My computer crashed, so I had to put it together again from scratch. It was a matter of passwords. Microsoft’s employees would not help me retrieve my password.
We are returning to Molière, but not immediately. First, we will read one more post on Confederation. It is almost ready to publish. We will read two short plays by Molière, his La Critique de l’École des femmes (1st June 1663), and L’Impromptu de Versailles (the Fall of 1663). These are often considered Molière’s “theoretical” plays, but they are performed and constitute essential reading. After reading these two plays, we will have read all plays written by Molière, but some are not presented with an English translation.
Our discussion of these two one-act plays will be followed by a reading of Madame de La Fayette‘s Princesse de Clèves (1678). You may remember that Molière depicts the harms of jealousy. Our best example is Dom Garcie de Navarre, but Amphitryon is the model most remember. In La Princesse de Clèves, jealousy precludes reciprocated love. The French wars of religion are its backdrop. Henri II is the King of France. He is married to Catherine de’ Medici, but loves his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. One of Catherine and Henri II’s sons was Henri III. He died in 1589, which is when Henri III de Navarre became Henri IV of France (La Henriade). As King of Navarre, he had been a Huguenot. He converted to Catholicism and proclaimed the Edict of Nantes (1598).
For the last few months, I have been updating my page listing Fables by La Fontaine. France has a new “site officiel” dedicated to La Fontaine, which means that links no longer take a reader to the fable under discussion.
Paris vaut bien une messe. (Paris is well worth a Mass.) Henri IV
Pierre Dugua de Mons, Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit and Samuel de Champlain did not travel to North America until 1599, and we have discovered that these men were Huguenots. Despite the Edict of Nantes, L’Édit de Nantes, an edict of toleration granted by Henri IV of France in 1598, Huguenots, French Protestants, could not escape persecution. Let us explain. Henri IV of France had been a Huguenot as King of Navarre. He converted to Catholicism to be crowned King of France. He is reported to have said that “Paris vaut bien une messe” (Paris is well worth a Mass). He was assassinated in 1610, and Huguenots were no longer safe in France.
The Siège de La Rochelle, which took place in 1627-1628, is abundant proof that Huguenots were endangered. According to Wikipedia, 22,000 citizens died of starvation at La Rochelle. La Rochelle had a population of 25,000. However, some escaped. Two or three of my Bourbeau ancestors hid in the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, waiting to sail to New France. In 1627, the Catholic Company of One Hundred Associates would rule New France, but it did not persecute New France’s Huguenot population. Huguenots left New France or converted to Catholicism when the Edict of Nantes was revoked on 22 October 1685. They fled to the United States.
We have discovered that our men were Huguenots and that they could be persecuted in France, despite the Edict of Nantes. As noted above, L’Édit de Nantes was an edict of toleration signed by Henri IV. Yet, Henri IV, a beloved King, was assassinated by a victim of religious fanaticism.
Failed Settlements
It was thought that Jacques Cartier, who took possession of Canada in the name of the King of france and named it Canada, did not found a settlement. But he did. He founded Cap-Rouge near Quebec City. It was a failure, but the remains of the settlement have been rediscovered. It seems that Francis 1st did not know about this brief settlement.
In 1541, King Francis 1st commissioned Jean-François de La Rocque, sieur de Roberval, a nobleman, to establish a settlement in the land Cartier had discovered. Cartier would merely accompany Roberval to North-America. However, Cartier left in 1541 and arrived in North America on 23 August 1541, a year earlier than Roberval. He met Roberval, on 8 June 142, but did not accompany him as the King had requested.
The King had given Roberval two missions. He was to found a settlement and was also asked to convert Amerindians to Catholicism. Roberval could convert Amerindians into Catholics because he was a Protestant or had converted to Protestantism. The settlement he founded did not survive. So, Roberval returned to France. He was not chastised by the King, but he and other Huguenots were murdered leaving a meeting of Protestants.
So, France’s bitter Wars of Religion all but prevented settling Acadie and Canada, New France’s two provinces. A few years ago, I contacted Britannica to say that Dugua de Mons was a Protestant and that he, not Champlain, was the father of Acadie. Could its scholars investigate? Britannica modified its entry and scholars went on to determine that Quebec City was founded by Champlain, but that he was Dugua’s employee.
Acadie fell to Britain in 1713, by virtue of the Treaty of Utrecht, but Acadians had not left. In 1755, a large number of Acadians, sources vary from 1,200 to 11,500, were forced into ships that went in different directions. Family members were separated and so were young couples who were engaged to be married.
Longfellow told that story in Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, an epic poem published in 1847. Acadians have transformed Longfellow’s Évangéline into Acadia’ heroine. Évangéline is alive. According to one’s sources, the name Acadie is derived from an Amerindian word, or from Arcadia.
Scholars have now established that Champlain settled Quebec City under the supervision of Dugua de Mons. New France would be a Catholic colony, but it has Huguenot roots.
King Henry VIII, by Hans Holbein the Younger, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Casuistry
The Fragmentation of the Western Church
When Antonio Escobar y Mendoza (1589 – 4 July 1669) published his Summula casuum conscientiæ (1627), the handbook of casuistry, the Roman Church had been severely fragmented. Escobar y Mendoza and Francisco Suárez (5 January 1548 – 25 September 1617), Jesuits, were therefore addressing an alarmed and vulnerable Western Church, a Church ready to use remedies it may not have otherwise contemplated. Casuistry all but took sinfulness out of sin. Consequently, it was attacked by Blaise Pascal, in his Lettres provinciales(1658-1659), and ridiculed by Molière(Tartuffe) and La Fontaine. But it allowed the king to sin.
Let us assess the damage
Henry VIII of England (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547; king: 21 April 1509 until his death), who was not allowed to divorce, ended up making himself head of the Church of England.
John Calvin (French, Jean Calvin, born Jehan Cauvin: 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) and French Huguenots, Calvinist Protestants, could easily point a guilty finger not at Jesus of Nazareth,but at the Churchas a human institution. Calvin is the author ofThe Institutes of the Christian Religion, publishedin 1536.
To the above, we could add the Edict of Nantes, promulgated in 1598, by Henri IV who was both king of France and king of Navarre. The Edict of Nantes offered protection to the formerly persecuted Huguenots, which seemed the correct remedy, but Huguenots were not loyal to the Roman Church and were therefore a potential obstacle to absolutism in the eyes of cardinal-duc de Richelieu.
Richelieu may have been right when he suggested to Louis XIII that the Huguenots’ right to have “places fortes” (fortified communities), such as La Rochelle, could imperil absolutism, i.e. one king, one language, one religion. These “places fortes” could be turned into genuine fortified places. (See Siege of La Rochelle, Wikipedia.) However, did he have to let twenty-two thousand Huguenots starve to death?
Casuistry: origins
Casuistry, a recipe for ethical laissez-faire, does not find its origins in seventeenth-century Spain, or Escobar y Mendoza, Francisco Suárez and other casuists. In dates back to ancient Rome and ancient Greece.
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael (6 or 28 March 1483 – 6 April 1520). Aristotle gestures to the earth, representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethicsin his hand, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Form.
For example, casuistry has roots in ancient Rome and, especially, ancient Greece, and the Renaissance had given greater access to the knowledge of ancient Rome and Greece. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE)[i]proposes an examination of certain actions, not all, before judgment is passed with respect to their moral acceptability.
Casuistry and Jurisprudence
I should mention thatcasuistry has often been defined as jurisprudence applied to morality. For instance, the Ten Commandments do not permit the killing of a human being, but during a war that restriction is lifted. It is also lifted in the case of self-defence. As well, many countries have retained what other countries look upon as profoundly unethical: the death-penalty. This would suggest that the sinfulness of an action depends to a smaller or larger extent on circumstances and location. Jurisprudence is the study of cases (casuistry).
In other words, moral relativism is not new.
—ooo—
However, with casuistry, a sin could be rendered innocent using “methods” that manipulated reality, which Blaise Pascal could not accept, nor Molière, nor La Fontaine.
Casuistry: a general definition
There were great advantages to casuistry in that allowed the “grands” among the faithful to sin without sinning, which constitutes an unacceptable form of moral relativism and, by and large, benefits only the “grands” or the rich and powerful. Casuistry proposed “methods” that could be used to make a wrong a right. The most important of these “methods” or doctrines were:
la direction d’intention, or the end [l’intention] justifies the means (Machiavellian);
mental restriction (saying part of the truth out loud, but saying the rest silently, within oneself);
the doctrine des équivoques: using ambiguous or equivocal terms, to transform a message;
probability (one theologian who said “no” could be overruled by a theologian who said “yes” as both were theologians.
I am leaving out: easy devotion (la dévotion aisée), and dispensation from loving God (la dispense d’aimer Dieu) and there may be other “methods” or doctrines, but for a detailed account of the methods put forth by casuistry, one needs to read Escobar y Mendoza, Francisco Suárez and other proponents of casuistique, a task best performed by theologians.
Among the four “methods” or doctrines I have listed, the most disputed was the fourth: probability, which pitted one authority against another.
Henry VIII & Henri IV
The Church of England separated from the Roman Church because Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was not allowed to divorce Catherine of Aragon and having separated from the Roman Church, Henry VIII went on to have wives decapitated.
But let us look a the life of Henri IV of France who was a good king, but a womanizer who did not honour his promise to marry Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, should Gabrielle d’Estrées(1573 – 10 April 1599), his official mistress, pass away. Henri IV probably expected Gabrielle d’Estrées to live a long time, but she died of eclampsia on 10 April 1599, at the age of 26. A few months later, Henri married Marie de’ Medici, not Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, whom he had promised to marry.
Moreover, where was the Church, when Henri IV, a Protestant married Marguerite de Valois (14 May 1553 – 27 March 1615), a Catholic who did not want to marry him?Henri IV, king of Navarre, stood outside Notre-Dame de Paris while his wedding took place.
Henri IV abjured Protestantism on 25 July 1593, following the advice of his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées, a Catholic, but he did so unconvincingly: “Paris vaut bien une messe.” (Paris [the crown] is well worth a mass.) He converted five years after his becoming king of France. I surmise he had to convert in order to be crowned, which meant he was seeking power.
Finally, in 1599, ten years after he became king of France (1589), Henri had his marriage to Marguerite de Valois annulled on the grounds that she could not bear him children, which may not have constituted valid grounds for an annulment had Henri IV not needed heirs and had he not been a “grand.” He had also had Gabrielle d’Estrées’ marriage annulled. So what happened to Henry VIII? Why was his marriage not annulled?
Henri IV, king of France and king of Navarre, was no choir boy. He loved women. But he may well have been the best king France ever had.
Adultery
In other words, what we see here is adultery which, according to Judaism’s Ten Commandments, is a sin. Unlike Henry VIII, Henri IV did not break with the Roman Church to marry another woman. Nor did he have wives decapitated. But he had an insatiable sexual appetite which he obviously felt free to indulge perhaps given his “divine rights of kings,” a notion he and Henry VIII had probably never heard of.
Moreover, it was not uncommon for monarchs whose marriages were arranged to keep an official mistress. Henri II of France, Marguerite de Valois’ father, was married to Catherine de’ Medici, but he had a mistress, the powerful Diane de Poitiers.
Opposition to Casuistry
In his Lettres provinciales(1656-1657), Blaise Pascal[ii] (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662), using a pseudonym, Louis de Montalte, condemned casuistry. Molière mocked it in Tartuffe (1664, 1666, 1669) a play he often revised to please “le parti des dévots” and escape the death penalty. As well, La Fontaine, bequeathed a long list of poems where the “grands” do with impunity what is not allowed of the “petits.”
—ooo—
In other words, the rapid breakdown of the Roman Church justified robust recourses, but did it justify taking sinfulness out of sin in aristocratic rather than plebeian circles. There can no doubt that circumstances play a role in determining whether some actions are ethically permissible. But can taking all sinfulness out of sinful actions be acceptable?
Pascal was not heard in his lifetime, but in 1679, “Pope Innocent XI publicly condemned sixty-five of the more radical propositions (stricti mentalis), taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, Suárez (Catholic Encyclopedia) and other casuists as propositiones laxorum moralistarum and forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.”[iii]
Ironically, if indeed casuistry was used to prevent further fragmentation of the Western Church, it was also an indictment of the Church, which can lead one to think that Pope Innocent XI perhaps saved the Western Church. .
“Those” are mainly members of the clergy of France, before it was nearly destroyed during the French Revolution. The Age of Enlightenment did not happen in France alone, but it was a time of liberation, rooted, among other texts, in René Descartes‘ Discourse on Method (1637). The reign of reason had begun.
Descartes: « Je pense, donc je suis » and the Tabula Rasa
We associate Descartes with the Cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”), his proof of his existence and, by extension, the existence of other human beings. The Je pense, donc je suis (The Discourse on the Method) is more easily understood if rewritten using the verb “to doubt.” If Descartes doubts, he is thinking, and if he is thinking, he is. By the way, the Discourse on Method, as it is usually referred to, was written in French. It was the first ever philosophical work written in the French language. However, his tabula rasa(cleared up table) sums up the Age of Enlightenment as it unfolded in 18th-century France. Built-in mental content was rejected.
The Age of Enlightenment did not happen in France alone. Voltaire was particularly impressed by England, where he was exiled and was inspired to write the Letters on England, first published in translation in England (London, 1733) and, one year later, in French (London, 1734). An unauthorized copy was published in France in 1734, and was censored. He escaped to Cirey-sur-Blaise, Madame du Châtelet‘s castle, which they refurbished. Madame du Châtelet, a mathematician and a physicist, was Voltaire’s companion until her premature death, at the age of 42, in 1749, which was before the Calas affair.
The Salons and Cafés
Brilliant men gathered in salons, a “key institution” (see Women’s Involvement in the French Salons) and French cafés. You will remember Madame de Geoffrin‘s salon, rue Saint-Honoré, and the Café Procope, the oldest café in Paris. Voltaire was an habitué, a regular, of salons and cafés, but he had to live away from Paris in order to escape authorities who could have thrown him into the Bastille prison. Descartes chose to live in Holland, as reason was a tool feared by a repressive Church. As for Voltaire, having spent 11 months, maybe more, in the Bastille, he ended up living near the Swiss border.
Voltaire’s château de Ferney, Kassandra Kasparek (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
At that time in the history of France, one could incarcerate a man without the benefit of a trial or the possibility for him to defend himself. One obtained a lettre de cachet, signed by the King or the Regent, countersigned by an official, and sealed: le cachet. In order to avoid imprisonment, Voltaire seldom resided in Paris. He claimed that philosophes (intellectuals) needed two dens or tanières, so they could flee easily from one to the other.
Voltaire expressed a philosophe‘s need for two lairs, deux tanières, in a letter he wrote to Madame Denis, his niece and companion.
« Rampant ainsi d’une tanière dans une autre, je me sauve des Rois…, car il faut toujours que les philosophes aient deux ou trois trous sous terre contre les chiens qui courent après eux. » (Voltaire, Lettre à madame Denis, 1745)
(“Thus crawling from one lair into another, I escape Kings…, for philosophes always need two or three holes underground against the dogs running after them.”)
Voltaire had transformed an inheritance into a fortune and could afford to own a château. He purchased Ferney, one hour away from Switzerland, where he bought a house, at Lausanne. After Madame du Châtelet’s death, to whose castle he had fled when the Lettres philosophiques were censored, Madame Denis, Voltaire’s niece, became his permanent companion.
Jean Calas
Jean Calas (19 March 1698, Lacabarède, Fr.—died 10 March 1762, in Toulouse) was a Huguenot (French Calvinist Protestant) merchant whose son, Marc-Antoine, committed suicide by hanging in his father’s cloth shop. His body was found on 14 October 1761. It appears Marc-Antoine planned to convert to Catholicism.
Suicide was a crime, punishable by death if one survived, and the bodies of persons who had committed suicides were defiled. The family therefore claimed they had found their son dead hanged. They made the suicide look like a murder.
Our cast is:
Marc-Antoine Calas, the victim, who planned to convert to Catholicism;
Jean Calas, his father and a Protestant (called Huguenot in France) merchant;
Anne-Rose Babibel, Jean Calas’ wife and a Protestant;
Pierre Calas, Marc-Antoine’s brother, a convert to Catholicism;
On the evening of 13 October 1761, Marc-Antoine left the dinner table and hanged himself in his father’s shop. His body was discovered the next day, 14 October;
On 15 October 1761, the family and their guest were interrogated. At first, they lied, but were advised to tell the truth;
They told the truth. Marc-Antoine had been found dead. He had studied Law, but had difficulty entering his profession. As noted above, he was planning to convert to Catholicism;
On 18 November 1761, Toulouse magistrates concluded, rather summarily, that Marc-Antoine had been murdered by Jean Calas, Anne-Rose (mother), Pierre Calas (brother), Jeanne Viguière (governess, servant), and Gaubert Lavaysse, a guest;
The accused appealed the decision to the Parlement de Toulouse
On 9 March 1762, Jean Calas was tried and found guilty;
On 10 March 1762 he was executed: he was broke to death on the wheel;
On 18 March 1762, Pierre, Marc-Antoine’s brother, was banished, but the other suspects were acquitted.
Jean Calas, broke on the wheel(Photo credit: l’Affaire Calas)
Enters Voltaire
Voltaire was informed of this event by Dominique Audibert, from Marseilles. He soon suspected an injustice. How could Jean Calas, aged 64, strangle his robust son alone? In fact, how could he lift his son’s body and hang him? Why was he the only person to be found guilty and “roué?” The monitoire or chefs d’accusation (the charges) did not make any sense. Besides, Jean Calas had claimed he was innocent until the very end.
For three months, Voltaire sought the truth: “cette vérité qui importe au genre humain,” (this truth which is important to humankind). By the middle of June, he was convinced that there had been a miscarriage of justice.
« Je suis persuadé plus que jamais de l’innocence des Calas et de la cruelle bonne foi du Parlement de Toulouse qui a rendu le jugement le plus inique sur les indices les plus trompeurs ». (21 juin 1762) Read more: http://www.site-magister.com/afcal.htm#ixzz3Ti70UVCz
(“I am persuaded more than ever of the innocence of the Calas family and of the cruel good faith of the Parliament of Toulouse who ruled most inequitably on the most deceptive evidence.” [21 June 1762])
Voltaire sent for Pierre and Donat, Donat being Pierre’s brother. They were refugees in Switzerland. This too was puzzling. Why had Pierre been banished? A person is either guilty or innocent.
“The only person Voltaire would incriminate was the magistrate, called a Capitoul, David de Beaudrige, who had been hostile to the Calas from the very start and had neglected to conduct a thorough enquiry.”
« Il incriminera le seul David de Beaudrigue, ce Capitoul [magistrate] qui, d’emblée [from the very start], s’était montré hostile aux Calas et avait négligé son enquête[.] »
The Mother, the two Daughters, with Jeanne Viguière, their good maid, the Son and his young friend Lavaysse, Engraving by Jean-Baptiste Delafosse from a drawing by Carmontelle (1765). (Photo credit:l’Affaire Calas)
He wrote anonymous pamphlets, libelles, as well as letters to Choiseul, the foreign minister, and Mme de Pompadour, Louis XV’s official mistress. He also sent Madame Calas to Paris where she met ministers and was introduced at Court. Moreover, he published a print by Daniel Chodowiecki showing Jean Calas bidding farewell to his grieving family.
On 1 March 1763, the Callas’ appeal was deemed admissible;
In November 1764, Voltaire published his Traité sur la Tolérance à l’occasion de la mort de Jean Calas (Treatise on Toleration, on the Death of Jean Calas.);
On 4 June, the old verdict was nullified by the Court of Cassation, and the family returned to jail briefly to hear the new sentence;
A famous engraving, from a drawing by Carmontelle, was sold in order to raise money for the family;
In February 1765, David de Beaudrigue, the magistrate, was removed from office;
On 9 March 1765, the Calas family was fully rehabilitated.
Voltaire surrounded himself with royals and other influential people. He won the sympathy of French Protestants and Protestants outside France, thus advancing the cause for religious tolerance. He also discredited the judiciary. When Voltaire worked on a case, he was extremely persistent.
Montesquieu published his Spirit of the Laws in 1748, bringing absolutism into disrepute; it seemed despotic. Voltaire proved that the execution of Jean Calas was an injustice. He showed the merciless treatment of Huguenots, French Protestants. He mobilized the whole of Europe, yet, he never left home.
However, Europe was inundated with letters, etc.
I should note in closing that Voltaire loved the theater, he enjoyed acting, wrote several plays. In short, to rehabilitate Calas, it seems he staged a huge drama. He even sent the grieving widow to Paris and to Court. Having prints engraved to move people or to get donations was brilliant. But this is where I must stop.
composer: unknown (c. 1750)
performers: Le Poème harmonique
director: Vincent Dumestre
Le Roi a fait battre tambour
1. Le roi a fait battre tambour Pour voir toutes ses dames(To see all his ladies)
Et la première qu’il a vue (the first one)
Lui a ravi son âme
The king had drummers beat their drums / So he could see all the ladies of his kingdom / And the first one he saw / Stole his soul
2. Marquis dis-moi la connais-tu
Qui est cette jolie dame ?
Le marquis lui a répondu
Sire roi, c’est ma femme(she is my wife)
Marquis do tell if you know her / Who is that pretty lady / The Marquis answered / Your Majesty, she is my wife
3. Marquis, tu es plus heureux que moi
D’avoir femme si belle Si tu voulais me la donner (If you wanted)
Je me chargerais d’elle
Marquis, you are happier than I / To have so beautiful a wife / If you gave her to me / I would look after her
4. Sire, si vous n’étiez le roi (if you were not)
J’en tirerais vengeance
Mais puisque vous êtes le roi (since your are)
À votre obéissance(obedience)
Your Majesty / Were you not the King / I would seek revenge / But since you are the King / I must obey
5. Marquis ne te fâche donc pas
T’auras ta récompense
Je te ferai dans mes armées
Beau maréchal de France
Marquis, do not get angry / You will be rewarded / In my armies you will be / A handsome maréchal (marshall) of France
6. Adieu, ma mie, adieu, mon cœur ! (Farewell)
Adieu mon espérance(my hope)
Puisqu’il nous faut servir le roi Séparons-nous d’ensemble (Let us separate)
Farewell, my dearest, farewell my heart / Farewell my hopes / Since we must the King serve / Let us part
7. La reine a fait faire un bouquet
De belles fleurs de lys
Et la senteur de ce bouquet
A fait mourir marquise
The Queen had a bouquet made / Of beautiful lillies / And the scent of this bouquet / Caused the Marquise to die
The Story behind the song
We know that Le Roi a fait battre tambour was written in 1750. However, it is difficult to determine whose story the song tells. Opinions differ. But, in all likelihood, the song tells of events that took place at the end of the sixteenth century, during the reign of Henri IV (13 December 1553 – 14 May 1610), King of France and King of Navarre.
Henri II (31 March 1519 – 10 July 1559) was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559. He was wounded during a jousting tournament and died. Henri II had three sons and all three were potential heirs to the throne of France or dauphins. It therefore seemed that the Valois Kings of France would continue to reign for a long time.However, Henri II died prematurely. Consequently, when his sons ascended the throne, they were too young and the person who reigned was their mother, Catherine de’ Medici (13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589).
The Fate of Henri II’s sons AND THAT OF mARGUERITE
Charles IX (27 June 1550 – 30 May 1574) ascended the throne at the age of 10 (1560 or 1561) and died at the age of 24. He did not survive the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre which his mother had forced him to order and which began on the 23rd of August 1572.
The Massacre took place a few days after Marguerite de Valois was forced (by Catherine de’ Medici) to marry Henri IV, King of Navarre. She protected her new husband but, afterwards, the couple seldom shared the same roof.
Henry III (19 September 1551 – 2 August 1589) became king in 1574, at the age of twenty-three and fell ill and died at the age of 38.
Marguerite de valois and the Salic Law
The Salic law prevented Marguerite de Valois to succeed her brothers. Women could not ascend the throne. So, ironically, Henri IV, the Huguenot (French Calvinist Protestant ) King she had been forced to marry, was suddenly the new heir to the throne of France.
Henri IV, the King of Navarre, became King of France and Navarre in 1589 and was crowned when his official mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées, suggested he convert to Catholicism, which he did. He is reported to have said: Paris vaut bien une messe (Paris [being King of France] is well worth a mass).
Marguerite de Valois as murderess
When Henri IV was having his marriage to Marguerite de Valois (la reine Margot) annulled, Gabrielle d’Estrées (1573– 10 April 1599), his official mistress, died of eclampsia during a pregnancy. She was bearing their fourth child. Rumours started circulating that she had been poisoned by the Queen (Marguerite de Valois). Therefore, the lady killed by the scent of a bouquet of lilies was Gabrielle d’Estrées, an extremely beautiful woman.
Henri IV married Marie de’ Medici (26 April 1575 – 4 July 1642) in October 1600, but the Marguerite de Valois’s title remain that of Queen.
More on the Song
The song is performed in the French of the Ancien Régime, i.e.before the French Revolution (1789-1794). Roi is pronounced Roé, as it is still pronounced by many French Canadians. Moreover, the lyrics I have provided are not identical to the words I have found. I will have to transcribe this older version of the song.
There are several recordings of “Le Roi a fait battre tambour.” The words given above are the words used by Nana Mouskouri.[i]
Conclusion
So now we know the probable origin of the our featured song, a famous song. But more importantly, we have seen how dangerous jousting tournaments can be, if one is married to a Medici. Catherine de’ Medici was manipulative and bloodthirsty and ruined her children’s life. Henri II had three sons, yet the Valois line died in 1589, the year Henri III and Catherine de’ Medici died.
After writing about the Duc de Joyeuse who slaughtered Huguenots, it may be a good idea to look at absolutism. In France, absolutism meant: one king, one language, one religion. It was achieved at a cost that makes absolutism a Pyrrhic victory. Chasing away the Huguenots deprived France and New France of citizens who, by and large, were an asset to their community and would be asset to the countries to which they fled.
Yet, as the Wars of Religion took their toll, courtiers danced. Jean-Baptiste Lully composed ballets de cour, but composers also wroteSuites, mostly dances. JS Bach‘s English Suites, French Suites and his Partitas (for the keyboard) are a good example of the union of rythme and melody, but his suites were not the galant music composed by his sons, the eldest, Wilhelm Friedemann and Johann Christian.
The image at the top of this post features a grotesque ballet de cour. The grotesque flourished in the late years of the 16th century and the early years of the 17th century in France, showing a distorted form of beauty perhaps consistent with the pity of the wars of religions. The gargoyles of medieval cathedrals reflect a related duality.
Daniel Rabel was a 16th-century French court artist during the French religious wars. For several years he was a set and costume designer for nascent ballets de cour which he somehow ridiculed through grotesque depictions that can be associated with comedy.
But let us listen to a menuet by Luigi Boccherini. The menuet, or minuet, is a triple–meter dance (1–2–3 ; 1–2–3), perfect for a bal at court. The Waltz also has a triple meter: 1–2–3. As we know, Louis XIII wrote a ballet de cour, the Ballet de Merlaison, dance music. I do not know if Louis XIII’s music has already been entered into one of the official periods of music. I would surmise it is Baroque music. However, the Ballet de la Merlaison has been revived and was performed in May 2012, in Compiègne. But let us discuss Boccherini, whose music is delightful.
King Henry VIII, by Hans Holbein the Younger, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Casuistry
The Fragmentation of the Western Church
When Antonio Escobar y Mendoza (1589 – July 4, 1669) published his Summula (1627), the handbook of casuistry, the Roman Church had been severely fragmented. Escobar y Mendoza and Francisco Suárez (5 January 1548 – 25 September 1617), Jesuits, were therefore addressing an alarmed and vulnerable Western Church, a Church ready to use remedies it may not have otherwise contemplated. Casuistry all but took sinfulness out of sin. Consequently, it was attacked by Blaise Pascal, in his Lettres provinciales(1658-1659), and ridiculed by Molière(Tartuffe) and La Fontaine. But it allowed the king to sin.
Let us assess the damage
Henry VIII of England (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547; king: 21 April 1509 until his death), who was not allowed to divorce, ended up making himself head of the Church of England.
John Calvin (French, Jean Calvin, born Jehan Cauvin: 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) and French Huguenots, Calvinist Protestants, could easily point a guilty finger not at Jesus of Nazareth,but at the Churchas a human institution. Calvin is the author ofThe Institutes of the Christian Religion, publishedin 1536.
To the above, we could add the Edict of Nantes, promulgated in 1598, by Henri IV who was both king of France and king of Navarre. The Edict of Nantes offered protection to the formerly persecuted Huguenots, which seemed the correct remedy, but Huguenots were not loyal to the Roman Church and were therefore a potential obstacle to absolutism in the eyes of cardinal-duc de Richelieu.
Richelieu may have been right when he suggested to Louis XIII that the Huguenots’ right to have “places fortes” (fortified communities), such as La Rochelle, could imperil absolutism, i.e. one king, one language, one religion. These “places fortes” could be turned into genuine fortified places. (See Siege of La Rochelle, Wikipedia.) However, did he have to let twenty-two thousand Huguenots starve to death?
Casuistry: origins
Casuistry, a recipe for ethical laissez-faire, does not find its origins in seventeenth-century Spain, or Escobar y Mendoza, Francisco Suárez and other casuists. In dates back to ancient Rome and ancient Greece.
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael (6 or 28 March 1483 – 6 April 1520). Aristotle gestures to the earth,representing his belief in knowledge through empirical observation and experience, while holding a copy of his Nicomachean Ethicsin his hand, whilst Plato gestures to the heavens, representing his belief in The Form.
For example, casuistry has roots in ancient Rome and, especially, ancient Greece, and the Renaissance had given greater access to the knowledge of ancient Rome and Greece. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE)[i]proposes an examination of certain actions, not all, before judgment is passed with respect to their moral acceptability.
Casuistry and Jurisprudence
I should mention thatcasuistry has often been defined as jurisprudence applied to morality. For instance, the Ten Commandments do not permit the killing of a human being, but during a war that restriction is lifted. It is also lifted in the case of self-defence. As well, many countries have retained what other countries look upon as profoundly unethical: the death-penalty. This would suggest that the sinfulness of an action depends to a smaller or larger extent on circumstances and location. Jurisprudence is the study of cases (casuistry).
In other words, moral relativism is not new.
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However, with casuistry, a sin could be rendered innocent using “methods” that manipulated reality, which Blaise Pascal could not accept, nor Molière, nor La Fontaine.
Casuistry: a general definition
There were great advantages to casuistry in that allowed the “grands” among the faithful to sin without sinning, which constitutes an unacceptable form of moral relativism and, by and large, benefits only the “grands” or the rich and powerful. Casuistry proposed “methods” that could be used to make a wrong a right. The most important of these “methods” or doctrines were:
la direction d’intention, or the end [l’intention] justifies the means (Machiavellian);
mental restriction (saying part of the truth out loud, but saying the rest silently, within oneself);
the doctrine des équivoques: using ambiguous or equivocal terms, to transform a message;
probability (one theologian who said “no” could be overruled by a theologian who said “yes” as both were theologians.
I am leaving out: easy devotion (la dévotion aisée), and dispensation from loving God (la dispense d’aimer Dieu) and there may be other “methods” or doctrines, but for a detailed account of the methods put forth by casuistry, one needs to read Escobar y Mendoza, Francisco Suárez and other proponents of casuistique, a task best performed by theologians.
Among the four “methods” or doctrines I have listed, the most disputed was the fourth: probability, which pitted one authority against another.
Henry VIII & Henri IV
The Church of England separated from the Roman Church because Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was not allowed to divorce Catherine of Aragon and having separated from the Roman Church, Henry VIII went on to have wives decapitated.
But let us look a the life of Henri IV of France who was a good king, but a womanizer who did not honour his promise to marry Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, should Gabrielle d’Estrées(1573 – 10 April 1599), his official mistress, pass away. Henri IV probably expected Gabrielle d’Estrées to live a long time, but she died of eclampsia on 10 April 1599, at the age of 26. A few months later, Henri married Marie de’ Medici, not Catherine Henriette de Balzac d’Entragues, whom he had promised to marry.
Moreover, where was the Church, when Henri IV, a Protestant married Marguerite de Valois (14 May 1553 – 27 March 1615), a Catholic who did not want to marry him? Henri IV, king of Navarre, stood outside Notre-Dame de Paris while his wedding took place.
Henri IV abjured Protestantism on 25 July 1593, following the advice of his mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées, a Catholic, but he did so unconvincingly: “Paris vaut bien une messe.” (Paris [the crown] is well worth a mass.) He converted five years after his becoming king of France. I surmise he had to convert in order to be crowned, which meant he was seeking power.
Finally, in 1599, ten years after he became king of France (1589), Henri had his marriage to Marguerite de Valois annulled on the grounds that she could not bear him children, which may not have constituted valid grounds for an annulment had Henri IV not needed heirs and had he not been a “grand.” He had also had Gabrielle d’Estrées’ marriage annulled. So what happened to Henry VIII? Why was his marriage not annulled?
Henri IV, king of France and king of Navarre, was no choir boy. He loved women. But he may well have been the best king France ever had.
Adultery
In other words, what we see here is adultery which, according to the Ten Commandments, is a sin. Unlike Henry VIII, Henri IV did not break with the Roman Church to marry another woman. Nor did he have wives decapitated. But he had an insatiable sexual appetite which he obviously felt free to indulge perhaps given his “divine rights of kings,” a notion he and Henry VIII had probably never heard of.
Moreover, it was not uncommon for monarchs whose marriages were arranged to keep an official mistress. Henri II of France, Marguerite de Valois’ father, was married to Catherine de’ Medici, but he had a mistress, the powerful Diane de Poitiers.
Opposition to Casuistry
In his Lettres provinciales(1656-1657), Blaise Pascal[ii] (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662), using a pseudonym, Louis de Montalte, condemned casuistry. Molière mocked it in Tartuffe (1664, 1666, 1669) a play he often revised to please “le parti des dévots” and escape the death penalty. As well, La Fontaine, bequeathed a long list of poems where the “grands” do with impunity what is not allowed of the “petits.”
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In other words, the rapid breakdown of the Roman Church justified robust recourses, but did it justify taking sinfulness out of sin in aristocratic rather than plebeian circles. There can no doubt that circumstances play a role in determining whether some actions are ethically permissible. But can taking all sinfulness out of sinful actions be acceptable?
Pascal was not heard in his lifetime, but in 1679, “Pope Innocent XI publicly condemned sixty-five of the more radical propositions (stricti mentalis), taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, Suárez (Catholic Encyclopedia) and other casuists as propositiones laxorum moralistarum and forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.”[iii]
Ironically, if indeed casuistry was used to prevent further fragmentation of the Western Church, it was also an indictment of the Church, which can lead one to think that Pope Innocent XI perhaps saved the Western Church.
This is probably my last post on the subject of the Pléiade, but there is one story I would like to share with you, that of the Académie de poésie et de musique founded, in 1570, by Jean-Antoine de Baïf and Joachim Thibault de Courville, under the auspices of Charles IX. Royal patronage could explain why the Académie de poésie et de musique is considered the first Académie to be founded in France.
In theory, members of the Académie attempted to write verses measured in the same manner as Greek verses, vers mezurés à l’antique.* The Académie‘s endeavour was perfectly legitimate and encouraged by Ronsard himself. However, members met in such secrecy that it would not be unreasonable to suspect a Huguenot connection.
*There was and may still be a Baïf font for Mac computers.
Jean-Antoine de Baïf
Jean-Antoine de Baïf (Venice, February 1532; Paris, 19 September 1589), the co-founded of the Académie, was the natural son of diplomat and Hellenist Lazare de Baïf. We have no information on Jean-Antoine’s mother. Jean-Antoine was raised by his father.
The Collège de Coqueret
Lazare was a good father. He provided his son, at a very early age, with the best teachers he could hire. In fact, in 1544, after Lazare had returned to Paris, he had his son and his secretary, Pierre de Ronsard, now nearly deaf, educated by Dorat or Doraut, who would become principal at the Collège de Coqueret and was later appointed as professor at the Collège de France, established in 1530.
Pierre de Ronsard was Jean-Antoine’s senior by eight years and at the Collège de Coqueret they met Joachim du Bellay and Pontus du Tyard, Dorat’s pupils and both future members of the Pléiade. Ronsard, the “prince of poets,” and Du Bellay are the co-founders of the Pléiade. Jean Dorat, one of Europe’s most prominent Hellenists, also became a member of the Pléiade and was, in fact, the group’s mentor. The Pléiade consisted of seven members.
L’Académie de Musique et de Poésie
Among members of the Pléiade, Baïf was probably the only poet who was also a musician. His goal in founding the short-lived Académie de poésie et de musique was, as mentioned above, the creation of poetry and music that would be measured in a manner resembling Greek versification.
Charles IX, by François Clouet*
The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
Catherine de Médicis’s incited her son, King Charles IX, to order the Massacre of the St. Bartholomew’s Day (August 24th [early morning], 1572). In fact, she plotted the entire event. The massacre lasted several days and spread to the provinces. Thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered. Young Charles IX, then 22 years old, barely survived the atrocities. He was emotionally devastated and physically weakened. He died in 1774, probably of tuberculosis.
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When Charles IX died, Ronsard, who was supportive of ‘vers mezurés,’ left his rooms at Court. As for the Académie de Poésie et de Musique, members continued to meet and they received encouragement on the part of famed poet Agrippa d’Aubigné, a Protestant who had left France several years before the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, but the Académie had nevertheless entered a period of decline. It was revived briefly as l’Académie du Palais, under Henri III, Charles IX’s brother.
Claude Le Jeune, Jacques Mauduit and, perhaps, Eustache Du Caurroy
All three composed musique mezurée à l’antique, but the better-known of the group is Claude Le Jeune (born c. 1527, Valenciennes, Burgundian Hainaut [now in France]—died c. 1600, Paris). Claude Le Jeune, a Franco-Flemish composer who died a Huguenot, was choirmaster to Henri III, Charles IX’s brother and successor, and music teacher to Henri de Navarre, a Huguenot and the future King of France, Henri IV.
Le Jeune wrote ‘Parisian’ songs, using metrical verses, but also composed madrigals and motets. Moreover, as a Huguenot, he contributed metrical psalms to the Genevan Psalter, published after his death in 1600.
As for Jacques Mauduit, he is the composer of the masterful Requiem (please click to hear) played at Pierre de Ronsard’s state funeral in 1585. Mauduit and Du Caurroy were composers of polyphonic music, or music using many voices.
Massacre of the St. Bartholemew’s Day
Vers mezurés and Music
It remains nevertheless that the premature death of Charles IX, dealt a nearly-fatal blow to the Académie. Moreover, members were not particularly successful at producing vers mesurés in poetry. Set to music, however, vers mesurés or metrical psalms were quite pleasant. So, there is a sense in which Antoine de Baïf experiment was successful, but not for long. The air de cour became fashionable.
As for Antoine de Baïf, in 1574, he published his Etrénes de poezie fransoèze en vers mezurés (“Gifts of French Poetry in Quantitative Verse”). As well, in 1586, he composed the lyrics of songs in Greek metrics: Chansonnettes mesurées. The music was written by the above-mentioned Jacques Mauduit, a member of Baïf’s Académie de Poésie et de Musique, the Académie’s foremost musician, and, as I mentioned above, the composer of the Requiem played at Ronsard’s state funeral.
Given its secrecy, the Académie may have been a refuge for Huguenots, but we may never know for certain. We know, however, that Baïf wrote a long poem commemorating the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and that, although he had taken minor orders, Ronsard saved Claude Le Jeune’s life, as did Antoine de Baïf. But most eloquent of all, is Ronsard’s Discours des misères de ce temps (1562), Discourse on the Miseries of These Times.
In poetry the “vers mezurés” were not very successful. French is a “flat” language. Stressing syllables other than the last sounded syllable of a word made poems sound unnatural. But vers mezurés à l’antique had their moment of grace in the history of music.
In my last blog, I wrote that a daughter, Caterina (13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589), was born to Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici (September 12, 1492 – May 4, 1519) and Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne (c. 1501 – 28 April 1519). Both died in 1519, shortly after the birth of Caterina who married Henri II of France and became Catherine de Médicis, Queen consort of France.
As Queen consort of France, Catherine incited her son, Charles IX (27 June 1550 – 30 May 1574), to massacre Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants). This massacre called the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) took place during the night of the 23-24 August 1572.
In my blog on Machiavelli and Reynard the Fox, I pointed to the ruthlessness of the Medici family, but left aside Caterina deʼ Mediciʼs hatred of French Protestants and her Machiavellian behaviour. The St. Bartholomewʼs Day massacre was Catherineʼs idea, but only her son, King Charles IX, could and did order it. When he witnessed the bloodshed, his already fragile mental health suffered such a blow that he did not recover and died two years later, in 1574. The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre claimed at least 5,000 lives in Paris. But it also claimed lives outside Paris.
This is the kind of actions, though on a smaller scale, that Machiavelli was aware of, and saw, hence his praise of the zoomorphic, half human, half beast, Centaur. The Centaurʼs beastial half could be useful to his prince as could the crafty Fox, born as Reinardus in Nivard de Gandʼs Ysengrimus a lenghty Latin beast epic (1149).
However, we will concentrate on Reynard in a future blog. At the moment, it would suffice to focus on the Huguenots, or French Calvinist Protestants. The French were beginning to consolidate their monarchy to make it an absolute monarchy. Richelieu would be its main architect, but absolutism meant one king, one language, one religion, a concept embraced by Catherine de Médicis.
Henri IV, who sympathised with the Huguenots, had to convert to Catholicism to become the King of France. He is remembered for saying that Paris (kingship) was well worth a mass: “Paris vaut bien une messe.” Henri was an excellent king, but he was murdered in 1610, when his son, the future Louis XIII was still a child.
A few years earlier, in 1598, Henri IV had signed the Edict of Nantes, which gave the Huguenots a respite, but one that did not truly survive the assassination of Henri IV. In theory, the Huguenots were safe and inhabited safe places, such as La Rochelle. But we know about the Siege of La Rochelle. It reaped the lives of approximately 24,000 Huguenots who were simply starved to death by Richelieu, a regent during the Louis XIII’s childhood but who remained a ruler during part of the reign of Louis XIII.
Mazarin, who was a ruler, also a regent, during the reign of Louis XIII, and Louis XIV were tolerant of Huguenots, but ended up revoking the Edict of Nantes, in 1685
The Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes led to an exodus. Huguenots fled to the Low Countries, England, the future Germany and elsewhere. However, as they fled, those who were caught were tortured in the cruellest of manners.
The Huguenots had constituted the cream of France’s middle-class, including Nouvelle-France’s middle-class. Where Nouvelle-France is concerned, it was so weakened by the departure of the Huguenots that the Révocation may help explain the future vulnerability of the colony.
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It was an important chapter in the history of my family. However, my sister Diane, an excellent genealogist, tells me that three Bourbeaus left France, which means that Suzor-Côté’s*Bourbeau paintings depict the home and surroundings of a third Bourbeau, my maternal grandfather’s father whose ancestry Diane has sent me, but it remains unexplored, but who was a Huguenot who converted to Roman Catholicism in order to remain in Canada.
* This is a French-language Wikipedia site, surrounded by English-language sites.
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Among Huguenots slaughtered on St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre was composer Claude Goudimel, an innocent man. All were innocent persons. Many Huguenots settled along the St. John’s River, in the United States. I must find out a little more.
I have never understood cruelty, especially cruelty perpetrated in the name of a religion.
There are happy and unexpected moments. For instance, a few days ago, I went in search of information on my grandfather’s family. He was a Bourbeau and he is my mother’s father. I have used his name when publishing scholarly articles: Bourbeau-Walker.
The Bourbeaus came to New France in the seventeenth century. They were Huguenots, or French Protestants. Two brothers came to New France: Pierre and Simon. They had survived the Siege of La Rochelle (1627-1628), by Richelieu and Louis XIII. The protestants had chosen La Rochelle as their refuge even though the Edict of Nantes (1598) protected them, at least officially, from persecution in other locations.
However, it is at that point in the history of France that absolute monarchy was consolidated. After King Henri IV was assassinated, in 1610, although still in effect, the Edict of Nantes, which stipulated tolerance of Huguenots, was not always respected. Henri IV, who had converted to Catholicism, had been a Huguenot, which is why he was assassinated. His son, Louis XIII, was too young to be crowned, so a regent was chosen: Richelieu. Richelieu became the chief architect of absolute monarchy in France. It was his belief that the King’s subjects should all speak French and be Catholics: one King, one language, one religion.
During the Siege of La Rochelle, some 22,000 protestants were starved to death, but two Bourbeau brothers were among the 5,000 who survived and the two later moved to New France. In 1685, when the Edict of Nantes was revoked by Louis XIV, the Bourbeaus and other French protestants living in New France moved south, to the English colonies. But a few stayed in Canada.
As I was searching Bourbeau entries, I saw a picture of the Bourbeau farm and realized that it was located in the area of Quebec where my grandmother had grown up. This picture, an oil painting, is the work of Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté (1869-1937), now famous. I knew that my grandmother had been an artist’s assistant, so I was able to determine for certain, first, that the artist was Suzor-Côté and, second, that in all likelihood she met her husband, a Bourbeau, because the Bourbeaus were close friends of Suzor-Coté. There are several Bourbeau paintings by Suzor-Côté.
Research is an extremely interesting endeavour because of surprises and coincidences. I will now attempt to incorporate a least one of Suzor-Coté’s paintings in this blog.