sexual
issue marks a particularly important milestone in mainstream Elizabethan scholar-
ship. Yet overall, one is put off by the breezy self-assurance of tone and more deeply
troubled by the constant tendency to argue with perfect righteousness well beyond
any evidence placed before us: a tendency, in fact, reminiscent of Neale himself.
Comments on the gender issue aptly illustrate both these objections. Chapters begin,
in the trendiest of terms, with the announcement of stereotypes with which her
contemporaries, at least in Haigh's eyes, perceived their Queen: "a pushy woman"
(p. 27); "a show-off and dressed to kill", (p. 86); 'a mother, . . . and aunt, ... a nagging
wife, ... a seductress ...", (p. 107). These, of course, arejust the tags likely to appeal
to the broader reading public, but as mere labels it is hard to see that they get us
very far in understanding Elizabeth or perceptions of her by her contemporaries.
Fuller support for such images would turn this into a scholarly argument, but we
never quite reach that level of discourse. Indeed, though we should be ever in his
debt at least for raising the issue, the extent to which Haigh has informed himself
of serious feminist scholarship on the subject seems limited to a single essay in
Feminist Review cited in the Bibliographic Essay at the end.

Much of the disappointment here stems from the sense that Haigh could do better,
and has. The best recent guide to the rapidly unfolding scholarship on the Elizabe-
than period remains the collection of essays which Haigh himself edited as The
Reign of Elizabeth (1985): a first rate collection of shrewd, balanced and judicious
essays, including Haigh's own, plus his fine introduction. The current volume stands
small beside the former, and for our new standard treatment of Elizabeth herself we
must still wait.

ROBERT TITTLER, Concordia University

Renaissance et Réforme / 339

Leonard Mustazza. "Such Prompt Eloquence: " Language as Agency and Char-
acter in Milton's Epies. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1988. Pp xii, 173.

God Almighty was no rhetorician: Satan it was who created persuasive political
rhetoric. Here Leonard Mustazza begins his exploration of character in Milton's
epics as it is manifested in discourse, spoken or thought. "No mean feat," he
comments on Satan's achievement (19), though some might feel that the misappro-
priation of language to move others to damnation is the archetypal meanness. His
analysis of language usefully explores the strategies used by the characters in
various states: innocent, sinful, remorseful, reprobate. Chapters on Satan's rhetoric
as he tempts the angels and then Adam and Eve are followed by an examination of
human language before and after the Fall. "Divine" language includes the speech
of the angels, affable Raphael and understandably stern Michael. One of the best
chapters is on language as a weapon in Christ's duel not of arms in Paradise
Regained.

The discussion is in a traditional, conservative idiom, marked at its best moments
by a practical common sense. No dragon's teeth here of signifiers and différance,
of trendy new doublets, fresh minted affixes and intrusive solidi. Some readers will
be relieved. Others will feel that at least a dimension is missing in a discussion of
language that ignores contemporary theorists' focus on how words mean what they
do, how texts speak to texts, how authorial and contextual ideologies frame the
discourse of fictional characters. Mustazza accepts status of text and authority of
author under an older covenant, as it were. Within the limits suggested, he quotes
sensitively from some of the best critical work directed at his theme, but has a
slightly irritating habit of endorsing quoted opinion as "apt", "valid" or "correct".

His own style is a little lumpy at times. He speaks of scenes that "represent polar
boundaries in Edenic language use" (90), calls Paradise Lost "chnsiological in perspec-
tive" (127) and analyses the "preseparation conversation" of Adam and Eve (88). More
serious is his occasional insensitivity to the levels of meaning in the poet's language.
When Adam chooses the same "lot" as Eve, "Certain to undergo like doom", Mustazza
reads "doom" as "payment", the anticipation of which makes Adam's choice the sadder
(95). But "doom" suggests that besides knowing that judgment will follow, Adam is
becoming infected with a diabolic ideology which interprets events in terms of fate,
denying the absolute power of divine will. Distempered, fallen Eve who speaks of her
"lot" already believes in "fate". Elsewhere, when Mustazza discussed Satan's specula-
tion about obtaining "By act of grace my former state", he notes Satan's ignorance of
how God's grace operates (52). However, he does not notice that the phrase is also
beautifully in character because it is exactly the dispensation an aristocratic transgressor
might hope for when he is legally guilty but sues for a free pardon out of the grace of
the monarch. One more example: neither Michael nor Milton use of Noah the phrase
"perfect man" as quoted by Mustazza, nor might they consider "perfect" to be an
adjective that permits degrees of comparison, as he does (112). One feels at times that

340 / Renaissance and Reformation

Milton's language has not quite yielded either its suggestive multivalency or its
precision to this author.

One is uneasy also about the treatment here of rhetoric, a word much mentioned.
We are promised early that "a kind of Miltonic rhetoric" will emerge (13), but this
seems to refer to remarks such as: "Satan invents yet another kind of language - the
'pep-talk' " (34). Perhaps statements such as the following are the "rhetoric" the
writer had in mind: "To illustrate the complexity of the medium, Milton moves
quickly in this scene from Adam's inquiry into his Maker's identity (inquisitive
language), to the Son's introduction of himself (formal language), to the interdiction
(prohibitive language), to Adam's naming "presumption" in wishing to know more
(exploratory, deferential language), and finally to the Son's gentle taunting of Adam
(playful and indirectly didactic language). These last two categories are especially
interesting. ..." (72-3). This is a shadow of a taxonomy but there is no descriptive
elaboration within the categories. The writer seems simply uninterested in classical
rhetoric, a lack of interest which traps him in misreadings e.g. of Satan's behaviour
before the spoken temptation of Eve. "Each part. Motion, each act won audience
ere the tongue": Mustazza dismisses this as clumsy "histrionics ... abusing the part
of the orator with his serpentine meanderings" (65). Not so. The importance of
motion and gesture, of catching the attention before the oration begins, was an
important part of rhetoric. Satan is as accomplished a rhetorician as any "orator
renown'd ... to some great cause addressed." Hypocrisy, "the only evil that walks
invisible," acts convincingly not clumsily. Then there is the dream Satan induces in
Eve with his "devilish art." It is treated as a rhetorical event: the art "can refer to
little else besides words" (56). However, Eve is not awake as is suggested, and she
cannot hear words. In the intertext, with other devilish figures who practise goeteia,
is Spenser's Archimago. Archimago's evil illusions, too, are forged by night but
with a more sinister weapon than rhetoric or a "mode of reasoning" (57).

Mustazza has a tendency to affirm or speculate without producing evidence from
the theological or literary context, e.g. "Does [Satan] truly believe the rebellion can
succeed? I think he does" (26); or, "It is highly doubtful that either Satan or the
faithful members of his following actually believe that they were self-begotten"
(28). The discussion of the evil angel's rebellion is unconvincing. This matter is
central to Milton's theodicy and requires scrupulous attention. God says they fell
"self-tempted, self-depraved"; Mustazza is satisfied that "the Father's statement
obviously cannot be taken at face value" (29). Actually, it would be safer to assume
that God can be trusted and that when Omniscience glosses Milton's narrative, that
the reading is correct. Christian Doctrine 1.9 confirms this. In Carey's phrase, the
temptation is intramural.

One last concern must be mentioned. Mustazza does not quite convince us that
we should think in terms of the agency rather than the instrumentality of language.
The distinctions between thoughts/words and reason/language are touched on but
unsatisfyingly (45,85,97). He talks of the power inherent in words (19) and treats
language as an entity in itself (29). The subject has fascinating potential but this is

Renaissance et Réforme / 341

not realised. The traditional model of human consciousness, rational soul with
erected wit and infected will, not hegemonic, not an actor but an instrument in the
drama of damnation.

For all these reservations, there are many interesting and enriching perceptions
in this study, beginning with analysis if Satan's "calumnious art of counterfeited
truth". Especially useful are the survey of the nature of pre-lapsarian language and
its post-lapsarian future (88-89), human language after the Fall (90-100), the Son's
response to Adam (100-1 16), and the whole chapter on Paradise Regained. Leonard
Mustazza focuses our attention on a topic of undoubted importance to readers of
Milton and he guides us through text and critical discourse with an interesting and
often valuable commentary.

DEREK N. C. WOOD, St. Francis Xavier University

Gisèle MsLthieu-CasiQWani. Agrippa d'Aubigné. Le corps deJézabel. Paris, Presses
Universitaires de France, 1991.

Peu de critiques étaient aussi bien placés que Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani pour
éclairer les coulisses de ce théâtre de la cruauté qu'est l'oeuvre d'Agrippa
d'Aubigné, pour faire sortir de leur nuit les fantômes, et quels fantômes, qui ont
peuplé l'imaginaire de cet écrivain au tempérament "igné". En effet, Gisèle
Mathieu-Castellani est une spécialiste de la littérature baroque et on lui doit des
études toujours pénétrantes sur Agrippa d'Aubigné. Ce petit ouvrage appartient à
la collection "Le Texte Rêve," dont l'objet est de remonter au coeur même des
oeuvres, de lever le voile sur l'inconscient des auteurs grâce à une lecture attentive
au dit et au non-dit.

Nous avons la chance de posséder le "roman familial" d'Agrippa d'Aubigné.
Celui-ci, en effet, a écrit Sa vie à ses enfants, qu'il a dédiée à ses trois enfants
légitimes. Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani fait judicieusement remarquer que l'aîné des
enfants avait été renié et que la fille, Marie, était déjà morte depuis quelques années
quand ce testament-confession fut rédigé. Par contre, le fils naturel, son héritier
spirituel, Nathan, est passé sous silence. Autre aberration, ce récit autobiographique
est écrit à la troisième personne du singulier, comme si Agrippa d'Aubigné reniait
lui-même sa filiation, comme s'il avait un compte à régler avec ses parents.

Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani voit trois moments décisifs dans la vie d'Agrippa
d'Aubigné. Tout d'abord sa naissance. La sortie du ventre maternel fut vécue dans
l'imaginaire de l'auteur des Tragiques comme une malédiction gravée dans son
prénom même. Agrippa, Aegre partus. D'une part, il se voit victime, abandonné par
sa mère qui mourut en couches; d'autre part, il sait qu'il doit la vie à la décision des
docteurs ou du père qui ont choisi de "tuer" la mère pour sauver le fils; le voilà du
même coup passé du côté des bourreaux. La dialectique victime/bourreau,
accusé/accusateur, et le renversement des rôles qui a été maintes fois relevé auraient

342 / Renaissance and Reformation

leur source dans cette naissance traumatique. Dans L'Hécatombe, la maîtresse,
bourreau du coeur, est accusée par l'amant mal-aimé qui, victime, en appelle à la
vengeance des dieux. Dans Les tragiques, les martyrs protestants, victimes des
mauvais juges, se portent comme témoins et accusateurs devant le tribunal céleste
qui condamnera les juges pervers, et les premières victimes deviendront les
bienheureux au ciel. Le discours judiciaire chez Agrippa d'Aubigné ne relève pas
de la rhétorique seule, mais il est l'expression d'une nécessité interne: victime d'un
contrat qui a été rompu à la naissance, il doit en même temps se justifier.

Sa place dans le monde était d'autant plus précaire qu'il s'est vu expulsé du logis
maternel par sa belle-mère. Victime d'une marâtre. Agrippa a toujours eu la
nostalgie du sein maternel dont il a été sevré. Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani attribue
d'une façon convaincante à ce double sentiment la double figure obsédante de la
mère dans Les tragiques. Nous trouvons, en effet, la mauvaise mère, la mère
castratrice, prête à dévorer ses enfants, et qui par le juste retour des choses sera
dévorée par les chiens comme Jézabel. Catherine de médicis vue comme
l'incarnation contemporaine de la marâtre. Mais à côté de ce monstre, on trouve
aussi l'image attentrissante de la mère nourricière qui malheureusement par la faute
du mauvais fils, Cain ou Esau, voit son lait tarir.

Dans le récit autobiographique, l'auteur de cette remarquable étude relève une
deuxième scène qui colorera la vie amoureuse d 'Agrippa d'Aubigné. C'est une
scène d'hallucination auditive et visuelle que vécut le petit Agrippa, âgé alors de
six ans. Il entendit et vit s'approcher de son lit une femme blanche qui disparut après
lui avoir donné un baiser de glace: blancheur et froideur marqueront à jamais
l'érotisme de l'auteur du Printemps. C'était inscrit dans son destin qu'il aimât une
déesse chaste, et que sa maîtresse eût pour nom Diane ne faisait que confirmer cette
destinée. Dans Le printemps, Diane apparaît aussi sous les traits plus effrayants de
Diane-Lune et de Diane-Hécate. A cette dernière, il apporte en sacrifice ses cent
sonnets, son Hécatombe, sacrifice destiné à apaiser la cruelle déesse. Gisèle
Mathieu-Castellani fait remarquer que le sacrifice qui s'inscrit dans la structure de
l'échange est "l'une des modalités, la plus dramatique, la plus efficace, du contrat
qui lie deux parties". Elle avait déjà montré plus tôt ce thème d' ob -ligation, qui
parcourt toute l'oeuvre d'Agrippa dans un article, "Le contrat et le sacrifice dans la
poétique d'Aubigné" {Renaissance et Réforme, février 1987).

Enfin le troisième tableau qui scellera à jamais le devenir d'Agrippa d'Aubigné:
devant le château d'Amboise, le serment arraché sous menace de malédiction de
venger les suppliciés d'Amboise. Le fils est donc lié par un contrat pervers à
répondre à la violence par la violence. Rien d'étonnant donc que l'écriture
d'Agrippa d'Aubigné, même dans son canzoniere, soit sous le signe de la violence.

Ce petit livre nous mène au coeur même du mystère de l'écriture d'Agrippa
d'Aubigné. En mettant en évidence les thèmes récurrents de contrat et de sacrifice,
ainsi que les images obsédantes du sein maternel, Mathieu-Castellani montre la
cohérence et la polysémie d'une écriture de haine et d'amour qui met en scène Eros

Renaissance et Réforme / 343

et Thanatos. Ce livre est une invitation à lire ou à relire d'Aubigné; à cause de sa
pénétration et de sa richesse, aucun lecteur sérieux du poète ne pourra s'en passer.

SIMONE MASER, Université d'Ottawa

J. H. Elliott. The Count Duke ofOlivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. Pp. xxviii, 733.

in 1621 the Count-Duke of Olivares emerged as the dominant figure in the Spanish
court and government upon the accession of Philip IV (1621-1665) to the throne.
As the royal favourite {valida) of the young king, Olivares acquired power intent
upon introducing fiscal, administrative and political reform into a creaking imperial
structure beset by a multitude of problems at home and abroad. The optimism
generated in the early years of his rule had long since vanished by 1643 when
Olivares was driven from power as the monarchy staggered under the burden of
military defeat at the hands of the French and the Dutch, revolts within the monarchy
in Catalonia and Portugal, and the crushing weight of taxation.

J. H. Elliott has written an exhaustive account of how this intelligent and
extraordinarily hard-working figure came undone, his great foreign and domestic
projects brought to ruin. The author pays due attention to the economic and political
obstacles in the way of anyone exercising effective power over the Spanish monar-
chy during the seventeenth century. And he addresses with admirable clarity the
complex diplomatic history of the times with particular attention being devoted to
the monarchy's relations with the Dutch, the French and the Austrian Hapsburgs.
Yet when all is said and done, this is the story of a personal failure of enormous and
heroic proportions. It is a story of elaborate foreign policy schemes designed to
preserve the hegemony of both Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs before threats from
the Dutch, the French and the Protestant princes of central Europe. It is also a tale
of fundamental miscalculations, such as the refusal to come to terms with the Dutch
in the late 1620s, and the decision to commit Spain militarily in the struggle over
the Mantuan succession, thereby bringing about a French intervention that would
bring disaster in its wake. At home, Olivares, beset by a perpetual financial crisis
produced by Spanish military commitments abroad, misread the deeply held resent-
ments of Portugal and Catalonia at Castillan domination.

Elliott argues that in the end Olivares' inability "to take clean, sharp decisions,
without accompanying them with qualifying formulas and subsidiary purposes"
(p. 587) frustrated his elaborately conceived plans and strategies. Olivares appears,
indeed, as a tragic figure who worked ceaselessly at his desk on the king's business,
who saw Spain called to fulfill its glorious imperial destiny in Europe on behalf of
itself and Catholicism, and who bore the disasters that rained down upon the realm
beginning in the mid- 1630s with stoic resignation. This is a story well and objec-
tively told. At its end, the reader instinctively feels sympathy for the man who

344 / Renaissance and Reformation

struggled mightily to do for the Spanish monarchy what he believed was in its best
interests but who, instead, led it to near ruin.

WILLIAM]. CALLAHAN, University of Toronto

Machiavelli. The Prince. Edited by Quentin Skinner and translated by Russell
Price. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1988. Pp. xxxv, 152. Two Appendices; Two Indices.

Quentin Skinner, Russell Price, and Cambridge University Press have all outdone
themselves in developing this elegant translation and scholarly edition of
Machiavelli's great classic. After commenting on their achievement I will use the
new translation to make a point about some central themes in The Prince.

Quentin Skinner's fine introduction sets Machiavelli in his intellectual context,
noting his rejection of the mirror of princes literature and his break with Cicero's
and Seneca's Utopian moralizing about power. Skinner also prepared the helpful
bibliographical notes and a chronicle of Machiavelli's life. Price did the translation,
annotations to the text, biographical notes on everyone mentioned in the text, and
two appendices: one a selection of Machiavelli's letters, the other, superb explana-
tions of the major Italian terms. All these aids, combined with the lucid, accurate
translation make this a splendid edition (and the paperback a bargain).

Price's translation for example renders 'principato' as 'principality', not
'dominion' or 'despotism' (sic!), as in Rodd's 1955 effort (Chicago 1965). To show
its quality the table below compares the original titles of Chapters VI and VII (in
Latin) with the Price and Caponigri versions.

Machiavelli

Price

Rodd

VI De principatibus
novis qui armis propils et
virtute acquiruntur

VI New principalities
acquired by one's own
arms and ability.

VI The Rule of a
Dominion Conquered by
Battle.

VII De principatibus
novis qui alienis armis et
fortuna acquiruntur.

VII New principalities
acquired through the
power of others and their
favour.

VII Rulers by the Grace
of Others.

In addition Price translates the title of the climactic Chapter XXVI, "Exhortatio
ad capessendam Italiam in libertatemque a barbaris vindicandum", thus: "Exhorta-
tion to liberate Italy from the barbarian yoke". In contrast Caponigri termed it an
'Envoi', putting it after an appendix with the letter to Lorenzo de Medici. These
chapters bracket the central themes of The Prince: fortuna, vertu, the foundation of

Renaissance et Réforme / 345

ordine and liberta. Given their ambiguity I will use all four words in the Italian;
each term receives illuminating commentary in Prince's vocabulary notes.

Machiavelli's realistic approach to politics appeard modern on 'differing with the
precepts offered by others' i.e. breaking with tradition: "The following facts may
cause surprise," he remarked in a notable understatement (15). Later he laconically
added a note of mild concern about the effect of his empirical and practical
approach: "I fear that I may be thought presumptuous" (55). Machiavelli's attitude
to tradition then was intelligently modern: don't simply accept it, learn from it.

This attitude underlies the historical approach in each chapter of The Prince. Each
canvasses "good examples' from 'ancient history' and 'more recent events', usually
in that order (18, 48, 45). The ruler "should read historical works especially for the
light they shed on eminent men" (53), that is, on the "deeds and careers" of those
"I have proposed as exemplars" (20, 88). History shows great rulers did not trust
merely to "luck" or "favour" (i.e. fortuna), but saw events as "opportunities"
(Occasioni) to exercise their "ability" and "skill" (vertu).

Vertulfortuna constitute a polar set, a dialectic whose resolution Machiavelli
could not discern. One of vertu 's main properties is to perceive the times, forsee the
danger and minimize risks. Half the time fortuna rules over us, Machiavelli felt,
adding "that lets us control the other half. Here "human freedom" has its chance
(85). But one should not mindlessly trust to "luck" (34, 22f). Although tempestu-
ously unpredictable, like the flow of a powerful riwer, fortuna can be controlled by
the dikes and dams which human ingenuity devises (vertu). In such passages
Machiavelli presents freedom as an understanding of necessity, a power exercised
in space and time. Descartes' and Kant's subsequent attempts to flee history were
in contrast not modern, but throwbacks to Platonic idealism. Machiavelli's approach
is new and modern, and was echoed by Vico, Hegel, Marx and Heidegger, inter
alios.

In an Aristotelian vein Machiavelli treats vertu like "practical knowledge"
"consummate prudence", wisdom or good judgment (86, 82; cf."bon sens" in
Montaigne). This requires the rare skill of discerning the changing dynamics of
particular situations or circumstances and the times. Rulers have to learn history so
that they can compare present situations to past analogues and try to foresee
harbingers of future success or failure. Guicciardini echoed the sentiment: "In
nearly all things one must make distinctions and exceptions because of ... circum-
stances. Nor can such distinctions and exceptions be found in books; they must be
taught by discretion" (Ricordi, C. 42). Rulers also need to be good judges of people,
notably their advisers (80f). In sum success in handling power comes when "meth-
ods match the circumstances" (86). Vertu means knowing when to act, when not.

A strong but flexible resolve goes some way to control fortuna. Renaissance
thinkers like Justus Lipsius, Montaigne, Pierre Charron, and Descartes saw such
neo-Stoic constancy as a major ethical value (cf Skinner's Foundations of Modern
Political Thought, 1.254; 11.278). In unstable times a ruler of vertu must "pursue his
aims steadfastly" (81). To be considered "inconstant" is to court contempt (64). The

346 / Renaissance and Reformation

Ruler, that is, must be 'hard like water', and the Chinese say. It is a form of courage
in the face of fortuna. Such steadfastness is a mean between rigid "obstinacy", in
Guicciardini's words, and a passive trust in luck. In the blood-ridden chaos of 16th
century Europe where states and churches tumbled like ten pins this was not a
cynical or immoral view.

The ruler's aim, to "maintain his power" ("mantenere lo stato"; 23,62), is not
amoral. A ruler, he notes, must "be prepared" not only to trim his conduct to the
"winds of fortune and changing circumstance [but also to] act immorally when
necessary"; nonetheless "a ruler should not deviate from right conduct if possible"
(55,62; cf 58,86,87). Guicciardini voiced a similar sentiment: "power cannot be
wielded according to the dictates of good conscience ... except [inside] republics"
(C. 48). Machiavelli was articulating the classic doctrine of the necessary evil. A
harsh teaching perhaps, but in reality not far from Thomist casuistry, especially as
applied to popes.

Indeed Machiavelli's teaching that the prince should be more concerned about
image, reputation and perception than reality can hardly be protested in an era when
the ruler of the largest democratic empire of the world was a lazy, senile third rate
actor. Moreover I for one would prefer Machiavellian vertu to the present and
militaristic fetish for more and 'better' nuclear missiles, which exemplifies little
appreciation of necessity or evil.

Vertu's foresight and control of fortuna made it possible for the Ruler to
'mantenere lo stato'. "Lo stato". Price explains, also means government, the
political community, the state; and "mantenere" implies that time is essential to the
state. States require "strong . . . secure and stable" foundations. Lo Stato goes beyond
any one ruler's personal power or ambition - a point which The Discourses make
clear. The Prince implies it through its orientation to the need to end the disorder
and dependence of Italy.

Ordine, Machiavelli suggested, rests on "good laws, strong arms, reliable allies
and exemplary conduct" (23, 83). Liberta meant self-government, and emancipa-
tion from external dominion. It is a profoundly democratic concept. Italy, The
Prince taught, desperately needed both, Ordine and Liberta, unity and indepen-
dence. This was to be the work of a great prince, someone like Cesare Borgia. Only
such a virtuoso could free her from her enslavement to the papacy and threats of
foreign invasion (Chs. XI,XXVI). He alone could make unstable, faction-ridden
Italy over into a 'new principality' unify her and free. Hegel recognized the ethical
import of Machiavelli's vision, partly because of its relevance to his own divided
Germany (and, I would add, to Canada's federal/provincial bickering and colonial
submissiveness to Washington). Given its historical setting, Hegel wrote,
Machiavelli's vision appeared "as not merely justified but as an extremely great and
true conception produced by a genuinely political head endowed with an intellect
of the highest and noblest kind".

Machiavelli's grand underlying theme then sees vertu as what the times (fortuna)
call for if Italy is ever to become a 'new principality' based on "ordine e liberta".

Renaissance et Réforme / 347

This is the theme The Prince adumbrated in Chapters VI and VII. It reaches its
climax in Chapter XXVI's address to Italy. After four hundred and fifty years his
words still ring true:

"Bearing in mind all the matters previously discussed, I ask myself whether ...
there is matter that provides an opportunity for a far-seeing and able man to mould
Italy into a form that will bring honour to him and benefit all its inhabitants ... so
many things are propitious for a new ruler that I am not aware that there has ever
been a more appropriate time than this" (87).

VINCENT DI NORCIA, University of Sudbury

Annonces / Announcements

Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies Meeting

The next meeting of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies will be held on
May 31, June 1 and 2, 1993 at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Papers related
to the following topics are especially welcome: Language and style in Middle
French; Cultural encounter: 1492 and after; The question of race in the early modern
period; Images and perceptions of Henry IV; The Jesuits Relations: A Renaissance
text; The Middle Ages in the Renaissance; The Council of Trent. For more infor-
mation, please contact Prof. Don Beecher, Department of English, Carleton Uni-
versity, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada KIS 5B6.

Congrès de la Société Canadienne d'Etudes de la Renaissance

La Société Canadienne d'Etudes de la Renaissance tiendra son congrès annuel les
31 mai, 1" et 2 juin 1993 à l'Université Carleton, Ottawa, Canada. Les sujets
suivants seront abordés: Etudes de langue et de style en moyen français; La question
de la race à la Renaissance; Les contacts culturels: 1492 et après; Images et
perceptions d"Henri IV; Les Relations des Jésuites: un texte de la Renaissance; Le
Moyen Age dans la Renaissance; Le Concile de Trente. Pour de plus amples
renseignements, communiquer avec M. Don Beecher, Department of English,
Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada KIS 5B6.

Women and Text in Pre-revolutionary France Conference

A conference on Women and Text in Pre-revolutionary France will be held. May
7-9, 1993 at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L3G1. For
more information, please contact Prof. Hannah Fournier or Jean-Philippe Beaulieu,
Department of French, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L
3G1.

Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference

Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Public Structures, shaping the
World in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Barnard College, New York City,
USA, December 5, 1992. For more information, please contact Prof. Catharine

350 / Renaissance and Reformation

Randall Coats, Department of French, Barnard College, New York, New York
10027, USA.

Moreana

La revue trimestrielle Moreana consacrera un numéro spécial à V Utopie de Thomas
More. Les auteurs sont invités à proposer leur titre et un résumé avant le 1^"^ janvier
1993 à Elizabeth McCutcheon, Department of English, University of Hawaii,
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA.

Correction

Correction: In the last issue oi Renaissance and Reformation (Vol. XV, No. 3), an
error occurred in the article entitled "Politics of John Donne's Devotions Upon
Emergent Occasions: or, New Questions on the New Historicism" by Mary
Arshagouni (pp. 233-248). Note 25 on page 248 should have read '"Ibid, pp. 171,8".
Prof. Arshagouni informed us also that her correct name is now Mary Arshagouni
Papazian. We apologize to the author for these omissions.

The editor welcomes submissions on any aspect of the Renaissance and the
Reformation period. Manuscripts in duplicate should be sent to the editorial
office:

Renaissance and Reformation
Department of French Studies
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario NIG 2W1
CANADA

The journal does not accept unsolicited reviews. However, those interested in
reviewing books should contact the Book Review Editor.

La revue sollicite des manuscrits sur tous les aspects de la Renaissance et de la
Réforme. Les manuscrits en deux exemplaires doivent être postés à l'adresse
suivante:

Renaissance et Réforme
Département d'études françaises
Université de Guelph
Guelph (Ontario) NIG 2W1
CANADA

Les textes en français ou en anglais seront soumis à l'évaluation externe. Veuillez
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la fin de votre texte. Les droits d'auteur sont la propriété des collaborateurs et
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